A few months ago, something happened to my partner that would upset anyone. I can’t go into too many details, but in short, a police report was filed containing false allegations by a person he had mentored and thought of as a friend. We’re considering our legal options—that’s not what this is about—but it will take some time to resolve in the courts.
It has led to a months-long mental breakdown, and I am completely depleted. He starts drinking in the morning, is on the cusp of losing his job, gets aggressive/dismissive at the drop of a pin, cries loud enough to make our neighbours complain (I haven’t passed this on to him but it went on for long enough that they said it was waking their baby), and is basically tearing down his life and mine with it.
I’ve tried to get him admitted to hospital and have had to call EMTs a couple of times, but he is remarkable at putting on a ‘good face’ for emergency services.
After two months, my empathy has turned into anger and despair. I’ve told him the self-pity is over-the-top and probably worse. I’ve said it is ridiculous to let the person who made the allegations ruin his life like this – he’s losing me, his job, and everything we’ve worked for.
I see no end in sight and I know getting aggressive in return isn’t helpful but it’s all I have left. AITA for not having any empathy left?
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A few months ago, something happened to my partner that would upset anyone. I can’t go into too many details, but in short, a police report was filed containing false allegations by a person he had mentored and thought of as a friend. We’re considering our legal options—that’s not what this is about—but it will take some time to resolve in the courts.
It has led to a months-long mental breakdown, and I am completely depleted. He starts drinking in the morning, is on the cusp of losing his job, gets aggressive/dismissive at the drop of a pin, cries loud enough to make our neighbours complain (I haven’t passed this on to him but it went on for long enough that they said it was waking their baby), and is basically tearing down his life and mine with it.
I’ve tried to get him admitted to hospital and have had to call EMTs a couple of times, but he is remarkable at putting on a ‘good face’ for emergency services.
After two months, my empathy has turned into anger and despair. I’ve told him the self-pity is over-the-top and probably worse. I’ve said it is ridiculous to let the person who made the allegations ruin his life like this – he’s losing me, his job, and everything we’ve worked for.
I see no end in sight and I know getting aggressive in return isn’t helpful but it’s all I have left. AITA for not having any empathy left?
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OP has offered the following explanation for why they think they might be the asshole:
> Stopped being able to show empathy in a bad situation given as a partner I am supposed to be supportive
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Contest mode is 1.5 hours long on this post.
You’re never the asshole for how you feel. It sounds like some serious therapy is needed. I hope you both get through this. NAH.
Op… have you considered you don’t know the person you share a home with? Because if it’s all false, I don’t see WHY he would be breaking down. Sure sad and hurt for a bit. But I would be doing everything in my power to show the actual type of person I was.
NTA.
You can’t set yourself on fire to keep someone else warm indefinitely. You can’t be a romantic partner and his mental health carer. The day drinking alone is sufficient justification to tell him to shape up or ship out.
INFO are the allegations definitively false or did your partner simply tell you they were false?
NTA unfortunately that doesn’t change anything.
Did he experience some serious consequences from this false allegation?
Did he lose a job or friends?
Whatever the reason is for his behaviour, he’s the only one who can change it.
You can only decide how much longer you can live with this behaviour
Please get him into therapy and possibly on antidepressants. Neither need to be permanent but are likely required now.
Info: have either of you sought therapy to help you through this time? If not, even if your partner is refusing to get therapy, it might be a good idea for you to look into it for yourself. Compassion Fatigue is real.
NTA At a certain point you you turn into his enabler rather than actually helping him get better. He’s clearly choosing when and where he behaves like this. So whatever your responses are to his behavior apparently makes him feel better without the work or accountability or whatever he may have to do/face if he saw an actual professional. I had a friend who would always apologize to me when she didn’t do what she had promised, and because I was polite and knew she had depression I would say it’s no problem, but when I finally responded by saying I have time now, let’s do it together, she backed out and never apologized again (she also stopped making promises to do things, showing me that she never planned to do anything). On a side note, it’s also possible that he’s playing up how devastated he is because there’s some truth to the “false allegations”.
