Caring for my long term boyfriend - schizophrenia and DID

Hello Forum

I have never been a part of any forums but I’ve been told that now is a good time to seek support from others who know just what it’s like to be a carer.

My boyfriend of almost 5 years and I have lived together for 2 years. We both are 22 and are working towards our dream careers - mine is to be a child protection officer, for which I am a full time university psych-science student. His is to be a tattoo artist, for which requires a full time unpaid apprenticeship. As you can imagine, the financial stress of upkeeping a household by ourselves with barely enough income between the two of us was extremely hard. At the start of this year, the stress pushed my partner into his first experiences of psychosis. Neither of us understood, he didn’t have the words to explain what he was feeling, hearing or seeing.

Months later we now live with his mum, are trialling his third different anti-psychotic medication starting this week and are working cohesively with both a psychiatrist and a psychotherapist to work on treatment and management. The psychotherapist has started to work at the possible diagnosis of DID, while the psychiatrist has said Schizophrenia. But either way, I feel like the support and constant re-evaluation is healthy and I like that we are exploring all the options to see how we can get him back to living life as ‘normally’ as possible.

Beign so young, I find it hard to cope with the restrictions I feel like I have on my life now. I feel like I can’t have the adventurous and wild 20s I had envisioned, but also feel immense guilt about even suggesting that’s my partners fault.

I fear for the future we may have lost - marriage, children etc - and the relationship that was the envy of all my friends because we always balanced each other and took care of each other, now it is hard for him to be there for me at all. He feels like he is taking my life away from me, and there is no way I can explain to him that even though I’m having these feelings of loss, I by no means feel like he is taking my life away from me. I care about him more than anything.

I look forward to being a part of the forum to see how other people are dealing with these types of complex emotions, treatment and management tips, and I hope I’ll have something to contribute in return

-Tictac