Relationships with seriously damaged people

[ella58]

Can anyone give any input on this?

My partner of three years has some quite severe emotional damage and trauma from the past, particularly PTSD. I really had no idea for the first two years and then it came out over time.

Can anyone give me any feedback on relationships like this? I know they are hard (experienced that) but I am torn between leaving and staying as these parts of him are sometimes really hard to cope with and he doesn't want to get counselling to get over them. He's terrified of facing the trauma and then unravelling completely.

As a couple of examples of struggles:

• He was abused before, and if I shout or get angry with him he gets into a real state and it takes days to calm him down. I am not an angry or scary person, this is just regular couple arguments but he reacts to them in a very big way.

• He is paranoid that the world is an unsafe place and people are going to hurt him, including me. Despite years of evidence I am safe, he defaults to self-defence in a problem which is counter productive.

• He is almost frozen emotionally in his 16 year old state when his first trauma happened, and his views on me, the present are often polluted by things which happened nearly 30 years ago

Things like this - it makes the relationship hard sometimes, and if I get upset or angry or have needs he finds hard to meet (he can be, like anyone else, worth having a row with from time to time), I then feel guilty for upsetting him by being upset.

He can't stand me being upset, so he insists in supporting or looking after me, after which he more or less has a mini breakdown because me being upset has caused him to have an avalanche of fear that I am going to leave him.

We are two people who love each other deeply, but who are not in a healthy, stable relationship because one of us is not healthy and stable inside themselves.

For anyone who's experienced PTSD or long term trauma, is there anything you can recommend to help aside from counselling?

He had a bad relapse lately due to a situation in the present which he found very triggering so it's been a very difficult year.

I have used diet, vitamins, supplements, exercise, mindfulness, aromatherapy, massage and all this has helped a lot. Things he refuses are:

counselling
meditation
yoga

As he feels afraid these things will unlock the trauma in some way and then he won't be able to cope.

I really do love him, but it's very hard.

OP, some of this feels so familiar to me and I can only say in my case, it wasn't worth it.

From the outside, at the moment it seems like he's manipulating you into doing exactly what he wants, while still getting to be the victim. He won't get help because it doesn't benefit him, basically - there is far more selfish benefit in it for him to rage and swear at door handles and take his temper/trauma out on you, then mouth some empty apologies while you try to excuse and make sense of it all, than there is for him to actually do difficult hard work in therapy. It's easier to turn up at a train station and make some charade of a grand gesture than it is to actually say, yes, I'll get help.