THE VIETNAM EXPERIENCE:
POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER
AND PARTNERS OF
VIETNAM VETERANS
Lorraine M. Fish
Antioch University Seattle
Fall 1994
During the past twenty years, since the end of the Vietnam War, there has been increased attention
and study of the devastating effects that the trauma of war can have on the lives of soldiers, their
families and their friends. Out of these studies of many thousands of Vietnam veterans (and victims
of violent crimes) the American Psychiatric Association finally recognized that there was a clear
pattern of symptoms arising from experiencing traumatic events and called the manifestation of
these symptoms Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
I would therefore like to address through the following four sections; the social context of the
Vietnam combat veteran, the nature of PTSD in relation to Vietnam veterans, how PTSD has
impacted the lives of partners of Vietnam veterans, and the therapeutic and counselling practices
that have been or are available to veterans and their partners.
THE SOCIAL CONTEXT OF THE VIETNAM COMBAT VETERAN:
The Vietnam War was fought by an estimated two million eight hundred thousand men (Mason 2)
over period of fifteen years (from 1960 to 1975). The average age of those that saw combat was
nineteen years old, compared to the average age of twenty six for those that served in WW11
(Mason, 189). Unlike the patriotic climate of WW11, the U.S., during the Vietnam War, was a
hotbed of rebellion against established norms and values. This was the hippie era, a time of
experimentation with drugs, communes, and sex. Complete with its slogans of "make love not
war," this era was in total discord with the concept of war. Everywhere the mood of the young was
to wage peace rather than join the ranks of Vietnam soldiers. There was far less support for this
war, that many did not understand, than there was for WW11 (Mason, 196).
Many young men demonstrated against and evaded the draft by burning their draft cards, creating
fictitious personalities that were incompatible with the armed forces, and by moving to safety up
north into Canada. However, there were still a large number of young men that did go, willingly
and unwillingly to serve their country in the jungles and swamps of Vietnam. However, because of
the edict that college students were exempt from the draft, many of those that served were from the
lower social classes.
In Patience Mason's book Recovering From The War she quotes Ross S. Carter in the preface to
Those Devils in Baggy Pants as saying:
Every level of society had its representation among us. Senators' sons rubbed shoulders
with ex-cowboys. Steel workers chummed up with tough guys from city slums. Farm boys,
millionaires' spoiled brats, white collar men, factory workers, ex-convicts, jailbirds, and
hoboes joined for the thrill and adventure . . . (190)
However, she concludes by saying that:
Vietnam was just the opposite; people with money dodged the draft, and you had to explain
why you did serve. (190)
However, on the college campuses many students participated in sit-ins and demonstrations against
U.S. intervention in Vietnam. But these students being ineligible to be drafted into the armed
forces, held a privileged position from which they protested. The students were in effect, protected
from the harsh realities that the draftees had to face. It was therefore difficult for those that objected
to the war to empathize with those that served in the war; a division developed between us and
them, the good guys and the bad guys. This was blatantly obvious when returning combat veterans
were greeted by angry protestors who spat on them and called them murderers and baby killers.
Mason states that, “Many vets were so angry with the military that they threw away their uniforms
in the airport rest rooms and spent the extra money for the flight home. (To get a serviceman's
discount a vet had to wear a uniform.)” (166-7).
Thus, the social context that surrounded the Vietnam era vet did not afford a healthy re-entry into
society for those that served their tour of duty in Vietnam. Along with the lack of public support,
the military were inadequate and incompetent in dealing with debriefing the vets that saw combat.
It was not uncommon for a Vietnam combat soldier to be fighting in the jungles of Vietnam one day
and be back in a major metropolitan city in the U.S. the next. There were no, hero’s welcome. No
bands played for these lone vets who had just left what had been home and family for the past
twelve months.
Unlike WW11, where whole companies would return together as a unit, usually on a long slow boat
ride that afforded them time to decompress, Vietnam Vets returned to the U.S. alone and isolated
carrying with them a lot more "baggage" than many of them knew they had acquired. In the next
section I want discuss this "baggage" that had previously been called shell shock during WW1, and
combat fatigue or combat neurosis during WW11 (Mason, 226), that is now termed, through the
study of many Vietnam Vets, Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (Goodwin, 4).
