‘I’ve been through a trauma and my husband shows no empathy’

Dear Roe,

My relationship with my husband is being severely tested for the first time in almost 20 years. I am a woman in my 50s. We have no children and have had no major setbacks to deal with between us until now. I had a medical emergency six months ago which I found devastating. I have PTSD and remain very brittle emotionally. I am aware of the change in my behaviour and am working hard to keep myself calm and busy as distraction; breath exercises help with the anxiety attacks, which are improving. Historically, I did not emit vibes of being emotionally needy and perhaps that is why my husband chose me; I am generally somebody who is capable, efficient and takes care of everybody’s needs but my own. I desperately needed my husband to be emotive, soft, caring and accepting when I returned home from hospital but he was the opposite, displaying no understanding of my needs, physical or emotional. He refused to be supportive. I gave up trying to comprehend if he was devoid of empathy and decided that he is “emotionally unavailable”. He has had issues with other family members in the past where he chose to ignore and not engage with others’ troubles.

There is a pattern when I think about the past two decades. As I come out of the fog of illness and try to communicate better with him, I feel he is taking this hardline stance, where he simply will not bend from his position of derogatory comments, haughty behaviour, contempt and vitriol towards pretty much everything I say. I cannot open my mouth without feeling knocked back in a nasty volley of words. I understand he is hurting about my illness but as he refuses to express his own emotions, I am at a loss to understand how he is really feeling. I have tried to have a heart-to-heart conversation, to get him to come down a notch from his high horse position. What I get is him correcting my memory, criticising my emotional response and then insisting on my forgiveness for the appalling things he said to me when I was at my lowest ebb. I accept I cannot change him and he is clearly hardwired to express emotion through anger and frustration only. He displays no empathy, care, softness or any conversation enquiring about how I may be actually feeling or what am I thinking. Are we doomed to separate? Is it possible to get through this wall when he clearly does not want to?

I’m so sorry for everything you have gone through and are still enduring. Post traumatic stress disorder is still so deeply misunderstood and the panic attacks, vulnerability and emotional “brittleness” you describe – which could be irritation, hypervigilance, defensiveness, sadness, anxiety, paranoia or a combination of these feelings – is a classic presentation of it. Your brain and body are desperately trying to keep you safe by keeping you in a state of high alert, which is exhausting in and of itself. You’re also emotionally processing something traumatic and trying to recover. What is vital to that recovery is support and a witness; someone who clearly and compassionately sees what you have been through, understands your PTSD and sees your heightened emotional state not as a personal deficit, but as a deeply difficult physical, mental and emotional state that is, almost literally, your entire being crying for safety. You need someone who wants to be that witness and that safe space.

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My immediate concern is getting you that. It is clear from your letter that your husband is not that person right now and my fear is that in trying to turn him into that person, you will spend more time feeling unsupported and unsafe and internalise his withdrawal and cruelty, doing further damage to your psyche and making you believe that you do not deserve support. This is not true. You do. Please understand that your husband’s inability to be there for you is in no way an indicator or sign of your worth. It is, as you have seen before, simply a sign of his own inability to show up emotionally for people in need.

It is vital that you get a trauma-informed therapist and that you find people who can be your witnesses and support. Ask your GP or doctors from the hospital for information on specific supports for PTSD and the medical issues and procedures that you went through. There may be support groups where you can find others who truly understand your experience. Ask friends and family members for support and do not be afraid to ask them to educate themselves about PTSD so that they can get even a vague framework of what you’re experiencing, how it might manifest and how they can try help you. You need to be the focus right now, not your husband. Commit to yourself – even if that means staying with friends or family for a while so that you are surrounded by support.

As for your husband, I do have some sympathy for people who don’t understand PTSD; those who emotionally shut down during times of high stress which can be their own defence mechanism; and those who take time to adjust to a transformative traumatic event and the changes it can bring in a partner.

However, not knowing what to do and not being willing to do anything are not the same thing. Emotionally stumbling and being actively cruel and disparaging are not the same thing. Your husband’s inability to cope with any vulnerability or need from you seems to be making him lash out with cruelty and contempt and this is completely unacceptable. His character is being revealed – not by his initial reactions to your trauma, which could have been shock and inexperience, but by his now daily decisions to treat you with disdain.

You are in your 50s – you both hopefully have decades and decades of life ahead of you. What do you want that time to look like? As you both get older, there will be more times of emotional and physical vulnerability, times of difficulty, times of need. You will both need to grow and learn and adapt to accommodate each other’s changing needs and desires. Is this the person you want to be with for those times? If you had a friend or family member whose husband was behaving like this, what would you want for them?

For now, focus on getting yourself well. Then, there will have to be serious conversations with your husband. You’re right, you can’t get him to change – he is either willing to learn, adapt and show up for you with effort, kindness and compassion, or he isn’t. Some initial signs of how willing he is to grow and support you is whether he’d be willing to read about PTSD to learn about what you’re going through and whether he will attend couples’ counselling with you, so that he can learn how to communicate from a place of respect and compassion.

You have been through so much. Don’t put yourself through more by believing you deserve this treatment.