A wife of a man with PTSD explains why staying in the partner role, not the caregiver role, saves the marriage. When you become his therapist, sexual intimacy dies and resentment builds. Each person owns their own mental health.
I've seen it happen a lot of times where a spouse will take on that caregiver role instead of staying firmly in the spouse position. I am John's wife. I am not his caretaker. I am not some sort of mother thing. Mother. You know, and so I think that will destroy your relationship with your spouse if you take on that caregiver role. And so I'm his partner. I am his support. I'm his wife. And, you know, you, you can't make love to your caregiver. So—
You can't make love to your mother. It's just— having done that as a 4-year-old, I don't recommend it.
No. And I think that it does, it does change your relationship because people are not attracted that way. They're not attracted to a caregiver per se, or a mother, a parent. Yeah. You know, so it does take away so much from your relationship when you have that Change in power from being equals, right? Partners.
Yeah, very much so. And she's tremendous at that. And yet all of that, there is— she's an incredible help to me. I mean, in any way, in every way. But she does it from a place of being my wife, you know, and seeing me as her husband, not seeing me as a victim or broken or, you know, anything else.
So I have a responsibility to My thoughts and my thinking towards him. I have to realize that he's, he's doing his best and he's a man with struggles, but he's a man. And he's the man that I married. And so it's my responsibility to take care of my own mental well-being and manage my own thoughts. And so if we, you know, if I get offended at him by something he said, or, you know, he's having a bad day or a struggle. And he's, you know, not nice to me or whatever it is, it's my responsibility to go to him and say, I need to talk about this. I need to, you know, because it's my thoughts and my thinking towards my husband.
