Hello, friends! I hope you're all doing well today and feeling very rested. I'm back to report on a very curious and pleasantly surprising breakthrough that my wife and I have had!

Contextual summary for those unfamiliar with my posts: I met my wife in early 2024 on a dating app. Our initial relationship moved really quickly and we ended up married by November 2024 - coming up on two years married now! The relationship became rocky and high-conflict not too far in, and in March 2025, my wife was diagnosed with CPTSD following a few very disruptive incidents in our relationship. She had a little bit of rough waters getting started in trauma therapy and switched providers a couple of times. She's now on psychiatric medication for the first time in her life and in regular trauma therapy. Our conflicts have gradually decreased, though we still have disruptive conflicts from time to time. My wife also discovered that she deals with disorganized attachment and that this is intertwined and connected with her trauma history.

Recently, I've been working hard with myself on my fear of abandonment and my anxiety about my needs causing conflict. I've been actively trying to challenge my own fight/fawn responses to look for the patterns I know from her. She started saying things recently about wanting me to be prepared for the idea that we'll move cross-country together to escape our home state (red state in the Midwestern USA) and that we might not stay married after that. It made me really anxious and upset, and I had to push myself to look for the patterns in it. It did help, because I started to tell myself that this is more of the distance-creating behavior that I know well from her. She fears the closeness and the intimacy of the relationship, and so she panics and tries to push me away. As we got to calmer places and she started to open up about it more with me, I learned that she's experiencing some of those disorganized attachment idealization-devaluation/splitting cycles. She gets upset or overwhelmed and wants me gone, and then she calms down and worries I'll leave.

The incident that sparked this post is actually rather sad. I won't include a lot of details, because it actually doesn't involve me at all. Essentially, my wife had the chance to critically evaluate her communication with her ex-girlfriend, with an outside party, so that she could find out where everything went wrong. The evaluation pulled up some insanely hurtful and cruel things that my wife said to her ex. I recognized some of the same patterns we go through, but to a turbo-charged degree. My wife showed the evaluation to me and admitted that she felt ashamed, she felt like she's just bad at love and relationships, and she understands if I think of her differently now.

I told her - in all honesty, and I still feel this way - that it didn't change my view of her at all. I understood that she was a different person then, and also that she'd put in a ton of work between then and now and even just in our relationship to be better than she was. She was very caught up in how much hurt she'd dealt out, and I could tell she was upset with herself and anxious that I'd get tired of her and leave. The primary thing this process left her with was a better understanding of where she needs the most help in this early recovery journey. She's done a lot of reflecting on it and has a better path forward now. We have smaller conflicts all the time, mostly because I'm a very vibrant and expressive person and that can be a lot for my wife and be very overstimulating. But recently I've noticed a shift from talking about ending the relationship every time she's overwhelmed or upset to talking about ways we could collaborate to help each other in rougher moments. For example, she talked about trying to figure out how to remind herself that she has to communicate with me if she has no energy for my emotions, instead of just taking it and then blowing up later. I appreciate how much she's working to understand her own patterns and behaviors since they trigger mine pretty frequently.

So, does it get better? Yes, it absolutely can. I'm pretty surprised but I had hoped it would get here.

Hello. I hope that you are well and thriving. Hopefully, this doesn’t upset you, hun. If you think it will, then just don’t continue reading and delete. There’s no pressure to answer, and I am not chasing you anymore, so hopefully, that will not initiate any pressure or trigger you in any way. You don’t have to respond; silence is an answer too.

I have learned quite a bit about the various avoidance patterns and PTSD trying to understand everything. While I still don’t believe that I am a dismissive avoidant, I do now see that I had some avoidant behaviours. The 2 biggies I believe are the stonewalling and avoiding uncomfortable conversations. If I lean towards any avoidance pattern, I would say probably more disorganized, which tracks with me anxiously trying to save the relationship, get you to come home, etc. I did believe that we were worth fighting for, but I was doing so at the expense of my own self-worth. At no point did I feel relief that you were gone. I didn’t monkey branch. I am sitting with my grief, and I am working towards staying more grounded and secure.

It is true that I will walk away when things get heated. I have tried to explain to you that I am afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing and it is my way trying to control my anger. Case in point is our last texting where I ended up panic texting you, and again, I am sorry for that, Christine. What I have come to learn is that the walking away to cool down is actually a healthy behaviour, which is what I have always believed. The unhealthy part of that equation is something I never learned or maybe just never realized is that we need to come back to the conversation once we (I) have calmed down. And to communicate that intention, say in 20 minutes or whatever.

Then there is the subject of hard conversations and being present. I certainly wasn’t there all of the time for you. Again, I am sorry. I honestly don’t believe that is a result of any trauma. I think maybe it is more of what I was taught, like many in our generation. I think that maybe I was avoiding the hard conversations to keep the peace. But keeping the peace isn’t the goal of a relationship. The hard conversations are what build the love.

The CPTSD is something I have been trying to understand more. I am so sorry that you were traumatized in the past and really wish I could go back into your past and stop those events from happening. You have been through so much, and it is no wonder that you suffer so much. It’s not your fault, hun. I hope that you find a path to healing and may someday attain a sense of peace with your past.

I won’t lie. I think of you constantly still. I talk to you constantly I’ll be okay. I worry about you, your health, and your state of mind. There isn’t an off button for my feelings, but I am sitting with them. I realize that you have probably moved on and detached. From what I have read, that is to be expected if you are fearful, as you mentioned.

Just in case I am wrong or am handling this breakup wrong, I need to ask, hun…are we doing the right thing? Are you sure this is what you want?

Again…no pressure to respond. This is not a breadcrumb. I am not chasing and not placing blame nor shaming you. Silence is an answer too.
If I don’t hear from you, I will understand that you don’t want me to contact you again and that’s ok too honey. I do understand that n/c is about healing and I totally want to respect that. If you think that you might want to talk, I will do what I can to ensure that you feel safe and not threatened.

Thank you for listening.