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Relationship Moving on

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Her ex partner died a couple of years ago but she’s still dealing with financial matters. E g. Anyway I need to just let her go and hope she can find peace with her past. I knew things would not be easy for her which is why it’s even harder as I had been supportive of what she was going through. Obviously not enough for her to sit down and talk
 
I would have walked to the end of the earth to try to make her happy. She said she had never felt safe as she did with me. My crime was wanting to spend 5 mins with her and her daughter on her birthday. Yes I understood birthdays are not easy when the little one’s dad passed away. But shit you can’t tell someone’s one week that you are adored and the little one has grown close to you and then just be expected to turn your emotions off. A week before she was worried I was hiding her from the world in not clicking on a Facebook tag I didn’t see. She was worried about getting hurt. I tried to call as soon as I got her message but she was too upset to talk. So I explained it all in a text and she apologised for her insecurity. There was no drama from me. I understood why, given her most recent relationship why she felt insecure. But when I needed some small recognition of my feelings she dumps me. Surely You can’t say to someone that their daughter is growing close to you without realising my feelings for her daughter were the same. Apparently I don’t realise how birthdays are hard. Well I know that it’s absolutely heart wrenching to never be a parent when it has been your greatest dream and to have had it shattered by the infidelity of two former partners. She would walk a thousand miles to meet someone to whom she and her daughter meant more and who would have been there every day of their lives if she hadn’t just shut me out out of no where. Thousands of messages from her telling me what my commitment to her meant and I just get blindsided and shut out like I don’t exist. PTSD or not - and she’s in denial of how her trauma affects her - it’s hurtful beyond words
 
I hope that given how she responds to people ie shutting them out, that she stops introducing her daughter to the people she dates. If not, that kid is gonna become hella f*cked up.
 
I hope that given how she responds to people ie shutting them out, that she stops introducing her daughter to the people she dates. If not, that kid is gonna become hella f*cked up.

She’s a wonderful mum. Not easy for either of them but my family and I both thought her wonderful qualifies shone through in her daughter. That’s one of the hardest things to comprehend with this. I didn’t meet her daughter without being committed to my ex. I was not going to walk away and be yet another man who had let them down. But clearly that’s what she thinks I am. Again apparently no one had ever shown her daughter love and affection as I did but now that counts for nothing.
 
She loved the song start of something good by Daughtry. The line me scars don’t seem to matter anymore. ‘Cause they led me here to you. Maybe should be changed to “you led me to my scars”.
 
Because this hurts i a way I simply cannot describe other than to say it will leave me scarred for good.
 
And I don’t think either of our lives will be any richer for this. I think both of us will look back at some point in the future and both wish we had been able to work things thorough. no one can have a relationship without some misunderstandings or miscommunication along the way. She had the capacity to realise that there would be curve balls. And when she said we would work through them I believed her. Trying to find a way to be in their lives in the most supportive way was a challenge for me. It’s not easy to fit into other people’s lives when there is a child and when your partner has been through trauma. But I can say I honestly tried and to deal with her insecurities and the things from her past that she was still dealing with. Unfortunately this has come at a time where work pressure is immense and I can’t give less than 100% to my job. Achieving that is a huge struggle right now. Hopefully the counsellor who suggested I read up on ptsd which led me to this site can assist me deal with that.
 
I understand she is hypervigilant. I know she hates any conflict. I understand she was subjected to controlling behaviour by an ex, had her trust abused by others. But I was hurt that she couldn’t even find a way to acknowledge my wish to spend a few moments with her daughter on her birthday. It didn’t require being told that I don’t understand what it’s like for her daughter to have birthdays without her father. I wanted to share a few moments with her daughter on her birthday so she knew her birthday was important to me. Didn’t ask her to change anything. I had only suggested hours before we didn’t see each other the next day - a week before the little one’s birthday - because I knew she had a lot on her plate. No I don’t know what it’s like to be without a parent as a child on your birthday. But I do know the pain of never being able to share a birthday with a little one you love. The last child’s birthday party I attended was my own when I was 10. The same age she was turning. I know the pain of never having the blessing of being a father. I know the pain of going to an empty house night after night after dealing with every one else’s dramas in my career as a lawyer. Being screamed at by people. My ex didn’t just end our relationship she tore apart the bond I was making with her little one. And to do that by text with little explanation is cruel - PTSD or not.
 
