Hello everyone!
I’ve been feeling shy about sharing in a forum, so I’ve been hanging back just reading, learning, and looking for some perspective. Coming here and reading through these forums has helped me tremendously to realize I’m not alone and I’m not crazy. So I decided I should probably get over myself and introduce myself already :)
I’ve been seeing a combat veteran off and on for about a year and a half. We’re both in our early-mid thirties. We’d known each other and had a mutual crush on one another for a little over a year prior to this. He is no longer in the army, and had been diagnosed with PTSD but went untreated for about three or so years. He finally agreed/decided to start going to therapy about three months ago, and has expressed that he is determined to stick with it. He’s opened up a bit to me about his experiences and about how his PTSD affects him and those around him. He drinks heavily and has anger issues. He understands that his drinking only exacerbates his anger and other issues and is damaging his health, but he's currently still leaning heavily on alcohol. At least starting therapy is a step forward.
As for me, my father was a police officer until I was about 20, when he retired with a PTSD diagnosis. He tried getting treatment, but ultimately ended up taking his own life a few years later. I did a lot of reading about PTSD during this time, and again after I learned that my guy had it. So I’m familiar with it, but I also know I still have a lot to learn. I also know I can’t save or fix my guy, but I think my experience has left me pretty well equipped to handle this – or it’s a good starting place, anyway, with much guidance and outside support.
As for us, he has expressed that he feels strongly about me (both ends of the feelings spectrum – I’ve gotten “I love you” and “You drive me f*cking nuts”), and that I seem to have an intuition about him and how to deal with him (he actually told me I have some kind of magic power over him). He’s also told me on several occasions that he doesn’t understand why I’m so good to him or why I like him, that he feels unworthy of me, and that he’s terrified of me. Simply put, I love him. He’s the best person I know. He’s sweet and smart and handsome, and can be such an incredibly obstinate shit. I adore him with my entire being.
Our relationship pretty much echos a lot of the relationships I’ve read about in the forums here. The back-and-forth of pulling me in/pushing me away. The cycle of seeing one another, things getting more serious, him bolting, him coming back, starting the whole thing over. A couple of times after he’s run, he’s jumped into brief, disastrous relationships with young twenty-something-year-old party-girls. They were messy and ended quickly and poorly. It gets to the point that I start second-guessing and invalidating my own feelings and experiences with him. It hurts like hell every time he pushes me away - especially when he can suddenly jump so easily into a relationship with someone else (as this is the point with me when he generally disappears), but I’ve tried my best to be patient and understanding with him, and he always comes back to me.
Anyway, we’ve just come to the end of another one of these cycles. We started slowly picking back up again about two months ago, shortly before he started therapy. This time the feelings/relationship talk was more serious than it’s ever been, and we agreed that a relationship was firmly on the table. This lasted for about two weeks. Then two days after I last saw him (with lots of kisses and I love you’s), I was out celebrating a friend’s birthday, and he walked into the bar with another girl. It was actually the last party-girl he had “relationshipped” with for a couple of weeks over the summer at the end of our last cycle. I quietly confronted him about it, and he froze - wouldn’t make eye contact with me and kept insisting he was just out with friends and was about to go home, and refused to discuss it any further. I left upset, and tried discussing it with him via text a day later. He replied with a long angry message, basically yelling at me for getting upset, admitting they had just gotten back together, and apologizing for hurting me. I asked if we could talk and he asked what we even needed to talk about. I said we needed to talk about the fact that we had just decided that a relationship was on the table for us and then he suddenly had another girlfriend. He said, “Well it isn’t now, I’m sorry,” and that it had just sort of happened. He finally agreed to talk to me, but said he’d let me know when. That was a few days ago, and I’ve yet to hear from him.
I’m devastated. I don’t know what just happened or what to do. Well, that’s not true. Logic is telling me that this is just following the same pattern - we just got closer than we have before, so he shoved me further away - and I should back off and let this run its course. He'll have to contact me eventually to let me know if he wants his things back and how to get them to him. I’m just so hurt and scared that it’s really over this time, so my heart and my brain are at odds about what to do. Anyway, I guess this is starting to verge on something that belongs in one of the forums, so I’ll wrap it up. Thank you all, again, for being here and sharing.
