Navigating the Trap of Abusive Relationships

We started hot and heavy. Power couple. I'm afraid the next time I approach dating, I'll be gunshy if they're too nice, too accepting of me, because the brightest beginnings led to my most problematic relationships. Including the one likely to end tomorrow. I was describing it to a friend tonight, one who has been a sort of guru to me in my last year of living with fibromyalgia to complicate an already toxic miasma of a living situation and a health record. She and I have both struggled with substance abuse in the past, and so she knew exactly what I meant when I said the first little bit of an abusive relationship is like coming up on your first Ecstasy pill. It's exciting, nerve-wracking, and the moment you go from "dating" to "a couple," it's euphoria like you've never felt before. It's like everything bad in the world has fallen away to reveal this person you feel like you know better than yourself. But that's the trap. If you can be content with coffee or beer or a joint now and then, you have no interest in trying a psychedelic or a club drug. You feel like that "ol' reliable" is enough. But with PTSD, C-PTSD in particular, nothing on earth seems reliable. And if you can't rely on anything or anybody because you're too hyper vigilant, and that has been your truth as long as you can remember, then hell yes, I'll take the scratch card, hell yes I'll take a chance at something which reminds me of the beauty life can have, even for a night. You can't party every night. It will eventually catch up with you, and if you keep trying to chase that dragon, you'll leave behind no more than a shell of your former self. You need to find a way to trust the future will come and that you can experience beauty without a crutch. I thought I would be safe from the trap of my last two years because I've dated an abuser before, I have a psychology degree, I've been in therapy myself for over a decade. I thought I should know better. It's hard to sum up in anything short of a novella, but I turned 26 in the middle of March in 2020. Her other partners dumped her for different reasons, she moved in with me two days after my birthday, two days later we both had COVID. COVID kicked what symptoms I was justifying as stress into eventual "inability to work" territory, but I tried. PTSD flared up real hard because I love meeting new people and lockdown was rough, but I tried. One thing I tried a month before our first anniversary was a new pill my psychiatrist recommended. Buspar. I had a TERRIBLE reaction. My PTSD and anxiety got so bad I lost much of the year to dissociation while trying to find the right balance of meds. On top of that, the minute I climb out of the psychosis from just a week on Buspar, I look at her and tell her I don't remember being in so much pain all the time, she told me I'd been complaining about it for months. I finally started seeing doctors for it when my feet went numb. Particular highlights of our relationship include many instances in which we've triggered one another. My friends swear she's abusing me (they're right,) her friends say the same (I could see how they would think that off her impression of me,) us both saying or doing things we've told the other is a trigger. It just seems impossible at this point. Before she went to sleep, after we argued about how she wanted to fall asleep cuddling and I wanted alone time to process how ugly our fighting has gotten, she said I had better get plenty of rest cause we're having the Big Talk tomorrow, and also that if I had any hope of salvaging this relationship, I had better come to bed with her when I'm ready. Well, it's nearing 5am. No use explaining to her that her presenting such an attitude makes me quite nervous to touch her. No use explaining that my habit of staying up all night came from a desire to know everyone else in my home is asleep and not angry with me. Just typing this massive brain dump because I'm a verbal processor (one area of incompatibility between us is how verbal I am and how physical she is with both expressions of love and expressions of pain.) Throw shit at the wall, hope for at least some sympathy, I guess, or maybe I'm just writing to hear myself think. I appreciate the patience of anyone who has stuck with me this far. You get a fun fact. The Swedish word for raccoon translates roughly to "laundry bear," because the "washing" they do looks like washing laundry in the river. Anywho.. the Klonopin I took to try to curl up with my partner is finally hitting me. I think what has been tripping me up is my guilt complex. I don't know how to get out of this without feeling horribly guilty. Guilty for the kitty who was mine but likes my girlfriend better than my other cat. Guilty for my sweet kitty who hasn't gotten his ESA cert yet, but needs and will receive it provided I can just find a place for both myself and him to stay. Guilty that I couldn't fix it. Guilty that I got caught in the trap again, chasing the dragon. At the end of the night/early morning, I worry and dread the next day. Will she play nice and be offended when I'm still hesitant near her? Will she tell me she slept poorly and that I pretty much wrecked her day before it started? We'll see! ....I just don't wanna play this game anymore.. it's no fun and I'm barely approachable in the morning till my shower takes the stiffness away.. Thanks to anyone who gave this a read. It kinda helps just to post it. Say goodnight to my buddy, then curl up with her again, try not to cry, again. Oh, how high were our highs. But with how she talks now, we're just killing each other with attrition. I'm so unsure how to be brave here. But hey. Time to do the totally not scary thing of just curling up to sleep with her. It should be easy. I've done it before. I just hope not to do it again.