My (26F) fiancé (28M) has been losing it for a year now ever since his parents tragically died in a car crash. To take it from the beginning and give it some background, he always felt like he owes his parents something. He was the youngest of 4 and all the siblings went up high, made it through good universities and got pretty prestigious jobs. He got on track and for the past 2-3 years became better, he threw it behind him and worked on himself, lost about 80lbs, found hobbies, friends, a well paying job and he felt like he's finally got it.
Then he also got his PhD. and proposed to me which made his parents probably the proudest they've been. That happened about 2 weeks before the incident and he was on top of the world, until he wasn't..
The day it happened, he got everything sorted out, his brother called that he'll take care of everything process-wise and so he told me that he's going to rent a lodge in the mountains to just clear his head and try to get above things. I didn't know how to act so I said yes, sure, go, do what you feel you need to do.
He came back and he told me that we have to talk. He said that he managed to get all the drugs he read could help and that he was mixing LSD, MDMA, shrooms and some light opiates some day of the 2 weeks to try and reach ego death and just take it all in.
He probably did experience an ego death, but ever since, for the past 10 months, I feel like he's been stuck in it and he just isn't and doesn't want to be himself.. He's a fairly tall guy but still, he got back to about 290lbs, started hating his looks and the whole world with it.. Became just.. nihilistic..
We went through post-relatives-death therapy, couple therapy and he even got another therapist for himself.. It does nothing with him, he takes them lightly, cynically and just doesn't accept a word because "he knows better".
We've cancelled the wedding too, because his parents won't be there and it's just not in place yet. But I feel like I'm at my ends. I've given it my all, energy, mental health, work-life balance, everything. And I'm starting to lose everything I felt for us. Since we started working out together because we hated how we looked I somehow got hate in my heart for it and besides my worry for his lack of life, joy and belief in anything, I now also despise how he looks. I probably sounds cruel, but I have to get it off my chest.
He stopped caring for me and lost any interest, as he did with all other things. We had sex about 4 times in the whole year and lately I'm absolutely not into it anymore physically. He also didn't care that I lost my job and it took me 2 months to get a new one and until now, he doesn't know where I actually work. Every time my parents come to visit, he either gets sad up to the point he tears up, or just leaves the house.
I don't know what to do anymore, I love him and I don't want to leave him, but it is taking so much time that I feel like this isn't grief anymore, it's just a person who gave up on life.
Tl;dr: Future husband lost all will to live his life and care for our relationship after his parent's died.
Edit:
I genuinely cannot comprehend how so many people back the fact that if someone's grieving in a way where they lose their job, their hobbies, leave everything to their partner, it's completely normal. I have given my all to help. But the other person doesn't accept help. Be it mine, therapy or his relatives. He cut ties and burned ground. What I needed was advice. I'm burnt out, not a cold hearted killer. I love my fiance.
28 comments
Yes I agree that it’s time for you to move on. This man is stuck in horrific, unimaginable grief and you are worried about getting laid more than 4 times a year. This man lost his parents tragically.
When you get married, you make vows to stick with your spouse through ups and downs. Things get hard. If you cannot handle it, you might as well go and let this poor guy figure out how to grieve on his own since he cannot rely on you.
You guys are done. Understand that what happened to him is devastating. It is not business as usual. I lost my mom at age 38. I can’t imagine at age 28 to lose two parents. How horrific. He needs to work this out and to be honest you don’t appear to be an emotionally responsive partner on the level he needs. They say crisis will test a couple like a ship to see if it is seaworthy. Your relationship is not sea worthy.
>*And I’m starting to lose everything I felt for us…I now also despise how he looks. I probably sounds cruel, but I have to get it off my chest.*
You guys do not need to be married.
> *I love him and I don’t want to leave him, but it is taking so much time that I feel like this isn’t grief anymore, it’s just a person who gave up on life…*
He hasn’t given up. He has lost his way.
He has mentally left the relationship. He is in emotional shock and will someday be himself but needs time. A year is not that long. You should amicably ask for a pause on the relationship and remain friends if you can.
You need to do this for your mental health health and well being.
Neither of you are wrong or bad. Sometimes things like this are for the best in the long run. I think you are more upset over the effort you put in and it is hard to give up on an expectation of being with someone that you invested in.
This is not your person.
You can’t put your life on pause indefinitely. It sucks to love someone who’s stuck, but only he can dig himself out. And it was ultimately foolish for him to think doing a lot of drugs was going to help him.
