PTSD and Marriage: What to do when the passion is lost?

I am so sorry about your divorce. It's hard to let go of someone you love. You have good advice. We need a vacation from life.

Remember that they (spouse) is suffering too along with you. Every time you get angry, anxiety, or withdrawn, they are seeing it and dealing with it as well. Recognizing that and taking the time to make them feel part of your life and feel special is one way of compensating for the bad times.

Thanks for the advice. I generally lost most of my passion.

I went through this 30 years ago when I was married to my first wife. Steven Covey, author of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, said “If you don’t love your wife (emotion) then love your wife (action).” Love, the emotion, follows love, the action. I think SGT Ben Keen’s advice is spot on. Date your wife again and you will find the emotion.

By the way, it worked 30 years ago and I’m still married to my first wife...for 45 years now.

LTC Stephen F. profoundly said and articulately expressed. Thanks for the response.

Amen!

Thank you for the fantastic advice. I to take a lot of medication and the seas of emotions get a little rough at times, then I go into self numbing mode.

Colonel Stephen your post was spot on. Like the Major, I am in a marriage very similar to the Major's. Over the past 18 years I have had nearly two dozen major surgeries and roughly eighty where I was operated on in the morning and sent home that night. My wife is fifteen years younger than me. She is a Commander in the reserves and a CPA in her professional life. When the doctors recommend surgery she acts like I am looking forward to it. She just tells me to take of myself, because she has better things to do than help me. I was injured severely that took almost last surgery years to find and surgery to repair. This involved the spinal hcord and required that I sleep sitting up and basically do not bend over and lift anything for two weeks. She decided dog-sitting was important than my health. So, I ended up alone to fend for myself. She says she loves me, but my last was a year ago and required ten weeks of chemotherapy ever 8 hours I injected myself rather than spend the additional ten weeks in the hospital. Well, she was coming into the hospital and met a cousin of mine and his wife. She told them that she was getting tired of taking off work, because of my surgeries.

I went through a very painful divorce in 1991 when I deployed. I divorced her due to her affair. That is the only thing that I believe in divorce.

Since my current wife of 18 years was released from active duty she has pretty much turned her back on me. She says she loves me, but at times I believe it is a marriage of convenience for her. She will be set up pretty well with my benefits that will go her way upon my death. Sometimes I feel that she is just waiting to die. She is a devoted Christian. Since she left active duty I don't think she has called me to check on me. So, any passion for her left long ago. Plus, I take a crazy number of prescriptions that pretty much taken the physical desire away for intimacy which is perfectly fine with.

A home without true love and devotion is a very lonely place to be.

I wish everyone the best in maintaining a relationship. I saw it happen whereby upon return from a few weeks at sea or a deployment that "Uncle Jody " had been living in the home. Sad, very sad.