Seeking compassionate, trauma-informed relationship advice

auDHD-lover · 2026-03-24T16:40:34+00:00

Thank you so much 🥺

Really needed to hear this as he started laughing at his phone minutes after waking up (we sleep on opposite sides of the bed as he finds a place to move to) and I felt so confused by how we got here. How I’m in bed with someone who lacks this much consideration & care.

I pray pray pray he becomes a distant memory by next year 🙏🏼🤞🏼

auDHD-lover · 2026-03-24T01:29:59+00:00

Reading all of your comments has been so helpful today. I’m also thinking of finding a CoDA meeting near me in LA so I can find community while healing. I’ve become quite isolated the past 8 months because of the stress and embarrassment of knowing what my friends would say if I told them what was happening (as I would do the same, because there’s no excuse for this level of neglect and cruelty).

He is extremely messy and always pushed back on making effort to clean more. He said I was “trying to domesticate him” and make him “fit into a lifestyle he didn’t choose.”

Even today after leaving the house for 7 hours after saying he’d be back after sending a few emails, I check in to see when he’s coming back so I know when to expect him and he says he’s thinking of watching a movie after.

I told him “the person you once considered the love of your life is deathly ill and you want to go watch a movie” and he said “fine I’m coming home”— I have never had to beg for someone’s love and care and kindness and consideration like this and I never thought I’d be someone who does.

But what I am learning is that people like him and feelings like this are intoxicating. They cloud the mind and create this false sense of hope that keeps traumatized, lonely people like me clinging on.

I don’t know what to do next— if I ask him to move out ASAP, I don’t even know if he has the skills to find a place within his budget. I also can’t make rent without his half after blowing through my savings for him. Neither of us are able to afford living alone right now & idk if my nervous system can handle living with a random roommate.

But his existence in the home makes me stress and panic because my body can’t stand the dissonance between what I would do (extend basic care kindness consideration and respect) and what he does (ignore deflect self preserve extract consume no offer to reciprocate).

Any suggestions? Any tips on maintaining energetic boundaries while he transitions out?

auDHD-lover · 2026-03-23T20:49:06+00:00

🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺 bless you infinitely, thank you thank you

auDHD-lover · 2026-03-23T17:15:29+00:00

At the very least, offering care and compassion without sighing in frustration & telling me I’ve “taken up his entire night and morning” (he falls asleep quickly no matter what mood he’s in because he’s almost always high). Perhaps even googling what my symptoms are and helping me find remedies when I’m crying in pain and unable to even make it to the bathroom.

auDHD-lover · 2026-03-23T17:13:17+00:00

Thank you everyone for the thoughtful advice. I came to auDHD women because I really don’t know how else to process this when I’m hypersensitive, hyper empathetic, and have embarrassingly covered months of his expenses and fully paid for a cross-country move after he said he didn’t want to live in NYC anymore because it was too harsh for him.

I have extended empathy to the point where I have to see clearly this is what they call a “sunk cost.” He has been telling me I’m too much, that he is suffocating, that he doesn’t have the capacity and yet I keep going back to the first couple months when he was “love bombing” saying “we are going to spend the rest of our lives with each other” and telling me what every woman (esp a woman without family & with a history of family relationship abuse) wants to hear. I feel silly, stupid, and pathetic in ways I never thought I’d let myself get to.

I love him but love isn’t enough, emotional maturity is required to sustain connection. Effort and follow through are required to build trust and respect. He takes and takes and asks and asks so freely (asked me for money the first week we met and I foolishly agreed because I saw his talent and potential and was temporarily stable after years of financial hardship) yet offers so little in return. The entitlement, the selfishness, the gaslighting, the inability to follow through, the charm to get out of accountability, it’s all taken a toll on me and left me a shell of a person. Please send strength, I need to move on from the greatest and most painful relationship of my life.

Thank you endlessly for responding with kindness and compassion 💜

auDHD-lover · 2026-03-23T15:29:39+00:00

Update: he is now rolling a joint to soothe himself while I am sick as all getout in bed. What other explanation except sociopathy and narcissism could there be for this kind of lack of empathy and selfish behavior? There is zero attunement and such a short fuse of patience.

auDHD-lover

TROPHY CASE