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Helping with his guilt
My boyfriend and I have been together for nearly a year now, and as we get closer and closer I find more and more things to love about him. He has been telling me he had something he had to tell me but every time he would try it would be really hard for him and he would just say he would tell me another time. Well last night we finally talked. The story is way too complex to share all the details, so in a nutshell, his ex-girlfriend he was with for 3 years had an abortion. She is bipolar and he had reason to believe she wasn't even telling the truth. He went along with it until the day she actually took care of it.... I could tell by the way he was telling me and by him crying that he feels so guilty. This girl was cheating with him on another guy and so he will never even know for sure if it was his baby or not. But the fact that there is a chance that it could have been his just eats away at him. He told me he felt like I needed to know in case it ever came up down the road. He just sat there crying and saying how he was a bad person and how he should have stopped her...... what can I do to help him with this guilt? I have no experience with this matter and I have no idea what to say....... I really want to help him....
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You have been together for quite some time now. So I get that you feel for him, maybe love, idk. I know how it feels to love and care for someone but not being able to do anything to help them. In my case it had to do with family issues. BUT in any case you have to be there for him. Show him you care and you are trying to understand. You need to show empathy for him and what has happened don't act like you feel sorry. Try to relate to how he is feeling. Try and pull him back down to life, I'd just hug him if he wants to cry.. cry. You don't want him to think that you think he is weak by crying and showing emotion.
Next I suggest talking about it some more and if he can't with you then someone else. He has to get these feelings out or they will eat away at him forever.
It might help by saying that what happened was awful. But he can't change that. He has a future ahead... maybe a family ( maybe with you).
I'm sorry you are in this situation and I feel for your relationship. This can make it stronger though. Couples who overcome things grow closer. If you need someone to talk to about what you're feeling let me know. I'm sure that this has affected you in some way. Be there for him, comfort him,
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I think he will be all right. Just listen when he talks. But - and not to sound harsh here - he needs to stand behind his own decisions. He made them for a reason. He could have insisted on a paternity test. He could have forcefully presented adoption as an option and offered to support his ex through that process. But he didn't. Remind him of this - not to make him feel bad, but to make him aware that this was what he thought was best at the time, and a good argument can be made that if she had kept the baby, she would have gone on to raise it, and that would have been one more kid - possibly his - being raised by a screwed-up, bipolar mom.
He didn't necessarily make a bad decision. Tell him that, and otherwise just let him get it out. He'll be OK.
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