Other Should I Trust Him?

[Puppet]

Hello,


I was never diagnosed with PTSD by a professional psychologist. I was raped this summer and ever since I am not feeling like I am living my own life. I am always paranoid and every single sound behind my back is making me jump out of my own skin, almost every night I have vivid nightmares and flashbacks and I wake under the illusion I am still there and it's happening. I don't remember everything from that day, but night after night I feel like I'm slowly gathering the pieces and the more I can recall, the more down and depressed I find myself. I even moved in another country for university just to stay away from my home, where I was followed and threatened and felt no safety.


Here, I met up with an old friend of mine, we always had sparkles between us. He helped me a lot to start functioning and act like myself but he never wanted a relationship so I tried to keep my distance. It was just comforting for me to have someone I could handshake with without starting to shake and he was acting nice and kind to me, he was trying to give me pleasure without asking anything from me in return and he didn't ran away when I was acting cold. Eventually I reached up a point when my secret was making me rot from the inside. Months past and one night we got more close to each other. Things after that went straight down with him, I built up my walls and had so serious fight with him that our previous relations are now complete wiped and it’s irreversible. Then I discovered I am pregnant. I had abortion two days ago. The pain is the same pain I felt before, it makes me violated from the inside, I can't sleep, I can't eat, I can't drink, both silence and noises get me scared.


And recently I met another man - quite the love nest, huh - who seems okay and just lets me be. And I know his intentions are serious. We are having long conversations every night, he knows about my abortion and what happened happened before I met him... but I am not even near to finding myself and him ready for something so big as my PTSD problems. What bothers me is the knowledge that he might be the right person for me and this is completely the wrong moment to meet him. I am usually not the trusting type and it will get take me a lot of time to trust him, and after what happened, I'm not sure if on this level I can trust anyone at all. We both got back for Christmas to visit our families and I know when he comes back this Monday he will want to see me. I don't know what to do. He will try to get close to me, not in the sexual way, and I don't want to push him away on the other hand – no matter how well I know him and I am just starting to know him, I can never be sure, I am too insecure. I am sure that if I push myself away he is going to ask questions. I am sure that if I don't push myself away he will eventually see there is something wrong and he will ask questions. Should I trust him? And if I do – should I tell him what he is getting himself into?

PS: I apologize to the moderators for putting the topic in the wrong forum.

 

[Deleted member 1860]

I think your priorities are in the wrong place. I think you should focus on healing and stop bouncing from guy to guy. Many of us put off the relationship thing until we're further along in healing because.....well, its sort of fruitless to jump into a relationship when we're so symptomatic and to be truthful, its not exactly fair to the other party to get involved with them when you're not working on healing yourself.

Welcome to the forum.

 

[Puppet]

Thank you.
Yeah, I'm trying to stay away from it, it's just really hard when you are in a new country and have no friends, no one really, that led to my mistake, having an old friend and speaking my own language was like a lifeboat to everything I missed. I was always getting along better with guys, engineering thing, and with all the new people around me and me trying not to get anyone's attention towards me, I somehow always end up in a situation in which I'm just rejecting someone. I will start therapy soon, I have my own milestones and baby-steps, but it's just not enough...

 

[Powder]

Have you heard of Dialectical Behavioural Therapy? http://www.dbtselfhelp.com/html/what_is_dbt_.html

Regardless of your diagnosis, many people who feel they need to be in relationship and suffer because of this will benefit so much from this kind of training course. I am in a long term relationship, but I am considering a course in DBT to improve how I feel about me overall and to be a better person in my relationship.

 

[AngelKeeperJ]

Welcome to the Forum!
I'm SO sorry for your struggles! It is GREAT to be in therapy BEFORE having another relationship. If this man cares, he will understand that you are going to require time to heal, and that a relationship other than strict friendship...no 'benefits'...other than meeting out and about, and not risking rushing into ANYTHING intimate.

