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Supporter Law Enforcement/military Marriage

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Ollie1242

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Hello,
I am looking for some insight. My husband has twenty plus years in law enforcement (local and Federal) and is in his 26th year with the Army, serving as an MP (Afghanistan) and now as a Criminal Investigator (Iraq & Guantanamo.) He recently retired from law enforcement, after suffering a neck injury at work and eventually after years of PT, cortisone shots, etc.. the end result needed to be surgery. Start to finish, the worker's comp, surgery and recovery phase has been about five years and they are finally retiring him this year. He had carried the pain for almost a decade prior to finally settling into the idea that surgery was the only option left (he was getting tingling and numbness in his fingers.) We had begun dating not too long before he was deployed as an investigator to Iraq, where he was part of a special task force that handled interrogations. I spoke to him sometimes daily and sometimes weekly while he was deployed.

He loved every second of what he was doing and when he returned home, stated that nothing in his law enforcement or military career would ever touch what he was doing over there -- for once, he seemed complete and like everything in his life had added up to what he did there. We were engaged within a month or two of him coming home from Iraq (2008) and eventually married in 2010. I became pregnant a few months later. My husband seemed ecstatic. In the early stages of pregnancy, he asked me not to put much about the pregnancy on Facebook. He said he felt our life was so good, too good, and he felt something bad would happen as we had such a great life. Like we were due for something bad. Throughout the pregnancy, my husband was distant -- no back rubs, no hand holding, always busy helping fellow co-workers or friends. I felt pretty lonely. Where he was distant, his family filled in. We went through what seemed to be the normal amount of marital fights -- no different than when we were engaged. My husband tends to be very judgemental and can be hard on me at times, but nothing abusive at this point in our life.

Normal fights, sometimes heated, but we were always able to compromise and work things out.) A week or two prior to my due date, we got into a fight about him being so distant throughout the pregnancy. I asked him if he was even planning to show up at the hospital, as I felt he paid no attention to me whatsoever half of the time. He was still working for the Feds, we had put an addition on our home and we were balancing some rental properties that I own in a resort town where I am originally from. Life had a lot going on, but there was something more to it with the emotional distance. No issues intimately, just emotionally distant. Since I have known my husband, he has run off of 2-3 hours of sleep per night. He can fall asleep but he cannot stay asleep. His body jumps and he wakes and his adrenaline gets going and he cannot go back to sleep. I've tiptoed around his moods for years, but they were never overly explosive. His immune system was shot from deployments (if someone sneezed three towns over, he was sick for a week... he'd end up with full blown bronchitis sometimes just from heavy grilling in the summer... we are polar opposites where I've always been super healthy with a great immune system and he's always run down and on some prescription med for something or another.)

Those were the only real issues going on for the most part leading up until my due date and those were things we had been dealing with for as long as I had known him. We eventually had a talk about his distance and he said that the entire pregnancy, he felt something bad was going to happen and that our life was too good. He said it never felt real and that he was constantly on guard. About a week before the due date, he started having dreams of holding his son. He started telling me how real it felt and he started talking to his friends about it all with excitement. A few days prior to my due date, which was his birthday, the baby wrapped himself in the umbilical cord and died. I had to be induced and after 30 plus hours of labor with no meds (my platelets were too low so I could not have an epidural,) I delivered a 9lb dead child. My husband at first stated he would not be able to see him when he was born or hold him. Anything that has to do with emotion, especially children, my husband becomes angry and defensive. In the end, he did stay in the room with me while our family and friends held the child, but my husband refused to hold him.

During the entire event, I was responsible for calling our family to tell them the baby had died, while my husband looked for distraction. His family immediately came to the hospital and I felt bombarded by it all, when all I really wanted was my husband. This has been a common issue in our marriage, where his sister can be a mother hen at times and over step her boundaries. It's like she can't just let her brother fly on his own without having to be constantly in our life. When I was released from the hospital, my husband told me that his sister had handled all the funeral arrangements and that everything was done. I was shocked. I have always been an independent person -I've buried my dad and my aunt without the help of others and I was highly upset that everything had been handled for my son. When I asked his sister about it, she stated she knew that her brother could not handle the emotional parts of it so she took the reigns. Ahem... but I could have handled it and no one even consulted me and I was the child's mother. My husband is one of the strongest people that I know -- he commands a presence when he walks into a room. He gives off an old school vibe of safety, security and confidence. He's beyond modest, would give you the shirt off his back, and would do anything for anyone. He can teach and train, yet when it comes to his own life and his emotions, he builds walls.

