Advice on having a "normal" realtionship after a serious one with a boyfriend who had PTSD

Hi there. So this is a really long story and i'm just going to try and condense it down. I was never really interested in dating people in high school, but I found someone later on that was really great. He was someone I had grew up with, my best friend in fact, but as a child he was kidnapped and suffered some pretty horrific and sadisticemotional/physical/sexual abuse. He spent months in the hospital and was diagonsed with severe PTSD (apparently the specialist he hadwas the best in the US and she hadnever seen a case that bad). It took nearly six years for him to have some sort of sense of "normality", even when heavily medicated. We got along great though and I tended to go to therapy with him sometimes as a kid (for both my benefit in learning how to cope with his experience and to provide support to him).

Fast forward a few years and you get him asking me out and us dating for about a year before declaring an exclusive relationship. I had been on a couple dates before him and they weredisasterous(not really thier fault, I just couldn't deal with the immaturity of guys my own age). We really clicked and were together for nearly four years. Being with someone with PTSD was hard, but I think because I grew up around him I naturally knew what to avoid. He had a relapse about half way through our relationshipwhen he was involved in a severe car crash that killed his sister and that was really rough, but we coped and I still wanted to be with him. He made a pretty impressive recovery considering things and we were happy together.

During this time his doctors discovered he had cancer (we still aren't sure what it was) and he ended up not making it- he went into remission for about six months and then it came back and he was gone in two months.

So. With all that said, I don't have PTSD. I am still heartbroken to have lost him, but the idea of being in a relationship (or at least trying dating) has become less repulsive and actually kind of appealing.

I have tried dating two different people over the last six months now under the pretense that I am not looking for anything serious. The first one went no further than the first date and I was pretty much like "to hell with dating". Then someone fairly mature (unless guys in their mid twenties are mature in general and I just seem to contact the ones that still at like 13 year old boys?) came along looking for something of the same thing.

We dated consistently for about a month and then I just couldn't do it anymore. So it's been over two years since Andrew passed and I feel okay with dating but I feel like the last guy I dated went badly because of me. Granted I have issues of my own but he said he could accept those and he really did. He even hinted at wanting something more permanent with me.

I'm not totally sure why I broke things off, but has anyone else had an expeirence of being with someone who is "broken" and then unable to have a "normal" romanticrelationship? I don't know how to explain it, but "normal" to me is what Andrew was and anyone who has PTSD/has been with someone with PTSD knows that that sort of relationship is no where close to "normal".

So do I just need more time or do I need to try to readjust to a new "normal"? I really want what I had with Andrew, I know that's not obtainable, so I can settle for trying to find something like that again.