Justmehere
Sponsor
Gator,
I know you need some time to think and process the previous posts before you respond fully, and that's a good thing. It's also great that you are getting words out and beginning to share with others.
It will help folks here respond with the kind of advice you are asking for if you finally can face this head on. Write the words. Not even so much for anyone else, but yourself. And if it helps you, this is a good place to post. People here are generally not the judgy type.
It does seem like you are evasively implying that you cheated on her 3 years ago with someone else for a week, and that she is just now bringing it up, you have told your therapist and she is claiming your partner has PTSD from your cheating on her... is that right?
If you can't define it then I think the real issue is YOUR pattern of avoidance, not hers. If you can't yet define it, let's start there, in you, instead of focusing so much on what may or may not be going on for her. None of us here can really know.
If you did cheat in her, then your therapist is not being clinically appropriate as others have well explained. Someone can not develop PTSD from cheating alone. They can develop a whole host of other mental health problems but not PTSD. An event of cheating combined with a known or unknown previous trauma history (including attachment wounds from developmental trauma) can lead to PTSD. But cheating alone, it doesn't cause the specific clinical neurobiological condition of PTSD.
That's part of why it's important to face and define what you do know about what happened here.
But this is all jumping ahead.
First, YOU need to focus and deal with your own pattern of avoidance here. Not on what her possible or not possible mental head diagnosis could or could not be...
We can focus on what is known and that's your pattern of avoidance and your pain about the situation and the possible loss of relationship here. I can tell that you want to do the best you can with it all, and that whatever happened, you feel bad really about it.
It's also not like either of you can now say "well you are right, that's no big deal now." Clearly, it is key issue for her and the more you can face that and validate it, the better off you both may be.
You both have a pattern of avoiding this. As you are experiencing, when we avoid stuff, it tends to come back up later on, and often it comes back much stronger than it would have in the first place. But avoidance is a coping skill and defense mechanism against pain. Maybe neither of you had better skills to deal with it in the moment, and now you are both dealing with it when you absolutely can't keep avoiding anymore. You waited as long as you did. She waited as long as she did. It wasn't good or bad, right or wrong. It is what it is and you are at where you are at now. The more you can be present with this moment now the better.
The good thing is you both have the opportunity to deal with it now.
Focus as much as you can on what you do know, and not what you guess. A lot of unneeded suffering is caused by assumptions. We all know what they say about the word "assume"... it makes an ass out of u and me. (Get it? Ok, really bad joke. Sorry if it's bad timing too. I'm very good at making an a** of myself.)
Anyhow... Bad jokes aside....
You are calling whatever happened as "trauma." If it is trauma of the criterion A type, there is no way anyone can know if she has PTSD until she is assessed by her own individual therapist. It's great you are looking into treatment options for her already, but this is probably going to be a lot messier and take a lot more work and time than giving her space and having her go do EMDR and then you boy get to keep the life you built together.
If this is the major mental health condition of PTSD, as your therapist is suggesting, it's not a matter of "waiting" to suddenly having these major mental health symptoms 3 years later.
Symptoms happen when they happen. Maybe your therapist is suggesting your partner had PTSD in order to try to help you understand his isn't like some kind of mean thing she is doing, but that your partner may have a serious mental health issue related to whatever happened and that it's going to take some serious time and work to deal with it.
Sometimes it can take decades for PTSD to show up and sometimes it comes up just when someone is finally feeling safe enough to experience symptoms from the past. So if this is the major mental health condition of PTSD, symptoms showing up years later is pretty par for the course.
If this is a case of her experiencing mental health symptoms and/or a normal reaction to your cheating on her 3 years ago, it's still not unreasonable for her to now struggle with it. It's possible that as your levels of commitment and closeness grew closer and closer to each other, she began to really examine she relationship and if she could keep growing closer to you. She discovered that lingering issues were there she couldn't overlook. It's also possible that something else happened between both of you and stirred up the unresolved betrayal that both of you avoided dealing with years ago.
You mention giving her space a handful of times and I get the impression that while you are making a good effort to be ok with this and respect her need for space... deep down, you are really hurt.
So let's start by dealing with what we do know: You care for her, you are trying to do the right thing, you don't want to lose the life you have built together.
Focus more on what else you do know about you and the situation, for sure, and less on what you assume could be possible, I think you will get a lot further faster.
I commend you for doing the hard work of therapy yourself and reaching out for help. You deserve big kudos for that. It takes real courage to face all of this and reach out for support here too.
(edited to fix a big typo.)
I know you need some time to think and process the previous posts before you respond fully, and that's a good thing. It's also great that you are getting words out and beginning to share with others.
