My Rock Bottom.

[stites11b]

After being married for 5 years my PTSD has finally done me in. The way I have treated my wife and friends and family has pushed them all away.

After another fight with my wife she told me what will happen when I start treating my daughter who is only 14 months old the way I treat everyone else. Something clicked in my head finally. I was able to tell my wife what I have been going thru.

I'm an Iraq war veteran. I was an infantryman in the first year of the war from 2003 to 2004. I went to get treatment and I was able to cope with the things I saw and did , but emotionally I have been a reck for almost 10 years. I was only able to show anger towards people. The wall I built up never allowed others feeling to get back to me, for the first time in 10 years I cried for two hours talking to her. She said she understand, but the way I have hurt her she says she will never feel the way she use to towards me. She told me she dosnt want to be with me anymore.

I have told her in the past I will change but things just went back to normal. I know this time is different because all the emotions I have held back have been coming out and for once in a lone while I feel good about myself.

Has anyone else had this issue with a partner and if so how did it turn out?

<Paragraph breaks inserted for readability >

 

[Pale Warrior]

Hi Stites, so sorry to read of your situation.

This is the bit of what you say that rings true for me:

I have told her in the past I will change but things just went back to normal.

It is so hard to believe someone when they have let you down in the past and it sounds as if your wife has concerns for your daughter which can be a serious motivator for her to move on.

Have you sought any outside support, therapy, meds or the like? Perhaps if she saw you taking steps to sort it out she might be more convinced? I know with my husband I see failure to try as the killer, not failure to succeed. I have left him and returned when he started to take steps toward his own healing.

As much as I love him, I couldn't make him better and it wasn't fair on me to use me as his therapist. It was dragging me back to places from my past where I didn't want to be and one of us needed to be healthy.

I hope it works out for you, stay positive if you can. x

 

[stites11b]

Thank you for the kind words and thoughts pale warrior, this last week has been an eye opener. My wife said she is going to file for devorce and that is ok. I realized I can not change the past I can only learn from it, and if she no longer loves me than we need to move on. I can not let the way she feels about me derail my road to being a better person and living a better life.

 

[anthony]

This is very normal, especially being pushed to the brink where a decision must be made to help ourselves or lose everything we love.

Well done.

Been there, done exactly as you are experiencing, and also a veteran. We are trained to produce everything into anger, when that really has no place in civilian society... you must process the underlying emotions, thus anger as a response can no longer form. There is always underlying emotion/s to anger, hence anger is an emotional response, not an emotion by itself. You cannot feel anger without feeling something else, it is impossible. Focus on the other emotion and deal with that, you automatically resolve anger.

 

[stites11b]

Well said Anthony, I know my journey to recovery has just started and in a way will never end but just in a week I have caught myself thinking before acting and that is a lot coming from me. In the past I was so quick to get defensive and react with anger to situations that it didn't call for. I always wondered why people asked me why I look so tired, in the past week I realized I spent so much time being angry and pissed at everything it was killing me slowly, despite all the things going on right now I feel good, it feels good to feel other emotions even if it's pain or regret.

 

[anthony]

Very impressive mate... not many of us veterans actually come to this conclusion that you have by yourself. Really well done.

The core of all problems are emotion. If you are willing to set aside the tough facade that we males majority genetically have, then the real problem solving comes thick and fast. You will be extremely surprised just how much you can use more positive aspects of your military training, ie. self-esteem, confidence, etc, to achieve a rapid progression, tapering off to then refine over further years.

Many military don't realise that some aspects of our training actually help recover things like PTSD, even though other aspects are negatives, being the anger training... if you can learn to drop the negatives and keep the positives, as you're finding, in just one week you feel good relief. I won't lie, it takes a lot longer than that to master this stuff, years to refine it depending on severity... but your training can help you, not just hinder as it may have done prior to your acceptance of emotional self.

This is when I really like working with veterans, when they hit this point.