I did exceptionally well after the still birth. I was talking to my friends, back photographing newborns as a photographer, holding friend's babies and carrying on while filtering emotion. I did so well with it that I went to follow up with a still born therapist that the hospital had recommended, to make sure I wasn't missing something or in denial. She thought I was doing exceptionally well. I feel like everything happens for a reason and out of everything bad comes something good. It simply wasn't meant to be. During the times I had cried, my husband became very angry. He would yell at me to stop crying, which in turn would cause me to cry more with feeling unsupported. He would eventually storm out of the house yelling about his top secret clearances and if anyone heard me crying they would think we were having a domestic and call the police. I could never understand that part as he was friends with every single police officer on the force with the three towns surrounding us. I felt he was not dealing with his own emotions. I feel like between what he was dealing with with the sleep issues etc, that the death of the baby put a crack in his wall and he was trying to hold it all in, but unable to stop it from sliding out at times.

I became pregnant about three months later and delivered a healthy little boy the following year. My husband was again distant during that pregnancy. At this point, my husband was out of work awaiting neck surgery. Worker's comp took over a year to finish the claim and we had to get creative with money for a little bit until his back pay came back in, which after a year it did. My rental properties carried us, but it was still stressful. My husband was very hands on with the newborn, since he was home and not at work. He said it was a blessing that he had this time and he stated he would have been really hard on me judgement wise if he didn't see for himself how hard it was to take care of a newborn and keep life going in general. I am either OCD with everything put away and functioning or sh*t hits the fan and things are a mess. There is no grey area in between and it's something that drives my husband nuts. One of my worst flaws. I'm also a big sleeper.

Since I was a child, I've just loved my sleep and get 10-12 hours of sleep per night if allowed/nothing scheduled. Our son is the same way. Over time, my husband has seemed to resent this and the insults began about the sleep. The insults eventually escalated from anything and everything. By the time my son was six months old, I felt I could not breath right in our house. It was constant eggshells and surviving around my husband and his moods. His family and friends have always joked about his moods and him being angry/holding grudges at times, but this was above and beyond. We had life in the palm of our hand. He made great money, I had assets that brought in great money, we had great family and friends, we could vacation when we wanted to, we spent time in the resort town where my properties were as we got them ready for the rental seasons, etc. We had nothing to be arguing about. We had no issues with trust/cheating or anything more than differences in two people (I'm creative, trusting, fly by the seat of my pants most days...my husband is more logical, stern, forward thinking, planned out.)

Our typical marriage fights would bloom into full blown war. Battles in the past could be heated too, but nothing like this. Anything and everything set him off and it was always directed toward me. I was lazy, I was useless, I was unmotivated, hadn't been to the gym in years, a piece of shit, etc. Now, I had two full term pregnancies in a row and I bounced back to my size six instantly with no issues. Meanwhile, my husband was gaining weight due to the recovery phase of surgery, couldn't stay on any type of consistent lifestyle diet and was constantly getting fast food, the sleep issues became worse, the anger became worse, etc. I started to realize there was way more going on with this. He had threatened me when our son was about six months old that if I tried to divorce him and leave the town he was from, he would do everything he could to make me look like an unfit mother who was mentally ill. It was nothing new at that point that when he flipped his switch, that he spewed horrible things to me and then later, went back to normal. I knew something was going on with him and I tried not to let it bother me. A law enforcement friend of him pulled him aside one day and took him on a ride to a PTSD/trauma academy that handles all local bomb squad guys in the city near us. They specialize in police, fire, EMT, first responders and military. Things we so bad within the house and I had confided in one of my good friends, who's husband is also law enforcement. My husband found out and went of the deep end. I get it. I broke rule #1 as a loyal spouse, but I truly didn't know what was even going on with him and I was confiding in a friend about the abuse that was going on and just wanting to fix my marriage. I needed support too but when my husband found out I had reached out for support, he flipped. He has never forgiven me and shut me out completely with whatever is going on. This was two and a half years ago.

The more my husband went to see this man about the elephant in the room, the worse he treated me at home. He would follow me around the house telling me to kill myself, calling me horrific things, doing anything he could to invade my personal space but never laying a hand on me. I started seeing a therapist to help me deal with it as I didn't feel I could confide in my friends in case he found out. She told me I was being bullied and to leave when it happened or go to another part of the house. There was one time he started in on me over nothing and after enduring it for long enough, I took my infant and walked upstairs and locked us in a room and let my husband cool off from the insults. Twenty minutes later, I went back downstairs to continue what I was doing and he came back in and started button pushing again. When he is like this, he does everything in his power to push my buttons. The more I don't react, the more the mental and emotional manipulation escalates. He tries to put words in my mouth, spins me around in my mind and does everything he can to destroy my mental state. I try not to buy into it as I'm a strong person, but after a while we all have our breaking point. As he followed me down the hall, he was right up in my personal space, his face in my ear, calmly and calculatingly saying horrible things to me while laughing in between. He won't yell, he won't lay a hand on me -- it's mental manipulation like I've never seen.

