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I broke up with my partner of almost 5 years this month. She lives with CPTSD as well as bulimia and bipolar (although this is medicated and she hasn't had a manic episode for the entire relationship). At the start of the relationship, her PTSD was expressed as triggered moments of crying, being scared, sensitive to touch, etc. It would usually happen during sex or when specific things reminded her. This I felt pretty equipped to dealing with and my soothing of her brought us much closer. After we moved in together, I started to see a lot of worrying traits such as:
These explosive episodes became more and more frequent, and self-harm was often a part of them. Often I would raise concerns in a neutral or as sympathetic way as I could and would get these responses, or sometimes they would not even be over conflict or concerns and seem to come out of nowhere, ie. intense reactions to me saying she looked good in old photos where she had a different hairstyle and that that haircut really suits her and I like it a lot - this is interpreted as me saying I hate her current hair and want to control how she looks (bare in mind she says things like this to me all the time and I have no issue with it as, as long as it's expressed respectfully, I view that as a normal thing to say in a relationship). I also have some PTSD symptoms and tend to dissociate/shut down when under stress. Initially in the relationship, I would not communicate this to her and instead just give silent treatment. This made things even worse. Over time, I learned to communicate with her that I was entering a shut down state and that it was my own reaction and not her fault, and suggest we take breaks to prevent it getting worse and impacting her more. At my therapist's encouragement, I took the same attitude with her, I tried hard to validate her emotions and express empathy with them but make it clear that I was not trying to make her feel guilt, shame, judgment, abandonment, etc. and do not deserve anger because of her triggered response, that it is still important to me to discuss what I raised, and that I am open to looking at ways to do so without triggering her in future provided this is treated as a voluntary concession and not as something I am obliged to do perfectly and can be spoken to aggressively if I fail that. There are always slight concessions made, never complete agreement or legitimate remorse or apologies for how her reactions impact me. These concessions seem to disappear once she is back in that state, she has completely different views on the subject depending on what state she is in. However, the consistent theme is she believes her emotional reality is supreme, that my intentions are not worthy of being considered, and that I have to apologise for her feelings regardless of where they come from and what relevance they have to what I was trying to communicate.
I took a job interstate and we saw little of each other over the past year. She made significant improvement on the intensity of her reactions, no more self-harm. But the overall pattern and dismissal of my boundaries remained. I became very emotionally distant while I was away, the intensity of my work made it difficult to communicate as much as she would like (although I rarely missed a nightly phone call) and I felt overall "checked out". I could tell how much that was impacting her and felt bad about it. We fought a lot while I was away. A week before I came back, my anxiety about walking back into this dynamic took over to the point I couldn't hide it from her and told her over the phone straight up how anxious I felt. She became incredibly angry and demanded reassurance from me about the relationship. I apologised and said I was not capable of that and in fact I was reaching out to get that from her. She said as I had not made that explicit from the get go I did not deserve it. I suggested we take a break from contact for the week, which she only partially respected. She broke no contact to tell me to stop liking Instagram reels about psychology which triggered her and again dismissed when I said I did not like those particular reels due to anything with her.
When I got back, we talked and I apologised for the emotional distance that had been building up and explained where it came from. I laid out my boundaries around her triggers - that I could validate them, empathise with them, and work for ways to avoid them but I do not want to have my intentions dismissed, be held responsible for them or obliged to work around them perfectly - and if this anger does come, she needs to apologise for it once she is regulated. She said she could not do that, so I broke up with her. But a few days later, she called and said she could do it. We met up to talk a few times, including in couples counselling, and things seemed promising. Until again I raised how her weight gain and eating disorder were impacting the relationship and made me worried for the future. Again, I expressed this purely through a concern for health and used gentle, direct and neutral language. She reacted very aggressively, called me an abuser and threw me out. So I made plans to get my name off the lease and move my things. She called me to demand I give her some of my kitchen appliances as "emotional damages" which I refused. Then when I came to get my things on the day we agreed, she was there and kept missing her bus to her holiday to stay and talk to me. She refused to apologise for anything. Thinking I had nothing to lose, I did apologise again for the distance when she prompted me to. And after this, she became more sympathetic, saying it must have felt awful to be yelled at and that she regrets demanding my belongings. But refusing to apologise for calling me an abuser. I eventually told her to get her bus so I could pack.
