resistencia
New Here
Hello All,
I am keenly aware of how difficult it must be for Supporters in a romantic partnership with PTSD. As a person with PTSD, I have figured out a way to simultaneously have this disorder while doing my best to remain empathic and observing toward how it affects my main Supporter, my Boyfriend. I know that he often sees the worst of it and has been subjected to times in which I have been contentious and irritable toward him (I feel really bad about that.)
I try to do as much as I can to manage my PTSD. Recently, I fell into a bit of relapse when I got triggered by something that happened with me in therapy. Admittedly, I was a bit harsh on my Supporter during the thick of it and feel terrible about the ways that this relapse affected how I interacted with him. I said a lot of things in the thick of anger that I should have said in a more respectful tone. A relapse of this kind has not happened for almost half a year: I have been doing well, and I am kind of bummed that I lost foothold of my strong set of coping skills and got snarky and moody with him.
So, here I am, with some really good things in place (just got offered a good job) and after my relapse, my Boyfriend has detached himself from me to a point that I find to be uncomfortable. I can't even celebrate this momentous occasion with him. He won't acknowledge it. The air is full of tension in this apartment. He is choosing to sleep on the couch for the fourth night in a row. He is short with me and looks angry. He is a light sleeper, so I am up in our bedroom writing this message. I can't go down to get a cup of tea, because I don't want to wake him and cause more resentment. At this time, I am concerned that we may have reached a point of no return.
My Boyfriend and I have been together for almost two years. When we first met, I was well ahead of a tidal wave of multiple trauma. I didn't have time to slow down and deal with it, but as I ran, the wave kept growing larger and larger. Unfortunately, I was too busy, overworked, dealing with multiple traumas that were unfolding without pause to stop and take good care of myself.
By the time I met my Boyfriend, I started spiraling into full-blown crisis. The tidal wave crashed down on me. I had been living on adrenaline for so long, and it reached a point where it was about to run out. It was only until I was terminated from my job, lost my car, my apartment that I was FORCED to slow down and that's when the PTSD symptoms hit me with an unforgivable vengeance.
This became the foundation of our relationship and at that time I was dissociative, experiencing flashbacks, engaging in wild reenactments of my traumas, getting keyed up by certain phrases my Boyfriend would use that would remind me of my abusers. It was a very embarrassing ordeal to cast this impression upon him. Even though I have always had PTSD, it was never this severe. I tried my best to be truthful with him, and told him that I have PTSD. I explained that what was happening was years of unfinished business begging to be dealt with.
I can't say that he was always the most understanding person. Oftentimes, he would take my PTSD very personally. I would struggle to explain, to shout, 'It's not YOU, it's the ghosts, I Love you and trust you, believe me!" Sometimes, he wouldn't hear me. He was too angry with the PTSD, he refused to direct his anger toward the perps and circumstances that brought me there to that place to begin with. He was angry with me, for what I said, how I behaved, and that was that. There were times where he would react by feeding into the trauma by shouting back, threatening to leave, or by not coming around to talk with me when things were calm. He would refuse to communicate during those times when it would have resolved an outburst, problem, or misunderstanding as a result of my PTSD.
What is still the case is that there is a resentment for the fact that I have this disorder. I would often be in the thick of it, while trying my best to explain my shakes after being triggered during sex, the madness behind my projection, that this boiled down to me arguing, not with him, but with my abusers. I simultaneously experienced and explained my hypervigilence, my difficulties with trust, the uncertainty of landmines, and disclosed to the best of my ability what I know from research about these manifestations.
This tidal wave continued to annihilate me and those around me until I became hospitalized for the first time in my life. I took that experience as an opportunity for a time out for healing and to stabilize. It was at that time, where he was ready to walk away and never look back. The case manager assigned to me gave him the advice to leave me, and for a moment in time, he took that advice, moving my things without my consent to my sisters' house. During that time, I was scared and hurt by his decision, but somehow we ended up sticking through it and staying together. He ended up admitting that he was very scared at where I was at and very vulnerable to the case managers advice. He was present in my life when I recovered, and I thought that we would too, but I still see how my earlier days of full-blown PTSD have marred his perception of me.
