PTSD: deciding to stay or leave when they change

by
Chaplain Kathie

I don't know the rest of this story. I don't know if this wife knows what PTSD is or what it does, but I hope she decides with the knowledge and wisdom her husband and children deserve along with the woman she will be in the future.

I hate my husband and I want to leave but.... - Talk About Marriage


I don't know where to start. My husband came home from Iraq for the second time last November. When he came home from his first deployment he had horrible PTSD and drank a bottle of hard alcohol daily. I dealt with it and knew he was going to redeploy and I thought that would magically fix him.

Before he deployed we had our only child and he left when he was 6 months old.
We don't agree on parenting at all, he thinks I am too easy on our son. I think he needs to spend more time with him and make a bond.

Anyway he said he was done drinking and wants to work on our marriage when he gets home and rebuild the trust he broke. click link for more

Deciding is the problem we all face when the people we planed on spending the rest of our lives with suddenly become more like strangers than the friends we married.

I had to decide as well. Four years into our marriage, it was nearly over. I had what I needed to know what PTSD was to make an informed decision but even having to face making it knowing what came with PTSD says a lot about how it changes our lives. It was a decision I would have to face over and over and over again. We've been married 24 years and to tell you the truth sometimes I wonder how we got here. That is how dark some of our life together was.

Newer veterans, unlike the Vietnam veterans, get to decide if they join or not. Some Vietnam veterans, as with generations before, did not have a choice and it's important to remember that when addressing any of this. The veterans drafted and sent into combat had a harder time coping with PTSD because aside from all the other problems the rest of the veteran's population face, at least it was their decision to go. Imagine being forced to go then having to fight the government because you were wounded by body or by trauma. Doesn't exactly leave you feeling too warm and fuzzy about the government. Still these men and women when asked do not regret serving in the military no matter how they got there, what they did or what they had to face after coming home. Remarkable individuals!

Setting that aside, these newer veterans decide to serve in the military or National Guards/Reservist but we, the spouse, have to decide what to do after if they come home with the changes of PTSD taking the people we loved away. It's hard to see they are still in there under all we see on the surface. It all becomes pretty hopeless when they won't go for help or are turned away from the help they need. We end up looking at them wondering if we really want to live the rest of our lives living walking on "broken glass" wondering what we did wrong or what we will say that sets them off. It's hard even knowing all the facts!

My advice is keep looking for answers. Keep looking for someone they will talk to. Keep trying to get them the help they need because if you are the type of person that would do all of it if they had cancer or any other illness, then you owe it to them and yourself to do it when it's PTSD.

I am not saying that you have to stay married when you feel you absolutely cannot. I am saying that caring about them does not have to end just because they are carrying around the weight of the world on their shoulders and being eaten alive by this wound. If you have to leave, do it honorably.

For those who decide to stay (as long as there isn't any domestic violence because this changes everything) you will discover that it was so worth it. Even with the problems we still have in our marriage, I don't regret staying. We care deeply for each other, still hold hands and we still even have a weekly date on Friday's when we have a play day for at least 5 hours to get away by ourselves and enjoy each other's company. While my husband is not the same man I married, he's still the man I loved when we got married. All I loved about him came back. PTSD just added into it some things that aggravate and frustrate me, but we consider all of this normal for us. What came with PTSD is all the usual symptoms but also some that no one really talks about and some of them are charming. While he's quick to anger and makes rash decisions, he's also very quick to realize he was wrong and his attitude turns into "a cute kid" trying to make up for doing something wrong. He gets adorable. This came with therapy and medication but it also came with the way I react to him and that came with understanding what all of this is.

He has short term memory loss, paranoia, goes on "patrol of the perimeter" checking doors and windows and jumps with every sound. He twitches and has some pretty bad days still but he gets back to normal for him faster. Yes, he still has nightmares and flashbacks, but again, we know what they are and we know what to do when they come. We found what works for us. So can anyone else if they really want to.

When you are faced with having to decide if you should stay and fight for them or leave them, just know what you need to know and will be able to cope with what comes next if you leave.

They could end up worse.
They could end up homeless.
They could end up committing suicide.
But, they also could end up getting the help they need and healing and then you would have missed the way they come out on the other side.

Speaking for myself, there is no way I would want to miss the way he came out on this side. A man that was dying a slow death now finds joy in the smallest things. He screams from the deck of our pool so that I can go out and see the sunset with him. He calls our dog all kinds of names, some not so kind but most of the time he calls him "brother" and the dog responds. He's a reformed smoker and doesn't like the fact I still smoke but comes home with adorable lighters because he thinks I'll enjoy them. He goes out and calls me when he gets to where he's going to tell me he got there ok so that I won't have to worry and calls me when I'm on the road to tell me he loves me. Nope, there is no way I would ever want to miss any of this. A man like my husband is very rare. As a matter of fact, they all are considering we're a nation of over 300 million people and only 24 million are veterans. Think about it.