General Dragging Your Spousy Back To Bed

[Sweetpea76]

Gotta roll with what works as long as it works!

 

[Deleted member 28812]

Do you sometimes feel "alone"? "If people knew that about or family they would all point their fingers at us and ridicule us"

 

[Sweetpea76]

No... not really. My vet took wounds in the service of his country. If people think that any way we have to cope with those wounds are open to mockery, then they are scum beneath my contempt. I'm kind of a bitch like that though. ;)

 

[holdenmonty]

I know I probably shouldn't post here since I'm not a supporter but... I might be able to help with a point of view a little bit, but I also must admit I like reading the supporter forums because it helps me to understand what my wife might be going through, but anyway. I have noticed now thinking back to the multiple times that I just couldn't fall asleep on the bed and ended up sleeping on the floor and sleeping great by the way that I just felt to exposed up on the bed and needed some concealment. I was also thinking that your husband might like sleeping in the door way is that he feels like he is able to protect his family better. No matter where we are such as the other day we were at a friends house and our boys were playing with the other kids I had to know where my kids and my wife was at all times and would check on my boys to make sure I still knew where they were and if my wife would just disappear I would excuse myself and go looking to where she was and found her talking to some women and then I went back to the guys that I was talking to. It never was that way before my ptsd but is that way now and sometimes I like it because it gives me comfort knowing where all my family members are but also sometimes like when I excused myself I told them that I had to go to the bathroom because I feel a little embarrassed that I feel like I have to know where all my family members are.

 

[Sighs]

@holdenmonty - please feel free to post in supporter forums! Most of us supporters are so grateful to those sufferers who are able and willing to share their perspectives. We try hard to "understand" our sufferers and every little bit helps.

 

[holdenmonty]

thanks Sighs, I have also recently from reading the forums here realized how tough it is to be a supporter. I knew before that I put my wife through quite a bit but seeing what you guys post has made me really appreciate her, and if your sufferers don't tell you thank you for being a supporter that I want to thank you for being a supporter. I know for me personally if it wasn't for my wife and two boys that I would be in a dark place instead of having made all the progress I have. I continue to progress for myself but also for them.

 

[Deleted member 28812]

I carpeted his favourite spots and am quite pleased with my work and he actually said it was sweet of me.

thank you for being a supporter

Thanks for thanking us :) It means a lot to me.

I am happy when the "sufferers" share their story. It makes me feel less alone when someone has the same symptoms my husband has because I used to think I was alone but meeting other vets and spouses I realized I wasn't... later I came to this board and realized that whatever odd symptom you think is unique somebody else has it too. It makes me feel a lot better about myself... because I used to think "What did I do wrong? Why does my husband do this and I cannot "stop him"?"

@holdenmonty: Why does sleeping outside of your bed make you feel less exposed? Can you explain this or is it just a feeling? @FridayJones says she needs to use the restroom like you do and my husband does it too. I used to think he just needed to pee when he was nervous *lol*.

 

[holdenmonty]

Hmmmm it seems to be just a feeling but with our bed the regular frame is about half a meter off the floor, and then we have our box spring, and then our mattress which ends up making where we sleep about a meter off the floor. I was also thinking more into why other then feeling exposed, and I realized that sometimes I'm just in a funny mood where our bed feels to soft or to comfortable and when I sleep on the floor it just feels comfortable but the cot that I slept on while I was deployed was probably just about as hard as sleeping on the floor so maybe it is just something familiar when life was black and white.

This could/probably should go on a different forum for in all honesty I miss being deployed to Afghanistan sometimes. When I was deployed there was a correct answer and a wrong answer, it was if you did this correctly you had nothing to worry about but if you didn't do it or didn't do it to the best of your ability then bad stuff could and did happen. And here if you do something and it isn't to the best of your ability and something went wrong then bad stuff doesn't happen so people tend to not do things to the best of their ability and things go wrong all the time but since bad things don't usually happen then not very many people care and don't try to prevent things from going wrong most people just want to make it look like it isn't their fault instead of just getting it fixed. So I tend to say that when I was deployed things were black and white but now not being in a war zone there is all different shades of gray. Also things were so much more simple when I was deployed at least compared to the states. When I was deployed at the base exchange there was one isle of all the hygiene items you would need and when I came back I needed to get some tooth paste and at walmart there was an entire isle of nothing but tooth paste and I felt so overwhelmed I felt like sitting down in the isle and crying because I just felt so overwhelmed with the selection.

 

[Sighs]

@holdenmonty - I know my man misses being in the Army and I know he misses being deployed. How can civvy life ever deliver enough adrenalin when you've spent 25 years as an infantry soldier?

My man also finds civvy land shopping difficult. Sometimes because of too much choice, but sometimes because of a lack of realistic options. For example we live in a rural area and mobile phone coverage is terrible. He wanted an external antenna to boost the signal. The guy at the store showed him 2 options at about $150 each. He asks why does it have to be so clunky and with a cable - don't they have wireless. The guy looks at him like he's mad and says well yeah you could get wireless but that's like $5,000. My guy whistles and mutters something about the Q store.

So if nothing else perhaps the fact that you're not alone might help you feel better about things.

 

[Sighs]

My vet has been having a lot of trouble sleeping the last week or so. He never sleeps well, but goes through patches of really bad nights. This patch is the worst I've seen.

Last night we went to bed about midnight. He was restless, couldn't get comfortable. He had set his alarm for 5,30am to go hunting. At about 2am he told me to turn his alarm off as he hadn't been able to get to sleep and he may as well get up and go on his hunt. He said maybe he would be able to sleep in the bush and off he went.

At about 8.15am he texted me saying he hadn't slept at all. I spoke to him at about 10am. He was a good 2 hour hike from home, very tired and hungry. He asked me to get some bacon so we could have a cooked breakfast over Christmas. Christmas? I said. He repeated it twice before correcting himself to the weekend. I hope he makes it home in one piece. Sigh!

 

[Sweetpea76]

@Sighs, that's how mine gets... when he is having a bad patch he is up for days until he pretty much just falls down face-first asleep from exhaustion. It is almost like he is drunk right before he goes down.

 

[Sighs]

I just hope he doesn't fall face first down the gully or into the creek... Sigh!

@Sweetpea76 - how do you go as far as sleep when he's up all the time? I get so sleep deprived I'm worried about falling asleep while driving. (I drive 160km / 100miles round trip for work each day.)