What advice to give to my fiance, who is in law school and in a bad place?

I did this a few times to guys when I was depressed and it was just easier to shut the relationship stuff down because everything was bad and it was just stressful (these were always LDRs, I have ADHD, bipolar disorder, and so many other things that aren't the point right now.) If I were giving your fiance advice, I'd say:You are screwing everything up here, buddy. I get that it's really hard and it stinks and it's totally unfair and that really doesn't matter right now. No one can fix this but you, and when it does eventually get fixed, the thing you are going to hate the most is all the time you wasted and all the people you messed with while avoiding getting it fixed. Yes, you have diminished capacity - but you have enough capacity to be able to choose to ask for help, so do it. Tell the truth to your doctor, do the work in therapy, stay connected to your family and friends even though it's a pain and it seems really pointless, because it's not pointless at all. End of sermon. Oh, but let me know if you want resources.Since your fiance isn't around, I'm going to give you advice, instead:ADHD and depression are big, huge, complicated, difficult things to deal with, both when you have them and when someone you cares about has them. It stinks, a lot, for everyone. You have to put on your own oxygen mask first. Figure out what your needs are, make sure they're met, and then - and ONLY then - start thinking about what you might be able to do for someone else.One of the crappiest parts of mental illness is that the person who needs to change is the person who is least likely to understand that change is necessary, and to be in a position to effect that change. Trying to help them see that it's necessary, and making it easy for them to get help, is a very kind thing to do. It may not work for a long time, though.The sense of hopelessness, frustration, sadness, self-hatred, disgust, resignation, etc., can be so overpowering you sit in dirty clothes for three days and forget to eat and stop returning phone calls. This is no one's fault. He's not doing this to hurt you (at least, the odds are against it) and he realistically doesn't perceive how it's affecting him or you, either in the immediate or long term.The one thing I wish I had had, when I was screwing around being depressed and not dealing with it because dealing is hard, are consistent, persistent, supportive, but firm messages of "you have a problem, there are answers, please let me help you."The fact that he is your fiance in no way obligates you to give him those messages. It might be wise to reach out to people in his immediate environment and let them know what's going on, though.You can do everything perfectly, and this will still turn out really bad and painful and disheartening and be fodder for a few decades of regret. I'm really sorry. Mental illness is awful like that.If you want to talk about depression, mental illness generally, and the psychology behind this kind of behavior, feel free to MeMail me. I was totally exactly like this for about ten years of my life, right down to the gaming and the not answering emails and the exhausting the patience of everyone who liked me even a little bit. One of the reasons I try to answer these kinds of AskMe questions is because I can't go back and fix the period between 1995 and 2010; this is the closest thing I can get to it.I'm happy to talk with your fiance, too. I don't expect he'll take you up on it, but it may be worth a shot. When I was in the lowest of the low places, the one thing that never even occurred to me was the idea that anyone else, let alone lots of people, had been in the same kinds of places and might know a bit about getting out, that I'd like to hear.I have no opinion on whether you should give up on this guy. But do realize this is going to be hard one way or another, and he has a not-so-great track record already. Only you can decide if you can put up with that and stay sane, safe, happy, etc.Being broken up with, like getting evicted, having your car repossessed, having your wages garnished, losing your job, accidentally burning your eyebrows off, ending up in the ER getting your stomach pumped, waking up in jail, and a lot of other serious natural consequences of your bizarre/unhealthy/risky/inappropriate behavior, are almost 100% ineffective at getting someone with a serious mental illness to go off and get themselves better and fly right from there on. That kind of "shock" treatment might work with a healthy person who had experienced a lapse in judgment, but your brain is sufficiently messed up that you just don't tend to process these bad things the way you should. I speak from the POV of someone who lost houses, money, cars, jobs, boyfriends, and years of her life - knowing the whole time that these were bad and painful and scary things - and that didn't change my behavior at all.That doesn't mean you shouldn't break up with him. I'm just saying, don't expect that breaking up with him is going to be the thing that transforms his life. It almost certainly won't. Getting kicked out of law school, being kept from admission to the Bar, etc., also probably won't accomplish anything.Good luck. Again, MeMail if you want to talk, or vent, or whatever.

I don't know about advice, but you could say "We haven't spoken in weeks. Let's not marry. You have a problem and I hope that you can find the help that you need."