In couples counselling, she would say that she hates being made to feel "too much" for her PTSD, that it's okay for her to have a cry now and again. But the crying was never the issue, I could deal with that and felt like I was part of the solution when it was just crying. Even the yelling, breaks from reality and self-harm, as horrible as they were for us both, I felt like I could deal with as there was a clear 'on-off switch' and it was obvious this behaviour was disordered and she needed help. What was the most damaging was the subtle ways she would take things I said and did as examples of abuse, shame, judgment, abandonment, etc. and be completely unable to recognise this was her trauma response and not anything I was doing. Sometimes she would not say anything, but I could tell she was viewing me through that lens. It was impossible to get out of and assert my perspective of things and come to a consensus view of reality. It wore me down immensely, and became a self-fulfilling prophecy, leading me to become physically and emotionally distant (which I regret immensely and is ultimately my responsibility) and eventually leave her. Even now, the glimmers of hope I got from what she last said to me are powerful and draw me back, but there is a real distinction between the strong and complete apology I offered her for the ways I contributed to the breakdown of the relationship, which I have remained committed to regardless of my emotional state, and the shifting goalposts and half-apologies she has offered me. I feel no anger towards her and she is not a bad person, I just had no idea PTSD could run this deep and impact her whole way of seeing things. I feel like she was never really in a relationship with me, she never saw me, I was just this composite of other people who had hurt her, and when I resisted that characterisation, it only made it stronger.
- Repeatedly falling out with friends and family members, losing jobs and having issues with study (always framed to me as if she were the victim, and in some cases I definitely take her side but others I'm really not sure)
- Becoming increasingly codependent on me and agoraphobic, demanding all my attention and time and getting angry at me for seeing friends and pursuing hobbies (even though most of my hobbies, ie. cooking or DIY around the house benefit her) and even seeming to resent me for going to work (demanding I spend 5-10 minutes every morning cuddling and soothing her before I go because she finds the separation so hard, even though at that time I was struggling with getting to work on time and was in performance reviews because of it). Always this is presented as not an issue with me having space and alone time, but because of some specific thing that was not okay that I did. She denies there is a pattern.
- Agoraphobia leading to significant weight gain, leading to gallstones and a snoring problem which disturbs my sleep and causes conflict
- Intense control of the house and things in it, ie. when I wanted to buy a lumbar support pillow because I was uncomfortable on the couch, she made me present ones I wanted to her so she could make sure they matched her aesthetic vision of the house
- Inability to support me when I was feeling bad, saying me expressing that I was depressed or talking about my depression scared her, getting angry at me when I was recovering from wisdom tooth surgery for not being able to help around the house
These explosive episodes became more and more frequent, and self-harm was often a part of them. Often I would raise concerns in a neutral or as sympathetic way as I could and would get these responses, or sometimes they would not even be over conflict or concerns and seem to come out of nowhere, ie. intense reactions to me saying she looked good in old photos where she had a different hairstyle and that that haircut really suits her and I like it a lot - this is interpreted as me saying I hate her current hair and want to control how she looks (bare in mind she says things like this to me all the time and I have no issue with it as, as long as it's expressed respectfully, I view that as a normal thing to say in a relationship). I also have some PTSD symptoms and tend to dissociate/shut down when under stress. Initially in the relationship, I would not communicate this to her and instead just give silent treatment. This made things even worse. Over time, I learned to communicate with her that I was entering a shut down state and that it was my own reaction and not her fault, and suggest we take breaks to prevent it getting worse and impacting her more. At my therapist's encouragement, I took the same attitude with her, I tried hard to validate her emotions and express empathy with them but make it clear that I was not trying to make her feel guilt, shame, judgment, abandonment, etc. and do not deserve anger because of her triggered response, that it is still important to me to discuss what I raised, and that I am open to looking at ways to do so without triggering her in future provided this is treated as a voluntary concession and not as something I am obliged to do perfectly and can be spoken to aggressively if I fail that. There are always slight concessions made, never complete agreement or legitimate remorse or apologies for how her reactions impact me. These concessions seem to disappear once she is back in that state, she has completely different views on the subject depending on what state she is in. However, the consistent theme is she believes her emotional reality is supreme, that my intentions are not worthy of being considered, and that I have to apologise for her feelings regardless of where they come from and what relevance they have to what I was trying to communicate.
