Hi Vee12 and a warm welcome to our friendly community, 

Thank you for having the courage to come here and share your story with us. While it is sad that your partner is in hospital right now, your mental health and well-being must be the priority at the moment and you getting better is really important in order for you to be able to support him in the best way you can. What happened to your partner was clearly traumatic for you and I hope that you are getting the best possible medical help. Working as a mental health nurse must have made things even harder for you and it's completely understandable that you felt exhausted as a result and that you felt you couldn't function as it is a lot to have to go through while also dealing with other people's mental health issues at work.  As a mental health nurse though you probably know the system best but you find yourself at the moment in the position of  also being the patient so don't hesitate to get in touch with your GP at any point you feel really low or vulnerable. 

I think it's important for you to realise that your partner’s behaviour is a form of emotional abuse designed to inflict maximum guilt at a time when you yourself also need support. He should also not have the right to tell you to resign from your career - only you know best what you want to do with your career, and it is your decision, no one else's. It is also very clear that you haven't abandoned him but you had to step back a little bit just to get better yourself but you have ensured that he is surrounded by the love and support of parents and friends and that there are people around him. All these unfair accusations are definitely not helping your mental health so you are right to want focus on feeling better first and foremost. 

What you are experiencing is a form of abuse and domestic abuse isn't always about physical violence. It can also include emotional, verbal abuse and coercive behaviour all of which can hurt a lot. You can read more about this and find helpful information on the Government website. You might also like to call the National Domestic Abuse helpline for a chat, they are available on freephone 0808 2000247, or you can contact them directly from their website. Their expert advisers offer confidential, non-judgmental support 24 hours a day 7 days a week. 

You might also find it useful to talk to someone at Relate about the difficulties you are having in your relationship and how much his behaviour has affected you over the years as it sounds like the abusive comments and his tendency to blame you unfairly started well before he had these health concerns. They offer a range of digital and telephone counselling services which you might find useful. And finally, I wanted to give you the link to a charity called Refuge - they have useful information on their website.

As a cancer charity this isn't our area of expertise but I hope this helps in some way. The forum is always here for you whenever you need it and I hope that you will hear from other forum members who have been in this really difficult situation before and that they will share their experience with you.

Best wishes, 

Lucie, Cancer Chat Moderator