ThorDogofThunder
New Here
Hi all,
You may remember me from a while back when I posted a bit about my situation. Here's a link: https://www.myptsd.com/threads/is-it-as-easy-for-him-as-it-seems.83041/#post-1392333
Anyway, long story short, I'm working though whether or not he pushed me away purely because of the PTSD, or if he just wasn't that into me. He wants to be friends, I initially said no, but I miss him, so.... Also, I'm still in love with him. So, there's that.
Anyway, besides being a love-sick lady, I'm also a writer, and I've drafted an essay about my situation. It's not research-based, simply a personal essay. I *do* intend to seek publication, though, and I wondered if anyone might be willing to read it. I want to know if it tells the supporter story accurately (yes, it's my story, but I'd like it to be somewhat reflective of what all supporters go through), and also whether or not it gives an accurate picture of what the PTSD does to someone that might make them run from relationships.
(By the way, I have to say one more time how incredibly helpful this site is. Even though we've broken up, I've been lurking here. It's gratifying to know I'm not alone in my confusion and helplessness.)
Ok, the essay:
PTSD IN LOVE
If I put my ear to his heart I thought I might hear things he never said. I wasn’t listening for “I love you," because he said that. He said that in his words and his actions; he brought me fruit from the farmer’s market and put air in the tires of my car. When we walked together down a sidewalk, he always took the outside. He made sure I wore a hat when it was cold and taught me to eat things for breakfast besides coffee. In these ways, I knew he loved me.
Yet, from the beginning, I sensed an un-crossable space. There was a way he kept a tiny distance, a dance he did around my questions; a two-step that made me feel awkwardly needy when I wanted to plan ahead for time together. Some of my friends saw it right away, "He’s 48 and never married. He’s either scared of commitment, or something’s wrong with him." I told myself the only thing wrong was that he hadn’t met me yet. And now he had. He spoke openly of loving me, of one day sharing mortgages and towels. I knew that he loved me, he said so, and he showed me, so I loved him back. And because I saw a shadow in him, a tinge of unquenchable sadness, I wanted to take it away. I thought I could make him happy, and that made me love him even more.
He had complex PTSD. He talked about it with me. A brutal childhood compounded by work in war zones. It wasn’t a secret. He put all the right words together, in the right order, to explain. "It makes me scared." He said, "It makes me default to being alone." He said it and he looked at me, and he had eyes I’d already fallen in love with. Don’t leave me. I thought. And to guard against it, I read. Books on attachment theory, books on commitment-phobia, books on loving after trauma. He’s Scared, She’s Scared, They’re All SO Scared. But I wasn’t. He made me brave. He taught me to kayak in whitewater, to ride a bike through downtown Washington traffic. He talked to strangers and held himself with such an easy confidence he made me want to be less shy.
The people he introduced me to, his colleagues at work, the guys at the bike shop where he bought parts to fix my broken wheel, none could guess at the darkness of his memories; how even before he was born he knew the sound of knuckles hitting flesh; and had memorized the taste of terror in his mouth. I knew those things about him. I knew those memories—the ones he held deep in his body in places so dark he could barely see them himself—made it impossible for him to trust love. Those memories made love inherently terrifying, and trust unimaginable. He'd let intimacy in to a certain point, and then, suddenly, he'd startle and retreat. I sought to be the one who understood him in a way that would eventually allow me access to that hidden space, the one on the far side of the impenetrable perimeter around him. I knew I could be the one who did that. I loved him so hard it would build a little bridge for me to cross.
The first time he left was early spring. Looking back, I clearly see the signs. Fewer texts, not as much time together and when we were, we didn’t have sex; barely touched. But I hadn’t learned the signs then; I couldn’t see them, and the almost casual way he said he needed to ‘stop our romantic connection,’ felt like an earthquake. After he said it, he walked me to my car. I cried. I told him even though he’d broken my heart, I’d miss him. He seemed surprised. "Wait, aren’t we still friends?"
I slept on my couch for weeks after that—I could hardly look at the new IKEA bed he’d helped me put together. Every night was restless; I relied on swigs of vodka just to fall asleep, I lost weight. My mind circled and circled for a reason. It had been good between us for almost six months, great, even. Then he was gone. It was inexplicable—one day he said he loved me, the next day he left. When he texted a few weeks later, I couldn’t help but answer. I was his and he was mine. He’d pushed me away, that was true, but I’d read enough by then to feed the hope this was all part of his commitment-adverse dance. If I played my part exactly right, he’d come back. And one day, he’d stay.
He did come back. We met on a Tuesday at a park between his office and mine. He said it quickly, almost embarrassed, “I wonder if we could try again?” I didn’t hesitate to say yes.
