My Mental Illness and Relationships

The psych eval is what opened my eyes to the fact that I’d never had a healthy relationship. This applies to the relationship with my mother and father, sister and brothers, boyfriends and husbands, my children, and, if I had friends, I’m sure those would be strained relationships, too.

I’m not gonna lie; it’s made me question my worth more than once. Everybody leaves because I fell short in some way. Too much to handle. Not worth the effort.

I do have abandonment issues — big ones. That tends to come out in jealousy.

I’ve got a wicked fight, flight, or freeze mechanism ingrained in me. I’m easily offended and have a track record of being confused during conflict or confrontation. That often comes out in anger. And then I disassociate.

I don’t trust others to manage a household budget, which surfaces as a need to control.

My environment is one of the only things I can control, and so I’m beyond particular, if not OCD (literally, not figuratively), about how it’s kept. This means that if anyone moves anything, my energies misalign, and I get unrealistically upset.

Thanks to a case of ADHD, which we can’t medicate because of my other medications, I’m a non-stop chatterbox who blurts out every thought I have — and a lot of them are pessimistic. When I express my fears and concerns to my husband, he takes it as complaining, making excuses, and expecting him to solve my problem.

Attributed to PTSD, in addition to the fight, flight, or freeze mechanism, I also wrestle with automatic negative thinking. This means that every thought I have is formed as a negative, and I have to consciously work to bring myself back to center and shift to a more positive frame of mind.

I go through long stints of depression where I’m unmotivated to work; I stop cleaning and cooking; I avoid food and water, isolate, and push people away.

All of these things, for which I’m heavily medicated and in therapy, make me a difficult life partner. My mate has to learn to live with my mental illness just as much as I do. This is why my other relationships have failed.

I felt terribly ashamed and guilty for following in my grandmother’s footsteps, having married five…