Encouragement from a spouse for support
Lindsay:
Hi, my name is Lindsay. I'm married to a husband in the U.S. Marines. We have 15 years of being married, and he deployed twice to Iraq. It was hard the second time because it was a longer time that he was away, and then they called me saying that he went through an IED and his arm got hurt. All these things running through my head, like “what happened to him,” but he says he's fine. It's being taken care of and everything so I'm like, “Okay.” But I was still inside like a nervous wreck. The second time they called me they told me that they had to medivac him. I was like, “Why?” And they told me that he went through an IED again. When I found that, I lost it, and I kept on getting sick and crying. It was just really hard.
When he got out of the service, then that’s when we started having problems. He used to get frustrated by any little things the kids said something wrong, if I didn’t say something right. He will get frustrated or did not say anything at all. We were used to talking, communicating everything, and all that was lost. I kept on dealing with it. I said, “Well, it’s probably the whole process of getting out of the service.” So, I kept on coping and in my head I was like, I was there with him through the whole entire time when he was in the service, I could do this.
Since I knew we were going through a rough time, I asked him if he could see if there was any programs or anything out there that could help us. And then, if he gets help, and then I knew we both could do it together. The doctor told us he had PTSD and she told me the pretty much explained to me what it was. So it was a relief to know that there was a specific name diagnosed with what he was going through, and being explained what it was. It was a lady who was helping us, she made me understand what were the reasons why was he reacting that way and she will give me some ideas or stuff, how to cope with it and to deal with it. The counseling helped us a lot. Our marriage has improved; it’s growing. It doesn’t mean that it’s perfect, but he still has a little bit of here and there and everything, we’re working with it with the family. It’s been a blessing to have help, because I don’t know where our relationship, our family will be at this time if we wouldn’t have any help.