It will help folks here respond with the kind of advice you are asking for if you finally can face this head on. Write the words. Not even so much for anyone else, but yourself. And if it helps you, this is a good place to post. People here are generally not the judgy type.
It does seem like you are evasively implying that you cheated on her 3 years ago with someone else for a week, and that she is just now bringing it up, you have told your therapist and she is claiming your partner has PTSD from your cheating on her... is that right?
If you can't define it then I think the real issue is YOUR pattern of avoidance, not hers. If you can't yet define it, let's start there, in you, instead of focusing so much on what may or may not be going on for her. None of us here can really know.
If you did cheat in her, then your therapist is not being clinically appropriate as others have well explained. Someone can not develop PTSD from cheating alone. They can develop a whole host of other mental health problems but not PTSD. An event of cheating combined with a known or unknown previous trauma history (including attachment wounds from developmental trauma) can lead to PTSD. But cheating alone, it doesn't cause the specific clinical neurobiological condition of PTSD.
That's part of why it's important to face and define what you do know about what happened here.
But this is all jumping ahead.
First, YOU need to focus and deal with your own pattern of avoidance here. Not on what her possible or not possible mental head diagnosis could or could not be...
We can focus on what is known and that's your pattern of avoidance and your pain about the situation and the possible loss of relationship here. I can tell that you want to do the best you can with it all, and that whatever happened, you feel bad really about it.
In your initial post it seemed like you both didn't deal with it at the time, and that's important to consider before you start getting too stuck for too long on what she is doing or not doing. No matter what happened in the past and no matter what is happening with her now, the only person you can control Is you.
It's also not like either of you can now say "well you are right, that's no big deal now." Clearly, it is key issue for her and the more you can face that and validate it, the better off you both may be.
You both have a pattern of avoiding this. As you are experiencing, when we avoid stuff, it tends to come back up later on, and often it comes back much stronger than it would have in the first place. But avoidance is a coping skill and defense mechanism against pain. Maybe neither of you had better skills to deal with it in the moment, and now you are both dealing with it when you absolutely can't keep avoiding anymore. You waited as long as you did. She waited as long as she did. It wasn't good or bad, right or wrong. It is what it is and you are at where you are at now. The more you can be present with this moment now the better.
The good thing is you both have the opportunity to deal with it now.
Focus as much as you can on what you do know, and not what you guess. A lot of unneeded suffering is caused by assumptions. We all know what they say about the word "assume"... it makes an ass out of u and me. (Get it? Ok, really bad joke. Sorry if it's bad timing too. I'm very good at making an a** of myself.)
Anyhow... Bad jokes aside....
You are calling whatever happened as "trauma." If it is trauma of the criterion A type, there is no way anyone can know if she has PTSD until she is assessed by her own individual therapist. It's great you are looking into treatment options for her already, but this is probably going to be a lot messier and take a lot more work and time than giving her space and having her go do EMDR and then you boy get to keep the life you built together.
If this is the major mental health condition of PTSD, as your therapist is suggesting, it's not a matter of "waiting" to suddenly having these major mental health symptoms 3 years later.
Symptoms happen when they happen. Maybe your therapist is suggesting your partner had PTSD in order to try to help you understand his isn't like some kind of mean thing she is doing, but that your partner may have a serious mental health issue related to whatever happened and that it's going to take some serious time and work to deal with it.
Sometimes it can take decades for PTSD to show up and sometimes it comes up just when someone is finally feeling safe enough to experience symptoms from the past. So if this is the major mental health condition of PTSD, symptoms showing up years later is pretty par for the course.
If this is a case of her experiencing mental health symptoms and/or a normal reaction to your cheating on her 3 years ago, it's still not unreasonable for her to now struggle with it. It's possible that as your levels of commitment and closeness grew closer and closer to each other, she began to really examine she relationship and if she could keep growing closer to you. She discovered that lingering issues were there she couldn't overlook. It's also possible that something else happened between both of you and stirred up the unresolved betrayal that both of you avoided dealing with years ago.
You mention giving her space a handful of times and I get the impression that while you are making a good effort to be ok with this and respect her need for space... deep down, you are really hurt.
So let's start by dealing with what we do know: You care for her, you are trying to do the right thing, you don't want to lose the life you have built together.
Focus more on what else you do know about you and the situation, for sure, and less on what you assume could be possible, I think you will get a lot further faster.
I commend you for doing the hard work of therapy yourself and reaching out for help. You deserve big kudos for that. It takes real courage to face all of this and reach out for support here too.
(edited to fix a big typo.)
Last edited:
