looking for thoughts, advice and support as feeling quite trapped.
last year I came out of a five plus year relationship. It was very tempestuous and abusive and I was left with real mental health and physical problems, to the point that I tried to take my life during the relationship. I was glad when it was finished and spent time working on myself and my career. 6 months down the line I was happy, healthy and thriving; it felt like a whole world had opened up to me.
in December I met up with a person I’d known for several years and it developed into a fling. It was fun and the complete opposite to the relationship I’d come out of, as most rebounds are. At least for the first month.
I realised very quickly that he had a drink and drugs problem which I don’t think he saw as a problem- there was a litany of incidents including him falling off a three storey scaffolding tower whilst drunk and high and having to have surgery, then a week after surgery of having a metal plate put in his arm he was off drinking again.
I am completely tee total (out of choice to avoid mental health problems) and haven’t touched drugs since I was probably 18 (I’m now 32).
Because I saw the situation as a fling and because he was going back abroad, I saw these incidents as issues but not ones that would impact my life because they were ‘at arms length’.
He started applying pressure to see me all the time, stay at mine and generally make him the centre of my universe - me, probably not fully recovered from the previous relationship where I was anxiously attached, complies probably more than I should’ve to this. Noticing that when I put boundaries or said no, he’d make me feel guilty or say ‘you can work and I’ll just sit quietly’.
he’d been travelling/working in Australia for the previous 6 years so was back in the UK visiting. The accident that happened on the scaffolding tower meant that one month turned into three and because he had all the free time, he wanted to see me/be involved in everything I was doing. In hindsight, I obviously see that this is my error and I should’ve drawn various lines and boundaries.
my uncle passed away and I went to visit my Aunt and he asked to come. I booked an Airbnb for us and my dogs and his brother came to visit on the premise it was the last time they’d see each other before he went back to Aus. To cut a long story short, they ended up going out and getting off their heads, coming back to the air bnb and harassing other guests and offering them drugs - all the while myself and my dogs were in bed. The next day the owners rang and said we had thirty mins to leave - I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life.
A few days later he was back on the plane to Australia for 8 months via New Zealand.
I was relieved because I felt like I had my life back - my idea of what is fulfilling from life and his are also different I think I.e I work as a wildlife journalist and children’s book writer and I love putting my heart and soul into things regardless of the hours; he said he wanted to write so I got him a commission in a magazine on one of his diving trips in Indonesia.
During his time in NZ he was again, drunk and on drugs alot even breaking into a disused gym, before returning to Aus to work on a mine for 8 months.
He had decided that he was coming back to the UK after this and had all these various plans for businesses, moving in with me etc etc.
First few months of him away, every break he was paralytic drunk. I started asking him not to call me when drunk because he’s just sit there and stare at me. He went to Indonesia and Thailand and ended up going off into the villages and getting drunk with the locals. I felt like I carried the continued conversation/connection between us in the sense of, he’d want to talk all the time but nothing to say and it became very taxing.
I found out I was pregnant and I miscarried it. The drug situation at the Airbnb reared its head again and I ended up asking my brother who is a lawyer to get involved.
when I brought anything up with him he said that first of all I was just looking for negatives, then that he didn’t realise it was an issue and then that it was his brother’s idea (but as I point out to him, he was complicit and partaking) and that it would all be different because he now has a reason to not do them and it’s a actual life together and he was only doing them because he was bored - as I said to him, there’s better things to do when you are bored.
when I found out I was pregnant I asked him not to tell anyone because I’d lost babies before. When he got drunk he started telling everyone and I felt less like he was excited about the child and more relieved that he had a new direction as he didn’t want to travel anymore and was constantly moaning about how working on the mine was driving a truck in circles.
when I miscarried, coupled with the stress of the police being
involved with the drug thing and loosing my grandmother I had another mental health episode. My GP and Women’s aid helped me get myself together again and I’m now in the come down from the episode and I’m kicking myself for allowing myself to get here again.
i communicated to him what was going on with my mental health and I said to him I need to think about what kind of life I would have if I keep allowing it to be compromised- his response was that he’d been thinking about the life he’d have if we did t go through with the plans etc.
which made me feel like I was now responsible for him. I’ve been sure to communicate as best I can clearly how I’m feeling and what is going on in my head. When I do t reply or pick up his calls immediately he sends me messages like oh you never reply. When I was telling him about my episode he said, I’m used to you not replying and when I said that I’d need time to sort it, the summary of thoughts from him was why are you living in the past and how long will that take.
The GP said, he’s a grown adult with family in the area - he’s responsible for his own life and decisions. We aren’t married and we weren’t living together when he left. we knew each other for three months.
I told him that I need space to sort myself and my mental health out. He arrived back in the UK today.
If you met him, you’d think what a nice guy because he’s very positive and happy go lucky, my Dad says he’s a smotherer rather than an aggressor - but I’ve seen that beneath that, he’s also selfish and reckless, doesn’t take accountability and has had no responsibility, I also wonder if he was so keen to return as I represented to him a stable alternative to the life that he didn’t want anymore. He’s happy for others to fall at the wayside as long as he gets out Scott-free.
I live on a large farm with lots of animals , have a career in journalism
and I’m just about to start my masters in animal law - I explained to him that the drugs thing put everything at risk that I’d worked for and as much as he says it will change, I’m not willing to put it at risk again; or indeed my mental health.
my family all think I’m mad for ever being involved in it and my work is suffering because I’m anxious nonstop that he’s going to turn up or start putting pressure on me.
I feel silly for not putting my foot down sooner but It’s a lesson learnt : to also be aware of both the positive and negative feelings as they are happening.
Is it unreasonable to now take it slowly?
To say to him that, if he is going to stay in the UK, it’s his responsibility to sort out these businesses etc and set himself up, and not mine? I feel bad that this glittering future he saw I can’t deliver.
I feel really trapped, and although I suspect that it’s a ‘self made’ prison, I just need to know that I’m not being unduly harsh by asking for time to heal before reassessing the situation.