Can I walk away from this without prompting him to kill himself?

[theabysswithin]

Need some help with this... my ex and I separated two years ago at my instigation for a variety of reasons (verbal and financial abuse/alcohol dependency/inability or unwillingness to participate in family life and refusal to contribute financially being the most significant).

My ex has always been prone to bouts of depression and over the past month or so has been seriously depressed and has been threatening suicide over a variety of issues (financial problems and loneliness being the main ones.

We didn't exactly separate amicably but we've maintained a reasonably cordial relationship in front of our daughter almost too cordial in that I feel he is over-dependent on me emotionally and still asks me to do quite a lot of life admin for him and we spend a reasonable amount of time together. I've tried to draw back from this as I have totally moved on, but as his depression has deepened I've become worried about him and I am basically the only person he can talk to about it.

The flip side of this is he is quite controlling and makes it really hard for me to have any kind of social life by withholding childcare, things like going off the radar when we have arranged for him to be looking after my daughter, not returning phone calls to confirm appointments and being so late he renders it impossible for me to go out. He has refused any formal contact agreements at all and every time I try discuss these he shuts me down and says he is going to run away etc. No financial support from him at all aside from him buying the odd item of clothing for our daughter.

Last week he said he wanted to kill himself, I came with him to an appointment with a therapist and generally supported him around interactions with doctors and helped him get his act together around work. All seemed to be going well and then tonight following an extremely petty disagreement he has just rung me to tell me he will kill himself tonight. I promptly called an ambulance and the police (who I presume are with him now).

I know these are bullying tactics and that he is probably bluffing. I am absolutely sick of being the backstop for everything in his life and being abused into the bargain when I try to regain some degree of control by going out occasionally, having my work disrupted by having to look after him etc. But the bottom line is that for my daughter's sake, I can't just stand by and watch him die.

How do I get out of this loop? We are going through mediation at the moment and even though I'm probably going to have to shell out to get him out of my life I'm happy to do this. But for her sake, I can't let him destroy himself and I couldn't live with the guilt if he did.

Am I basically stuck with this for the rest of my life?

Just to derail the thread for a moment, mumoseven said this upstream:

I have never forgiven myself for allowing them to go that day, I feel I should have realised he wasn't in his right mind, though he was acting OK

I do hope you realise there was no way you could have known how he'd behave because as you said, he was acting OK; and you can't see into the future, or predict what other people might do. This was not your fault, you did nothing wrong, and all was well. Please stop beating yourself up over it. You're good.

I think you need to change your mindset to thinking you'll be the best parent you can for your DD and you're not responsible for her other parent. You are using your strength to protect your daughter from the truth of what her father is and I get that I really do. In the end the truth will out though. Please focus on the best life you can make for your DD, cut ties with this man do not rely on him for childcare or anything else and if he cleans up his act and wants to be a parent eventually then that's a bonus. If he doesn't then you've lost nothing. Your daughter isn't really losing a father - just the illusion of one that you are no longer able to maintain for her.

I don't think you are weak abyss but I do think you are still overly involved and invested in his life. You do need to put that barrier up. He can have supervised visitation but it is not for you to organise. You do not need to speak to him again.

How does never speaking to him again feel?

Why not hire a solicitor so if and when he is well enough to resume contact with your DD a third party is dealing with it. Not you.

I would never have him alone with your DD again. Completely supervised visits at a contact centre only. Not only would I be worried about your DDS safety if he has no ties to this country there must be a thought that if he isn't supervised he might decide to take DD back to his home country.

The language you use in connection with him is interesting: I have to, I need, I feel, I cannot

Intellectually, you know that there is an unhealthy dynamic between the two of you. However I am not sure that you have fully accepted that there appears to be a very strong co-dependency between you. Even when you talk about stepping away, detaching, protecting your daughter, you're still writing updates where you say you cannot leave him without 'oversight', that you are responsible for letting his family know.

You aren't.

This man is an adult. Whilst he may have MH issues and a problem with alcohol, he is still capable of picking up the phone to his family - or passing their contact details on to the hospital.

Every time you step in, you reinforce the psychological message to him that you are there as a dependable safety net. Your words to him about detaching, about not being there, are just that - words. Even after having said all of that you are still talking about having to liaise with his family. Stop and think: When you do this, it tells him that whilst you might say you're 'out', you don't actually mean it because you are still there in the background.

