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Try not to think of this as a break-up... more like gifting him more time to tend to his current needs.
I found myself having less and less patience for meddlers, complainers, and people with negative energy. So I avoided them, quit calling them, and spent more time with people who actually understood caregiving.
As to what he's going through, he most likely feels overwhelmed, dividing his attention between his demanding job, his family and his mother. He's probably emotionally and physically exhausted, stressed to the point that it's difficult to focus on anything that's not absolutely necessary. And he probably doesn't want to discuss his feelings; it's hard for someone to tell another that he or she just can't be a priority now - family comes first.
I only had my father, his house and my house (and some meddlers) to deal with; I wasn't working (for pay), but I was overwhelmed. And with that came less clear thinking, less clear focus, more fatigue, more down time needed as the demands increased but my ability to provide care decreased.
That's when I had to just "jettison" all noncritical activities. I think your friend reached that point when the breakup occurred.
Watching a parent deteriorate with dementia is excruciating.
You being “light and fun” may be in itself stressful to your ex. As family caregivers normally we need quiet understanding, someone to listen or vent to. We don’t have a drop of energy for fun.
I suggest giving your ex some space. Be supportive, call and check on him. Then let him contact you in return.
I know its hard to find a good man. Maybe let him know that you really care and ask if there is anything you could to help him. Or let him know you'll wait for things to settle down. There is a lot on his shoulders and understandably stressful. Even without kids I found it really hard just to care for my own elderly parents. There wasn't too much room for fun in my mind. I hope things work out for you and him.
I think it’s nice that you’ve kept in touch after the breakup but right now I would give him his space.
This could work to your advantage in that absence does make the heart grow fonder. I don’t want to give you false hope, but you never know. He may find he needs you in his life & reconnect.
Before you give him that space, however maybe you could fix up a basket of items to help him cope with a bit of humor - like a box of soothing teabags, for example, or a GC for a massage or less expensive items that would have some connection with the challenges he is facing but not too personal. Maybe a little book of everyday inspirational phrases. If you do this, do it with no strings attached. Then just leave him be and let him make the next contact.
In the interim,however, don’t put your life on hold. Go out with friends, go to the gym etc and realize this relationship may be at the end and move forward.
Good luck to you!
What if it were your mom? Would you have the emotional energy to nurture an important romantic relationship?
I hoped it was to help you reconcile yourself to his decision.
I hoped it wasn't so that you could try to get him to change his mind.
But, alas, it is indeed because you don't want to let him go.
This thoughtful, well-informed and nurturing young man has looked at his priorities and recognised that he cannot give you the time or the status in his life that he believes you deserve.
He is right. Isn't he? Don't you deserve to form a lasting relationship with someone who is not bound to place at least four other people ahead of you?
You can like and respect and even admire his clear-headedness; and it is just one of life's ironies that his evident sense of responsibility makes him all the more attractive as a human being. But his life makes him a poor choice of partner for you. He knows that, and he has let you go. Accept it, do not add to his burden.
YOU don't need to explain a thing. He may not have intended to hurt you; in fact I'm sure he didn't, I'm sure that avoiding harm to you was a major motive for his deciding to stop the relationship. But all the same he did hurt you, and you are entitled to blame him for that, purely within the bounds that he embarked on a relationship and then chose to end the relationship, and that was painful to you.
Understanding and forgiving a person does not mean pretending that they didn't get anything wrong.
By all means send him a letter - better yet, send him a card with a really nice picture on it - but just tell him he is a good person whose kindness and dedication you admire, and that you wish him well.
Then "all" you have to do is walk the walk! Big hugs to you.
This really isn't your fault, you know.
While you believe having fun would be good for him, keep in mind fun takes energy, energy he sounds like he just doesn't have.
