Dear Saraswati:

You shared that you had a difficult and an emotionally draining 1.5-year relationship with a man who had a brain injury from an accident. During the relationship, you experienced panic attacks while driving. Six months after the ending of that relationship, you (36) met your current boyfriend (40) through a dating app., and started “very casually dating” him. keeping things “simple and fun”.

He worked nightshifts at a hotel, drank a lot, didn’t seem to have any ambition, didn’t have any friends locally, and “he was terse, argumentative, demanding”. During a romantic swim in the sea on the third month of the relationship, he told you that he loved you, and that “he had an accident when he was in his twenties.. and had a head injury”. You were very disturbed by this piece of information, given your ex boyfriend had a brain injury. You told him that the two of you should go your separate ways.

Soon after that swim in the sea and the breakup,  you found out that you were pregnant: you rang him, he sounded very happy, said that he’ll move to your city, that the two of you will “get an apartment together and commit to one another”.

At the time you were living with your parents and you didn’t want  to share with them that you got pregnant by a guy you knew for only three months. You proceeded to look at apartments, found one, sorted out the furniture, all while continuing to work.  He stayed at a hostel and a campsite during the transition to the apartment, and otherwise, spent “most of his time working for a temp agency on and off, doing truck driving which he constantly complained about”.

The two of you moved in together by the time you were 2 months pregnant. When he was at home, he rarely spoke to you, and “preferred to spend his evenings on his phone and drinking alcohol.. consistently used to turn his phone off when I walked in the room”.

Two weeks after moving in, he told you that he bumped into a girl he met at the hostel and “they mutually agreed to go for a drink later that night”, telling you that he wanted to get to know her as a friend. You were troubled about his motivation to get to know her while “we had been living together for two weeks and he hasn’t even made any effort to get to know me or connect with me.. we didn’t even know one another and were about t have a baby together!”

As a result of your concerns, he told you that he will not see this woman. Later, you asked him more questions about her and “he goes into a rage pushing me off the sofa and shouting in a huge explosion”. You cried uncontrollably, asked him to leave, he left, but later apologized. You tried to reassure yourself that “he wouldn’t cheat on me and say that it was really honest of him to say he was meeting up with a girl he met”, but then you looked at his phone and found “inappropriate messages and photos from his exes that he continued to communicate with saying what he wants to do to their bodies”.

You found a girl’s number that he wrote down with a heart, a girl he met in a festival two weeks after he found out that you were pregnant. When confronted with that, he first told you that she was an ex, and later he told you that it was a girl who “kissed him at the festival and then sent him naked pictures of herself”. You also found out “flirty messages from the other girl at the hostel”, and messages he sent to a work colleague, flirting with her.

You confronted him again, and he “angrily exploded”, again, saying that you are “delusional and nothing has happened and they are only text messages.. he denies everything, refuses to see it from my point of view.. He says I judge him and criticise him constantly, which is why he gets so angry and defensive over the ‘injustice of it all'”, and that you “created this problem by looking at his phone”.

While five months pregnant, Dec 2019, the two of you went out for a Christmas dinner with your friends. He sat at the end of the table and refused to talk to anyone. After dinner, all of you went to a bar, and he spent the rest of the night ignoring you and your friends, and instead- talking to the barmaid. Next morning, when you confronted him, “he seems ashamed of himself”.

For the rest of your pregnancy, he “stays angry and bad tempered the majority of the time.. self-centered.. only doing what pleases him, and the moment he doesn’t get his way he responds with angry outbursts and blames me for provoking them”. He also “made it very clear he wasn’t attracted to me whilst I was pregnant, often laughing at me and showing me no emotional support”.

