Hello Sighs. Sorry to hear about your trouble! I try to give the most honest input I can.Your post was uncomfortable for me to read, because it brought back memories.
In short; I can relate. I am a sufferer and there were times in my life were I was a real asshole to my partner. Not unlike your husband.
First, it seems that this was unusually bad behavior? That is good. You wrote you were getting along much better. I think its important to not let the bad overshadow the good. It is better to see the whole affair not as one big pile of stuff, but a pile of good and a pile of bad. In time, one will grow and the other shrink. If he works on his progress, of course.
Now to the real meat.
I wrote there was a time I was a real asshole to my partner. From what you wrote I feel your partner is one to you. This behavior is simply not acceptable. You are not your husbands mother. Not his sibling, nor his nurse, or his drinking buddy. Your are his partner. An equal. There needs to be a level of respect, healthy boundaries. PTSD can, at times, swallow those. I believe, that must be fought.
You need to go to bed when it is the right time for you, and he needs to learn to cope. You need to take care of your health and your needs. Just because his needs can be more dramatic, volatile if you will, they are not greater then yours.
Before I knew about PTSD, about what the heck was going on with me, all those things were missing from my relationship.
I had it worse then my partner! ! ! He complained about things I did not give a f*ck about. Who cares if he gets his sleep, right? I am miserable, and I want help now. Need help now! What, he complains? How dares the son of a bitch, does he not see my pain? How can the pain of 2 hours less sleep compare to mine? Whiny dick, if he would go through what I was going through, he would know what it means to be truly tired. Now he is bitching about not having enough time for himself? Does he expect me to help him with his trivial problems, or what? What, now he wants to talk about something that bothers him? I cant believe he burdens me with his own problems! ! ! He knows that triggers me. What a unempathetic stone!! Pff. If he knew how hard doing the dishes is for me, the selfish bastard would not complain. And so on, and so on.....
You see? For some reason I considered it his duty to put his needs before mine. To care for me. As if he was a paid nurse, or a parent. Then, one day, he just broke down. He simply could not take it anymore. I made his live hell. He was afraid of coming home, because this demanding, angry, spoiled bratty big baby would await him and do nothing but complain and argue and bitch and moan. Hissyfits and temper tantrums abound. Of course, I considered him to be the difficult one.
Then, only when he could not take it anymore, he broke down. He cried and talked and cried some more and after months and months, finally told me how absolutely miserbable he was. How he felt unappreciated for all the sacrifices he made, how he does not need much but no matter what, even that he doesnt get. He had bottled it all up.
It was a wakeup call, if there ever was one. I realized I took him for granted. Like a little kid his parents. Did not even think about nor care that he was a human, not a function. When he was not my nurse, he was my punching bag.
What changed then was, that I realized he could walk away. I realized what I would lose if that would happen. Not the nursing and helping and stuff, that did not matter. But love and warmth and companionship. I realized that I buried the person I loved under my own weight.
We made an instruction manual of him for me. :D We figured out his needs, what he needs to be happy and I simply wrote it down and put on a wall. It hangs here, right in front of me. We wrote down just a bit, only a start, but that changed everything. Just those small boundaries we made, mostly about sleep, resetted me in a way. There was a beautiful ripple effect and I re-learned to be respectfull of his needs again.
Now we have a very beautiful and understanding realtionship again. We are very happy. I no longer take him for granted, but am profusely thankfull for all he does. He does alot. Its not all roses and sunshine of course. I still have bad days, or we have difficult situations. But when I behave shitty, which becomes rarer I hope, my apologies are sincere now. Its very different. I do not apologize anymore because I think I should, for peace's sake, but because I want to.
But that initial boundary setting, was so so important. To say: A line must be drawn, this far, no further. I hope you do not wait until your breaking point.
Sorry for the long text, did not plan for it become a novel.
