So let down

LegacyUser

Hi,

I will try to keep this as brief as possible as any one who reads this will certainly recognise me from the situation.

I am a 22 y.o. female and my mum just passed away 2 weeks ago. As difficult as this is to deal with - we were best of friends (my mum and dad split up when I was a baby) there is another situation aswell which is causing me additional stress and pain.

My boyfriend of 3 years went to Austrailia in January for 12 months. Inititially I was due to go with him but I decided against it to stay with my mum as I saw her deteriorating and wanted to spend as much time with her, and look after her. He went anyway (which pissed me off but only a tiny bit) and I said I would follow him over at some point.

Anyway, when my mum died I asked him to come back. Not only for the funeral but mainly to lend me some support in the difficult weeks ahead. I feel like if we are in a relationship, and this is undoubtadly (sp?) the most difficult time in my life he should be here to support me. By the way, in the weeks leading up to her death, I could have also really done with having him here but I didnt ask him to come back until I was desperate: her dying.

His older brother offered to pay for his flight home. He declined the offer. He said he didnt want to give up his job in austrailia as they are so few and far between. Now maybe I am wrong, but i feel like well what is your priority? Your girl friend or a job???

We had had a pretty stable relationship up until now and I just feel so unbelievably hurt and let down. He wasnt even supportive on the phone either and whenever I would ring him and need to talk or vent he would sigh and seem really uninterested in what I was saying.

As I write this post my blood is boiling but at the same time I am still grieving and I still do wish he was here for me. I feel compelled to try and ring him and I am really confused.

I just wish he was here for me and I dont know if I can ever forgive him for letting me down during the most trying time of my life.

I would love to hear someone elses perspective. Maybe he was right to stay in the event that in a few months time I want to follow him over?? I dont know.

LegacyUser

i feel really sorry for you. i hope your dealing with everything okay! He is WAY out of line!! especially when his brother offered to pay for it! my 2 cents anyway!!!

Otis Driftwood

Firstly OP,very sorry for your loss.

Im going to have to side with your BF on this one.The way things are at the moment,here and abroad I likely wouldnt leave a stable job for anyone(outside of close family)
It may sound a bit harsh but he is probably having a ball over there.Apart from you what is there to come home to?The dole?
Sorry but I think he is right.



.

labradoodlelady

You poor lady. First of all, can I offer my heartfelt sympathy to you. I lost my mother to an illness when I was 14 and my God it's a horrible experience.


You are going through one of the most traumatic experiences of your life. You are hurting and still grieving and this is the last thing you need on top of you.

Your boyfriend is acting like a brat. That's the mildest word I think I can use. I could get all emotive and say XYZ about the situation but that won't help matters. You need love and support at this time and unfortunately he appears to be providing neither.

Talk to family, talk to friends, talk to your mother's friends and let yourself grieve for your mother. It is very easy to replace grief with anger or resentment or even concern directed at another person. When I lost my Mom, my best friends at school didn't some to the funeral and I was so cross with this. I have a pal who lost her mother and ended up dealing with her boyfriend's problems. Grief is hard to experience. I'm not a counsellor, I'm only speaking from my own experience but from this I know it is so much easier to transfer the emotion associated with losing someone instead of dealing with it. This only succeeds in making things harder down the line.

I can't advise you and I can't tell you what you should or shouldn't do. You will make your own decisions on this.

My thoughts are with you.

auditek923

so sorry for your loss. and sorry for being brutally honest but maybe he does not see you guys as serious as you see the relationship. plus he is young and enjoying his life at the minute on the other side of the world .

CorkLady1983

he should have come back for the funeral for sure.... I mean jobs come and go all the time. Some may argue that he needs the money, and that a job is a job during the recession, and you need to show commitment in order to keep the employer happy....

If it was me and my bf did that to me at such a difficult time I would also be hurt and disappointed and tbh would start to wonder does he want to be the relationship anymore. Being here at home to support you should be his priority if he serious about you. Have you been in contact with him much since he left?


By the way - I'm very sorry for your loss. It must be tough for you at the moment....

