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You’re going to have to decide if you want to live like this forever, because if this is how she handles stressors she is going to do this over and over again. As far as anxiety goes, this isn’t about you or the relationship. She has PTSD and this is part of it. Once you come to terms with...

It’s not going to make sense to anybody but her. It’s the push/pull. I’d just follow her lead. It also couldn’t hurt to just ask her how much contact or communication she wants.

My advice? Leave him alone, give him some space. Imagine you are sick with a stomach bug, and you’re vomiting your guts out… and your boyfriend is knocking on the door every 5 minutes expecting you to eat the meal he cooked. It means a lot to him and he worked hard on it. Don’t you love him...

It’s the all-around wallowing. I can see that.

PTSD doesn’t cause anybody to raise their fists and beat somebody. It’s a broken stress response. How somebody reacts to that stress is a choice. PTSD doesn’t *make* anybody physically abuse, sleep around, lie, steal, or use substances. That’s somebody’s decision.

They know who they’re talking to… or rather, who they are avoiding. It’s not a delusion, it’s a coping mechanism to avoid stressors. Yeah… I don’t think we’re all talking to the same guy. This is common behavior with PTSD sufferers. Avoiding and isolating is easier than dealing with stressors...

Honestly, I don’t think I make my vet feel “safe.” There are times when my vet thinks I’m very unsafe just because he loves me and it makes him have actual emotions. I think that “safe” feeling is actually just trust sneaking in there.

Here’s the thing though… you can’t make her feel safe. She has PTSD, so she is going to feel unsafe regardless. It is a difficult lesson for supporters to learn, but we cannot “help” and we cannot “fix.” You are not going to love her better. She has a mental illness. Attempting to do the...

You are not responsible for managing her mental health. The sad thing is *everything* you do will be “wrong” when she’s in a state. You are not triggering her, she is being triggered. It’s happening in her head. You are not in charge of managing her stress reactions or triggered behavior.

The question is why would *you* want to do this to yourself. If her go-to response when she’s stressed is to call the cops on you, *you* are going to end up in jail. I’ve been with my vet for a decade, and the first time he calls the cops on me is the last time I will grace him with my...

You’re going to be disappointed if he is still ghosting during your birthday… there is no managing that. That’s an asshole thing to do if you are in a relationship.

The education you never knew you didn’t want.

I’m sorry… I know it’s hard. Has she stopped talking divorce?

It’s not a rule for him, it’s a rule for me. I can’t control anybody but myself. He’s going to do what he’s going to do. I will move on if he ghosts me… and he has no say or input. That’s my boundary, and I’ve communicated that to him. If he wants me to stick around he will respect my boundary.

Trauma therapy is rough. It makes things worse before it gets better. Getting therapy for yourself is a very good idea, because this is a mindf*ck.

Hell no… might as punch yourself in the face. I can’t remember, is she treated right now? Or is she off the rails and untreated?

I just tell people he’s sick. They figured it out on their own. My partner is an obviously disabled vet though, so it wasn’t hard to connect the dots.

I don’t know about triggered, but my partner has long periods of time when he is highly symptomatic. I don’t see that going well… Everybody is different, so finding a “normal” or “typical” pattern isn’t possible. You can maybe figure out a “typical” for your wife. My vet has a pattern of...

It’s OK not to be OK with the isolation if you need a lot of contact. People need different things in relationships to be happy. You have to take a realistic look at your needs in a relationship and decide if you can be happy if he isolates like this regularly. It’s also OK to decide how much...

Who knows what common is? There really is no rhyme or reason to it. Everybody has their own individual quirks. With that being said, my partner tends to act like nothing happened when he comes back around. It’s like freezing so the T-Rex doesn’t see you and bite your head off. It never happened...

I don’t take it personally because I understand it is a coping mechanism. He is in survival mode. He can’t think past surviving. Here comes the analogy we tell the new supporters. Think like this…. Image he is swimming upstream against the current in rapids, struggling to keep his head above...

We’ve been together ten years, and we still have sex. Sometimes I think he uses it as a distraction or to help him sleep. However there are times when he is symptomatic and has zero interest. He’s also physically disabled from combat, so sometimes pain gets in the way.

He was an ass… PTSD be damned.

Hell no. It’s been ten years and he still isolates. The thing that makes it better is me not taking it personally. I’m not upset if he needs alone time to feel better. I love him, and want him to feel better. Me insisting he interact with me, just to comfort me, while he already feeling terrible...

I’d chalk it up to straight up panic when things got real. It’s easy to talk about moving across the world when borders are closed. Can’t go to the grocery, but he’s going to move counties? That is masking.