Another thought: Even after his mom does pass--which could take years--you'll need to go easy. (I was my mom's live-in caregiver and my mom passed a month ago. My exhaustion is total. Tonight is a bingo night in my tiny town. I'm going, but I wish something even this simple was next week. Perhaps then I'd find the energy to look forward to it.) He'll need time and space to recover. You sound so caring. I hope you both can get through this terrible time with your concern for each other intact and you can take off together stronger and closer. Best wishes.
You can also think of this as a sort of cooling off period, for both of you to refocus, sort out your feelings, and give him the space he needs for what arguably is a priority time in his life.
It might help to read some of the frustration posts here; they'll offer good insights into what others are going through, how time has become so precious because others just can't keep up with all the demands of caregiving.
In the long run, he'll respect you for that more than trying to continue to be involved.
He seems to be a "stand up" and responsible young man. Let him know that, compliment him. If he's like many of us caregivers, he probably could benefit from noncommittal reinforcement.
When I was really frazzled and stretched thin, just a simple comment from someone who understood could brighten my day. But the meddlers, the ones who tried to tell me what I should be doing, just irritated me. I dropped them as friends, at least temporarily, as they just compounded the frustration and stress I was feeling.
I'm getting pushed like that now, and I still resent it.
Don't be concerned if he doesn't initiate contact for some time. It may turn out that this sort of cooling off period results in a stronger relationship in the future.
Let me further explain why I want to write a letting expressing my understanding and apology. In the week prior to the break up he was taking more than normal time for himself and I didn’t fully understand what was going on. He didn’t mention prior to that how much he felt affected and pressured due to his moms recent incident. I acted emotional and that’s when I asked him if he saw a future with us. A few days letter I said “I hope sometime soon I can be more than a once a week girlfriend.” He agreed and apologized, at that point he mentioned the thought of putting his mom in a home shook him up. While I know he felt the need to simplify, I now look back and realize that my emotional reaction surely didn’t help. And I want to just clear myself and apologize, and tell him I am here to support him, and when he wants to, I’d still be open to playing tennis or kayaking. 2 activities he loves to do and we did together.
Thoughts? I don’t want to stir up the past, I don’t want to crowd him, but I don’t want him to feel I hate him either.
I don't want to be critical, but tennis and kayaking are both energy expending activities. Kayaking is I think more relaxing, but given his schedule, he may not even have the effort to fix a meal when he gets home. And he has a demanding job, which is probably taxing his energy as well.
Caregiving is extremely exhausting. If someone kept saying to me, oh lets go to the movies or out to lunch, I would think THEY ARE NOT LISTENING TO ME, I am tired, can't do it. What part don't they understand.
Time to step back to the sideline and let him make the first move when and if he has time. Working outside the home, then taking care of his mother, then having parent responsibly for his daughters, is overwhelming. Give him some space.
If you were or are needing your ex to be YOUR “sanity support” ,if I read that right, that’s probably not going to happen while he is caregiving. Even as a friend.
Do you work? If so, plan your evening to last until around midnight. Go grocery shopping for a fictionally ill parent, take the food to the parent's house, puree or microwave a meal, check out the house, tidy up, make the bed, pick up and take clothes for laundry, change the water bottle on an oxygen tank, fill the humidifier, check for clean clothes, sort out the junk mail and put it and the trash out for pickup.
Stop on the way home to pick up something medically that the fictional parent needs. Go to 2 - 3 stores to find the specific device or food needed. Stop at a laundrymat. Get home around 9 or 10, have a quick snack or microwaved meal. Do the laundry if you didn't do it at a laundrymat.
Clean up; pay yours and your parents bills; review your notes to see what you need to do tomorrow.
Go to bed, sleep about an hour and wake up in a panic when the phone rings at 1 am and the parent has fallen, or can't walk, or is vomiting, or has slid out of the chair and can't get up.
Call 911, get dressed and rush out to the hospital to provide medical history on the parent. Take notes, answer the same questions of the intake nurse, treating nurse and doctor, and again when it's determined to keep the patient overnight.
