Simon Cox Blog: When Combat Trauma Tests a Marriage

Thursday 9 November 2017

When Combat Trauma Tests a Marriage

PTSD impacts not just veterans but their spouses and children too. How can the church help military families heal?

“I feel like a silent warrior,” a fellow military wife told me. “I don’t want people to think badly of him. They have no idea what he’s been through. But they also have no idea what I’m going through.”

Though she felt isolated, this military spouse was far from alone. Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) disability claims by military veterans have soared to over 940,000 cases. More concerning is the fact that many veterans are unlikely to speak up about their symptoms due to fear of being viewed as weak or experiencing negative repercussions in their military career. Spouses often fear that speaking out to others about PTSD-related struggles at home may permanently sever an already strained marriage. Though this military wife had sought my advice as a counselor, she could not have anticipated how deeply I understood.

As the wife of a soldier who served for three years in Iraq, I had wrongly assumed that because my husband was so strong, he would somehow be immune to the toll war would take. He shared only tiny glimpses of war with me at first: describing car bombs targeting mosques and the pandemonium that ensued or what it was like watching hysterical family members search for loved ones in piles of charred bodies that included women and children. The sights, sounds, smells, and feelings of horror and helplessness he experienced mingled to form memories that would stay with him indefinitely. He was just 22 years old.

Over the years, he shared even less with me. I would question how he earned awards, including a Bronze Star, and he would give vague answers to dismiss my questions. He’d share bits occasionally, but he mostly sought to forget—and to protect me from—the ...