I’ve been feeling shy about sharing in a forum, so I’ve been hanging back just reading, learning, and looking for some perspective. Coming here and reading through these forums has helped me tremendously to realize I’m not alone and I’m not crazy. So I decided I should probably get over myself and introduce myself already :)
I’ve been seeing a combat veteran off and on for about a year and a half. We’re both in our early-mid thirties. We’d known each other and had a mutual crush on one another for a little over a year prior to this. He is no longer in the army, and had been diagnosed with PTSD but went untreated for about three or so years. He finally agreed/decided to start going to therapy about three months ago, and has expressed that he is determined to stick with it. He’s opened up a bit to me about his experiences and about how his PTSD affects him and those around him. He drinks heavily and has anger issues. He understands that his drinking only exacerbates his anger and other issues and is damaging his health, but he's currently still leaning heavily on alcohol. At least starting therapy is a step forward.
As for me, my father was a police officer until I was about 20, when he retired with a PTSD diagnosis. He tried getting treatment, but ultimately ended up taking his own life a few years later. I did a lot of reading about PTSD during this time, and again after I learned that my guy had it. So I’m familiar with it, but I also know I still have a lot to learn. I also know I can’t save or fix my guy, but I think my experience has left me pretty well equipped to handle this – or it’s a good starting place, anyway, with much guidance and outside support.
As for us, he has expressed that he feels strongly about me (both ends of the feelings spectrum – I’ve gotten “I love you” and “You drive me f*cking nuts”), and that I seem to have an intuition about him and how to deal with him (he actually told me I have some kind of magic power over him). He’s also told me on several occasions that he doesn’t understand why I’m so good to him or why I like him, that he feels unworthy of me, and that he’s terrified of me. Simply put, I love him. He’s the best person I know. He’s sweet and smart and handsome, and can be such an incredibly obstinate shit. I adore him with my entire being.
Our relationship pretty much echos a lot of the relationships I’ve read about in the forums here. The back-and-forth of pulling me in/pushing me away. The cycle of seeing one another, things getting more serious, him bolting, him coming back, starting the whole thing over. A couple of times after he’s run, he’s jumped into brief, disastrous relationships with young twenty-something-year-old party-girls. They were messy and ended quickly and poorly. It gets to the point that I start second-guessing and invalidating my own feelings and experiences with him. It hurts like hell every time he pushes me away - especially when he can suddenly jump so easily into a relationship with someone else (as this is the point with me when he generally disappears), but I’ve tried my best to be patient and understanding with him, and he always comes back to me.
Anyway, we’ve just come to the end of another one of these cycles. We started slowly picking back up again about two months ago, shortly before he started therapy. This time the feelings/relationship talk was more serious than it’s ever been, and we agreed that a relationship was firmly on the table. This lasted for about two weeks. Then two days after I last saw him (with lots of kisses and I love you’s), I was out celebrating a friend’s birthday, and he walked into the bar with another girl. It was actually the last party-girl he had “relationshipped” with for a couple of weeks over the summer at the end of our last cycle. I quietly confronted him about it, and he froze - wouldn’t make eye contact with me and kept insisting he was just out with friends and was about to go home, and refused to discuss it any further. I left upset, and tried discussing it with him via text a day later. He replied with a long angry message, basically yelling at me for getting upset, admitting they had just gotten back together, and apologizing for hurting me. I asked if we could talk and he asked what we even needed to talk about. I said we needed to talk about the fact that we had just decided that a relationship was on the table for us and then he suddenly had another girlfriend. He said, “Well it isn’t now, I’m sorry,” and that it had just sort of happened. He finally agreed to talk to me, but said he’d let me know when. That was a few days ago, and I’ve yet to hear from him.
I’m devastated. I don’t know what just happened or what to do. Well, that’s not true. Logic is telling me that this is just following the same pattern - we just got closer than we have before, so he shoved me further away - and I should back off and let this run its course. He'll have to contact me eventually to let me know if he wants his things back and how to get them to him. I’m just so hurt and scared that it’s really over this time, so my heart and my brain are at odds about what to do. Anyway, I guess this is starting to verge on something that belongs in one of the forums, so I’ll wrap it up. Thank you all, again, for being here and sharing.
