Views on a mystery from my past

[Leaveyourkeys]

This is a question about something that happened to me many, many, many years ago that's always sat on my mind and I stumbled across some letters today that brought it flooding back. It was all so strange so I'd like to know what people think really happened.

We met and fell in love. I'll admit I pored over every minute and can't think of anything that was off or wrong. With the benefit or hindsight and wisdom, we were just in love.

He was reliable, sensible, calm, soft, gentle and absolutely besotted with me and we moved in together after about eight months of dating. We both had children and our children bonded like best pals and it was the happiest time of my life.

I remember being a family. Family car. Family holidays. We used to laugh all the time and our sex life was electric. I felt calm, safe and happy. He proposed, after asking my Dad, and I was ecstatic to say yes.

Seemingly very suddenly, things started to get very stressful. He car accident and was quite injured and I thought he might die. He had a brain bleed they managed to get under control. His injuries were not terrible but he seemed not there for weeks after the accident. I was there, so ended up traumatised and started having really bad anxiety.

Around the same time a lot of things hit. Work issues. A few dramas. And it turned out (I didn't know until later), that he was in debt and had financial worries.

So around six months after, he just didn't come home one day. He kissed me goodbye one morning, I remember it so clearly because he was crying and I was asleep and didn't understand. Then he left and quite literally never came home again.

Me and the kids were given weeks to leave our house, and it was all just the biggest shock and so awful and he wouldn't speak to me. I had no idea what was happening or why it was happening.

He was incredibly cruel about it. Just left me and the kids without saying goodbye or letting me say goodbye to my step skids. It was so out of character and I had no idea why.

Eventually a while later we did see each other (to divvy up belongings and so on), and he was very unwell. I remember it was like he'd become someone else. Emotionally: alternating between hysterical crying and being eerily cold and staring into space. Physically: skinny, vomiting all the time, couldn't remember things.

It was the most bizarre experience ever. He said he'd had a breakdown and said he loved me but couldn't live with me and cited me having anxiety as the reason. I remember that not making sense. We were engaged. I'd only had anxiety a few months and it wasn't that bad. It didn't make any sense.

Then a few months passed of living separately with daily video chats. WhatsApp didn't exist back then, so we would text. I just found the phone this morning with all the texts and it was so weird to read them.

He wanted to message every day and speak, but he was cold like a robot and also hypersexual. Like abnormally, insanely hypersexual of all the things he wanted to do to me. You can see in the texts that I'm going along with it (I think I just wanted ANY intimacy at that point) but I was so desperately sad.

This man who'd seemed to love me beyond anything I'd ever experienced was just completely cold and detached and telling me all these pyrography fantasies.

He said to me that he'd had a breakdown. And I got him to the GP and he got antidepressants. He started taking them, and things got worse. He was even more cold and detached. It was eerie and so painful. I persuaded him to see a counsellor and he had his first session and said it made him feel better.

Reading over the texts was so uncomfortable. Like all his love for me was gone overnight. He was polite, cold and incredibly sexual and even all these years later I felt visceral pain reading them.

I went to stay him a while later (3 months after he'd left), and he was in a bad state. I remember just being so confused. It was like he had no emotions at all. Then he went to his second counselling session and came home and said "I don't love you anymore, sorry".

I remember just the complete bewilderment. Confusion. It was like an out of body experience. The next day he went to work and I checked his Internet history. He'd been googling how to pick up women, as well as prostitutes and sex websites. Not always, just the months we'd been apart.

I remember packing my bags and leaving that morning. I texted him to say what I'd found and to express the agony I was in. He said he'd been googling those things because he had lost a sense of himself and just wanted to feel normal. He said he thought he could feel love for me, but he couldn't, and it wasn't him, it was the breakdown.

I told him that nobody was happily in love and engaged and just woke up one day not feeling it anymore and that he'd never loved me at all if that was what happened. He replied saying "I did love you, you were my whole world". But he had no explanation over why he woke up one day and felt differently.

I left, and we only spoke again one more time.

He phoned me one evening about a year later. Very gently crying. He said his kids found a family photo and said they missed us, then he said to me "we were so happy, weren't we?" and I could hear the confusion in his voice. I said "yes" and that was all.

There was never another woman. Never any real explanation. I heard he battled mental health problems (maybe still is) and as far as I know never married.

I just stumbled on the old phone and texts today and reading them after all these years didn't make any more sense than it did back then.

What do you think really happened?

I barely think about it anymore, but it is hard in ways for me to make full sense of my life with thus puzzle always there in my subconscious.

