Letters to the Editor
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PTSD
I dated someone with PTSD. She behaved very like your wife. For example, we were in a doctor's waiting room once and she read my horoscope in a magazine from two months previously when we'd been temporarily living in different countries. It said something about a new romantic attachment, which she took as proof that I'd been cheating on her. When she got upset she was liable to take a knife to her wrists, and I thought it was my job to stop her. It was a game we played for two years and at the end of it I believe I was suffering from something like PTSD. People with this disorder, and with things like Borderline Personality Disorder, or Narcissistic Personality Disorder, which, I've read, sometimes follow from it, can't have healthy relationships, and are a nightmare to be around. You say you love your wife, and I wonder if that statement would bear examination. My experience of people with these problems is that they're impossible to love, and incapable of loving, though they're good actors, and manipulators, and guilt-trippers. It's no fun being them, but in the end I had to look after myself because I was helping no-one by staying in the relationship, and at least by getting out of it I helped myself