You can’t help someone who won’t help themselves, and you can’t keep setting yourself on fire to keep him warm. His grief is understandable. A crash out is understandable. But then you have to get up.
It may be time for you to walk away. You can keep the door cracked if you want, to see if he gets his shit together, but do not keep holding your life on pause while you wait for him to figure it out. Support him, but don’t run yourself empty or accept any abusive behaviors.
It’s only been a year since his parents died. I don’t believe in drug use or “ego death”—I mean clearly the drugs didn’t help or do anything whatsoever. The weight gain and indifference to everything are normal. I lost a parent in my early 20s and was also a mess. I put on 30 lbs in a year. Then one day I looked at the scale and decided: “This isn’t going to be my life.” I lost all the weight in 2-3 months and made big changes. He’s just not ready after an only a year to come to a breaking point or reach rock bottom and stop being self-destructive.
You could give him an ultimatum that you can only continue the relationship if he stops using drugs, loses weight and generally cleans up his life. If he doesn’t, you can move on. But the ultimatum if he loves you will definitely motivate some changes.
OP, I’m so very sorry for your loss and his loss.
You are very young and (thankfully) have not had to experience something like this before. You do not have to marry him.
Before you make that decision, would you still want to leave if you were married? Or would you stay? There are going to be many seasons of your life with ups and downs, sometimes lasting years. In a marriage, 1 or 2 low years could be in the middle of 10 joyous ones.
You don’t have to stay, and there is nothing wrong with leaving, but just think about it. And you should tell him that you are feeling this way, that the partnership isn’t working for you how it needs to and he needs to actively make better choices in relation to the partnership if he wants it to continue. You aren’t solely responsible for making a partnership work, but you are responsible for communicating with your partner.
It’s only been a year. This sounds like pretty standard grief, TBH. Most people take at least three years after a major loss to be able to project normalcy (and are never really the same after); the fact that it was both his parents and it happened suddenly means it will likely take a lot longer. This year has been his first Christmas and birthday without them, as well as the anniversary of the event itself- every new “without” is an entirely new, smaller tragedy. Combine this with the traditional post-PhD burnout and it’s likely that this is his absolute rock bottom. I don’t think this is an ego death thing from one drug trip, I think this is a “he is now an orphan and you fundamentally do not understand what that is like” thing. It is, frankly, not reasonable of you to expect things to be better by now.
What is your own support system like (do you have a hobby or some other thing to do outside the relationship)? What is his support system like aside from you (is he close with his brother)? It’s important to let others help you both right now- there is processing that he needs to do that you cannot help with, and there is support that you need that he cannot give, because all his energy is going towards grief processing. That doesn’t mean that you’re incompatible, it’s pretty typical after a big and stressful life change. It just means you have to scale back on what you both expect from each other for a while.
He’s trying to shortcut his grief with drugs, when really all he’s done is stuff it all down in order to not deal with it. Until he wants to actually work on it, he won’t get better. You don’t have to wait around for that moment.
You don’t have to tbh. No one have to sacrifice their health for their partner. But you lost me when you said you just despise his looks an judge it.
Kindly, I think you’re underestimating grief. My dad lost his brother 40 years ago and still periodically experiences depression as a result. You essentially sound like you expect your fiancé to have “moved on” by now which is honestly unreasonable a year after he was orphaned.
None of this is to say you have to stay with him; you don’t. It’s okay to choose yourself. However, I would not paint it that he’s been unreasonable here.
I know this is hard – and you can’t save someone who doesn’t want to be saved. It sounds like his motivation for life is “gone” because it was his parents.
He needs to find what else he is working for- the drugs he was taking can help but with SUPPORT. I think his words of “I know better” potentially could be the thing he has told himself his whole life.
My thing is – this is the reality of marriage. We make vows and they are not always easy to keep. They are fucking hard sometimes. We hold the trust and belief that the person we know and love, who we have trusted with our lives, will figure it out. You don’t need to sacrifice everything though, truly, there is ways to honour what you need while supporting him.
Don’t drown with him… but I think there are ways you can stop people pleasing and still find a way – but that’s only if you feel ready to be a spouse.
One day, if you do have children, there are years they rely solely on you. It’s good practice to understand that even if they want everything from you – you don’t have to give it.