I was married 4 times, and always let sex begin LONG before it should have, and actually caused the relationship to fail. Sex changes the course of learning how to be friends first. Deep friendship HAS to be the FIRST part of getting to know someone. In today's world though, sex is almost automatic.
For me, I thought that was all I had to offer. I was SO very wrong. I listened to my 'feelings', and used NO LOGIC, but pure chemistry. Well, it wore off, and I wanted out...ASAP. The only chance for a good relationship is to heal YOU first, find out WHO you are, WHAT you enjoy, and learn to enjoy being with yourself...not lonely...but okay with being alone. I thought I HAD to be part of a couple or I wasn't 'complete'. That was a lie.

I tell you these things, to let you know that YOU DESERVE TO BE MENTALLY HEALTHY AND WELL, so that you can be a healthy partner, and choose a healthy partner. Learn to trust YOU first. Give yourself the gift of TIME, and HEALING!

You have found an awesome place to share your feelings, and you will find compassion and understanding!

Blessings to you,
AKJ

 

[Puppet]

Thank you all for the support,
@AngelkeeperJ/AKJ, tank you, it means a lot for me to actually hear it. Maybe he will, maybe he won't. It's why I wanted to stick around him in the first place, somehow he seems to understood that sex is out of the deal with me any time soon and maybe he is the first person that didn't judge me at all, because for me, on the top of all, being pregnant with all the people assuming I simply didn't take precautions when precautions is like an obsession to me, just managed to keep me constantly blaming myself that I should have known and I was obviously not careful enough. Otherwise, I would't even consider anything with anyone. It is really rare for someone to actually see how my mind spins but that doesn't mean I will rush into something, especially sex. It means that maybe, maybe in the future if I really let him be around and try and do his things, as a friend, maybe some day more. It also means that I will have to give an answer to his questions. And for me, this is even more scarier than losing someone on the way but I do realize that I can't hide forever. I really want to trust people, I haven't told anyone really, but I simply can't. He already have his suspicions because of my reactions to everything, I guess, he just haven't figured it out yet. And probably he respects me enough to wait for me to open up. But no one can wait forever, he will eventually find his way around the topic. I'm really not sure how you are supposed to explain something like that and it's wrong to lose his time when it can all be for a lost cause.

 

[intothelight]

@Puppet

Welcome to the forum! Take some time to focus on taking care of you and if this person is really wanting to get to know you better and form a lasting relationship, then let them know you need to take it slow and have some things to do for yourself. For some people trust is something that takes time to build on and nothing wrong with that. Sometimes it is easy to get caught up in the "what if" and forget to enjoy the "what is". Take it day by day and see where it goes, but keep your own recovery in the forefront.

 

[Freedomfighter]

I agree with Solara, if you yourself can not heal then you will not be able to have a healthy relationship with "anyone"

When you still had such a tough time with PTSD your right to heal would have been more important than any other person. You see, anyone that attempts to get close to you during such a time is a predator. I had the same problem, when being weakened by this illness others would attempt to slither into my life, foreboding even more pain. Pain I did not need, but when I was so very sick, similar to the PTSD symtpoms you describe I too did not know that such predators only wait for you to be weakened, to swoop in and gain entry into the life of a completely helpless person.
When you are in the first stages of PTSD, you are like a baby, completely helpless and you do not know what is even going on. During such times there will be devils who attempt to cheat a way into your life, I had those that even tried to impersonate the personality of a stalker that gave me PTSD.

No, when you have PTSD you deserve to heal first, unfortunately most people think healing has to do with getting involved with others, but it does not. I had so many called friends and helpers who turned out to be the employees of the devil himself, the stalker. So many people who saw their chance to get close to me when I had absolutely no defenses. When you have PTSD you are like a cell that is bombarded with viruses and bacteria that can not be warded off. If anyone approaches you during such a time you can bet that person does not care about you in the first place but is rather only interested in their own gains.

Happened to me. Allow yourself to heal, you are more important than anyone else. It is you that needs to recover and additional relationships that you are entering into while you have PTSD might actually put you in a terrible danger.