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?

A famous case taught to psychology students describes personality changes after traumatic brain injury, Google “Phineas Gage”

That's the job of the medical professionals, she shouldn't have to put up with uncomfortable sexual messages, a man who sees prostitutes, and him frightening the children.

Woman aren't automatic caregivers, they are humans in their own right and I doubt you would say that about a man.

Could you speak to his ex wife and see if she could shed any more light?

My sister had a car accident early 20’s, cracked her scull, unconscious. She changed a lot and certainly was not the same person
very close friend came of a bike on holiday, coma/ brain injury he also became a different person

so I think its likely his brain injury was the trigger but no one can tell you for sure.

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

Ultimately the poster though has spoken out loud my fears. Is this what really happened? It felt like a real family. It acted like one. I am scared inside that it wasn't.

Didn't the same happen with James Cracknell after his head injury? Him and his wife split up and she said it was because he wasn't the same person any more.

I agree with PP - it does sound like the head injury was the start of all this, which may have turned in to PTSD, anxiety and depression of his own.

It's really sad for both of you and the children OP.

I hope you've managed to find some peace and happiness since.

a brain bleed is very serious and the extent to which someone recovers often depends on how widespread was the injury.

If he had immediate and very serious issues related to memory and cognition then there is a high likelihood that the damage was quite extensive. Was the bleed located at the front of the brain?

serious injuries to the frontal lobe are known to change personality and in most cases for the worse - emotional regulation is often affected, and a lot of people who had a traumatic brain injury do tend to develop these extreme behaviours where they go between crying hysterically to being completely cold, sometimes in very short periods of time

of course it was a real family! as you've said - you took care of your step-children, you were family regardless of your relationship with your ex

it is a real tragedy that this accident seems to have robbed you all of this family life you've build

From an outsider perspective, this is very obviously the result of brain damage. Coupled with the trauma of mental health problems it brought him.

The 'old' relationship was real. You lived it, you saw it, you felt it.

It's incredibly sad and painful, but not personal. He had an accident resulting in a brain injury. It changed him

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 was told his injuries weren't terrible. We were sent home with a leaflet on head injuries and told to phone if he bled from his ears.

I spent months in terrible fear, looking after him, obsessing to a point I explained I got anxiety issues.

I emailed the GP begging for help and didn't even get a reply. I found him a counsellor and googled depression and bought books and read them all.

There was nothing I could do. He disappeared and wouldn't speak to me.

Clearly his accident affected him, but if I read your post right

And it turned out (I didn't know until later), that he was in debt and had financial worries.

and then you had to leave the house with short notice, it sounds like there were problems he hadn't told you about before the accident as well.

Even if it hadn't been for the accident, there may have been things you didn't know at the time that would have caused problems anyway. sorry you had to go through this, but it sounds like you are in a better place nowadays

the way doctors approach these injuries is different to how the patient may

having a brain bleed and surviving is, objectively, not a terrible injury. If you physically heal relatively fast that's pretty much all doctors can observe and advise on. Long term effects are much harder to observe and even more difficult to help with, as effectively - if his personality did change as the result of brain injury then there is very little anyone can do

I think the impact of brain injury has been underestimated. Have you looked at the Headway website? It's a charity about head injury.

Honestly I think you can put it down the injury, and let it go.

You have every reason to trust the relationship, given your mutual history.

I'm surprised you didn't stay in touch second hand through the mutual friends though.

Also, have you considered how this has impacted your current relationship breakdown? You sound as though you've struggled to commit perhaps as a result of trauma around the first one.

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

Nobody told me that. I was told he had received a blow of extreme force to the rear of his head which had basically thrown his brain at great force from the rear to the front. So the blow was at the back of his head, but the resulting injury was at the front.

They just acted like it was nothing and gave me a leaflet.

I find it quite odd that you talk about the accident and the brain bleed but then don't seem to consider that that could've been at the root of his dramatic personality change.... have you never thought this was the cause? has no one else ever suggested that?

your experience reminds me of a documentary about a man with a brain injury.

the brain injury for sure

Definitely brain injury. I know somebody who had a terrible accident that resulted in a brain bleed. He was in a coma for a long time. He is a completely different person now. There is no sign of the kind, gentle man who was there before. He's unpredictable and you tread on eggshells. I'm certain it was that. This was really sad to read, I hope you can put it behind you. Awful for both of you.

so basically his brain got shaken like a baby rattle leading to bleeding...this is traumatic brain injury and it can lead to irreparable damage

front of your brain is where your cognitive function and personality is located - basically, physically, anatomically what makes you - YOU. If that part becomes damaged then in a most literal sense you as a person, your very personality, takes a hit

add to this the trauma of accident itself and the preexisting financial worries (and other issues), and you have a pretty awful scenario. Things someone may have been able to easily cope with before accident become unbearable for

Just to clarify. I wasn't suggesting it wasn't real OP. Just that it sounds from what you have said as if it was mostly following on from the accident, but it could be that the earlier financial problems would have also had an impact eventually. It is very sad that you both went through this.
It sounds as if you did everything you could at the time, so I think you can take comfort from that.

the current brain injury leaflet does mention that there may be delayed and long term problems with thinking, memory and mood changes which should prompt patients to go back to GP to discuss those

Sounds like a brain injury but IANAD.

It can cause a total change in personality and a lot of the behaviours you describe. Really sad for all concerned.

I agree with many others. Brain injury. A relative of mine had a head injury from which he recovered, but it was as though he'd had a personality transplant.

It does sound like the brain injury was the issue but you would know more if you spoke with his ex.

Was the bleed located at the front of the brain

Yes.

The thing was, he was very reluctant, almost angry, at the idea something was wrong with him and wouldn't speak to the doctors. He was also intent on hiding it from everyone close to us (including me until the day he disappeared).

He had said he'd felt terrible for a while but didn't want to worry me so he hadn't said. He said he'd been worried I wouldn't love him anymore which i don't understand because I loved him to bits.

He said the morning he left, he had made the decision that morning. He said he'd just woken up and decided. Which also made no sense. He cried as he kissed me awake and just said "sorry". Later I found a note on the table that just said "I love you".

The entire thing completely split our friends. He'd hidden it all, so the ones that didn't know us well just assumed we had problems they didn't know about. He was such a good guy that a lot just assumed I'd done something wrong.

A few assumed he must have someone else. Remember he had been odd but pretty normal so no one had any reason to believe he was ill.

The ones that knew us closely were horrified. They all just couldn't believe it. A lot of them (male and female) cried. A lot cut him off because they were so angry.

They weren't there or around to see the odd behaviour. The coldness and weirdness was obvious to me but no one else was in the room.

When he got really unwell with all the crying smd weight loss he just isolated himself completely and stopped being in contact with anybody really.

He told people it was a very hard decision but he was depressed and needed to be on his own and dropped contact and I think everyone just accepted that.

A few, who knew us best, think he had a brain injury. But he didn't want to agree and wanted to be alone so there wasn't much anyone could do. He became a hermit.