vowedmom thank your for your honest and open post. These are my first words here on this forum and you’ve inspired me to be here and learn more.
I am in a marriage of 7 years with a sufferer of CPTSD, we have a young child. I feel like a newborn in my understanding of what’s going on in my wife's suffering but how the symptoms and triggers are also a part of our relationship, my daughters experience, and of course my own personal experience. I am rather alone in it all. I speak with my mom over the phone a little. I’ve seen a therapist off and on, I’ve read, I listen. And I suffer silently.
I think I am a caregiver in a majority extent to my wife, though she can’t see that. We also run a business together, raise a child together, and of course partner up with running the business of life as we know it. With what’s left, there is of course our marriage, which seems like an on-going struggle with her not getting enough attention from me, constantly needing validation and reassurance, riddled with nightmares and bad dreams about me leaving her, and what I can only imagine is mistrust in me at some core level, and even what I feel as a lack of respect for me, at a core level. Co-dependency seems ever pervasive, as when I have a bad day and try and talk about it, it ruins her night and she can’t see that the conversation was supposed to be about my day. Arguments ensue. The cycle of being blamed for being harsh or unkind begins. During and the days after every argument we have, which arise from nothing at all, I am told how triggered she was by me, how when I say things like this or that how much that frightnes her and how much what I say makes her feel unsafe. She becomes focused only on her pain, her triggers, her needs, her fears and trauma. The small topic of conversation that began the argument gets buried in what feels like a toxic dumpster fire, decades in the making, so messy that I have no idea what we’re even arguing about. Recently I bowed my head and said, “please I don’t want to argue tonight, I had a hard day.” She lashed back, “no! You just said you’re day was fine!” I was being blamed and argued with for trying to talk about my day and asking for peace after it.
My spouse is NO-CONTACT with her parents and siblings. All the siblings in my wife’s family who were also abused, are adults with families and have never done any work to begin to accept that they were all abused, and even still are being emotionally abused by the parents to this day. I say all of that because I seem to be the only one in the world close to my wife. It’s me and the therapist. She has friends, who all open up to her about detailed trauma or closer personal issues in their lives. People have always seem drawn to her to divulge and talk. She listens, cares, and people love her for it. She on the other hand, does it open up to her friends. Has told only 1 or 2 a little about her childhood trauma and what it means today.
Back at home, I see it all. The good and the bad. The hurt and the bravery. I see the imbalance, I witness the pain. I don’t get the same person the rest of the world gets. I did once, maybe before the world changed for her again, perhaps it was another life altering trigger, perhaps it’s just the way this goes.
The loneliness and isolation may be getting me deeper in the mess. I try and take too much on, I have always been one to take on more to avoid a mess. I avoid conflict and will go pretty far out of my way rationalizing the detour rather than setting a firm boundary. When I do set a boundary, it’s like I blew up a perfectly good orphanage. (Excuse the darkened humor). What I mean to say is that I get blamed for doing something really horrible, to a situation that was just fine they way it was.
Her CPTSD may not be the only thing going on here. And most likely the trauma of her childhood caused a slew of other things that are all entwined: OCD (obsessive thoughts), abandonment, trust issues, jealousy, NPD. Although OCD and PTSD is all she’s been diagnosed with, if she is talking about any of this other stuff with her therapist, she’s never mentioned it to me.
I feel gaslit when every argument eventually leads to her being triggered by me, her never apologizing or even seeming empathetic about my side of the issue, and then directly blaming me for communication problems, her triggers, scaring her, making her feel unsafe, not understanding her needs, not seeing her as my wife, and generally being emotionally immature to the point where my communication and relationship skills are the problem.
I fear we’ve not quite begun any real work to make this better. I can’t see that she sees these problems. She knows she has CPTSD, she does EMDR and talks about it all of the time. She believes she is a managing it well and one of her biggest fears is that it will affect us. And I think there in defines the place I feel trapped and lonely in; living with someone with CPTSD, who know they have it, and believes they’re managing it, who is isolated from pretty much the world and has a resolute belief that because of her therapy and how much she like her therapist, she’s doing pretty good.
I can’t help but feel that though I am not responsible for her triggers or most of what she blames me for, I do feel like by not setting and maintaining boundaries and taking on extra to avoid a mess, I can only be kicking the can down the road, Enabling toxic behavior, and putting up with what I feel is emotional abuse towards me.
I don’t know if I am finding ways to make it work. I find ways to avoid bad days. I pour love into my kid. I work hard and take pride in a rewarding career. I lie and suppress my feelings because I’ve found that being as open as I need to be makes a pretty stressful existence nearly intolerable. I worry about my own mental health a lot. I wonder how bad it’s gotten and I can’t see it. I self-medicate. I wake up, and I keep going for my child, taking seriously the most meaningful role I could ever have. I wonder what the future holds for me and my child. I find people like you and places like this. I watch birds and nature around me and remember that there is beauty everywhere.
Thanks for listening.
