littleme
05-31-2015, 06:11 PM
Hi everyone,
I hope you don’t mind me posting this thread, as I do not suffer from agoraphobia (although I DO suffer from generalised anxiety and social anxiety, and I've been active on this forum before, for myself).
I’m posting because I recently found out that my partner of almost one year suffers from agoraphobia. He told me at the start of our relationship that he had been diagnosed with PTSD, panic disorder and social anxiety, but for reasons best known to himself, he neglected to mention the agoraphobia bit.
It didn’t come as a surprise to me, as his symptoms fit the bill (at one point a few years ago, he was unable to leave his house for 6 months, but that was before I knew him), but I feel it would have been helpful to know, because it would have changed the way I’d reacted to his behaviour in a great many situations. Now, looking back, I feel like I wasn’t very supportive of him at times, because I had misread his behaviour at the time.
All the information webpages for family and friends recommend that you should read as much as I can on agoraphobia, but so far I’ve been unable to locate much in the way of detailed information on what to expect in a romantic relationship with someone who suffers from agoraphobia, and how best to support them (especially when they appear to be doing their damnedest to hide their symptoms from you!).
There are a number of issues in our relationship that I think MIGHT be related to his agoraphobia. I would be very appreciative if someone could tell me whether it’s likely that that is the case. I realise that everyone is different, and their symptoms manifest in different ways, but what I’m after is an indication ie. confirmation that yes, this is something that tends to happen with agoraphobia.
• We really don’t have sex very often. I suspect that he may have had panic attacks (or been close to having one) on a few occasions after we’ve had sex ie. his breathing was very laboured like he was having difficulty catching his breath. We have the odd week where we fool around a lot, but mostly we go many weeks without doing anything sexual at all. I don’t push him, but I feel like he gives me mixed signals – he acts interested and we start fooling around but then he pushes me away. The last time he did this I got a bit cross with him, and asked him to be clearer about his intentions, as it confuses and upsets me when he pushes me away after acting interested. It really hurts when he does that. He listened and agreed to be clearer in future, but the end result seems to be that now we’re not having sex at all. I’m sorry if that’s TMI, but I feel like I’ve made things worse with how I reacted to this situation.
• He gets really uncomfortable when I look at him for any length of time. We’ve coped with this by making a bit of a joke out of it, but a few times I’ve just looked over at time and given him a loving look, and he’s told me it’s creepy that I do that! What the what now??
• He sometimes makes jokes about wishing he was alone. I’m essentially living at his house now, but I still have a rental house that I’m paying for. He’s not ready for me to move in permanently yet, but we are agreed that we we want to move in together, and we have both said that we are committed to this relationship. It’s taken a long time for us to get to this point - in the first few months of our relationship, we barely saw each other – he invited me around a couple of times in the first week, and then seemed to withdraw – not just from me, but from everyone. We didn’t really spend any time alone together for a couple of months after that, even though we texted and saw each other on the weekends at the sporting club that we met at (one of very few ‘safe’ places that he feels comfortable visiting, well, most of the time). During that time, we made arrangements for me to come and visit many times, but he always cancelled at the last minute with a lame excuse. He told me afterwards that he was struggling with his anxiety and feelings of unworthiness, but that’s all the explanation he gave. I still don’t really have a good understanding of what was going on with him during that time.
Can anyone comment on his behaviour, and help me understand what might be going through his head, and how I should best support him? I’m pretty cruisey about most of his limitations – we never go out to do anything other than grocery shopping, medical appointments or to our sporting club, and I’m okay with that. We used to visit his parents together, but now he doesn’t seem to able to do that either anymore. When they invite us around for a meal, I end up going by myself! He seems okay with visiting them by himself, but always keeps his visits to them very brief, and usually only after his mum gets upset that he hasn't visited her for a while. If we’ve made arrangements to do something, and he cancels at the last minute, I don’t give him a hard time.
But, it’s hard for me to talk to him about his condition, because even though I can usually tell when he is feeling very anxious, he rarely admits that it’s his anxiety that’s causing a problem – he usually gives a (pretty lame) excuse instead. This makes it hard for us to have open, honest conversations about it. His condition appears to be very unpredictable – some days, he is able to be social for a whole weekend at our sporting club, and then other times, he doesn’t want to leave the house at all for days on end.
