PTSD Punchbag
New Here
My partner was abandoned by her father at 7, when he eventually re-surfaced with his new wife she was expected to accept it, behave and move on with no sensitivity or room for emotion given. To this day she was always made to feel like the black sheep of the family, just a burden. He effectively abandoned her both emotionally & practically.
At the same time her mother suffered a breakdown & was sectioned, she would only allow her to address her by her name & was very disinterested - essentially she was emotionally neglected. Later my partner ran away from home, returning pregnant with her 1st child at 19, this relationship failed & quickly led her towards her future husband & the father or her 2nd child. He was a dangerous & controlling man, over the next 7 years he did all the very worst of things you might expect a bad man could do to his wife.
I met her in May 2010, I was 29 & she 27. We had the most incredibly beautiful relationship, open, fun, adventurous, friendly, balanced, reasonable. I had found my soul-mate no doubts. We moved in together after a year (in to the same house where she had been abused) & for the next 3 years things were blissful. She was a difficultly messy & disorganised housemate, & sometimes a rather disorganised & arms-length mother. It appeared that our values on home & family were not always in-line, but nothing we should not have been able to overcome, we were still so in-tune with each other & she clearly loved me like nothing before.
By May 2013, we were bickering occasionally about her mess (she is uncommonly messy, eg our bedroom is knee deep in her clothes & she would always leave days of washing up), the bulk of the housework & running around fell to me. it just wasn't important to her (yet seeming neither was my comfort). I found this completely selfish & she did little about it for me - yet we still had a great time together.
By May 2014 she had become really aggressively defensive & occasionally volatile, she had hugely thrown herself into her interest in gym & training for marathon running to the extent that everything else took second place. All our plans became centred around it & she was rigidly inflexible & defensive of it. She seemed really disconnected & down, she knew she had needed to see someone about her past eventually so unbeknownst to me she explored EMDR therapy with a therapist that summer..........
BANG !!!!
She was gone !! Suddenly becoming nasty, vindictive, angry, distanced, disinterested, volatile & with no let-up - I literally did not recognise her !
I reluctantly retreated to my parents house for a couple of weeks, I was not qualified to deal with this & hoped it might provoke a change, instead I think it just made her feel abandoned.
We kind-of sorted things out after re-visiting the therapist, but things deteriorated quietly over the course of the coming year. She completely avoided & cut my family from her life, no longer meeting on family occasions, she was always on her phone/ Facebook/ out at the gym/ running - you name it she was doing it.
It became really invalidating, I felt unappreciated & devalued & stressed by it all, eventually my interest in sex vanished, I stopped working out, became demotivated (the opposite of her !) - I guess I was under more stress than I realised, I missed her so much. The sex was clearly an issue of rejection for her but I couldn't help it, it wasn't even the sex I missed, it was her smile, the look in her eyes, & the way she would be so affectionate & clearly just appreciate me so deeply just for being me.
By 2015 I had realised that whatever was wrong was beyond our control I was about to suggest counselling when she dropped the bombshell - she wanted to Break-up; 'she loved me but wasn't IN love with me' !
We underwent counselling, she upped & downed with really confusing behaviour & mixed signals of 'I love you' - 'I don't love you' - 'I don't know if I love you' !
I learned a lot about myself. While throughout this time we received a diagnosis of PTSD I barely factored it in - I was too preoccupied with repairing her perceived differences between us (little did I realise at the time that it was all largely attributable to PTSD).
She ultimately broke things off in August, I begged to continue with the counselling, something was not right about all of it.
We never broke contact, by Sept she begged me to forgive her, explaining that she had been in a bubble all year since the EMDR & wanted us to be a family again.
I returned home again, expecting to help her through this & work on things together. However we barely spoke of it, when I brought up PTSD it was met with avoidance or anger.
Occasionally she would open up about her experiences but she was SO distant & avoidant, she was barely at home, when she was she was head-down on her phone etc & there was no intimacy/sex. The NHS offered CBT therapy but each therapist cut the sessions stating that she was too complex for them & re diagnosing her with 'Complex-PTSD'.
We had an amazing night at a x-mas party, just like it was in the beginning, (this was the last time we had sex). We spent a week away in the country over new year & she became really relaxed & open, yet as the new year kicked in she withdrew again. I managed to get her onto anti-depressants (fluoxetine) which seemed to immediately increase her mood - but that was it, the avoidance, volatility, negativity, sexual disinterest, & emotional numbness all still remained.
While she was only on week 5 of her anti-depressant medication (Fluoxetine) they take 6-8 weeks to kick-in. I have also since learned that Fluoxitine can make things worse before they get better, can cause an emotional low point after the settling in period AND even when working properly can cause further emotional numbing (which has brought into question the value of its use for PTSD sufferers !)
She has announced again that she wants to end the relationship. Again she says she loves me (probably closer than ever) but that there is no attraction, she is not 'IN' love with me. That she feels 'numb'. Obviously I tried to talk her out of this decision highlighting that all of these feelings could have been influenced by PTSD - no use (probably just made her feel like a diagnosis).
She had asked me what I would do if she ended things, I foolishly suggested that I'd probably really struggle & have to cut all ties. This was a stupid thing to say, especially to someone who has been abandoned by all the men in her life - I didn't really think this through
The truth was, I didn't know what I'd do - She is my best friend, I couldn't be without her, especially while knowing she is suffering !!
I work away as a firefighter for 4 days a week, on my first day away (01st March 2016) she put this into a text asking me not to contact her, (she also removed me from wassap & Facebook)- On day 24 I'm still waiting, I was advised by a counsellor to leave her alone & not to go home.
I hate those responsible for what they have put her through, what they have done to her.
I just wanted to be the best human being possible for her & give her all the love she always deserved. I hate her ex-husband for even managing to destroy our happy-ending to the misery he caused her.
I fear that I may have learned what was going on a little too late to be sensitive to it, to not take it personally & to educate myself sufficiently to avoid hurting her & triggering perceptions of control/ manipulation. I spend my life rescuing people every day, but I'm powerless to save the only person I have ever really cared about.
I know this is not her, she is not herself she is PTSD all over. But she is a real person behind it all too - I'm left wondering;
Was this her decision or PTSD's/ Fluoxetine's Does it even make any difference ?!Will I hear from her again?When? Did I scare her into shutting me out for good when I suggested that I would want to cut all ties?!Will she still want to end if / when I do?I had managed to line her up with as much 'human givens' therapy through a charity as necessary, but I can't tell her about it
How are the kids? They have been as affected by this as me but now I can't even be there for them to pick up the piecesIn addition to which, I have once again had my heart torn out of my chest & stamped on by the most important person in my life
Anyone got any ideas?!
Any sufferers with anything enlightening to offer on this particular case?
Kind Regards,
PTSD Punchbag
