What It Is Like to Love Someone with PTSD in September 2026?

If you are reading this, you probably already know that loving someone with PTSD is unlike any other relationship experience. It can be deeply rewarding in moments of connection, then completely draining when a trigger fires without warning. Learning what it is like to love someone with PTSD means understanding that your partner’s emotional responses, triggers, and ability to feel safe have been reshaped by trauma, and that navigating this landscape takes patience, clear communication, and a real commitment to both their healing and your own well-being.

Maybe you found this article at 2 a.m. after another night of walking on eggshells. Maybe your partner just got diagnosed and you are trying to understand what comes next. Or maybe you have been in this relationship for years and you are running on empty, wondering whether what you are feeling is normal.

I want you to know something right away: everything you are feeling is valid. The confusion, the guilt, the love that keeps you trying, the exhaustion that makes you want to walk away. You are not alone in this, and there is nothing wrong with you for struggling.

In this guide, we cover what PTSD actually does to a relationship, how it differs from Complex PTSD, what your partner’s triggers look like from the inside, practical strategies for supporting them without losing yourself, and honest answers to the questions you may be too afraid to ask out loud.

What PTSD Actually Does to a Relationship

Post-traumatic stress disorder is not a personality flaw, a choice, or something your partner can just snap out of. It is a recognized mental health condition that develops after exposure to a traumatic event, whether that is combat, assault, an accident, childhood abuse, or any experience that overwhelmed the brain’s ability to cope.

The core issue in PTSD is that the brain’s threat-detection system, primarily the amygdala, stays stuck in survival mode. It is as if your partner’s internal alarm is wired to go off at maximum volume even when there is no actual danger. This is not something they control consciously. The alarm fires before the rational brain (the prefrontal cortex) even has time to evaluate whether the threat is real.

This matters enormously for relationships because the survival response does not pause just because you are in a safe, loving home. A slamming door, a particular tone of voice, an unexpected touch, or even a smell can send your partner’s nervous system into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn mode. And when that happens, they are not responding to you. They are responding to the past.

Dr. Daniel Siegel, a clinical psychiatry professor at UCLA, describes this through the concept of the window of tolerance. When someone is inside their window, they can think clearly, feel emotions without being overwhelmed, and engage in healthy communication. When PTSD pushes someone outside that window, they become hyperaroused (anxious, reactive, angry) or hypoaroused (numb, shut down, dissociated). Your job as a partner is not to force them back inside the window. It is to help create the conditions where they can find their way back.

PTSD becomes a relationship issue because it does not just affect the person who experienced trauma. It reshapes the dynamic between two people. It changes how arguments unfold, how intimacy works, how plans get made, how trust gets built. Understanding this is the first step toward building a relationship that can hold both the love and the trauma.

PTSD vs Complex PTSD in Relationships

Not all PTSD looks the same. If your partner has Complex PTSD (C-PTSD), the relationship challenges will be different in important ways. Understanding the difference helps you respond to what is actually happening rather than what you assume is happening.

Standard PTSD typically develops after a single traumatic event or a discrete series of events. A car accident, a combat deployment, a sexual assault, a natural disaster. The nervous system got overwhelmed by something specific, and now it is trying to protect against that thing happening again.

Complex PTSD develops from repeated, prolonged trauma, usually in situations where the person could not escape. This includes ongoing childhood abuse, long-term domestic violence, human trafficking, or being held captive. The trauma was not a single event but a sustained environment of fear and powerlessness, often inflicted by someone the person depended on.

Because Complex PTSD involves interpersonal trauma, it deeply affects attachment patterns. People with C-PTSD often struggle with fundamental beliefs about whether they are worthy of love, whether other people are safe, and whether their own emotions can be trusted. This makes romantic relationships particularly complex terrain.

Here is how the two compare in a relationship context:

PTSD in relationships: Triggers are often tied to specific sensory reminders of the trauma (sounds, smells, sights). Flashbacks may be vivid and event-specific. Your partner may avoid certain places, activities, or topics. The core self may feel relatively intact between episodes.

Complex PTSD in relationships: The entire attachment system is affected. Your partner may swing between clinging and pushing away. Emotional regulation is a daily challenge, not just during triggered episodes. Trust is fundamentally fragile. Intimacy can feel simultaneously desperately wanted and deeply threatening.

Neither version is easier or harder to navigate in a relationship. They are just different. Knowing which one you are dealing with helps you choose the right strategies and set realistic expectations for healing.