POST-TRAUMATIC STRESS DISORDER AND VIETNAM VETERANS:
The term Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) emerged as the outcome of a substantial amount of
research and clinical studies done with Vietnam Veterans, rape victims, and those who survived
family violence and sexual abuse (Goodwin, 3-4). The American Psychiatric Association finally
recognized PTSD as a mental illness in 1980, and the current Diagnostic Criteria from DSM-111-R
asserts that Post-traumatic Stress Disorder can be identified if:
A. The person has experienced an event that is outside the range of usual human
experience and that would be markedly distressing to almost anyone, e.g., serious threat
to one's life or physical integrity; serious threat or harm to one's children, spouse, or other
close relatives and friends; sudden destruction of one's home or community; or seeing
another person who has recently been, or being, seriously injured or killed as the result of
an accident or physical violence.
B. The traumatic event is persistently reexperienced in at least one of the following
ways:
(1) recurrent and intrusive distressing recollections of the event (in young children,
repetitive play in which themes or aspects of the trauma are expressed)
(2) recurrent distressing dreams of the event
(3) sudden acting or feeling as if the traumatic event were recurring (includes a sense
of reliving the experience, illusions, hallucinations, and dissociative [flashback]
episodes, even those that upon awakening or when intoxicated)
(4) intense psychological distress at exposure to events that symbolize or resemble an
aspect of the traumatic event, including anniversaries of the trauma
C. Persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma or numbing of general
responsiveness (not present before the trauma), as indicated by at least three of the
following:
(1) efforts to avoid thoughts or feelings associated with the trauma
(2) efforts to avoid activities or situations that arouse recollections of the trauma
(3) inability to recall an important aspect of the trauma (psychogenic amnesia)
(4) (markedly diminished interest in significant activities (in young children, loss of
recently acquired developmental skills such as toilet training or language skills)
(5) feeling of detachment or estrangement from others
(6) restricted range of affect, e.g., unable to have loving feelings
(7) sense of foreshortened future, e.g., does not expect to have a career, marriage, or
children, or a long life
D. Persistent symptoms of increased arousal (not present before the trauma), as indicated
by at
(1) least two of the following:
(2) difficulty falling or staying asleep
(3) irritability or outbursts of anger
(4) difficulty concentrating
(5) hypervigilance
(6) exaggerated startle response
(7) physiologic reactivity upon exposure to events that symbolize or resemble an
aspect of the traumatic event (e.g., a woman who was raped in an elevator breaks
out in a sweat when entering any elevator)
E. Duration of the disturbance (symptoms in B, C, and D) of at least one month.
(146-148)
Most or all of the above symptoms became integral aspects of many Vietnam veterans’ lives,
marriages, and relationships. However, the common response from family members, the military
and the general public was that these men were just plain crazy. Because so many men returned
from WW11 apparently unharmed psychologically, the public wanted to know how come Vietnam
vets were crying like babies and acting insane?
Nevertheless, statistics, though unclear, point to an overwhelming percentage of suicidal deaths and
"accidental" death. Aphrodite Matsakis states in her book Vietnam Wives that:
. . . the statistics among Vietnam veterans themselves are presently an area of considerable
debate. While in 1975 the Public Health Service Center found that the suicide rate among
Vietnam veterans was 23% higher than among other veterans in the same age group, the
studies that exist on suicide among veterans are not only few in number, but highly
controversial. (233)
Matsakis also goes on to argue that the nature of many Vietnam veterans’ deaths maybe masked
suicides:
For example, one-car collisions and other vehicular accidents may sometimes be deemed as
suicidal . . . The same problem arises regarding certain poisonings or drug overdoses. Were
they accidental or suicidal? (233)
The ordeal of seeing and experiencing combat is indeed "outside the range of usual human
experience (DSM-111-R, 146)." However, in order to cope with the trauma of war Candis
Williams, who has counselled many Vietnam veterans, states that , ". . . a great deal of emotional
distancing is necessary . . . " (Williams, 271). This emotional distancing was certainly evident long
after Vietnam vets had returned home; establishing or re-establishing intimate relationships
therefore became a difficult task. There is a need to:
. . .deny, 'numb out' or repress the event - the memory of the event and the emotions
experienced with it. This force creates the disjointed, unconnected reactions, feelings of
denial, intimacy disorders, memory loss, dissociation and the need for distraction often
sought through addictive behaviors - especially drugs or intensity.