Currently, your baby is seven months old, and your baby’s father “is still doing temporary work and finds it stressful to hold down full-time employment”. The two of you “go over the same argument again and again about the same web of lies from the past”. You are “constantly trying to please him and make him happy, but deep down I  know that I can never ‘make’ him happy”. The most recent argument you had was about you coming home to find him masturbating 1-2 times per week. He told you that “rather than get annoyed with him, to try to have sex with him and not make a big deal about it”, then when confronted further, “he got very angry and held my shoulders, pushing me back towards the wall”.

When you asked him in the past to leave, “he refuses and can’t believe how nasty I am that I want to break up his family”.

“I feel it’s going downhill quite rapidly now, and he is not able to control his anger. We hold a lot of resentment for each other. I fear for my daughter and me in the future and wonder how he would be able to cope with a toddler who disobeys him… he wants to go to a relationship counsellor but because of the pandemic we can’t… I don’t know what to do. He says I’m being unreasonable and during the argument he manages to twist everything into it being my fault. Sometimes I feel like I’m going crazy and I’m being completely unreasonable with my expectations for the relationship. Is it doomed? Is he a bad person?”

And now, my input: I spent an hour and a half retyping the above, as it helps me absorb information instead of rushing through it. At first, before I read your whole account, I thought that there might be a chance for this relationship. I figured he didn’t do well in life, didn’t get the education he needed to get a better paying job, or a stable job. He was unhappy with his work, understandably- as many jobs are distressing and harmful to the employees, mentally and/ or physically. I thought that maybe you and him can work together like a team,  and maybe, with your support and a better communication, he can get educational training, a better, more stable job- and feel better for having achieved that. Feeling better about himself, he would be a better partner and father to his child.

But as I kept reading and typing, I realized that .. he is too far gone from being a decent person. This is not a man who had it tough in life but is willing to work hard so to make his life better- or better the life of his own child- this is a man who is not at all trying to better his life. Like you noticed early on, he indeed lacks ambition.

He is not motivated to better the work/ career part of his life, and he is not motivated to better his relationship with you. If he was motivated to be a better partner to you, and if he succeeded, that would have made him feel good, and that good feeling would have motivated him to better himself even more.

But the way he makes himself feel good is by masturbating, and otherwise flirting or sexting or whatever he did (and may still do, or will do) with other women. This means that his way to feel better is sex (and drinking), “doing what pleases him”, being very self-centered:  it’s all about him.

He refuses to take any responsibility for his actions and blames you instead. He blamed you so many times that you now believe him: “He says I’m being unreasonable.. Sometimes I feel like I’m going crazy and I’m being completely unreasonable”.

“Is it doomed?”- yes, I believe it (the relationship) is doomed.

“Is he a bad person?”- yes, pretty much. But unlike a cartoon character that is always bad, a bad person is not always bad: every bad person has moments when they have a good intention (ex.: when you called him about being pregnant and he was happy and wanting to have a committed relationship with you), and almost every bad person sometimes feels shame (ex.: the morning after the Christmas dinner with your friends). But overall, this man is bad and dangerous.

I share your concern regarding “how he would be able to cope with a toddler who disobeys him”. I think that you and your daughter are currently in danger and that it is likely to get worse for you and for your daughter if you do not separate from him as soon as possible.

The danger is physical, as he may seriously assault you and your child- if he gets angry one day/ night after drinking a lot, losing all of his inhibition because of the alcohol, and seriously hurt you or your daughter, causing injury or death.

The danger is also emotional- your child will be emotionally harmed as she witnesses his anger growing up. I communicated recently with a member whose adult daughter was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) because she grew up with an angry, alcoholic father. Even though her mother protected her physically from the father while he was alive, and even though her father died- the now adult daughter suffers a lot and is unable to live a functional adult life.

Your own emotional health is already in danger as you are doubting your own logical, correct thinking. You are correct and reasonable to think that indeed his behavior is unreasonable and dangerous. Problem is the more he “denies everything”, the more he accuses you of being “delusional” and “unreasonable” and “unfair” to him, the more he blames you for creating the problems that he creates (ex.: by looking at his phone)- the more you will believe him and doubt yourself. The more you doubt yourself, the less you are able to do what you need to do, which is to protect your physical and emotional health. Your child needs you safe and healthy, so that she can be safe and healthy too.