How PTSD Manifests in Romantic Relationships

PTSD shows up in relationships through specific, recognizable patterns. Understanding what these patterns are and why they happen can transform how you interpret your partner’s behavior.

Emotional Withdrawal and Numbness

One of the most painful experiences for partners is the emotional distance that PTSD can create. Your partner may seem disconnected, flat, or unable to access positive emotions like joy, excitement, or even love. This is not because they do not care. It is because PTSD can blunt the entire emotional range as a protective mechanism. The brain dials down feeling to avoid being overwhelmed.

The VA’s National Center for PTSD notes that people with PTSD often struggle to feel and express positive emotions. This can make partners feel unloved or shut out, even when the person with PTSD cares deeply. The warmth is still there, but it is buried under layers of protective numbness.

Hypervigilance and Startle Responses

Your partner may seem constantly on edge, scanning for threats that are not there. They might startle easily at sudden sounds, react intensely to surprises, or struggle to relax even in safe environments. Hypervigilance is exhausting for them and can create an atmosphere of tension in the home that you absorb without realizing it.

This constant alertness can also manifest as needing to sit with their back to the wall, checking exits, or feeling uncomfortable in crowds. These behaviors are not paranoia. They are the nervous system trying to keep them safe.

Mood Swings and Explosive Outbursts

PTSD can cause irritability and anger that seems disproportionate to the situation. A small disagreement can escalate quickly because your partner’s nervous system is already primed for conflict. These outbursts are often followed by shame and withdrawal, creating a cycle that is hard on both people.

It is important to understand that the anger is usually not really about you. It is the fight response activating in a moment when your partner feels threatened, even if the threat is just the vulnerability of a difficult conversation.

Fear of Abandonment and Feeling Unlovable

Many people with PTSD carry a deep belief that they are broken, unlovable, or unworthy of care. This can lead to testing behaviors, pushing you away to see if you will stay, or clinging tightly out of fear that you will leave. The fear of abandonment can be intense and irrational, driving behaviors that seem contradictory or confusing.

As one Reddit user described it, the experience can feel like “nice in the good moments but incredibly draining when something goes wrong.” The push-pull dynamic is one of the hallmarks of trauma in relationships.

Difficulty with Intimacy

Physical and emotional intimacy can be complicated when trauma, particularly sexual trauma, is part of your partner’s history. Intimacy requires vulnerability, and vulnerability is exactly what PTSD makes dangerous. Your partner may want closeness but feel panicked when they try to achieve it. They may dissociate during intimate moments, or need very specific conditions to feel safe enough to be close.

This is not a rejection of you. It is the trauma response hijacking what should be a safe, connected experience. Patience, explicit consent, and open communication are not optional here. They are the foundation.

Avoidance Behaviors

Your partner may avoid people, places, activities, conversations, or emotions that remind them of the trauma. They might refuse to talk about certain topics, avoid social gatherings, or retreat into work, gaming, or substance use as a way to escape uncomfortable feelings. Avoidance reduces anxiety in the short term but reinforces PTSD in the long term.

The Emotional Reality of Loving Someone with PTSD

Most articles about PTSD in relationships focus on the person who has PTSD. This section is about you, the partner. Your emotional experience deserves attention and validation because it is real, it is heavy, and ignoring it helps no one.

Walking on Eggshells

If you feel like you are constantly monitoring your behavior, carefully choosing your words, and trying to predict what will set off an episode, you are not alone. Partners across dozens of forum threads describe this “walking on eggshells” feeling as one of the most draining aspects of the relationship. You start editing yourself, shrinking yourself, trying to keep the environment as calm and predictable as possible.

Over time, this hypervigilance in the partner becomes its own kind of trauma response. You are essentially mirroring your partner’s nervous system, staying on high alert to manage their emotional state. This is exhausting and unsustainable without support.

Guilt for Having Your Own Needs

One of the most common things partners report is guilt. Guilt for feeling frustrated when your partner cancels plans again. Guilt for wanting intimacy when your partner is unavailable. Guilt for needing a break when your partner is struggling. Guilt for sometimes wondering whether you can keep doing this.

That guilt is understandable but misplaced. Having needs does not make you selfish. Wanting a partner who can meet you emotionally does not make you ungrateful. You are a person in a relationship, not a caregiver in a facility. Those two roles blur together sometimes, but they are not the same thing.

