Relationship Still processing breakup with PTSD ex

[Deleted member 47099]

I usually post in the other section of the forum, because I have PTSD myself.

My last relationship, which ended 2 years ago, was with a fellow PTSD sufferer, C.

The breakup was so painful, that I'm still working through some of the stuff that happened with my ex, two years later.

I've written about some of it in my trauma diary - I'll try to add some details here later, so there's not so many gaps.

Basically, I had a similar thing happen to me like @jandk5721 - my partner slipped into crisis, went mute and disappeared.

When he started dysregulating and slipping deeper into crisis, he went from someone incredibly loving and present to someone who was totally absent, who was strangely mute/ silent (he would try and talk and no words would come out of his mouth).

He was obviously slipping into crisis faster than he could deal with it. Instead of trying to reach out, trying to get help, he just spiralled deeper and his actions became more desperate and chaotic and messy.

It was an emotional rollercoaster that started with next to no warning. We were so incredibly close, before it started. We wanted to get married. Things were incredibly beautiful.

Then he started spiralling and his behaviour became erratic and bizarre.

He was drowning and he clung to me, to stop himself going under. But he damned nearly pulled me under too.

Things got more intense, more crazy, more painful, more desperate, more dysregulated, more bizarre.

What upset me the most is that there was no meta-level to any of it. At no point did he realise he was spiralling. At no point was he able to say "Sorry, Sophy, I'm spiralling"

He just went over the edge, full-force, head first and let the chips fall where they may.

For me, it was like watching someone die, but not physically. He stopped existing, before my very eyes. But he obviously wasn't "dead" cos his body was still moving and existing.

It's taken me two years to even begin to understand it and to feel a sense of calm about it.
Reading through the supporters' section of the forum, it seems this stuff is pretty common, that it happens a lot.
That people with PTSD spiral to the point that they just disappear, go incommunicado, stop being themselves... just disappear from the face of the earth, as if that's normal... as if that's something people just "do" sometimes...

At the time I didn't know what was going on and I've never felt so betrayed in all my life.

It was really bad - it was awful in the kind of "Wow, this is as bad as childhood trauma" kind of way.

The most painful, berieving experience of my adult life.

To get closure on this finally (because it's been such a painful, crazy-making mystery for the last 2 years) I've been working through it and sending some emails to C, just to be able to speak my truth about the situation. Just to be able to say *what it was like for me* so I can put it to rest and walk away.

Bizarrely, I've been getting really positive, caring, gentle emails in reply.

I totally lost my shit and wrote back some really angry, scornful, scathing emails full of swear words.

Just couldn't believe that after putting me through 2 years of painful relationship breakup hell, he's gone back to being sweet and nice.

I nearly f*cking threw up on the laptop when I read his emails.

At first, I thought he must be f*cking kidding. It felt like such a head-game. Like he was being "fake nice" on purpose, just to make the whole situation even crazier.

It's taken me weeks to start getting my head around it.

It seems that when he did his crisis/ dysregulation/ spiralling/ mute/ disappearing/ survival thing, he is/ was totally unaware of the impact it had on me.

He seems to think that "all" he did was to "prevent himself from drowning" and that that's a good thing to do, so why the heck am I so upset about any of it?

I don't know if he's got some sort of protective amnesia thing going on, about the worst of it.

Or whether he didn't even notice most of it, because he was drowning and hence not aware of anything else?

He's basically saying that after two years, things are still really raw and he's still struggling. But that he thinks after 10 years he'll have recovered enough to be able to talk about stuff. And that given 2 years have passed, in 8 years time we'll be able to be friends and talk about this stuff properly.

Again, when I read this, I was sooo close to puking on the laptop.

Just CANNOT believe he'd put me through hell at 40 and then think that I'll want to DISCUSS it at 50...???

Discuss this stuff with someone who's so f*cked up that he needs a DECADE to stop being mute and to be able to talk about stuff???

Ugh.

Sorry if this hasn't made much sense/ has had lots of gaps. I'm too emotional to write about it properly at the moment.

I just need to keep processing this. I need closure. I need to fully heal from this.

I need to view this through a supporter lens.

It was his PTSD that made him spiral so messily.

It's not my fault. It's not his fault.

But I need to move on.

 

[Abstract]

Sorry this all happened for you Sophie. I can't speak from a supporter perspective and what I would say would be from the PTSD perspective so may not be what you need here. If you want the input let me know.