All I've ever wanted was for him to understand. I thought that he could. I still want him to. Its essential.
However, I am growing weary of being both student and teacher for his understanding of PTSD. I am wondering if he will ever get it for himself; read an article or two, educate himself on the importance of mutual boundaries and self-care. I wish he would resume his therapy with his own trauma therapist. I wonder if there will be a time where he stops taking it personally. For a short period of time, he attended weekly appointments at the trauma agency I go to, but after a while, he stopped going altogether, saying he no longer had time.
He was being seen as a co-survivor and it was my greatest hope that he would be able to have a place to discuss his experiences living with a person with PTSD. However, during this time he was being seen, he talked a lot about how he felt that I was walking all over him, that I was taking advantage of him. That he was unhappy with me. That he just wanted a relationship that is 'normal.' Those statements hurt and I wasn't sure where they were coming from. I temporarily lost trust in the agency, was scared of what he was saying to his therapist, and what she was saying to him.
When I asked, he replied by telling me that what he was saying to her was, 'None of my business," and he would accuse me of being intrusive and controlling for even asking. Such outbursts would come up when he would get really stressed but then he would backpedal and things would run smoothly for a while. I started feeling self-conscious, left with the message that he wasn't interested in being with someone who has PTSD anymore. I accept that I can't be anyone else but myself and that is all I want to be. I have trauma. I have seen things. I have survived them. Sometimes they haunt me. I don't want to be made ashamed for having this. I don't want to have to hide when I am struggling from my partner because it upsets him. I just want his affection and support when times get rough. I don't want to pretend.
Though I manage PTSD as best as I can, this does not mean that I can't or won't sometimes relapse. At this point in the relationship, he is running away from me if there is the merest sign that I may be symptomatic. I wish it wouldn't have to be the end of the world for him when this happened to me. When I am starting to get triggered, I often try to tell him in advance. This is usually a cue that I am seeking extra understanding, support, companionship, affection and I express that. I have discovered that establishing closeness with others is what helps curb the intensity of my relapse best for me. However, this doesn't happen. Instead, he pulls away from me, busies up his schedule with other people and activities. He shuts down, avoids me, and sleeps on the couch.
When I confront him about how much time he is spending away from the house, he tells me that I am trying to be controlling, that I want all his time to myself. This is not true, this is not what I want, or have ever asked of him. I think its good that he has outlets and things in place to engage in self-care. What I want is to be able to spend some time with him. I have chosen to only let a handful of people into my life post-trauma. I work little by little to expand the tribe, but it is careful work for me to make sure that the people I let in are safe. This means, that I don't have as many social supports as he does.
In fact, a lot of the time, I enjoy spending time one on one with him. I would be open to spending time with him and his friends, but he often neglects to invite me. This is a person who has seen me at my worst, and is watching me become better, but that doesn't mean that at this point he is willing to accept that I am getting better. When I have periodically forayed into my usual symptoms after some stressful event, he is ready to jump ship, he is resentful, he is distant, and quiet. He won't even hug me.
So when he goes out to 'decompress' in the face of a relapse or trigger, I am spending a lot of that time in isolation. This isolation does not decrease my symptoms. Instead, I start to become more irritable around him. Little things begin to become problems for me. I start to complain, I start to unravel just a little bit more. I've learned to cope in other ways since I know that he isn't as available. I do use the phone, text, and reach out to others, but sometimes, who I long for the most, is him. A warm body, a hug, someone who is willing to tell me that they believe me, that they are proud of me, that they love me. This is not happening as much anymore.
My Boyfriends' affection waned after I had a very difficult period of time where I shut down sexually. It was not his fault, it was not personal- it was exhaustion from years of being sexually used and abused. I needed to stop having sex because it was triggering, scary, and full of flashbacks. Since it was physically difficult to have sex with all of these symptoms, I thought it would be useful in some way to test the waters to see if what we had together was more than just erotic attraction. What happened from here is that he started sleeping on the couch, complaining that he wasn't getting 'it' enough, he stopped saying 'I love you,' and lamented that we were on the path of a sexless existence. This put a lot of pressure on me. I didn't give in by having sex when I clearly wasn't in a place to, but I felt ashamed that he couldn't understand that I needed to stop before I could be fully present again.