Grief for the Relationship You Expected

Partners rarely talk about the grief, but it is there. Grief for the easy, uncomplicated relationship you see other couples having. Grief for the future you imagined that now feels uncertain. Grief for the version of your partner that existed before the trauma took over, or that you catch glimpses of during good moments.

This grief does not mean you do not love your partner. It means you are processing a real loss while still choosing to stay. Both things can be true at the same time.

Identity Loss in the Caretaker Role

Over time, many partners find that their identity has narrowed. You become the supporter, the planner, the emotional shock absorber, the person who keeps everything running. You may have stopped seeing friends, dropped hobbies, or lost touch with parts of yourself that existed before the relationship.

Forum discussions reveal that partners frequently struggle with feeling like they have “lost themselves” in the relationship. One partner described looking in the mirror and not recognizing who they had become. This identity erosion is a slow process, and it happens because you are doing what any loving person would do, stepping up when someone needs you. But it has a cost.

Isolation from People Who Do Not Understand

Your friends and family likely do not understand what your daily life looks like. They may give well-meaning but unhelpful advice like “just leave” or “have you tried yoga.” They may not understand why you stay, why you tolerate certain behaviors, or why you cannot just talk it out.

This isolation is compounded by the fact that many partners feel protective of their loved one’s privacy. You do not want to share their struggles with people who might judge them. So you carry it alone. And carrying it alone is one of the heaviest parts of this experience.

Partners who have found peer support, whether through support groups, online forums, or therapy, consistently report that being understood by someone who has lived it is transformative. If you take one thing from this section, let it be this: you need people who get it.

Understanding Your Partner’s Triggers

Triggers are sensory or emotional cues that remind the brain of the original trauma, activating the survival response. They are automatic, fast, and not under conscious control. Your partner does not choose to be triggered, and they often cannot predict what will trigger them.

Triggers can be external (sounds, smells, sights, situations, specific words, anniversary dates) or internal (emotions, physical sensations, thoughts). A particular tone of voice might trigger a response because it matches the tone used by an abuser. A certain smell might transport your partner back to the moment of trauma. Even a feeling of being happy and relaxed can be a trigger if happiness was dangerous in the traumatic context.

Here is how to work with triggers as a team:

Learn your partner’s specific triggers. Ask them directly when they are in a calm state. What do they know sets them off? What environments feel unsafe? What sensations do they avoid? This is not about memorizing a list to avoid at all costs. It is about understanding their landscape so you can navigate it together.

Recognize the signs of activation. Before a full trigger response hits, there are usually early warning signs. Changes in breathing, muscle tension, going quiet, becoming hyper-focused, sudden irritability, or eyes going “somewhere else.” Learning to read these signs helps you respond before things escalate.

Know what to do when your partner is triggered. When the survival response takes over, logic and reasoning do not work. Do not try to talk them out of it. Do not demand they explain what is happening. Instead: reduce stimulation (lower lights, turn off music, create quiet), use grounding techniques (name things you can see, hold something cold, focus on breathing), speak in a calm, low voice, and let them know you are there and they are safe.

Debrief later, not during. Once the activation has passed, usually after some time has passed and your partner is back in their window of tolerance, you can talk about what happened. What triggered it? What helped? What would they like you to do differently next time? This debriefing builds a shared toolkit over time.

What It Is Like to Love Someone with PTSD: Practical Strategies

Understanding the theory matters, but you also need tools you can use on a Tuesday night when things get hard. These are strategies that partners and therapists have found genuinely helpful.

Use the Connect and Redirect Technique

When your partner is emotionally activated, trying to solve the problem or reason with them usually backfires. The connect and redirect approach, rooted in attachment-based therapy, works differently. First, connect with the emotion your partner is experiencing. Acknowledge it without trying to fix it. “I can see you’re really overwhelmed right now, and that makes sense.” Then, once they feel heard and the nervous system begins to settle, you can gently redirect toward grounding or problem-solving.

This technique works because it addresses the underlying need for safety before attempting any kind of cognitive work. Jumping straight to solutions when your partner is dysregulated feels like dismissal, even when your intentions are good.

Build Safety and Predictability

People with PTSD need predictability the way plants need sunlight. The nervous system is already on high alert, so anything you can do to reduce unexpected stimuli helps. This means creating routines, following through on commitments, giving advance notice of changes, and being consistent in your emotional responses.

