As a late addition ETA... I dated people with PTSD ...almost exclusively... which had the effect of essentially removing it as an issue. As everyone lost their tempers, isolated, had nightmares, panic attacks, etc.? It didn't matter what was happening, but HOW.
So there is/was zero excuse. It's all character HOW someone treats others when they lose their temper, and HOW far they're willing to go, and HOW they isolated, and HOW they dealt with nightmares, etc., etc., etc..
Don't accept anything in a PTSD relationship you wouldn't accept in a relationship without PTSD.
Big Hint: "BUT XYZ ISN'T A PART OF NORMAL RELATIONSHIPS." tells you where your own limits are. Because there's nothing that happens with PTSD that isn't found elsewhere, for other reasons.
This is helpful!
I’m going to delete some of these posts soon, because if they found these one day, I think they’d be ashamed and hurt, and I’d hate that. It’s why I’ve tried to never gender them etc.
But I think I’m still hurting about our relationship, partly because I don’t understand it…
They seem well-liked, and they’ve been very intentional about committing to a church community, regular therapy, regular exercise, they’re in a skilled full-time job etc etc.
They‘d get up early in the morning to cook me breakfast (which I never asked for, they just liked to treat me I guess), and they listened to me when I shared deeper parts of my story. They drove me around a lot because I didn’t have a car in that new city, and they didn’t complain about it - they offered, every time. We’d sit there holding each other for hours, and I felt safe.
But then there was the time that they became triggered by a lame, silly joke I made about “not hitting the pedestrian on the sidewalk”, and they drove me off away from my home at 11pm. They were red in the face, and when they pulled into a gas station, they made me ’say things’ to appease them, before they drove me home.
They‘d just come out with random things like “I’d beat the sh*t out of you if you ever did x”.
They talked about manipulation and power a lot - probably more than they realise.
”I could manipulate the sh*t out of you to do ‘x’, but I won’t…”
”Oh, my dad would do that - he’s wrapped around my finger” (As a joke, but still… it‘s in their thinking…)
”If I kicked you ‘there’ [joking conversation], you’d see that I had the power the whole time [seemed less a jokey after that]”.
Or how they‘d occasionally snap at me infront of their friends - if I said “I think you’re good at that!” they mightve said “I don’t give a sh*t what you think”. And the friend looked a little taken aback for a second.
Or how they pushed against the physical boundaries that we’d agreed (they usually wanted to do more than just hug, and they’d push for it even if I said I didn’t want that on that evening), and how - when I asked them to stop doing something - they smiled, said “no” and carried on, so that I had to actually push them off me.
Even just how they’d laugh about other people sometimes in ways that felt a little mean spirited, or how willing they were to say their parents had done a sh*t job (which may be true, but it seemed to me like they were trying to do the right thing now - they were always over there, helping with this and that). It’s like… it was always someone else’s fault…
I could see their hurt. They were badly abused by some strangers as a child, and had something else happen in latter years from a ‘friend’.
They were bullied at school, and at college. And they had a horrible situation at a previous church which had really hurt them.
But I just couldn’t get my head around it - what was their CPTSD? What was their character? How do I square that with the fact that theyre committed to regular therapy and community, and that they seem well liked (I never actually talked to their friends about them, but they seemed to get on well with them)?
And how do I square with the fact that they made me feel safe and loved on the one hand, and totally hurt and ‘less than’ and attacked and injured on the other hand?
I even wondered if they’d ever actually physically attack me, but... perhaps not.
And yet when they were in floods of tears describing their abuse, I saw why some of it might be happening…
I wanted to try to make it work for them.
They love kids, they were desperate for a family… they’re in the ‘helping‘ professions… I dunno. I can’t work it out.