(Kellog and Harrison, 11)
However, many vets returned home to families, wives, girlfriends and friends, with the hope that
they could put their experiences of Vietnam behind them. Indeed, those that were close to them, for
the most part, wanted it that way; they too wanted life to be "back to normal." But putting such
traumatic events back into some imagined place for ever is not possible. Therefore the symptoms of
PTSD started, in varying degrees for each vet, to play havoc in their lives and relationships.
After living with my partner for about 5 years, who was a Vietnam veteran, I witnessed or
experienced all of the DSM-111-R symptoms that he exhibited. One New Years Eve, after having
gone to bed, we were woken up by a number of loud bangs; probably kids playing with M80's (a
loud fire cracker). My partner immediately jumped out of bed, grabbed a large stick that he kept in
the bedroom, and proceeded to "check the perimeter." This practice of "checking the perimeter"
came from his experience in Vietnam and it only took a loud sound to create "a startle response
(DSM-111-R, 148" and a "sudden acting or feeling as if the traumatic events were recurring"
(DSM-111-R, 146).
This man who had introduced me to the horrors of Vietnam had maintained a substance abuse habit
for most of his adult life since Vietnam. He never spoke to anyone about having served in Vietnam
for about five years after returning. He even got rid of all the evidence, such as his uniform,
photographs that were taken, and his discharge papers. No one would have known that he been in
the Army or in Vietnam and that was the way he wanted it. He tried very hard to numb his feelings
and put Vietnam away into some imaginary box to forget. But even the enormous quantities of
drugs that he consumed on a daily basis could not keep the memories at bay and life became
increasingly more chaotic.
The public's, and especially WI vet's reaction to the chaos or upheaval in the lives of Vietnam vets
was not only that they were crazy but also that they were whiners (Mason, 218). Initially, the
military saw their psychological problems as defects (Mason, 168), and the media merely depicted
them all as drug addicts and, ". . . the random madman who goes berserk and kills a bunch of
people" (Mason, 170). Mason also states that the image of the vet as, ". . . the no-good loser-bum
was a creation of prime-time TV series" (170).
But why was the Vietnam War different from other wars? Why were there more psychological
problems among Vietnam vets as opposed to other vets? Such questions about what made the war
in Vietnam different from other wars have been asked and debated among many, including
psychologists, war historians, and those that served in Vietnam. It was discovered however, that
there were many unique aspects of the Vietnam War that were unusual and dissimilar from previous
wars. And it was these distinctive aspects that predisposed Vietnam War combat soldiers to
developing acute PTSD. Among these distinguishing features, Mason (as well as other authors
writing on this subject) describes the following characteristics that make the Vietnam War a
particularly fertile breeding ground for PTSD:
1. The young average age of combat soldiers was nineteen
2. Tour of duty was one year of constant combat compared to the much shorter combat
experiences of other war veterans.
3. Because each soldier arrived and departed singularly, there was an extreme lack of unit
solidarity.
4. The lack of safety in the rear, due to the fact that there was no rear, meant there was no safe
place to retreat to.
5. Lack of support of the population was evident primarily among the youth with countless
demonstrations and pleas to the President to end the war.
6. The lack of support at home from wives and other
family members did not allow the
veteran to talk about, or emote about his experience.
7. The fact that there was no declaration of war enabled people the legal right to protest and
visit North Vietnam. This was emotionally damaging to the men who were fighting there.
8. Lack of clear combat zones and visible progress on the ground.
9. Lack of a clear-cut enemy - in Vietnam friends and enemies all looked alike as opposed to
uniformed enemies in other wars.
