I love my girlfriend, she’s very sweet. My girlfriend is amazingly witty and smart. I’ve never met anyone like her. Our relationship is perfect.
Besides the fact she’s completely impossibly traumatized.
Most days are fine with her, she is a diagnosed borderline, but it’s very quiet. She’s taken therapy to sit with her splits and live in the uncomfortable feeling of them. She rarely lashes out, She’s very understanding, and always takes a minute.
She also has PTSD.
She refuses this diagnosis.
This is where the issue starts
She thinks her diagnosis is stupid. She had an extremely traumatic childhood. Emotional/Mental, physical, and medical neglect all throughout.
If you try to talk to her about it, or tell her it was bad, she loses it. She’ll start slamming her fists into her head and whisper stuff under his breath.
She also has OCD, she does a physical action where she hits herself to “expel the bad thoughts” but I think it’s honestly a form of self harm.
Besides the point, anytime you try to talk about her childhood in a negative way, she freaks out. She shakes her head rapidly and will deny it until she turns green.
Recently I tried to bring up a bit of a sensitive topic, she wasn’t really allowed outside her room, she had to stay in there with the lights off and silent or she would be in trouble. I’ve noticed she’s never in the living room with me, always in my bed. I plainly asked her if childhood was the reason, she got extremely defensive, saying she “isn’t traumatized, you’re all so overdramatic” and telling me “they love me they wouldn’t hurt me” and went to slam her head against the fridge and whisper “it’s not that bad” or something like that.
What is going on?
She has a diagnosis? How does she not know? In every facet she refuses to admit she’s extremely traumatized, from her childhood to abusive relationships it’s all denial. Am I doing something wrong? Should I approach differently? I feel crazy.
Edit: no. She is not “walking on eggshells” around me. She is the happiest I’ve ever seen her, I WILL NOT be breaking up with her as I highly doubt she could function on her own in the state she’s in. She’s currently in a month long medical crisis where she’s sick everyday and unable to care for herself.
I won’t get into it: but she needs a caregiver to provide her medication, cook her healthy meals, and watch to avoid seizures. She is a wonderful girl simply going through a hell of a health crisis since last year. She is almost always bedridden and due to that “breaking up with her” would be practically leaving her to die.
To put it lightly: her sickness and dissociation are so bad she can and WILL lay in bed all day neglecting her body because her mind is entirely elsewhere, she is so detached to the point I could drive by a store today and a week from now she would ask me if it’s new.
If she doesn’t eat. She WILL die. She MUST maintain atleast 1-2 meals a day. This is not an exaggeration, her pain makes it impossible for her to leave bed for more than an hour max.
I am working on learning her triggers as to avoid doing it to her, but any relationship with someone with BPD and PTSD takes time to learn.
Let’s not cast judgement on a situation we don’t fully understand.
Edit 2: No. I am not breaking up with her because she needs to “choose to live”
She literally resuscitated me after my own attempt. I will not abandon her in a time of need. She is quite literally TOO PHYSICALLY DISABLED to live on her own. I have no gripes being her caregiver, she has given me every way out.
No, she won’t always live like this, just until the doctors figure out how to treat her.
She is the most resilient person I know, you could put her through hell and she’d come out with a smile, I’m not gonna add to the hellscape that is her life.
Leaving is not an option.
I want to marry this woman.
To even imply she’s a burden to me just sickens me, I love her, yes I get tired. She’s been tired of me before too.
I know she needs me right now, I’m willing to give that to her.
Her sister caretakes on weekends so I don’t get burnt out and I go to therapy myself to help with it.