Relationship Redlight Ticket....scared To Tell Him....

[Pretty Hurts]

@scout86 i believe when you say he's overwhelmed. i also think he makes choices at times that add to it, whether he's concious of it or not i don't know. for example, he insisted on cooking thanksgiving dinner completely by himself. it took him 2 days. he wanted to do it alone, he wanted to do it his way saying he just didn't need/want any help. in a later discussion when i saw how much it was taking out of him and he was talking about how much schoolwork he had to complete over this weekend, i asked if there was anything i could do, but he said there just wasn't anything i could do to help him. i let him be. i began to understand he may be have a hard time with the holidays in general. during the first night of cooking he was in good spirits and opened up, shared some good memories/stories and told me the meal he was preparing was the last holiday meal his mother prepared for the family before him and his brothers were separated from her as children, and he does this every year. she died while he was in his early 20s from cirrhosis of the liver, he was away in the army and had not seen her in many years. i let him be, i understood this was a grieving ritual for him....although it seemed to me he was overwhelmed and i wished there was something i could have done to take some of the pressure off. we served our parents, but it was awkward because talk of me not participating kept coming up. it was a shock to my mom and his father actually told him he should have let me help. he told his father, "she does enough to help me."

i always collect the mail, he forgets to do it. so i give his to him. that has worked out fine. this peice of mail is in my name, because the car is registered to me. i pay insurance, he maintains it, and we both drive it. this also works out fine.

i do not generally walk around "scared to hand over the mail". but when he's like this, i try not to "bother" him too much, this is something i have to work at. this particular piece of mail just happened to arrive while he's in a bad place, so i'm anticipated an unfavorable reaction. i appreciate most of your input. and i can understand if you can not relate to how i may feel at times as a supporter, who has some issues of my own that i'm dealing with that i have not disclosed in this post. always trying to "not make things worse" and you dread the feeling of realizing you just may have unwittingly after the fact. he's generally pretty balanced, approachable, helpful...but quiet in general. we've not been/lived together a year yet, so still learning how to. yes i experience anxiety over some things, and reach out for support here because no one in my life can relate, i love him dearly and appreciate him and won't make a villain out of him to our friends/family.

i agree he's in a bad place, right now. from previous discussion, he's not interested in treatment for ptsd at this time, so i doubt he'd opt for relationship couseling, but not because the relationship is not important to him. i think just the thought of adding anything else to his roster, having to talk about feelings, potentially being offered meds would add more pressure as you described. and his mind is focused on school, everything else has to come second....because "this is what's going to make a better life for us." <----his words. it was a challenge to get him to see a dr recently for chest pains, but he came around in his own time and he's cooperating now.

as far as the gym, he is training to compete professionally one day. while it is very therapeutic....he always returns in a better mood if he left stressed...it is more than "just exercise". for him.

 

[Pretty Hurts]

@Sweetpea76 thank you for your input. he may have noticed, depending on what was going on in his head he may not. but thank you.

 

[Pretty Hurts]

@Lucycat i've never heard it used that way. i'm sorry, no other examples come to mind at the moment. i guess "running a redlight" is what you'd call a figure of speech. perhaps not translatable word for word in another language, but regularly used in the version of english american people speak.

 

[Justmehere]

Would you use the term in other situations - for example is it an offense to be running a pedestrian crossing?

If the light was red for the pedestrian, many Americans would call it jaywalking, even if they were physically running - and someone could get a ticket for jaywalking. American English makes so much sense. ;)

always trying to "not make things worse" and you dread the feeling of realizing you just may have unwittingly after the fact.

I can really relate to this feeling.

It's hard for me personally to let go of feeling really responsible to not make anything worse, ever.

I do want to point out that if you give him the ticket and he gets stressed out, unless you were a jerk in how you gave him the ticket, it is not YOU that is stressing him out. He may put it on you, and you may take that responsibility on, but it's not actually yours. If things got worse after you gave him the ticket, it's not YOU that is making them worse, inadvertently or not. Not you.

You may think he is making things worse for himself, and he might be. He also might be doing the best he can. Cooking Thanksgiving dinner all by himself is a little self focused, but maybe that helped him get through the holiday the best he knew how. It strikes me as a controlled yet celebratory way to remember his mom. Maybe it was better than the alternative of not cooking it and then spinning out being triggered. A lot of things PTSD sufferers do, may not seem like the easiest thing on the outside, but for the sufferer, it is the best way they know how to cope with the pain inside. PTSD is a lot of freaking work to cope with.

A lot of what you describe concerns me that he is very controlling. He doesn't want you to help cook dinner, doesn't want you to leave the house to build up your own friends and support, doesn't you to do this or that... It's a little overly controlling and it does concern me that it's setting up the relationship for failure.

You are also very focused on him and his needs, and how you can accommodate them, to the exclusion of your own, or at least it seems that way. It's my sense that you are both perhaps a little co-dependent, or something like that, in your relationship with each other, and you are both almost burned out, by relying on controlling the other or meeting the needs of the other. His happiness depends a lot on you and yours on his, to an exclusion of any other supports. When PTSD is in the mix, this is very hard to sustain over the long haul.

