My boyfriend has been in this really bad place for the past couple of weeks. He says that he doesn't feel like himself (or act like himself) & that he feels like 'nothing'. He's saying that he doesn't feel like a friend or a boyfriend. And that he feels nothing towards our relationship, even though he loves me like crazy. He just feels nothing towards everything right now.

Because of this he wants us to take a break from our relationship so he can focus on himself and getting better. He wants to do it alone.

I am really worried about him. I can't just leave him to battle this on his own when i'm the only one that knows he's in this bad place.

Even though we are on a break I really want to be there for him and help him. I just don't know how...

*Trigger* This is a long story but I will try to be as brief as possible. I am very new to forums and anything I say is without judgement of any form of disorder, as I am all to aware of the impact it has on all parties and how the sufferer is impacted. Please do not take any offence as I'm still trying to understand, accept and work with its far reaching concsecuences and would ask all posters to remain non-judgementa. Thank you.

My wife and I have been in a relationship for 16years, married for 4 and have 3 year old Daughter together.

Most of the revelations from the events of the past two months have made me realise that in hindsight my wonderful true love has suffered from more than the diagnosed general anxiety and depression that has been interwoven in our lives for all this time.

Two months ago my mother in-law lost her on/off 10 year battle with cancer. We were all left devastated, but my wife who has always been considered the most emotional member of the family showed little grief, despite being greatly consumed for the entire decade of this fight.

Two days after her passing, my wife had a memorial tattoo and immediately confessed she had fantasised over the artist and made sexual advances towards him. My wife has always despised adultery and we had talked openly about friends who had committed this most "despicable" of acts. My wife has also always been very timid around strangers, sexually unadventurous and incredibly attached to myself. I put this down to the trauma and suggested that some form of therapy for her grief, along with open discussion would help and that I would support her all the way.

The situation became worse on the day of her mothers funeral, as the following day she confessed she had been awake all night sending naked pictures of herself to men she had never met. She made in her own words " throw away " comments that she would be better off dead, how a massive hole was consuming her and how she was unable to love anyone or inflict her "issues" on me anymore.

Her family although unaware of the full facts all agreed she should see her GP immediately, who subsequently referred her directly to A&E. The Doctors fortunately could see the full picture and my wife's reluctance to open up, or even admit she had a problem. They talked to both her sister and I and after discussions at board level, generally agreed she suffered from a personality disorder and offered immediate therapy and support, this has sadly been refused and ignored by my wife.

During this period our daughter was also suffering from pneumonia and my wife was unable to fully cope with this and embarked on offering herself for NSA sex via the Internet, sleeping with 6 unknown men (at least) in a period of weeks, all of the encounters potentially dangerous given the unknown quantity of the individuals and the environments the acts were taking place.

My wife has always suffered from angry outbursts, issues of social acceptance, 'living in and blaming the past', fear of abandonment and an inabilty to focus on positive aspects of life. Its also important to teveak that she was beaten by her father as a child, along with her sister and mother and her fathers family also had a history of sexual abuse, although my wife claims she was never assaulted in this manner.

Whilst this has left me devastated and whilst an exact diagnosis is not possible without therapy and dialogue from my wife, I know the most caring and loving person I fell for all those years ago, now has some form of explanation as to why she feels like this, as do I for the roller coaster relationship we have experienced.

As a footnote, not only does my wife not accept their is a problem with her actions or health, she has also started drinking heavily and vilifies me to anybody that she is able to convince, normally those who have infrequent contact with her or myself and are unaware of the full picture . These individuals are now validating...

[ Continued ]

At the age of eleven, five years ago, I recall calling a voice in my head the narrator, because he would refer to my life in third person, always negatively, constantly talking, and arguing with me, To this day. As far back as I can remember I have had a want to become female, purely for physical reasons, however, this need was intermittent, usually I had the standardly accepted gender identity, I even imagine being a father- not a parent or mother, a father- and now at sixteen my gender identity feels as if it has split into two, transgendered and 'normal,' while I am now 'turned on' by material of transgendered nature at times, but usually am not. The narrator has also evolved, triggering bouts of sudden uncharacteristic anger, while I am usually calm and cheerful. I sometimes find that my face is curling into a look of anger or contempt, or that I have sudden images of badly hurting people who do something I dislike, that may have been an acceptable thing to do, but for whatever reason I just feel foreign satisfaction in imagining pain.

I began looking through myself, basically just trying to figure out what the hell is wrong, and the following are the results:

At the age of six I had a crush on a girl in my primary school class, she left that year, for other reasons. This is the most definite starting point I can place for my tgism. then, at eleven, I had my second crush, on another classmate, and she walked up to me and told me to stay away from her shortly after the two friends I told this secret to went and told everyone. My theory is that my subconscious took these rejections, and the stereotypical views on geeks and indians, and sculpted from them the idea that I was so repulsive that the only way I could ever have a girl in my life was to be a girl, and so that shard of my gender identity broke away, and from this information I called that shard Lust. Lust doesn't seem to be as conscious as the narrator (who is now named Anger), though she has on two occasions exclaimed on how 'hot' a guy was, though this may be because of nightly masturbation to the idea of being a girl, leading to lust already being expressed. Anger, however, is kept under lock and key, and so usually has a voice. There are other signs as well. I used to use electronic devices excessively, even when supposed to be sleeping, but I voluntarily stopped, and recently I've started feeling tired after 11am, as if I hadn't gotten the sleep that I obviously did. Occasionally, when writing, my hand forms a squiggle instead of a letter, and my handwriting has deteriorated, and today when trying to write while holding the pen loosely, I could only make squiggles.

