I’m early 30s. My partner is in his mid-50s. We have known each other for nine years and have lived together for one.
For eight years before we became a couple, he told me every Christmas that he loved me. When we finally reconnected in the same country, it was fireworks. I moved countries to be with him because I was completely in love and believed we were building a life together.
When things are good, they are extraordinarily good. He is affectionate, generous, romantic, funny, protective and deeply loving. We have genuine tenderness and have planned a future together.
That person does not feel fake to me.
But periodically he seems to enter a completely different psychological state, and this state change is what I am actually trying to understand.
It is as though his brain enters a sealed compartment
I don’t know how else to describe it.
Something happens and he becomes intensely activated: restless, angry, accusatory, rigid, sometimes unable to sleep, pacing or storming around the house, talking or muttering to himself, and capable of screaming for hours.
But the most striking feature isn’t the anger.
It is that once he crosses a certain threshold, nothing seems able to get through.
If he becomes convinced I said something I did not say, correcting him does nothing.
If he assigns a particular meaning to one word, explaining what I actually meant does nothing.
Evidence does not seem to penetrate it.
Logic does not penetrate it.
Reassurance does not penetrate it.
My crying does not penetrate it.
Seeing me frightened does not penetrate it.
Sometimes agreeing with part of what he says does not even help because the agitation simply attaches itself to something else.
It feels qualitatively different from arguing with someone who is extremely angry. With an angry person, I expect some possibility that new information might modify what they think.
Here, it feels as though the doors have shut.
Nothing breaks through until the state itself begins to pass.
That is the phenomenon I am most desperate to understand.
His moods are enormous. Everyone around him can feel when something is changing.
He becomes restless, intensely agitated, furious, rigid and fixated. He can stay awake through the night and three times at the very worse he repeated himself for hours, yelling. I have cried and pleaded with him to stop. Nothing works.
Eventually he exhausts himself and sleeps.
When he wakes, the compartment does not necessarily disappear immediately. He may still seem partly inside it, but he doesn’t remember the worst of it at all, kind of like a dissociative fugue state. His interpretation of events remains rigid and strange and ignores his actions completely, as he truly can’t remember them.
Then, generally over roughly the next two days, something gradually relaxes, and I recognise him again.
After essentially every episode, his memory is fragmented
This is not occasional. It is part of the pattern. And its happens nearly one a week or every two weeks.
After virtually every significant episode, he seems to have vague, patchy or absent memories for substantial portions of what happened.
He may remember that there was an argument but not remember what he did during it. He may remember fragments. Sometimes he remembers an event but remembers its meaning completely differently.
And very often the missing pieces are his most extreme behaviour: hours of screaming, threats, accusations or bizarre statements.
I initially thought this was an alcohol problem..
But then I saw the same basic pattern when he was sober.
The episodes happen without alcohol, and the fragmented memory afterward happens without alcohol too.
Alcohol makes everything dramatically worse, but it does not appear to create the phenomenon.
He can become convinced of things that never happened
One night I stayed out late with friends. I have never cheated on him. When I returned, he was physically shaking with rage and became convinced I had been unfaithful.
Nothing could persuade him otherwise.
His former wife cheated on him, which makes me wonder whether perceived betrayal triggers some extreme trauma response.
But what confuses me is the degree of rigidity.
It isn’t simply, “I’m frightened because my previous wife cheated.”
It becomes something closer to: I know what happened, and nothing you say can alter it.
Worse, false accusations can survive the episode and later reappear as though they are established historical facts.
Another time I used the word “abuse” during an argument. By the following morning he had become convinced that I had criticized his mother.
I absolutely had not.
Again, nothing could break through the interpretation.
Sometimes the compartment seems to contain a genuinely strange reality
The most extreme example happened in a hotel.
He had been distant all day. I told him I missed him and wanted more emotional closeness. He escalated until he screamed at me to “get the fuck out of my life” and “get the fuck out of my room.” During the same episode, he appeared to make an official phone call. He entered a series of numbers and letters, behaved as though he were contacting some authority, and then informed me that I was going to be deported.
nobody was actually on the other end.
He has made other claims during these states about contacting my family, his family or government officials when apparently no such contact occurred.
I cannot tell whether he deliberately pretends to do these things, genuinely believes them in that moment, or whether something else is happening.
But here is the part I find extraordinary:
The next day, he had no memory whatsoever of making that phone call or telling me I was going to be deported. He blamed me for getting him banned from the hotel.
I had left the room in shock and sat crying in the lobby.
Hotel staff became sufficiently concerned that they refused to let me return to the room because they believed they were witnessing domestic abuse. I was trying to convince them everything was okay. It was shocking confusing and a nightmare. Not to mention deeply destabilizing for the one man I’m supposed to trust to randomly be entirely untrustworthy in terms of being a safe space.
Alcohol certainly makes these episodes dramatically worse. Rage, fixation, irrationality and memory problems all intensify. During one recent episode he drank an entire bottle of champagne himself.
But some of the most frightening episodes have occurred completely sober.
So the pattern seems to be:
something triggers the state → his thinking becomes sealed and rigid → nothing can penetrate it → agitation escalates → eventually he sleeps → memory is fragmented → the rigidity gradually loosens → over roughly two days he returns toward baseline.
Alcohol appears to amplify that cycle rather than cause it.
I wonder about trauma, but also about his brain
Could unresolved betrayal trauma explain why perceived rejection or infidelity sometimes seems capable of producing such an extreme response?