Hi, I have ADD (not ADHD), and have had bouts with depression, so I'll give you my two cents; hopefully it might help a little. First of all, I disagree with the comments of anonymous (starting with Powers of empathy...). Empathy and compassion are, as one might expect, essential ingredients to recovery from depression, as well as living with ADHD. Of course, these are essential ingredients to life in general. The commenter says that it sounds like your fiancé is breaking up with you. This isn't out of the question of course, but the information you provided by no means implies it. Having been through similar situations, here's what I was going through: • Where women tend to be very good at reaching out, and maintaining social ties when faced with adversity, men are absolutely not. Men tend to isolate themselves, and feel guilt and shame. Guilt both in the disappointments their causing others, and in putting rainclouds over others' headspace when they share their painful emotional state. Of course, that's not the right way to look at it, but we do anyway. (Sorry about the generalizing — these are more like bell curves than absolutes! That Men are from Mars book has more wisdom / sweeping generalizations of that sort, and might be helpful. :) ) My thinking would be that you not read his distancing himself from you as being about you or your relationship. Well-timed direct questions on that subject are the upcoming step! • I highly recommend you do a Google video search for Dr. Russell Barkley, possibly with the terms ADD and ADHD added to that. He's a highly regarded psychologist who has focussed his career and research on ADHD. • ADD is really hard. Knowing what to do, but being cut off from that knowledge, and some-damn-how being "frozen" and unable to act is not only counter-intuitive and deeply frustrating, it's very painful. Your fiancé's state of mind when he's doing something other than what he knows very well he ought to be doing is one of self-loathing. • There are medications that are helpful for some people, to some degree. Although it's only a piece of the puzzle, Vyvanse is very helpful for me. • My sense is that people with ADD and ADHD need to construct lives in which immediate feedback is ever-present. Life without it is impossible for us. Is your fiancé really committed and driven by the task of getting a law degree? Personally, I could never sustain effort for long-term goals without that drive. He may need to (unashamedly) change tack and search for what can drive him. Even if he's driven to accomplish that long-term task, as someone with ADHD, it'll be arduous at best, and impossible at worst for him to get there. It's still possible though, as are other judiciously selected long-term projects. The key is to design tasks, schedules, and life to be ADHD appropriate. Is your fiancé the kind of guy who would jump up and help you if you were struggling to load something into the car? That's a clue. More than that actually, it's a kind of axiom for thinking about life with ADHD. Why is his ADHD unaffected by that imperative? 1) it's immediate: the consequences (your appreciation or disappointment) occur in real-time), 2) he's driven to do it. Take away #1, and you have a man who's disappointed in himself, and take away #2, and you have a man who flounders in ineffectual "shoulds". Applied to this situation for example, and assuming your fiancé is sufficiently driven by the goal, what would the solution look like if it was just a matter of snapping your fingers? Your fiancé would have a study group that met for 5 hours a day to work together. Or, you were there with him, hanging out (usually in the same room), having some good times while he busts his ass, and generally providing him with the immediate feedback that he needs. This need not come in the form of "nagging", although a little bit of mothering will always be good for him. For me personally, only two contexts have worked for me. Being outside them has been an unmitigated disaster — every bit along the lines of the situation you describe. The first has been projects that I was super driven by — that I couldn't wait to get out of bed to work on, an the second is *working within teams*. As Dr. Barkley points out, people with ADHD and ADD join the military in higher numbers than the general population. I can't abide by an autocratic environment personally, but those externalizations of my frontal lobe are something that we benefit from particularly, even if it's just an open and multi-faceted office environment. Well, at this moment, your fiancé is adrift, and can't re-connect with his world. This is because of his ADHD (he's probably telling himself, like he did two hours ago, that two hours from now he's going to call you), and his depression. There may be a way through it — I don't know, but my guess is that he needs to "come home" and retool, or if that's not possible, you need to go to him and help him ride through it. The cruelty of depression is that it robs one of the tools that are necessary to get through it, but the fact remains that feeling *effective* is the very often the antidote to depression for someone with ADHD. The question is, what can make that possible? As nutty as Freud could be, he was breathtakingly insightful when he said recovery comes through love and work. All the best to you and your fiancé, and tell him I said to spend his day around people!

WALK AWAY. I know you won't agree with this. I know. Still. This is NOT an actual relationship you are describing - it's just a mess of crap that you, personally, can not control, and are likely promoting with your continued "support" - WALK AWAY. WALK AWAY. (PS - I know you think he is awesome, but AWESOME partners do not act like this, even in the worst of circumstances. Go ahead, as me how I know. Memail)

