Childhood trauma C-PTSD non attachment - can you form a lasting intimate relationship with CPTSD?

[Changing4Best]

I was married for 23 years, have had childhood trauma and also experienced adult trauma, but not within the marriage until he started to suffer from Dementia, at which point he did become violent. He was never violent before that, so I knew it was his Dementia that was causing it, not just his nature or something.

Eventually, after taking care of him for 5 years, I did have to place him in a nursing home. He lived there for about 3 years and then had a massive heart attack. He went to the Hospital and that was where we spent his final days.

Anyway, yes, we had an intimate relationship, and even to our last days together while he was dying, there was love, compassion and understanding. He was a sweet man, and I have a lot of great memories of our marriage.

We were married in 1982, he had a massive stroke in 1997 (at which point he became wheelchair bound), he became bed bound in 2004 and he passed away in 2005.

For the most part, our marriage was a good one. We never were able to have children though, so the usual stresses of that were never a part of our marriage. Finances were pretty good, so we rarely argued. That was great, because I hate strife.

 

[grit]

There is a woman in one of my therapy groups who said she has a husband with trauma and they do not get along but also she wants to keep the marriage.
We are not allowed to give advice in the therapy group so that forces me to provide understanding but what I share with her was something like this:

You need to become more aware of your own issues and hooks. One of the reasons, my husband and I get along is he is really truly detached from my un-healed parts and they show up, he may say something like "you are back!" which makes me laugh (depending on the situation) but also tells me, I am on threat or rage/anger alert - these things truly just show up as control or boundary pushing like if I ask my husband what did you talk about in your therapy? he would say, I do not want to share that (my name) while he looks at me directly and if I look hurt he will say something like I hope you understand babe, I love you but this is my therapy and I need to have my privacy...
but because he is looking at me (not acting all mysterious and evasive) I feel that is the truth and that asking was my issue showing up as intrusive and annoying. So in essence, he is more direct and I am more accepting not escalating but not all the time but eventually in a good moment, we will talk about what was that all about?

Also my husband and I we are not shy to compare childhood notes and connect with our darkness to our childhood. For example, I am seeking control to know for example he is not talking about me or in a bad way that is fear of abandonment or insult from the past. My husband has had issues where he thought being angry was offensive because he was told as a child not to express it but we had conversation where we agreed of course everybody gets angry as they get happy or whatever. Emotions are human nature. and so forth.

We want to grow and learn and I think that is fundamental difference from just having a relationship and following the formulic way dictated by our culture. We are taking different route than what is normal because we are not.

I think in your case, you need to be empowered first to know YOU and most of your hooks that are getting bothered by his outburts. At the end of the day, most of his outbursts are not about you but YOU ARE TAKING THEM PERSONALLY because they are hooking into your hooks of unfulfilled childhood issues of your own.

I hope this makes more sense.

 

[Lucycat]

Has there been anyone diginoised with C-PTSD and been able to form a lasting intimate relationship..it sounds like it is almost impossible.

I have been diagnosed with CPTSD and have been happily married for over 30 years (to the same man!). I have not been an easy partner and there have been ups and downs. I think what helped us was that, by pure coincidence I married a psychiatric nurse. At that point I was NOT diagnosed, but the trauma had already happened. When I really needed help and that crisis led to my diagnosis, it was my husbands contacts that enabled me to access help in the form of therapy and medication, very quickly.

 

[Kopykat]

Yes it can but it takes work. You may be fine one day and the next need constant reassurance you won’t be abandoned. But the longer the relationship goes on, the more consistent the other person is, the less there will be “flare ups”. I used to think it was hopeless but I don’t think it is. Relationships are hard and take work regardless of diagnoses.

 

[68philly]

Yes it can but it takes work. You may be fine one day and the next need constant reassurance you won’t be abandoned. But the longer the relationship goes on, the more consistent the other person is, the less there will be “flare ups”. I used to think it was hopeless but I don’t think it is. Relationships are hard and take work regardless of diagnoses.

Thank you and yes they are..

 

[Hopeforlife]

I have PTSD with complex trauma. I have been married 4 years and been together 10 with my Husband. We have a happy healthy relationship - I think.
I do remember the beginning of our relationship when I pushed and pushed him away as I was so terrified to form my first consented sexual relationship. Intimacy took a long time and there was so many triggers which popped up along the way. With my husbands support, understanding, compassion and consistency it felt like we were in a hurdle race for a while. I was strong enough then to deal with a lot of this without therapy but I had a lot of therapy before I met him.

I have had a relapse the past two years and back in therapy as I recognised I still had a lot to work on.

My husbands support and love has never waivered and he has shown so much strength to drag us through each day.

