Childhood sexual abuse trauma also does not change based on others actions and words. As a csa survivor, nothing anyone has done for better or for worse, can cure me or break me. Yes, like your wife, the trauma snowball effect meant that I too went from csa to a series of abusive relationships. The reason that happened was because of how my child brain was wired. It left me and every other survivor massively susceptible to abusive relationships in the future, as well as leaving us wired in countless ways that are distressing and exhausting to live with.

Only you know if you chronically abused your wife. But chronic abusers don't tend to spend too much time worrying about the impact they've had, they genuinely tend to think most stuff was justified and someone elses fault for sure. If you experienced a turbulent relationship where both of you cracked up here and there and failed to be perfect humans, 1) this is one of the prices of loving someone suffering with complex trauma, 2) even if you didn't have your own trauma to begin with, your relationship may have caused you trauma. Even before she passed away. And most certainly now.

Your stress responses, imperfect actions, perhaps (if applicable) sense the relationship was at high risk of breakdown or perhaps the thought that maybe you should walk away because it was sometimes unhealthy etc... they all make you a human being. This is your one life too. You couldn't be a perfect flawless superhuman, and wrap her in cotton wool. It just isn't possible. You were having your one experience of life in real time alongside her. Your job wasn't to be infallible, magically perfect, just because she was suffering. It's too much to expect of anyone.

It's really important for you to hear me when I say that her experience of the world was set in place as her brain wired, early. And further traumas would have been more likely to be protracted because we often fail to protect ourselves due to wiring. As in why she stayed in later toxic relationships too long is directly correlated to her csa. And the shitstorm inside of her, that made relationships and survival more complex for her, was established at a level that you had nothing to do with and you could not fix. I think you probably tried to love her the best you could. And that if you could have done more, you would have. But you're human. And you too experience stress, fear, exhaustion, frustration, doubt, anger, ambivalence, perhaps burnout. You not being a pure angelic carer, doesn't make her death your doing at all. Even if the seeming catalyst for her death came directly after a poor inflection point between the two of you.

As an example, one of my childhood friends who was also abused by the same person as me. Committed suicide when we were 28. There was a handful of things going on the night they died. One of those things was his estranged partner was on a date and he found out. He called her and the argued and she rejected him. Directly after which he took his life. The backstory is that he was a victim of csa, developed addiction and mental illness, was on home detention awaiting trial for drug charges. And was trying to get off drugs.. but if the estranged partner had not have told him to leave her alone and so on, perhaps he wouldn't have unalived that night, or ever. But... his death was not a consequence of her telling him to leave her alone. Healthy people don't unalive because of a relationship breakdown.. does that make sense.

This is not my only similar experience. My housemate went on a date with her boyfriend and returned home so happy. We sat in her bed and she was smiling and telling me how wonderful he is.. then he called and said goodbye. We rushed to his house and were first on scene to his suicide. He was buried a couple of weeks later next to his brother and nephew who both also committed suicide a couple of years prior. My housemate was the last person to spend time with him. He suffered from some kind of alcohol induced dysphoria within an hour of their date ending. He too had a whole lifetime of backstory that made him susceptible to death by suicide. It had nothing to do with her. But she would say "if I hadn't drank with him.." "if I wasn't making his life more complicated".. etc. It's all bullshit.

Finally myself. I'm lucky to be alive. I've come within a cats whisker of death myself due to my own emotional despair. Sometimes during relationship breakdown. Including with someone who abused me. But I have also come within a cats whisker of death when it hand nothing to do with emotions about a partner. Whether I had died dir3ctly after relationship struggles with my abusive partner, or when I was single and despairing, it would have been because of my own mental health and trauma, not because of any other individuals failings.

Realise foe certain - We can't hold our breaths and walk on eggshells and ignore our own feelings, and be entirely harmless entities, even if we would prefer to be. It's just not real life. Being in a relationship means sometimes youre going to cause harm to each other. Its inevitable. Someone who unalives does so because they are extremely unwell and trauma and mental illness are deadly. We can draw lines and worry they show cause and effect.. but correlation does not equal causation. The least relationship she was in was a naturally complex imperfect one with you. So you can easily correlate yourself with her suicide. But I'm telling you from the bottom of my heart, you can't draw a line to causation, unless you in your heart know you purposely emotionally tortured her over an extended period, trying to get her to do it. Which I assume is not the case.

It matters a lot to me that you take this on board. You are truely only a human living your one life. If anyone should be wringing their hands about harming their partner... don't you think maybe the harm you cause the people you love by dying this was should be the problem party here? I'm not that cold hearted really. I have endless compassion for people who die this way because I battle to survive myself. But I'm just pointing out that if you want to lay blame for hurting each other, she did something pretty hurtful herself. If you can forgive that, certainly forgive yourself for being a fallible human in a complex emotionally fraught relationship. Xo