Consistency is more therapeutic than people realize. The Couples Institute notes that repeated, consistent positive relational experiences actually help rewire the brain over time, building new neural pathways that associate closeness with safety rather than danger. This is neuroplasticity in action, and it is one of the most hopeful findings in trauma research.

Communicate Without Triggering

How you say something matters as much as what you say. Use a calm, steady tone. Avoid starting sentences with “you always” or “you never,” which activate defensiveness. Use “I” statements to describe your experience without assigning blame. “I feel disconnected when we go a week without talking about anything real” lands very differently from “You never want to talk to me anymore.”

Also, be aware of timing. Important conversations should not happen when either of you is tired, hungry, stressed, or already activated. Pick a time when you are both calm and have privacy.

Practice Explicit Consent in Intimacy

For partners with trauma histories, particularly sexual trauma, intimacy requires more than just willingness. It requires active, ongoing consent and the freedom to change their mind at any point without consequences. Check in during intimate moments. Go slowly. Let your partner set the pace. If they dissociate or freeze, stop immediately and focus on grounding.

This may feel awkward or clinical at first, but over time it builds a level of safety that actually allows for deeper intimacy. Many couples find that when the pressure is removed and safety is guaranteed, connection becomes possible in ways it was not before.

Create a Safety Plan Together

A safety plan is a written agreement you create together during a calm period that outlines what to do when things get hard. It might include: signs that indicate your partner is becoming activated, what grounding techniques work best for them, whether they prefer you to stay close or give space, who to call if things escalate, and what the plan is if either person needs to leave the room to cool down.

Having this plan in place removes the need to figure things out in the heat of the moment, when neither of you is thinking clearly. It also gives both of you a sense of agency and partnership in managing the PTSD together.

Do’s and Don’ts When Supporting a Partner with PTSD

Sometimes you need a quick reference. Here is a straightforward guide to what helps and what hurts.

Do These Things

Do educate yourself. The more you understand about PTSD, the brain, and trauma responses, the less you will take symptoms personally. Knowledge is the most powerful tool you have.

Do ask what helps. Your partner is the expert on their own experience. Ask what they need during a triggered moment, what environments feel safe, and what you can do differently.

Do maintain your own life. Keep seeing friends, pursuing hobbies, and taking care of your own health. This models healthy behavior and keeps you resourced enough to be present in the relationship.

Do practice patience. Healing from trauma is not linear. There will be setbacks, hard weeks, and times when it feels like you are going backwards. This is part of the process, not a sign of failure.

Do validate their experience. You do not have to understand exactly what your partner went through to validate that their response makes sense. “That sounds incredibly hard” goes further than you think.

Do celebrate small wins. A day without an episode, a successful social outing, a conversation that stayed calm. These are victories worth acknowledging.

Do encourage professional help. PTSD is treatable, but it usually requires professional intervention. Gently, consistently encourage your partner to engage in therapy.

Do know your own limits. You cannot be your partner’s therapist, their only support system, or their reason to get better. Trying to be all three will break you.

Don’t Do These Things

Don’t take symptoms personally. The withdrawal, the anger, the numbness. These are symptoms of a condition, not reflections of your worth or your partner’s love.

Don’t try to “fix” your partner. You cannot heal their trauma for them. What you can do is create a safe environment where healing becomes possible.

Don’t force them to talk about the trauma. If they want to share, listen without judgment. But pushing for details before they are ready can re-traumatize them.

Don’t walk on eggshells indefinitely. While it is important to be sensitive, constantly suppressing your own needs and personality damages the relationship in a different way. Aim for honest, compassionate communication over permanent self-censorship.

Don’t minimize their experience. Avoid phrases like “it was a long time ago,” “other people have it worse,” or “you should be over it by now.” These dismiss the reality of what they are going through.

Don’t enable avoidance. It is natural to want to protect your partner from discomfort, but consistently accommodating avoidance behaviors actually reinforces PTSD. Work with a therapist to find the right balance between support and gentle challenge.

Don’t neglect your own mental health. If you are drowning, you cannot help someone who is struggling to swim. Your well-being matters independently of your partner’s needs.

Self-Care for Partners of Someone with PTSD

Self-care is not a luxury when you are loving someone with PTSD. It is a necessity. The term “secondary traumatic stress” or “compassion fatigue” describes the real psychological toll that supporting a traumatized person can take on a partner. You can develop symptoms that mirror PTSD itself, including anxiety, sleep disruption, hypervigilance, and emotional exhaustion.

