Traumatic Experience/ guidance for avoiding triggers when reaching out

[MegNara]

Hello, thanks in advance for reading such a long post. I went through some traumatic experiences last year, and just this past month am finally returning to myself, and in fact better than I’ve been in years. Most of the trauma involved a new relationship with someone who after researching a lot, I strongly believe has BPD (undiagnosed as far as I know). He ticks every single criterion. The break up happened last year, and I want to try to recover the relationship, with part of the parameters being that we both individually see helpful therapists and do couples counseling and continue to work on emotional regulation. I have a recent ADHD diagnosis, and had some long term mild anxiety and depression that went haywire during this experience. This relationship partner has told me that he experienced numerous close calls while on tours of duty, has suffered sexual abuse as an adolescent, is adopted, had some childhood emotional abuse, is twice-divorced with a child from each marriage, and has had increasing depression, anxiety, and panic attacks in recent years.

We started dating in March of last year, and very quickly developed the most intense connection I have ever felt in my life. We are incredibly like-minded, sharing similar interests, values, and outlook on life. To me, much of the intensity has to do with the fact that we both feel things incredibly deeply, and it’s such a relief to be with someone who occupies that world and understands that.

We both got Covid in May, and quarantined together for 6 days. Right before that, he had started a new, highly stressful job. When he returned to work, he was really eager to see me, and then a switch flipped. He had a panic attack, and slipped into anxiety/depression. I tried to offer support, and was incredibly shocked to see an entirely different person, and was hoping to ride it out to figure out how we could handle the situation in the future. I started to feel like I was losing my mind, as a result of long Covid symptoms. I was really hard on myself, believing that I should have recovered by that point, and seeing him as not fully there, felt like I had to keep the relationship, and him, together. I had the worst brain fog I have ever had, I was having difficulty performing basic tasks, had zero sense of time, I made up plans to do nice things for him and couldn’t execute them, and was really disoriented by my lack of focus, mind-body connection, and weakness. My own limited boundaries became almost nothing, and so I really felt his depression/anxiety, and I’m sure he felt my erratic and loopy behavior. He had been very generous with me, whereas I had held back a little, so I didn’t feel like I could ask anything more of him while he was struggling. I’m just now realizing the extra stress my symptoms placed on him—even though I couldn’t articulate what was going on, there was obviously a change in both of us.

He became frequently experiencing states of panic. And then I became pregnant. I was obviously not doing well already, and the emotional swings—both his and mine—hit me horribly. We both want kids, but that was really early. His reaction to the news was immediately on how his life would be over, if he became divorced three times with three kids. He called soon after he left to amend his reaction, but I was already spiraling. We were walking on eggshells. I wasn’t feeling well and turned down sex, and he was triggered by sexual rejection from his last marriage. I lost the pregnancy, and he took me to the ER, after blood loss and almost passing out to the point where I was fearful for my life. He has told me that he worked briefly as a paramedic, but he couldn’t handle it because of all of the children and elderly in trauma made him think of his own family members.

After that, he didn’t really check on me much, and started responding selectively to my texts. I felt like I had made a big deal of nothing, and the female doctor at the ER had made the comment that “childbirth is so much worse”, minimizing my pain, gaslighting, etc. We had a couple of great moments—I went out and met him and his kid for the first time, and he called me up a few days after, and sounded normal, cheerful, excited about life. We had a couple of very strained dates. I had a visit to the GYN where they said what I was experiencing was normal, but I wasn’t feeling well. He came over to give me a hug I asked for, but his anxiety was rolling off of him in waves, and he became extremely upset at my energetic dog.

After that, he didn’t want to get together, and we had a strained phone call, and then little contact. A week later, I was feeling worse, and went to the GYN, who said I was probably just having a weird period. I almost canceled the appointment to get an ultrasound because I was convinced everything was in my head. It turned out that I still had a significant amount of remains in my body (for over a month), and I was hustled to schedule surgery within the next few days to complete the miscarriage. The way the GYN spoke with me, I was fearful that my life was potentially at risk. I called him, and asked if he could help, but he said he was unable to take off any more work, and was going to be with his kid. The procedure was a nightmare. He did text to see if I was ok, but 2 days later, I texted him, and he had taken me off of his contacts who could override his ‘do not disturb’. A week later, we chatted and he talked about how busy and overwhelmed he was. A few weeks later, I texted him to see if he could talk, and we called and he said he was finally seeing a therapist who said he should set boundaries, and he didn’t want to talk about what happened, didn’t have time to date, and just wanted to spend time on the things he cared about.

