Oh boy oh boy oh boy RELATIONSHIP THREAAADDDDD! Totally a new and interesting thing. Totally.
So I have an awesome boyfriend. I've been dating him for three years, two years long distance. We met in kindergarten, hooked up in high school and are currently juniors in colleges in other states, hence the long distance part. We've had our ups and downs but generally our relationship has been fulfilling and rewarding for both of us. We're pretty compatible and care deeply for each other. Our first summer in college we spent every weekend together and this last summer he lived with me.
My boyfriend seems pretty depressed about things lately. He might be having mental problems and we've been encouraging him to seek help. Here is the story spoiler'd for length and drama; summary below.
Until recently I thought he was generally doing alright. He's a very introverted person and generally doesn't tell me about things that he thinks might sadden or upset me. A few days ago he spent nearly a day and a half without talking to me, which is really unusual behavior for him. Upon asking him what was wrong, he confessed that he was very worried about his academics and that he felt he was a failure at school and a number of other things, including interpersonal relationships. He hasn't been going to classes apparently due to staying up to late goofing off on the internet and sleeping in till 2. We talked it over a little and he told me he felt a little better and would talk with his academic adviser. After that conversation I started worrying about him and made an effort to ask him how he was doing more often but he told me he was fine. I got conversationally roadblock'd since I don't think he wanted to talk about it or worry me.
This morning he sent me and his parents an email that raised concern for all of us. I think he was just trying to get his feelings off of his chest, but he chose a platform that made his parents and I freak out. He essentially called himself a failure and confessed that he had a lack of motivation, self control, ambition, lack of ability to take care of himself, and a lack of empathy for other people. He told us he felt like everything was falling apart. He seemed really upset about how his life was going in general. I replied to his email as soon as I got it, linking him to his school's free psychology consoling since he sounded quite depressed. His dad drove a few hours to meet him in the out of state school and his mother called me and grilled me with questions (the only info I had that she didn't was about his poor academic standing at this point.)
The conversation with his mom was troubling for me. She told me that he was not doing well financially and was short a thousand or so for tuition, which he hadn't mentioned to me, and that his kitten had died recently which I also did not know about. His kitten was pretty adorable and he didn't mention the death to me. His mom said that he was short for tuition because he had lived with me this summer instead of living with his parents. She said that if he hadn't spent the $300 a month on rent this summer he would be fine right now. For the record, he lived with me from may-august this year on his own dime. Since May when he moved in his parents haven't talked to me. His parents strongly disproved of us living together for a mix of reasons, inducing living with 4 girls (even though my 3 roommates are 24-26 year old professional adults, not 'girls'), sleeping in the same bed as his girlfriend (she's religious and we aren't), lack of transportation to his job in a nearby city (they didn't let him use their 3rd car which he had been driving), signing a lease even though he was only temporarily on as a subletter, and also rent money. He covered rent money with his summer job paycheck. He figured he would be fine this semester since he had a student job when he left, but apparently he wasn't able to get the student job back and has been unable to find annother one. He also seems to be very unwilling to take out private student loans, which is probably a smart fiscal choice.
The phone conversation with his mother made me feel really, really, really bad. I don't think I've felt as guilty as I did after talking to her than I had at any other point in my life. I didn't really say anything back to her on the phone since she's my boyfriend's mom and I didn't want to talk back. I was rather surprised she'd bring that up and single out his living with me and my roommates as the root of his financial woes. I felt pretty guilty/ashamed afterwords. It also felt weird that she was fixating on that since he hadn't mentioned money at all in his email to the three of us.
Anyway, the BF unplugged his PC since his internet habits were what was causing him to stay up late. It sounds like his mother is coming up tomorrow and will quite possibly take his pc back home and away from him. He is a CS major but there are labs on campus for him to work in. It's probably for his own good in the long run and I support his choice of de-wiring himself.
The long and short of it: boyfriend is sad and stressed about school, life in general. He's goofing off online until the wee hours and missing his morning classes. Sends email to me and parents about feeling like a general failure. We all freak out, his parents come and will be taking his PC away which is probably good for him in the long run as he is goofing off on it.
In the short term, however, it leaves me without 90% of how I communicate with him. No more online games, IM's (there is meebo but he shouldn't be doing that anyway) stumble upons, or anything else that can't be run on a school machine. I think he'll still be able to email but I doubt there's much else he can do. This is going to make maintaining my long distance relationship/helping out my boyfriend more difficult.
Here's what I am doing:
-Told him about the school psychologist. Showed him the URL with the phone number in an email (he can still access email in the labs.) I've highly encouraged him to visit the psychologist but as we're in other states I can't do much more than that. He sounds like he is depressed and he needs to see a professional.
-Lots of text messages and phone calls. I told him I would call him each morning, since he's been having issues getting up before 2pm. He said it he would appreciate the getting out of bed assistance.
-Going to send him some goodies in the mail. He has a soft spot for chocolate chip cookies. Maybe paint/draw him something since I'm an animation major.
Here's what I can't do:
-No more TF2, NWN, or any other online game we play together. No more PC.
-Visit him. I am broke and in annother state. If I do visit him I have to buy train or bus tickets/hotel rooms ect and I don't have the time or money to do it unfortunately.
I honestly can't think of anything else I can do to help him out. I really, really, really want to help him feel better about his whole situation and I am really worried about him.
Here's where you come in H/A! What else can I do to help out my boyfriend? I'm bad at coming up with ideas and I would appreciate exterior perspective on the situation. Especially with improving my relationship with his mom, I get the feeling she doesn't like me.
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As for his mental health issues - only he can make the first step to take care of that (or perhaps his parents force him to). No amount of prodding is going to have a positive affect - sure you might be able to make him go through the feminine wiles; but in the end for him to buy into it, it's got to be his decision.
At this point it is probably best to allow his financial, mental and academic situation to resolve itself before trying to figure out how the both of you can satisfy your personal needs. Without taking care of the first three - there is no fourth. This is a fine time to really evolve your relationship, to see if it actually is able to exist outside this boundary that you both have created.
Look at buying bundles of skype credit and call him. Alternatively look at buying skype phones. Also with school machines there is a group of people that dedicate themselves to getting shit to run on flash drives, that is you plug in a flash drive and from there you run MSN, skype and all kinds of little programs, I can't remember for the life of me what it's called though sorry.
Regardless I would be careful in all future dealings with his parents. Point out that it isn't your fault that he got fired from his job.
Satans..... hints.....
If you want to prevent discord and promote healing, here's my advice: If/when his mom brings up issues such as your boyfriend living with you over the summer, point out that he made the decision he did based on the information he had at the time - which was that he'd get the campus job back. Things changed, the future is unpredictable, hindsight is ALWAYS 20/20, now he's short on money. Point out that now is the not the time to cry over spilled milk (man, the cliches in my post! they are rampant!) but rather you guys should work to support him and help him out, rather than criticizing him for past decisions that weren't even bad decisions at the time. You especially don't want to be critical of decisions like that when he's clearly going through a lot of stress.
If his mom continues to give you problems about the previous summer, you may have to have a little session where you resolve her ideals with what her son has chosen to do. He won't always have mommy's perfect morals - sometimes he's going to disagree with her, and his mom needs to come to grips with that. It's one thing to disapprove but still support and love your kid; it's another to disapprove and come across as a cold-hearted bitch.
Cutting off Internet access is a very good idea; I struggled a lot with his same problem when I was in college. Advise him to find study groups. Just be there for him. And whatever you do, don't complain or guilt-trip him when you get less time with him than what you're used to - this will only stress him out more and make it hard for him to get his work done.