Part of him accepting he has issues and trying to form a plan for recovery, will be accepting that he has to stand on his own two feet, that he is on his own and that you aren't there. That means no ringing round after him, no updating his family, no checking on his welfare - nada. You don't need to know where he is to facilitate contact; he knows where you live and how to get hold of you. You tell your daughter that Dad isn't well, he's going to be away for a while but that everything is going to be OK.

Step back. It is what he needs and it is also what your daughter needs. You may feel like you are doing the right thing, but it's actually not helping at all.

Time to completely detach other than setting up supervised set access days. And any further threats of suicide equal withdrawal of supervised access until his MH is under control.

No further contact, email only and let him seek visitation with his DD.
His life between access days is his own to manage.
He contacts own family
He sorts own medical/mental health supports.

If your mental health suffers because of your ex's manipulative dependency on you who will 'fix' you?
You will that's who, you will have to support yourself for your Dds sake.
Let him do the same for himself step away from micromanaging his role as a parent to your DD. You can't change him or make him parent or make him want to live either.

Well done, OP, for being straight with him.

I can see this is a very difficult situation - but he is not your responsibility.

He is a grown man. He can access help. He's in the best place right now.

Ensure the hospital knows he is an ex, tell a doctor the extent of his controlling, bullying behaviour, and tell them that you are not responsible for any part of his care/after care.

Agree with stopping contact and setting up supervised access only.

Tempted to ask if you are the oldest child in your family as I recognise this overactive sense of responsibility for others, but possibly just projecting from my own experience.

Just one point to add to the very good advice given by other posters. Currently, you are encouraging him to act this way, because he is getting a payoff in the form of your rushing to sort things out for him. You need to take away the payoff for his behaviour. It gets worse before it gets better, because he will up the ante, chasing the payoff he used to get, but you have to weather it through. Eventually you'll reach the point where this behaviour results in pure boredom for you, not distress. It's the same way you'd treat a tantruming toddler.

Is he in a psychiatric hospital or general? Did he actually harm himself (sorry if I missed a post).

It is really hard to hear this advice OP.

It is all 100% correct.

The penny will drop at some point. Everyone here just wants that penny to drop for you right now - so that you dont keep putting your hand back in the fire.

You can see the big picture in theory - but you are struggling with what is practically in front of you right now. You have taken one big step, by separating but you are still being abused, coerced, controlled even though he is not within your 4 walls.

You need to be 100% NC - right now. For your daughter. She needs you 100% - not constantly distracted and emotionally drained by this looser.

The continual contact eg "after I have done x,y,z.." or "once he is a,b,c..." is a co-dependancy behaviour and is in fact you trying to CONTROL this crisis situation now - in the past you probably tried to CURE it. Maybe you even believed you CAUSED it. Take on board the 3Cs

For every single "I need to do x, y, z first" you are wasting time, getting yourself and your daughter hurt and holding him back from reaching rock bottom and taking responsibility for himself.

I know that you believe that you "just need to do x,y,z.." and then I will put down my boundaries and walk away. But for each of those practical points there is an alternative - the hospital can call his family etc. You dont need to do any of it - you are being over responsible. You intentions are good but it will not help any of you.

Please keep posting and debating - the support here is amazing - advice can be agitating and painful - but it is just from frustration from people who have walked this path and know that there is only one way out (NC) and they really dont want you to walk another step of this horror. Take care xx

You've had some great advice OP. Please listen and do what you need to do to be free. I wish you all the best as you move forward.

I would just like to add something though - Stop feeling sorry for him! There is a reason he has no one , it is because he has treated those around him like crap. Totally his fault . Let him deal with the consequences of this.

Also please don't be surprised if when you've properly detached he quickly finds another 'you' to pick up after him and be his verbal punching bag. His type are textbook OP , there's nothing special or unique about them.

Be free , breathe that lovely fresh air that surrounds you when he's not crowding you with his demands. Step away and live again! Good luck.