There may be other voices, occasionally when playing a sport I become giddy, speaking without thinking, and really jumpy, and sometimes I hear a crowd, but that may be Anger messing with me.
There's a chance I am only imagining all of this, but I don't want to take that risk.
Help me please.

Rightio, guys! Welcome to my world! It's great in here, albeit the landscapes may appear a little cerebral and neurotic sometimes. I lead the fine young life of an Irish student. Yes, student life is... well, chaotic. Effective organisation is always precluded by the necessities of student life (i.e. sleeping erratic hours, inconsistently meeting inconsistent deadlines, and an all-round simultaneous lack of planning and spontaneity). I am doing what I love (that's binge-reading on metaphysics and critical theory and writing highfalutin essays on it all), and even if it doesn't make me happy, that's okay, because I'm doing the right thing with my life right now. Clarity helps.

Happiness (whatever it is) is a thoroughly overused term these days. Why on earth should I be happy just because I have everything and my life is pretty darn good?! 'Erm... perhaps because you have everything and your life is pretty darn good...?' This is called circular reasoning, a logical fallacy. In fact, the entire pursuit of happiness in itself is both illogical and pointless. For a fact, nothing makes me happy. Ought I be stricken now by an avalanche of guilt? Not really. It's okay to feel whatever you feel and it is absolutely ridiculous to feel what someone else (or society, in fact) tells you to feel, because that's even more absurd that not feeling good, when life's good. In fact, the pursuit of happiness makes people depressed, because it's cheating logic and breaking down the faculties we rely on to make clear distinctions between things!

I like my life. I don't like my depression. I live life with depression. I do not live a depressed life. When I am really depressed I am not living my life, but this has nothing to do with my life and everything to do with my depression. It is important when I am very depressed to never wish my depression to end, because this would mean ending my life. And I like my life. It is much more likable than my depression. It only makes sense to say, then, that I like my life more than I can ever dislike my depression, because depression requires life in order to exist and wishing my life to end because it will end my depression is completely absurd, because it denies the origin of depression, which is not life, but absurdity. Yes, depression is absurd, but life is not and in order to affirm what is true and meaningful (i.e. the fact that depression is absurd) we must affirm life.

Of course, it may appear to be problematic when philosophers say that life is absurd and melancholia is a natural reaction to the absurdity of life. This may be true (and if it is it becomes difficult to distinguish depression from life), but even these philosophers find a way of affirming life, even if only in spite. For Camus, absurdity must be affirmed because our lucidity is the basis of all that we have. According to him, we must continue to push the boulder up the hill knowing it will fall back down, because acknowledging the pointlessness of this task liberates us to accept it. For Kierkegaard, it is defiance: rejection of help or escape which gives us strength to be our own and endure. For Nietzsche, life, suffering and all the tragedy in the world must be relished in order to rise above the adversity of slavery and become masters of ourselves through strength and creativity.

So My boyfriend and I have been together a little over 2 years. We are both 20 years old. Up until a few months ago he was perfect fun and outgoing. He practically bowed down and kissed my feet and did anything for me. i dont mean to sound concieted, but thats how it was! Semi-recently he has changed. It started when we moved into the city in a house with 3 other gays. He just became more stand-off ish, and didnt want to cuddle or spend too much time with me. I ignored it thinking it was coming from stress about money and such, but it got worse. He eventually seemed like he was only happy when he wasnt with me. Rarely had sex or kissed me or even acted like i was around. This all was very hard for me, but i love him so i stuck around. Everything i did or said could make him mad and start a fight. This made me try harder to be sweet and cute with him and he didnt want any part of that. About two months ago he broke up with me saying he hates the house and the housemates and he just wasnt happy, but we talked and i told him if he really doesnt want to be with me then he could go and id be okay, but i didnt want him to do that without being 100% SURE. so we ended up working it out and he did it again two days later and the same thing happened. Then a month or so went by and he told me he wasnt happy, and he didnt know why. he recognizes that he has a career and a boyfriend who loves him more than anything and he loves me the same. I told him that he needed to leave because i couldnt emotionally handle it anymore. He got a room somewhere else and still isnt happy and we are seeing each other and taking it day by day. Today he told me he hates his life and has nobody but me. I love him and want to help but i dont know how. His father disowned him 2 years ago when he told him he was gay and they used to be really close and now he doesnt see or talk to him at all. His mother isnt there for him either. He feels alone and miserable and i try to tell him to keep his head up. He needs help, i know but is there anything i should be doing? can someone help me understand becasue i take it personally when i know that i shouldnt...He lashes out at me over stupid things then later tells me hes sorry and that he wishes id just leave because he treates me like $#%^ but he says he loves me so much and doesnt understand why i put up with it...i just dont know what to do! id love to talk to someone maybe on the phone?