Why do so many men threaten suicide?

[HelenInHeels]

I'm not talking generally here or minimising the reality of male suicide for real.

I mean guys who threaten to kill themselves if their wife or partner goes through with dumping their sorry asses when they've been found out. I've seen it so many times on here. It makes a mockery of suicide victims and I hate it.

Absolutely, and what an extra-special twat for deploying that, in light of what he knew 😠

It happened to me and worked for decades.

Manipulation, gaslighting, control.

We are now divorced and he's still very much alive.

Control.

My ex said he'd taken a load of pills. Left vms for people all over the world including his dcs.

When I heard my vm from him, I was sorely tempted not to go check on him.

He is a vile bully and hated that we were free of him and he'd lost control.

This.

The thread is not about suicidal men.

happened to me, when I tried to dump my ex 😡

I haven't RTFT but my ex had form for this and it was 100% a control mechanism. He only stopped when, after the last time he intimated it, I rang the police. They went looking for him at his workplace, his favourite pubs and his friend's houses, and he was so mortified he never did it again.

How awful for you and your child. I imagine it was difficult to find a good narrative to use as to why their father had died. It must have been very traumatic for you despite how horrible be had been.

Hanging himself from a bannister while you were in the next room preparing to leave certainly doesn't sound like the actions of someone who had carefully thought through their action and taken steps to ensure they were successful after sorting their affairs. I think you are right that he wanted you to find him and panic but misjudged and died basically by misadventure.

I was once told by a therapist that if your partner threatens (says they are considering or have recently considered) suicide you take them seriously and you signpost them - just as you would a friend or a sibling who said the same - to the right services that can help them. Because a person’s girlfriend / wife is not a suicide / mental health service. So you say, I can call the Samaritans for you. Or I can go with you to A&E. Or you need to call your GP in the morning and ask them to refer you to see a psychologist and get some help.

I thought that was good advice, because it would a) be the right thing to say to anyone who was seriously unhappy and unwell and b) it isn’t what the playbook anticipates.

@NeedsMustNet I agree with this. It's not the responsibility of a partner to aid someone who's expressing suicidal ideation, most certainly won't have the skills to cope with it. It is 100% best left to services.

I’m glad it resonates with someone. It seems lots of people here know this already, judging by the number of people who say they have called the police to carry out a welfare check on someone they suspected was trying to manipulate them in this way.

But actually .. modifying my earlier suggestion.. no-one here should have to go to A&E to accompany the person in their life whose main purpose is in trying and hoping to waste their time. I guess they could instead call a friend of the so-called suicidal person / call the coercive person’s parents instead, and make the circle of people who know about their threats wider. It all depends on the circumstances. But really the key thing is not to be silenced or stilled by this kind of threat.

@Mrswhatsit40 no I won't piss off. Just because you don't know women who have done it it doesn't mean women don't do it, they do. They do it for the same reason men do: because they feel out of control. Because they can't cope emotionally with the end of a relationship. Because they are emotionally immature. The OP words this like it is an exclusively male problem and it isn't, it's a problem that exists in both sexes and you cant have a proper discussion about this without pointing that out. So you piss off 🧸

The original post is about there being many numbers of posts on here by women about men threatening to take a life ending course of action at the moment when the woman writing on MN about the situation is leaving them or is talking to them about leaving them. And s/he starts by saying s/he is not generalising or minimising the reality of male suicide.
It’s possible that women threaten this as well sometimes, even if it’s not what the post is about. Do you have experience of this happening? Or want to share about it in another way?

@NeedsMustNet I'm not asking you to relate to it. I was pointing out that this is not exclusively male behaviour. When women post on here who have been abandoned by their husbands and they admit they have threatened suicide in an attempt to win them back they are met with nothing but understanding and support - and quite rightly so. But when it's a man ... well, look at the responses. No sympathy, no empathy, nothing. And I'm always struck by the same question when I read these types of responses. Do these women have sons? I know some of them must do and it's frightening to think that there are women out there who have this abject internalised hatred to all men - even men going through a difficult time: men who may never actually intend to kill themselves but the fact that they can say this to someone suggests that something is very with them. And then I think it doesn't surprise me at all that men are turning to Andrew tate etc in order to find someone who has some understanding or sympathy for them and I'm not a Tate fan I think he's a rapist but I get where they are coming from because for many of them, their primary female relationship (the mothers) seem to just hate all men and that has to include their own men even if they aren't conscious of it.