I had continued pain during this time, but the operating doctor said I was fine. I finally found a pelvic floor specialist who helped me gradually reduce my pain over 4 months. I was debilitated over this time, unable to do much beyond living through each day. I was unemployed and very alone. I texted him about every 2 weeks, just asking how he was doing, and he responded to most of them with maybe a light sentence or two, usually not right away. He did drunk text or call a couple of times, but immediately apologized for disturbing me. He seemed to be in a great mood when his parents visited in October, and we had a long text conversation, and then we ran into each other a couple of weeks after. We talked for a couple of hours, and the conversation was surprisingly easy, we talked about all sorts of things. He invited me to yell at him after I told him my therapist was trying to get me to access anger. So, I accused him of leaving me to handle the situation all on my own, he never checked on how I was doing, had earlier offered to help me pay medical costs but had never asked about it (which I had to wait for months, getting so many huge bills, waiting for the insurance to settle it all). I told him, upset, that it’s a moral issue if you contribute to someone’s harm, you help them, and if you can’t then, you help them when you are able to. He apologized for not being there, and for not helping me. He said that he couldn’t remember most of July/August. He did tell me, accusingly, that I was a “puller”/anxious attachment style, and that he was insecure, and that I didn’t reciprocate sexual activity or compliment his body like he needed. He also mentioned the pluses of being in a relationship with me. The next day, he texted and said he had blacked out much of the conversation.

I found my therapist unhelpful for the obvious reason that her “tough love” approach isn’t good for people drowning in guilt—I wanted him to take responsibility, but expressing that to him wasn’t helpful (even if I’m working thru my feelings, I only want to say it to him if he’s going to really hear it), and because I was happy that he actually was communicating his needs to me. But, my therapist belittled his needs, trying to make sure my perspective was not blaming myself for not giving him support while I was undergoing physical trauma. I asked him a couple of weeks later if he’d be willing to meet and talk more about it, but he said just the thought stressed him out too much, and he couldn’t. A few days later, at a therapist appointment, I texted him asking if he’d be able to send money like he had said he would, so we wouldn’t have to think about it anymore. He asked if it was ok if he altered the timeline, and I said it was ok. I texted him later that week about how I was out having a good time, and he didn’t reply. I waited for over a month, and texted how he was doing, and didn’t get a reply. Two days after, I was in a club dancing and he was there dancing with someone else. I moved away from him, but I think he had a big emotional response too, and he left.

I have no idea what mental state he’s in…but every day since the New Year, I’ve been going up and up, to a point where I have only been at a few periods in my life, where things just seem to be secure—I feel valued with a new job, I feel really good knowing that there are tools out there to reduce high emotional states for myself, especially in situations of conflict. I have found with this new calm and restored sense of self, that I feel very in love with him and want to share this wonderful place with him, and figure out how to handle the negative spaces together. I understand that it wasn’t healthy for him to be around me in my trauma, and vice-versa. I think we both felt very vulnerable, and it really hurt to see each other in pain and not be able to help each other. It was so early in the relationship we didn’t have any idea how to support each other, and this situation would be difficult for anyone.

I overanalyze everything, so I am wondering if anyone can help me to clarify some concepts I have seen on these boards. I saw the idea to think about my end goal, to establish a safe place where deeper ideas can be discussed—however, I’m having a hard time determining which ideas I can bring up now, before reaching that goal of a safe space for discussion. I’m not asking to be told exactly what to say, but these are some examples that I’m thinking of, for how to consider a situation where I don’t know how he’ll respond, but there are still some things I can do to avoid the obvious triggers, while not feeling like I’m violating my own needs.

1. how to apologize without sounding like I’m giving excuses or completely accepting blame?
2. I want to give context, that I was fearful for my sanity and my life, in ways that I never have before, and I was acting very erratic and did not feel safe or trust myself or anyone, and I know it affected him. but I’m not supposed to explain myself, right? and this sounds dramatic, even if true.
3. when we spoke in person in November, he really wanted to know if I was happy. I want to tell him how great I feel now, but I also want to give context that it was a big climb, and I don’t think he really saw outside of himself as to what I was going through. A big reason for it is because I’m no longer experiencing the trigger of pelvic pain…and he doesn’t know that I had pain beyond the surgery, and I think it would hurt him to know it.
4. I want to tell him how I feel, and that I love him…what would be love bombing at this point?
5. I want to tell him how attractive I find him, because he was clearly feeling insecure about that in November, but I don’t want it to feel like I’m manipulating him because of our strong physical attraction.
6. tell him that I understand that he couldn’t be around me in my state of trauma, and I do think now it was in our best interest to not be setting each other off in high emotional states, that we were both hurting because we were unable to be in alignment with our values of helping others, and our expectations of the relationship were really high because of our connection, and so we felt incredibly devastated that we weren’t able to find a way through this. but, I feel like this is referring to things in the past that could trigger him, and I don’t want to feel like I’m excusing him.
7. I actually don’t need to talk it through at all right now—it’s going to be incredibly difficult if and when we do that. I just want to reconnect with him, but I don’t want to misrepresent things, obviously we’d have to talk about it in order to think about dating again. 

 Thanks again for reading and any thoughts.

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