What a weekend

In brief, we have had company since Thursday. My bf's son and friend came to spend some time as we were having a multi-birthday party for all of the January birthdays among our group of friends. It has been really nice having the company and our party Saturday was wonderful... . until our little dog vanished. He's an 8lb Yorkshire Terrier and he took off some time after 11 pm. We were crushed! We searched the woods and up and down the road for several hours on foot and my bf went out in the car several times during the night.

Sunday morning I made a bunch of fliers and we posted them everywhere we could around the neighborhood. It's a very small community so I had hope... . my bf had none. He was convinced someone at the party had stolen our little PeeWee dog and I was fearing he was going to start to rage over the situation. I'm actually thankful (which seems really odd to me) that he was sad instead. We were both sobbing on and off the whole day, but by nightfall, my bf was overcome with his sadness. He was a wreck. He began having chest pains and had difficulty breathing. He has heart problems so naturally I was concerned.

I helped him to bed and gave him one of his pills. He told me through his tears how much he wanted that little dog back and how unfair it was for someone to take him. I told him that I understood just how painful this was but that I still had hope that someone found him and would do the right thing and return him to us. My bf said that he was selfish. I asked him why he felt selfish and he said that he just wanted the love back... . he said that's what happens when you love something. I asked him if he felt that whenever he loves something it goes away and he said yes.

This is the 1st time he's really expressed these thoughts to me. He told me that he dreads the thought of going to sleep at night without me by his side, which seemed to be a disconnected thought so I told him that I am here and would continue to be here. He then went into the "I am such an idiot, stupid, (add all kinds of self defeating adjectives here) old fool" mode. I couldn't respond. I knew not to validate the invalid, but I didn't know what to say so I said nothing... . just held him and listened.

He said he couldn't be alone (Monday) and wanted to go to work with me. I reminded him that his son and their friend are still here and he wouldn't be alone. He acknowledged that he wouldn't be alone, but still wanted the comfort of my arms and that when I'm home with him, everything is ok and he feels better. I assured him that I would be home as soon after work as I possibly could (I'm self employed so I pretty much make my own hours). He eventually fell asleep.

I had a very good conversation with his son about my bf's reaction to the missing dog. His son was not surprised by the "over reaction" (his words) to the event. I explained what I'd read about extra sensitive and highly reactive emotions (just finished reading Manning's Loving Someone with BPD but said nothing about BPD... . just that some people experience emotions much deeper than we would expect them to. His son told me that his dad has been that way for as long as he could remember (son is 35) but it usually would be anger not overwhelming sadness. I explained that I was concerned about his sadness because he'd recently spoken of suicidal thoughts. His son said he would hang around another couple of days if that would be helpful~~YAY!

Monday I went to work and about 10:30am received a call that someone in a business about 2 miles behind the woods at our house had found our dog and he was safely returned. My bf APOLOGIZED (he never does that when he's raging) for being such a mess. I told him that his sadness was understandable under the circumstances. Our home is complete again and I gained some valuable insights. The guys are still going to hang around for a couple of days to help my bf with a plumbing project.



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