Dear Jen:

January two years ago, you wrote: “He thought I was holding back anger”- I think he is holding back anger.

January this year, you wrote: “whenever he feels depressed, he says he doesn’t deserve me or finds reasons to think he can’t trust me”-

– I will edit this sentence so to suggest a possibility: whenever he feels angry  he says he doesn’t deserve me or finds reasons to think he can’t trust me.

From personal experience, depression is a sort of exhaustion from feeling either fear and/ or anger too intensely and/ or for too long. Fear and anger are closely associated. We feel threatened, next we feel fear (motivating us to run away) and often we feel anger (motivating us to fight). Flight or Fight are ways to protect oneself from a perceived threat.

So, when he feels intensified fearful and angry, he tells you that he doesn’t deserve you, hoping perhaps that you will leave him alone, or he points to not trusting you, hoping perhaps to anger you and cause you to.. leave him alone.

Clearly, fear and anger is not all that he feels about you, but he feels too much fear and anger.

In the aftermath of him experiencing with psychedelics, “has had him dealing with very intense depression. He tried to break up with me”- he felt angry at you and he  did what people who feel anger at their partners do- break up.

What I am saying is that depression is not a singular issue, not a pure emotion, it is a condition made of repressed fear, anger, shame, and such. His anger is most likely at his parents/ people in his family of origin projected into you.

Recently at nigh, “he had an episode that looked schizophrenic to me. He started crying and was paralyzed, he couldn’t communicate and was acting very erratic”- part of his behavior was genuine, he really did feel distressed, but part of it, I think, was him performing, trying to scare you away, so that.. you leave him alone.

He is conflicted, he wants you in his life and he wants you out of his life, at the same time, is my guess, therefore his “constant state of confusion and feeling lost”, and “if it’s not one thing is the next one and the next one”.

“I want to help, but I want to help doing the right thing”- how about bringing up to him the issue of his anger at you and his efforts to end the relationship by discouraging you and scaring you?

I suspect it will be scary to bring this up, to open a communication about his anger at you, fearing that it will lead to a breakup, something you clearly fear. But it may lead to a breakthrough, not a br4eakup. Without a breakthrough you may be forever stuck in a state of limbo, neither here (reliable, solid commitment), nor there (breakup).

anita