So, bringing myself back to the present, I am noticing that after my minor relapse over the weekend, that he has grown cold. He looks angry at me when he comes home and is short and rude with me when I try to be kind and nice. When he does speak, he tells me that all I ever do is insult him. That I hurt him, force him to be home when he does not want to be, force him to give up time that he doesn't want to give up. We have gone through all of this before, but now I'm starting to wonder...
Is this worth it? Are we at the point of no return?
I realize that this is a sensitive personal relationship and that many of you may not know exactly what to say. I feel like this last relapse is the last straw for him with how he is behaving. I don't know how to talk to him right now without him getting angry or just ignoring me. I have given him materials to read about trauma, encouraged him to seek therapy about it, I have suggested him getting a little more familiar with trauma, but so far he hasn't jumped on those suggestions. He thinks its 'common sense' that he is receiving from the literature and counseling, not valuable information. I am just not seeing how his understanding of the common sense of Sufferer support is helping either of us in any way.
Lastly, I do love him. I do want to try to work out this issue. I realize some of you may say I should just walk away. It is difficult for me because I have spent more time with him than I have with anyone in the past five years- that matters to me, that investment. There still is stability, but I don't think that his current approach is helping. I just want to help him understand. I have thought about couples counseling for people with trauma. I have tried patience. I am willing to try anything healthy to resolve this.
I am at a very profound impasse. I am asking forum members here if they have any tips that I could use as a Sufferer to create a healthy bridge of communication and intimacy with my supporter.
Any supporters out there? Please let me know what has worked for you to not take PTSD personally. Any feedback of any kind helps. I really want to see an end to these problems, taking my own accountability where accountability is due.
-Resistencia
I am keenly aware of how difficult it must be for Supporters in a romantic partnership with PTSD. As a person with PTSD, I have figured out a way to simultaneously have this disorder while doing my best to remain empathic and observing toward how it affects my main Supporter, my Boyfriend. I know that he often sees the worst of it and has been subjected to times in which I have been contentious and irritable toward him (I feel really bad about that.)
I try to do as much as I can to manage my PTSD. Recently, I fell into a bit of relapse when I got triggered by something that happened with me in therapy. Admittedly, I was a bit harsh on my Supporter during the thick of it and feel terrible about the ways that this relapse affected how I interacted with him. I said a lot of things in the thick of anger that I should have said in a more respectful tone. A relapse of this kind has not happened for almost half a year: I have been doing well, and I am kind of bummed that I lost foothold of my strong set of coping skills and got snarky and moody with him.
So, here I am, with some really good things in place (just got offered a good job) and after my relapse, my Boyfriend has detached himself from me to a point that I find to be uncomfortable. I can't even celebrate this momentous occasion with him. He won't acknowledge it. The air is full of tension in this apartment. He is choosing to sleep on the couch for the fourth night in a row. He is short with me and looks angry. He is a light sleeper, so I am up in our bedroom writing this message. I can't go down to get a cup of tea, because I don't want to wake him and cause more resentment. At this time, I am concerned that we may have reached a point of no return.
My Boyfriend and I have been together for almost two years. When we first met, I was well ahead of a tidal wave of multiple trauma. I didn't have time to slow down and deal with it, but as I ran, the wave kept growing larger and larger. Unfortunately, I was too busy, overworked, dealing with multiple traumas that were unfolding without pause to stop and take good care of myself.
By the time I met my Boyfriend, I started spiraling into full-blown crisis. The tidal wave crashed down on me. I had been living on adrenaline for so long, and it reached a point where it was about to run out. It was only until I was terminated from my job, lost my car, my apartment that I was FORCED to slow down and that's when the PTSD symptoms hit me with an unforgivable vengeance.