Here is what genuine self-care looks like in this context, beyond bubble baths and nice walks.

Individual Therapy for Yourself

Having your own therapist is one of the most important things you can do. Not couples therapy, your own individual therapist who is yours alone. This gives you a space to process your feelings without worrying about how they affect your partner. A therapist can help you work through guilt, set boundaries, identify enabling behaviors, and maintain your sense of self.

Many partners feel guilty about going to therapy, as if acknowledging their own struggle somehow takes away from their partner’s pain. It does not. In fact, a healthy, resourced partner is better equipped to contribute to a healthy relationship.

Build a Support Network

Isolation is one of the biggest risks for partners of people with PTSD. You need people you can talk to who will not judge your partner or tell you to leave. This might be a formal support group (NAMI Family Support Groups are free and available nationwide), an online community, or even just one or two trusted friends who understand the situation.

Peer support from others in similar situations is especially powerful. Forums like r/ptsd and r/CPTSD on Reddit have active communities of partners who share experiences, advice, and solidarity. Just knowing you are not the only one going through this can be a lifeline.

Set and Maintain Boundaries

Boundaries are not walls. They are the rules of engagement that keep a relationship sustainable. This might mean: “I will not engage in a conversation where I am being yelled at. I will step away and we can talk when things are calm.” Or: “I need one evening a week for myself, no exceptions.”

Setting boundaries with a partner who has PTSD can feel scary, especially if they have abandonment fears. But clear, consistent boundaries actually create more safety, not less. Your partner knows what to expect from you, which reduces the anxiety of uncertainty.

Recognize Caregiver Burnout

Watch for the signs of burnout in yourself: chronic exhaustion that sleep does not fix, emotional numbness, irritability, losing interest in things you used to enjoy, feeling trapped, resentment toward your partner, and physical symptoms like headaches or stomach issues. These are not signs of weakness. They are signs that you have been carrying too much for too long.

If you are experiencing these symptoms, it is time to reassess. What can be delegated? What professional help needs to come in? What are you doing out of love that has actually become a burden you cannot sustain?

Practical Self-Care Strategies

Maintain your physical health through regular exercise, adequate sleep, and proper nutrition. These are not trivial. Your body is absorbing stress every day, and it needs care to process it. Keep up with your own medical appointments. Do not let your health slide while you focus on your partner’s.

Carve out time for activities that have nothing to do with PTSD. Hobbies, creative pursuits, time in nature, spiritual practices if those are meaningful to you. These activities are not selfish. They are what keep you whole.

When to Seek Professional Help

PTSD is highly treatable with the right professional interventions. The challenge is often getting your partner through the door, and knowing when the relationship itself needs professional support.

Therapies That Work for PTSD

Evidence-based treatments for PTSD include Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT), Prolonged Exposure (PE) therapy, and Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR). These are not generic talk therapy. They are specific, structured protocols that have been extensively researched and shown to reduce PTSD symptoms significantly.

Somatic therapies, which focus on the body’s stored trauma responses, are increasingly recognized as valuable complements to cognitive approaches. And for Complex PTSD specifically, therapies that address attachment and relational patterns, such as Schema Therapy or Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), can be particularly helpful.

Couples Therapy for PTSD Relationships

Couples therapy is not just for relationships in crisis. For PTSD relationships, it can be a space where both partners learn to communicate about the trauma’s impact, develop shared coping strategies, and work through the resentment and grief that can accumulate over time.

Look for a therapist who is specifically trained in trauma. Not every couples therapist understands PTSD, and a well-meaning but untrained therapist can inadvertently make things worse. Trauma-Focused Couples Therapy and Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) are two approaches with strong track records for PTSD relationships.

Signs Professional Help Is Needed

Watch for these indicators that it is time to bring in professional support: symptoms that are getting worse rather than better over time, substance use as a coping mechanism, thoughts of self-harm or suicide (this requires immediate attention), inability to maintain employment or daily functioning, relationship conflict that feels unresolvable, any form of violence or abuse, or your own mental health deteriorating significantly.

If there is violence or abuse in your relationship, that changes the calculus entirely. PTSD is never an excuse for abuse, and your safety comes first. The National Domestic Violence Hotline (1-800-799-7233) is available 24/7.

