I've been on forums for a while and have not yet found anything exactly corresponding to what my girlfriend "Rose" is going through, though some have come close.
I am 18 years old and a freshman in college; she is 18 as well, and a senior in high school. We started dating in February, when both of us were 17 (I a senior, she a junior), and are each others' first long-term relationship. As I was driving her home after our first date, she confided in me that she has a stalker named "Jason"--a member of the "intimacy seeker" subcategory who had delusions of love and was hell-bent on establishing a relationship with her. Starting in 7th grade, he published poems about her, followed her everywhere--school, home, church--and told everyone about his intense love. They were both at a Catholic school, so naturally everybody knew what was going on inside days; the worst part for Rose was that she could not bring herself to tell people she was being stalked, so to everybody--her teachers, friends, and even parents--Jason looked like an innocent schoolboy with a crush, and Rose looked like the heartless bitch who rejected him time and time again. Everyone who she loved followed the textbook "blame the victim" behavior almost to the letter, telling her "I'm sorry you're so wonderful" or "would it hurt to dance with him just once?" She did, at an eighth-grade dance, when he dedicated the song "My Heart Will Go On" to her. It was one of the most terrifying experiences of her life, and she still can't even think of that song.
From all of this, Rose developed symptoms that were later diagnosed as PTSD. She fit the diagnosis perfectly: flashbacks, heightened anxiety, emotional numbing. After graduating middle school, she and Jason went to different high schools; he, however, did not relent, and continued to stalk her any way that he could. He stared at her all through church, continued to visit her house (he's good friends with her brother) and sent her emails saying things like: "although I fell into a deep depression after you rejected me, I want to thank you for teaching me how to feel." Being a naturally empathetic person, Rose felt awful reading this. In more recent years she was diagnosed with other disorders arising from PTSD: GAD, OCD, and depression. The latter has a seasonal aspect (more on that later) which at one point was so severe she felt absolutely no joy on both Christmas and her birthday (which is in January). To some degree, he's still stalking her now. She is still undergoing treatment for all these disorders; she takes medication and has regular sessions with a therapist.
There's something else that hasn't helped, and this is going to sound like bragging, but it's not--trust me, I'm not at all happy about this. Rose is beautiful, and is the kind of girl that messes with boys' heads without meaning to or even knowing that she's doing it. Though nothing has been as severe as being stalked by Jason, somewhere around 20 different boys (by her count) professed their love to her between 7th and 11th grade. They all did this with a total lack of respect, skipping all the socially accepted stages of courtship and claiming that their love gave them some sort of divine right to possess her. When she told them about her PTSD, they responded, to the man, that they'd go talk to Jason, get him to leave her alone, and leave Rose free to be with them.
I developed a crush on her in February; the fact the she felt the same way of her own accord, combined with the fact that I was approaching romance on her terms rather than clubbing her over the head with love, combined to make her decide she was tired of being afraid. After she told me about her PTSD, instead of offering to fix it for her, I told her that I would wait for her; she says that's when she fell in love with me. For six months, February to August, we were truly happy. Everyone called us "cute." I directed a play and got into my dream school; she made leaps and bounds in therapy and discovered her aptitude for poetry. Though we never had sex, we did some stuff that came close; she was completely comfortable with it, and initiated it about as often as I did. She still had flashbacks, but said that I helped her to recover from them, and that my love made everything bearable.
Now, here's the part that makes this story different from any I've found so far. We both live in Austin, Texas. In mid-August, I moved to Washington State to attend college; since then we've had a long-distance relationship. For the first few months, this went quite well--we wrote letters, skyped, sent each other stuff--and things were helped by the fact that her symptoms seemed far away and in the background. What I didn't know was that her PTSD and depression was seasonal, an effect linked to the stalking having begun in midwinter. When I came home at Thanksgiving to visit her for the first time since I'd left, she seemed distant and removed. She told me she was having a relapse, and that she felt angry at everything; toward the end of the week she asked me for a temporary breakup so that she could get her emotions under control without worrying about lashing out at me. I accepted, although I wasn't happy. Three days later, as I sat in the airport waiting for my flight back to school, she called and said that she'd made a mistake and wanted to get back together. I accepted again.
