Visible and unseen combat injuries are wreaking havoc with the sex lives

DoD studies intimacy issues among combat vets
By Patricia Kime - Staff writer
Posted : Thursday Jan 19, 2012

Brannan Pedersen was 16, attending a young activists meeting in Alabama when she first spotted Caleb Vines, then 19, an enthusiastic organizer who wanted to change the world.

She fell hard: Three years after their first date, they married. Later, when they watched the World Trade Center fall, Caleb pledged to join the fight: He enlisted in the Army infantry.

He deployed twice to Iraq — a 15-month stint extended by the Battle of Fallujah, then a year filled with bomb blasts and small-arms fire. At one point, a rocket-propelled grenade blasted him through the door of a Humvee.

But he came home seemingly unscathed. During their first reunion, Brannan recalled, Caleb was distant but affectionate. The couple conceived a child.

After his second deployment, however, Caleb changed from easygoing and enthusiastic to withdrawn, angry and forgetful.

Diagnoses of post-traumatic stress disorder and, later, traumatic brain injury followed. It provided an explanation for his symptoms, but that didn’t ease the emotional — and physical — gulf between the couple, Brannan said.

“Guys with PTSD have a much harder time being physically close, let alone emotionally close. And from a woman’s perspective, you almost require that closeness to be invested in a sexual relationship,” Brannan said.

‘ELEPHANT IN THE BEDROOM’
With an estimated 400,000 veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan thought to have suffered an injury — either physical or mental — in the combat zones, the Pentagon, civilian behavioral health specialists and military couples are starting to talk about what Brannan calls the “elephant in the bedroom”: the fact that both visible and unseen combat injuries are wreaking havoc with the sex lives of service members and veterans.
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