10. Higher volume of casualties than WW11
11. The prevalent use of, prescribed and illegal drugs
12. The solitary trip home
13. Un-supportive re-entry into society
(189-217)
Though I haven't listed all the reasons why the Vietnam War was different, what I have adds up to a
disturbingly high number of predisposition factors to developing PTSD. These key elements clearly
demonstrate why Vietnam vets suffered the after affects of war to a greater extent than either
WW11 veterans or Korean War veterans.
For those who returned from Vietnam, PTSD manifested itself in a myriad of ways. However,
because denial is a major aspect of this disorder (Matsakis, 18), many vets didn’t even know they
had such deep rooted psychological scars. What ever symptoms did appear were either ignored or
suppressed, often with the help of drugs or alcohol. A common slogan among Vietnam vets was/is,
"It don't mean nothing." This was their way of trying to minimize the trauma of war and the stress
that it bequeathed upon them.
PTSD appeared in the high divorce rates and broken relationships, it appeared in the long
unemployment lines, it appeared in the jails and too often it appeared at the morgues. It has been
estimated that more men committed suicide after returning from Vietnam than those that died there,
and as I mentioned earlier, the actual numbers of suicides are uncertain. However, it is clear that reentry for many vets was difficult, perplexing and fraught with societal demands that could either not
be met or only met marginally. For some the only answer was to retreat from the world. Whether it
was to places such as the Olympic Mountains where many preferred the seclusion of the hills, or the
numbing effects of drugs and alcohol – the need for peace of mind was imperative.
The growing discomfort caused by: continuing nightmares, the inability to sleep well, lack of
concentration, feelings of unrest, hypervigilence, flashbacks, the demands of relationships,
substance abuse, and dealing with a public that did not understand, eventually led some vets to their
doctors, counsellors at the V.A. hospital or Vet Centers for help. For some it was their wives or
girlfriends that often gave the ultimatum, "Either you get into therapy or I leave." I did. The next
section will describe how Vietnam impacted the lives of those close to Vietnam veterans and how I
discovered that I too was suffering the effects of the Vietnam War.
PARTNERS OF VIETNAM VETERANS:
When my partner pretended to strangle me one night, after we had got into bed and turned off the
lights, I felt that I had reached my limit. This experience scared me intensely; by this time in my
four year relationship I was so identified with Vietnam that I too had developed a serious startle
response. That night I told my partner that either he got into therapy or I would leave, and I went
and spent the night with a girlfriend. In the next day or two my partner went to a veterans outreach
center and broke down for the first time since returning from Vietnam in their offices. One month
after he began therapy I found a counsellor who worked with partners of Vietnam veterans and
began my road to recovery.
It is hard for those who have not been intimately involved with a Vietnam vet to understand the
sometimes strange, bizarre and indeed difficult moments that such relationships present. Early in
my relationship my partner would often pretend to shoot me in a seemingly playful manner. It was
o.k. and even cute for about a year. However, this gesture, that often included a detailed mime of
locking and loading a gun, became increasingly disturbing to me. I didn't tell him or anyone for a
long time that I was distressed by his pantomime. When I got into therapy and discussed this with
my counsellor, she suggested using a code word that would be appropriate to the situation and stop
him from continuing this gesture. We came up with "cease fire" and it worked to some degree. On
the last occasion that I was "shot at" my partner and I were out walking when he decided to shoot
my foot. The impact of this gesture was so intense that I doubled up in (emotional) pain. My
response finally shocked my partner into seeing the power behind his gesture and he never did it
again.
In Aphrodite Matsakis's book, Vietnam Wives, she quotes the words of one wife:
Living with a veteran who suffers the effects of Post- Vietnam Stress is like running
blindfold with weights on. Nothing is easy: the smallest tasks become monumental.
Nothing is reliable: the rules change the minute you understand him. (xi)
Such words speak for many partners of Vietnam veterans; the craziness of the war soon became the
craziness of the relationship where a new battle was being waged.