 

[Deleted member 47099]

Sorry this all happened for you Sophie. I can't speak from a supporter perspective and what I would say would be from the PTSD perspective so may not be what you need here. If you want the input let me know.

Feel free to reply from a PTSD perspective, Abstract :)

Thanks for asking. I think after 2 years it's now no longer so raw... :hug:

Edit to add: I wanted to thank @Freida for her thread General - What are they thinking?

... because it really made me understand this stuff better :hug:

 

[Abstract]

Hi Sophy!I'm glad it is decreasing in rawness. ?

You say bizarrely. Is that out of character for him? Was he aggressive etc as a person? Does that not fit? Especially before he was very symptomatic. What was it about him answering in a nice way that made you angry? What would an angry or whatever way have done for you? Could it be that it helped affirm something for you?

It sounds like you experienced his metaphorical dieing as if he was dying in front of you. What part of of it was betrayal? Did it feel purposeful to you?
I obviously don't know the nature of the bizarre behaviour or him clinging to you.

The part I relate to is the not speaking. You mentioning him trying and no words coming out caught my attention. Something that used to happen to me a lot. Sometimes because I just couldn't make myself and sometimes because of a type of functional dissociation where I expected sound to come out but it didn't. I have so many things to do with "speaking" in any form it would be hard to express them all. ;) I'm one of those who overly obsessed about the impact on others and I can tell you that the more I tried the more mute I became. Just because one part of my brain was wanting to or attempting to express myself doesn't mean that the rest allowed that to occur. And I will say that if that is someones inclination in my experience it is not an easy thing to shift. I have gone at it hell for leather for around 8 years and have made a lot of progress but it has been incredibly hard to change. For me actually saying "I am spirally" was as impossible as anything possibly could be even when it was what I most wanted to say. Because of the not speaking expressing stuff. Not because of lack of self awareness, for me.

 

[Deleted member 47099]

The part I relate to is the not speaking. You mentioning him trying and no words coming out caught my attention. Something that used to happen to me a lot. Sometimes because I just couldn't make myself and sometimes because of a type of functional dissociation where I expected sound to come out but it didn't. I have so many things to do with "speaking" in any form it would be hard to express them all. ;) I'm one of those who overly obsessed about the impact on others and I can tell you that the more I tried the more mute I became. Just because one part of my brain was wanting to or attempting to express myself doesn't mean that the rest allowed that to occur. And I will say that if that is someones inclination in my experience it is not an easy thing to shift. I have gone at it hell for leather for around 8 years and have made a lot of progress but it has been incredibly hard to change. For me actually saying "I am spirally" was as impossible as anything possibly could be even when it was what I most wanted to say. Because of the not speaking expressing stuff. Not because of lack of self awareness, for me.

Yeah. This is what was going on with him, I think ^^

Thanks for your reply! :hug:

Sorry I worded everything so confusingly...!

In the relationship, he was totally lovely and we were really close. He spiralled quite suddenly and without any warning and he went downhill really fast and didn't/ wasn't able to communicate anything about it.

So I was incredibly shocked and had NO idea what was going on - he was behaving like "some other person". It was like suddenly, he no longer existed, and some cold, crazy, silent person had taken his place and was spiralling into crisis and becoming more and more dysfunctional and weird.

The fact that we had been SOOOOO close before just made it all the more awful. It was such a shock. It felt like a total betrayal. Because I couldn't BELIEVE that he couldn't AT LEAST say "Sorry, but I'm spiralling" at some point in the 12 months that he deteriorated badly. There was just silence and more silence and more silence. The only thing that occasionally broke through the silence was crazy, negative, shitty comments. It was awful.

I dealt with the horror of that by being angry. Grieving and being incredibly angry. I think hating him was how I coped.

Now, 2 years later, I've started understanding what was going on.

At the time, I was lost, hurt, confused, shocked, horrified.
It was a horrific way to see a relationship destroyed for seemingly "no reason whatsoever".

Anger and feelings of hate is what allowed me to survive, emotionally.
So now, I don't want any "positive" emails from him.

As far as I'm concerned, he doesn't get to do another about-face now and try going back to being "the good guy".
He already went from "good guy" to "horrible person" and I had to cope with that.
I'm not willing to be around for the "magical" transition back to good guy now.

Rationally, I'm aware of your explanation @Abstract
And yeah, I agree that would be the mature, calm way to view it.