The worst part about the distance is that I'm unable to be with her when she has flashbacks. Reassurance just falls flat over the phone. The worst part of my story began just this month, when I arrived home on New Year's Day for another visit. I saw Rose that evening, and she had a flashback while we were together. A couple of hours later, due to a combination of disappointment about how the evening had turned out, erroneously thinking she was all right, and shock at something she had told me--that when I touched her, she just felt Jason's hands--I made some unwanted sexual advances that absolutely shattered her confidence in me. She refused to see me for days. The explanation she gave me was that her hypersensitive amygdala believed that my behavior confirmed me as someone who just wanted to hurt her; even though her rational mind realized that it was an isolated mistake, she could not control her fear when I was around. It wasn't the same for the next week.
The day before I left, we broke up again, her again promising that it wasn't the end (which is why I'm still referring to her as my girlfriend). She said she'd relapsed--my actions only partially responsible, the time of year much more to blame--and that she was finding it impossible to trust me. When she agreed to see me a week after New Year's, I thought that she was all right; I had taken it on faith that she wouldn't let me near her unless she was truly ready, but it turned out she was still scared and had agreed only to be nice to me. The bottom line is, I had put her through hell without even realizing it, and I think that she may never trust me again after what I've done. All she needed was space, but, because I was so afraid that I wouldn't get to see her before I had to leave again, I forced her to be ready before she really was. The worst part is that everything I did to try and win her back after my mistake was something that one of her endless parade of suitors had done; something insensitive and done without consideration of her feelings.
So, here's where I stand now: 2,000 miles away from a girl who, simply because it's winter, cannot get her past and present straight, cannot sleep for a recurring nightmare of being raped and watched in her bed, cannot see past her stalker to me. And I, despite loving her with all my heart, haven't been able to keep from doing exactly the wrong thing over and over again, digging myself and her into a deeper and deeper hole. We haven't talked in days, since we agreed to be friends, and I hate not knowing how she's doing, or if she's any closer to being all right. I want to understand what's happening to her--how PTSD can even be seasonal, how depression interacts with PTSD, exactly WHAT one does to reprogram one's amygdala to distinguish between people who love you and people who will hurt you (right now she can see only the latter). I want to help her out of this, but everything that it's my instinct to do--to be there for her, to listen to her, to hold her (appropriately)--is either impossible because of the distance or something she has expressly asked me not to do because she feels the need to go through all her hardest moments alone. And yes, I want her back, but that's a secondary goal--I just want her to be all right.
I’m sorry for the length. Anything that anybody can tell me about any of this would be greatly appreciated. And if you need additional information, or clarification of anything I’ve already said, don’t hesitate to ask.
<Font edited to default by Nicolette>
I am 18 years old and a freshman in college; she is 18 as well, and a senior in high school. We started dating in February, when both of us were 17 (I a senior, she a junior), and are each others' first long-term relationship. As I was driving her home after our first date, she confided in me that she has a stalker named "Jason"--a member of the "intimacy seeker" subcategory who had delusions of love and was hell-bent on establishing a relationship with her. Starting in 7th grade, he published poems about her, followed her everywhere--school, home, church--and told everyone about his intense love. They were both at a Catholic school, so naturally everybody knew what was going on inside days; the worst part for Rose was that she could not bring herself to tell people she was being stalked, so to everybody--her teachers, friends, and even parents--Jason looked like an innocent schoolboy with a crush, and Rose looked like the heartless bitch who rejected him time and time again. Everyone who she loved followed the textbook "blame the victim" behavior almost to the letter, telling her "I'm sorry you're so wonderful" or "would it hurt to dance with him just once?" She did, at an eighth-grade dance, when he dedicated the song "My Heart Will Go On" to her. It was one of the most terrifying experiences of her life, and she still can't even think of that song.
From all of this, Rose developed symptoms that were later diagnosed as PTSD. She fit the diagnosis perfectly: flashbacks, heightened anxiety, emotional numbing. After graduating middle school, she and Jason went to different high schools; he, however, did not relent, and continued to stalk her any way that he could. He stared at her all through church, continued to visit her house (he's good friends with her brother) and sent her emails saying things like: "although I fell into a deep depression after you rejected me, I want to thank you for teaching me how to feel." Being a naturally empathetic person, Rose felt awful reading this. In more recent years she was diagnosed with other disorders arising from PTSD: GAD, OCD, and depression. The latter has a seasonal aspect (more on that later) which at one point was so severe she felt absolutely no joy on both Christmas and her birthday (which is in January). To some degree, he's still stalking her now. She is still undergoing treatment for all these disorders; she takes medication and has regular sessions with a therapist.