Stay until he or she is admitted, making sure that it's for admission and not just observation (as Medicare doesn't pay meds under an observational stay). Go home, w/o any sleep, get ready for work. Or call in sick and crash and sleep all day.
On your lunch hour, do online research to learn more about the parent's conditions. Make a list of questions to ask the nursing staff and doctor(s), if you can catch one while you're there.
Go back to the hospital after work, deal with the nurses for issues that have and haven't been addressed. Get the names of the doctors and call them when you get home to get more information on the plan of care.
Go to the parent's house to get the mail, check for security, be verbally assaulted by nosy neighbors who not only want to know where the parent is but whether or not you're going to take the garbage pails back and hide them as leaving them on the front patio offends them and devalues their investment, which is of more concern than your parent.
Hold your tongue and try not to tell them to mind their own business.
Repeat daily until you really, truly feel the mental and physical exhaustion. If it doesn't happen in a week, consider yourself lucky.
When you're so exhausted that you don't feel safe driving, come straight home after work and go to bed, only to be awakened by calls from people, especially relatives, who won't bother to come to the hospital but want to spend 1/2 hour talking about what else you should be doing, or their own medical problems, or whatever.
Fall asleep in a chair after deciding not to take any more calls. Wake up and take a shower, then back to bed.
Repeat for several days. At the end of a week, your back aches from sitting in hospital chairs, your legs are tired from walking on hospital floors, which are notoriously not comfortable for the feet. Your parent is seriously ill; he/she may need surgery, or may need to go to a SNF for rehab, or directly into PC or hospice. You're worried sick about your parent, wondering about medical insurance, thinking of how you need to restructure your life to visit regularly, how you're going to get through another day of work, ....and more issues.
(I lost 2 jobs b/c of taking time off to care for my parents.)
Do you feel like going kayaking?
And that's not even dealing with dementia, which compounds the situation several fold.
I assume his mother's dementia is pretty early onset, is it? It's terribly sad and terribly hard on the entire family. And since he's a psychiatric nurse he'll have additional insight into what's ahead, with the realisation about to hit him that everything you thought you knew about patients all changes radically when it's your mother.
But. I am really sorry about his mother. But. She isn't the problem.
He's got two little girls. If you were my daughter, I would be deeply unhappy at the prospect of him as your long term partner.
I haven't asked how old you are? I assume you don't have kids of your own?
This boyfriend sounds like a really nice, really responsible, considerate man. All credit to him. But wouldn't it be better to quit while you're ahead? You've gained the experience of a good relationship. You've made a friend of a worthwhile person. So you've lost nothing, and you don't have to break your heart over a man who, with the best will in the world, can never put you first.
He even blocked his sister on Facebook in winter when they were arguing over decisions for mom. Something he’s never done. He’s dealing with more than he ever has. All that being said, he is an amazing person and I want to stand by him. If he will let me. He did say he wanted to be friends, and his sister backed that up a couple times.
Would you want one of your friends calling you up asking to go play tennis, have lunch, go to the movie? I bet you wouldn't. What if that caller calls you every 3rd day asking the same thing. Then every week asking for you to join him/her. Eventually you will ignore calls from the telephone number. You just don't have the physically energy nor the emotional energy to do "having fun" stuff.
LISTEN to us. We have been in the trenches. Been there, done that, haven't had time to wash the T-shirt. Some have had 24/7 hands-on caring.... others logistical caring... other caring from afar. It's all overwhelming. You wish you could clone yourself over and over so you can get at least one night sleep. Oh, now imagine if you had children to take of on weekends.
Note that 40% of caregivers pass away leaving behind the one they were caring. Not good odds. Your former boyfriend will be ok, but I would worry about his Dad. Heavens, he had to quit work which is devastating for someone to leave their career and not be able to bring in more income into the home. And not to be with one's peer group just to talk.
Food for thought. I know you will do the right thing.
[Where is my helmet?]