If I put my ear to his heart, maybe when he was sleeping, when he breathed those slow, long breaths, maybe I’d extract meaning from the shadowy spaces I still felt between us. Because they remained, that prescribed boundary—invisible but always apparent—which surrounded him. This time, I tried even harder to be careful, to never be the one to approach, to never ask for more than I thought he could give. It was simply a trick of calibration. I thought if I found just the right balance between him feeling loved and him feeling safe, it would work. I thought that because he acknowledged his issues, because he could name them, he wanted to solve them. But I never asked him if he did, and he never said so, either.
Five times. Five times in three years he came and went. I learned to read the signs, his “fadeout.” His attention would wane, he’d have less time to share with me, my anxiety would rise, and then I’d hear some version of that first break-up—'I can’t be with you like this/it’s feels dangerous to be so close/I don’t have time to be with you and take care of myself.’ Each time it shocked me. The earthquakes never lessened in scale.
He was a tide—pouring in, only to speed away again, over and over in slightly uncertain intervals—and I was the shoreline, always waiting with arms open wide. I didn’t notice right away that the tide of him was eroding me—pulling bits and pieces of myself apart every time he left, scattering them on the sea floor. When we were together, I felt safe. I felt cherished and wanted. Yet I was inherently unsafe, always unsettled, never knowing when he’d leave again, never knowing what moment would flip the switch in him from on to off.
A few of my friends found it romantic. He loves you, they said. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t keep coming back. He loves you, he just doesn’t know how right now. Other friends saw him as poison. I vacillated. I didn’t know what he was to me. Each time he left it burned me to the bone. Each time he left I wanted to be immune—to see him like the cigarettes I once smoked—something I’d loved and craved a long time ago but gave up because they were bad for me. I reminded myself it took two or three attempts to quit smoking and only when I wanted it badly enough did it stick. I craved him. I craved him more than I ever craved nicotine. Even if he was poisonous, he was a poison I couldn’t stop taking. And it wasn’t his fault, I told myself, that he didn’t know how to be in a relationship of trust and love. And how could I show him if I didn’t stay, even when he left?
It was during another break-up that my therapist said, “you attract what you think you deserve.” She may as well have slapped me. I was a middle-aged mother of three. Divorced, yes, but by my choice, and amicably. I had good parents, a supportive group of friends. I was confident in the world, not one to squander myself. I wondered if I loved him so much because of some pathetic part that thought I deserved to be left and left and left and left again. Maybe that was why I couldn’t I hate him. I hated myself for loving him more than I hated him for not letting me. Yet I still couldn’t untangle myself.
After a while, after the third or fourth time he left, I stopped talking to friends about him. I lied to my therapist. I told her we weren’t in touch anymore. I looked her right in the eye when I said it and at the same time I listened hard for the ding of my phone; his incoming texts that told me we were still connected.
I did notice that the length of time we were together decreased each time we tried again. The last time was a scant six weeks, and for the final two he was fading out. I kept myself busy; determined not to crowd him. This time, I even faced it head-on. I wrote him a letter and slipped it through his mail slot. ‘I know you need to isolate,’ the letter said, ‘and it’s ok. Just don’t leave me this time. I’ll be there when you’re ready, just don’t leave me.’
I drove home crying. I imagined all the days I’d cried about him stacked next to the ones I hadn’t. The teary days made a tower that toppled over and crushed the few tear-free ones below. Three days after I dropped that letter off the text came. I wish we could just be friends. Another earthquake that shook me so hard I sank to my knees on my kitchen floor, red-faced and sobbing and grateful that at least his timing coincided with my non-custody days. Just me and the dog at home, no kids to hide my red-rimmed eyes from.
This time, I said I could never be his friend. I said I loved him too much for that. I said he shouldn’t contact me again. After several weeks of silence. I told my therapist I hadn’t seen him. I said, I think we can finally start talking about something else. I tried to laugh.
There was a time I felt certain if he could name his issues, if he could acknowledge them, he wanted to solve them. Now I see complexity I couldn’t see before. There are problems we see and solve, and there are the ones that, for whatever reason, we keep. We greet them. We give them names. And we put them in our pockets and we hold them close. They provide us a measure of safety for a while, a pain so familiar it feels as much a part of us as our own heart does.
Maybe we named each other, he and I, and when I put I my ear to his chest and listened for what I wanted to hear, I listened for the wrong thing. Maybe there was nothing to hear but the sound of his breath. Maybe he was like a shell picked up on a beach somewhere. Years later, landlocked and missing the vastness of the ocean, you can hold it to your ear and pretend to hear the waves coming in. But it’s just a myth. You can press that shell to your ear as long and as hard and as often as you want, but you’ll never hear the ocean. The only sound is the noise right there in the room with you, reflected back. It’s your own noise you hear resonating in that shell’s empty space; rushing around and not saying anything. Not saying anything at all.
