Combat veterans with PTSD often have tremendous difficulty with
their closest personal relationships: marriages and families.
Divorces, multiple marriages, and short-term relationships that end
unhappily are very common: All situations that compound the pain and
suffering that already exists with PTSD.
While there are a few books out there that provide some helpful advice about the difficulty of combat vets with PTSD sustaining good relationships, some insight is also in order. While many obstacles could be mentioned, we'll stick to just a few important ones.
1. Needing to have a constant enemy. Combat veterans will tell you that their training requires a constant enemy for alertness, vigilance, what amounts to staying alive. Once combat ends -- or between episodes of combat -- that "role" needs to be filled by somebody. The most obvious candidate to fill that role? The combat veteran's usually unwitting, and unwilling, partner. If the spouse or partner isn't available, the next best candidate is a child. The combat veteran is often unaware that he or she is using this tactic at all, and the one victimized by it can often tell "something is wrong," but isn't always clear on exactly what that is.
2. Pestering and teasing doesn't feel like love, but it does feel like irritation. Let's say the coast is clear. It's a sunny day, everything seems (temporarily) all right in the combat veteran's world. But he or she teases and pesters a spouse, partner or family member (e.g., a child) incessantly, until that person gets fed up and walks away. "But I was just teasing!" says the combat veteran. Yes, but the frictional nature of the allegedly good-natured teasing has a predictable effect: it drives close others away, much like bad behavior also does. Now the combat veteran can be left alone: But is that what he or she really wanted? Perhaps. Perhaps not. The main thing, combat vets say informally, that inspires this strategy, even on an unconscious level, is that too much peace and calm is off-putting, and creating (or re-creating) a little "chaos" in interpersonal relationships puts the combat vet with PTSD back where he or she is more likely to be comfortable.
Now factor either (or both) of these two behavioral patterns (among several others that could have been discussed) with the combat veteran's periodic desire for intimacy -- and imagine the realistic toll that such behavior, even if unintentional, takes on the spouse or partner's desire for intimacy. More likely, either one or both of these behaviors is more likely to shut down or numb the spouse or partner, who then is more tempted to resist attempts at intimacy. Is turning down intimacy the problem? Is it the only problem, or even the central problem? Probably not, if either of these fairly typical behaviors are an issue.
