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I’m feeling really devastated at the moment about my relationship with my partner. We’ve been together seven years, have always lived together, and got engaged on NYEve 2008 (the anniversary of this isn’t helping). Since my mental health problems returned in 2007, we’ve both had a tough time and I know she has felt very strained. In November she chose to move to Australia for a new job. I coped really well, probably because I was getting so much out of my relationship with T that it went some way to balancing out the loss of my partner. I was supposed to spend two weeks there at Christmas, but the snow closed the UK airports and I was stuck here. I was coping really well but in the last week (since my T went on holiday) I’ve become a desperate wreck during our phonecalls, and she is getting more and more angry and impatient and pulling away. A couple of days ago she said she can only ‘handle’ speaking to me twice a week. Last night she told me she’d spend one week of her three week Easter holiday with me (and the other two with her family). I am dying inside at the thought of spending one week out of eight months with my partner. This isn’t a life.
My T comes back tomorrow morning and I’m trying to hang on till then, but I’m not sure what difference it will make. I’ve decided not to get back into that dream world with her where I feel so happy and safe and contained, because it’s only really a distraction from the cold hard facts of my life, which are that: I had it all and I lost it all, and however hard I work to build a life, it will always be taken away. We actually talked about this (my worry that the relationship with her is just a distraction) in the session before the break, and she said the key factor was that the closeness to her was enabling me to engage with my life more and live better (do my job, see my friends, have more positive communication with my partner... building a life), rather than engaging less (e.g. shutting off from everything and living only for contact with her). I will try to finish DBT, but I'm can't allow myself to get sucked back in to all the warm fuzziness. Who was I kidding? Even my partner can't stand me, yet somehow I let myself believe that my T loved me??
I’m feeling very very low. Even though the loss of my partner has been gradual, it’s just hit me like a 50 tonne truck, at the same time as the loss of my T (which is self-imposed, I know). I have truly tried my best every day of my life, but I can’t face another year of pain, and all the years after that. I don't know how to get through today, and I'm not sure why I would, only to have to do it all again tomorrow. I'm sorry to dump all this here, but there's nowhere else.
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