My story - new member here. :)

“Hello,

I’m new here, and this site was recommended to me by my psychologist as she believes that I need support as a carer of my wife, who deals with deep mental issues.

Before I met my wife (3y ago), I was an ordinary man, with my ups and downs as all of us, I guess. Used to treat my downs mainly with chocolate as my preferred medication. J

I am coming from a very violent family home (dad alcoholic, the war in the 90s) so I carry my own trauma as well. Have done a lot of personal development work, inner child work, anger management…)

Early in my relationship, my wife told me a bit of her history, and it was very hard to hear all that as I never came across a person who had such a hard life.

I will list traumas she had experienced to give a better picture of how deep and complex her trauma is. She was sexually assaulted by her grandad (well-known paedophile in the family who attacked all his granddaughters) from the age of 5 till 9. She tried to tell her mum (who caught them in the act once) but got shut down and threatened to never speak about it again. When she was around 8yo, 4 out of 5 her siblings sexually assaulted her repeatedly till she was a teenager. At that time, she developed the sense that sex is what she is there for and started acting out with her school friends and was marginalised because of that. As a teenager, she was very tall, and her mum decided to put her on massive hormonal therapy to stop her growth, so she doesn’t grow too tall. As a side effect of that, she developed endometriosis and had to have, at one stage, 7 surgeries in a year. Because she didn’t find home a safe place (dad emotionally unavailable), she got herself into very damaging relationships with the major one being with a surf guy who was also a drug dealer in her town. She experienced violence and had few miscarriages while with him. She was also sexually assaulted by another guy and got pregnant and had a miscarriage at her 5th month of pregnancy. She had two more serious relationships with 20+ older guys. One was married and one was using her as a “show off”. She tried to take her life at least three times and was judged by her siblings as a “troublemaker and useless”. She tried to speak up about her childhood sexual abuse again when she was 30 and was put in an institution by her mum and one of the brothers, as a drug addict, got completely filled up with heavy meds so she can’t talk. Because of strong endometriosis pain, she experienced she was put on a huge and strong dose of pain medication. She managed to get out of there after a while and started from scratch, still carrying HEP C she got from the time she was in a relationship with a drug dealer. She managed to get state scholarships to study an MBA, which she finished and started working in a corporate setting.

Just started to settle when she got herself in a tough situation by supporting one of her siblings with some real estate business from which she had a massive mental fallback. She ended up changing work and started working in health, full time. She somehow managed to build herself again, like a chronic avoidant, with no friends, only casual lovers, with still absolutely no support from her family. Her mum got sick and her family decided that she would be the best person to look after her mum, which ended up being 24/7 care, so she leaves her FT job and becomes FT carer. The family promised her to be reimbursed, but she ends up being paid only carers Centrelink wage which is not much and still had bills to cover as she lived in her house she had a mortgage for. Because she had to relocate herself to the city where her parents lived, she ended up selling her house to cover bills and mortgage.

Her mum dies after a couple of years she was looking after her, and that is where I come in.

I also had to relocate to her parent's town because she had to be close to her dad and from then onwards everything snowballed down, for both of us. She couldn’t grieve properly, she couldn’t talk much with me, she was closed and withdrawn most of the times. I was full of energy when we met and was going to the gym regularly, dancing, doing things I was passionate about.

In a less than a year, even I had FT job, (she is still not working, almost four years now), I got depressed, down, zombie-like, stopped my gym, my libido went out of the window, got fat, and hit the bottom.

I am better now. We did some changes, had lots of psychiatry and psychology sessions. I am on an antidepressant now as well ( and I hate it). We managed to lower her pain medication. I would like her to get off that medication asap, and we had many deals that she will yet I received another one couple of days ago, so will see.

I love my wife, as she is the kindest, most compassionate, loving and supportive person (besides all that she is super hot! J

But, I am experiencing being short with her sometimes, frustrated more than ever, and I don’t like being like that. I am not that. I used to feel so hopeless that I couldn’t do anything. Things are changing slowly, and we’ve done some actions in positive directions, but I am very concerned about how much damage all those huge dosages of strong medications has done to her.

She is working hard, really hard on herself (she is very good at self-reflecting), and is aware of everything that is happening to her and us. She used to get suicidal thoughts every morning when she wakes up, and that subsided a bit just recently. As soon as she gets triggered (usually by her family) she gets those thoughts. She promised me that she would never act on them because of our life and our future together and because she finally feels that life have some meaning and some positive direction.

There is so much more to this whole story, but I feel I emptied most of it.

I apologise for such a long post, and grateful to be able to vent it, express it all.

Thank you for reading my story.

R”