Partner with Anxiety and on meds has ended the relationship

[Rula24]

My partner of 21 years, father to my 5 yr old and 21 month old, has just told me that the spark has gone and he wants us to break up. He says we have no intimacy or passion. I am devastated. Our sex life has been poor since our baby was born because he sleeps so badly and generally ends up in our bed or we are exhausted. We also get little time without the kids because we have no close by family and money is tight. However, I accepted this is a temporary situation and we'd get back in track as the kids got older. I still felt close to him and find him attractive.

He has suffered anxiety and is on SSRI meds. He says he is broken and if he stays his mental health will get worse and he's scared of being a bad dad.

Does anyone else have experience of this with a partner with anxiety or on SSRI's ? I'm clinging to the hope that this is his mental health talking and we may be recoverable in time.

Please don't suggest another woman is involved as I am sure that is not the case here, believe it or not.

I am so sorry that you are going through this. I don’t have any wisdom but can say I understand how you’re feeling. I am in a very similar position. My DH says he is not sure if he loves me, not sure how he feels about anything. We’re are discussing going for counselling and this maybe an option for you. The illness does mess with how everything seems. It is so hard and hurts so much. Massive hugs from me xx

So he wants to leave you to do all the parenting as he's scared of being a dad.

Never mind his MH, but the stress of all that on you, a difficult sleeper....with no family close to help, will affect your MH as well.

He can opt out of a relationship with you, but it's unfair to dump it all on you to parent.

I personally would let him know that while you don't want the relationship to end, you'd like to coparent effectively and you need him to do his fair share.

Thank you. To be fair he does want to parent. He adores our kids and wants to be in the home more than just weekends for them. Practically I will be doing a lot of it but that can't be avoided. I'm grieving all the more because I love him still. He won't do counselling with me because he says he can't face talking to a counsellor. He is having therapy for his MH issues and that is hard.

I just don't know of I am fooling myself by hoping that his lack of feeling for me may be to do with his anxiety or the meds he is on. I don't want to give up on a 20 year relationship so quickly, particularly as we were so happy when our boy was tiny which wasn't that long ago. On the other side I don't want to be clinging to false hopes. I am in hell at the moment.