On the rise, thank you! Its a long time ago now but I think led to long term anxiety for all of us

"Please keep posting and debating - the support here is amazing - advice can be agitating and painful - but it is just from frustration from people who have walked this path and know that there is only one way out (NC) and they really dont want you to walk another step of this horror. Take care xx"

Please believe me, I have also walked this path... I went through many threats of suicide which included my whole family. He went to my mums and put all the windows through because he wasn't getting his own way, i remember my mum saying that she thought he had committed suicide but that it wasn't my fault. He hadnt - it was just another bluff.

I went NC but even years after - he would try contact saying that he wanted to be friends but it very quickly returned to him saying that he was going to kill himself without me. I had no option but to tell him to fuck off,

OP - I understand how responsible you feel, how much you need to try to control things but it is not helping either of you,
You need to walk away,

You've pretty much described my ex, especially the control through DC - refusing to look after him so I couldn't work at the last minute, dropping him off early so I had to leave work early, picking him up late so I was late for work, switching his days around if he knew I couldn't get alternative childcare, and NEVER having him on weekends because that would mean I'd have a social life, and all the suicide threats if I dare challenge him.

I hit breaking point, went to a solicitor, set fixed access days which couldn't be changed regardless of circumstances, if he was a certain period of time late there'd be no access, there was absolutely no conversation whatsoever other than to confirm the fixed days at the start of the month. Of course the suicide threats increased because he finally realised he had lost of control and it was his last pathetic attempt to get it back. I completely ignored and disengaged from any of it, eventually he stopped and after a few months he stopped showing up to collect DC, I didn't contact him/react the way he wanted me to and we haven't heard from him since.

This is not a confession I'm enormously proud of but I've been trapped in a remarkably similar situation to you for far too long, OP. In fact I'm only just coming out the other side.

My DP became depressed and altered due to a medication he was on but (it has taken me a long time to understand this) abuse is abuse and manipulation is manipulation, and they feel shit and scary to live with and live through regardless of the underlying cause.

Our child is also 6 and for the first 3-4 years of her life he threatened suicide regularly - usually when things felt out of his control - sometimes just because. My father died by suicide and DP's favourite refrain was "You know how it will feel for DC to grow up without a dad!". It was an effective threat because it was my greatest fear. Plus I loved and felt responsible for him, convinced I had to help him recover because no one else was prepared to.

But you know what? It didn't help. It just ground me down and stole a thousand happy days my child and I ought to have shared away from us through worry and eggshell walking. And one day I'd had it, so when he said "It would be easier for you if I was dead!" I shocked us both and said it absolutely would. I said if you had died we could have mourned you but as it is we are haunted by this thing you have become - wearing the face of the man you used to be. Then I started to say no.

He's still alive today and, with support, the medication which ruined him has been phased out but there was a point when I had to accept that the seesaw could tip either way and that maintaining its balance was something I could no longer do. I totally echo what a PP said about pointing him towards Samaritans. Please do this every time he reaches out in anger or despair. Then allow yourself and your daughter the gift of time alone together. He will either recover or he won't. I know that is brutal to hear but the truth can be brutal. My DP was drowning in mental health resources yet preferred to cling onto me. I should've prised his fingers off because he nearly dragged us all down with him.

Please know that what you have done is admirable, I recognise that it all came from a place of love, however misguided you (and I) may have been. It is an impossible situation to be trapped in and one that is hard to comprehend from the outside. I wish you all the luck in the world and a calmer, happier future for you and your DD

I have been suicidal to the point that my DH was not able to have me live with him. Earlier in my life, my parents had me admitted to A&E and refused to have me come home on the basis of the effect that this would have on their own mental health and that of my siblings. They effectively made their adult daughter homeless, although at a technical level it did not come to that.

They did this for their own reasons, and I am in awe at the strength it took for them as parents to get their daughter into the care of people who could cope.

Your ex-husband is not your spouse nor your child. If he takes his own life, which he probably will not, then this will not be your fault. You could not have done any more that you are doing.

Please ensure the people who are responsible for his care are aware what his happening. He may be telling them that he is alive for you or your DD at the same time as threatening you with taking his own life, for example. Make it clear to the professionals involved in his care that you are and cannot be his carer or "nearest relative", a technical term in medical parlance.

(I am doing much better now, and I was not in the same situation as your ex-DH in terms of my mental health, but there are parallels.)

Coffee and Erinaceous - thank you for sharing your experiences.