The thing is, that this understanding comes 2 years too late.

Why didn't he warn me that this happens to him?
Why didn't he give me any chance of somehow dealing with the situation?
Why did he just leave me to cope with the disaster and the fall-out of it, all by myself?

I don't *want* to forgive him.
Even if "the PTSD made him do it" I *want* to be angry at him.

I'm not willing to say "Oh yeah, oops, what a shame PTSD made you do unforgivable stuff"

I'm willing to think about it rationally, in terms of healing from it and moving on.

But I'm way too resentful to accept "nice" emails from him.

And I'm certainly not willing to "talk" to him about this stuff "ten years later".
NO WAY

If he feels he needs to "discuss" this stuff with someone in 10 years time, he'll have to get a therapist.

I refuse to communicate about this stuff anymore.

I had to accept that he's a horrible person, not a good guy.

I'm not going back and forth on that, depending on how symptomatic he's feeling or not.
It's not my job.

I'm holding on to my healthy anger, for as long as it serves me.
And I couldn't care less about how that impacts him.
He didn't give a shit about how any of his dissapearing and silence stuff impacted me either.

Edit to add: Sorry I'm so angry about all this.
I know it's "dumb" to be angry about his PTSD-related stuff.
It was just super painful.
And what makes me angry is that it would have been SOOOO easy to deal with, if there'd been ANY communication about it.
It was so needlessly, senselessly painful.
It trashed and destroyed a really good relationship and friendship.
Turned it to pure shit and raw pain for no good reason at all.
So I'm sorry my words are angry/ sound judgemental.
It's not how I "think" about this stuff, it's just how I feel about the situation.

Edit to add: I've also had this "going mute" stuff happen to me too, due to PTSD/ stress/ dysregulating/ dissociating/ etc.
I've *never* had it go on for 12 months straight tho.
Even if I go mute for a few days, I do manage to at least call/ email people a week later and explain what is/ was going on and to apologise, if needed.
So him not "managing" to do that *at all* in those 12 months of our emotionally excruciating breakup just had me convinced that he was doing it on purpose/ didn't give a shit about me/ wasn't who he had seemed to be.
I still struggle with that level of muteness. 12 months plus the nearly 15 months since then just seems a freakishly long time to be mute, to me.
And to then just write "nice" emails (obviously no longer mute) but to not apologise about a million times for what happened?
Whatever...
Just makes me super angry.

 

[Deleted member 47099]

Wow, I think I really, really, really, really needed to vent all that anger.
I feel so much calmer now, six hours later.
I feel like I can actually "see it" for what it was.
Oof.

I've been carrying around that anger for a long time now.
The last 2 years have basically been anger-driven.
Just a constant stream of anger about this stuff.

It's been healthy anger.
It's been "surviving" anger.
Without it, I'd have crawled off and hidden under a rock and just died.
I was in so much pain.
The anger kept me alive, made me believe in myself and made me get better.

Now, for the first time in 2 years I can calmly and clearly look at my role as a "supporter" to someone who has PTSD.
And I can feel some more nuanced feelings, other than just straight out anger.

I'm even annoyed at myself, that I didn't know how to support him better, as he spiralled out of control.
But he did his absolute best, to "hide" his PTSD, so it was hard to work out what was going on and what might help.
He also did his darndest to avoid getting professional help, which also made the situation pretty "impossible".

I think I can finally stop taking this stuff so "personally".
At the time, I had no idea why he was behaving like a cold bastard, why he disappeared, why he was mute, why I didn't even get an explanation as to why everything was going crazy, why our relationship didn't seem to "matter", why I seemed to not "matter" to him.
At the time, that hurt so much and came so out of the blue.
It was impossible to not take it personally.
He was literally destroying the best and most important thing in my life - this relationship - for seemingly no reason at all.
It's been a lot of grieving and mourning.

So glad to have gotten this anger out.

I need to keep thinking clearly about this situation.

I need closure on it, finally.

 

[Deleted member 47099]

Well, yesterday evening, things took a bizarre turn.

Feeling calmer and less angry, I ended up reading our email exchange from the last two months.

And without my brain being clouded by anger, I could read his emails more closely and was stunned to see that he's not implying we could "sit down and talk about the breakup like adults" in 10 years time... he's actually implying we could "get back together" in 10 years time.

Wtf?

Who thinks/ says stuff like that??

