Hi, I don't know if I'm a little out of place here, but I'm hoping to just find some answers. My boyfriend and I have been dating for a little over a year now, and he's a wonderful person in a lot of ways, but he does have some odd struggles that really seem to cause major distress for him. I'm not sure how to help because the things he struggles with aren't things that I have struggles with. One of these things is definitely noises, we moved in together into an apartment complex about 5 months ago, and it's on the first floor. Now, we only have one old lady that lives above us, but we can hear her sometimes throughout the day. It doesn't bother me much, it doesn't normally last too long except on some occasions. I get how it can be annoying, but for him, it affects him so much worse. Ever since we've moved in here, he's had countless breakdowns the second he starts hearing noise above us, and I mean screaming at the top of his lungs, not even words, throwing things, cursing, crying, and just constantly talking about wanting to leave and go back to his mom's house. I try to help him and calm him down, but my words never seem to reach him. I sit with him, hold him, and encourage him to use headphones, or to take a drive and get away for a while, but he never wants to. His behavior concerns me a lot, even scares me sometimes because of how strongly he reacts. He's brought up the noise complaints with our landlord, even brought the old lady into it and we've asked her to maybe not stomp too hard if she can. It's only caused more drama between everyone, they told us the previous tenant had lived there for 4 years and never complained, that there really have never been any noise complaints in the apartments before. I feel for the most part the place is a quiet community, and I think it's normal to expect some level of noise living in an apartment complex generally, but my boyfriend seems to hyper-fixate on the noises and can't seem to get it out of his head. I've never been insensitive to his struggle, I understand this is a very real issue for him, but i really don't know how to help any more than I have. We've just been trying to save up to maybe rent a house so there's no one above us, but it's going to take time before we can afford something like that, and we still have 7 months left to our lease.
I've just been thinking lately maybe he should see someone and get some help, because he loses control of his emotions really easily. I'm not sure if it could be autism, or something else. He seems to function normally in most social situations, he can interact and connect with people well enough, though sometimes I've noticed he has a hard time maintaining friendships. I'm not sure if this is just a symptom of something else, or if I'm missing something, or if there's something I can do to help him more. It's just gotten harder and harder to help him when he reacts in these ways, and I feel it strains us because he always expects me to do something to fix it or to say something to make it better, but I can't. I don't have anything else I can say at this point, and he gets upset with me for not doing enough to help him when he feels this way.
So if anyone might have some insight, please let me know, I'll answer any questions the best that I can.