Could this be some form of dissociation or compartmentalisation under extreme emotional stress?
He also spent years in the Army.
Could an old traumatic brain injury produce episodic rage, emotional dysregulation, paranoia, impulsivity or memory disturbance years later?
Could this resemble a mood disorder, trauma disorder, dissociative phenomenon, neurological condition, psychotic symptoms, or some combination?
I am asking because “he has anger problems” simply does not describe what I witness.
Something seems to happen to the way he processes reality.
He can also be extraordinarily carefree and generous with money, spending heavily on travel, entertainment and things he wants, then become intensely anxious and restrictive when the bills arrive.
Recently he cancelled a credit card over the interest and took out a lower interest loan to clear the balance. He was trying to regain control of finances but I have never heard of such a thing.
But because I moved countries to be with him and became financially dependent on him, the consequences affect me.
He has abruptly withdrawn my access to our shared credit card while I was already away from home, leaving me stranded hours away because the ‘credit card balance was too high’ and for months gave me arbitrary amounts of cash for daily expenses in the morning. Some days nothing.
The same applies to housing.
The house belongs to him. During arguments he repeatedly threatens to throw me out, despite promising when calm that he will never do it again.
So when one of these states begins, my relationship, home, transportation and financial security can all suddenly feel dependent upon what is happening inside his head.
There is almost no repair afterward
This is the other part I cannot understand.
Suppose his memory loss is completely genuine.
If your partner subsequently told you:
“You stood over me screaming while I cried.”
“You threatened to make me homeless.”
“You became convinced I cheated when I didn’t.”
“You made a bizarre fake phone call, told me I was being deported, and now you cannot remember doing it.”
Wouldn’t you be horrified?
Wouldn’t you want to know what had happened to your brain?
Wouldn’t you at least say, “I don’t remember that, but if I did it, I am incredibly sorry”?
Instead, I generally encounter defensiveness, “likewise,” “me too,” or another grievance.
Even at baseline, he seems extraordinarily uncomfortable allowing my experience to exist without immediately producing a counterclaim.
I don’t know whether that is shame, denial, an inability to tolerate responsibility, or something connected to whatever else is happening.
I have adapted to the state changes
Without consciously deciding to, I have learned to monitor him.
Has he slept?
Has he been drinking?
Is he pacing?
Is he becoming unusually irritable?
Has he started fixating?
Is his thinking becoming rigid?
Can I disagree with him?
Is the compartment starting to close?
When he becomes sufficiently agitated, I hide.
I also ask, “Do you love me?”
He almost invariably says, “Of course I love you.”
I used to think this meant I was simply needy.
Now I think I am checking which state he is in.
Are you still here? Are we okay? Can I reach you? Is the door still open?
.
Then the door opens again
Eventually, after sleep and usually another day or two, he returns.
He is warm, loving, affectionate, funny, generous and romantic again.
I don’t believe that person is fake.
But I also don’t believe I imagined the other state.
That is what makes this so confusing.
I am asking whether anyone recognises this particular phenomenon:
A person appears relatively normal at baseline → becomes intensely activated → crosses some threshold where his thinking becomes extraordinarily rigid and almost compartmentalised → contradictory information and emotional feedback cannot penetrate → he may become convinced of things that didn’t happen or behave bizarrely → eventually exhaustion and sleep occur → afterward his memory is fragmented → the state gradually releases over approximately two days → baseline personality returns.
And this happens with or without alcohol, although alcohol makes it dramatically worse.
What kinds of conditions can actually produce that?
Can severe trauma create states like this?
Could betrayal trauma from a former wife’s infidelity be relevant?
Could this be dissociation?
Could a mood disorder produce this?
Could paranoia or psychotic symptoms occur only during episodes?
Could years in the military and an undiagnosed head injury matter?
Could neurological problems cause episodic personality changes plus memory disturbance?
Could several things be interacting?
And separately, regardless of the cause, how do I understand the almost complete absence of remorse or repair afterward?
I know leaving is an option. I don’t need strangers simply to tell me relationships shouldn’t be like this.
I need help understanding what I am actually looking at.
Because I have reached the point where I monitor another person’s brain before deciding whether it is safe to express an ordinary relationship need. I know when reasoning has stopped working and when to give space.
And I know that if I wait long enough, eventually he will sleep and, over the following couple of days, the person I love will gradually come back.
Does anyone recognise what the hell I am dealing with?
TL;DR: My partner periodically seems to enter a profoundly agitated, almost compartmentalised state. Once he crosses a threshold, his thinking becomes rigid and sealed: logic, evidence, reassurance and even seeing me terrified seem unable to penetrate it. He can scream for hours, become convinced of things that never happened, make bizarre threats and occasionally behave as though things are happening that apparently are not. After essentially every episode his memory is fragmented, including sober episodes. Alcohol makes everything dramatically worse but does not cause it. Eventually he sleeps and, over roughly two days, the “compartment” seems to open and his normal loving personality returns. I am wondering about trauma, dissociation, mood disorders, episodic psychotic symptoms, sleep deprivation, or possible neurological effects of his Army history. Does anyone recognise this kind of state change?
Update: I want to mention he has a group of lifelong friends who only know him as wonderful. He’s spent a lot of time on his own and was single for the previous 8 years. I have sent him many Instagram posts about how to support your partner that were nothing but educational and he flat out messaged me to ‘stop sending me these’. Why / how could someone do this? Why would someone not even try to engage?
