One of the things he has said to me before is how I don't show independence about doing stuff on my own like trips I want to take, planning for stuff that takes me out of my comfort zone a little. I traditionally rely on him to go with us, or to plan it out.
I have been after him to go with me to his Moms for a couple of months. She lives a few hours away. His Mom has been texting me asking when a good weekend would be to get all the kids together, and his schedule just isn't where we can take a weekend to all go. He is an EMS pilot, and is doing crop dusting on the side, and the hours have been over the top this spring. Anyway, she finally just set a weekend, asked us all to come, and I do want to go and see them. We always have a blast. His brothers and sisters are like my own. When he was deployed I did it all the time. I am just feeling wierd now because of our situation. I know they are all fully supportive of me and have each told me that individually and repeatedly, I'm just dealing with my own demons of trying to get myself to go do something on my own with the kids, and commit to it. Without him. That has been hard for me to do since this separation started. I stay close to home a lot, and don't like to face people, or worry about talking too much about the situation. I know that is a big part of getting a life, and I need to step it up more, but it feels like we are making a little bit of slow progress, so I always worry about messing it up.
I know, on the surface it sounds like I am worrying too much about what he wants, but with the PTSD, there is a lot of push away, pull back on his part, and I am dealing with trying to gain his trust and him being able to be close again to me, so I feel like I am trying to listen a lot to what he needs to be able to overcome that hurdle. He has pushed away all close relationships and as bad as he is to me, I'm still the closest one. He can deal with work people easier, because he doesn't open up to them. I wish I had a good support group close by for spouses dealing with PTSD vets I could reference for help. I feel like it is a little different situation than the normal WAH, although there are similarities too. He was diagnosed and started counseling within a month of the talk of problems in our marriage and from what I can find in books and off of online forums dealing with this, I'm not the first person dealing with this reaction. PTSD spouses have big issues with trust and closeness, especially with their significant others. So, while I am trying to treat this as we did have problems in our marriage that needed fixed, I'm trying to figure out how to deal with them and not go dark, or let him feel I am pushing him away in any way, because from what I have learned he needs to be able to re-learn to trust and let me close to him again. I really feel out of my element half the time to figure out how to put the pieces together correctly.
I have heard his brother refer to this time in our life as my husband has deployed again. That is kind of accurate. He focuses on work, fitness, himself, and has moved out, kind of isolated himself, and when he feels like he is ready for family time, he comes to us. It sounds a lot like MLC symptoms too, so I get confused, but he has been diagnosed with PTSD, so I keep going back to that as the biggest factor. Divorce Busting tactics have been helping our situation in that I have stopped freaking out about the whole situation, begging, persuading, etc., but I am in a bit of limbo trying to figure out how to piece what I am learning about PTSD and relationships in there, because it is a piece of this puzzle too. And it doesn't fit in there quite the standard way a civilian WAH would operate.
Anyway, I know that was a lot, but I hope it was a little clearer on what my Mother's Day dilemma was about. It would show him independence for me to take the kids and do a weekend without him and go out and have fun, I am just a little torn over leaving him for a weekend and going to his family and enjoying them the whole time while he works. And I want to make sure it is what he really wants, so I don't end up hurting any progress towards trust we have made on the PTSD trust issue.
M 36 H 36 D9,S6, Expecting D in August 2012 M 13 T 18 Told me he wanted to separate 12/31/2011 Moved Out 2/2/2012 Didn't want to work on things, wanted divorce 4/20/2012