Living With an Emotionally Unstable Partner: Five Steps to Cope with Life When Life Feels Like Being a Tightrope Walker

Living with an emotionally unstable person

It doesn’t sound attractive to live with an emotionally unstable person.

If you come home to your partner, and she is sitting bent beneath the kitchen table, silently crying, what do you do then?

You go and put your hand gently on her shoulder of course. And you ask: 

— What is it, darling? Why are you crying? Are you sorry for something?

When this happens a few times, you think that it is a pity, you feel sorry for her and you do your best to support her and help her to raise herself again from the tears and her depressive thoughts.

You try as best as you can to comfort her, to support her and to consolidate her. If you have an idea of what could be the causes of her tears, what the reason for her tears is, you’ve got a good place to start.

It is something that can happen almost anytime. You come home, and when you enter the apartment you often do not know what awaits you behind the door.

When this has happened tens and hundreds of times, things can feel exhausting. You arrive at home and you experience the ‘same’ crisis day after day, or with intervals; some periods are worse than others.

What if this has lasted for years, and it evolves — as you can see it — only in a negative direction.

What if she attacks you and accuses you of things you think you are innocent of? What if she blames you for reasons that you feel are wrong, untrue?

What if the reasons for her tears are not visible to you?

A man who behaves 'normally'

I am not thinking here of couples where the man in the relationship is physically or mentally violent. I am not thinking of relationships where the man in the relationship is an abuser, abusing wife or children sexually or mentally.

No, I am now thinking of a case where the man in the relationship is ‘normal’ and behaves normally, a man who is equipped with normal emotional intelligence and emphatic abilities.

I am thinking of a case where the tears come unexpectedly, because of something hidden inside the person who is sorry, who feels low down.

Obviously, it is about depression, in some or other form.

And the person who has problems with black thoughts and bad feelings refuses to go to the doctor. She rejects to take anti-depressive because she is convinced that it is unhealthy and not a good thing to take anti-depressive.

Also the man in the relationship might be emotionally unstable

It can be the man in the relationship who is emotionally unstable. It happens all the time, and perhaps the statistics will say that men are more emotionally unstable than women — I cannot tell, because I do not know.

But in this case, in this story, I write from the standing point of a man who experiences that his partner — his fiancee, his love, his wife is emotionally unstable.

What can a man do in this situation?

It is a relationship that has lived for some time, at least a few years. The man is tired of it, he starts to feel a little that things are hopeless. Everything repeats itself, crisis after crisis, day after day.

1. Step back, try to become an observer

Think through your common story. Have you done her wrong? Have you cheated her?

If that’s the case, she has reasons, and maybe that’s the reason for her tears.

Have you abused her? If yes, that serious, it’s your fault. You must absolutely consider ways to repair the things you’ve done wrong.

This article is not written for you if you are an abuser. I would advise you to seek professional help for what you’ve done so that it does not repeat itself in the future.

I write this for the reader who lives with a partner who is emotionally unstable and who is more or less desperate for help to get out of the emotionally unstable wilderness he and his woman are stuck into.

2. Ask yourself: How do I play the game?

Do I pour oil on the fire, or do I help her to cope with her sufferings?

One of the reactions is wrong, the other is right.

Ask yourself: How can I help? Tell her you are there for her. Listen when she speaks. Take her seriously. The tears are real, even if you sometimes can think they are crocodile tears.

Be with her in the adverse adulthood experience. She may be depressed, or she is not. But everyone can see that she needs support. And you should be her first supporter.

This applies also even if you feel she is manipulating you. If you feel she manipulates you, think that it is just part of her survival strategy. She tries everything to keep up with her sufferings, even dishonest things like accusing you of infidelity, for looking at other women, etc.

Jealousy is a powerful tool for the depressed and emotionally insecure partner.

3. Do you think of her as a narcissistic person?

Well, if you do, don’t!

It will not help. Think instead of her as someone vulnerable, someone who needs your support. Someone who needs to be comforted by you, her closest one, her partner.

If you still think of her as a narcissistic person — well, that okay. But then you have to think: I will not blame her, because she cannot be held responsible for her state of mind.

If she has a diagnosis, you must be generous and try to say to yourself that she is the person she is, anyway. And that you once loved her (maybe you still did, I hope so). You chose her (and she chose you).

Remember, she has her strong and weak sides, just like you have!

This leads us to the next point:

4. Accept and respect!

Accept her for who she is. Accept her with her strong and weak sides, just like she has to accept you with your strong and weak sides!

Acceptance is the first rule to be respected if you want to be in a relationship. Accept the other person for who she is!

Accepting others and their particularities are the rule number one in society when people want to live peacefully together. To accept does not mean saying yes to everything. We are all different from each other, and we must tolerate the differences! To respect the other is the basis of healthy relationships.

5. Walk away!

When you have tried everything to comfort her and support her, and she still falls back into the deep gorge — try more!

You do not have the right to run away. Not before everything has been tried.

There may come a day when you are so exhausted, so tired and so depressed because of the never-ending story of tears, critics and accusations.

There may come a day when enough is enough. You feel you are in a free fall, and you need a lifeline.

Talk to her.

Try to establish a genuine conversation. Try to reach her with your message: You feel bad, you feel miserable, you feel you have tried everything to help her.

You are very sorry for this, but now you cannot walk any longer on that tightrope that has been your relationship for the past few years. The crises in your relationship threaten your mental health, perhaps also your physical health.

You feel depressed and everything seems hopeless. You don’t mind any longer how you live, you skip e exercise, you eat unhealthily, you try compensational strategies like drinking and or gambling. Brief, you are set for sliding down the steep hillside, and you don’t know where you are going to land.

You have tried to make it work. You have tried for so many years to make it work. You’ve been together with her to couples therapy, you’ve tried everything!

Then, maybe, one day, you walk away.