God bless...

jellie

OP, im really sorry to hear about your mum, you poor thing.

i understand why youd feel how you do. most employers would be understanding enough in the case of family deaths, do you know if he even tried to get away for a week? that would be the least i would expect.

but either way, hes not here and hes not being v helpful from where he is. so right now you have to look after yourself. have you got good friends you can depend on? let them look after you & help you through it.

take care

nedtheshed wrote: »

Im going to have to side with your BF on this one.The way things are at the moment,here and abroad I likely wouldnt leave a stable job for anyone(outside of close family)

But would you not count your gf of 3yrs as part of close family?

Otis Driftwood

sar84 wrote: »

But would you not count your gf of 3yrs as part of close family?

If I was that enamoured with my girlfriend of 3 years why would I go to the other side of the world without her?

Girlfriends or boyfriends are not close family.

Steamer

I think that this issue will always be with you for the rest of your relationship if you stay with him, it's not something you are going to forget. Personally it would be a deal breaker for me because if you can't rely on him now, then when can you? It's not like you are only going out a few months??

I get that he is in Oz and young etc but he should still be concerned for you.

His brother sounds nice!

Also I am really sorry for your loss and could not even imagine what you are going through. I hope that you have some good friends there for you at the moment. What do they think of your boyfriend? Is this typical of him?

jellie

nedtheshed wrote: »

If I was that enamoured with my girlfriend of 3 years why would I go to the other side of the world without her?

Girlfriends or boyfriends are not close family.

If i had been with a boyfriend 3+ years it would be because i intended on spending my life with him, and so he would be considered as close family. obviously this varies from person to person.

Lollipops23

OP i'm so sorry for your loss.hope you are coping.

i get the whole australia buzz,he's young and wants to explore.but it takes some heartless git to pass up the chance to support his GF through this horrible time.if it were me it would be tearing me up to think of my OH going though this on his own on the other side of the world;i'd want to be there as much as he's want me there. could he not have asked for 2-3 weeks off work?he wouldn't neccessarily need to come home permanantly but at the very least for the funeral. sounds like an immature selfish git TBH.

Amazotheamazing

nedtheshed wrote: »

If I was that enamoured with my girlfriend of 3 years why would I go to the other side of the world without her?

Girlfriends or boyfriends are not close family.

I see your point, but if you don't care enough about someone to come back from travelling when their mother dies, do you really care about them at all? And if you don't care about them, why not just break up? The OP says they are still going out and that she was planning to join him at some point.

Imo, any relationship I was in would never survive my partner not coming back for such an occasion.

Otis Driftwood

Amazotheamazing wrote: »

I see your point, but if you don't care enough about someone to come back from travelling when their mother dies, do you really care about them at all? And if you don't care about them, why not just break up?

You just outlined what I didnt want to say.His telephone manner to her in this horrible,horrible time speaks volumes (to me at least) about him and their relationship.

He wasnt even supportive on the phone either and whenever I would ring him and need to talk or vent he would sigh and seem really uninterested in what I was saying.

He cant even be nice on the phone yet he should come home from Australia for her?If he did what do you think would happen.He would sulk and behave like a child with a smacked arse.Someone like that is not what the OP needs at the moment.

Putting it bluntly,the impression I would get is that he doesnt particularly care about their relationship.

LegacyUser

Hi ... OP here..

Thank you everyone for the replies. I suppose it boils down to if I could ever forgive him for this and to be honest I dont know.

Even if I did forgive him I would never forget it and I dont think I want to be in a relationship with him if he could let me down at the most difficult time in my life. Its such a shame because I really loved him and I have my ticket paid for to go over to him Even though there is no way I am in the right frame of mind to go now I wanted to go in maybe 2 or 3 months and now I will probably have to go alone

Yes I have lots of friends and they have all been amazing and I couldnt have got through it without them.

He even said "whats the point in me comming home. you have so many friends. I am not a miracle worker". And I just thought what a B@stard. I dont need a miracle worker but the relationship you have with your boyf is totally different than the one I have with my girlfriends. Sometimes it would be nice to just have a hug at night seeing as I havent been sleeping AT ALL.

