Hello,
I'm from Melbourne, Australia and I am sick to death of people trying to tell me that my partner is just a bad guy and I should leave him. He is not a bad guy. He's a sweetheart but he is hurt and sick and sometimes angry and sometimes lost. He does not have narcissistic personality disorder. He is not a violet, heartless, lying thug or "just junky scum". He has real problems stemming from real childhood abuse and neglect. It is not just narcissitic excuse-making and his self-awareness and apologies are real, not just "a-hole insurance".

He is a loving, playful father to our three year old son and he tries to be as helpful as he can around the house but he is constantly sick with lung problems. He has bad asthma and caught pneumonia in 2002 which caused his lung to collapse twice, had an operation and has had poor health ever since, making stable work hard to maintain. He used to be a heavy smoker but he's cut down a lot since the operation. He's been unable to quit entirely though and this makes him a malingerer or a loser in a lot of people's eyes - yes, even the GP he saw last week.

Nobody understands him, and they sure don't understand me staying with him. I try to tell them but they look at me with pity as if I don't know what's going on in my own life and my own home! They don't want to understand him and he gets more and more withdrawn as the emotional abuse that he suffers gets reinforced by attitudes like these.

We have had it tough and we would have broken up by now if I had somewhere appropriate to go with my son, but I've come to understand in the last year that I cannot hope to rely on anyone here as much as I can rely on him, (and vice versa) even with all the illness and chaos. That's partly because it was my "friends" who have been telling me to leave him without giving any thought to how that might be done! Does anybody really think that homelessness is a reasonable thing to put a preschool child through?

Does anybody else have to cope with this ignorance and stigma and social pressure? I am so frustrated! It's hard enough to know how to support him and get him the treatment he needs without the world trying to turn me into his victim. He doesn't deserve that. He wants to be a good person and he usually succeeds, he's just not got the oomph to get out into the world and when he has those unexpected rages he is mortified by what he's done afterwards.

I'm sorry if this is too ranty for an introduction post.

Annette

Hi Annette, welcome to the forum. Yes, social pressures are a right bitch, to say the least. How can someone looking in judge what they do not understand is the question I ask. Sure, if a person was physically abusive to their partner, you don't need a degree for NASA in order to give advice on that one, but PTSD is very very different indeed.

If you like, contact me by PM and if you or your husband want to speak with me personally, I am more than willing, as I am also in Melbourne, Eastern suburbs actually.

Hi Annette

Welcome! It's great to have another aussie aboard, I'm in Adelaide.

I know what you mean about people not getting it. If they had physical signs of the trauma, people would tend to have more empathy because they can "see" that something is wrong.

Exactly! If they had an amputation then people might get it but I also think that people are frightened of feeling another person's pain or thinking about frightening things like how much our lives are at the mercy of luck and chaos.

We're in the north, in Reservoir. It's good to finally find a forum on PTSD that has so many Aussies. I've just PMed you. Thank you. :)

Don't you just love it when people say, but he looks fine, just the same as he was before.

I now point out to people that what "normal" people do everyday & take for granted like getting up, going to the shops etc is a huge effort for him. They don't see how much it wipes him out & what the next day or so is like for him afterwards.

I'm not shy in telling people what this can do to a person. If we don't speak up & tell people what this can do to a person, then we are just allowing society to keep the negative stereotypical attitude they have towards mental health issues.

Maenad,
Just follow your heart! Come to the spouses forum when you can and we are sure glad you are here!

Wayne

welcome to the forum, annette.