Boyfriend Denies Need for Medication

Let me just add, what I have learned through bitter, bitter experience, and one of the most difficult life lessons to learn; you cannot push a rope!

Nothing you do, can alter that he’s not ready to make any kind of shift, at the moment. He rebukes all your suggestions and attempts to reach out to him. You need to recognize that, (for this, perhaps otherwise wonderful man, for whom you do have some feelings), he may need to bottom out, before he’ll find his legs again. Sad, I know. Painful to watch. But trying to prop him up is only going to elongate his journey. It’s a sink or swim world, that you are currently protecting him from, to his detriment. Let him sink or swim. Move on with your life.

The thing you should be examining is why you’re doing this again? Are you really willing to go all the way around the track, learning those hard lessons a second time? If you need to, you need to, of course.

But there’s a better than good chance, it seems to me, that you are smarter now, and can see what you’re getting into. The question is, as you stand on the precipice, of the enabling, codependent relationship you are constructing, do you possess the strength to step back? Or will your distaste for conflict or ‘hurting’ someone’s feelings, insure you fall right back into the abyss?

Only you can answer those questions, of course. But you should consider it an enormous insult to your own intellect to recognize how ill advised this relationship is, yet pursue it regardless. And in my experience, with life lessons that required two trips round the track, the second course always comes with a truly wicked one, two, knock out punch. No doubt because of having failed to take the learning from the first serving. Proceed carefully.

And good luck, keep us posted, we’re pulling for you!

Before we get all crazy with the depression diagnosis and medication suggestions… how do we know this isn’t just a guy with some weird views who likes playing poker?

Bingo, and even if he is the fact she is wanting to force him to change after dating a few months…bad sign all around. You date people you click with, you don’t pick a person and force them to mold themself to your taste.

I agree with others who are saying that he’s not necessarily mentally ill or suffering from depression. I do think that his opinions and beliefs bother you immensely, to the point that you feel he needs mental help. He doesn’t want it or think he needs it, so I think that the best thing for the both of you is to go your separate ways.

Just let him know that the romance isn’t there anymore, that you are sorry, and that he has a reasonable amount of time to find somewhere else to live. It doesn’t sound like this is a guy you can honestly see yourself with for years down the road unless he changes substantially, and I don’t think he’s going to.

I agree with this. When somebody is a threat to themselves or others, you can get them locked up and forcefed medication. If somebody is not a threat to themselves or others, you can’t do squat.

or

Or, perhaps a middle road?

Elbows IME the vast majority of the time, those are your only choices and there is no middle road. The BF refuses to seek treatment. There is no way to force him into therapy or meds unless he’s judged a threat and committed against his will.

I don’t think the problem is necessarily with the boyfriend - I think it’s with the relationship.

The middle road is “try to convince them to accept treatment,” which the OP says isn’t working.

Ditto.

Treatment for what? For having different views than she does? Or for being on the internet a lot?

The OP suspects depression.

Maybe with intensive counseling, she’ll be able to acknowledge that the New World Order really is coming to take away our guns and send old people to death camps. Then she and Mr. Fox News Poster Child can live happily ever after in their bomb shelter playing poker and eating Beefaroni.

He’s holding down a ‘good job’, interacting with other people online, etc.

If his ideas are only related to mental illness, then you’d be talking things like paranoia or delusions, which would generally need a lot more than just a few pills to fix. Mental health issues like paranoid personality disorder dont really even have a ‘treatment’ as such.

I think this is probably more an issue of you hoping the relationship can be salvaged jayray. Whether its his personality or a result of mental health, or both, its highly unlikely medical intervention can do anything with issues like this to make it just disappear and simply leaving the bits you like about him behind, even if he did decide to attend.

Please note Im not saying he has any diagnosis - Im more saying that given the kinds of things you’re listing, even if he does its unlikely to change your situation much.

Otara

Now that you mention it Vinyl Turnip, until I saw what I now suspect was Beefaroni on his chin, I honestly believed Rupert had simply retired.