Sometimes even now if I have a bad day or feel lost or scared or alone, I picture him in our happy house that felt so warm and safe. I can still picture his Pyjamas on the knob of the bed, or his grinning face when he was down on one knee or rolling along in the car with his hand reaching over to squeeze my leg while he smiled at me and the kids made up funny songs in the back.

That's my happy place and still is I suppose.

The way those eyes used to look at me like you could visceral feel the love coming out of them, and the overnight they were like dead fish. Soulless. Not even a tear on the day I left.

I'm not in pain. I accepted it.

I just want to know.... was it ever real?

I wish someone could tell me, for sure, that it truly was a tragic accident.

So I can grieve.

No one can say 100% but it seems quite likely.

Oh bless you, what a sad tale. Yes it does sound like classic brain injury issues. There are charities with information about this, such as Headway.

I’m sorry you didn’t have support and information about this at the time, as his family. I would hope that has changed now.

I’m so sorry, what a horrible loss. X

As others have said, this sounds like brain injury. There is a Louis Theroux documentary called A Different Brain. I saw it a long time ago but I vaguely recall he meets lots of people with acquired brain injury, people who've had accidents etc and looks at how it changed their life.

There was one woman on the programme who had a brain injury and when she recovered she just decided she no longer loved her husband. They'd had a strong relationship beforehand and were very happy but now she didn't want to be with him. She too struggled with empathy after the injury. Very sad and sobering programme but I thought of this as you were describing your experience.

How old were his children at the time? Did they notice a change in him?

OP,

It feels blindingly clear that this was related to the accident and would not have happened otherwise.... I truly think you are safe to grieve... let yourself grieve...

It is a terribly thing that happened. And the brain is a complex organ, so it may not be as simple as 'everything changed on day 1 of the accident.

But he had a healthy (if ultimately unsuccessful) relationship with his ex; you had a wonderful relationship, in which you felt safe and relaxed .... that's crucial - it wasn't just short term thrills- you and your gut knew it was good. Then he had a brain. Injury, and things turned awful. Even he, however seemingly cold, was telling you he felt he lost himself.... and told you that he had genuinely loved you.

But his brain Had been altered... and he was very physically and mentally unwell and no longer capable of living in the same way.

It is a terrible loss, that you must grieve as if he had died. But I don't think there is any reason to doubt the genuine as of what you had before.

I'm sorry for your loss.

Nobody (well, maybe an investigative medical professional, but none of us) can say for certain, but it sounds overwhelmingly likely. A very plausible explanation.

The debts, and the somewhat rapid progression of your relationship... those things don't stand out to me as particularly troublesome, but more like relatively normal "faults", characteristics or issues that do arise in many relationships. You moved in together fast, but then the majority of your relationship from that point was healthy, normal, and you look back on it as your safe space, a time of safety and peace. There are no signs there that he was a duplicitous or harmful person.

Then came the head injury, and in subsequent months, the traumatic changes in him and in your relationship and family. I do believe, personally, that you can confidently accept the head injury as the explanation for what happened. I know it is ever so painful to not have that ultimate certainty, though.

(edit: spelling)

Agree. Too much too soon, no wonder you're left confused OP.

Hope talking about it here has helped x

What strikes me is that, quite apart from the later brain injury, is that you moved in together after dating for only eight months -- you moved in with a man you didn't know, can't have known, and rapidly decided to marry him.

And, from what you say about having to leave with your children when the relationship broke down, you also moved your children in to the house of a man you didn't know properly, and started playing families.

Again, quite aside from the brain injury and the trauma you sustained from the accident, you discovered he had debt and financial difficulties that pre-dated this.

You also say you found out he'd had MH problems, but it's not clear from your post whether these pre-dated your relationship -- it's perfectly possible.

Bluntly, it sounds to me as if you moved far too fast with this man. You will never know whether his brain injury left him with longterm damage and a personality change, which is perfectly possible, or whether he was a damaged person who blew hot and cold on his relationships, or had had previous nervous breakdowns.

I wouldn't waste my time wondering what was going on in his head, or whether any of it was 'real' from his POV.

In your shoes, I would focus on what led you to trust yourself and your children to someone far too quickly -- you say he 'acted in ways that hurt the children', and of course he threw you all out of your home after the relationship broke down.

There's no point to wondering about him. Analyse your own behaviour, so you can never do it again.

X-post with @Opentooffers and @Foreverhope1.

Had a similar complex experience in ways I won’t go into, this isn’t my story. But particularly the change almost overnight, a physical disappearing of the person you knew and loved. It doesn’t mean the good times weren’t real and the memories of love are to treasure. So hard though. Might be the brain injury, might be breakdown or severe MH - possibly a combination. You will likely never know. These experiences of love and loss make you the person you are today

You say his injuries ‘were not terrible’ and say he had a brain bleed. You do realise that a brain bleed is traumatic and can kill or cause severe changes in someone’s behaviour. You made this all about you but seem to not understand about him. Poor guy, hope he found someone sympathetic to his needs!