However, if it weren't for their marriages and relationships, crazy as they were, many vets would not
have survived. Through all the bizarre and insane events a great need was partially being met by
their girlfriends and wives; they comforted them in those rare moments when they were allowed
"in," they protected them by acting as a buffer against "them out there," they did most of emotional
work that their vet could or would not (though they often kept their feelings to themselves for fear
of being judged as crazy), they served as the scapegoat for much their vet's anger, they took over the
responsible role in the family, in fact most wives took care of everything that their veteran didn't,
couldn't or wouldn't do.
It is not surprising that the enormity of such a burden caused a great many wives or girlfriends to
either quit or experience secondary PTSD from living with a victim of trauma. In my own case I
found myself having combat related dreams, startle responses to loud noises, explosive reactions to
arguments, isolating and a strong identification with Vietnam veterans. Such symptoms are not
uncommon to those who live with Vietnam veterans (Germano, 3).
For those wives and girlfriends who had heard the gory details, repeatedly, it felt as though they had
been there. In a 1988 JAMA article entitled "Study says memories of violent death linger in
survivors, trigger psychosocial problems," it states that four million adult Americans are indirect
victims of criminal or vehicular homicide and that of these four million 250,00 are currently
experiencing PTSD, as a result, for as long as ten years after. It is therefore only necessary to
witness violence or death in order to be affected by PTSD.
Partners of Vietnam veterans were witnesses to the trauma and violence of their vet's experience in
the Vietnam War through listening their ordeals; consequently they ". . . are actually in a secondary
experience of the catastrophe" (Germano, 3). Similarly, Matsakis states that even the therapists of
Vietnam veterans were at risk to developing PTSD; therefore, given that most wives and girlfriends
were their "pseudo therapists," this puts partners again in a high risk category for developing PTSD.
For many partners of Vietnam vets, trauma was or is very much an active member of their family.
Because of many vet's inability to deal with the trauma of war, the relationship became a mock
battleground, one in which the vet attempted to relieve the pressure of the trauma by reliving it:
Each of us who have experienced violence have conflicting forces within. One is a
completion compulsion - a need to heal, to finish through the emotional, cognitive and
verbal debriefing of the event. This need sets up the reenactment of the even and the
intrusive feelings and memories. Outbursts of rage in settings may be a residual of the
feelings experienced in past settings which are attached to the present setting.
(Kellog & Harrison, 11)
Many partners, me included, have been the target of their vet's rage, confusion, and other
misdirected emotions. And many were/are abused, used and abandoned. For those that came to
understand that the injustice lay in the hands of a political elite, it was still hard not to blame and
resent the veteran for the actions and words that never seemed to make sense. But, with time and a
lot of help, a partner can heal these wounds too and distinguish more clearly the nature of the
craziness in their relationship (whether it is still current or over).
Two and a half years ago my vet did not come home one night and did not contact me. We had
known each other for over seven years and lived together almost five. We had done drugs together,
got into recovery together, tried to raise his son (by another marriage) together, got into relationship
counselling and experienced all the trials of a relationship that was affected by the Vietnam war. I
was committed to go through anything with this man and to stick by him. When he left in such an
abrupt manner I was devastated. The pain, the grief and the rage was sometimes so enormous I
thought I would be swallowed up by it. But I survived, and I learned a great deal in these past two
and half years through the help of a lot of friends, support groups and my counsellor. The next
section will look at what kinds of therapy and counselling are available to assist both the veteran
and partners of veterans who have PTSD.
COUNSELLING FOR VIETNAM VETERANS AND THEIR PARTNERS:
Many veterans of the Vietnam War, because of their lack of trust for governmental bureaucracies,
have preferred to stay away from VA hospitals. Though the VA has counselling services that it
makes available to vets, it has nonetheless been the job of many local Vet Centers and Veterans
Outreach groups to offer counselling services to vets or their families.
One of the most important methods of therapy, that has been beneficial to vets healing from the
Vietnam War, is group therapy with other Vietnam vets. Here they have the opportunity to talk and
express emotions in a supportive setting. It ". . . finally provides the veteran with that 'long boat ride
home' with other veterans who have had similar conflicts” (Goodwin, 13). However, because of the
strong elements of denial among those living with PTSD, some vets need a period of individual
counselling before entering a group.