I don’t think it’s about children or houses as I had a boyfriend who I didn’t live with or have children with who did this. I finally left him I think September and I said that I promised myself after my bday that I would leave him but I had just lost a family member and couldn’t do it. He got so angry, said has he just been filling in time since then (a few months) and I pointed out that he threatened to kill himself if I left him. He got in his car and said well I’ve got a half hour drive home now I’ll see how I go, and sped off angrily.

he didn’t kill himself. He came back 2 weeks later and took all the gifts he had bought for me over the years. To be honest months later I was abit annoyed, I stayed so long cause he said he would kill himself and then I finally left and he didn’t. Wasted so much time with him.

I think many men (and some women) have no emotional vocabulary to voice their big feelings. It's a very big response they jump to. In my early twenties I think I was probably similar but didn't voice it. In my head it was a "you'll be sorry if/when", at a time when I lacked the means to express myself in a more healthy and helpful way.

Mine did this repeatedly cos I stayed till the last time and I’d had enough

He phoned me to tell me he was at the bridge and I told him I was phoning the cops. He laughed so what. I phone the police and he wasn’t at the bridge at all but in bed. Police gave him a stern talking to and told him he’d be fined next time after that jailed.

he is alive and single and bitter very bitter

I can only see absolutely the opposite of what you are suggesting (man-hating tendencies from posters here) in the original message or the responses. The first sentence of the whole thread itself puts to bed that idea.

If talking about a few abusive men (men in this case, but that of course doesn’t mean that people haven’t also written here about women doing the same thing in times past, it just happens to not be what this thread is about) choosing to threaten suicide in order to manipulate their partners will always mean - in your mind - that we are talking about all men, then any discussion here on Mumsnet starts to look … very different. As if everyone here is secretly a critical theorist and not just writing about their own life or experiences.

I am happy to agree to disagree on this point. Happy Christmas!

If control is the issue, which i think it is, it rather points to why women want to be controlled by these men ? What is attractive about being controlled by someone else's behaviour ? Why keep going back ?

As I said, 82 % of men currently in prison are fathers. If you included non custodial sentences that figure is only going to up. These men can't be fathers on their own, there is choice going on. Men learn to say the right things very early and women clearly like it. This is why they threaten suicide, as an exercise is control.

My impressionable boys at work as young as eight are all learning from the men they see as successful in their lives.

Thus the circle repeats itself.

My ex did this when I asked him for a divorce. He said he was going to drive into a tree. He also told me he'd "had a lengthy discussion with the Samaritans" about killing himself. I'd been with him along time and knew him very well - I could tell it was all BS. I told him to go to his GP to get antidepressants.

He also later told me he "might" have terminal cancer. He came home one day with a bag of pills form the pharmacy - he behaved really weirdly about them telling me they were treatment for cancer. He left a box lying around and I googled the medication to find they were a treatment for fungal nail infection.

This all happened about 8 years ago and he's still alive and well - no idea if his toenails have cleared up 😆

If you're going to commit suicide you don't tend to say so beforehand. Overall anyway.

I didn't; I was leaving and it was a clear manipulation. As a previous pp says, it was misadventure - he meant to 'scare' me into staying and I found him too late.

The most recent ex threatened the same so I called MH services - they said I was more in need than him of assistance! I ended that relationship too (and look where THAT got me!)

In my (admittedly very small) pool of 4, 100% of them said the would commit suicide before hand, and all of them did it - 3 in ways that were irreversible without external intervention of a 3rd party (cut their own throat and 2 hangings). The third took pills and sought help themselves.

@NeedsMustNet happy new year, friend!

The thing people need to keep in mind is that threatening to commit suicide because you aren’t getting what you want is very different to confiding in or telling someone that you feel suicidal.
The men in the first category are manipulative cunts, the second lot I have some sympathy for but they need to remember if you feel suicidal it’s unfair to expect your partner, friends or family to be able to help you, 111 would be a better option as they are trained professionals.