My Husband Was Diagnosed With Ptsd...are These Normal Symptoms Or Is It Something Else?

[wife of]

He may also be feeling guilty about "wanting out" be that via divorce or opting out of life full stop...
It's much easier to have someone hating and leaving you than to have to choose to leave and look the bad guy...

 

[armywife05]

wife of - thank you. He is now telling me he doesnt love me and would rather pay a butt load of money for childsupport, etc just to have me out of his life. I think im going to just call his first sgt and tell them everything that is going on because i am sick of it and he needs help.

 

[wife of]

No problem darling,you sound like you realy want to stay the course and at the moment he's self destructing.
I've heard of so many guys throwing thier marriages down the loo only to regret it later when they become more rational.
I've realy had to fight tooth and nail to get mine through the last 10 months and keep our marriage intact,I'm not sure I would of found it so easy if I were pregnant and with little kids.
But I do know that it would of been impossible without telling all his family and mine what was happening so that they could support us and help convince him to see he wasn't rational and to let them help us during the first tentative stages of his recovery which involved several hospitalisations.
We are no where near to the edge of the woods yet but we are at last venturing along the waymarked path..x

 

[wife of]

Oh yeah and when he was at his most unhinged I too got the I want a divorce,I dont love you routine.

 

[armywife05]

Well he is serious :( He said he is filing for divorce in 2 weeks. So we are done. :(

 

[Prettysmile]

My husband got home from Afghanistan in Dec. He was fine for a few months (i guess the honeymoon phase of him being him after not seeing each other for a year and just happy to be home). Well as the months go on he gets worse and worse. We have 2 kids together and another one on the way due in Nov. My husband has become so lazy since coming home from afghanistan. He almost seems like he cant deal with the kids (which i know theyre hard to deal with because i have them constantly). He doesnt help around the house at all, i mow the grass, take the trash out, do everything around the house plus do everything for the kids while being almost 8 months pregnant and needless to say i am exhausted. We argue a lot because of how lazy he is. All he does is sleep. He did get diagnosed with PTSD/severe depression/anxiety. The thing is, he doesnt have flash back or bad dreams. He is irritable constantly, he has a hard time controlling his anger (he isnt physically abusive). He comes home and is either on his phone in our back bedroom or he is drawing or sleeping. He always avoids us and it is really annoying.Which causes us to fight more. Well this whole week he has been avoiding the house. He works and then gets off and says he is going to tattoo someone after work (he just started tattooing on the side because this is what he wants to do after the army). Well the other day he had to go to work for 24 hours (staff duty) and before he left he freaked out and started saying mean things to me and bringing up old problems in our marriage that i thought were resolved. I mean he literally brought this up out of nowhere. Then he left. I called him after he left crying because i did not understand why he is lashing out on me for no reason then he started saying he doesnt know who he is anymore, he feels like he is going crazy and doesnt even feel like himself anymore and he was going to tell his first sgt to admit him to a mental ward because he needs to be admitted and he needs help. Well he went to work and got off yesterday at 5:30pm and i left him a lone because he said he needed to be a lone, so i left him a lone. It turns 11pm and i call him to see where he is and he gets annoyed that im calling him and he says he is tattooing someone and i asked if he was gonna come home, he said yes....but he never did and now he isnt even answering my calls.

Is this much avoidance normal? Im stuck between thinking he's cheating or his PTSD is a lot worse than i thought. I have been trying to read as much as i can about ptsd but it seems like there can be so many different symptoms so i dont know what to think.

You should read my Marine Love story which I posted yesterday! lol. I felt the same way. I knew nothing about PTSD and i thought he was cheating. NO avoidance, shutting you out, not communicating, not showing you attention, the confusion of their emotions are all his PTSD! I'm going through it now. But my marine isnt so bad. But he does break up with me every other week because he thinks I deserve better. I just ignore him. The following week we are in love again.

 

[Powder]

I can only say that I don't have combat PTSD, just regular PTSD, or chronic. It took about 10 years for me to be able to trust my husband and stop doing this "push and pull away" thing. I was testing him, because I knew no other way to see if I could trust him. He is the only person I do trust. THE only person.

Your husband's tests are cruel, as were mine. He is damaged. It will take a lifetime or more to heal, and he could get worse at times, then better. The stress of coming home from combat to a pregnant wife and a house full of kids would not work for me either, and I'm a mom of two. There are days I ask my H (like RIGHT NOW) when my H takes the kids out of the house to leave me in peace. I am too chicken s** to leave myself but when the toddler makes noise I cry and panic attack. I have to bunker down, under blankets, on the couch, alone. I have to work through the s***t of PTSD and PMS all at once. This disorder is the pits.

While I feel so so bad for you and what you are suffering, I relate to your husband, as I feel similarly to him (withdrawling) when it's bad. I think you and the kids make him feel "present" and feeling fully present when you have PTSD is like sitting on an electrified chair and feeling the current run through you and the pain of where it goes through nerves. You feel like you can't take another minute, but you want to be there for them, and you get angrier because you can't and feel like a failure because you can't make it stop. It's easy to see why people use alcohol or whatever we can to numb and try to survive it without freaking out.

If you have guns, get them locked away from him, or take your kids elsewhere. I have gotten hypervigilant and slept with a loaded gun. Now, I don't have anything to do with them and that part is better.

I'm sorry to hear this. If you can, tell him you love him, but you need to be safe.

 

[The Godfather]

I just read this post yesterday. I was searching for guidence into what has happened to me. Army wife's husband describes me to a "T". I can say that even after all the mean and hurtful things I did to drive her away , I love her deeply . Someone stated that he just wants to test her to see if she is going to stand by him. They are absolutely correct ( for me anyway) I will add, for me, that also those actions of driving them away, is an act of trying to spare them the horrors of having them deal with stuff we can't handle