Relationship Yesterday Has Gone

[Fire phill]

Thanks again Scout, you make sense. I just don't understand if this is PTSD or what. She says she can't deal with me right now. I had no answers no discussion and all explanations don't make sense.

 

[Deleted member 30331]

Hi, I'm new here.

I apologise for the long blog but this is my story and I have to vent.

Ok where t...

Hi again Phil. I posted to you and read most of the other posts. I'm not sure any one of us canease the ongoing pain you are going through and may still have to outlive. I do want to mention that although your situation may continue and even worsen, there is one thing that can be useful to you in the long run.

You have not said how old your daughter is, but may not even matter right now. That fact is, depending upon her own maturity and resilience, she may need you more than even you can guess. Your stability, no matter how all this turns out, can be a life-saver for her. She will worry about losing you and whether you'll be OK, even as she undergoes stresses she shouldn't have to suffer.

But your courage and unbending support of her could avert the kind of damage which easily could traumatize her and continue the cycle that her mother and evidently also her grandparents have begun. Find the opportunities to reinforce the bond you have with her, cry with her for her sake. Be her hero, and never knowingly let her down. The outcome can be that she will grow up knowing there is some fairness and love somewhere for her depend on.

It may take years, but she at least will have an opportunity to know that honest love exists. I hope you are successful in that. Kids have a great sense of right and wrong, and as she grows, she may fully understand that you have been her loving anchor.

A happy exponent of that will be that you will have proved your own worth to the person you love without reservation. That's some of the best therapy there is, and it is within your power, if you have any contact with your daughter.

 

[Fire phill]

Hi Still standing,
Thanks for you kind words. I hope and pray every day that me and my daughter will make it.
I just don't understand my wife. One day she is so in love then bang she doesn't like me overnight.
Has anyone else out there experienced anything like this?

 

[Kefira]

Most of the time when I end relationships the person I am with doesn't understand. It probably appears to come out of the blue for them. I try and try to communicate my needs in my own way, or learn through their actions that they aren't going to give me what I want. So I get more and more lonely and closed off, and eventually I hit a stresser or symptom spike and because I've already been emotionally isolating that's the kicker and I leave.

I learned very well the lesson that when one is depending upon someone (for emotional security, physical security, just things being normal/familiar/safe) that you make a show of being happy and things being good. More so when things AREN'T and it hasn't been taken well so far.

I can't tell you whether that's what happened with her. But from my end I know that people have been very confused and felt as though things were fine near the end, when for me it had been deteriorating for a while, whether it was an increase in symptoms that finally made it look unsustainable from my end or not.

 

[Deleted member 30331]

Hi Still standing,
Thanks for you kind words. I hope and pray every day that me and my daughter will...

Yes I've experienced that Jekyll and Hyde kind of terrorism. My girlfriend had severe
Borderline Personality Disorder, and probably had it all her life. Her mother might have been even worse, and her father was institutionalized for life for trying to kill her mother.

She was intelligent, attractive, passionate--and vicious when the attention turned to anything but her. She disrupted my daughter's wedding, several other family gatherings, even funerals with her tantrums. I knew not to even be friendly with a waitress at a restaurant, because my "girlfriend" could make terrible scenes, even throw food or splash drinks on me.

I had begun to suspect she had problems early on, but stayed in support of her until I almost self-destoyed. Having PTSD myself, I badly needed to be needed romantically.

By the time I split up with her, I had lost myself while walking on eggshells for 11 years. I had given up most of my other friends and activities, ignored my talents and hobbies, insulted some of my family's intelligence, and invested a lot of money in her failures to keep jobs.

I stayed with her at first because I am a compulsive caregiver, and later, I hoped that somehow she might repay the money I invested in her. She had also threatened to kill herself if I left her. When I finally split totally from her, I had to rebuild my fragile confidence, endure months of her hysterical begging, stalking, and attempts to monitor my new friendships. I eventually blocked out her phone calls and refused to answer the door when she would "happen by". It's been almost four years now, and the doorbell still startles me.

