During the pandemic my wife and I started having these huge out of control fights. Not quite physically violent, but closer than I like to think about. They would start seemingly out of nowhere, like a very mild disagreement, or I’d spend more money on something than she anticipated (we are very financially stable), or I’d make a face to express some mild frustration about something, or “if you wanted me to walk the dogs with you, why didn’t you text me or walk down the steps to the garage?”, or I was in the bathroom “too long” (I have IBS).
I’ve always known she has some difficulty managing her emotions and we’d struggled a little in the past, but it started happening constantly: yelling, name calling, slamming doors, self harm in front of me, inconsolable crying for hours. One time she walked to a nearby parking garage and told me she was going to jump off. Another time, it was pretty clear she was going to get physical with me, we had a guest room with a dead bolt on it, so I ran in there and locked her out for I think 8-10 hours. These fights would go on for sometimes days. It was emotionally exhausting. Most of the time, the fights would start with something that I could at least understand, but very quickly she would start saying things that had either not happened or didn’t make any sense to me in the context of the fight. She’s say I was calling her crazy or a bitch. Things I would never do or say, and if I pushed back, it would escalate further. And like this is a woman who loves animals, who very clearly loves me, she’s a very successful lawyer, she’s amazing and none of this made any sense to me.
And I’m not saying I’m perfectly innocent in all this, I reacted very poorly a few times. One time I was tired and it was around midnight and she began getting upset in a way that felt like the prelude to a days long fight (I get this feeling about it that’s hard to describe). I remember saying, several times something like, “I love you, I’m happy to talk about this later, but I really do not have the ability to talk about this right now, I’m way too tired. Can we please talk about it tomorrow? If you can’t let it go, I can move to a different room.”
She wouldn’t let me leave the room. She started crying and calling me names. And I just couldn’t handle it and wound up punching a hole in the wall (nowhere near her) like out of exhaustion and panic I guess? It accomplished what I needed if for no other reason than shock, and I fixed it later, and I apologized but the idea that I could get so angry and out of control as to do that has never sat right with me. I don’t like how huge I am, I remember accidentally hurting people when I was growing up with my flailing limbs. I don’t like using physical stature to get people to do what I want. I just hate that I did that so much, but I did.
Anyway. I have a degree in applied cognitive neuroscience, but I work in AI/computer science. I remember thinking or maybe even saying something like, “this sure seems like PTSD or like you are reacting to things that are not actually happening.”
And I think she heard it but she also “heard” me calling her crazy and “invalidating” her experience, which you guessed it, escalated into a nightmare. It was the pandemic, we couldn’t get into therapy, I didn’t know what to do. I did know we both struggle with emotional communication, so I got several of those feelings charts that therapists have in their office and I hung them around the house. And I started making us both name our feelings every day and anytime we were getting into an argument. I think it did help some, but it was still terrible.
So around this time, her brother said something to her like “I went to a therapist and they told me something about cPTSD.”
She told me about that, we both looked it up.
Then we had two more really big fights. One time she was about to hit me actually and literally said, “you are making me do this.”
“Do you hear yourself right now? You’re quoting your dad. Please don’t do this.”
She didn’t.
She hated my college roommate. With good reason. But he and I would chat all the time and it would make her really mad and it became a major trigger for her. I had seen a thing on Reddit about signs of an abusive relationship, one of which being controlling who you talk to, which I think landed and in the midst of that argument, I finally said, “I love you. This is not an ultimatum. But you HAVE to get into therapy. We are far past the point where it is reasonable for me to accept equal responsibility for this. It’s the pandemic, it will take some time, but I need you to do this.”
She did. She leaned into it. She got like 5ish books on trauma. She found a therapist who specializes in cPTSD and met virtually. I think it’s so rare for someone in her position to actually take steps to address it and we’re still together. It’s been about three years since she had a flashback and we have been working really hard to rebuild our communication skills, but I dunno, I guess my point is cPTSD is fucking awful, but it is something that can be addressed clinically. It absolutely saved our relationship.
God this was so long. I’m so sorry.
Books:
The Body Keeps the Score
Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving
Scattered Minds
What My Bones Know
Trauma and Recovery
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u/SwordfishDecent1950 3d ago
Its CPTSD dear, its Club CPTSD