Lollipops23

Unregistered wrote: »

I dont need a miracle worker but the relationship you have with your boyf is totally different than the one I have with my girlfriends. Sometimes it would be nice to just have a hug at night seeing as I havent been sleeping AT ALL.

you don't need to explain that to us. you need to figure out if there's any future for you;if he can't be there for you now will he ever be there when you need him?

username123

OPO Im terribly sorry for your loss.

You have been hit with an awful double whammy with the BF. Sometimes how BF/GFs act in a crisis is a true indicator of the depth of their feelings.

Would you have come home to him if he was in your situation? If your answer is yes then you know that you are willing to give more to the relationship than he is. Its easy for him to be in a different country, not having to deal with things and leave you to it - but do you want to stay with someone who is not there for you in the tough times? Think about it.

And dont worry about your paid for ticket, you can sell it to someone, persuade a fun friend to go with you or just bloody forget about it - its only money, go when you are ready and with someone who cares about you whether it be BF or girlfriend.

chillywilly

i can understand where he is coming from but to be honest he sounds like a right prick and doesnt know how to treat a girlfriend. The very least he could have done was come home for the funeral. Being disinterested in your conversations and comments like "im not a miracle worker" are shameful. If my girlfriends mum died id be on the next flight home regardless of a job or not, but i suppose thats just me. Honestly it sounds like he doesnt care that much and id be thinking about where your relationship is going

Taltos

Unregistered wrote: »

He even said "whats the point in me comming home. you have so many friends. I am not a miracle worker". And I just thought what a B@stard.

Think you nailed this one on the head here!!!

Find someone else - someone who will be there for you through thick and thin - and not just the good times. Pity he doesn't have the respect for others his brother clearly has.

LegacyUser

I'm sorry to hear of your loss. It's hard enough to deal with the death of your mother without being let down by someone you'd trusted. Give yourself time to recover from this double blow...whatever you need to do to get yourself through. In time you'll be able to go to Australia (or anywhere you want really) and have the time of your life....it's what your mother would want.
For what it's worth, your ex will be harvesting the rotten fruit of this episode for years to come, if not for the rest of his life

cashback

This guys behaviour is hard to believe. I definitely agree with most of the posters here.
When I was in Australia a few years ago, my Dad died. I tried to convince my friend to stay in Oz but he insisted on coming back with me, and we wouldn't even be best mates.
Yet your boyfriend of three years refuses to come home? I'd forget about him to be honest. You'll find yourself a changed person in some ways after you get through this, more mature possibly, and maybe it's best to leave your boyfriend behind.
Sorry about your mother OP.

Terodil

Maybe this will earn me the ire of some posters, but... I for one believe that asking him home for a prolongated period of time (how many weeks did you say? 6?) would be OTT and even counterproductive.

I agree with the posters who said that he should have come home for a weekend or maybe a week; that's something easily negotiated in most (not all!) jobs. For a final judgment we would need more info about the bf's professional and financial situation though.

But grieving has two major stages, the initial shock and the processing/overcoming phase. Contact with loved ones can help during the first, but the second is nothing but personal. Harsh as it sounds, if your bf was there to hold your hand or not would not make a single bit of difference in how well (or not) you cope.

By contrast, you, OP, could just as well have joined your bf over there. It would even have had the benefit of taking you out of your current situation, where everything reminds you of death, and getting your mind off things and out of the dark that is currently brooding in there. It would be wrong to try and simply push it out of your mind, but it's usually easier to come to terms with such stuff with a little bit of distance. Sitting outside in a thunderstorm at night won't help you, figuratively speaking.

I'm not saying that OP's bf is thinking this or just being lazy, all I want to advise here is a tiny bit of caution before condemning him to hell, and to consider alternatives. Australia is pretty at this time of year.

Hi there OP,
I'd also like to offer my sympathies but in all honesty, i have no idea of what you're going through.
Australia is a beautiful country. He most likely only has a years working holiday visa and he'll be having a great time. He has a job and wont want to get into debt to come back.
Having said all that though, i find it completely inexcusable for him not to return at all. If i was him, i'd have been back. If i was you i'd get rid of him quicksmart. He's clearly not ready for a real relationship. As i'm sure you've realised, lifes too short and definitely too short to waste it on someone so unreliable.

Best of luck sorting everything out!