Counselling (not sure if a MC would be good for this) would be a good thing but I doubt if she would ever consider it. Because of her crappy childhood, she is a tough lady now. She has told me stories early in marriage about how her step father tryed to rape her. Now those stories have slighty changed to he was drunk and tried something but was unsuccessful. Will my wife ever admit that there maybe an issue here, not in a million years. As for waking up scared, it happens occasionally, probably 10 or 15 times over the last 17 years. I may come in to bed after she has been asleep for a couple hours and reach over to touch her (nicely) and she will wake up incredibly startled and sometimes literally move up to the top of the bed and pull her legs up to her chest. Clearly she is not coherent and does not even recognize me for a couple seconds until I talk to her, then she relaxes. Now she is a very vivid dreamer, so I may have woken her at the wrong time, or maybe it is related to her childhood. Probably will never find out for sure, as she "does not need help".
Honestly, I think it was in PM that there was a chapter titled "Who Wants to Want" that could have been written about my wife. It describes how children that grow up in very dysfunctional settings learn avoid being vulnerable by eliminating the ability to "Want". Children "Want" to be loved by their parents, and when they don't have normal parents, they learn that to avoid the pain of not having love, they stop "Wanting". Making themselves vulnerable always ends in hurt, so they "lose" the ability to leave themselves vulnerable. But to have it all in marriage, to have a PM, this REQUIRES that you be vulnerable. And from what I have read, women that have these issues can appear normal for years, and this may not show up until many years into the marriage, which again is similar to my situation.
