Help! My "future son-in-law" tries suicide

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I just got the call from my 21 year old daughter that her boyfriend tried to commit suicide by jumping in front of a train in her presence last night. If it weren’t for his friend who tried to pull him back he’d be dead. He did however end up with two broken legs which can be saved apparently. She is devastated. Her mom and I are devastated for her.

Now this guy would never have been my first choice for my daughter, as his prospects for the future do not look that good to me, has a daughter staying with her parents in a foreign country,(mom deceased) and twice he has called us while he was drunk past midnight to tell us how he loved our daughter.

Well I’m finished with making allowances for him just because my daughter loves him. I don’t ever want her to bring him around again for a weekend visit. Right now he’s a loser, showed that he has little regard for my daughter (despite all his previous attentions) and has shown that he needs a lot of help. Since there is no guarantee of recovery of mental health, I’m convinced she must lose him.

I don’t want to lose my daughter though. She is extremely beautiful and smart and well liked by her co-workers, but she does have confidence issues arising from being overweight during her highschool years. Any ideas as to how a parent could and should handle this ?

2

Going through something like that , but from your daughters point of view, I think you need to let her know that you love her and then exactly how you feel and why, eplaining it calmly, not going into histronics or anything. If she has the brains, etc that you credit her with it will soak it, it might take a while but I am 99% positive it will take root.

3

RED FLAG CITY.

As I posted in a ‘lessons learned the hard way’ thread several months ago;

“If you drive through an entire forest of red flags to marry the one you love, you will be beaten with every last one of those red flags on your way out of the relationship”.

I’m currently in the process of divorce from a woman who tried to kill herself four times in the ten months of our married-and-together time. Sad part is that I only knew about one of those attempts before we broke up, and she (unfairly) blamed me for every aspect of it. I drove her to it, I didn’t count the number of pills she took, I didn’t know about some of the pills she took, I didn’t check on her throughout the night, blah, blah, blah. Just an incredible pile of excuses for her own selfish and self-destructive behavior.

Your daughter needs to consider how she might handle repeated attempts by this guy to kill himself - especially when he does so by such incredible means in her presence! How would she have felt seeing him torn to pieces in front of her? Is he going to blame her behavior or make excuses for why it’s all her fault? How would she deal with it if he crippled himself and she had to take care of him like an infant? How will she handle it if this becomes a repeating pattern? Can she deal with a mentally ill spouse who isn’t going to be all there for her?

As hard and as painful as it is to walk away from someone you love, there comes a time when their selfish, self-destructive nature becomes so destructive of YOU that you must take your own safety, your own sanity, into your hands and move on.

Trust me, I know from whence I speak.

4

Just be careful. If you come down too hard against this guy, you may set her up for the classic “I can redeem him with my love and show them ALL!”

5

What GMRyujin said.

I’m with you, though, OP. I’d want my daughter to break up with him too.

Marriage vows are for better or worse, in sickness and in health. They are not married and she has every right to protect her own future.

The fact that he’s not raising his daughter would be enough grounds to dump him, IMHO.

6

Lots of good stuff here. Let me add my thoughts in approximate order.

  1. Your daughter needs to know that you love her and will support her. She is going to be going through a lot of confused thoughts and feelings.

  2. She is probably not going to be in a position to think a whole lot of things through logically. I would be surprised if she’s able to listen through a lecture on the merits or demerits of her chosen boyfriend.

  3. To help her put things into perspective, focus on the one thing you are most concerned about. You want her to have the happiest and most stable marriage possible. That requires two stable people. He needs to stabilize before the relationship can progress. Express your desire for the best for her.

  4. When she expresses her feelings for this guy, focus her towards appropriate action. “What is the most loving thing you can do?” Discuss these things. They might be things like, encouraging him to get the hep he needs, tell the truth about how you feel – the tough-love kind of things.

  5. I wouldn’t tell her this right yet, but it sounds like the current situation is the best possible outcome at the moment. He is still alive: albeit with a couple of broken legs. He should be able to get the help he needs. Your daughter has a strong incentive to re-evaluate things – to work out what she really wants and what will really make for a good relationship. At this stage, if the right decisions are made, it could point everyone on the upward path. Likely that will spell the end of the relationship too, which sounds like it will be a good thing.

My two cents. Hope some of it is helpful.

7

When I was 18 (I’m 45 now just FYI) I met a man and married him 2 months later, (yes I know it was stupid ** now ** ) four months after we were married he committed suicide by hanging himself in our front yard after an argument that got a bit out of hand.