END
You may remember me from a while back when I posted a bit about my situation. Here's a link: https://www.myptsd.com/threads/is-it-as-easy-for-him-as-it-seems.83041/#post-1392333
Anyway, long story short, I'm working though whether or not he pushed me away purely because of the PTSD, or if he just wasn't that into me. He wants to be friends, I initially said no, but I miss him, so.... Also, I'm still in love with him. So, there's that.
Anyway, besides being a love-sick lady, I'm also a writer, and I've drafted an essay about my situation. It's not research-based, simply a personal essay. I *do* intend to seek publication, though, and I wondered if anyone might be willing to read it. I want to know if it tells the supporter story accurately (yes, it's my story, but I'd like it to be somewhat reflective of what all supporters go through), and also whether or not it gives an accurate picture of what the PTSD does to someone that might make them run from relationships.
(By the way, I have to say one more time how incredibly helpful this site is. Even though we've broken up, I've been lurking here. It's gratifying to know I'm not alone in my confusion and helplessness.)
Ok, the essay:
PTSD IN LOVE
If I put my ear to his heart I thought I might hear things he never said. I wasn’t listening for “I love you," because he said that. He said that in his words and his actions; he brought me fruit from the farmer’s market and put air in the tires of my car. When we walked together down a sidewalk, he always took the outside. He made sure I wore a hat when it was cold and taught me to eat things for breakfast besides coffee. In these ways, I knew he loved me.
Yet, from the beginning, I sensed an un-crossable space. There was a way he kept a tiny distance, a dance he did around my questions; a two-step that made me feel awkwardly needy when I wanted to plan ahead for time together. Some of my friends saw it right away, "He’s 48 and never married. He’s either scared of commitment, or something’s wrong with him." I told myself the only thing wrong was that he hadn’t met me yet. And now he had. He spoke openly of loving me, of one day sharing mortgages and towels. I knew that he loved me, he said so, and he showed me, so I loved him back. And because I saw a shadow in him, a tinge of unquenchable sadness, I wanted to take it away. I thought I could make him happy, and that made me love him even more.
He had complex PTSD. He talked about it with me. A brutal childhood compounded by work in war zones. It wasn’t a secret. He put all the right words together, in the right order, to explain. "It makes me scared." He said, "It makes me default to being alone." He said it and he looked at me, and he had eyes I’d already fallen in love with. Don’t leave me. I thought. And to guard against it, I read. Books on attachment theory, books on commitment-phobia, books on loving after trauma. He’s Scared, She’s Scared, They’re All SO Scared. But I wasn’t. He made me brave. He taught me to kayak in whitewater, to ride a bike through downtown Washington traffic. He talked to strangers and held himself with such an easy confidence he made me want to be less shy.
The people he introduced me to, his colleagues at work, the guys at the bike shop where he bought parts to fix my broken wheel, none could guess at the darkness of his memories; how even before he was born he knew the sound of knuckles hitting flesh; and had memorized the taste of terror in his mouth. I knew those things about him. I knew those memories—the ones he held deep in his body in places so dark he could barely see them himself—made it impossible for him to trust love. Those memories made love inherently terrifying, and trust unimaginable. He'd let intimacy in to a certain point, and then, suddenly, he'd startle and retreat. I sought to be the one who understood him in a way that would eventually allow me access to that hidden space, the one on the far side of the impenetrable perimeter around him. I knew I could be the one who did that. I loved him so hard it would build a little bridge for me to cross.
The first time he left was early spring. Looking back, I clearly see the signs. Fewer texts, not as much time together and when we were, we didn’t have sex; barely touched. But I hadn’t learned the signs then; I couldn’t see them, and the almost casual way he said he needed to ‘stop our romantic connection,’ felt like an earthquake. After he said it, he walked me to my car. I cried. I told him even though he’d broken my heart, I’d miss him. He seemed surprised. "Wait, aren’t we still friends?"
I slept on my couch for weeks after that—I could hardly look at the new IKEA bed he’d helped me put together. Every night was restless; I relied on swigs of vodka just to fall asleep, I lost weight. My mind circled and circled for a reason. It had been good between us for almost six months, great, even. Then he was gone. It was inexplicable—one day he said he loved me, the next day he left. When he texted a few weeks later, I couldn’t help but answer. I was his and he was mine. He’d pushed me away, that was true, but I’d read enough by then to feed the hope this was all part of his commitment-adverse dance. If I played my part exactly right, he’d come back. And one day, he’d stay.
He did come back. We met on a Tuesday at a park between his office and mine. He said it quickly, almost embarrassed, “I wonder if we could try again?” I didn’t hesitate to say yes.
