Nobody tells you that supporting someone through PTSD means grieving the relationship you thought you'd have. That grief is real. It doesn't mean you love them less. It means you're paying attention.
Both things, at once
You can love them and miss them. You can be in the same house and feel like you haven't seen them in months. You can know it isn't their fault and still be tired of it. None of those feelings cancel each other out.
The expectation that love has to look like endless patience is one of the reasons partners of people with PTSD burn out so quietly. Love is not patience without limits. Love is showing up enough times to know your own limits, and being honest about them.
The grief you're not allowed to name
There's a particular grief that comes from watching someone you love change in ways neither of you chose. The spontaneity that's harder now. The plans you make and remake. The version of them you knew before, or the version you imagined building a life with, that's somewhere behind a wall of survival.
You're allowed to miss what was. You're allowed to mourn what isn't. Naming the grief doesn't betray them. It frees up the part of you that was using all its energy pretending nothing was different.
“Love is not patience without limits. Love is being honest about what you have.”
Exhaustion is information, not failure
If you're tired, you're tired. That isn't a character flaw and it isn't a sign you've failed. It's a body telling you it's been doing more than it can keep doing.
The tiredness shows up in odd ways. Snapping at small things. Crying in the car. Not wanting to come home. None of that means you don't love them. It means something in you is asking to be looked at, too.
You're a person, not a resource
Somewhere along the way it can start to feel like you exist to make their life manageable. That isn't a relationship. That's depletion with a name on it.
You can love someone with PTSD and still need things. Rest. Friends. A night that's about something else. The needs are not a betrayal of them. They're the only way you stay someone they get to be with.