[DKellar]

Hi all!
I am so upset and lost. I have been in a relationship for over ten years with my boyfriend. I haven't always been happy. He suffers bipolar and is OCD and that is a tough combination to live with!
I feel like I am always bossed around and told what to do. I tell him how unhappy I am over this and he turns it around to be something I did wrong.

In 2010, I had enough and left him in the middle of the night. After a month of being separated, he coaxed me into returning, promising this and that and to change.
Fast forward seven years. The same stuff is happening. I am in some horrible time loop. We will be great for a month or two, and then he snaps. He is paranoid and thinks I am "up to no good", or "sneaking around". I now work with him full time and live with him and sadly we are now to one car, too. I don't know why he doesn't trust me! He says he thinks I am having online relationships and talking bad about him.

I just don't know what to do. He tells me that because I left the way I did, he is hurt and is afraid I will leave like that again.
In fact, we are fighting today over this nonsense. It is his birthday and I purchased him a truck. It is in the shop getting fixed and ready. I wanted to surprise him. He was in my office and my phone rang. It was the auto mechanic. I didn't want to ruin the surprise, so I told him they must have called the wrong number. ANYWAY! He still hasn't talked to me since this, after four hours. I ended up telling him about the truck to diffuse the situation and still, he claims I am "acting weird". I feel as if I am on a roller coaster all the time. I just don't know how to get his trust. He says he trusts me, but then he is paranoid if I am not with him or if I get a phone call or whatever. What can I do?!?!

Desperate for advice!
Danielle

[dermald]

I was once in a really abusive relationship, where I was on the receiving end. I learned a few things from my experience.

There is nothing you can do to get him to trust you. Either he trusts you, or he does not. If he does not trust you, then you do not have a healthy relationship.

Also, you can try and try all you want to make the relationship work. But if both people don't work, and both don't want it, then you can put your all into it and it won't make a difference.

Finally, each person has to own their own mental illness, issues, paranoia, or whatever else is going on. If he is not interested in dealing with his own issues, and wants to constantly blame you, then you don't have a relationship.

I know what it's like. I wanted that relationship to work out so much, especially because we had a child together. But in the end, I had to accept the hard reality that it would not work, and that it would be dangerous for me to stay in it.

I think your best move would be to get out, get far away, and not talk to him anymore. No calls, no texts, no emails, no social networking, no explaining. Of course, this is only if he is unwilling to own and deal with his issues.

I know how rough it can be. Best of luck.

[Bill3]

If he is not getting or not progressing in treatment you can expect the same things to happen again and again, indefinitely. How long are you wiling to endure?

[TishaBuv]

You've invested a lot of time with him and you are so enmeshed with him; working and living together, one car. Getting out will not be easy.

He sounds like he certainly has trust issues, and you fight often. That sucks.

I don't think the way it is will change. What do you think about trying marriage therapy?

Does the good outweigh the bad?

[Nammu]

to PC I hope you find the answers your looking for. The only advice I have is to seek counseling for yourself to deal with this. couples therapy would be excellent but I get the feeling he probably wouldn't go but do go for yourself.

[dermald]

For a long time, I would use the "good days" as a reason to stay; that maybe things weren't so bad. I was totally fooling myself, because it would start right up again.

Sometimes there is projection. If I was five minutes late getting home because my bus was behind schedule, my ex would sniff me up and down at the door and ask, "Who is she?" There was nobody.

She was doing this because she was sleeping with her first ex-husband in exchange for cash.

Guilt can cause finger-pointing. If he doesn't trust you, then maybe it's because you should have a valid reason for not trusting him.

[Sunflower123]

Originally Posted by dermald

I was once in a really abusive relationship, where I was on the receiving end. I learned a few things from my experience.

There is nothing you can do to get him to trust you. Either he trusts you, or he does not. If he does not trust you, then you do not have a healthy relationship.

Also, you can try and try all you want to make the relationship work. But if both people don't work, and both don't want it, then you can put your all into it and it won't make a difference.

Finally, each person has to own their own mental illness, issues, paranoia, or whatever else is going on. If he is not interested in dealing with his own issues, and wants to constantly blame you, then you don't have a relationship.