This became the foundation of our relationship and at that time I was dissociative, experiencing flashbacks, engaging in wild reenactments of my traumas, getting keyed up by certain phrases my Boyfriend would use that would remind me of my abusers. It was a very embarrassing ordeal to cast this impression upon him. Even though I have always had PTSD, it was never this severe. I tried my best to be truthful with him, and told him that I have PTSD. I explained that what was happening was years of unfinished business begging to be dealt with.
I can't say that he was always the most understanding person. Oftentimes, he would take my PTSD very personally. I would struggle to explain, to shout, 'It's not YOU, it's the ghosts, I Love you and trust you, believe me!" Sometimes, he wouldn't hear me. He was too angry with the PTSD, he refused to direct his anger toward the perps and circumstances that brought me there to that place to begin with. He was angry with me, for what I said, how I behaved, and that was that. There were times where he would react by feeding into the trauma by shouting back, threatening to leave, or by not coming around to talk with me when things were calm. He would refuse to communicate during those times when it would have resolved an outburst, problem, or misunderstanding as a result of my PTSD.
What is still the case is that there is a resentment for the fact that I have this disorder. I would often be in the thick of it, while trying my best to explain my shakes after being triggered during sex, the madness behind my projection, that this boiled down to me arguing, not with him, but with my abusers. I simultaneously experienced and explained my hypervigilence, my difficulties with trust, the uncertainty of landmines, and disclosed to the best of my ability what I know from research about these manifestations.
This tidal wave continued to annihilate me and those around me until I became hospitalized for the first time in my life. I took that experience as an opportunity for a time out for healing and to stabilize. It was at that time, where he was ready to walk away and never look back. The case manager assigned to me gave him the advice to leave me, and for a moment in time, he took that advice, moving my things without my consent to my sisters' house. During that time, I was scared and hurt by his decision, but somehow we ended up sticking through it and staying together. He ended up admitting that he was very scared at where I was at and very vulnerable to the case managers advice. He was present in my life when I recovered, and I thought that we would too, but I still see how my earlier days of full-blown PTSD have marred his perception of me.
All I've ever wanted was for him to understand. I thought that he could. I still want him to. Its essential.
However, I am growing weary of being both student and teacher for his understanding of PTSD. I am wondering if he will ever get it for himself; read an article or two, educate himself on the importance of mutual boundaries and self-care. I wish he would resume his therapy with his own trauma therapist. I wonder if there will be a time where he stops taking it personally. For a short period of time, he attended weekly appointments at the trauma agency I go to, but after a while, he stopped going altogether, saying he no longer had time.
He was being seen as a co-survivor and it was my greatest hope that he would be able to have a place to discuss his experiences living with a person with PTSD. However, during this time he was being seen, he talked a lot about how he felt that I was walking all over him, that I was taking advantage of him. That he was unhappy with me. That he just wanted a relationship that is 'normal.' Those statements hurt and I wasn't sure where they were coming from. I temporarily lost trust in the agency, was scared of what he was saying to his therapist, and what she was saying to him.
When I asked, he replied by telling me that what he was saying to her was, 'None of my business," and he would accuse me of being intrusive and controlling for even asking. Such outbursts would come up when he would get really stressed but then he would backpedal and things would run smoothly for a while. I started feeling self-conscious, left with the message that he wasn't interested in being with someone who has PTSD anymore. I accept that I can't be anyone else but myself and that is all I want to be. I have trauma. I have seen things. I have survived them. Sometimes they haunt me. I don't want to be made ashamed for having this. I don't want to have to hide when I am struggling from my partner because it upsets him. I just want his affection and support when times get rough. I don't want to pretend.
Though I manage PTSD as best as I can, this does not mean that I can't or won't sometimes relapse. At this point in the relationship, he is running away from me if there is the merest sign that I may be symptomatic. I wish it wouldn't have to be the end of the world for him when this happened to me. When I am starting to get triggered, I often try to tell him in advance. This is usually a cue that I am seeking extra understanding, support, companionship, affection and I express that. I have discovered that establishing closeness with others is what helps curb the intensity of my relapse best for me. However, this doesn't happen. Instead, he pulls away from me, busies up his schedule with other people and activities. He shuts down, avoids me, and sleeps on the couch.