If there is one consolation it’s that she did this now instead of waiting years into a relationship to do it... which happens. You’re never going to make logical sense out of why she left. As painful as it is now, it’s probably a blessing in disguise.
 
It’s absolutely destroyed me. Took an awful lot to trust. Was asked to trust promised that this wouldn’t happen. How you shut someone out of your life like is just unbelievable. PTSD or not. Cutting someone out with no proper explanation is immoral. Not just hurtful. Utterly immoral. I wish her only happiness. I know she has been through hell but creating such pain for someone who was there for her is just not right. I could not do that to someone in a million years. Ask for their trust, promise they would talk through whatever issues came up and just kick them to the kerb. This will live with me forever. Left me broken and her life will be no better for it. But thanks sweatpea
 
It didn’t require being told that I don’t understand what it’s like for her daughter to have birthdays without her father.
You might want to have a serious think about this one... It sounds like you DID need to be told, because you’re still making a child’s birthday about YOU, and what you want(ed), and how you wanted to focus on your bond, etc.. Rather than innately understanding that birthdays are likely to be difficult for a child who has lost a parent, and that very possibly the best thing for her would be to meet up on a different day for something special. Ditto, that a day that’s difficult for your child, is also going to be a difficult day for your own self, so her mom was likely to be going through a rough time. So, instead of automatically doing whatever it would take to make a hard thing easier on the girls? You got your feelings hurt, and made an already difficult situation even more difficult.

Was that your intent? Sure as hell doesn’t sound like it. It sounds like you very much wanted to be supportive, but in this -like so many other examples- you’re thrashing out? How you wanted to be supportive, and how your ex wanted to BE supported? Were diametrically opposed.

That’s one of those things that ends relationships, and is usually found out in the first 6-12mo. Regardless of whether or not someone has PTSD, it’s a personality thing, where the rubber meets the road. 2 people can talk until the cows come home about supporting each other through this or that, but until situations arise where that’s actually the case? There’s really no way to know how that’s going to shake out. Time and time again in your new relationship? It shook out badly.

So, from experience? That’s what I would look at. Rather than her past, and how things might/could/should have been different if her past wasn’t her past? Both of your presents. As, when I take the focus off the imaginary place where everything is different? And look at the present reality, where the things that make me, me? And the things that make her, her? Just weren’t working. In a lot of different ways.

Some of that was personality, others just bad timing (like the recent bereavement, and yes, 2 years is still recent. Especially when the wound is reopened time and again by also supporting a grieving child, and being eyeballs deep in a financial clusterf*ck). A 5 year relationship can sometimes absorb losing 6 months here and there as one partner struggles with grief (and that’s not an exorbitant amount of time, but very common for a single event to evoke 1/3/6 months worth of f*cked sideways), although 10 & 20 year relationships often still struggle ...but a 5 month relationship hasn’t even been around as long as one of those dips take. There just isn’t the foundation there to even know what they’re like when they’re not grieving vs when they are.

I talk periodically about my Uncle... who had a thing for “broken winged birds”. He was the peeeeeerfect guy for certain kinds of women going through a certain kind of hard time. But once they got better? He wasn’t the partner for them, anymore. They all (but 1) stayed friends... there was a monthly ex-wives dinner at his home I attended more than a few times, that was a rollicking good time. My family does that sort of thing, once you’re a part of the family? You’re always a part of it... although he’s the only one who was married and divorced more times than I can count. He had A LOT of ex wives. Great women. He had excellent taste. Both when he married them, and after. But they were very different women. Because, who a person is? Is often dependent on their circumstances. and people often take years and years to pass from one stage of their life, to the next. I don’t think any of my uncles marriages lasted less than 5 years? <<< My aunties were/are all amazing women, both when they were a hot mess and the best version of themselves. But it gave me a very first hand account of how people change. The person who’s attracted to me when I’m a hot mess? And the person attracted to me when I’m on fire, the world at my feet? Are unlikely to be the same person.

You had a few amazing months with your ex. But you also had problems, up to your eyeballs, almost from the gate (inside the first few months). Learning to recognise those? And give them he weight they deserve? Instead of overweighting what I wish/wanted/of things were different? Is one of the most useful skills I know. PTSD or no.
 
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