Supporter New Here, Husband With Ptsd Wants To Leave Me

[Believeinlove]

Hi, i will intriduce myself. I am Jolanda and live in the Netherlands, i am Dutch. My husband has ptsd, diagnosed in 1998. We met after his former marriage ended in 2000. A few months after his wife left him we fell in love and started to live together. I had (have) a son who was 2 years old then. We had a perfect marriage. Sometimes we had an argument, most of the times we felt good together. Loved each other a lot. Last year i got leukemia. The whole year was about me. I was thrown into mennopause, had lots of hitflashes, so was not easy to live with. Later he once told me he had missed me that time. In september 2015 he had a time he did not love me. Never told me. Then later everything was fine again.

Then in januari the ptss started to kick in. He told me he was totally cold inside. That he didnt feel love for me anymore. I was in totall shock. Never thought that he wouldnt love me. I was terrified, showed him that. We had difficult talks. After a month things looked better. He could say again that he loved me. Happy. Then a month later he started with regressiontherapie. Then he told me again he couldnt feel love for me. A few weeks later, and dramas later, he moved out. Went to camper to get peace in his head. Finally i reacted good, told him he should take the time to get peace and calmness. Now, month later, he told me de did nit want to stay in relationship with me anymore. Wants to be free, live at the campside in a cabin with our dog. I was in shock. Am in shock. Am in such a pain. The familidoctor told me week before that he isnt himself now. That he is nkt acountable at this moment. I keep telling myself that. That everything will be fine in time. But I am so afraid! He agreed to take relationtherapy. We should ask for it this monday. Yesterday I told him that i would let him lose to get the ptsd taken care of (dont know how to say jt in English), to tame the storm jn his head and that we later go into the relationtherapie. That the contact between us would me less. I hope that he will see that i am nit the problem, that the ptsd is the problem.

And now I am sooooo afraid that he will never ever love me again. That i will have to live without him. And that our son will have to deal with a father who is leaving. Who left. First an ill mother, now an ill father. But the last one will have so much more impact. I was never scared for the leukemia, i am terrified for him to leave me. I love him sooooo much.

 

[Deleted member 17302]

Many PTSD sufferers bail on their relationships. I've seen only ~2 actually come back and only 1 actually stay. In that situation the guy came back 12 months later and they had kids and were married. This forum is bursting at the seams with these stories. My lady has been gone 2 months now and we were engaged and together for 4 years and through hell and back and it still went poof. Others were 7 years and 20+ years of marriage.

Unless meds and therapy are done, there is little hope of recovering from that scenario it seems. It's very sad but reality sometimes is not very kind. I'm sorry for the troubles you are going through. Please look at the "supporter relationships" forum on this website and you will see quite a bit of the posts talking about this happening to them. I wish you the best of luck.

 

[Believeinlove]

Thank you for your reply. I will look at the item.

 

[intothelight]

@Jolandamariette Welcome!

You need to keep your focus on your health and on your child as you cannot fix your husband. He is going to have to seek the help he needs to work through the issues that he is struggling with. Cancer is hard on everyone and sometimes it is the hardest on those that don't have it. I am not sure what type of support is available for family members in your country, but sometimes just having the support of others going through the same thing is invaluable.

My husband also pulled away when I was treating and a big part of that was it was easier to disconnect than to deal with the pain and the fear of losing me. It wasn't an easy time for either of us, but we did get through it. Cancer isn't a disease that affects just the patient, it affects the entire family and it most definitely isn't your fault and it isn't anything you did wrong.

 

[Believeinlove]

Hi intothelight, thanks for your words! Just an hour ago my husband told me he is going to do EMDR therapy. So glad. He is such a wunderful person, hope that the therapy will give him tools to cope with the ptss.

 

[Deleted member 17302]

Hi intothelight, thanks for your words! Just an hour ago my husband told me he is going to do EM...

Be aware that EMDR is awesome BUT it gets worse before it gets better because you have to actually face the issues and running away from the trauma is what most people want to do. It will be tiring, upsetting, but in the end, a great solution.

