Avatar Posted by kaliforniakhaos 40 days ago (Question)
I met the love of my life a few a months ago-- but the more and more I get to know her, the more troublesome history I unravel. She is 24, and international student far away from home. Her drinking, and her "smoking" amongst other things is more frequent than i originally thought. She has a very addictive personality, and the freedoms that she currently has being away from her home country is not helping. When she is high, she opens up to me and is very emotional. She has trust issues, jealousy, and is becoming very "needy" with me. I'm kind of concerned about her, as she is failing her courses, and the drinking has escalates since we started dating. She has about 2 panic attacks a day.

She did tell me that she was sexually abused starting at the age of 9 - she did not go any further into this. She also admitted that her father beat violently with a belt once or twice a week for absolutely no reason, this started after she reached puberty and continued into her late teens. when I asked why he did this - she tell me "he just felt that he needed to". There was a tragic death in the family, her older brother. She is the oldest girl in the family.

She is a beautiful person, kind, good, loving, and I love her to death. This is putting a lot of stress on me. Her behavior is erratic, she calls me at 2 in the morning drunk/high. She has only had 1 other boyfriend before me, who also physically beat her.

What is wrong with her? and what can i do to help?




Answers

Written by Chemar 40 days ago Rating: 0 | Rate Answer: + -

Hi

I really feel for you in this situation as what she is exhibiting is beyond your control, other than to be loving and understanding

When childhood abuse has occurred, people frequently suffer with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and often other issues as well. There is growing evidence that childhood abuse not only results in mental health problems, but can actually have ramifications that impact physical health as well.

she is likely using alcohol and drugs to "self medicate"

IMHO for her to begin to stabilize would be with professional counseling, to help her come to terms and begin to heal emotionally with what happened to her during her childhood.

It will not be an easy road for you in all this as even tho you can be very sympathetic, it is hard to fully comprehend the trauma she has suffered. If your relationship is serious, you may want to consider having joint counseling as well, to help you better understand

I do hope it all works out for you...she is blessed to have you in her life....you sound like one of the good guys!

Written by Clyde 40 days ago Rating: 0 | Rate Answer: + -

You are a good person, for sure. I also feel for you in this situation, as you cannot control much of it, except how you act towards her in the situation.

She may have PTSD or other things and can be using the drugs and alcohol, as Chemar said, to self medicate, or get away from it all.

She really does need some counseling to help her through this. What, if anything has she said to you about that?

Best,

Clyde

Written by sempervirent 38 days ago Rating: 1 | Rate Answer: + -

I'm sure she's very attractive and that your feelings for her are genuine, but you're truly putting your emotional health at risk by getting involved with someone who is obviously impulsive and self-destructive. I have been there and my experience is that women who drink and use drugs (even so-called soft drugs) are much more likely to sleep around and lie to you, in addition to being more emotionally volatile and flaky in general. You could be just another drug in her medicine cabinet, something she uses to feel good when alcohol and marijuana don't work. Her emotional openness when high should not be trusted whatsoever, if you think those are her "real" feelings coming through due to a lack of inhibition then you should ask some of your other friends if getting high got them in touch with their "true" feelings or if it was just a temporary feeling of euphoria that went away after the crash.

I'm speaking from direct experience here, having been through a multi-year relationship with someone who was sexually abused. She toyed with drugs and drinking before we dated, but got cleaned up for the first year or so when I made it clear that I wasn't going to stick around if she didn't. The intensity of my feelings was roughly correlated with her vulnerability and my desire to help her. In the end all my concern was for nothing, because she didn't want to help herself. Within the second year she was doing drugs again, much worse than before, getting drunk very often, and sleeping around when I was out of town.

I've always had a certain attraction to these dangerous, spontaneous, impulsive girls but you could really be setting yourself up for disappointment. In the end, you know much more about this situation than any of us can get from a short message board post, so please take my comments with a metaphorical grain of salt. Maybe you will truly help her through a hard time, but I see a lot of red flags here that are all too familiar to me, early-morning phone calls and everything. You need to lay things out and tell her that her drug use and drinking is problematic, not just for her, but for you and your relationship.

Just to throw one more thought out there, needy=addicted. Same psychological problem. A healthy relationship isn't about need and addiction.


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