Found out my ex is a diagnosed schizophrenic

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Remember when I sometimes talk about when I dated a guy for three months who was obsessed with sex and thought it was normal to argue in relationships and didn't want to work and always made excuses to not do things and always played on his computer and never got off and who so into being true to himself it alienated people from him? I found out through searching his name online that he had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia when I found his parents court document online.

I was surprised about the paranoid part because when we were together, he wasn't delusional and he wasn't hallucinating and doing bizarre behavior. He was none of that so I assume he must not have had it that bad then and he was at his early stages of his illness.

After seeing he had been diagnosed with that, I wondered how much of his behavior actually attributed from it so I decided to do some research by looking it up and I was reading about laziness and schizophrenia and I read posts on schizophrenia forums. I started to understand my ex better and realized he might have been at his early stages of schizophrenia so all he was displaying were negative symptoms. But back then I just thought he was lazy and didn't want to work and he was making excuses and trying to manipulate me but did a terrible job at it so I was hurt by his behavior. Now I realize he might have been making excuses to hide his illness and he wasn't doing it to manipulate me and to get his way and to get out of responsibilities and working. The problem was he wasn't able to do it but he didn't want to say so he just made excuses and would lie to me.

I won't let myself feel guilty because I didn't know. I did try to help him, I did my best but he kept blowing me off. I realized I never treated him like he was sick, instead I treated him like someone who was me, Asperger's, and learning disabled. Plus he was not fully honest about his problems so he made excuses. I won't blame him because he probably didn't know what was going on and he didn't think he had a problem. How can you help someone if they don't want help? There is a line drawn for when to accept someone with a mental illness but what if they won't seek treatment? My ex didn't even try obviously because he thought he was fine and he had no intention to take pills again so it wasn't wrong when I broke up with him.

Also this explains why he thought everything should be handed out to everyone and money shouldn't exist. It was about his problems and if everything worked this way, it would suit his needs but unfortunately his idea would never work.

When my mom told me she thought he might be a schizophrenic based on his social interactions and how he moves his hands, I thought she was just armchair diagnosing him and thought nothing of it and when she told me he might be mentally ill, I just thought he was calling his behavior a mental illness. This is why we have medical labels and why they matter. If we don't use a medical label, then no one will understand what is going on with that person.


I still would have broken up with him though if I knew he was a schizophrenic because he didn't think there was anything wrong with him, he didn't want help, schizophrenia is something that gets worse and worse if not treated, I want to have a family and I can't have one with him, he didn't want any kids, I cannot handle stress so his illness would have been too much for me to handle. My husband and my mother both think I wouldn't have been able to handle it.

But after finding out about him being diagnosed with it and reading more about it and reading about the "laziness" that goes along with it, it helps me see this all differently. Instead of feeling angry about how my ex treated me and his lies and "manipulation" and him "using me," and me "being his meal ticket" and him "being a bum," I now know he did none of that and he was just sick and hid it from me by making excuses and lying to me by saying he did this or that while I was at work such as studying the DMV manual. But it sure looked that way when I didn't know what was going on and I didn't really understand what my mother was telling me. Back then I just thought schizophrenia was being delusional and seeing things and hearing voices and acting bizarre and talking to themselves and my ex did none of that. So that is why I think he might have been at his early stages and hadn't gotten that far so he was only showing negative symptoms. So it's not like he lied to me and hid anything from me, he just didn't know and didn't think he had anything wrong with him. But good thing his mom did get him help and now she helps him with daily assistance and gets Social Security and lives on his own.

But damn he was so good hiding himself and I was gullible because I bought his excuses like he didn't memorize the days of the weeks and months in order because he never found it important while my mom thought those were just defenses because he isn't capable of knowing his days of the weeks and months. So there I was trying to teach my ex stuff and trying to get him to understand why this and that is important and then I was getting frustrated that he wasn't doing it. See why lying is bad? Then you would have to come up with another excuse and another when it keeps backfiring and then both of you get hurt.

I am also giving his mother the benefit of the doubt because she probably didn't know then either until he got worse.

Now I understand why my ex meant by I gave up on him.
Now I understand why he called his "laziness" his faults and how he acted towards me and telling me everyone had faults
I now understand what he meant by "accept me for who I am."


Now after finding out about this, this now changes my story about him. Now I might say "my ex had a undiagnosed mental illness and I didn't know about it then so I just thought he was using me and didn't want to work and was lazy and always making excuses and trying to be manipulative."

That's a sad story. Schizophrenia is an awful disease. I'd much rather have autism than schizophrenia.

It can be controlled with meds but the side effects are frequently awful.