Helcat,

“When I get triggered during disagreements I shut down. I stop talking for about 20 minutes. This helps me to calm down. This in turn triggers him because he’s had previous partners ignore him for a long time.”

I am sorry you endured that from your mother, I feel for your past self there. I relate to the part about shutting down and needing time, but this triggers my partner as well. He’s told me his mom would give him the silent treatment quite often, I am not sure what he would do to make her do this I will have to ask now that I think of it. When I need space he has seen it as withholding affection from him, like his mom. I have told him I just can’t be touched while I am upset, but I try to break this as soon as my mind can re-ground, seems this happens faster as I work on it.

“It wasn’t easy to get to this point. It’s been a journey figuring out how to communicate with each other in the relationship. We even went to couples therapy.”

My partner is supportive of me seeking therapy but does not believe in it, he has said “someone who doesn’t know me or my situation can’t help me.” I have tried many times to tell him the benefits of therapy, and even told him that therapy is not someone talking at you, it is a listening ear that re-phrases your own words and actions back to you so you can understand yourself. But he will not go to couples therapy with me, I think if I just make an appointment and tell him it is important to me, that he would go, at least once to try. However I am afraid of him getting a bad first impression and never wanting to go again, and I also don’t have the funds.

“Are there times when he handles your trauma response well? What does he do differently in this case?”

Yes, infact I feel lucky in this way, but I fear I will lose his patience and he will stop, more on this later. On fourth of July I was upset with him, honestly I cannot remember what he did, but I remember feeling like he didn’t care about my feelings and was putting other things ahead of me. I remember this causing deep feelings to which I cried and wanted to just run away for a while, but as I tried to turn to walk away he grabbed my arm and gave me a hug and this made me feel better. There were several times while I lived with him that I would be having a trigger response that lead to a panic attack and I would go into our big closet with the lights off and sit on the ground, this helps me to calm down. He would come in and sit next to me. He also has pulled me out of a panic attack by whispering in my ear “be nice to my girl,” directly communicating with the voice in my head telling me I was unseen and uncared for.

But lately he doesn’t grab me or hug me as much like that, and has said he feels he is always consoling me and sometimes does not have the patience to do so and instead feels falsely blamed for my pain. I fear that he is holding resentment for how much he has “consoled” me and will retaliate by making me pay him back for it in some way, like getting lazy in his effort in the relationship and make me mom him. I just want him to be seeking self improvement like I do, and not mistake consoling me and my still active triggers for me being mentally weak and lazy, leading him to be purposely that way with me.

“Regarding the lateness, does he text you when he is going to be late? Or does he just let you wait for him? Perhaps there are some things that you could plan to do, to make you feel more comfortable when he is late?”

He sometimes doesn’t text me and just lets me wait, which feels quite tormenting. Then the times he does let me know, his reasoning just feels like excuses and are all things that come before me, and leave me feeling unprioritized. So far the only things that makes me feel better are talking about it and feeling he understands why it bothers me, otherwise I also get an impulse to pull away and cancel our date, this hasn’t happened, but it has ruined dates before, where I feel unsettled/triggered the whole time and struggle to move on, and become irritated how quickly he moves on without validating my feelings. Even typing this out I feel like it is all because of my triggers, which exhausts me because it has been a while that we have had a full weekend without triggering me in some way. I think it is wearing on us both.

“When you are feeling calm, how do you feel about your partner and the difficulties that you’ve both experienced in the relationship?”

I was going to get back to you on this because I am not feeling in my most confident state right now and can tell my answer may reflect that, but I am going to challenge myself to answer it now and compare it to possibly a later edit:

I feel I am falling out of love with him because of how worn out I feel from being triggered at a faster rate than I can heal. I am hoping me moving out will help and not harm us. It allows me more processing time, but in the meantime I do feel more disconnected from him, and quite honestly relieved he is not always around… This feeling concerns me as I thought distance made the heart grow fonder. I think so much of our relationship in the last year has been about me and my triggers and him learning them, and he has said he doesn’t bring things up because he would rather ignore it than do any more talking. This worries me because he may not be emotionally available enough for me.  We have less fun together now than we used to, it definitely feels heavy and we rarely go a whole day without him triggering me in some way and I fear this will drain us both and I will end the relationship to relieve myself and because I love him too much to spread him so thin. I recently find myself breaking up with him in my head and how I would explain myself, but I do not want to lose him. He is my best friend, who comforts me and him being out of my life seems impossible for me to accept. We are on thin ice I feel, and I think it is thinner than he is aware of, since he is not as emotionally in-tuned/aware as I am.