janeylaney wrote:

My boyfriend and I were together for three years and just broke up about two or three weeks ago. He was very depressed and it wasn’t really severe in the beginning but it has gotten worse the last year and a half of our relationship.

He works for and lives with his dad, who doesn’t respect him and is very emotionally abusive. He hates his job but won’t quit because of fear and guilt that the failure of the business would be placed on him. His dad constantly told him I was going to leave him, when I started college he told him I was going to meet someone else on campus, and when I graduate he wouldn’t be any good to me anymore. Even in the beginning of our relationship his dad told him not to prioritize me because one day I’d be gone. His dad claims he likes me, and I don’t believe that he personally has an issue with me, but he doesn’t care about my ex’s happiness because he’s benefiting from his learned helplessness. I don’t think my ex sees it this way because he’s been manipulated, but I believe his dads emotional abuse lead to us breaking up. His dad was using me as a tool to further put him down and no matter how much I tried to reassure him it didn’t help and his dad got in his head, not to mention he was depressed because of his living and work situation.

He broke up with me because he said he was so depressed that he knows he hasn’t been a good boyfriend and he needs to figure out how to heal, which I was heartbroken but I respected, and I understood what he meant. But because I wasn’t the cause of his unhappiness, I don’t see how us breaking up would help him heal, and he doesn’t have intentions of getting professional help. He was very emotionally distant, and I convinced myself this was because he didn’t love me anymore but it was really because he didn’t have the same state of mind as the beginning. I think I became somewhat desperate because I was trying so hard to get the same affection back.

When we broke up we both seemed like we weren’t ready for it to be permanent, and when we broke up I was fine and didn’t even cry because I just had a gut feeling we would be fine and it wasn’t really over. He kept saying maybe once he can get in a head space where he doesn’t feel completely hopeless we could try again because he still loves me and has feelings for me, but he doesn’t see how we could have a future anymore right now because he doesn’t see a good future for himself, and he wasn’t comfortable with me seeing his emotional breakdowns so he continued to bottle everything up which made him feel worse.

I have doubts that maybe he really just didn’t love me anymore, he seemed uninterested but sometimes he acted like he did in the beginning. But I worry even more that this third person (his dad) will always be an issue within our relationship even if we get back together. I haven’t contacted him, but because I know he’s depressed I want to reach out. At the same time I feel like it’s up to him to take the first step since he ended it, but he has a lot of pride and I don’t know that he would. I worry that he’ll never have the courage to stand up to his dad and get out of his situation, and he’ll never return to me.

I don’t know what to do.

 

This could help you. It's a bit muffled at the beginning but just for a few minutes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4VbxLjf9So