I didn’t know at the time that he had tried it many times before but someone always stopped him before. When he went out the door that night he kept banging on the side of the house yelling for me to come out that he wanted me to see this. I had no idea what this was so I didn’t go out. I stayed inside and waited for my Mom to come get me.

I went through a hell of my own for a long time after that and still feel guilty at times for not going out that night , I might have been able to stop him ** that time ** .

I hope your daughter will not have to go through that, hopefully someone told the police or doctor that he tried to kill himself, they can get him some help, not all he needs probably but some.

As others have said be careful how you approach your daughter, don’t let it become a *you and I against the world * thing.
Maybe add something about your concern for him and his life and how she may consider making his seeking therapy a condition for her to see him again AFTER that happens. I don’t know I just hate the thought of someone going through that.

8

It is pure hell to watch your kids put themselves in the way of being hurt, or worse. I think there are a lot of good suggestions here, including anything that will help her delay any permanent decisions until she’s had time to think, and maybe to see more of what he’s like.

But, as has also been said, please don’t make her decide between him and you. One of the things that made it possible for me to leave the abusive marriage I got myself into was knowing that my parents still loved me, even though they didn’t approve of my choice. Their dislike of my action didn’t change their feelings about me, and that made a world of difference.

9

I would agree that in an ideal world, this man probably isn’t the best person for your daughter to hook up with, but do you really think labelling him as a loser is going to help him at all? Or your daughter even? Seeing as he has survived this attempt, maybe he deserves to be shown a bit of compassion right now.

10

Jesus Christ! Show a little compassion, dude. First, the guy is obviously sick. Second, he means a lot to your daughter, whether you like him or not. Don’t be a dick and cut him (and probably your daughter) out of your life right now. Maybe the guy will get some help.

11

I hope the guy gets some help.

But for God’s sake, please help your daughter back away until he’s straightened out.

What if they have children, and he decides to blow his brains out in front of your grandchild?

Yes, your daughter may love him. But love is not enough for a successful, stable marriage.

Give her your love, and help her to see that her fiance needs serious help, and now is not a good time to get married.

12

I’ve been there with trying to help suicidal people and learned. my. lesson. Compassion for the mentally ill IMO does not extend to enabling an unstable, suicidal person to potentially become my daughter’s husband, and the father of my grandkids. Suicidal people are dangerous, destructive, hard to cure, and will often drag other people down with them into their long term whirlpools of despair. Help him to locate and receive professional help sans your daughter’s involvement.

A suicidal, potential son-in-law is a dangerous and toxic tarbaby. Do everything in your power to get her away from him, without driving her closer to him.

13

I hear you on wanting your daughter away from this guy. And you are probably right that that is best for her.

But I can tell a story from something like her side. I was desperately in love with a guy my mother hated deeply. She did okay until I, in my brilliance, got pregnant at 18. She laid down the law and said that I could come home or I could continue dating him, but not both. (She had already said he wasn’t welcome in or near her house.)

I chose home and family, and let the young man go. Had the child, put him up for adoption. I went home and played along, tried to pretend I was happy and not horribly angry with her. We didn’t talk about it, she wanted me back pre-relationship, and we’re masters at denial. And I lost my mind. Post traumatic stress disorder, not from the pregnancy, but from being forced into that choice, and trying to pretend I was okay with it when I wasn’t. Lots of therapy later, my mom let me see the young man again, and the relationship imploded on its own merits.

Trust your daughter. You raised her, you love her, its her life to live. If you could make all of the choices in her life, it wouldn’t be her life. Its taken a lot to put my relationship with my mother back together, and I’ll never forgive her for trying to force that decision on me. I love her, and I always will, but with that I’ll always be angry with her. Its my firm opinion that she could have saved me a lot of pain and insanity if she had let me see the flaws in the relationship myself, rather than trying to force me into behavior that she was more comfortable with. I know she was trying to protect me from myself, but the damage done by the cure isn’t worth it.

Try to express your concern for him. Tell her that you want to make sure the boy gets the help he so obviously needs. She already knows you hate the lad, re-iterating that more strongly won’t help.

14

Thankyou for the replies. My wife and I are scared for our daughter’s future and I want to be effective as a parent. This afternoon my wife will travel the 5 hours to the big city to be with her even though the time will be mostly spent at the hospital. Wonderful. Every day for the next several months my daughter will be attending him in a hospital. My anger which usually subsides with time, increases with every hour.

