About to Marry a Man With Paranoid Delusions
Reader’s Question
I am currently engaged and am about to move overseas to join my fiancé in England. At first everything was fine and we were very happy. Lately, however, he has become extremely paranoid and believes that I am cheating on him. It is to the point that he even believes he can hear another person in the room with me. When I call him, if there’s a small change in my voice (like if I’m tired), he believes I’m making love to someone else. I’m now speaking speaking to him every day for several hours, and I also work two jobs.
I will be uprooting my whole life — leaving my family, job, and everything I’ve known just — to join him in his country. I love him dearly, but it hurts to be falsely accused all the time. No matter how much I do for him, he just simply believes I am lying…and honestly is hearing things. I have never cheated on him, nor would I ever want to. I’ve tried to explain things to him logically, but he never stops questioning. His irrational mistrust has begun to affect me by giving me anxiety, and I constantly feel as if I am doing wrong even when I haven’t. I even have his name tattooed on my body. He was in a very bad relationship 2 1/2 years ago, with someone who cheated and lied to him and would never come clean. He caught her in the act at the end of their three-year relationship. He said he had always suspected it.
So I think maybe he just hasn’t got over that and can’t trust because he was so badly hurt. I do everything for him, and I love him so much. I just want to know how to help. I want to know how I can make it better for him, so we can have a happy and healthy relationship. He is hearing things that aren’t real and can’t stop thinking that I am cheating when I have been totally loyal. Please help!
Our Clinical Psychologist’s Reply
Of course it’s impossible to assess your situation completely and reliably from this distance. But from what you say, there are two misconceptions that most likely are helping to fuel your anxiety and worry. First, you appear to believe in a logical connection between this man’s purported experience of being betrayed in a prior relationship and his current mental state. Second, you appear to believe that you might have the power somehow to put an end to the craziness. Yet, the symptoms you report, such as a persisting and irrational false belief (i.e., delusion) and reported hearing of the voice of a person who isn’t there (auditory hallucination) are signs of a mental illness that requires professional intervention.
In past times, paranoid delusions were thought to stem from a person’s inability to handle their own unacceptable urges or behavior (e.g., your boyfriend either wants to or is cheating) by “projecting” such unacceptable urges and desires onto others. These days, such delusions are viewed primarily as manifestations of a brain dysfunction rooted in a chemical imbalance of neurotransmitters, namely dopamine.
You are about to embark on a life journey with someone in need of professional help. You may truly love him, but before you fully commit yourself you need to be fully aware of not only the reality of his condition but also the possible ramifications of it. If you ask him if he thinks he has an illness serious enough to see a professional, he will likely NOT say “I do.” Still, before you say those words, you would do well to insist that he gets the care he needs.