Any advice or insight is very welcome. Sorry for the long post.
I hope you don’t mind me posting this thread, as I do not suffer from agoraphobia (although I DO suffer from generalised anxiety and social anxiety, and I've been active on this forum before, for myself).
I’m posting because I recently found out that my partner of almost one year suffers from agoraphobia. He told me at the start of our relationship that he had been diagnosed with PTSD, panic disorder and social anxiety, but for reasons best known to himself, he neglected to mention the agoraphobia bit.
It didn’t come as a surprise to me, as his symptoms fit the bill (at one point a few years ago, he was unable to leave his house for 6 months, but that was before I knew him), but I feel it would have been helpful to know, because it would have changed the way I’d reacted to his behaviour in a great many situations. Now, looking back, I feel like I wasn’t very supportive of him at times, because I had misread his behaviour at the time.
All the information webpages for family and friends recommend that you should read as much as I can on agoraphobia, but so far I’ve been unable to locate much in the way of detailed information on what to expect in a romantic relationship with someone who suffers from agoraphobia, and how best to support them (especially when they appear to be doing their damnedest to hide their symptoms from you!).
There are a number of issues in our relationship that I think MIGHT be related to his agoraphobia. I would be very appreciative if someone could tell me whether it’s likely that that is the case. I realise that everyone is different, and their symptoms manifest in different ways, but what I’m after is an indication ie. confirmation that yes, this is something that tends to happen with agoraphobia.
• We really don’t have sex very often. I suspect that he may have had panic attacks (or been close to having one) on a few occasions after we’ve had sex ie. his breathing was very laboured like he was having difficulty catching his breath. We have the odd week where we fool around a lot, but mostly we go many weeks without doing anything sexual at all. I don’t push him, but I feel like he gives me mixed signals – he acts interested and we start fooling around but then he pushes me away. The last time he did this I got a bit cross with him, and asked him to be clearer about his intentions, as it confuses and upsets me when he pushes me away after acting interested. It really hurts when he does that. He listened and agreed to be clearer in future, but the end result seems to be that now we’re not having sex at all. I’m sorry if that’s TMI, but I feel like I’ve made things worse with how I reacted to this situation.
• He gets really uncomfortable when I look at him for any length of time. We’ve coped with this by making a bit of a joke out of it, but a few times I’ve just looked over at time and given him a loving look, and he’s told me it’s creepy that I do that! What the what now??
• He sometimes makes jokes about wishing he was alone. I’m essentially living at his house now, but I still have a rental house that I’m paying for. He’s not ready for me to move in permanently yet, but we are agreed that we we want to move in together, and we have both said that we are committed to this relationship. It’s taken a long time for us to get to this point - in the first few months of our relationship, we barely saw each other – he invited me around a couple of times in the first week, and then seemed to withdraw – not just from me, but from everyone. We didn’t really spend any time alone together for a couple of months after that, even though we texted and saw each other on the weekends at the sporting club that we met at (one of very few ‘safe’ places that he feels comfortable visiting, well, most of the time). During that time, we made arrangements for me to come and visit many times, but he always cancelled at the last minute with a lame excuse. He told me afterwards that he was struggling with his anxiety and feelings of unworthiness, but that’s all the explanation he gave. I still don’t really have a good understanding of what was going on with him during that time.
Can anyone comment on his behaviour, and help me understand what might be going through his head, and how I should best support him? I’m pretty cruisey about most of his limitations – we never go out to do anything other than grocery shopping, medical appointments or to our sporting club, and I’m okay with that. We used to visit his parents together, but now he doesn’t seem to able to do that either anymore. When they invite us around for a meal, I end up going by myself! He seems okay with visiting them by himself, but always keeps his visits to them very brief, and usually only after his mum gets upset that he hasn't visited her for a while. If we’ve made arrangements to do something, and he cancels at the last minute, I don’t give him a hard time.
But, it’s hard for me to talk to him about his condition, because even though I can usually tell when he is feeling very anxious, he rarely admits that it’s his anxiety that’s causing a problem – he usually gives a (pretty lame) excuse instead. This makes it hard for us to have open, honest conversations about it. His condition appears to be very unpredictable – some days, he is able to be social for a whole weekend at our sporting club, and then other times, he doesn’t want to leave the house at all for days on end.
Any advice or insight is very welcome. Sorry for the long post.