When I confront him about how much time he is spending away from the house, he tells me that I am trying to be controlling, that I want all his time to myself. This is not true, this is not what I want, or have ever asked of him. I think its good that he has outlets and things in place to engage in self-care. What I want is to be able to spend some time with him. I have chosen to only let a handful of people into my life post-trauma. I work little by little to expand the tribe, but it is careful work for me to make sure that the people I let in are safe. This means, that I don't have as many social supports as he does.
In fact, a lot of the time, I enjoy spending time one on one with him. I would be open to spending time with him and his friends, but he often neglects to invite me. This is a person who has seen me at my worst, and is watching me become better, but that doesn't mean that at this point he is willing to accept that I am getting better. When I have periodically forayed into my usual symptoms after some stressful event, he is ready to jump ship, he is resentful, he is distant, and quiet. He won't even hug me.
So when he goes out to 'decompress' in the face of a relapse or trigger, I am spending a lot of that time in isolation. This isolation does not decrease my symptoms. Instead, I start to become more irritable around him. Little things begin to become problems for me. I start to complain, I start to unravel just a little bit more. I've learned to cope in other ways since I know that he isn't as available. I do use the phone, text, and reach out to others, but sometimes, who I long for the most, is him. A warm body, a hug, someone who is willing to tell me that they believe me, that they are proud of me, that they love me. This is not happening as much anymore.
My Boyfriends' affection waned after I had a very difficult period of time where I shut down sexually. It was not his fault, it was not personal- it was exhaustion from years of being sexually used and abused. I needed to stop having sex because it was triggering, scary, and full of flashbacks. Since it was physically difficult to have sex with all of these symptoms, I thought it would be useful in some way to test the waters to see if what we had together was more than just erotic attraction. What happened from here is that he started sleeping on the couch, complaining that he wasn't getting 'it' enough, he stopped saying 'I love you,' and lamented that we were on the path of a sexless existence. This put a lot of pressure on me. I didn't give in by having sex when I clearly wasn't in a place to, but I felt ashamed that he couldn't understand that I needed to stop before I could be fully present again.
So, bringing myself back to the present, I am noticing that after my minor relapse over the weekend, that he has grown cold. He looks angry at me when he comes home and is short and rude with me when I try to be kind and nice. When he does speak, he tells me that all I ever do is insult him. That I hurt him, force him to be home when he does not want to be, force him to give up time that he doesn't want to give up. We have gone through all of this before, but now I'm starting to wonder...
Is this worth it? Are we at the point of no return?
I realize that this is a sensitive personal relationship and that many of you may not know exactly what to say. I feel like this last relapse is the last straw for him with how he is behaving. I don't know how to talk to him right now without him getting angry or just ignoring me. I have given him materials to read about trauma, encouraged him to seek therapy about it, I have suggested him getting a little more familiar with trauma, but so far he hasn't jumped on those suggestions. He thinks its 'common sense' that he is receiving from the literature and counseling, not valuable information. I am just not seeing how his understanding of the common sense of Sufferer support is helping either of us in any way.
Lastly, I do love him. I do want to try to work out this issue. I realize some of you may say I should just walk away. It is difficult for me because I have spent more time with him than I have with anyone in the past five years- that matters to me, that investment. There still is stability, but I don't think that his current approach is helping. I just want to help him understand. I have thought about couples counseling for people with trauma. I have tried patience. I am willing to try anything healthy to resolve this.
I am at a very profound impasse. I am asking forum members here if they have any tips that I could use as a Sufferer to create a healthy bridge of communication and intimacy with my supporter.
Any supporters out there? Please let me know what has worked for you to not take PTSD personally. Any feedback of any kind helps. I really want to see an end to these problems, taking my own accountability where accountability is due.
-Resistencia
