I hope you all can forgive me if what I'm about to say sounds 'out there', it's just something I've experienced and came to me today (my dad's birthday- both parents are deceased quite young).
My mom and dad were very much in love and crazy about each other. For all intents and purposes I know now my dad seemed to have ptsd, but I will never know. I only know he had the causative circumstances and presented symptomatically, (aas did his father as he described , post the war. In great part when things started to go 'offline' with myself (flashbacks, night terrors, etc etc) I assumed it was due to my genetics. ) Both of them were very good looking, and had many times when others tried to 'make a move' on either one. I know my mom would have left if he slept with anyone else, or had an affair, but I also knew he said in his 'self-medicating' days he took that as, "Ok, I can do everything else". And things were hardly all rosy. He also worked away, so that foundation of trust had to be supernatural, nearly.
What did I see and heard helped? My mom NOT walking on eggshells- *though she chose to not engage with him verbally, sometimes. And she said she had to learn how to communicate, and learn how to write letters every week, or she believed the marriage would have failed. This was hard for her to do, though like most sufferers for my dad it was easier to express that way. (In typical ptsd-fashion before he died he burned the letters in fear they would be found.)
I think that trust is the foundation of love.
Well I think it's critical to have trust to be able to trust back. But they say 'perfect love' casts out all fear, and I think mistrust (especially unfounded) is due to fear. Fear of a repeat of the past or fear of the future, especially.
the accusations that come weeks after the fact, the waiting for the other shoe to drop, I'm worn to a frazzle and I can tell that my love is slipping away...
..I'm getting very close to that point where I emotionally retreat to a safe place in my mind and heart which is going to look remarkably similar to a sufferer that isolates.
Do you think it's possible she's sensing this and equating it to infidelity? I realize it's in response to her mistrusting you, but in a sense could she feel she's getting confirmation? (Though the source is not an affair.)
The deeper trust - that knowing someone is there for you and has your back and your best interests at heart - THAT is what has become the issue.
This ^^^ is so easy for someone with ptsd to forget. It's like memory gets all entangled. :( I can't stress this enough. As others have called it, an 'amygdala hijacking".
Until he had two heart attacks, and we moved 10 hours away, and his paranoia and distrust of everyone else got to be too much
When my dad was extremely ill (no one knew- he got a great check-up on a 3-day medical) he said to me out of the blue ~"everyone is lying, things can't be all good!" I was hurt by his mistrust of me. My mom recognized it accurately as a stress-cup overload from being unwell. And, it's a phenomena with heart conditions (those his was not, though it couldn't have felt too great.)
(As an aside, similarly- and that was the only time- my mom questioned my dad's fidelity to her with one person only (a woman who used to show up drunk and naked at my dad's door, and whom he took out of the bar and covered naked more than once) when she was dying- people who were there said 'ridiculous', a moral action on his part but no cheating despite her actions.)
PTSD is (among other things) a deep-seated conviction that the Bad Thing(s) will happen again.
^^ Very very true. In fact, near impossible to believe otherwise.
I learned to ask questions: "You just said 'hmmm'. I feel scared now. Please tell me what you're thinking."
I believe this is huge ^^^. Though it requires tremendous honesty and vulnerability.
Fwiw, I feel very badly for all here struggling or dealing with this. And I'm ashamed to say I am a 'runner' (though never in a million years did I ever think it could have hurt others' feelings like you've said. I doubt your partners have ever thought it, either. The better you are the more we feel you deserve better than 'us'.)
Also, my dad (inappropriately) used me far too much as an emotional go-between for communication. In some ways he could relate to the trust of a child (and this I've found to be very ptsd-related.)
My dad once said he could never make it up to my mom, what he put her through. She said privately to me she cried herself to sleep many nights. She also laughed and said he was actually right, he couldn't, but she would have died before saying that to him and never acted like that. He too just about died when she nearly did (and he was frequently frantic and 'assuming the worst' when she was even delayed, etc), -he actually saved her life on that occassion, and she saved his I am led to believe with the emotional trouble/ ptsd-related SI moments/ isolation, and after he died when she was dying she had a dream where he was pulling a great load with a strap around his forehead, she laughed/ cringed and said 'probably the weight of my sins' (she wasn't a religious fanatic). I did think today, that was maybe when he did make it up to her.
It wasn't always at all pretty, but in the end it was quite a love story.
Relationships are complicated, ones with ptsd even worse. But someone just said, as long as you are alive there is hope.
You all deserve very good things, good partners and joy in your lives. There is a tremendous amount of forgiveness and understanding needed to deal with someone with ptsd. But you are most important as well, xox.
Ps sorry if typos must run to work.
