Unsure how best to help

SunnyDayz24

Hi.. looking for thoughts, or the voice of experience.. my son, 20, with ADHD/ASD, is really struggling, and I'm not sure how best to help, I'm being here for him, listening, and trying to understand as best I can. He met his now ex-girlfriend through chatting on snapchat for a good 6 months, before they finally met and became an item. Out of the blue, she called things things to a halt at the end of April this year after 11 months together, my son was understandably absolutely devastated. She spent the next month going between still having feelings for him, saying she wasn't sure. My son went to stay with her (she lives 300 or so miles away) for a week, she said she wanted him back. The day after he arrived home she ditched him again, then spent the next month playing with his feelings, being nice one minute unkind the next, and demanding he send all her stuff back that she'd left her when staying with us. This tapered off around the end of August. My son has sent some of her things back, but not all, and she keeps messaging every so often being nice/unkind.

To me it was simple, send her stuff back and allow himself to heal. But my son has great difficulty with letting go, so for him I can understand it's not that simple, but if i try to help him to understand to move on you need to let go, he gets angry with me and shuts down. He says he needs answers, answers I'm sure he'll never get, or if he does, he'll pick them apart and want more answers.

It's been over 5 months now, and a number of times over the last few months he's said he doesn't want to be here anymore, usually after she's pinged him another message asking for her stuff back. I'm really not sure how to best help him aside from packaging all her stuff and sending it to her which would risk my son completely shutting me out.

Any thoughts, advice etc would be be gratefully appreciated. Thank you for reading.

Kookee

What a terrible situation for you both to be in. Does your son have any friends who could help support him through this? Is there any way you could contact the girl and explain the effect of her actions? Perhaps this could potentially make things worse, I don’t know…Things do have a way of working themselves out I’ve found and although easier said than done you may have to just try allow things to go the way they’re meant to.

Albus_Scope

Heya @SunnyDayz24 and welcome to the community.

I'm so sorry to hear what your son's going through, that sounds totally unfair on him and you. I totally get the need for answers, as an autistic myself, not having those answers can be a really big things, despite knowing the answers will probably not help matters anyway. It's the perils of rejection sensitivity dysphoria. Though if he's saying he doesn't want to be here anymore, I'd strongly suggest speaking to his GP about this if you haven't already?

Community_Scope

Hi @SunnyDayz24 a member of the team is going to pop you an email soon, please keep an eye out for it 😊