Here is what I imagine is happening in your fiance's head. I certainly don't want to guarantee that I'm right, but I'm writing from experience. He feels like he has fallen behind. His ADHD and depression have contributed/caused a degree of disorganization and procrastination that he feels he absolutely cannot recover from. To him, it seems that in order to "catch up" and be where he should be in terms of his schooling, his relationship and his own personal care (dealing with his conditions, etc), he would have to work through an impossibly large pile of his own failures. He knows it is his fault that he hasn't done his assignments, asked for help or extensions because he hasn't done his assignments, requested appropriate support or guidance (or whatever the exact details are in his case). He knows it is his fault that he hasn't called you back, but every minute that goes by the shame that he feels for not doing his "fiance duty" increases, and under the weight of that shame, he literally cannot manage to pick up the phone and face talking to you. He views facing you - facing his failure to be who you want him to be - impossible. He views facing his schoolwork - and his failures to be up-to-date, up-to-par and successful - as impossible. He views facing himself, by which I mean buckling down and coming up with a concrete plan to get out of the pit he is in, which requires explicit acknowledgement of where he is right now, as impossible. He does not have the skills yet to tackle large problems step by step, or even get started (because of his ADHD). He does not have the skills yet to tackle large problems related to his perceived success or failure at all (because of his depression). He has not yet acquired the all-important PERSPECTIVE necessary to see that his present condition is not a sentence he earned for being a horrible person, OR that his life doesn't have to be this way. He is still operating under the assumption that he deserves the mess he got, that he is being punished for being a bad person. This toxic combination of feeling that asking for help is futile because of the enormous complexity and intractability of the problem, and then ALSO feeling that even if he were to ask for help he wouldn't deserve it and it would never work anyway (because he's "worthless" and "hopeless")... well, it's a doozy. In light of these crushing feelings of failure - all of which he believes revolve around him in the most personal way possible - he probably 100% does not believe that these situations are common to the diseases he has - he turns to the easiest possible "instant-success" outlet: video games. They are absorbing (so he doesn't have to think constantly about his failures), entertaining (so he can have a tiny bit of fun for once), require some skill (so he feels he has some), rewarding (so he can feel he's finally winning at something), and, of course, they are unbelievably easy to do for hours and hours and hours and hours. I think it is extraordinarily likely that he knows exactly how bad an idea it is to play video games instead of dealing with the very real problems he has. He just has absolutely no tools in his toolbox to allow him to deal with those problems. OK, so what do you do? 1. You spell out for him, explicitly, whatever you DO understand about his position. He probably believes that you have nothing but contempt for him, and that you are completely unable to imagine the shameful things that are driving him to act in the way he does. By showing him that you are CAPABLE of understanding some of what is happening for him, you chip away at his belief that his problems are utterly, completely personal. You show him that his feelings aren't all that tragically unique. 2. You tell him that he MUST seek help for his problems, and that answers are out there. Above all, you stress that a symptom of his disease is believing that nothing can be done. His feelings of hopelessness are not grounded in reality. He WILL fight you on this one. He believes that they are. You show him cold, hard, non-personal evidence to the contrary. You do NOT re-inforce his idea that he is helpless. Instead, you show him you understand how wickedly hard his life is right now - but you never, ever imply that he can't do something about it. 3. You monitor yourself carefully. You get your own supports. You get people to commiserate with you about how GENUINELY HARD it is to have an SO who can't support you, can't be there for you, and can't give you want you want or need right now. I think actually that there might be a small silver lining in your long-distance status. When you are in the physical presence of somebody who just. can't. get. going. on anything, it can be enormously frustrating and the tendency is to try to force them to do things they just can't do. This can be damaging for both parties, and you are avoiding a lot of it. 4. You give yourself an internal, private time limit. After the time is up, you ask yourself: do I still love him? is anything about this situation changing? can I imagine myself married to this man? can I imagine him playing the role of husband? is there any intimacy left here? ... and if the answer to any of those questions is no, don't marry him. It won't be your fault. You're not required to wait for an arbitrarily long period of time while he deals with his legitimate problems. He may be a prince at heart - truly - and it's true that these diseases are not his fault, but that still doesn't mean you have to stay with him. You deserve a real relationship, in which your partner has the capability (yes, the capability - I'm sure he currently has the desire) to pay attention to, and care for you.

Powers of empathy and compassion are not solutions for depression or ADHD. What happens if and when you break up with him are not your responsibility. It sounds a little to me like his ignoring you is his way of "breaking up"....without having to do the heavy lifting of actually breaking up. If he's getting treatment for his known problems, that's about all that can be done. You can't help somebody else through this. Not with all the empathy in the world, and you do sound very empathetic. It may be messy for awhile. It sounds like he's about to lose his girlfriend and maybe fail out of law school. Those may be necessary things at this point. Step back, figure out what your limits are, and let him find his own way.

Why on earth would you want to sign up for a lifetime of this? He hasn't called you in two weeks, so it shouldn't be too hard to "cut off contact", but if he does contact you again, just tell him marriage is off the table. Nobody deserves to be treated this way even as a girlfriend; and he's doing you a favor by giving you a preview of what it would be like to be his wife. Ugh.

This is my opinion - people that are depressed and/or active/recovering addicts can develop poor coping mechanisms in the process of getting better and in an effort to feel normal. By "poor" I mean these coping mechanisms generate negative consequences for the person and the people around him or her, even as they take medication and seek therapy. Depression's a huge issue... and people can deal with a huge issue poorly. It can be a long messy road. I'm sure the video games, the isolating, and the not focusing on studies make some of the pain and anxiety go away. At least in the short term. Long term -- not doing so good. As people rightly point out, an engagement with no communication is NOT A GOOD SIGN. As my friend says, just because you see red flags doesn't mean a parade's coming. You should really be asking yourself what are you willing to deal with. A lot of this behavior, I hate to tell you, is: a. not something you can change b. going to get worse before it gets better c. not your responsibility So given these purported facts, I hope you realize that all you're left with is "what you're willing to tolerate." This should be about you, and that may be a hard starting point. You should have high standards. Nothing really wrong with that. By stepping into a depressed person's shoes, what you end up doing is rationalizing a pretty shitty situation and extend the scope of the problem. You are avoiding making a decision, and clearly paying a price for it.

I advise against marrying this person. He doesn't sound like he's got many of the skills to hold together a serious relationship with another person.