I yelled at him to get away from me, throwing out a few "f*ck you's" and such in between... and after he refused ot get out of my personal space, he picked up an empty baby walker in our living room and shoved it at him. He instantly started laughing and calling me an abusive spouse. Prior to that, I had never physically reacted to him ever. He immediately left the house as he spoke of being in fear of me. Ten minutes later, he came back upstairs and calmly looked at me and told me that I was mentally ill and I was too sick to understand what was going on. He removed our son from his high chair and told me that I should not be around children right then. Everything was calm and collected on his part and done with a smirk. That was a tipping point for me and I began to look more into the PTSD factor, even though he denied having it. He was collecting benefits from it, the center he was receiving help from had me come in and discuss our life, with his approval, and he still would spin me in circles saying I was mentally ill and heard everything wrong and that I was there for my own mental health. At the VA, he would state he had PTSD on a rare occasion and then when we would leave, he would do everything he could to spin my head and convince me I was hearing things. It began to make me feel crazy. He began telling our friends and family that I had PTSD and unaddressed post pardum.

He started creating lies to cover up his own stuff and he began projecting everything he hated about himself onto me. At this point, I am just starting to fully understand the extent of everything. It's been five long years of mental and emotional abuse within our home. My husband is a very well liked and very well respected throughout our community and state. He's an amazing man when he's not flipping his switch. In the past, I have tried to take it head on as I wasn't going to cower to it, but now I realized that was the worst thing I could have done. The times I have reached out for help, the courts or police have unethically told my husband about it. He does not trust me now, and I can see his perspective, but I had to start reaching out to help myself. I have found letters to the VA where several very distinct events from Afghanistan and Iraq are written about, where he states he has abandoned my as a wife and he explodes on me for anything and everything, and where he discusses how he can no longer decompress, is involved in bar fights and road rage as a 40 something year old man. He knows it is unacceptable, yet he cant control it. He has always been the guiding light to others with how to handle situations and use words to diffuse events, yet he is now incapable of doing that himself.

I am the enemy. I feel I am more of the enemy because I know. He has the wool pulled over everyone's eyes between family and friends and he has the world convinced I am the problem. When he would come home from his sessions, he would treat me worse that any other time. I get it, but there is a fine line with what I can handle as a human being and what I can let my now four year old son see. Our son was asking us to stop fighting recently. It was getting really bad and we agreed to separate. I went away for the day and my husband sold my car, which I had paid for. He started meticulously putting his plan into effect. I found that he has been documenting lies through his friends at the local police department over the past four years, wanting it noted how bad my post pardum is and how he is in fear of what I will do to his career. I am not that type of person and I could have easily pulled a restraining order on him if I wanted to. I will never do that. I do no fear him, I do not hate him, I hate the beast that is controlling him. I feel my husband clearly had some unaddressed PTSD before we met. I never understood the signs and thought it was just his demeanor and stressors at work. I think the day the baby died, it put a huge crack in the walls he was protecting himself with and he's been fighting to keep anything from spilling out over the past four years. The pieces all fit now and I am reading so much stuff that I wish I knew sooner with not triggering him or taking him head on.

Even now, I'm sitting here trying to find that fine line wiht caring about someone who I think is still in there, while watching them destroy our life. I am not at war with him, even after everything that has recently come to light. I feel bad for him. He's an amazing man. Truly. But he refuses to admit what is going on and is too busy creating a false scapegoat in me, to step back and deal with it. My husband went from a somewhat patient and loving man to a paranoid, controlling, meticulously vindictive abuser. Everything he is upset with himself about, he projects onto me. At this point, we are in the midst of a divorce that I don't think either of us want. BUT... how do you get someone help that won't admit there is something going on and is too stubborn to help themselves? My husband is spiraling and I would still do anything to help him. I have given him ample space over the years and the more space I give him, the more space he needs. I sleep on the couch most nights as to not wake him after I put our son to sleep. I give him back rubs, head rubs, foot rubs and do anything I can to relax him. We have still been intimate all the way through this bipolar ride. He stopped going to marriage counseling as he said it was useless. It's like he gave up on himself and doesn't think he deserves a good life. And when I say a good life, I mean a good life.