I know what it's like. I wanted that relationship to work out so much, especially because we had a child together. But in the end, I had to accept the hard reality that it would not work, and that it would be dangerous for me to stay in it.

I think your best move would be to get out, get far away, and not talk to him anymore. No calls, no texts, no emails, no social networking, no explaining. Of course, this is only if he is unwilling to own and deal with his issues.

I know how rough it can be. Best of luck.

I agree wholeheartedly with this. Please think carefully about this.

[Bill3]

You might want to consider enlisting a women's center in helping you prepare an escape plan, should you decide to leave.

[healingme4me]

My exhusband started with the paranoid accusations, in hindsight, right around the time a certain individual entered the picture.

Recently, I was asked if perhaps I think he had been cheating on me, by a coworker who by virtue of the community that I work in, knew some of the background details of my own history, the kids, the divorce, the domestic assault, etc., etc. She asked as we were discussing odd behaviors and meanness when a spouse cheats.

Something to consider, as it becomes confusing to try to prove trust worthiness.

[Rose76]

This is really a tough one. You can't argue him out of his delusions. They're not based on logic, so reasoning them away is impossible. You'll only exhaust yourself trying.

Basically, if you're not planning to leave him, then you have to stop constantly reassuring him. And, when he wants you to swear you'll never leave him again, you have to not do that. Because any oath you take will never be good enough. Best to say: "I don't plan on leaving, and I don't want to, but it's possible you could drive me away. I can only withstand so much." When he starts, remind him of the promises he made to lure you back.

He might be helped by a very good therapist, if he can be persuaded that this is a sickness. This is similar to a kid throwing tantrums, only it's more like incessant whining. It's meant to get a response out of you. Don't give the expected response. That reinforces the behavior. Do not walk on eggshells and do not curtail your behavior to try to avoid triggering one of his "spells." That just causes him to get worse. What will appease him short-term will only make him worse long-term.

To some extent this is like an OCD behavior that he truly can't turn off. He has to be made to understand that you are sorry he experiences this discomfort when he feels untrusting, but he'll have to learn that experiencing some psychic discomfort is not the end of the world and will not kill him. Your instinct to reassure him is not serving you well. Watch Cesar Milan - the dog whisperer, working with whiny dogs. You ignore the behavior that you don't want. Your husband needs to learn to self-soothe, and he can.

His distress is not imaginary. It's real. But resolving it is his problem. You have to be very firm and willing to bestow affection and approval when the whining is not going on.

Some evening, when he is not acting delusional, you hug him and say, "See how nice we are together when you have your head clear of wrong thinking. I love you when you're this way. I'm proud of you when you are thinking straight."

He is insecure. Then you become insecure, which makes him more insecure. You have to be the strong, secure one . . . unruffled by his carrying on. That's really what he wants, but he doesn't know that.

[TishaBuv]

I wish my mother never told me this, but my father was paranoid and delusional and accusing her of cheating. In hindsight, I see he was MI. It did not escalate or become violent abuse. He heavily medicated and died of cancer.

I wonder if this can be an early sign of physical illness.

[Rose76]

We're told that stress can predispose a person to physical deterioration and illnesses. Paranoid thinking is caused, I believe, by some kind of psychic stress, and, then, it creates more psychic stress.

I don't think paranoid delusions about one's spouse cheating are really about fear of being cheated on. I think it's a form of irrational obsessive thoughts. This, IMO, is like the fear of germs that makes a person wash hands 50 times a day, or scrub things beyond reason. You can't reassure this person by going around disinfecting things. No amount of cleanliness is clean enough. Often, the person may very well know the obsession makes no sense. They just can't get rid of it. These are unwanted, intrusive thoughts. I think the best approaches to manage this obsession can be learned from experts in OCD who treat that condition, which is notoriously difficult to treat.

There are physical conditions that can contribute, or even cause, this. I knew a man who was suddenly having obsessive, intrusive, upsetting thoughts. He was being treated by a psychiatrist who was exploring the roots of this thinking. It just made him worse. Turned out that the antibiotics he was getting (a lot of them) were toxic to his brain. The drugs were stopped and his thinking went back to normal. It was an amazing thing to witness.