[Delljoy]

Hi,
I love my man dearly and have been in a relationship with him for 21 months. I'm a mature woman of 47 and he is 56. I'm confident that he loves me 100% in return.

We had a shakes start to our relationship. We were overwhelmed with each other right from the start, couldn't keep our hands off each other, and you could say it was almost love at first sight. We had great dreams and aspirations for the future. After a declaration of love from him, followed by one from me 3 months into our relationship he then promptly dumps me, no explanation really. Me devastated but put it down again to my dreadful bad luck with men, I never seemed to get it right, there must be something seriously wrong with me.

Fast forward 3 months and he contacts me out of the blue and we get back together, with him still not giving me an explanation as to why he broke up with me except he was scared and I was 'pushing things'. Later on I found out that it was because I was too career orientated, he couldn't keep up with me and he felt I should be with some high powered executive.

A couple of weeks after we got back together we went to the us for a holiday touring around for 6 weeks. We had an amazing time and really cemented our relationships, however there were a few times when he would go really quiet and sad looking and seek his own space for a while. I came home from America a couple of weeks before him but we emailed on a daily basis and both really missed each other.

When he got home his business failed and he was in essence living on his savings, but he led me to believe that he was ok for cash. A couple of weeks after he got home he had his first depressive episode, he basically told me he didnt love me anymore, and didnt want to see me again, he just wanted to be alone. i was devastated, but a few days later he rang me, asked me out for dinner and everything was ok again.

i didnt question him too much i was just happy to have him back and well, and things progressed well.He wouldn't live with me due to pride and him not being able to cope with seeing me going to work everyday when he had no work to go to. We had a great life, were having fun, loving each other and I was the happiest I had ever been in my life, and I sensed he was the same. We got on amazingly well. We both talked about the past and he said he had had a diagnosis of bipolar after his marriage broke up but the diagnosis was thrown out later and put down to stress. I didn't pay much attention to this because he seemed quite normal to me but just a bit moody. Our relationship was developing and he was becoming very loving and caring. We decided to go to America again, this time for 9 weeks. We had a ball, he had no sad days whatsoever, we were so in love and even spoke about marriage.

We have been home less than a week and he has again become depressed stating he is crazy and not good enough for me, and that I should move on, that he doesn't want to see me again and that he just wants to be by himself.
I'm trying to stay strong but my heart is breaking, I love and miss him so much. Please help.

[Rohag]

Welcome, Delljoy! I'm sorry you find yourself in this predicament.

These are serious illnesses that affect mood and cognition. What do you know of how your friend is being treated? Is he receiving any treatment?

Of possible help from the PsychCentral Blogs: Being Married to a Person with Depression or Bipolar: 6 Survival Tips by Therese Borchard

Hi Delljoy! I agree with Rohag and encourage you to seek as much information on this site as you can and when he comes back, because he seems to have built a patter of infatuation and rejection, perhaps you can have a quiet talk with him to address these issues you've noticed. There are ways to do this in a non-confrontational manner, but I fear if you don't look into it, you're only going to remain on this rollercoaster, and trust me, it's not a fun ride.

Please take care of yourself, first and your mental health. If you do want to help him, then the only way you can is to be as sure as you can be, that you are as strong within as you are without. Good luck, and keep posting. We are all good listeners here, and probably many of us (myself included) have traveled down the road you have encountered and hopefully can be of some help to you.

[Delljoy]

When I last spoke to him he was quite verbal about his illness, saying things like he wasn't normal, he was crazy etc and even questioned my love.....saying, quote, " how can you be so wonderful and amazing if you love someone like me".
He said he had changed careers 3 times in his life and had failed at all of them.......he hadn't, he'd been quite successful in life. He originally trained as a shipping broker and worked around the world for multi national cooperations. He made a mint and was very successful. He became a self employed shipping broker and his business flourished. But the need for shipping broking is diminishing.
At the end of his marriage he had a bit of a midlife crisis and packed it all in and bought a farm and a vineyard and was successful for a while then there were a couple of droughts so he sold up and went back to brokerage. I think he lost a lot of money on his farm.
He said he really hasn't got over losing his farm and hasn't been able to let it go. He says he has been in counselling and taken medication but mainly because other people have asked him to. But he says none of it works because the underlying problem is still there, nobody is able to get him his farm back......so what's the point.
I've tried to tell him that to me he is more than what he does for a living, it's what inside of him that counts. How do I say the right things to help him?
His main problem is he feels a failure and that is exacerbating his depression. I feel he will always be in and out of depression unless he becomes a success again.
When we spoke about marriage in America, he said why would you want to marry me, I've got nothing to offer you. I tried to tell him that I don't want anything I just want him, but I don't think he listened.