Marriage break-up

Dawn’s husband moved away and took Peter’s two sisters with him, leaving Dawn alone to cope with an increasingly stressful home life.

However, things started to look a bit brighter after her divorce when she began a relationship with Gerry. She met him through an internet chat room and, at 29, he is 16 years her junior.

All went well at first. But then Dawn began to realise that Gerry had problems too.

“I must say,” said Dawn, “he wasn’t completely honest about his mental state when we chatted online. He’d said that he’d had some depression and because I had too, we could relate to one another.”

It turned out, though, that Gerry’s problems were a little more serious. In fact, due to the trauma he’d experienced through his childhood illnesses, Gerry had had mental problems for many years and had been diagnosed as having schizoid-affective disorder.

“But in many ways, our relationship has been beneficial for Peter,” said Dawn. “He is now 21, so he and Gerry are quite close in age, and they have interests in common, like watching football on television. Gerry is almost in the role of older brother and because of his own mental problems, he’s doesn’t judge Peter.”

“Most of the time Gerry’s OK,” Dawn added. “But then he has episodes where he gets very paranoid and he can become suicidal quite quickly.

“On top of that. Peter won’t go out. He stays in the home, because he finds any kind of interaction with others difficult. But it’s as if one person dominates the whole house, and everything has to be worked around them.”

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