General Calling Spouses Of People With Combat Ptsd

[holdenmonty]

I don't think my wife has ever gotten used to it. I have had to learn to try and stay on task and when she asks me to do something I have started to jump right on it so I don't get distracted with something else. It's still not easy though. I tend to start unloading the dishwasher and then see the pile of pictures and our bare walls and start to hang up some pictures then I can't really hang up any because there is boxes and stuff to unpack that is in the way so I start to unpack a little and then the boys want me to play so I play with them then a while later I remember that I was unloading the dishwasher.

 

[Sighs]

lol - I don't ever ask him to do anything. ;) Happiness is matching your expectations to your reality. (I should point out that he does heaps of stuff but all at his own direction and in his own timeframe. The lists, plans and fallbacks are driven by him. I'm 2IC no CO.

 

[Deleted member 28812]

Happiness is matching your expectations to your reality.

How true, but I cannot stop expecting certain things from him - like be on time, this is how I was raised and it's important in our culture. I think more so than in yours.

Actually I would not agree on having to be the 2IC because I only want to be this if we are doing something I don't understand anything about (such as repairs - than I am fine with it). Otherwise I think we should be equal partners.


... and it freaks me out when the "CO" is like this

My husband has a conflict at work because there is a guy who never does as he tells him and in all honesty I wonder if that is because he gives him confusing orders.

Ahh... to be fair my husband "takes orders well" *lol* he does not mind being ordered around at all - most likely because he is used to it. He is never on time but he does not mind when I tell him to do this and that and sometimes I order him to do things that make no sense just to find out what the most idiotic thing is he would do without asking "why?".

 

[Deleted member 28812]

To be fair btw my husband does not mind making being wait at all - if one did not say one would be there at 9 pm (or whenever), when you tell him you will be there at 9pm and arrive two minutes late he'll frak out a bit but if you won't tell him when you will be there he waits for you for hours and is fine. Have to comment him on this. I think I would not have the patience and think he might just think that I am just like that and not realize why I am angry at him being late.

 

[Sighs]

:roflmao::roflmao::roflmao: That's almost exactly how my guy gives orders!

 

[mellysail]

My fiancee has combat PTSD and I finally (despite being on this forum off and on for about 9 months) just read about the PTSD cup and it totally made sense to me. It made sense why he would be set off my the smallest thing, and why sometimes it was impossible to get him to do something.

We just had a really really bad PTSD weekend, and I'm frankly a little wrung out from it. It all started because he wanted a boat. So we were looking at boats. And he (because he has impulse control issues) bought the first boat we looked at. Mind you its a sail boat and he's never sailed before and I haven't sailed in years.

Fast forward, he gets it registered, etc. He then decides it has to go into the water the next day. My father had offered to help us, but he was unavailable the day that DF (dear fiancee) decided he wanted this done. Let me tell you, I knew that this would be a rough weekend.... I should have had an exit strategy for the weekend in place before going into this!

Long story short, a small hiccup (the guy who put in our mooring was unavailable to show us where it was) turned into a crisis. And we were off to the races. I ended up taking care of the boat by myself and and ended up getting everything squared away. I came home and I'm expecting his normal "back to normal after a few hours of sleep and space". Not so. Instead he was in the thoroughs of a full on episode. Things went from bad to worse all afternoon until he told me about 10 times to get out of the apartment. So I called my sister and she came to get me for the night. This made things worse and he said we were over.

The next morning I thought things were better but they really weren't..... I could see the wave had crested though and that he was on his way down to "normal". Things still aren't great and I'm a little at a loss.

He said some pretty awful things while he was having his episode and I don't think any of this is fair to me.... he was the one who wanted the boat (I wanted to just join a local community boating program with a veterans discount and sailing lessons..... If we never went we would have only lost money), he was the one who rushed getting it into the water, and then when I didn't do things exactly to how he would have done things, I'm called stupid and told I can't do anything right......

To make matters more confusing, he keeps talking about selling the boat now because "he could never enjoy it with me", but then just sent me an email announcement about something that would pertain to the boat...... AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH

I guess I just needed to get my story out in an audience that understands where I'm coming from. I know now that we really need to get into therapy and that I need to get into therapy. I think also that I need to set more boundries of what is okay and what is not okay. Otherwise any advice or help would be appreicated.

 

[Sighs]

@mellysail - boy that all sounds soooo familiar! :hug:

 

[mellysail]

And like the rest of his episodes, he takes multiple doses at a time of his sleeping medication and sleeps for days on end after he's done with the episode. He's in the middle of sleeping now.... he slept all day yesterday, all night last night, and this morning had to ask me what day it was. He's still out of it, and he's still not being terribly nice to me.

When is enough enough? When do you reach your breaking point?

 

[Sighs]

@mellysail - only you know when you reach the point where you NEED to get off the PTSD roller coaster. Its different for each of us.

If you make that decision please don't feel that you are a bad person. You have to look after yourself first.

:hug:

 

[mellysail]

Well, he's back to me.... He's embarassed by his behavior and he apologized and said that he never means it when he says the things he says. I love him and I'm not ready to throw in the towel yet.

Has anyone had good experiences with couples therapy? Has it helped or hurt? I do know there's a learning curve for dealing with the PTSD and I've noticed that even since I met my fiancee things have gotten better. So I do see hope and light at the end of the tunnel.....

 

[holdenmonty]

My wife and I went to marriage counseling and it has helped. For me it helped because I was able to get stuff to challenge the wrong thinking patterns when it came to my wife and she could learn about different things that shut me down that she didn't realize that she was doing.

 

[Love MyHusband]

I'm in, mine was long out of the military when we met and married & he didn't talk about it hardly at all...

Just reading this now, I'm new here.. Just wanted to say that I didn't meet and marry my Marine vet until a few years after he got out too. We married and had a baby shortly after. With a daughter each coming into the relationship.

My guy just got diagnosed about 3 weeks ago.. After being disconnected, quiet and there has been increasingly less affection. He's just turned into the shell of who I married. At least he isn't an ass though.... So there's that. He's trying his best. Still drives me nuts and makes me sad though.

Anyways, just wanted to say I can relate.