Matsakis states in her chapter on "The Hope of Therapy," that PTSD therapy for veterans involves
the following:
1. Helping the veteran uncover the specific events in the war which he has been attempting to
deny or which he has been unable to accept;
2. Supporting him as he feels the feelings associated with these traumatic events;
3. Helping him acquire a greater understanding of how his war experiences have affected his
life in the present; and
4. Helping the veteran find constructive uses for his Vietnam experience. (274)
Though the vet in my life did get into counselling, he never did make it to a vet group; he said it
would be full of men who were holding onto the past, and that he wanted move on with his life.
This of course is classic denial.
Nevertheless, regardless of what my partner was or wasn't doing in his own therapy, I pursued my
own counselling and a Partners of Vietnam Veterans group that was held at the Vet Center here in
Seattle. I had a strong need for support from others who would understand and I needed a place
where I could at least voice the bizarre and strange goings-on inside my relationship. I knew that
this was an important step to take in my healing from the war.
The group I participated in was not an ongoing group like most; it lasted for only six weeks. I was
mostly disappointed with this group because it was largely a lecture forum and there was little or no
time to share our feelings, which was what most of us came for. The group was run by two women
with graduate degrees from the V.A. hospital. Though I learned the value of how my self esteem
pays a large role in healing myself, it was an unfortunate experience, but it did further my need for a
partners of Vietnam vets ongoing support group.
However, it wasn't until my vet left that I finally hooked up with a group of women who met on a
weekly basis as a support group for Vietnam wives or girlfriends. Like myself, there was another
woman in this group also whose husband had left but still felt the need for support from other
Vietnam wives. The alien feeling of living with a vet does not go away with his leaving; I still
needed to talk about him within the context of Vietnam during my grief.
I stayed with this group through the first six months of being left and it was there that I felt for the
first time that I could speak openly about my experiences and be understood. This support group,
though it was not therapy, it was extremely therapeutic. When I decided to leave, it was so that I
could focus more on my new life, being in school, and being without my vet. Nevertheless,
Vietnam is still a part of my life, though not as much as it is still a part of the man who shared his
war experiences with me.
The following statement that, “Being well, for the Vietnam veteran, lies not in ‘feeling better all the
time,’ or in ‘never thinking or hurting about Vietnam again,’ but rather in being reintegrated into
society and in being able to function in a family or career. For the veteran, as for any human being,
therapy cannot promise the absence of pain, or rage, but only a closer emotional connectedness to
oneself and others” (263), also speaks to my own experience of healing from the Vietnam War.
Through very thorough and supportive therapy with a woman counsellor who is herself a partner of
a Vietnam veteran, I was able to discover that I was not alone and neither was I weird or peculiar. I
learned that, "Women bear the brunt of the emotional wasteland that the battlefield leaves behind”
(Germano, 2). It was inspiring to discover that the strangeness that I had experienced in my
relationship had been written about, and was not something I conjured up for gaining sympathy.
In a three page copy of Donna Germano's writings on "Partners of Nam Vets" that my counsellor
gave me, I found sentence after sentence that spoke to my experience more profoundly than
anything else I had read. These three pages I read and re-read, and read again. It was as though she
were speaking directly to me. Such paragraphs eloquently spoke to the craziness that my
relationship with my vet had become:
The identifiable maladaptive behaviors of catastrophic trauma take their toll on the women's
mental and social expression. But the psychic contamination that underlies all this is rarely
suspected and has greater impact than the rest. Without warning, the tremendous primitive
energy the vet grapples with invades the woman's undefined psychic space. Every war
horror and fragile pain stored beneath the surface of the vet's life brings an unconscious,
intense assault into the woman's life: strange, troubled dreams, sleepless nights, lack of
concentration, easy tears, extreme listlessness, menstrual and other health problems,
hypertouchiness, and withdrawal all build, often making her lose a sense of her own needs
and overall behavior patterns. . . Not knowing what hit, she doesn't know how to sort out
what is his craziness from hers. (2)
.