I do believe that it is possible to form lasting intimate relationships but for me it was damn hard work. As someone previous mentioned - Hope and optimism got me through.

I hope it works out for you. Please take care of yourself also. ?

 

[grit]

I was going to write a long post since I said I had something to add but I will try to make it short and succinct.

These comments are my personal experience and I do acknowledge we all reach whatever we are going different ways.

I focused on building relationships with people since i was 18 when I left the clutches of my mother's violent ways and the emotional abandment of my father. Not to mention the chaos and violence among my siblings and I - obviously children do what they know- so my siblings and I fought like vicious animals as well.

I left all of that at 18 and pursued life on how to build relationship with others. ambition, self-hood, self esteem, and any other thing in life like creativity were second to how do I relate to others.

All I think about awake or asleep was how do I relate to others? why do I feel hate toward those I do not know? why does this person does not like me? why do not i like that person? how do others relate to others? what is intimacy? why cant I have relationship even though I am dating all the time? what do others do that I do not do or do not know?
I spent my life like that for about 25yrs. I learned few things, intimacy with friendship is important. it does not take place of intimacy with a partner but it does give experience about how to go about that. I trust some friends. I was betrayed other friends. I got really close to some friends. I hurt other friends. I loved friends. I hate friends.

I treated my friends (some) as I treat my husband. I learned if I cannot be intimate with a friend, I cannot be intimate with partner. I have to trust a person solely enough for them to hurt me worse than my mother and I did and was hurt and betrayed and my heart was broken and I lived through it.

The most important lesson for me was I did not die from my mother's abuse and I will not die from this but it did leave a stain, a stench, a wound that kept me in a loop for 25 yrs.
I loved being single. I felt safe and I was safe. I wanted to meet a man who will not change that safety. I wanted a man whom I can feel as alone as I felt and still love him. I met a man whom i told listen I love you but I love being alone too and I want both and weirdly he got it.


Recently in therapy I am learning that:

The abandonment of my dad affected me with men. That abandonment from my dad gave me the feeling, there is a place my dad went that was not around my mother - that gave me a hope attachment to the abandonment. the hope was finding love once again since I never had it with my mother or father for that matter. The abandonment was the feeling I had when alone but happy - at least I loved abandonment cause it was the only time I was not being handled or viciously being abused by mother, siblings and who else?
I am learning that abandonment feelings are over-rated in our culture and so attached as being bad all the time or being a personality disorder trait but one must ask are the feelings of abandonment all bad?

I think that is one of the issue I am learning. For me abandonment gave me two things:
I love being alone because I associated wtih safety when I was an infant or a child. I was so abused physically or handled or neglected that not being touched was god sent - it was painful too in other ways but obviously also a reprieve in other ways. I acknowledge both in order to feel whole. I no longer believe feelings of abandonment are bad. This is culturally motivated and not based on my biological make a human can be alone, abandoned or with people just the same. One is not better than the other. I know because I have both feelings and live with them with my husband. When I was single fighting against my abandonment issues was also a sore point. Until I accepted that I was alone and OK did I felt at peace.

But I had to get there in order to be able to tell my husband I want to be alone and in love at the same time.

I see the irony that I have a husband and speaking about the feelings of abandonment but that is it.

But I think when people say you have to love yourself before someone else loves you what they mean is you have to be OK with feelings of abandonment and still feel safe ( my opinion here). Everybody loves themselves - loving yourself is not something one can stop. It is like breathing. But feeling abandoned and still be truly OK with it is what opens the door to have others come.

Look at it this way, logically speaking now, you were abandonment (speaking of me) as an infant when I was so dependent on my mother and I survived. If my husband leaves me today or dies, I will struggle but knowing that I can survive frees up a lot of energy that make me get one step to closer to healing.

I love my husband but not as much as I loved my mother when I was helpless little baby and I survived that.

in our culture, abandonment is one of the most over rated thing esp for women. We are told if you have abandonment issues you are a bad person - or BPD. OK whatever! everybody has abandonment part. NO way a mother can fulfill every child. But some of us it is core issue and it is the biggest impact on closeness but until you accept that and willing to be OK to be abandonment and live to tell, you will have relationship issues.

It took me middle age to get this all in articulation like this. I have had glimpses of it emotionally over the years.

Now that I am in intense therapy, I am no longer focused on relationship building. I am there in it with people. I accept that. With all these freed up energy, now I am focused on creativity, ambition and second career.

I know some of us have both areas damaged but no matter how deep or how long, when you undo the rope, it gets easier to unravel the whole thing,

If you are focused on relationship now: catch and release.

that is the antidote to abandonment fears!

sorry still too long and hope grammar is OK.