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[wherearethebees]

You and your partner are kind of insular, as a couple, but your partner comes from a larger social circle that he or she used to be closer to before you started shacking up. Your partner confesses to you that he or she is suicidal.

Do you tell other people?

Please explain your answers.

Comments

[emmalinell]

No. Unless my partner tells me he's actually going to commit suicide and I couldn't talk them out of it. Then I'd probably tell someone. But most likely I'd talk to them, explain to them why suicide would be bad, etc. And encourage them to talk to someone/ get help if it's particularly bad.

[yuriko]

Probably not, if he doesn't want them to know. I'd probably be the best equipped to help him through it. If they're not that close anymore, I'm not sure what the benefit of telling them would be. Though I might contact them and encourage them to start hanging out more again.

[crassy]

I tell his best friend and then I call for some sort of mental health assistance. I do not tell random people because my husband is a fairly private person and I wouldn't betray the trust we have set up between us.

[nextdrinksonme]

No, because there's a difference between actively and passively suicidal. If he just feels like he wants to die, I talk to him and encourage him to get help. It's only if he has a figurative gun to his head do I call anyone. And then it's the crisis line. It's not any of his friends' business. If he wanted them to know, he would have told them himself.

[hashishinahooka]

I agree about actively/passively suicidal, which is why I would never know how to respond to someone saying they were. I am passively suicidal, and I have only confided that to my best friend because he is too. I wouldn't tell anyone else for fear they would overreact.

[wherearethebees]

I am having such a hard time with this line of thinking. I spent the last week in and out of mental hospitals because my college boyfriend (who is now like a brother to me) tried to commit suicide. And he'd been suicidal for months, and his fucking idiot childish girlfriend didn't think to tell ANYONE.

I understand wanting to respect privacy. And I'm really trying to see things from her side to understand how this happened, even though I think she is the most poisonous and clueless person I've ever met. But not telling the closest remaining people in someone's life (whether friends or family) is fuckin' mindboggling to me.

[nextdrinksonme]

What would telling people would have done? In many states you can't commit someone unless they are actively suicidal (saying "I'm going to kill myself" or doing something to act on those feelings). Saying "I feel suicidal" is not enough

[myarra]

I wouldn't tell his friends about it. I'd probably tell my sister, though, because I tell her almost everything and it's nice to have someone who knows about stuff that may be bothering me.