Messages

thank you both of you for your replies
@wife#2 I think you are right that it is intimate information and that it could do a lot of harm in the wrong hands, especially someone you've just met. I think for me it leads back to a habit of self-sabotaging: better to say everything at once and get rejected than get rejected after 6 months, which obvs is something I need to unlearn. And yes, also use my knowledge to very carefully screen the other person to see if they are personality disordered or in other ways fit old patterns of abuse, before too much myself is shared.
@contessa yes I think that's a good way to put it - they have to win trust one card at a time, not just be given the whole deck on the first meeting. About substituting with another illness/disorder i think that from the perspective of someone wholesome they might even be impressed by the amount of work I (we) have done to understand the condition and to heal. Best aquarius

hi I'm new on here
I grew up pretty isolated from other people and with a lot of abuse so never had the possibility to date or have much sex when I was younger. In my 20s there has been only one romantic relationship, which was not a healthy one. I have had sex in periods, also great sex, but mostly I avoid it. I am too scared of rejections/abandonment, and most of the time I don't have the energy to even try to meet someone, let alone have sex. (I am what Paul Walker calls a freeze type, and I have spent much of my adult life by hiding away). The sex I can do without, but no physical contact for sometimes years is painful.
I am now 30, and newly aware of my c-ptsd and how it has shaped my life in every way. I have come along way in the last year in terms of my personal development, but not so much in my relations to other people (still isolate/daydream instead of trying to meet people). I don't know if I will ever be able to go on many dates/have random sex due to the rejection trauma, but I would like to find and keep (healthy) partners/lovers. I am also getting ready to make a social comeback with all my new found knowledge about my own condition. My questions is: at what point in the dating process do you tell the other person that you have c-ptsd (and all the issues that come along with that)? Do you work it into the conversation on the first time meeting, or wait and slowly disclose it when you are already seeing the person? My gut feeling would always be to tell things right away, but I also have a history of self-sabotaging, so.... Anyway, just curious how others have handled this. If people had a dating profile did they write in on their profile, or tell the person before even meeting irl? and how did people react to you telling them about the c-ptsd? Thanks
(also: I am male and primarily (but not exclusively) attracted to other males, so would be interesting to also hear experiences from people who identify as bi/queer/gay/trans etc)