Husband with CPTSD Please Help

[tryingtobesupportive]

Hi everyone,

This is really a last ditch effort for me to try to save my marriage. Please help. My husband was diagnosed a few years ago, but we were together for about a year and a half before that with huge problems. Fighting, he would continuously put me in a maternal role, he was very controlling, very sensitive, very high maintenance. We thought he was bipolar for a long time. Then, he was diagnosed with CPTSD and went to therapy for the first time ever. Shortly after, I was diagnosed with bipolar.

Our relationship has constantly been back and forth and has been riddled with violence, suicide threats and attempts, and various other huge problems. I want to make it clear I am by no means a victim. I messed up so much in the beginning, and after he was diagnosed. But recently, I really have calmed down quite a lot. I used to threaten to leave him constantly (God, I know, horrible) and did do some pretty bad things. Through therapy, I discovered a lot of my shutting down and then losing control was because I feared my husband. I feared he would hurt me, emotionally or physically.

I believe my husband has improved in many ways. However, he is still so convinced that everything wrong in his life is because of me. He spends all day every day playing video games and complaining. He's supposed to be the domestic one (he works part time while I'm in graduate school) but he has not made a meal or done dishes in months. He has also been throwing fits lately, breaking doors, walls, throwing things. This happened throughout our entire relationship, and it is what has caused me to completely break down when things get emotional between us.

There are quite a lot of other things going on in our lives. Without making it very personal, I have taken on a lot of baggage from my husband's past. Mainly, his son. I've also survived a very intensive graduate school program, and am doing well, in spite of this. I have had to miss classes and lie to people because my husband would be attempting to kill himself, or threatening to run away and never come back. His volatility, and the extreme places he goes so easily, do not make sense to me.

I do not feel like I've done anything for myself in months, and I don't believe my husband has seen me at all in a long time. I believe he's using me and our relationship as a crutch. I have tried to get him to go back to therapy for over a year, and he continuously tells me that when things are good between us, he'll go, because he can't get better without having a foundation between us. To me, that is completely wrong. There can be no foundation and nothing will be good between us until he goes to therapy.

I have also experienced his selective memory/amnesia, and I can't work around it. He's incredibly smart, and twists everything everyone says and can change everything so easily, and he believes it himself. However, I am not a victim. I have really really messed up on so many things. The issue is that now, he says he needs all of these things to be completely unconditional, but I don't feel I can sit by and just let him continue to do the self-destructive things he's been doing, nor do I feel like I can continue to just give him everything he wants. I tried that for a while, but completely lost who I was in the process, and flipped my * a few nights ago because of it. Everything seems like a real problem of timing with us. I believe he is at the stage where he is ready for things to be good, he's ready to move forward, but he continues to blame me for everything that happens. I have tried so hard, but all he does is tell me he's going to kill himself, or leave me. Then he's shocked when I act like it's true.

Please help. I don't know what to do. 

[Three Roses]

Hello and welcome to the forum. Although i'm sad your present circumstances are bad enough to have led you here, this is a safe and supportive forum for people to be able to find solutions to the chaos that cptsd can create in our lives.

First things first: make sure you are safe. If his son is small and lives with the two of you, make sure the boy is safe too. He's an innocent in this and if your husband is putting him in danger, you need to speak up to someone.

Helping someone who doesn't want help, or who doesn't even acknowledge they need help, is tricky. Your best and most loving attempts can have the opposite of their intended consequences. It is best if the two of you get in some couples counseling or individual therapy, or both. If he won't go, go alone and be completely honest with your therapist about the difficulties in your relationship.

If, like many of us here, he experiences dissociation as a side effect, he may honestly not remember things he's said or done while dissociated.

In the end, you may have to leave if only until he agrees to get help, if your relationship is that volatile. I wish there was something i could say to you, "Do this and it will get better," but there isn't. Take care of you first, and everything else will fall into place. You may have some very difficult choices ahead. Good luck, my warmest wishes for the both of you.

[Kizzie]

Hi and welcome tryingtobesupportive   

I am not a psychologist but I do suffer from Complex PTSD I must say that several things you mentioned about your H's behaviour sound more like a personalty disorder than Complex PTSD. In particular: blaming you for all his problems (most people with Complex PTSD blame themselves); twisting things people say and believing what he says is the truth (very common with a PD); and, threatening to leave or kill himself (volatile relationships such as this are more common in a PD - those with CPTSD tend to isolate from others).  My point is he may have been misdiagnosed, unfortunately it does happen.

Our sister site Out of the FOG is for people dealing with a personality disorder and I would encourage you to have a look through that site and see what you think.  See http://www.outofthefog.net/forum/index.php?wwwRedirect.  PDs require different treatment and strategies than CPTSD so it's important to know what you are dealing with as his spouse.

[sanmagic7]

i echo the sentiment of stay safe first and foremost.  and, may i reiterate that anything self-destructive he does, including suicide, is his choice, and has nothing to do with you.  his behaviors are not your fault, but things he chooses to do.  those threats are some of the biggest manipulations available - i know this from experience.   i hope your situation gets resolved in a positive way for you sooner rather than later.