So yeah. I've seen somebody I wanted to love turn from a darling partner into a screaming, insulting monster sometimes in mid-sentence. A therapist once told her that she has PTSD. But after meeting her and hearing years of my saga of co-dependence with that woman, my therapist has told me plainly that my former girlfriend has severe Borderline Personality Disorder. Given the degree of whatever her problem is, I'm lucky I freed myself. My therapist says about that relationship that "It would have killed (you)."

 

[Fire phill]

Thanks to Kefira and Stillstanding for your words,
The problem I've got is I don't know what my wife has. She has been diagnosed with extreme c-ptsd. She wants to get on with her life alone with my daughter. She said that if the feelings come back she will find me. She said I've pushed her away and she doesn't like me anymore. All I've done is worry, try to get answers. If that's pushing to her then I guess I have done so. I don't know if she also going through menopause or what. Nobody is telling me anything. I just lost ten tears of my life.

 

[Deleted member 30331]

Hi Phil. I hope you are not letting your confusion about your wife's motives and behaviours prevent you from being your own independent self. Most of us have been derailed at points from growing normally. I thing in your favour right now is the your awareness of at least that your wife and her family are not reliable for measuring your own worth. However, with persistence on their part, their hostility can wear down even your most rational thoughts and confidence.

The fact is, you don't know enough about what is going on to be actively helpful. So you must stay strong enough to avoid erosion, and you must concentrate on improving you own ability to survive without some crippling trauma to yourself. If nothing else, that is a way be help your daughter through her future.

It wouldn't surprise me if the worst is yet to come to your wife in terms of instability. For instance, if her former husband returns to abusing her, it is likely that she will panic further into whatever disorder she has. You are right to consider that her homones are part of her disturbance, bu t you are not any more welcome to rely on that belief any more than that she will suddenly change her mind and change things back to the way they were.

Though I have been through repeated traumas, I have been fortunate to have had a happy marriage and fatherhood. Losing my wife to cancer was one of the hardest blows I could have sustained after everything else before and since. That's why I am very much aware of how things can be in a mutually loving and respectful union.

I've never found the right person again, although I try not to impose my wife's standards on any other women I meet. I know I continue to grow and change, so I'm certain to be a different person now from the one I was with my wife. I've taken the time to learn many things that could have enhanced my marriage, and I try to exercise those skills in new relationships. That has reinforced my knowlege that I'm always trying to improve. These habits have helped me feel more responsible for my own life, despite the occasional reversals. And I advise you to consider developing similar skills while coping with the unknowns about your marriage. You'll thank yourself for surviving this unexpected tragedy, and your daughter may take a priceless cue from you.

 

[Fire phill]

Hi I'm back.
Just an update, I think my wife has Borderline tendencies. From the info I've researched, she is Splitting, has "Painted me Black". Which would explain, The sudden change of personality. I've read that Borderline and C-PTSD are often comorbid with each other.
Well the house is on the market and she seems to want to go ahead with her irrational plans.
I go on day by day.

 

[scout86]

Still wishing you well! This is one of those things in life where you can't do much except the best you can. Take good care of yourself.

 

[Fire phill]

Thanks Scout.

 

[Fire phill]

Hi back again.
Well she has an appointment with a psychiatrist on 31 July. I tried to speak to the assessing psychiatric nurse to find out what's going on but they told me nothing. Things here at home are getting worse as many of you had predicted. Every time we speak it ends up as an argument with it being all my fault. She says she hates me and I have done all of this. I have ruined the marriage.

I try very hard to keep out of her way but it is difficult. She expects me to carry on as normal but continues to treat me like s***.

 

[Sweetpea76]

Just because you love and support her, it doesn't mean you have to be a target for her bile. She is not managing her stressors so she is lashing out at you and playing the blame-game. That just plain sucks.

I usually just stop my vet up short when he starts lashing out like that. I calmly tell him I love him, but I will not tolerate being spoken to like that, and he can find me when he is ready to talk to me like an adult. Then I remove myself from the situation. He has learned that it is one of my firm boundaries.

Just because he feels bad he doesn't get to spread it around and try to make me feel bad or blame me for his issues. Well, that, and I have a temper and it does me a bit of good to go and cool off too.

Lashing out is horrid horrid horrid. Sorry you are going through all this mess.