We spend much of our winter in Florida on vacation, have a nice home, a beautiful vacation home in one of the country's most coveted areas, we are financially stable, have a healthy and highly intelligent son, great friends and family, etc. We have no worries at all. But we are constantly in a state of war. My husband is always "in orange" as we call it... he's always thinking something bad is going to happen and inventing threats in his head that are not there. He thinks I am trying to control him and that I compete with him with everything. That is the farthest things from the truth. He comes and goes as he pleases, is on the gold course half the summer, has three amazing motorcycles, an accessory car he just restored... nothing makes him happy. In the end, I am the cause of all of our issues according to him. I have my flaws, but nothing that warrants this treatment. I am just starting to really fully explore the elephant in the room we have been living with for five years and I stumbled upon this forum. I am hoping to find some type of advice, support, anything here. Any insight from other people's experiences -- as a spouse on either end of this cycle. I am trying to save my marriage if I can. It's probably too late as he only sees me as the enemy and I have been calling it what it is lately, which makes him more mad.

I've been begging him to get help for the past two weeks and he insists it's not him, but me, and that he just wants a divorce to stop the fighting. In the end, I know he doesn't want a divorce. If he did, he would have filed himself. H pushed me to file. And I only filed because he started selling my stuff and I had to get an attorney to help me with my rights. We have an amazing life and it's going down the drain over pride and anger. Is he capable of seeing that while he's enraged? I'm trying to understand. I have been through so much in my life and I have always come out on top without anger or harboring resentment. It doesn't work the same with my husband. I would love for anyone willing to share their stories with me to help me. Regardless if it ended in divorce or the saving of the marriage. Regardless if it's the spouse dealing with the cycle or the veteran who is trying to control the beast and make it work. I am grasping for anything right now to just understand. I'm trying to find that fine line with tough love and support and all the piece sin between in hopes that I can do something to stop my husband from constantly being at war with himself. He is going to be dead within five years just with his health alone if he doesn't start dealing with this. He deserves better. Our son deserves better. And I deserve better. I know my husband is still in there. How do I reach him? I am not the enemy but to him I am. I know I should leave and never look back, but something tells me that everything in my life has lead me to this point and maybe I was put here to help him and get him through this. I said through the good times and the bad when we married. I meant it.
 
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Hi and welcome! :)

It's really hard for those with PTSD to read huge chunks of text like that. I was only able to get half way through before I had to stop. It helps to write in short paragraphs if you want sufferer feedback. Broken up and/or shorter posts will often get you more feedback.

Based on the 1st half, this guy is a majorly abusive person. PTSD may influence our behavior but the line about what he'd do if you left him? (Can't find the line in that big block of text.) Why are you still with him? That isn't PTSD, it's abuse. I think you're putting your child in danger.
 
So sorry - is there any way to document this with cameras or anything? Not that I know anything about the legality of that, but in some places it would be legal.
 
Hi and welcome! :)

It's really hard for those with PTSD to read huge chunks of text like that. I...


I think he felt backed in a corner when angry -- totally not making excuses for him, but if I left and went home, he wouldn't be able to see his son everyday as though I'd be in the same state, it's a hike and a process to get to where I'm from. He was more scared IMO. When things are good, they are good. When he feels threatened, he gets nasty. He was never like this. He was always the guy who stuck up for others with bullies -- as a kid and as an adult. He was the guy taking less fortunate and troubled kids to ropes courses and activities to redirect their lives with skill building. He coached young kids. He is an amazing man -- but there is something going on that is not getting addressed. He's not like this 24-7. I am not in fear of him, I just hate the bullying. These events were over the course of five years. As of now, he's out of the house and we are in process of divorce.
 
Holy smokes, that's an incredible amount of stress, and I'm incredibly sad for your loss. If his wall's up that strong- I know it must be incredibly difficult for you to try to communicate.

For your positive energies.... guys can get through that wall, but they have to embrace the need to change things, and hopefully he will. I still react fast and aggressively without realizing it until a split second passes, then I'll immediately apologize, but I came full circle with enough time to accept there was no escaping the permanent changes. Me and my wife are now thick as thieves just as we were beforehand. I'm 40's and the fights, road rage etc I can all relate to though....

Finding a military or police comrade you know he respects dearly, but who may also suffer some effects of PTSD, and a therapist that he thinks your husband would get, might start the process...but for all I know maybe he needs a source totally removed from it as I did? Family, a female figure, who knows.

I'llI wish you all the luck I can though, and advise you to realize you can only do what you are able from your side.
 
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