Do Trauma Symptoms Impact Relationship Satisfaction?

Do Trauma Symptoms Impact Relationship Satisfaction?

      

The year 2001 was the beginning of the change and separation the military soldiers and their families had to undergo. Toward the end of 2005, more than 160,000 soldiers were deployed to Iraq and Kuwait for Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and 20,000 soldiers were deployed to Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom (Nelson 2007). The picture above represents the last time I could remember our lives being normal and adventurous. Since we have had all these family issues we rarely take pictures as a family or of each other. It wasn’t until I had my son that I began taking tons of pictures of every moment possible. Starting from the left is my mom, me, my sister (who is deceased), my other sister, my cousin, my brother, and my father. We usually take family vacations every other year and we went to Gatlinburg, TN. 

            After redeployments some soldiers might face mental health problems such as depression, anxiety, anger, sleep disturbances, somatization, substance abuse, alienation, sexual problems, and related symptoms (Nelson 2007). They measure how an individual and couples are affected after trauma has occurred by using the Couple Adaptation Traumatic Stress (CATS) model (Nelson 2007).

            For this study forty-five soldiers participated from Fort Riley and Fort Leavenworth. The results of the current study indicate that soldiers’ trauma symptoms did predict lower relationship satisfaction for soldiers and their partners; however, even though depression and anxiety have a greater risk following deployments these symptoms did not significantly predict marital satisfaction. Constant flashbacks, memory problems, nightmares sexual and sleep problems all have a huge impact on soldiers’ marital satisfactions. Due to much more needed research and comprehension of the systemic repercussions of being exposure to war trauma we can no longer consider trauma to be a strictly individual experience (Nelson 2007). 

            I agree fully with trauma symptoms decreasing lower relationship satisfaction because my father is the number one prime example. He tells he has flashbacks of being at war when my mother is yelling and fussing and when my baby is screaming. He never ever remembers anything you tell him. We have to constantly remind him to pick up my brother from tutoring, his doctor’s appointments, plans we made, etc. Since it has been so long we expect it yet it still frustrates us especially my mother. She feels like she is a single parent because she has to worry and remember everything regarding the bills, children, house, cars, etc. They have more and more arguments each deployment. I have gotten to the point where I do not want to live with them anymore because the environment stresses me out even more. One of these days I pray that we can get back to the days when we were in the picture above.

Nelson-Goff, B. ( 2007). The impact of individual trauma symptons of deployed soldiers on relationship satisfations.Journal of Family Psychology..Retrieved October 27 2012, from the Academic Search Complete database.