Is My Boyfriend Suffering From Ptsd?

[Vicric18]

My intuition is normally spot on when anything good or bad is happening and for once my boyfriend has thrown me for a loop.

We have been together for 3 months and the first two months have been so wonderful that we had decided to move in together and take a chance because we have a long distance relationship and I will be moving further away if I don't move it with him.

My boyfriend is a TACP in the Air Force and I am thinking there may be some PTSD happening in his life. He is at a 5 weeks course for training and he constantly in a bad mood. Tells me everything there is stupid and that he hates being there.

One day I went to visit him and he told me he had nightmare where he was fighting a war. That was my first real alert something was probably wrong because normally we are very intimate together and that has basically stopped. I keep asking him if I have done something wrong, or if he just has lost interest in me. (since its been a short amount of time of being together) and he keeps telling me no and that he just going through something and wants to be left alone.

Our texts and conversation have basically stopped and he doesn't even seem to care/ask what going on in my life. It hurts a lot and I wish he would just communicate with me.

Normally I would just move on from the relationship, but I can't figure what is the matter. He and I seem to have a very strong connection and we both have not been seeing anyone else "serious" for a couple of years. So part of me wonders if he has cold feet about moving in together or if its something more serious.

I really don't know what to do, and I need some help if it really is PTSD.

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[amethist]

Hi Vicric18

Welcome to the forum.

This is not going to be easy for you just now, Which is not really what you want to hear in such a new relationship.

It sounds as if his work in the Air force is a stressful one to say the least, doing the job he does would stress out the best of us. Which could if he has been in any traumatic situations, cause him to have PTSD.

The best thing you can do right now, it respect the fact that his training could stir up past issues, and that will not be an easy ride for him at all.

Learning all you can, and probably postponing your move in with him for now, would give you more understanding of how he could be feeling and give you both breathing space, whilst what ever is going on with him has settled down.

He may well already have a PTSD diagnosis, but does not want it out in the open, so has not shread that information with you.

Reading the link below may help you understand some of how this effects your boyfriend. Plus trying to remember that this is probably not about you at all, as relationships can be the first thing to go, when a PTSD flare up occurs.

[DLMURL]http://www.ptsdforum.org/c/threads/the-ptsd-cup-explanation.13737/#post-191843[/DLMURL]

Until you know for definite that PTSD is in the mix, please be careful how you approach him now, as too many questions could push him to backing away from your further. Just give him time to collect his thought together for a while. It could be all he needs for now.

Amethist

 

[Vicric18]

Thanks, I have been trying to be very understanding of his space and time alone. I want to postpone the move, but I have already taken a new job and found someone to take my apartment. I give him days between talking and just some texts here and there letting him know I am thinking about him. I don't get upset if he doesn't tell me his misses me back, I never been a girl who gets upset at small things like that. I'm just worried about him and if its something more then a new relationship that may end soon.

 

[MurphyJB]

Hey Vicric.
has your boyfriend been deployed? Or had some other sort of trauma in his life?

 

[Vicric18]

He has been deployed twice. We met a month after he got back from Afghanistan.

 

[Kintsugi]

It is possible that he has PTSD. I think that seeing a professional is the only way to know and address that, though, and it seems from what I've read here that it is best to address PTSD as soon as it can be addressed.

2¢