My conclusion at this point: you need to end this miserable and dangerous situation that you are in. Do it as safely as possible, involving your parents, the police, an agency perhaps that helps abused women, a shelter for abused women perhaps.. whatever it takes.

Plan your next moves carefully. No longer try to please him, to make him happy, to hope for an honest communication with him- none of that.

Do not ask him for permission.

Please plan and execute your next steps carefully and as safely as possible. Post here again anytime you want to. Every time you post, I will attentively read and reply to you.

anita

Dear Saraswati:

You are very welcome, and please, do not worry about your posts being long, they are not too long for me, and I have the time and the interest.

You wrote: “I want to understand him and his situation more”- I will be glad to help you with this aim by suggesting possibilities that you may not have considered:

He told you that he “went to private school and later in life.. gained a degree in Politics”- did you see any evidence of that private school he supposedly attended, or any evidence of his university degree?

“maybe he knows that he isn’t capable with his head injury? – did you see any evidence that he had an accident? Any medical evidence of any injuries as a result of an accident?

He has already revealed his dishonesty, lying to you- there is no reason to trust that what he tells you or anyone-  is true. Look for evidence.

It may very well be that because he feels that being a truck driver is an inferior job (“just a truck driver”), and that he is “inferior to” your friends who “are successful in their field of work”- he made up having had a head injury, so to explain that he was not.. born inferior, but became so because of an accident- a misfortune, as opposed to an inherent inferiority.

“He has never been to see any Doctor regarding how the accident affected him”- if his head was hurt in the course of an accident, wasn’t his head examined when he was hospitalized right after the accident? Does he have any papers from the hospital, a receipt of payment made, anything?

anita

Dear Saraswati:

I understand that he lied to you, but not all that he told you was a lie. Maybe he told you many things that were true, in between the lies. Questions in my mind:

– If he suffered a brain injury that significantly harmed him, why is he not willing to see a medical doctor for the injury- there may be a treatment or a rehabilitation plan that’s available for him. He may be able to get guidance as to how to deal with the results of his injury (?)

– As a father, isn’t it his responsibility to see a doctor on the matter?

– If that injury caused his erratic behavior, sometimes violent.. isn’t it your right as his partner and the mother of his child, to accompany him to see a doctor and become educated as to what you can reasonably expect from him in the future that is, to find out the nature and prognosis of his injury.. ?

– How can you possibly have a healthy, loving relationship with a man who lies to you and seems to not have a problem with lying to you… (?)

anita

Dear Saraswati:

“I can’t decide whether I should be showing compassion and understanding or whether I should give up on him?”-

– I suggest that you give up on him as a life- partner and as one who lives with you and your daughter, and have compassion for him as a person who lives separately from you, and who has no unsupervised time with your daughter.

“I find the bigger question and debate is, can I show compassion to someone like him?”- yes, show him compassion for as long as he is not hurting you and your daughter. When a person yells at you, hits you, etc.- it is not appropriate to respond with compassion. The appropriate response is to get away from him and stay away.

“Is this his brain injury- something he needs support with, or his personality- something unlikely to change”- yes he needs support, professional support, but he refuses to look for it. If he looked for professional support, the professional would guide him and you on how to support him.

Reads to me that he may have truly suffered a brain injury. But think of this: if a man who never suffered a brain injury break your bones=> your bones are broken. If a man who suffers from a brain injury breaks your  bones=> your bones are broken.

From what you shared, it does seem to me that if you stay with him, you will indeed be “just rolling over and him dominating our life with his frustrations”.

But I do understand that it is scarier and feels more difficult to confront problems and make changes than it is to roll over. This is why so many people roll over. I hope you can do better for yourself and for your daughter.

anita