I took a job interstate and we saw little of each other over the past year. She made significant improvement on the intensity of her reactions, no more self-harm. But the overall pattern and dismissal of my boundaries remained. I became very emotionally distant while I was away, the intensity of my work made it difficult to communicate as much as she would like (although I rarely missed a nightly phone call) and I felt overall "checked out". I could tell how much that was impacting her and felt bad about it. We fought a lot while I was away. A week before I came back, my anxiety about walking back into this dynamic took over to the point I couldn't hide it from her and told her over the phone straight up how anxious I felt. She became incredibly angry and demanded reassurance from me about the relationship. I apologised and said I was not capable of that and in fact I was reaching out to get that from her. She said as I had not made that explicit from the get go I did not deserve it. I suggested we take a break from contact for the week, which she only partially respected. She broke no contact to tell me to stop liking Instagram reels about psychology which triggered her and again dismissed when I said I did not like those particular reels due to anything with her.
When I got back, we talked and I apologised for the emotional distance that had been building up and explained where it came from. I laid out my boundaries around her triggers - that I could validate them, empathise with them, and work for ways to avoid them but I do not want to have my intentions dismissed, be held responsible for them or obliged to work around them perfectly - and if this anger does come, she needs to apologise for it once she is regulated. She said she could not do that, so I broke up with her. But a few days later, she called and said she could do it. We met up to talk a few times, including in couples counselling, and things seemed promising. Until again I raised how her weight gain and eating disorder were impacting the relationship and made me worried for the future. Again, I expressed this purely through a concern for health and used gentle, direct and neutral language. She reacted very aggressively, called me an abuser and threw me out. So I made plans to get my name off the lease and move my things. She called me to demand I give her some of my kitchen appliances as "emotional damages" which I refused. Then when I came to get my things on the day we agreed, she was there and kept missing her bus to her holiday to stay and talk to me. She refused to apologise for anything. Thinking I had nothing to lose, I did apologise again for the distance when she prompted me to. And after this, she became more sympathetic, saying it must have felt awful to be yelled at and that she regrets demanding my belongings. But refusing to apologise for calling me an abuser. I eventually told her to get her bus so I could pack.
In couples counselling, she would say that she hates being made to feel "too much" for her PTSD, that it's okay for her to have a cry now and again. But the crying was never the issue, I could deal with that and felt like I was part of the solution when it was just crying. Even the yelling, breaks from reality and self-harm, as horrible as they were for us both, I felt like I could deal with as there was a clear 'on-off switch' and it was obvious this behaviour was disordered and she needed help. What was the most damaging was the subtle ways she would take things I said and did as examples of abuse, shame, judgment, abandonment, etc. and be completely unable to recognise this was her trauma response and not anything I was doing. Sometimes she would not say anything, but I could tell she was viewing me through that lens. It was impossible to get out of and assert my perspective of things and come to a consensus view of reality. It wore me down immensely, and became a self-fulfilling prophecy, leading me to become physically and emotionally distant (which I regret immensely and is ultimately my responsibility) and eventually leave her. Even now, the glimmers of hope I got from what she last said to me are powerful and draw me back, but there is a real distinction between the strong and complete apology I offered her for the ways I contributed to the breakdown of the relationship, which I have remained committed to regardless of my emotional state, and the shifting goalposts and half-apologies she has offered me. I feel no anger towards her and she is not a bad person, I just had no idea PTSD could run this deep and impact her whole way of seeing things. I feel like she was never really in a relationship with me, she never saw me, I was just this composite of other people who had hurt her, and when I resisted that characterisation, it only made it stronger.
