The story is very long, but I'll try and nutshell it for you.
I met dh four years ago. He holds very prestigious degrees but had been unemployed and living in his parents' basement for half a year when I met him. He was undergoing adjustment disorder after having left his career as a corporate attorney to volunteer in the Sudan. He spent two years there. When we met, I thought it would just be a fling. But I quickly developed feelings for him. After three months of dating, I told him that he needed to decide what he was doing or I had to leave as I was falling in love with him. He assured me that he would stay in our hometown. He even went through the very long and involved interview process with the two top law firms in town and had offer letters in hand from both. But at about five months into our relationship, he received an offer from Médecins Sans Frontières and took it without counsulting me about it. The job was overseeing their efforts in 15 different countries in Africa. He asked me to join him. I did, giving up my whole life (great job, great car, great flat, cat, etc.).
I had a hellish time. I was sick with infectious disease the whole two years we lived abroad (I had everything from TB to MRSA to malaria to dysentery everything). It was horrible for me. But I stayed because I loved him. I accompanied him to site visits on occasion and saw such horrible things that I can't even begin to descrbie emaciated children left in the mud to die, babies who had been raped so that their insides were falling out, albinos whose heads had been severed for voodoo purposes, women who had their labia cut off and eaten in front of them, etc.).
When his contract was satisfied, we returned to the States (is it ok that I'm an American?, I hope so...). But we didn't go back to the smaller city that we were both from. Because of the economy, we moved to New York City. DH got a job as a highly paid lawyer again.
During this time, I started developing symptoms of PTSD. Neither he nor I really recognized it as such during the first year. Of course, I also had HUGE adjustment disorder NYC is a hard city to live in even if it's your dream and adjustment disorder can affect even expats who are returning from London (which is a far cry from places like Bangui or Goma). I barely ever left the apartment. I made ZERO friends. I stayed at home and cried all day, basically. I did not find a job or even try. I did nothing that I used to do. I felt destroyed. I would fly into rages at him over the smallest things rages that were extremely scary for both of us (but less so for me as I hardly recalled them after the fact (which, according to the therapist I just found two weeks ago is very typical of people with PTSD)). I have ongoing physical medical issues that I developed while living in Africa, including one that means that I may be infertile. I blamed him for all of that and really verbally abused him. I admit that and totally regret it. Occasionally, when I would get into a very heightened state, he would attempt to restrain me and I would fight him off of me. We both left bruises on each other on a few occasions.
It was truly horrendous. I did start seeing a therapist a year after this behavior started happening, but she was someone I picked randomly from a list of names that my insurance approved of and was not at all trained to deal with cases like mine. She validated a lot of my bad thoughts and behaviors instead of challenging them and my condition actually worsened during the time I saw her.
My dh is a very passive person and never really challenged me on the behavior. He always reassured me that he understood and loved me.
But in August I took a trip to a European city that we were planning to live in to make sure that it REALLY was as nice as it seemed. He was to have joined me at the end of the month, but instead of doing that he lied about being sick (saying that he was vomiting and had bad diarrhea and that he might have Crohn's disease or colon cancer). He said that he was going back to our home town to seek proper medical care (which made sense to me as it is hard to find good care in NYC). I flew back to meet him and, in front of my mother and father, he said that he needed a separation from me.
I was completely shocked. I had no idea it was coming. The last emails he had sent to me said things like "I can't wait to see you soon and hold you in my arms", stuff like that.
He didn't even tell my parents that before flying to our home state, he had filed for divorce in New York.
He was talking to my mother a for months behind my back about my behaviors and did not seem to accept that they came from PTSD. He had built this image in his mind that I am just abusive-- even though I never have been before and never was to him until after the disorder set in. She did not tell me because he made me seem so dangerous, she thought I might seriously harm myself or him if she did.
While I admit that the fight-or-flight rages were scary, I was pretty shocked to learn that he had taken them as an indication of who I was and what I really intended, not a symptom of an illness like vomiting.
He now refuses to talk to anyone in my family, saying that he thinks that I "can't change". Which is so absurd as he saw me change right before his eyes from a woman who would (and did) do anything to him to a radically depressed and PTSD ridden creature.
His leaving gave me the shock I neeeded to gain the perspective on what was going on. I now have found a very good therapist who specializes in the disorder, I am on meds to keep my mood stable, and, most importantly, somehow all of it seems to have just been blown off. I feel like a drunk who hit rock bottom and I'm done with all of it-- I have heard from many medical professionals that this can happen as anger becomes a self-medication addiction in some people in much the way that drugs do for others. I just have to work to maintain it.
The only thing is that dh won't talk or give me a chance. He has refused to go to counseling with me. Everyone who knows me thinks I should just let him go-- that it's horrific for a man who purports to be compassionate for others to misrepresent the behaviors of his sick wife as fundamental personality flaws in order to leave her with a clear conscious. That it was horrific of him to ask me to uproot my life and to keep me in such an unsafe place where I was getting so sick all the time. But I know that he loves me and I believe that where there is love, there is hope. I think he has what they call compassion fatigue going on (something that often happens to the SOs of those with PTSD). I just hope he can snap out of it.
So, please, tell me what you think. Honestly. I really need a way to try to just talk to him. I have no idea how this is even within the remote realm of possibility. Even if we do end up splitting, this silence is too cruel to bear.