He ghosted me for 2 years, hasn't owned it, hasn't apologised for it, but thinks it's a good idea to suggest we get back together... in ten years time...???

What level of crazy/ demented/ weird/ desperate is this???

I mean, I have PTSD too - I know we do some weird shit, but this is just "too much" for me.

After the initial shock/ after his words sank in, I cycled through about 30 different emotions for several hours.

There's a certain level of relief about this... because after 2 years of ghosting, I began to think that I must've imagined the good years of the relationship... I began to doubt myself and think it had all been some mirage/ mistake. So having him validate that the relationship had been "good enough" for him to still want to get back together even ten years later, has helped put my mind at rest that I wasn't just imagining everything.

At the same time, all I can think of in response is "No. Just no."

Many times in the past two years, I'd have given my right arm *and* my left arm, for this relationship to work out, for things to be okay again, for him to start talking again, for us to get back together.

I'm 40 and I'm lucky to have not had abusive relationships - my trauma and PTSD is all childhood related. I've had some very kind, caring, supportive partners over the years, but this ex really was the love of my life. Which is why the loss of the relationship was so devastating.

But this "let's get back together in ten years time" stuff is just too little, too late. (He's saying ten years btw, because "it's still too painful right now" and he thinks he needs "ten years" to be able to "heal enough" to be in a relationship.)

After what I've been through, yeah, I agree that he's at least 10 years away from being in any kind of semi-functional relationship. Damned right.

But I'm also at the point where I know "it won't be me".

Whatever journey he is on, it's not my journey.
Our paths crossed accidentally and although there was a LOT of positive stuff, the negative stuff outweighed the positive stuff and I've had to redefine my life and start over and there's no way I'm going back to that stuff.

My head is still swimming in a thought and emotion jumble. So much stuff to process.

I'm glad that I'm reaching a point of understanding about this. I realise he was deep in crisis, he was completely dysregulated, he isolated, he was in flight mode, he ghosted me for 2 years because of his PTSD.

Yeah, I'm still angry/ resentful that this information has come 2 years too late, because it would have spared me an insane amount of heartache and loss and grieving and pain to have know what was going on, 2 years ago.

But even with that understanding ^^ I do not ever want to deal with any of it/ with him, ever again.

I lost all trust in him. I lost all respect for him. I don't want to speak to him. I don't want to spend time with him. I no longer care about his wellbeing. I don't want to hear his thoughts or his feelings. I no longer want mutual closure, I just want my closure.

I no longer even care about getting an apology. Yes, it would be appropriate. But these past 2 years I've learned to live without any of that stuff, so now it doesn't actually matter anymore.

He broke a part of my heart and I've numbed everything to do with this stuff, to survive.

I burned all the stuff he ever gave me, on the farm's campfire site. Burned everything that was so infinitely precious to me, once.

I can't undo all that. I don't want to undo all that.

I cut him out of my heart and out of my life, to survive.

I do feel sorry for him that after 2 years of crisis and ghosting me that he has now suddenly "remembered" that we had a really wonderful, valuable relationship and that he wants that back, but I've moved on from that by miles and miles and miles and miles.

I'm no longer the same person as I was when we were together. For better of for worse, this experience has forced me to grow to survive and it's changed who I am.

The only thing I want now is to lay it to rest, to process it, to get closure, to have peace of mind, to move on.

 

[blackemerald1]

Oh @Sophy - you so need some rest from this. Honestly what he is saying is weird and your common sense is kicking in and preserving you.

I think he must be in the land of bs to not understand how much he has hurt you. I cannot understand him ghosting you for such a long period of time and now to be even emailing you 'nice' emails is a bit of a stretch tbh too.

Have you considered going no contact with him? Writing him an email or posting a letter saying 'f**k off and heal yourself and no I'm not waiting around 10 years for you to find yourself' and then leaving him. You have come so far in your own journey I don't think you need him hitchhiking along while you find yourself someone who can love you and not do any of that crazy stuff.

How could he not know that he hurt you and hurt you badly? How could he not know that disappearing and leaving you like that would not devastate you? It is weird and it is wrong. It's really wrong. Ptsd or not it's wrong.

You do need closure and from what you have written you seem to have a lot of it. It's just the final bit that is holding you back from turning your back on him and walking away. For your sake I think you need to do that. If you were my best friend...I'd say shut him down and stop the drip-feed of pain. :hug:

 

[Deleted member 47099]

You do need closure and from what you have written you seem to have a lot of it. It's just the final bit that is holding you back from turning your back on him and walking away. For your sake I think you need to do that. If you were my best friend...I'd say shut him down and stop the drip-feed of pain. :hug:

Thanks @blackemerald1 :hug:

Yes, I'm 90 % of the way there, re closure.
I need the final 10 %.

