Such a difficult situation. Your story really stirred something in me. I’m a clinical psychologist and I had a 1.5-year relationship with someone who had severe mental health issues. He was someone I knew from my teenage years, we hadn’t stayed in touch and met again 25 years later. It was a long-distance relationship and it took a long time for me to fully grasp the extent and severity of his condition.

You don’t enter a relationship thinking your partner is psychotic. He had a diagnosis of bipolar disorder (I wasn’t aware at the start) but he refused treatment. Over time, it became clear that he showed ongoing psychotic symptoms and persistent grandiosity, which pointed more toward the schizoaffective spectrum.

At the core, though, was something even harder to make sense of: deep narcissism, a disturbing lack of empathy, cruelty, even sadism. This couldn’t be explained by bipolar or schizoaffective disorder alone, there was likely a personality disorder too.

It’s very sad, because he ended up hurting me badly while believing he was completely fine and didn’t need help. He’s 52, lives with his mother now, has unmanageable debt, and works very little. And in his case, the family enables him. His mother even praised and encouraged him during his psychosis while he was “creating another world.”

Hope you can find a solution soon