My therapy was therefore a process of discovering who I was and who my partner was, where did
my boundaries finish and my partner's begin. As many partners do, I had overly identified myself
with my partner. I did not go to Vietnam even though I sometimes felt as though I had. It was
important to regain my identity and in the process become less co-dependent.
Co-dependency was/is the one of the leading issues for partners of vets. The wives and girlfriends
took care of their men to the point of never really knowing what their own needs were. During this
time of disengaging oneself, the relationship can feel very unstable. It is not unlike a divorce of
sorts in that a part of you is leaving the relationship. During this time I remember a lot of fights
with my partner; I no longer would stuff my feelings or give away my power. But, I still very much
wanted to stay in and work with this relationship.
If there is any hope for the vet (and country), it is in part contingent on the women's
response, whether she stays or goes, and how she takes care of her self. . . (Germano, 3)
I will hurt for a long time for being left so abruptly and without any explanation. But as time passes
the hurt gets less attention and feels more like an integrated part of myself. I learned in my grief to
trust myself and my intuitions and not to listen to the "voices" that told me he left me because there
was something wrong with me. I took the time to observe the facts and intuit from them what had
happened. I needed to decode his behavior so that I could make sense of this period of my life and
put it into perspective.
My analysis of what transpired was rooted in my ex's rather unorthodox Vietnam War history as a
Longrange Reconnaissance Patrolman (LRP). He didn't serve a full one year term like other combat
veterans and his wife at the time didn’t even know he was in Vietnam. He was stationed at an army
base here in the U.S. and went on long range reconnaissance trips into Vietnam (and even in
Cambodia when there were supposed to be no ground troops there). Many of his jaunts into enemy
territory were done in the earlier part of the year, from February through to July. These were
especially difficult months for him and our relationship; he left me once before in the month of June
and finally again two years later in the month of April.
During the months prior to my ex leaving, he had become very depressed and one morning declared
to me that he wanted to commit suicide (something he had never spoke of with me before). He was
in individual therapy and also in couple’s therapy with me. Myself and our couples therapist
thought he should take his suicidal feelings seriously but he announced that his individual therapist
did not! His moods swung a lot during this time from feeling hopeless to "it don't mean nothing."
I believe now that when he left he sincerely felt that I was the cause of his pain, as he did throughout
much of our relationship, and that if he walked away from me his suffering would subside. I also
believe that he had probably reached some extremely crucial moments in his therapy that initiated
some very uncomfortable feelings. And because of the enormity of his denial, a protection
mechanism to feeling the pain had to be found; he had to find a scapegoat – me!
Though I have wondered and doubted whether this man ever loved me, because of the way he
treated me and the manner in which he walked out on me, I do believe that in the only way he knew
how, he did. My rage has therefore shifted from a wounded man's actions, to the political
ideologues that run the country, to those who are guilty of gross neglect of the soldiers that they
continue to use as pawns in their deadly game of "political chess."
WORKS CITED
American Psychiatric Association's Desk Reference to the Diagnostic Criteria from DSM-111-R
"Study says memories of violent death linger in survivors, trigger psychosocial problems."
Journal of American Medical Association. (1988).
Germano, Donna. A leaflet titled: “Partners of Nam Vets”.
Williams, Tom, Ed. (1987). Jim. Goodwin, in: Post-traumatic Stress Disorders: a handbook for
clinicians. Ohio: The Disabled American Veterans.
Kellogg, Terry & Marvel Harrison. (1991). "The Echoes of Violence." Treatment Centers
Magazine. November 1991: pgs. 7 & 11.
Mason, Patience H.C. (1990). Recovering From The War. New York: Penguin,
Matsakis Ph.D., Aphrodite. (1988). Vietnam Wives. Maryland: Woodbine House.
William, Tom, Ed. (1987). Candis M. Williams, in: Post-traumatic Stress Disorders: a handbook
for clinicians. Ohio: The Disabled American Veterans.