I’m going to start with the response by saying human emotions can be complex. They also have limitations to a certain extent, and what you talked about sort of sounds like you reached your limit. So from what you shared it seems like you’ve been both extremely patient, and supportive, but even your empathy has what I like to call an “expiration date.” Especially when someone continues to refuse to accept help of any kind and even allows the despair to take over, to add playing the victim card also doesn’t help. All this sort of makes the “expiration date” be pushed more and more further back to the point where you’re both physically and mentally done.
None of this makes you cruel or even an asshole, it shows that you’re a human with feelings through and through. So as I said you’re not the asshole, you’re in a difficult and stressful sounding situation. It’s just emotional exhaustion and that’s a sign of a burnout. It deserves a bit of compassion not judgment.
Even the strongest compass breaks when it’s used to guide someone who won’t walk. Your exhaustion doesn’t make you cruel, it makes you honest.
NTA Is he refusing therapy? If so, get out and keep yourself safe. Coming from a place of experience (my ex fiancé had a mental break after his dad died and refused therapy) when the sadness no longer gets attention they turn to anger. I don’t want to be that Reddit person that says leave him, but this is serious if you’ve already called EMT and tried to get him admitted.
Your language makes me think that perhaps this is not a false accusation: “Something happened to my partner” “False allegations” and even “police report” which certainly makes this sound like quite a serious deal. “A person he had mentored” sounds as if it was someone younger than him.
If your husband was completely innocent of these charges, I don’t think he’d be going to pieces and jeopardizing his job. More likely, there is a grain (or a pound) of truth in the allegations, he knows what the outcome of an investigation will be, and that the thing he fears the most is admitting it to you.
Now is the time to stop blinding yourself to the truth. Have a frank conversation with your husband and find out what actually happened, if it has happened before, and how the outcome might affect his career. Then you could work together to face whatever is in front of you, as well as get him the mental health care he needs.
Perhaps your husband is indeed completely innocent, but it seems odd in the extreme that he would immediately have a breakdown over a mere accusation. And most accusations don’t end up with a police report being filed.
NTA because you’ve done nothing wrong.
NTA. You are not his therapist and cannot make him get better. But, he clearly has some understandably unresolved trauma from this that he is not handling well. Do what you can to get him into therapy.
NTA – but months without being willing to get help? Drinking all day? You are way past the empathy point and well into tough love territory! Dump that drink in his lap and tell him to go to a therapist appointment you made for him!! Then invite his mother father sibs and friends boss even if they’d help. Full intervention time.
NTA.
You’ve tried to reason with him, you’ve tried to rescue him, you’ve tried to fix him. Your efforts haven’t had any effect because you can’t fix him. YOU can’t fix him.
At this point, I would stop trying to tell him what’s wrong with him (e.g. “your self-pity is over the top”), and reframe the situation as “I can’t live like this any more. If things don’t change, I’m out of here.”
In other words, turn it into what YOU are prepared to tolerate, or not. He can then make the adjustments required to preserve your relationship – or not. His choice.
It’s very similar to what Al-Anon advises people whose loved ones are in the grip of alcohol. You cannot save them. You have to “detach with love”, so that you don’t go sliding down into the abyss with them.
I realize your partner’s problems didn’t begin with alcohol and probably aren’t centered on alcohol, although the fact he is now drinking in the morning is not a good sign. Even so, you still may find it useful to read some of Al-Anon’s advice online about focusing on yourself and detaching from your loved one’s problems.
Best of luck.
NTA. Your feelings are valid. You’ve been put through the ringer. Not as much as him, but enough. If he can’t get it together, it’s not your responsibility to cover for him. It’s not your responsibility to fix him either. He needs to see a therapist and so do you.
NTA your feelings are valid and as someone who has had a rocky history with their mental health whilst the circumstances maybe out of our control it is still our responsibility to get help and not drowning other people to keep ourselves afloat. That isn’t fair. Be very upfront that you cannot go on like this. Tell him the neighbours complained and he woke their baby. He needs to process his emotions in a healthy non destructive way.