Hoping to process something that happened and wondered if I could get support from any of you. I am emetophobic, have been since I was very young when my mum died of brain cancer and all of the illness involved in that towards the end.
I'm divorced, been with new partner about a year, absolutely and very much in love with him.
Went away for a romantic break to a hotel last night and we get room service and wine. We are drinking wine and talking as normal, it's about 11pm and suddenly he retches and throws up on the floor. It completely takes him by surprise, he runs to the loo and it takes me a while to work out what has happened and I'm a bit tipsy so my reactions are quite slowed.
He comes back, clears up the sick, brushes his teeth, says he now feels fine and just wants to carry on as normal and pours himself another drink. Under my slight drunkenness I feel a huge swell of adrenalin and panic and I become completely distracted and the rest of the night I am suppressing these awful feelings of panic. I ask him if he felt ill before it happened, he said no. He said he doesn't feel ill after either. I ask him if he drank or ate too much (we've only had one bottle of wine between us.) He says no, it was literally like a passing thing. He says he has only thrown up a few times in his life and that the incident was completely out of the ordinary and a one-off.
I tell him about my phobia and he is sympathetic but wanting to just move on from what happened because he's trying to get the mood back. I can see him wanting to get back into it, he wants to have sex, kiss, carry on as normal, and I can also see he is feeling quite insecure about throwing up during our evening. I love him, so I'm trying to go along with things as normal and end up having sex, ramming everything to the back of my mind and drinking more.
We fall asleep and I wake up this morning and I am sober and panicking. He has just dropped me at the airport for a business trip and I am sitting waiting for the plane in a complete state of meltdown. I mean, I suppose it's an emet achievement to not have run screaming and crying out of the room and allowed my "feelings" to override having physical contact with him afterwards, but the thought of me catching it, getting ill on the plane, how he just shrugged it off even though it was completely unusual for him, the way his face looked just before it happened, are just circling around and around in my head.
I don't even really know what I want to ask. Of course there is every chance it could be a virus and every chance I could now have it. I don't know how to stop the thoughts. It has consumed my entire day. How can that happen to someone and they just carry on as normal?
Please go easy on me as emetophobia is very triggering for me.