Talking About War With Spouses And Girl/Boyfriends

[Inouk]

Thanks Nicolette. Thanks guys for rambling on as you say.

I will not say inform, do not inform or be vague with your partner. It really depends on your willingness to speak and/or the receptivity of the one sharing your life.

What I can tell you is that when I met Rick, he told me he was an IT technician (computer technician) working for a world-wide known cie. Guess what? It was true for the Army paid 18K for his reinsertion into the civilian workplace after being medically discharged. IT was his dada.

When I probed a little bit more (like 2 weeks later), he told me he was an IT tech + Army Force Vet. Probing more, I found he had retired in 1999...at 37 years old (?). When gently probing about liking his job, I got the I am not working and never will. I do get paid...to look after myself. Why I asked? As an ace with computers, he forgot everything within a few months post graduation. Also felt like killing his boss for disrespect; yeah right go figure that!

Working in the Pharma Industry with an SSRI approved for PTSD, I asked Rick if he had PTSD. I not only got it straight from him but also included in the package were all the gory details (did not ask for this but got it anyway). If I had to do it again today, I would keep it as is. Tell me and then tell me again so I can understand why you can be such an ass-hole and yet so loving and gentle. Just be honest and I shall love you.

Sorry – Just rambling on :-)

 

[Nicolette]

. Tell me and then tell me again so I can understand why you can be such an ass-hole and yet so loving and gentle. Just be honest and I shall love you.

To all you guys out there........I totally agree with what Inouk said, which I couldn't put into words when I posted.

Thank you Inouk.

 

[Paradoxal]

To all you guys out there........I totally agree with what Inouk said, which I couldn't put into words when I posted.

Thank you Inouk.

I agree, that's a wonderful statement.

 

[sea shelly]

Here's my two cents. And it doesn't necessarily apply to us as PTSDers. I think that we should tell our signifcant others what we are and why we are that way. Of course we have to be careful as to an appropriate time and place. We all know there are details too graphic for widespread public. But, told appropriately, our stories can be the gold standard by which we filter out those who we shouldn't be with. If we are going to have PTSD for life, we need a partner who won't run. Someone like we were in the AOR. We didn't run when it got tough. Nor should our lovers run knowing full well what with whom they are committing to.

What great advice! Yes you should take the risk (and it is a risk) of talking to your significant other/s about what and who you are and why you are the way you are. I am pissed to high heaven over a relationship with a a soon to be vet who is obviously dancing around PTSD issues in our relationship. He goes from being dead of feeling to over the top hyped when drinking to loving to using me as a wind up porn doll. He is perplexed as to how I accept so much of him and opens up little by little in his own way. I'm older than he is and often restrain from turning on the mothering instinct because I feel so much tenderness towards him but there is more to my understanding towards him than just the feeling of love. What he doesn't understand, as there is a wall against understanding, in this silence and dance around his experiences and fears not to mention insecurities around leaving the army, is that I have had a difficult emotional history that includes many PTSD symptoms, I've just lived with them and worked on them longer. He thinks we are linked only by our joy but he doesn't see my understanding and patience also comes from a place of empathy. Trust is a big issue so I don't push this at all as I know what it means to have trust issues. Sometimes I laugh at all of this as the irony is unbelievable. He's attracted to and yet afraid to tell the one person who could listen to all he has to say and not run away. Have I shared my own past with him? No. Why? Because his plate is too full. He needs to see me as an island of stability for now and that's fine, One day though, when he is more anchored and stronger I will share the pieces of myself that more mirror his own and perhaps then he will see that he was never alone in his suffering.

I have just moved back to the States from Cambodia where I have lived for the past 10 years. When I first went to Cambodia after running around the world like a leaf in the wind, I was able to settle there, I felt 'known' by the Khmers. I found a certain acceptance and safety and nurturing. Why? Well if there was a nation of people living with PTSD its the Khmers and they are hypersensitive when they come across it in others and empathize. What I have learned is that trauma is universal. The circumstances causing the trauma may differ but the suffering is the same. Humanity is not only united and defined by the more positive and wonderful aspects of our nature, we are joined also by what it is that makes us hurt and weep in our soul.