I thought brain injury too. Read about James Cracknell after he was hit by a truck wing mirror when cycling.

Thank you all.

Our kids were 5, 6 and 8. So probably no I guess. They were only very small.

I remember he lost patience with the kids, didn't want to play with them and this was SUCH A CHANGE. They were just so small.

The 8 year old was mine.

Remember I never saw my stepkids again. They were just gone. It was surreal. We had 50/50 custody so those kids were my family

I'd taken their temperature when they were poorly and packed lunchboxes and hosted birthday parties. Then they were just gone.

My child was really, really confused. He didn't understand because in his mind he was his Dad. I remember the day I told him and tried to explain he was so little and his eyes just started spouting tears and he said "but he wouldn't do that. He loves us".

It was awful. And losing his step siblings was awful too.

We talked about it over the years and he always thought he was ill. That's what my son thinks happened, but I think he didn't understand why or how he left us. Ill or not.

As an teen he had issues around it and had counselling and made peace with it. He feels the only Dad he ever had just disappeared and his attitude was that he could go to hell.

He grew up into an amazing man. Amazing partner. He's good now.

I often wondered if the step siblings would grow up and connect. Social media or something. They haven't yet.

I agree, brain injury. Personality changes can happen, depending on where the bleed was.

Everyone's obviously entitled to their own views and to post them, but I think it's harsh to describe OP's longterm and meaningful family life with this man as "playing families", as if this was a fling that OP invested too much emotion into and brought her kids in and out of in a whirl. They had children together, the oldest being 6 when these changes started happening (if I've understood right). Concerns about love-bombing and the hidden debts, I totally get, but I think it's harsh to minimise what OP and this man had together as a family.

It sounds to me very much that the accident was the cause of your break up and his personality change. The real him just cannot manifest anymore because it was slowly written over. Please don’t doubt you were very much loved. Even if it was but a moment.

Your current break up is making you doubt your judgement around men.

In the case of your past ex, personality change after a traumatic brain injury is common and it seems the most likely explanation based on the timeline you give and the symptoms you describe. I’d recommended having a google and doing some reading about personality and acquired brain injury, it will hopefully provide an explanation and give you some peace. I’m sorry, you went through such an awful time.

Possibly a brain injury but to be completely honest what you describe is not a million miles away to my experience when exH left me. The turning very cold especially.

I'm so sorry. It sounds ghastly. How long were you together?
Head injuries can be brutal.
This reminds me of a David Tennant film I saw called Recovery.
It won't bring you any peace or closure sadly. I believe the writer Tony Marchant did a lot of liaison with those with close-hand experience. A reviewer mentioned Headway for those viewers who could donate.

But she's only said they had children together in her most recent post. The timings of the relationship, and how long they were together before the accident aren't clear from her earlier posts.

I still think that moving a child or children in with someone you've only been seeing for eight months shows really poor judgement.

You think he was normal beforehand? Did you read about his family and what they were all like?

Joining the chorus of those saying a brain injury. I know someone who's husband had a head injury, then a while later spent thousands of euros in a well known prostitution area. He seemed cold to me but he might have been already.

To answer your question I would say what you had together was definitely real. Apologies if this is an over reach but you could think of his "real" self has having left this world with the accident.

Alternatively, conditions like schizophrenia can manifest in men in their early 20s, if you were quite young when you got together this might be a possibility

you moved in together after dating for only eight months -- you moved in with a man you didn't know, can't have known, and rapidly decided to marry him

This is true. Hence I agonise. I did know him (loosely) for 14 years before that though. He was always well liked and a good guy with mutual friends- hence I trusted quickly. We got engaged about three years in after very happy years so it didn't seem odd.

I remember NOTHING seemed odd. I remember even this happened my Dad crying, which I'd never seen him do. No-one understood.

The other thing that played on me was the ex wife. They divorced finally only weeks really before we met after a very long relationship that was lauded as a good one.

Her decision. She met someone else, but the kids were still babies really. We were very friendly with her. All very amicable. She used to pop in for a glass of wine with me.

I remember never feeling weird about it. He said they'd drifted apart for years and become more like room mates and that he was in love with me and the happiest he'd ever been.

But with hindsight I have wondered if maybe he just moved on too soon and decided he didn't want a new family. These are the thoughts that plague me.

Could there have been any kind of substance/drug use going on do you think?