Hey all. My mom just got engaged, and I'm struggling hard to like her fiance or be okay with their relationship. I'm interpreting everything he does as a "red flag" and objectively I don't think I'm being fair to him. I'm having extremely visceral reactions to even seeing them together, and I've been lashing out at my mom in particular.

So a little background. My dad is a narcissistic sociopath. Just my own assessment, but he checks all the boxes. The man is evil and he ruled over this house by keeping us absolutely terrified of him. My parents divorced 7 years ago after years and years of his abuse, and he continued to make our lives hell after the divorce. I thought I had wrapped up my feelings about him and put them away, but seeing my mom with her fiance is bringing everything up again.

Every time he acts annoyed, or gets frustrated or stressed, I get enraged and sick to my stomach. For example; ge got annoyed over traffic and snapped slightly at my mom, and I was sick and angry for the rest of the day. On top of that, my mom has the view that a woman should be submissive to man (NOT my view at ALL) and so she's slipped right back into old patterns and just lets him make decisions/have his own way. I wasn't prepared for how emotional and angry this makes me. He literally just picked a restaurant for dinner and she didn't challenge him, and I wanted to slap her.

I'm genuinely happy that she's found someone, and I know he isn't my dad, but seeing them together is apparently a huge trigger. I want to rage at her for not protecting us from my dad, and I want nothing to do with her fiance because I can't bring myself to trust him. I've never been diagnosed with PTSD but could that be what this is? Or severe anxiety? I don't know, but it's causing problems. My moms fiance realizes how standoffish I've been, so there's a lot of tension there, and my mom is confused and hurt over how I've been lashing out. I'm not sure what to do and I really just needed to talk about it.