 

[raydarluvr1]

I think you have a wonderful outlook on your situation. I think he is just starting to face the true demon within. I liken PTSD to a quote I stole from the movie Shreck. "Ogres are like onions." Well, PTSD is like and onion. The more layers you peel back, the more pungent it becomes. I adopt this analogy because of my 12 years of couch time in the USAF. My providers were afraid to say "PTSD" until the uniform cane off. So, I developed many maladaptive behaviors during my separation and eventual dissolution of my first marriage. My onion has many layers than some others because I learned to build walls and contain my volatility; even though it was still felt. The walls were big enough that my providers couldn't see much of what was occurring inside. They couldn't smell the Ogre.

It took a violence in the workplace incident to break down the walls. Not exactly the way my now wife and I had in mind. My swings are not as bad as your partner's, but the alcohol certainly isn't helping his situation one bit. He needs a pillar of support in you. You don't want go too far with that for your own health, but he could use just a little benefit from the mothering instinct. Your partner needs the safety of consistency and structure in his life so he can see for himself, his dysfunctions and discriminate between those he can tackle and those he needs to learn to live with as a disability without being crippled.

That's it for my rambling. Thank you for sharing and allowing me to see your perspective as a partner of a PTSD warrior.

Regards,
Jeff

 

[Ken1]

I spent my trigger time in Viet Nam in 1967-68. I was just a grunt. Saw, smelled, heard and felt all the stuff grunts experience and came home with a serious dose of PTSD.

I've had 40+ years to work on my own PTSD. Made lots of mistakes and have notebooks full of lessons learned.

1. Trust is based on predictability. Combat is, by definition, unpredictable - especially in the kind of combat ops beginning in Viet Nam and continuing until now.

2. PTSD is a normal human response to the immersion in absurdity that is combat.

3. Hypervigilance and hyperarousal are normal human responses resulting from the unpredictability of combat.

4. At a specific point in the traumatization process of combat, a person makes a "decision" that "nothing is ever going to hurt me this bad again," hence the psychic numbing that occurs in warriors.

5. What warriors bring to relationships then is behaviors that are the result of the unpredictability of combat. These behaviors are compounded be the the warrior's desire to forget, avoid, and deny the feelings that go with all the combat experiences. Without those negative feelings the warrior feels "empty." All of the "life force" that was the person before combat has been extinguished.

6. Death and sex go together. This is a combat survivor's reality, whether it is acted out in physical form or not. The confusion here is that what the survivor is looking for is not death, but affirmation; and not just physical sex, but human intimacy.

7 What is left is the identity of a combat survivor that has been labeled as PTSD.

8. This identity is essential to maintain as long as a warrior feels that s/he has no control of his life. Life for a combat survivor is continuously reactive. People and situations "do" things to a survivor. These things trigger learned reactions, often accompanied by the rage that pumps the adrenalin that briefly relives the survivors depression.

9. The thought that situations require a choice, not an automatic reaction never occurs to a combat survivor.

10, By continually reaccting to "things that people or organizations "do' to him a combat survivor reinforces the "grunt" identity.

11. This behavior, and the "experience" of being victimized again is very important to a "grunt."

12. With out this reactive behavior to being victimized, a combat survivor with PTSD is faced with a relentless and terrible question: If I'm not a grunt, who am I?

 

[Jimmy1]

Ken,

You should write some articles mate. I can so understand what you have said.
However; with the change to warfighting and how it is conducted, every soldier be it a simple driver, quartermaster, and even the lowly old orderly room clerk can be exposed to the horrors or war.
What I mean is every soldier now when they deploy to a warzone survives by doing their job real time or else people get killed. So when they return home, in barracks trivial, menial tasks, drive them insane and they lose their identity.
Am I on the right track here????

Jimmy
P.S. The cow avatar represents what the inside of my head feels like sometimes (cows have trampled on everything).

 

[anthony]

Go the cows...

 

[Ladyhope Somerset]

Thanks for sharing lessons from your notebooks Ken.
#9 is very illuminating for me - black and white thinking is how i've heard it referred to, which sounded very clinical , your words have made it more real.

Good to hear from you.[/quote]

 

[Ladyhope Somerset]

I'm not very good at this lark - replying to threads that is. sorry Anthony :(

 

[Nicolette]

Just click 'reply' Resilientgirl, delete the unwanted text (keep the part you want to refer to), leave the start [quote;name blah] box and the end one [/quote] and then type away above or underneath. If you make a mistake while learning just hit report on your post with a message which will go to Anthony to fix.

 

[Ladyhope Somerset]

Thanks Nicolette, noted for future reference :rolleyes: