The title may sound like I’m saying any of this in jest, but it’s just my attempt at remembering to laugh at the absurdity of the situation I have created for myself.
I’m going to start with myself and my own issue in a moment, as I don’t want to hide the fact that I’m very much a damaged and unprepared human for the trials that are about to come in my life. I’ve never felt as idiotic in my life as I do right now, and I feel I am to blame for the situation I’ve ended up in where I’ve got a baby on the way with someone I met in November 2023 who has been diagnosed with BPD, ADHD & OCD. I will go into a bit more depth in how that’s been going after I go over my own personal woes before I even met her.
So, I was a child of divorce, parents split when I was on the cusp of adulthood and I seem to have taken it the hardest between all my siblings. My parents and aunties, uncles, etc. have described me as being very “deep” when I was younger, and have recollected to me that I didn’t show much emotion. Why I was never screened for anything which may be wrong with me mentally, I’m not really sure. I definitely hold a lot of resentment within me to the past and how I feel I was perhaps emotionally neglected and blamed for being “quiet” and never really connecting with my family at a majorly deep level. I’ve been in and out of counselling services for the last few years, as recently as a couple of months ago where I decided to stop for financial reasons (needing to save money for the upcoming birth of our child). Mainly being treated for problems with anger, depression, anxiety, self-doubt, fear of rejection, etc. I’ve been screened for mental health conditions in the past, however I was never considered as having any sort of personality disorder myself. I don’t know if there is a specific condition I have really, it’s loosely been treated as your generic depression/anxiety by our country’s broken healthcare system, and slightly deeper as a fear of rejection, and exploring more within me about my behaviours of anger and depression which play out in my life in the interpersonal relationships I have.
I’ve been in only long-term relationships, meaning I’ve never had a “one night stand” with anyone, I’ve never been the type to go out and find people to just have pointless sex with as it’s never appealed to me. This truthful retelling of my past is important for the current distressful situation with my SO that I’m in right now, but I’ll come back to this shortly. I’ve always struggled in these relationships to build a lasting connection with that person, and have previously rushed into spending all my time with those ex SO’s and neglecting my own personal life, friends, family, etc. I’ve always thought I do it to escape the stress I feel within my own family home which has been rather toxic at times, but slightly better these days than maybe 10 years ago.
Due to my mental health issues, I got myself into a boatload of credit card debt in 2019 , where I made peace with killing myself at a future date and spending needless amounts of money on drugs, booze, shopping, etc. Essentially, I gave myself a free pass to spend 10’s of thousands of [currency] because I was going to kill myself, and well obviously I had a moment of realisation where I decided not to. I will have paid off my final debts in March 2025. I’m paying about 20% of my salary every month to the companies in a repayment plan, so it does leave me financially struggling in this current climate where there’s a cost of living crisis. I had to move back in with my father in august 2023 due to the breakdown of my previous relationship, and not being able to afford to rent my own place until I’m debt free.
I feel that’s probably enough background on my own life, however I’d probably be happy to clarify when I get a chance to reply if anyone did have any questions about my own background, as I say - I feel like I’m aware of my issues and trying to resolve them, it’s just the timing of things are extremely difficult right now and I’ve had to stop going to counselling to save money.
Onto my relationship with my current SO, who as I said has been diagnosed with BPD and the other conditions I mentioned. I met her on Tinder (don’t know whether to laugh or cry as I typed this) back in in November and we instantly had a good rapport where we could bounce off each other well in a conversation. She seemed very nice at first, very self-aware of her own problems where she owned up to suffering from mental health conditions early on - this is something I found endearing and I instantly connected with her due to my own past. I’d heard of BPD before, been worried I may have had it myself, however a doctor told me I don’t meet the criteria to be a sufferer of this. Regardless, I felt like I understood her and that I had enough of an understanding of the condition from previously studying psychology where I wouldn’t let the stigma of it impact my ability to develop a connection with this seemingly stable and nice person. She told me she was actively receiving treatment in the form of medication and soon-to-be BPD-specific treatment (she’s on a waiting list for DBT). I also found this reassuring as I know that without treatment, there's no chance of recovery and there’s no chance of success between her and I. During the early stages I was ready to support her when she was feeling down, I was always very responsive to her feelings and made sure to be clear about wanting to set some boundaries when it came to us being exclusively dating when the time was right after a few dates.
She seemed to agree to this, but also always had a caveat where she felt it necessary to let me know that our relationship was not official, and that although she’d promise me she will never go behind my back and date other men, she also made it clear that we were not bf/gf, so it was quite a confusing time. What doesn’t really help matters is that I have such low self worth in myself, I place so much value in her above myself, that I think “OK, I can accept this for now, after some time she will see that I am a good, trustworthy man who isn’t going to cheat on her or abuse her like the men in her life previously have” (allegedly). For context as well, she was honest about having cheated in the past herself when she was dating these supposedly horribly toxic men, and that she always felt incredibly guilty about that and has never repeated that behaviour since (last committed about 2 years ago, according to her).
The reason this is important is because as I said, I’m only ever interested in dating one woman at a time, and not interested in having multiple sexual partners at one time. Since we have begun getting closer over the course 2024, she became more and more accusatory about what she believes I may be doing behind her back - she claims to have a photographic memory, so has brought up allegedly seeing suspicious things on my phone, how I allegedly “check out” other people in public, how I supposedly am untrustworthy, and that I am regularly “off” with her when we have conversations over text or in person.
Being accused of something I find morally reprehensible and never seemingly being able to get her to trust me has been the single most distressing thing I’ve ever experienced in my life. There’s parts of this girl that I truly love, I share the same interests as her, have similar sense of humour, admire her intelligence, find her unbelievably attractive - but I am trying to love those things about her whilst developing a seemingly exponential hatred for when she accuses me of these sorts of things. This has led to countless arguments, countless occasions where she has harmed herself during, countless times where I have been made to apologise for my angry outbursts in response to this woman who has only known me since November but acts like she can predict my every move.
Now finally, as the title suggests, my current predicament is that she is now 25 weeks pregnant and she has purchased a property where she has sometimes suggested I would be welcome to live with her and our child. She has expressed at times that she wants it to work between us. I have spent some time with her family, whilst the newly purchased home is being decorated, and for the most part I get on with them, but let’s just say I can see where she felt the sense of neglect and abuse from, based on the stories I’ve been told. I try not to judge her family as they seem to have truly built a good family life out of what sounded like turmoil for many years. During my time at her family’s house, we have had a couple of big arguments, one resulting in her father bluntly telling me as I cried to him during one of her rage episodes that “sorry mate but she’s like this sometimes, just go to your dad’s and speak to her tomorrow”. It’s embarrassing, I feel like she knows every button to push of mine as I’ve been honest and up front with her about my fear of rejection and perhaps abandonment myself. I’ve been honest with her about my problems and I feel like it’s used against me consistently to stir up arguments and continue a cycle of abusive arguments (not physical, but certainly we both have “talent” for shouting verbal abuse at each other).
One of the persistent issues I have with her is that for someone who is so accusatory towards me about my supposed nefarious intentions with her romantically, she is extremely private and behaves like someone who is lying to me about her own intentions and actions. She deletes all messages she receives on her phone every day, she immediately clears notifications from her phone after they arrive and she has a quick glance at them, then she’ll reply when she’s out of sight from me. I’ve been cheated on before, just to add fuel into this already brightly burning bonfire of
PLEASE READ, so I know the signs of someone being distrustful. Ive also never been introduced to a single one of her friends (most of them being male), and there have been numerous opportunities for this to happen. She’s been introduced to all of my close friends and family. Recently, I legitimately raised the shady behaviour with her as being in issue in a very calm but assertive way, as I don’t really appreciate being made out to be some sort of cheating scumbag when she is acting more shady than I ever have. This has led to the types of rates you can probably imagine, where I feel the bullets of her manipulation and blame are always ready to be shot in my direction at a moment’s notice. This may be forgivable, but this happens any time I raise an issue with our relationship dynamic. She sends me memes and videos of cute couple
PLEASE READ where it refers to “boyfriend” all the time, but she won’t even introduce me to her closest friends, has me blocked on Instagram (the only social media she uses), and refuses to unblock me, as well as never actually calling me her boyfriend or asking me, not accepting my ask to be in a relationship when I still had hope she’d actually say yes so I would bother to ask. I really don’t know if she’s even still in the frame of mind where we are not in a relationship, and I feel she gets off on this confusion and always avoids actually giving me some sort of reassurance.
This week has brought on some of the most distressing arguments, as she is on holiday with her sister, and I am at home trying to work in a job I hate and find a new promotion or role closer to where she lives so that we can feasibly live together. She’s been off work since the beginning of the pregnancy and has been very ill throughout it, which is understandable as I’ve witnessed some of the horrendous days she’s had, but part of the problem now is that I don’t think she realises the stress I am under to deliver in my job whilst also being entirely uncertain about if I am able to secure a new position within my business by the time our child has arrived. The arguments are your typical arguments for when someone like this isn’t with you for an extended period of time - from baseless accusations of cheating, to silent treatments, offensive jokes where she laughed and said the baby is not even mine anyway, etc.(She said it was obviously a joke, and chastised me for taking it seriously, becoming very angry at me when I told her I don’t find that funny and didn’t want to hear it again).
I’ve spent 3 days trying to get her to see some sense that she is not doing enough to change positively into a stable and healthy person whom I can enter a proper live-in relationship with. I have expressed to her how distressing the last week has been where we have argued worse than ever, so much to the point where I broke down in front of my father whilst I was working from home today, and the emotions I had been bottling up finally came out as a mixture of anger and sorrow at the situation I now find myself in.
I’m a mid-20’s, in-debt, mentally ill man who can’t handle this anymore in my current state. She’s sent me a long apology finally after 3 days but I am at the point where I can’t even reply as I feel she has her hooks on me already and I’m going to be pulled back into this cycle of abuse and manipulation. I’ve been manipulated by women before who only want me for whatever financial resources I have left, and I’ve fallen victim to being used, and I feel like she only wants me around to keep the financial burden of having our child as low cost as possible for her. I don’t feel loved however she tells me she does love me. If I was loved, surely to god I would feel it amidst all of this insanity.
I don’t know what the hell to do, and I don’t even know I’d want an answer to that from anyone here, but I’m at a loss for what to do with my life anymore and don’t know where to turn for guidance. If anyone has had a similar experience I’d just love to hear if there’s any positive way out of this, is there any hope she will change, is there any hope that our child won’t grow up in a toxic environment where we will both ruin their life with our interpersonal hatred for each other during these BPD rages and subsequent fallouts. I am utterly terrified and don’t know what to do. How can I live with someone who I feel manipulates and abuses me? How can I abandon raising my child? I never wanted to bring a child into this world with someone who I didn’t love completely, but right now I don’t fully love her. I want to, but I don’t feel she will ever let me.
Massively too long rant is now over, if none of this rambling makes any sense to anyone I apologise, it’s just been the most emotionally damaging week of my life and I feel like I’m drowning.