I could also be TOTALLY off the mark, and if so please disregard. I hope that when you give him the ticket, it's an easy and simple matter, and that at some other time, you both can begin to find a better path forward. For what it is worth, I think you are handling a really tough situation really well. I hope your health issues get better soon.

 

[Pretty Hurts]

[QUOTE="Justmehere, post: 926676, member: 24240";)I can really relate to this feeling.

It's hard for me personally to let go of feeling really responsible to not make anything worse, ever.

I do want to point out that if you give him the ticket and he gets stressed out, unless you were a jerk in how you gave him the ticket, it is not YOU that is stressing him out. He may put it on you, and you may take that responsibility on, but it's not actually yours. If things got worse after you gave him the ticket, it's not YOU that is making them worse, inadvertently or not. Not you. [/QUOTE]

thank you for relating and reminding me that it's not me. i tend to over think a bit when i think he's in a bad mood. i get all worked up and anxious in expectation of a sour reaction. inside, i know something's not my fault....but on the outside i just hate feeling like he's mad. i only feel this way with him....if it's a relative, coworker, person on the street i'm like "oh, you'll get over it." i hate that there's no balance. i don't ever want to completely disregard his feelings or not take responsibility when i'm actually wrong. but i hate being so sensitive to how he feels.

 

[Pretty Hurts]

@Justmehere i thought the same about cooking the thankgiving meal alone being self focused also....but the more he talked about his mom, family, memories i understood it was something he just really needed to do and why. when i tell you i was bored it's an understatement. cooking is my passion and i have no recollection of not cooking on a holiday my entire life. holiday meals have always been a huge deal in my family, i recall learning to bake bread at 4yo. and i really looked forward to doing it together as it was our 1st major holiday together....but i let him be. after dinner with our parents i asked about his comment to father "she does enough to help me." and he said "but don't you think you do enough to help me? you cook every day, now we have left overs for the week." his presentation is a bit gruff at times....but i believe ultimately he was trying to do something nice.

i also want to thank you for your thoughtful response overall. you are perceptive. and i appreciate your concern for the flaws you pointed out in my relationship. i'm only begining to realize what i've gotten myself into here to be honest and i'm trying to cope as best i can while actively working on myself. it has been difficult for me without having strong non-judgemental outside support. for the last couple of weeks this site has been the only safe place that i could express my thoughts and feelings about my relationship. i'm meeting with a therapist early this week in hopes of some patience, guidance and support.

dealing with my health concerns at the moment is tedious....and humbling for me. i don't feel as strong as i have known myself to be in the past....i've seen alot of doctors already with no solid answers and have more lined up to see. it is stressful, and brought on depression, anxiety, and nightmares. i also have history of a sleeping disorder that got better for a while then got worse. i had over night testing for this last night. my contentration, comprehension and retention of new information is affected. and i hope to see improvement with therapy and treating my sleeping disorder. it has been dissapointing to come to the realization that while he provides support in many ways, he is just not capable of providing strong emotional support due to ptsd. i realize that is mine to deal with, not his. i was not aware he had ptsd until we began living together....and when he told me, he was in such a good place. i had no concept of what the day to day would be like if/when it ever got bad. or how i would react to it.

i do depend on him, and he comes through in the majors. he depends on me in the areas where he's weaker. i did not know what co-dependency was exactly, now that i do, i recognize it in this relationship. i can see that some of those ways we depend on one another may not be appropriate or healthy. i don't have any work models of healthy relationships, it's difficult for me to garner what are healthy ways a couple should depend on one another. i like to be/feel needed, (he does too, maybe ptsd causing stress within that need?) not sure to what degree being/feeling needed would be "healthy" this is one of the things on my list to explore in therapy.

as a supporter i find myself often translating his actions to expressions of how he may feel toward me, since expressing emotions verbally is pass and go with him. so i guess my belief was, allowing him to do when i realized "doing" certain things is important to him was understanding this man for who he is and making it work. i realize now that i may have taken that belief too far as every action is not a reflection of how he feels about me....and some actions that i may process in a negative way, i was likely not a consideration. it just is. (wry smile) i'm a lil slow here....but there's hope. i think.

 

[Pretty Hurts]

i left the ticket laying face up on the counter where i knew he would see it. i was not home when he saw it, but when i arrived he asked about it casually and it was a relief that he did not get all worked up about it. we looked over the date/time/location, he realized it was him and couldn't remember why he was there, or th flash of the pic being taken....it's been paid. he generally doesn't get bent out of shape over bills and such. my anticipation of the bad reaction was because he had been in a bad mood for a couple days already. but this is what anxiety does. at least for me....disrupt my inner peace, over analyzing undesired outcomes. at times it immobilizes me other times i may react prematurely. some balance would be nice. ii'm relieved when the outcome is favourable....but that rollercoaster takes