That’s terrible advice for him to go back and contact his abusive toxic parent. He needs to speak to a counsellor/therapist who specialises in family trauma to help him explore his anger and come to terms with his decision. During therapy he can deep dive into forgiveness and reconciliation - but that is not for you or anybody else to put on him to do. He may realise that he forgives his mum but doesn’t want contact with her, or if he does, he will have firm boundaries in place to protect himself.
Sorry, I'm not telling him to go talk to his mum. I've basically said if he needs to, then I will support that, but he needs to tell her everything in his head (sorry, I didn't explain things very well) and also if I speak to her I will let everything out too and see if we can sort anything? I would do that if he needed me to. I've also told him many, many times that he should probably go speak to someone, but he doesn't think it will do anything. (Typical man hates going to the doctors, ha) If it was solely up to me, we would never see his mother again, and it makes me feel sick to even think about letting her back into our lives, but he's so unhappy I just don't know what to do? It's started to affect our relationship as his moods are ridiculous!
He feels so alone... we've had different upbringings, and I'm a very chilled out person who hates shouting and arguing but he's from a family where it's normal and not a big deal?
You need to set your own boundary here Incog. Put it to him once again, that he needs to speak to someone. You are not a trained therapist and don’t want to hear about the situation anymore. If he refuses to speak to someone and keeps bringing up the topic of his mum, you need to reiterate for him to stop going on about it and speak to a therapist. You basically need to shut the conversation down before it gets started. Otherwise you’re all just going to keep going in circles. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing continuously and expecting a different outcome. Your partner needs help. Only he can take the steps towards taking that action to make his life better.
She never asks about our daughter (her only grandchild)....whenever he's spoken to his mum, she just talks about her life and men, apparently... I have said I will make up with her for my partners sake but he had a bad argument with her again after, so I haven't yet but then she's gone and bought us Christmas presents??