 

[Friday]

Welcome to the forums :)

Both of those 2 things....
1) Emotional Distancing / Numbing...
2) Fear of hurting our loved ones (by our pain, our absences, our darkness, our actions, our ABCXYZ) and wanting better for them than we can give them...

...Are very common with PTSD.

A third thing, 3) Isolation, is a tool most (if not almost all) sufferers use when overwhelmed. It can range from a few minutes during the course of a day, to actually taking weeks/months apart.

All 3 of those things can be worked with / worked around inside of a relationship. But they take time to figure out what's happening, why, & how to work with it or work around it.


As a couple examples;
- 15+ years into this, I know that there will be times I don't feel any love for the people I love best. I ignore that. Feelings? Are not reality. Given a little bit of space, and some lowered stress? Those feelings return. If I haven't done anything in the meantime to f*ck things up (like break up with my partner), then things go right back to normal as soon as I take care of the things that are causing my symptoms to flare up. I know that when I lose my emotions, it has absolutely nothing to do with the people I feel things for -usually- and everything to do with what else is going on in my life.

- In the first few years, when I went into hardcore isolation, I walked away from my life. Quit my job. Broke up with my partner. Left my apartment. Left everything. Just walked away. What I learned, though, is that while at the time it felt like it would be forever? (And each time, even now, it still feels like forever). It rarely ran more than 6mo. And most of the time? Not more than 6 weeks!!! 6 weeks??? That, is not needing to walk away from my life. That, is needing to take a vacation!!! So, 15 some odd years later... When I get the urge to leave everything? I take a vacation. That simple. It's still isolating, but it's isolating without dire consequences. Even better? If I take smaller breaks throughout the year? A weekend here, a week there, a few hours here, a few weeks there? I'll go years and years without things ever getting bad enough that I need to take 6 weeks off.

The above are just some examples of what I do / what I've learned. Different people will have different solutions for what works for them, both individually, and inside of a partnership. It can be a very wild ride in the beginning. From both a sufferer's & supporter's point of view. While I've dated PTSD, my POV is mostly that of a sufferer. We have a really amazing group supporters, here, with phenom insight & understanding.

 

[EveHarrington]

Welcome to the forum. :)

I think you'll be able to get a lot of support here and find a lot of information about PTSD.

 

[Believeinlove]

FridayJones: thanks for your respond. Was good for me to read it. And it fits him and his behaviour now. The isolation he needs : cause when he is here, at home, he takes care of us. He is a very caring, warm person. Always looks after others. And now he needs to take care of himself. Things has cooled down yesterday. He doesnt speak anymore about leaving me, i told him not to worry about me. If he wants to contact me: I am here. If he doesnt, its ok. If he wants to app me it ok, if not its ok as well. He just have to focus on himself, on the therapy. Dont worry about us, we will deal with that later.
We have good close friends who take good care for the both of us. Saturday I hit rock bottom, now I think everything will be fine. Dont know when, but it will. It takes as long as it takes.

 

[Believeinlove]

Welcome to the forums :)

Both of those 2 things....
1) Emotional Distancing / Numbing...
2) Fear of...

I wrote a reply here below. Dont know if you read it. I read your message over and over again. When time comes i will let my husband read it. We spoke last sunday afternoon. Was a good talk. This morning we saw each other again, he looked not as good as sunday. Hope his therapy will start soon, this waiting is terrible. But it will take an other three weeks I am afraid.

 

[Mytime]

Welcome to the forum. I'm sure you have read some posts and no longer feel alone.

My first post, I got a very warm welcoming. It sounded a lot the same as yours. lol

The support I have received from everyone here is amazing. My marriage might not be where it is, if I didn't have all these wonderful strong people here to support me. I won't lie, some days can be harder than others. But to know you have a place to go is breathtaking. There is so much honesty and strength here.

I have to say, fridayjones thanks for sharing that reply. You said something in my first post, that I live by now, you said.

Sometimes you just have to take your own head out of your ass!! And I did.

Looking forward to help support you:hug:

 

[Believeinlove]

Welcome to the forum. I'm sure you have read some posts and no longer feel alone.

My first post, I got a...

I wrote a big reply and poof: all gone. Will reply later...;)