Encouraging a Resistant Partner

Many people with PTSD resist therapy, sometimes for years. They may feel ashamed, fear being judged, worry that therapy will make things worse, or simply not believe that anything can help. Approach the conversation gently and without ultimatums. Frame therapy as a tool for building the life they want, not as a punishment for being “broken.”

Sometimes offering to go together for couples therapy first is an easier entry point than individual therapy. Once they experience the benefit of a therapeutic relationship, they may be more open to doing their own work.

Can a Relationship Survive PTSD?

This is the question that keeps partners up at night. The honest answer is: yes, many relationships not only survive PTSD but grow stronger through the process of healing together. But not all do, and that truth deserves honest exploration.

What Makes PTSD Relationships Work

Relationships that navigate PTSD successfully tend to share certain characteristics. Both partners are engaged in their own healing work. The person with PTSD is receiving professional treatment. Communication is open, honest, and compassionate. Both partners have strong support systems outside the relationship. Boundaries are clear and respected. There is a shared understanding that PTSD is something you face together, not something one person manages alone.

Partners who have been through it successfully often say that education made the single biggest difference. Once they understood that the symptoms were a trauma response rather than a choice, everything shifted. The behavior stopped feeling personal, and they could respond with patience instead of hurt.

When Love Is Not Enough

Love is necessary but not sufficient. A relationship needs safety, mutual respect, emotional reciprocity, and a shared willingness to grow. If your partner refuses to seek treatment, if there is ongoing abuse, if your own mental health is collapsing, or if the relationship has become fundamentally one-directional, love alone may not be enough to sustain it.

This is a painful truth, and sitting with it is one of the hardest things a partner can do. But ignoring it does not make it less true. Healthline’s deeply personal account of loving a combat veteran captures this: “It’s OK to walk away.” Those five words carry enormous weight, and they need to be said without shame.

Military vs Civilian PTSD in Relationships

Military PTSD brings specific challenges that civilian PTSD does not. The trauma often involved witnessing or participating in violence, which adds layers of moral injury and survivor’s guilt. Reintegration into civilian life can feel alienating. Military culture may have taught your partner to suppress emotions, making vulnerability and help-seeking feel like weakness.

Civilian PTSD from assault, accidents, or childhood trauma has its own unique dynamics. The trauma may be interpersonal, meaning the source of the pain was another person, which complicates trust. If the trauma occurred in childhood, it may have shaped your partner’s entire developmental trajectory.

Neither type is “worse,” but they require different approaches. If your partner is a veteran, the VA offers specialized PTSD treatment programs and support services for families. If the trauma is civilian or developmental, look for community mental health providers who specialize in trauma-informed care.

Knowing When It Is Okay to Walk Away

Leaving a relationship with someone who has PTSD does not make you a bad person. If you have given your best effort, encouraged treatment, maintained your own well-being as much as possible, and the relationship is still causing harm to one or both of you, walking away may be the healthiest decision for everyone involved.

The guilt of considering leaving is, as one partner described it, “all encompassing.” But staying in a relationship that is destroying you helps no one. The most compassionate choice, in some cases, is letting go.

FAQs

You Are Not Alone in This

Learning what it is like to love someone with PTSD is not a one-time lesson. It is an ongoing process of understanding, adjusting, and growing alongside someone whose nervous system has been shaped by experiences you may never fully comprehend. The journey will test your patience, your boundaries, and your understanding of what love really means.

Here is what we want you to take away from this guide. PTSD is a treatable condition, not a life sentence. Your partner’s symptoms are not your fault, and they are not your partner’s fault either. You deserve support, your own therapy, and a life that exists beyond the PTSD. It is okay to have needs, to set boundaries, and to make decisions about what you can sustain. And it is okay to stay, just as it is okay to leave.

If you are looking for immediate support, these resources can help:

National Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: Call or text 988 (available 24/7 in the United States)

Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) National Helpline: 1-800-662-4357, free and confidential, 24/7

NAMI Family Support Groups: Free peer-led support groups for family members and partners of people with mental health conditions, available nationwide and online

National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233 or text START to 88788

VA PTSD Resources: If your partner is a veteran, the VA’s National Center for PTSD offers extensive resources, treatment programs, and family support services at ptsd.va.gov

Every relationship touched by PTSD has its own story. Yours does not have to look like anyone else’s to be valid, to be worth fighting for, or to be worth letting go of when the time comes. Take care of yourself, so you can take care of the relationship, or so you can take care of yourself in leaving it. Either way, you deserve to be whole.