Relationship There Is Hope!

[ProudWife99]

Hello,

My husband and I have only been married for one year, but that year has felt like the longest of my life. Without getting into too many details, my husband has combat related PTSD. I knew he had it when we got married, but I honestly had absolutely no idea what that meant. He is an amazing husband. He is caring, attentive, loving, sweet, kind, and all of the things we wish our husbands would be. However, he has a temper, has poor reactions, and sometimes is completely lost to me. Over the course of our marriage, I began to take all the advice I could find on how to help him. Tough love, no love, "kid gloves", leave and make him miss me, everything. Turns out, not a single one of those things worked.

Things hit the proverbial fan recently. He said he was fed up with me, wasn't sure he loved me anymore, and wanted a divorce. He even looked up how to get an attorney and had plans with meeting with one. I was a disaster and didn't know what to do. Finally, I decided the best thing I could do was give him the time he was asking for and pray to God every moment he would come around. It wasn't until I was telling him I was leaving when I took responsibility for my flaws in the marriage, told him I was going to fix myself with our without him in my life, that I loved him, and I only wanted him happy. By the grace of God, he calmed down enough to talk and now, while things are not picture perfect, we are on the right track. This is after days and days of him being completely distant, not "loving me", and wanting a divorce. There truly is hope, but we as spouses have to remember something..

They did NOT choose PTSD and cannot choose when it ends. No amount of love, tough love, or kid gloves is going to heal them. We have to remember to not lose ourselves in our own pain and trials and become spouses they don't WANT to heal for. I became a bitter, angry, bossy, controlling person because I didn't know WHAT I was doing and thought the best thing for him was for me not to put up with his crap. That is true to the extent that no one should verbally abuse us or hurt us intentionally, but there is a necessary understanding. No one person can tell you where that is, but there is hope in your marriage and in your life together, but you have to always take care of you and your needs, because they cannot give them to you.I am now seeking therapy for myself so that he doesn't have to meet my needs while he is going through this, but so I can meet them. It isn't that he doesn't want to, he can't, and it is my responsibility as his wife to take care of things so he can get better!

Sorry this is so long, I just know these past couple days I have read so many posts and found so much inspiration, guidance, and hope that I wanted to share these things. This really is a great resource.

God Bless!

 

[sunshiney]

I can definitely agree with the "I became a bitter, angry, bossy, controlling person".... I have recently definitely developed all of those characteristics...I have found myself becoming more and more angry because out of frustration and not understanding and have managed to lose myself... And I have come to the terms that I need to take care of myself, get myself back on track...

 

[NutritionNerd]

I had some tapes of our conversations so when it came to crunch time for the two of us I listened and was rather shocked to hear how much I had provoked stuff that I would have sworn he started. At any rate that really doesn't matter in the end. Now that we both have it and both know what's going on we go to great length's to avoid confrontations. Time outs really mean time out although we can usually just sense that the other's solitary activity is by choice.

I would recommend anyone to read a book called Dead Link Removed by Henry Grayson. It has very practical advice for techniques such as perception shifts, emotional awareness in oneself, clearing past false beliefs. You can completely change how you view and interpret your relationship.

The language of war creates the experience of it. 99% of the self help/sound advice we're all given in thousand's of women's magazines are written in a language of war. Women are the victims and men are the perpetrators. When we treat people with suspicion and with a presumption of guilt it's kind of hard for either party to trust the other. Especially so when one of them has PTSD. Even once you learn to catch yourself mid-trigger and know that your thoughts are colored by unwarranted suspicion it can be hard to believe and hard to stop acting on those wrong mindsets.

 

[Ladyhope Somerset]

Hi, it sounds like you 3 could be supporters for guys/gals with Combat PTSD.

If that's right there's a growing number of us. If you are, it has been suggested that our threads titles could include the words Combat PTSD to make identification easier.

There seems to be a consensus that we share specific experiences that differ from other types PTSD. There has been a recent discussion about this and the links is [DLMURL="https://www.ptsdforum.org/c/posts/261287/"]Is There Any Benefit Of Having A Combat Supporter Sub-section?[/DLMURL] You might want to have a read.

 

[NutritionNerd]

I'm not - my husband wasn't in combat. I got PTSD from his suicide attempt. I have a whole family of military though - my exhusband had PTSD from an incident when he was stationed in Turkey.