I hope you both get what you need 🙏
I’m shocked by the kind of encouragement you’re receiving in this comment section. Maybe it’s reasonable if you don’t marry him because he deserves to have someone that will stay by his side through everything. I’d say leave, but the reasoning appears to be you don’t want to be there for him through difficult times.
Being in a relationship, ESPECIALLY through something as profound as what he’s going through, sometimes you’re going to be the one doing the supporting and not getting anything in return. Therapists don’t help in a few sessions, it takes months, even years. Have you been going out of your way to just chill with him, and do things he enjoys doing? It doesn’t have to be a revolutionary moment where everything just “clicks,” that’s unrealistic. He needs to heal. He lost both of his parents! That’s insane.
Maybe define what marriage is to you, because it seems you want someone who’s going to pretend to be okay all of the time and not have real-life struggles.
I hope the best for you both.
sometimes trauma breaks people. it breaks relationships. the death of loved ones can break a lifelong marriage.
his parents’s death has broken him and it has broken your relationship. you’re probably best to get out now before it breaks YOU.
you can just go without guilt, or you can talk to him one last time and tell him that he’s about to lose you too, and does he want to repair the relationship before you can’t take this anymore?
I wish you luck.
He needs a new life perspective and he’s not going to find it in your relationship. If he wants to do it the proper drug way, find a guided peyote or ayahuasca ceremony, might have to go to Peru. Or a grief group. Or volunteer at an amputee hospital. But he’s on his own journey.
I lost both my parents within 9 months of each other when I was 34. The pain was devastating, crushing and absolute. I didn’t try drugs or anything but everything else lines up: gaining weight, stop exercising, stop wanting to be intimate, etc. There is no timeline for grief. No clear cut ending point. Also, you don’t just grieve your parents. You grieve yourself – your childhood, the person you were before they passed. You grieve the memories you made and will never make again. You grieve every single argument, every single hug, every single little moment and you feel like an orphan – because you are.
A year is not that long. It’s taken me nearly 10 years to “accept” my parents no longer being here. But I will never 100% accept it and I will never not grieve.
I don’t have advice for you but I just wanted to share some of what he could be feeling.
I think the pain of grief especially the first three years are the hardest. If he has other mental issues (for example depression) the pain is so much harder. He may just don’t have anything to continue given how his parents died. You are very much right – he has given up on life.
I say this as someone who lost both parents recently myself. Right now you have to do what is best for you. Marriage in this state will fail. It’s draining everything that matters from you; and I feel you don’t necessary understand the gravity of loss. It’s sad but probably the best way. I am so sorry for his loss and yours.
I am shocked by some of these comments stating OP must not love this guy or OP must be selfish when they’ve stated very clearly that their partner is not coping well and will not let them help them cope. OP is now the breadwinner and essentially carrying the relationship on their back and some of you guys are acting like she is some evil harpy for feeling burnt out. Shame on yall.
Anyway, I am studying to work with people in tough situations and I have always been rather adverse to death so maybe I can give good advice. If you are in a relationship where both partners are drowining I truly believe it is okay to tell him you are done. You have tried therapy, you have tried talking, you have tried being there and it is not working. In the end, rather naturally, you have started to build up resentment and feel drained from it.
No one is built for grief but people are bot obligated to sacrifice their health to uplift someone else. Your partner needs time to cope and adjust to this new reality. You are not a bad person for feeling different towards them as they are not a bad person to be behaving this way.
Overall, as shown in these comments, we all have very black and white ideas of grief and in sickness and health. You are not bad to want something else.
I was pretty out of it/ a little crazy/ saying and doing things I normally wouldn’t for about 3 years after my dad’s death in my 20s. I’m sorry you’re in this position. It’s delicate and hard and weird and you will have to decide if you want to wait or not. It’s impossible to know how he’ll be in several years. LSD and some of the other drugs you named can permanently alter ones’ personality as well. This is a tough one. Definitely postpone getting married for several years.
I lost my dad tragically at 23 and I have a feeling my partner at the time felt like you did. He tried to support me through my grief, which was crushing and life changing and took years to work through, but around the three year mark started telling me it was “time to get over it”. I read your comment that your mom passed while you were young, so I’ll tell you that you should know better. Not everyone grieves the same way and it is a horrible process to go through. Every moment he pictured his parents being there he will never have. Every good and bad thing that happens, he will not have them there. Anyway, I married that partner and we divorced very quickly. I wish he would’ve just left me if he was so annoyed by my grief and so maybe you should do your partner a favor and do the same. You probably don’t deserve the person he will be when he emerges from this.
You never recover from losing someone suddenly and tragically. It’s a one day at a time process. When someone has a terminal illness, you know that every day they are closer to death. You know that they are dying. Part, maybe not all of you is prepared for the pending outcome. Every day you have time to process it. He had no time to process this before it happened. He’s crushed? Life as he has known it for his entire life was snuffed out. The people who were there for him before he could remember are suddenly gone and it is unbearably painful. He’s fallen apart and understandably so. You have a taste of what the marriage vows speak of… in sickness and health, for better or worse etc. this is considered him at his worst and you have to decide whether or not you can or want to handle it. I know you think enough time has passed and are saying ‘what about me’. With all due respect, you’re not the void right now. The only thing you can do is be patient, loving and supporting during his grief journey or walk away if it’s affecting your mental health. Wish you the best.
The only thing you can do is get away and take care of yourself, and let him take care of himself. It sounds like he wants to be miserable and alone.
It sounds like he never truly processed his feelings. “I’ll just do every drug I can think of so that I magically don’t feel grief anymore” is not coping, it’s avoidance. The fact that he cries or becomes so upset that he leaves the house when your parents visit also points to grief that is being repressed instead of fully felt and processed.
However, totally withdrawing all support of and interest in you (he doesn’t know where you work?!?!) is not okay. A relationship is a joint project. You can’t work so hard that you make up for the fact that he’s not working at all.
It doesn’t matter if he’s in therapy if he’s actively committed to rejecting any help from his therapist.
Do *you* have an individual therapist for yourself?
It’s time to say “hey my needs are not getting met and I do not feel loved or cared for in this relationship, I need to see x, y, and z from you in the next 6-12 months or we need to start the process of separating.” A therapist can help you with articulating your needs and boundaries.
Grief looks different for everyone. I lost my grandparents within 2 years of each other, one to cancer and another to a failed surgery. My fiance has been there for me through all that even though I was probably awful to deal with, cancelled plans, dates and would burst into tears or have full blown panic attacks randomly. He’s lost both his parents at 28, that must be incredibly hard. I don’t have much advice to offer but just know that a loss like that can alter your reality. I have really changed as a person; itsnot like that for everyone but to some, it can be
May be a hot take, but I don’t think griefing gives you a free pass to treat your partner like shit.
google prolonged grief disorder, traumatic grief, and complicated grief. he’s experiencing all three. today is the 3 month mark since i lost my mom. the grief is unbearable. i sometimes wish i was dead alongside her. your judgement helps no one. you are not ready for marriage, because the whole “in sickness and health” clearly isn’t something you’re willing to stick by. life is complicated. grief is complicated. people are complicated. i’m sorry your mom passed too, but everyones relationship with their parent is very different, and by default makes their grief and experience very different when one passes. our inner child comes out again and creates new layers to heal and understand.
this isn’t about you. it’s about his experience. he may need an IOP or inpatient program for a few weeks. look into grief retreats too. if you don’t want to help him anymore, at least pass this information to him.
I don’t understand why people are criticizing OP. I understand why you’re burnt out.
This is a really tough situation and it is not being acknowledged enough the grief you’re going through. You’ve done everything and anything you can to support him. Since you are not married yet and even if you were, it’s not your responsibility to be the only functioning adult in the relationship. He is his own person and is responsible for determining how he wants his life to go. If he refuses help there’s nothing you can do honestly. Exhausting situation on both ends, i’m so sorry.
When we had been dating for 9 months my exes dad got a terminal diagnosis. Three months later his mom was diagnosed with mid-stage Alzheimer’s. A year later his dad fell and died a week later. Only 38 days later his mom fell and died within 24 hrs. Then 2 months later Covid hit and my ex boyfriend even social distanced from me, for 15 months.
After his mom’s death he changed. I kept thinking he just needed time.
Finally 4 years after his parents death, he still wouldn’t tell me when he was struggling. But he wouldn’t even sleep at my house on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. I broke up with him the day after Christmas.
He wasn’t willing to get help. He wouldn’t talk to me about what was going on. There was nothing I could do to help him. And I couldn’t live like that anymore.
That was 2 years ago. I miss him terribly. He has been my best friend and love of my life after a terrible 17 year marriage. But I still wouldn’t go back. He has to fix himself. My boys and I were just a bandaid.
I deserve better.