I could tell the long story of MR and what's happening right now, but the short version is that we're both dealing with PTSD at the same time, and our trauma needs collided. He doesn't want to put his trauma on my plate because I'm already overloaded, so he's trying to do it on his own and has been since April. It means we "broke up" or put the relationship on hold until he gets trauma support professionally, which is taking a long time. In the meantime we are still close and still see each other, but not as much as before.
Trauma played a huge role in our relationship because it kept me from trusting him enough to live together or marry him, despite the fact we have an incredible relationship and I love him to bits. I'm not talking about trauma affecting our sex life. I mean trauma affecting my emotions and my ability to take the next steps in an adult relationship.
In an ideal world we should be together with me trauma-free enough to let the relationship develop and grow, but I've put limits on it from Day 1 by saying "I'll never marry you". How romantic. He's been OK with that for the most part and his trauma issues are totally separate to mine, but my stuff still put us behind the 8 Ball. If I didn't have PTSD I could be living with him and helping him, instead of him trying to do this alone to spare me the burden. I feel like we never stood a fighting chance because of horrible decisions made by other people in my life, decades ago, causing me to be traumatised and fail to develop normal relationship skills. I blame those abusive people for doing this to me. By extension they are hurting him too, to the point I can't be with him during his breakdown. My abusers have ruined it all. I could add the Groomer to this list of abusers, because I won't recover from that added layer of manipulation or psychological exploitation. It adds to my trauma and sets me back years in a recovery which should be well underway at this point, even though it all happened well before I met MR.
Other issues:
- Single parenting -- My kids will always come first. Always. They don't want to live with him even though they love him. They've been screwed around by too many disgusting, abusive people in my past. I'm not making them do that again. They don't have the means to live independently either. They're both ASD and still need a lot of emotional support despite being adults. Some days my son and my partner are suicidal at the same time and I have to play middleman back and forth between them. My daughter has meltdowns from hell sometimes. The strain is unbearable.
- Caregiving -- I"m still responsible for my 84 year old mother who has cancer and lives alone as a widow. I have to take her to all her appointments and deal with her emotional baggage. That weighs on me and gives me fewer spoons for managing a relationship because I don't have time to myself and I'm always overextended in far too many directions. Did I mention my brother who used to help her went blind a year ago, and was recently diagnosed with cancer as well. Add that to the mix because his partner doesn't drive, so I have to help him with appointments and he can no longer help my mum. Oh, and mum had a mini-stroke last week on top of her cancer. So much fun.
- Pets -- I know that's my choice but they still exist, and I have a responsibility to be home for them. I take my dog to my partner's but I can't take the cats. We can't go away for weekends or long trips. He comes here but then my kids are here, and we don't get privacy.
- Communicating Emotions -- I'm awful with expressing emotions verbally. Sure I can say "I love you" but that's not always enough. I can't say or even identify how I feel most of the time because of Alexithymia. Add Selective Mutism on top and I'm a train wreck. I'm doing a LOT better than before, but it was 50 years of maladaptive behaviours for me to unlearn when we first met. He's very articulate with his thoughts and feelings. His emotional IQ is lightyears ahead of mine. His "feelings wheel" would have about 200 emotions on it and mine has about five. I don't mean that he's "too emotional" because he isn't at all. It's just that when he needs to communicate a feeling or a need he can do it clearly. In contrast I get overloaded and shut down, expressing a range of maybe five or six basic emotions like "Happy, Neutral, Bad, Angry, Trauma-Triggered, or Sad". There's obviously more depth to those feelings but that's about it in terms of my vocabulary.
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I never give you my number, I only give you my situation.
Beatles
13 Aug 2023, 2:14 pm