If I put my ear to his heart, maybe when he was sleeping, when he breathed those slow, long breaths, maybe I’d extract meaning from the shadowy spaces I still felt between us. Because they remained, that prescribed boundary—invisible but always apparent—which surrounded him. This time, I tried even harder to be careful, to never be the one to approach, to never ask for more than I thought he could give. It was simply a trick of calibration. I thought if I found just the right balance between him feeling loved and him feeling safe, it would work. I thought that because he acknowledged his issues, because he could name them, he wanted to solve them. But I never asked him if he did, and he never said so, either.
Five times. Five times in three years he came and went. I learned to read the signs, his “fadeout.” His attention would wane, he’d have less time to share with me, my anxiety would rise, and then I’d hear some version of that first break-up—'I can’t be with you like this/it’s feels dangerous to be so close/I don’t have time to be with you and take care of myself.’ Each time it shocked me. The earthquakes never lessened in scale.
He was a tide—pouring in, only to speed away again, over and over in slightly uncertain intervals—and I was the shoreline, always waiting with arms open wide. I didn’t notice right away that the tide of him was eroding me—pulling bits and pieces of myself apart every time he left, scattering them on the sea floor. When we were together, I felt safe. I felt cherished and wanted. Yet I was inherently unsafe, always unsettled, never knowing when he’d leave again, never knowing what moment would flip the switch in him from on to off.
A few of my friends found it romantic. He loves you, they said. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t keep coming back. He loves you, he just doesn’t know how right now. Other friends saw him as poison. I vacillated. I didn’t know what he was to me. Each time he left it burned me to the bone. Each time he left I wanted to be immune—to see him like the cigarettes I once smoked—something I’d loved and craved a long time ago but gave up because they were bad for me. I reminded myself it took two or three attempts to quit smoking and only when I wanted it badly enough did it stick. I craved him. I craved him more than I ever craved nicotine. Even if he was poisonous, he was a poison I couldn’t stop taking. And it wasn’t his fault, I told myself, that he didn’t know how to be in a relationship of trust and love. And how could I show him if I didn’t stay, even when he left?
It was during another break-up that my therapist said, “you attract what you think you deserve.” She may as well have slapped me. I was a middle-aged mother of three. Divorced, yes, but by my choice, and amicably. I had good parents, a supportive group of friends. I was confident in the world, not one to squander myself. I wondered if I loved him so much because of some pathetic part that thought I deserved to be left and left and left and left again. Maybe that was why I couldn’t I hate him. I hated myself for loving him more than I hated him for not letting me. Yet I still couldn’t untangle myself.
After a while, after the third or fourth time he left, I stopped talking to friends about him. I lied to my therapist. I told her we weren’t in touch anymore. I looked her right in the eye when I said it and at the same time I listened hard for the ding of my phone; his incoming texts that told me we were still connected.
I did notice that the length of time we were together decreased each time we tried again. The last time was a scant six weeks, and for the final two he was fading out. I kept myself busy; determined not to crowd him. This time, I even faced it head-on. I wrote him a letter and slipped it through his mail slot. ‘I know you need to isolate,’ the letter said, ‘and it’s ok. Just don’t leave me this time. I’ll be there when you’re ready, just don’t leave me.’
I drove home crying. I imagined all the days I’d cried about him stacked next to the ones I hadn’t. The teary days made a tower that toppled over and crushed the few tear-free ones below. Three days after I dropped that letter off the text came. I wish we could just be friends. Another earthquake that shook me so hard I sank to my knees on my kitchen floor, red-faced and sobbing and grateful that at least his timing coincided with my non-custody days. Just me and the dog at home, no kids to hide my red-rimmed eyes from.
This time, I said I could never be his friend. I said I loved him too much for that. I said he shouldn’t contact me again. After several weeks of silence. I told my therapist I hadn’t seen him. I said, I think we can finally start talking about something else. I tried to laugh.
There was a time I felt certain if he could name his issues, if he could acknowledge them, he wanted to solve them. Now I see complexity I couldn’t see before. There are problems we see and solve, and there are the ones that, for whatever reason, we keep. We greet them. We give them names. And we put them in our pockets and we hold them close. They provide us a measure of safety for a while, a pain so familiar it feels as much a part of us as our own heart does.
Maybe we named each other, he and I, and when I put I my ear to his chest and listened for what I wanted to hear, I listened for the wrong thing. Maybe there was nothing to hear but the sound of his breath. Maybe he was like a shell picked up on a beach somewhere. Years later, landlocked and missing the vastness of the ocean, you can hold it to your ear and pretend to hear the waves coming in. But it’s just a myth. You can press that shell to your ear as long and as hard and as often as you want, but you’ll never hear the ocean. The only sound is the noise right there in the room with you, reflected back. It’s your own noise you hear resonating in that shell’s empty space; rushing around and not saying anything. Not saying anything at all.
END