The pain is bearable now, honestly.
I cried more in the last 2 years than I cried in 20 years of trauma therapy :bag:
It's all "cried out" now...

If this relationship had meant less to me, I could let it go easily.
As part of my PTSD/ attachment stuff from childhood, I'm actually (too?) good at "just letting people go" :bag:
It honestly doesn't phase me much, if people come and go from my life.

This relationship tho - while it was alive, it was "the one".
I've never had a relationship affect me this deeply.
So the work of getting closure on it is going to be "deep" work too, whether I like it or not.

We are currently on "nearly zero" contact. These last few emails were ones I wrote to get closure and his replies to my emails.
He's certainly not "bugging" me - he's still too mute/ silent-ish to bother me with emails.

I just need to walk the last few steps of this closure journey.
It's been one of the most intense journeys of my life.

Trauma therapy was almost easy, compared to this ;)

On a more serious note, I think this stuff has been an integral part of my trauma therapy, somehow.
I learned an incredible amount during this relationship.
And then, to survive, I also learned an incredible amount during his crisis/ ghosting/ our breakup.

While it lasted, the relationship was deeply healing.
I did some healing work in this relationship, that 20 years of trauma therapy hadn't been able to bring about.

So on that level, I will be forever grateful this relationship happened.
But it also made it 100000 x more painful when it crashed and burned "for no reason".

I'm still picking up the pieces.
Still rebuilding my life.

We had merged our lives completely.
We were gonna spend the rest of our lives together and then get buried next to each other on some dinky village cemetary one day.

It's going to take a long time to forge a new life.

I'm grateful for each step on this healing journey.
Grateful for any progress, any relief.

Meeting him was like meeting my spirit animal.
It was that deep and that intense and that life changing.

But it seems that other than having been in each other's lives for a few years, we have nothing in common, nothing to share.
No journey together.

It still hurts, but hey... I was raised a feminist, so I've got the fighting spirit that there's no way heartbreak over some guy will ever be the downfall of me! ;) :laugh:

Whatever it takes to heal from this, I'll be doing it :tup:

 

[Deleted member 47099]

How could he not know that disappearing and leaving you like that would not devastate you?

Oh, and I think this is attachment disorder stuff...
He's got childhood trauma PTSD too and had a pretty awful father, tho in some ways, I think his mother is even worse.
She had post-partum depression for a long time, on top of her usual depression, anxiety, OCD and probably PTSD (she also had childhood trauma) and she treated him coldly and never bonded with him or connected emotionally.
He was taught that being un-bonded and un-connected is "normal".
So he does actually literally think that disappearing and being un-connected is "no big deal".
I struggle to get my head around this too...
I'm kinda smart and strong tho - if I'd been given any "fair warning" on this stuff, I'd have worked out how to deal with it.
But him "just" disappearing and expecting me to "somehow" cope - that's not my job.
Anyway... whatever, right?
Not my job to think about this stuff anymore... other than in terms of getting closure.

 

[blackemerald1]

some healing work in this relationship, that 20 years of trauma therapy hadn't been able to bring about.

^^ So I think in a way that you can take the good that came from ever meeting him and keep that safe. Isolate it from the harm that was also a feature of this relationship.

We had merged our lives completely.

Meeting him was like meeting my spirit animal.
It was that deep and that intense and that life changing.

^^Your devotion to this man and this relationship is probably what has brought you so undone. Whilst his normal was to live disconnected - you began to heal, to trust and connect. Little doubt then that you feel betrayed and that life can deal out the cruellest of ironies.

No journey together.

^^Sometimes we do have people come into our lives and incredibly painful and eventful things happen and then they leave. The silence pounds in your ears. We are left wondering if the sole purpose of their presence was some fickle chance of fate or maybe they were there for a time, a short time, not a life-time and that was what was always destined.

Sorry - just a philosophical thought on why these things happen.

 

[Deleted member 47099]

Thank you @blackemerald1 :hug:

I love philosophy and poetry for understand the ironies and absurdities and inconsistencies and riddles and mysteries and lunacy and vagaries and caprices and whimsies and red herrings life throws our way :)