I Messed Up And I Want Feedback On How To Fix It.

[unvrsplysfvrts]

This is probably going to be kind of long, so I apologize but I'll try to condense this as much as I can.

Five years ago when I was 18 I moved across the country with my aunt to San Diego. I spent a lot of my childhood summers there, and loved it, so I was stoked to go with her. I was only there for about 4 months because I got scared and left after I missed a day of work for a job that took me the first 3 months to get.

At this job, I met a guy. I liked him a lot, but he was a couple of years older than I was, and the tall broody type so even though he's actually a big sweetheart I was a little intimidated. From the first day I worked there we hung out after work. We hit it off really quickly. We both liked each other but were too afraid to say or do anything about it. So for two and a half weeks we were just friends harboring some pretty earthshaking crushes for one another.

When I panicked and left, I knew it was ultimately the best decision because I was getting into trouble. Nothing serious, just partying too much and neglecting responsibility-not unlike most newly freed 18 year olds. But during the trip back to Alabama, we both confessed our feelings for each other and had a 2 year long-distance relationship. We never got the opportunity to visit each other. We've never held hands or kissed. We awkwardly side hugged once, but it was brief.

Over those two years we both broke each others' hearts a few times because 3000 miles is just too far to have a relationship over. Especially when you're young and your body will win over your heart or your mind when it comes to certain things.

At the end of the two years, I impulsively married one of my brother's friends who was a stranger to me. Even though I loved him and wanted him, I cut him out of my life to keep from having him as a temptation to ruin things with the new relationship. And yes, I'm very aware of how awful that is.

It's been almost three years since this happened and I'm a bit over a year divorced. We've talked twice since then and both times we say we're just going to put things behind us and start over and one of us will move, but then after a few days, or most recently less than a day, he just cuts me out of his life again.

I don't know what to do to fix things, or if the chance is even there.

Feedback?

 

[Diamond81]

Hi. Your post was rather sterile and generic as it regards issues with PTSD. From what I've read, this is a five year old issue involving two men and yourself.

Absent any further illumination, the scenario you have described is neither uncommon nor remarkable. When I say "unremarkable" I do not inted to diminish your obvious emotional distress. For reasons perhaps unkown to you, you have allowed a dynamic to exist whereby you are never "fulfilled." You marry a man to "leave" another, then divorce that same man to pursue the first one. Either way, the principle player is you.

It would appear the man you are pursuing is reacting rather than being forthcoming. If you DO suffer from PTSD, chances are that rejection can trigger you, bring up unresolved issues perhaps?

Many times, we box ourselves in by pursuing a course of action with a predetermined outcome over whcih we really have little control. Again, this is a scenario that exists in what I call "neuro-typical" relationships as well so I apologize if I am not being much help to you:)

I will just simply state that I believe one key to a healthy relationships is to be able to say you are in the relationship because you CHOOSE to be and not because you HAVE to be. Maybe a decent self question would be to ask what would happen to you if this doesn't work out the way you desire?

 

[unvrsplysfvrts]

I guess I left out major details when trying to condense them. But you aren't far off the truth.

I can't really explain the impulse of marrying a total stranger, but when we got divorced after 18 months, it wasn't to pursue the first guy. It was because the guy I married was terribly abusive and horrible to me, cheated on me, was emotionally involved with other women, and I suspect is just a sex-addicted sociopath, but I could just be jumping to conclusions. Over the course of that 18 months, and within about 6 months of each other my child and my mother died. This caused my mostly dormant PTSD symptoms to start bothering me again and after my biological mother (and abuser) died I kind of lost it. This was less than but roughly six months after losing a pregnancy which was also emotionally scarring because my husband wasn't supportive and blamed me and my family was far away and didn't offer much support. My best friend lives in San Diego and she would call me every day and talk to me for hours to try to help, but she was my sole support system. In both my child's death and my mother's.

But no, I didn't leave my husband to pursue the first guy. I thought he'd never want to talk to me again, and probably hated me, and even though I never have stopped feeling like a huge tool for doing what I did, I will never blame him, should this end up being the case.

In the year and change since I've been divorced we've been in contact twice. The first time I looked him up, we talked for a few days, and then he wrote me a long email about how he's sorry if this is harsh, but he doesn't want to go down the same road we went down before and that it wasn't fair for either of us to ask the other to move when we never had a face to face relationship. That makes sense to me completely, but I never really wanted to come back to Alabama and I do really miss Amy (my best friend) so I was planning to go back there anyway which is why I looked him up again in the first place. I was crushed, but I didn't bother him again. I just took some time to get over the worst of it and then did my best to move on with my life. This was almost a year ago.

My feelings never changed about him and I never stopped thinking about him or wishing him well or hoping that whatever was happening, he was happy. I try to be as positive as I can, especially since I am, for the time being, stuck here anyway.

Last week he sent me an email and we started talking again. We talked for several hours and caught up on each other's lives. I thought it was going well and was hoping that at the very least we could be friends. I get that no matter how badly you want something to work out, sometimes it just doesn't. I do love him. Very much. But I want him to be happy whether I'm in his life or not. My issues get in the way of my friendships and relationships sometimes. I try not to let them and I try to do the full-disclosure without scaring people off, but it's important information so I don't want to get 6 months or a year down the road and then be like "Oh yeah! All those nightmares I have? All those irrational fears and social anxieties? Yeah I was abused in every way possible as a child and I have some nasty PTSD. About that..."

I guess the thing that I'm trying to say is that when I get there, if we actually talk or hang out face to face, I'll know if there's a chance or not. But if he decides not to see me, yeah I'll be devestated, but I won't blame him. I'll just be kicking myself in the ass for a long time for not taking the chances when I had them. I was younger and more afraid.

I suppose I'm just wondering what I could do, should the opportunity be there, to keep from letting my fears get in the way of potentially getting what I want. I'm not counting on that fact being there. He isn't my only reason to go back. I love San Diego. I have family and friends there and a life there to pick back up if I so chose.

I just don't want to ruin my chance if I get it again.

 

[unvrsplysfvrts]

Also, he does know about the PTSD. He knows a lot about my traumas, though a few of them he doesn't and not in great detail. I still have a lot of shame with the molestations, so it's hard for me to talk about them to people. I feel like people's opinions of me change when I tell them, so only a few people in my life know about them. They don't define me as a person, and honestly, I'm more damaged by the violence from my biological mother than I am by the molestations, as weird as that may seem. I think it has something to do with it being the person whose body I came out of and being afraid of her and hurt by her and that sort of thing.

When he and I were actively involved in each others' lives, he was really patient with me about it and could tell the difference between me needing to have a kick in the pants to snap out of it or me just needing to scream about it for a while. Or cry. Or whatever. He may not have completely understood, but he also didn't pretend to and he wasn't insensitive about it.