Apparently the boyfriend had an argument with his mother which caused him to get drunk. There was also as tussle between him and his friend who wanted him to go home. The boyfriend pulled a knife on the friend which was successfully parried just prior to the suicide attempt. At the hospital the mother freaked out on her son. My daughter expressed her disapproval, but I took the opportunity to plant ideas by telling her to make allowances for the mother who had been emotionally traumatized by the actions of her boyfriend.

My daughter said the friend is not ready to see her boyfriend yet because he’s really upset. “No wonder” I replied.

I’m treading as carefully as I can right now, avoiding any reference to dumping him, but being as subtle as I can with emphatic reference to the negative consequences he’s imposed on his loved ones.

Kalhoun, This guy is getting a lot of compassion from my daughter and others. Right now I need my anger and grief and a strategy to rescue my daughter from a life of misery.

15

That is the thing that worries me the most. I worry that my daughter might think “If only I had shown my love more” etc.

Although I’ve had reservations about this young man, I welcomed him into my home and have nary expressed one word of disapproval and accepted him, respecting my daughter’s choice. Your post outlines exactly one of the possible outcomes I wish to avoid.

16

This hit a nerve…

my ex’s (i’ve posted about him a while back) mother killed herself. Blew her head off with a pistol. Due to unavoidable circumstance, his 17-year-old daughter had to be the first family member on the scene. The police were there, but I can only imagine the trauma she endured when she enountered the blood-soaked sheet and the brain matter on the wall. She’s a wonderfully well-adjusted girl, with her head on straight so she’s (miraculously) doing okay today.

I hope that you will be able to spare your daughter from her lover’s tragic and inevitible fate.

As a woman ‘diagnosed’ with depression, I have entertained suicidal thoughts. But to actually attemt it and to fantasize about it are 2 completely different things. I feel that tough love and your intervention in your daughter’s “relationship” will save her grief and trauma. Hopefully she is as intelligent as you claim, because if she is, she will thank you one day.

17

I completely commiserate with you concern and objections to the boyfriend. Not only is he suicidal, he is also impulsively violent and that is what would concern me most. Your daughter is placing herself in harm’s way.

Is there some way that you could talk with the boy’s mother and doctor about getting him psychiatric help? He is obviously a danger to himself and others. And the alcohol has become a problem.

I have no answers for you. If nothing else, seek profession advice for yourself and your daughter.

Some suicidal people may be that way and this particular boyfriend may be one of them. But most suicidal people are dangerous only to themselves and only for short periods. Very often they are easily treated with anti-depressants. I speak from personal experience. It’s the ones who don’t seek help who are more likely to live a life of despair.

18

I’ve got some experience with being suicidal and with dealing with people who are depressed, although it’s strictly amateur.

Grienspace, whatever your daughter decides to do, one thing she needs to realize is she is not responsible for her fiance’s actions. She cannot heal him on her own, any more than my former fiance could heal me. He has just tried to injure himself and others. The only circumstances I would advocate taking him back is if he agreed to psychiatric counseling. Yes, it will hurt like hell. Watching him die will hurt worse.

During a 24 hour period a number of years ago, I did try to kill myself in front of my fiance, twice, I think, by throwing myself out of a moving car while we were on our way to the hospital; once by trying to go for a cop’s gun while in the hospital. I was literally out of my mind with depression and pain at the time, and I don’t remember those events clearly. Fortunately, that was the wake up call I needed to realize I did need treatment and I could get it. I worked damn hard to make sure I would never do such a thing to people I loved again. Even so, that wake up call took a miracle.

From my experience, without professional intervention, your daughter’s fiance will continue these actions barring extraordinary circumstances. She cannot do this on her own, and attempting to do so may damage her as badly as he is damaged if not worse. She does not deserve this, and it does not mean she’s not strong enough, tough enough, or loving enough.

I am sorry she and you are in this position. Please tell her what I wrote, and tell her she’s welcome to call or e-mail me. I still regret what I put my ex-fiance through, and, while I am no more responsible for your daughter’s actions than she is for her fiance’s actions (and neither are you, grienspace, by the way), I would prefer she be spared.

Good luck and wisdom to all of you,
CJ

19

Thanks again to all respondants.Siege, I’ve e-mailed a copy of your post to my daughter, with a brief introduction and your e-mail address. I hope you hear from her. Thanks.