I KNOW THIS IS ALOT BUT PLEASE READ I NEED HELP! Making a second post because I am desperate to feel better.
I’m 25F and my bf is 24M. April 15th was our 9 months. This is both of our first actually good/healthy relationships.
tl:dr amazing relationship but I get anxious and question my feelings
We both have our share of mental health issues but my anxiety only got bad once I met him. I have depression and random mood swings for no reason but once those are prolonged or there is some life event that brings me down it makes my anxiety RAGE and when this happens I question my feelings for him, which makes it 100x worse. When my problems are bad, my feelings are questioned in my head, when his are bad his feelings aren’t questioned by him.
We matched on hinge late June 2023. Things were just amazing from the start, until my first bit of anxiety after a random down swing in my mood when we were hanging out at the end of our 3rd week of talking. My mind couldn’t handle being with him but I literally wanted to die at the thought of losing him. We started dating after 5 days of a grippy sock vacay (GSV) for me. Things were perfection until beginning of November when my anxiety came back. I went on a 2 day GSV then and eventually with therapy and better meds felt consistently better by late December. Things have again been pretty damn good until 2 days ago.
We have had a few fights, one weeklong spree of fighting over the same things, but always come out of it better. If I were to make a list of everything I wanted in a partner, he has it.
We moved in together after a week of dating because my first GSV made me lose my job and all my utilities got shut off in the middle of Ohio summer. We got our own apartment with both of our names on the lease in October. I currently don’t have a job after my last job closing its location and have been stuck at home for 2 weeks bored out of my mind with nothing I normally enjoyed being fun anymore. I can’t go do anything either because I have no savings and $5 in my bank account. My bf is VERY supportive of the fact that I’m trying to find a job I won’t be miserable in, and has promised me multiple times he doesn’t mind covering expenses until I find a job. (I have an interview FINALLY on Wednesday of next week.)
The prolonged boredom and joblessness/lack of money has made me very depressed, which has in turn brought my anxiety back because when I’m depressed I don’t enjoy anything and therefore when me and my bf do something together I’m not enjoying it, and I of course haven’t been in the mood for sex recently either. That makes my mind start questioning everything like if I am just bored and depressed or don’t want to do things with him, yet I know I don’t even want to do anything when I am alone. It also makes me question my attraction to him, despite knowing I’m just not in the mood when I’m depressed.
When I am feeling good mentally I don’t doubt my feelings for him at all, even when we’re bored together. When I’m feeling bad he makes me feel better and cuddling with him makes me feel better. We want all the same things in life and are very similar. We’ve looked at rings and started trying to have a baby already. Even when I’m down I can have bits here and there where my love for him resurfaces and I feel happy and better but it just goes away very soon after, I can’t get it to stick.
There is a lot about this relationship I’m not used to like genuine trust, an actual good guy, the actual potential for a life of happiness, and next level support and caring and loving me for exactly who I am. I think part of me is still super scared it’s not real bc it seems too good to be true after all the horrible men I’ve dealt with in the past.
He helped me feel a lot better yesterday after a 30 minute phone call. Im reading this book recently that says thoughts are just there, but thinking is the cause of suffering, but I cannot stop thinking about the thoughts that pop up in my head making me question my feelings for him. UGHHH
I’ve gotten better twice before with weekly therapy and medicine. Just 3 weeks ago I felt so good I even told my therapist we can meet less often, I finally have an apt next week to talk to her. I’m used to dealing with my problems alone and being okay with letting “the bad side” win because that’s easier. I think that now that I have something truly good my mind works overtime to try and take it away from me. When I get anxiety I get physically sick which only gives me more anxiety so it’s really hard to break the loop.
I do sometimes wish I could just be dead so I wouldn’t have to deal with these problems anymore. I’m pretty sure my feelings have always been real and strong but why are they what my mind questions when I feel bad? How do I stop this? I was reading some forum yesterday about people who’ve all had similar concerns but it didn’t really help me. If you were to ask me how I would feel if we broke up, right now since I am depressed all I could say was nothing. The act of breaking up makes me an ungodly amount of anxious but what happens after that I can’t seem to figure out how it makes me feel.
We hadn’t had sex in a week, which is uncommon for us, so last night I made myself so with him to try and feel a better connection to him but I was thinking the whole time about if that would make me feel better so I didn’t particularly enjoy it that much, which I like to think is because I’m still depressed and a bit anxious, but my mind tries to tell me it’s because I’m not attracted to him. I do think he is attractive, but he is tall and skinny (but muscular) and I am tall and pretty chunky. Is my attraction just doubted because I hate my own body so much?
I’m trying to feel better but every time I do the thoughts come back and push down the good feelings I have. I also did read that in a healthy long term relationship feelings are going to go in and out here and there which may just be actually normal but hard for me to grasp but I can’t tell. I’m trying to just enjoy little good moments to build the love back up in my mind but I can’t seem to feel anything strong towards him right now. So my question is, do I love him and just have strong mental issues filled with self destruction or do I just for some reason not love him? Am I trying to convince myself it’s real because he’s so good or is my mind trying to do the opposite? How do I tell which thoughts and feelings are real and which ones are made up by my mind to hurt me?