There's something else that hasn't helped, and this is going to sound like bragging, but it's not--trust me, I'm not at all happy about this. Rose is beautiful, and is the kind of girl that messes with boys' heads without meaning to or even knowing that she's doing it. Though nothing has been as severe as being stalked by Jason, somewhere around 20 different boys (by her count) professed their love to her between 7th and 11th grade. They all did this with a total lack of respect, skipping all the socially accepted stages of courtship and claiming that their love gave them some sort of divine right to possess her. When she told them about her PTSD, they responded, to the man, that they'd go talk to Jason, get him to leave her alone, and leave Rose free to be with them.
I developed a crush on her in February; the fact the she felt the same way of her own accord, combined with the fact that I was approaching romance on her terms rather than clubbing her over the head with love, combined to make her decide she was tired of being afraid. After she told me about her PTSD, instead of offering to fix it for her, I told her that I would wait for her; she says that's when she fell in love with me. For six months, February to August, we were truly happy. Everyone called us "cute." I directed a play and got into my dream school; she made leaps and bounds in therapy and discovered her aptitude for poetry. Though we never had sex, we did some stuff that came close; she was completely comfortable with it, and initiated it about as often as I did. She still had flashbacks, but said that I helped her to recover from them, and that my love made everything bearable.
Now, here's the part that makes this story different from any I've found so far. We both live in Austin, Texas. In mid-August, I moved to Washington State to attend college; since then we've had a long-distance relationship. For the first few months, this went quite well--we wrote letters, skyped, sent each other stuff--and things were helped by the fact that her symptoms seemed far away and in the background. What I didn't know was that her PTSD and depression was seasonal, an effect linked to the stalking having begun in midwinter. When I came home at Thanksgiving to visit her for the first time since I'd left, she seemed distant and removed. She told me she was having a relapse, and that she felt angry at everything; toward the end of the week she asked me for a temporary breakup so that she could get her emotions under control without worrying about lashing out at me. I accepted, although I wasn't happy. Three days later, as I sat in the airport waiting for my flight back to school, she called and said that she'd made a mistake and wanted to get back together. I accepted again.
The worst part about the distance is that I'm unable to be with her when she has flashbacks. Reassurance just falls flat over the phone. The worst part of my story began just this month, when I arrived home on New Year's Day for another visit. I saw Rose that evening, and she had a flashback while we were together. A couple of hours later, due to a combination of disappointment about how the evening had turned out, erroneously thinking she was all right, and shock at something she had told me--that when I touched her, she just felt Jason's hands--I made some unwanted sexual advances that absolutely shattered her confidence in me. She refused to see me for days. The explanation she gave me was that her hypersensitive amygdala believed that my behavior confirmed me as someone who just wanted to hurt her; even though her rational mind realized that it was an isolated mistake, she could not control her fear when I was around. It wasn't the same for the next week.
The day before I left, we broke up again, her again promising that it wasn't the end (which is why I'm still referring to her as my girlfriend). She said she'd relapsed--my actions only partially responsible, the time of year much more to blame--and that she was finding it impossible to trust me. When she agreed to see me a week after New Year's, I thought that she was all right; I had taken it on faith that she wouldn't let me near her unless she was truly ready, but it turned out she was still scared and had agreed only to be nice to me. The bottom line is, I had put her through hell without even realizing it, and I think that she may never trust me again after what I've done. All she needed was space, but, because I was so afraid that I wouldn't get to see her before I had to leave again, I forced her to be ready before she really was. The worst part is that everything I did to try and win her back after my mistake was something that one of her endless parade of suitors had done; something insensitive and done without consideration of her feelings.
So, here's where I stand now: 2,000 miles away from a girl who, simply because it's winter, cannot get her past and present straight, cannot sleep for a recurring nightmare of being raped and watched in her bed, cannot see past her stalker to me. And I, despite loving her with all my heart, haven't been able to keep from doing exactly the wrong thing over and over again, digging myself and her into a deeper and deeper hole. We haven't talked in days, since we agreed to be friends, and I hate not knowing how she's doing, or if she's any closer to being all right. I want to understand what's happening to her--how PTSD can even be seasonal, how depression interacts with PTSD, exactly WHAT one does to reprogram one's amygdala to distinguish between people who love you and people who will hurt you (right now she can see only the latter). I want to help her out of this, but everything that it's my instinct to do--to be there for her, to listen to her, to hold her (appropriately)--is either impossible because of the distance or something she has expressly asked me not to do because she feels the need to go through all her hardest moments alone. And yes, I want her back, but that's a secondary goal--I just want her to be all right.
I’m sorry for the length. Anything that anybody can tell me about any of this would be greatly appreciated. And if you need additional information, or clarification of anything I’ve already said, don’t hesitate to ask.
<Font edited to default by Nicolette>
