How to get him to seek help
Hi everyone. I'm posting here because I'm scared and don't know where else to turn. My husband (25M) and I (25F) have been together for 10 years and married for about a year. I have never seen him act the way he is acting right now, and his closest friends feel the same way.
I want to give some background because I think the timeline matters, and because looking back, I think we may have missed an earlier warning sign.
Last summer, what we now think may have been a first episode:
He had about 6 weeks between leaving his consulting job and starting a new role at a hedge fund. He took a 3-week trip through Europe with close friends. Before that trip, his grandfather passed away. Almost immediately, he decided he was going to write a book, launch a charity in his grandfather's name, and start a young professionals networking group, a monthly speaker series for ambitious people early in their careers. It felt like a lot, but given the grief and the free time, we didn't think too much of it.
Back home, he became intensely focused on these projects. His roommates at the time described it as overwhelming. One of them said he stopped going to the common areas of their home because he couldn't handle being pulled into hourly updates every single evening. He was assigning roles to friends and had grand plans for a charity fundraising event.
Then, when he started his new job and moved into our home, it all faded. The wedding and work took over, and friends described him as completely back to his normal self. We were relieved and moved on.
We now wonder if that wasn't him calming down, but rather an episode that resolved on its own when life gave him enough structure and stability to ground him.
Three weeks ago, it's back and it's worse:
Something shifted about three weeks ago, and it has been a stark, jarring step-change in his behavior.
Social media: He has launched three accounts, one for the networking group, and two others for personal passion projects. He is posting constantly across all of them, reposting everything to his personal account, and mass-DMing his followers with each post. He has been posting memes and edited photos of people involved in the group, which friends are describing as embarrassing and unprofessional. Several of them are only a few years out of school in competitive careers, and their bosses have started asking questions.
The networking group: The social media presence got bad enough that members called an emergency meeting to address his behavior. By multiple accounts, he was dismissive, not listening, and at one point got up mid-conversation to go speak with someone across the room. Several people walked out of the meeting.
Work: He has been leaving his job, a role he has worked toward his entire career, for hours at a time in the middle of the day, still posting on social media while he's gone. His supervisors tried to address it with him and he interpreted it as them not believing in him. He was just placed on administrative leave and has brushed it off completely, saying he'll find something better. He doesn't seem to grasp what he's losing.
Spending: He recently made several large, impulsive purchases. After getting the news of him getting put on leave he booked a last-minute luxury trip. I have asked him not to go. His mom left a work trip early to try to talk him out of it last night, but he brushed her off. He left this morning.
I am terrified. I don't know if this is a manic episode, but the pattern, the grandiosity, the impulsivity, the inability to hear anyone around him, the reckless spending, the complete dismissal of losing his dream job, feels like something is very wrong. And the fact that we saw a milder version of this last summer, which seemed to just quietly resolve, makes me more worried, not less.
I am also quietly afraid of what happens when reality catches up with him. I don't want to be the one standing there when it does.
To my knowledge, he has no prior mental health diagnosis and no family history that I'm aware of, but I'm honestly not sure anymore.
He is currently not medicated and not in therapy.
For those who have been through something similar, how did you get your loved one to see someone? He currently doesn't believe anything is wrong, and every person who has tried to reach him has been brushed off or dismissed. Has anyone found a way to get through to someone in this state, or is there something I should be doing right now that I'm not? Any advice is appreciated.