adrenaline
New Here
This is my first post and I don’t know how to start. I have been in a relationship with her close to a year and we have been living together most of it. The first 6 months were absolutely perfect. It was the most loving, intimate and fulfilling relationship ever, despite being a complex relationship by nature (I will go into these details in future posts). She opened up about her past trauma at the very beginning of the relationship. We got engaged after a couple months in the relationship and we started talking about the wedding and the future together. Love, intimacy, commitment… I guess that started becoming very stressful for her and then other sources of stress also came into the picture. I have also played a big role as source of stress because I tend to make insane amounts of pressure and ask too many questions sometimes.
The relationship started going downhill all the sudden. She started looking for flaws in the relationship, questioning her feeling for me, saying things to push me away, to which my response was asking too many questions (I know now, it is bad!). It was very confusing as things could change from one instant to another. The actions wouldn’t necessarily be consistent with the words. And even the words wouldn’t be consistent over time. My reading was that her was sabotaging the relationship and denying herself the right to be happy, and I communicated all that to her several times. At a point she said we would split up and she would move out because she needed space to figure out how she feels about us. She said she couldn’t continue dealing with my questions. She didn’t move out though but it is still undefined whether we continue to be in a relationship or not.
I did lots of research trying to get deeper understanding of her behavior and find ways to help her. I started going to therapy myself to be able to cope. I got to realize she could have PTSD and started exploring deeper and paying more attention to her reactions. I let her know that I believed she had PTSD and that it could be the source of the way the relationship had evolved. She agreed to go to therapy but she made it clear at that time that she would do it for me and not because she felt ready to deal with her issues. I studied the different treatments available and interviewed with a few professionals as I believed that there was only one shot here. If there wasn’t rapport and chemistry between her and the therapist it would be over. I also wanted to let the therapist know that she agreed to go because of me and not because she felt ready to deal with her trauma, as I wasn’t sure that it would be helpful for her going to therapy for that reason.
She has had 4 counseling sessions so far, one of them of EMDR. I have put a lot of effort into changing my behaviors that weren’t helpful to her. I am trying to be somehow detached so I neither trigger her nor stress her. Sometimes I cannot help it and I would ask a question as I did yesterday when I asked if I was being helpful with the changes in my behavior. She got angry and responded that nothing had changed in her life and started threatening with moving out and stopping therapy. I didn’t acknowledge what she said and didn’t get caught into the argument. She apologized later but didn’t clarify or restate anything of what she said before.
Net, I am in a situation where I feel like having to read between the lines 24/7, while walking on eggshells as most of the carers in this forum. My concern is that I feel that I don’t really know if she loves me. She pushes me out, she tells me she doesn’t know why I am with her, she says I’m just obsessed with her, she tells me she sees me as a friend now, and so on. At the same time I feel she is doing a lot of things for me but when you are in love you tend to misread signals. I will really appreciate you opinions, advice and comments. I feel so desperate sometimes that I feel like running away from the love of my life.
One of the scary things I got to know is that I have been the trigger of memories she had repressed for years, and that those were now haunting her all the time. This is one of the things that make me believe that she really loves me like she has never loved before. But, again, I can be misreading.
I apologize for the lack of structure and the mix-up of ideas in this post. I’m writing with very little filter between the way I feel and the keyboard.
The relationship started going downhill all the sudden. She started looking for flaws in the relationship, questioning her feeling for me, saying things to push me away, to which my response was asking too many questions (I know now, it is bad!). It was very confusing as things could change from one instant to another. The actions wouldn’t necessarily be consistent with the words. And even the words wouldn’t be consistent over time. My reading was that her was sabotaging the relationship and denying herself the right to be happy, and I communicated all that to her several times. At a point she said we would split up and she would move out because she needed space to figure out how she feels about us. She said she couldn’t continue dealing with my questions. She didn’t move out though but it is still undefined whether we continue to be in a relationship or not.
I did lots of research trying to get deeper understanding of her behavior and find ways to help her. I started going to therapy myself to be able to cope. I got to realize she could have PTSD and started exploring deeper and paying more attention to her reactions. I let her know that I believed she had PTSD and that it could be the source of the way the relationship had evolved. She agreed to go to therapy but she made it clear at that time that she would do it for me and not because she felt ready to deal with her issues. I studied the different treatments available and interviewed with a few professionals as I believed that there was only one shot here. If there wasn’t rapport and chemistry between her and the therapist it would be over. I also wanted to let the therapist know that she agreed to go because of me and not because she felt ready to deal with her trauma, as I wasn’t sure that it would be helpful for her going to therapy for that reason.
She has had 4 counseling sessions so far, one of them of EMDR. I have put a lot of effort into changing my behaviors that weren’t helpful to her. I am trying to be somehow detached so I neither trigger her nor stress her. Sometimes I cannot help it and I would ask a question as I did yesterday when I asked if I was being helpful with the changes in my behavior. She got angry and responded that nothing had changed in her life and started threatening with moving out and stopping therapy. I didn’t acknowledge what she said and didn’t get caught into the argument. She apologized later but didn’t clarify or restate anything of what she said before.
Net, I am in a situation where I feel like having to read between the lines 24/7, while walking on eggshells as most of the carers in this forum. My concern is that I feel that I don’t really know if she loves me. She pushes me out, she tells me she doesn’t know why I am with her, she says I’m just obsessed with her, she tells me she sees me as a friend now, and so on. At the same time I feel she is doing a lot of things for me but when you are in love you tend to misread signals. I will really appreciate you opinions, advice and comments. I feel so desperate sometimes that I feel like running away from the love of my life.
One of the scary things I got to know is that I have been the trigger of memories she had repressed for years, and that those were now haunting her all the time. This is one of the things that make me believe that she really loves me like she has never loved before. But, again, I can be misreading.
I apologize for the lack of structure and the mix-up of ideas in this post. I’m writing with very little filter between the way I feel and the keyboard.
