Following the breakup of my abusive marriage several years ago I have been in a relationship with a wonderful man who has become the love of my life. Despite so many things going wrong, he has stuck by me and been so supportive. We had a fantastic relationship in almost every sense and he was my best friend and main support source. Essentially he has restored my trust in men and helped me heal from years of really shitty behaviour from other men.
However, shortly after we met, my middle child started displaying some very worrying behaviour. Was violent, suicidal and has daily meltdowns. It's been a huge struggle but I've finally got professionals involved although we are a very long way from resolution and are still not getting any real help and support yet.
I strongly suspect she has an underlying condition, potentially ASD or adhd. Despite most of the professionals being reluctant to go down the assessment route, there are a couple who have worked closely with her and agree that there is probably something else going on. Despite this, DP was never really in agreement with this and as he is quite the disciplinarian with his own DC, took the stance that my apparent lack of boundaries was the cause of DD's issues. More and more he was pressuring me to parent more in line with himself and was increasingly taking it upon himself to discipline my DD. Personally I have found that this approach actually makes things worse and despite the fact that DD at one time very much liked my DP, things began to unravel and now she hates him.
She also clashed heavily with his DS who whilst being a lovely boy, is quite competitive which my DD just could not handle. We tried to limit the time we spent as a 'blended' family but it was difficult as he didn't really have anywhere else to have contact with his DS.
We have recently come back from a disastrous long weekend away all together. It has been difficult for me to demand the help that I feel DD needs as both the professionals and DP were making me doubt my feeling that this is more than 'just' bad behaviour. However, the holiday really brought her problems into focus for me and I'm 99.9% convinced this is not a parenting issue (I also have two other DC without any issues). It also really highlighted just how badly DP deals with her behaviour. I need to be clear that none of his approaches come from a bad place, rather he wants to help and thinks that is what he is doing by being 'strict' on her.
During the journey home, his DS said something to DD which she reacted badly to. We were stuck on the motorway in heavy traffic and nowhere to pull over. DP then did some things that I feel caused a full on meltdown (she is not really in control when this happens) and she became violent, including to DP and his DS. I said to him that I thought he was making things worse/wasn't handling it well and he responded that he didn't care. We eventually found somewhere to pull over and DP got out of the car, called DD a horrible name and implied he felt like hitting her. I snapped at this point and said it was over. I feel really bad about doing this in front of the DC but I felt backed into a corner and was obviously very upset and distressed. DP then moved everything of his out of my house and said he couldn't ever see me or speak to me again because he was so hurt.
Since then we've been in contact and he would like us to stay separated but keep in contact with a view to deciding if we should stay together when we've had some space and a chance to talk. I'm hurting so so much and don't want to drag this out if it's not going to work long term. I feel the real problem is that he doesn't really like DD (understandable in some ways as she is very hard to love sometimes) and doesn't see her issues in the same way that I do but unless he gets on board then it can't ever work. Equally, I love him so much that if there's a chance, I'd like to make a go of it.
What do others think? Is this salvageable?