The Conflict at Home

I partially credit Martin Luther King Jr. with saving my husband’s life. Sitting in his running Subaru in our garage, loaded gun in hand, Mark remembered our daughter upstairs in her bedroom. It was the Friday before MLK Day weekend. She had come home from college for the long weekend. He understood she would have been the one to find him. That realization stopped him from ending his life that day.

When my husband came home from Afghanistan in 2011, we met at the airport in Boston for a homecoming filled with fanfare and photo ops. A reporter approached us for an interview. A brief clip of us made the news. The smiling reporter asked how I managed to take care of a family while my husband was away at war. I said I just tried not to think about it, that we did our best to stick with our routines and get through each day. Back then, I prided myself on not needing help from anyone.

The ironic thing about the scene above is that Mark’s unit didn’t actually fly into the airport. They traveled by bus from Fort Dix in New Jersey. He had already been back in the country for about a month for outprocessing. The airport scene was fabricated for publicity. A prominent politician was there to welcome the troops home and give a speech. The homecoming scene provided the perfect backdrop. Portrayals of families being reunited make for good publicity. Who doesn’t love a fairy tale ending?

Rarely is the public privy to the chapter after the reunited couple rides off into the sunset. The part where orderly military life collides with the disarray of the civilian world. When the welcome home party ends and families are left to figure out how to live and function together after being separated. This is when conflicts arise between partners. In our case, he was used to giving orders and being obeyed by everyone below him in the chain of command. In the military and first responder culture, questioning a superior is a sign of disrespect. Meanwhile, I had been singlehandedly managing the house, caring for our daughters, and working while he was deployed. I resented him returning and ordering everyone around like we were subordinates.

When Mark came back after a year at war, he left part of himself behind. It was like a light had gone out. He was physically here, but not emotionally. He wandered around the house saying, “This doesn’t feel like my home.” He had always been hypervigilant—easily startled, a light sleeper, and quick-tempered. After deployment, it all intensified. He patrolled the house at night: checking on the kids, inspecting doors and windows. I slept through his nightly rounds, but he told me about them. If I did wake up, he was always already awake. No matter how quiet I tried to be, he jolted up. He complained about my snoring, twitching, even the sound of my breathing. I felt guilty. I believed I was the problem. That if I just tried harder, he could sleep and relax. That line of thinking had as much to do with my own unresolved issues as with his. We all lived on high alert.

We didn’t engage in open conflict. We had each closed off part of ourselves. I had traumas I’d buried deep. He was completely emotionally shut down. We were going through the motions of life, not living it. I was passive-aggressive—I can admit that now. I was furious with him for being so closed off but afraid to express my anger. He felt dead inside, which he only told me recently. An emotional chasm had grown between us. And yet, we kept going: raising our daughters, maintaining the house, and working as nurses. He continued working in the prison, which did nothing for his mental health but provided for the family.

Eventually, I told him how I really felt. It was January 2020. I told him I couldn’t go on living that way. It felt like a minefield. I tiptoed around, afraid to set him off. I told him I wanted to separate. I needed to be my own person—free from the dark cloud that had hovered over us for years. I needed time and space to sort out my own darkness from his. I’d been accommodating everyone’s needs while neglecting my own. I didn’t know how to ask for help. I had reached my breaking point.

I was blindsided by what happened next.

When I told Mark I wanted to separate, he fell apart. His mind broke. He dissociated—an extreme response to trauma where the mind goes somewhere else. It’s a hallmark of PTSD and can be triggered by stress or sensory stimuli. At the time, I didn’t understand what was happening. I mistook his sobbing and repetition for simple sadness. I had steeled myself for this conversation. I couldn’t get pulled into his emotions—I had to protect my own.

Our daughter was understandably confused when he knocked on her door in the middle of the night, distraught, and asked to be driven to the local VA clinic. There, he had another dissociative episode. He was on the verge of violence. Police talked him into an ambulance. He spent the long weekend in the ER before being transferred to the VA hospital in western Massachusetts. Now the tables were turned. Mark was the patient. No longer the caregiver with the answers, the control, or the keys to the unit—he was the one taking orders.

As hard as it was, this was a blessing. Mark later told me the suicidal thoughts had been there long before I brought up separation. He’d been walking—and driving—around with a loaded gun under his seat. I had no idea. I only felt the cloud, the constant tension. After his hospitalization, he began regular therapy and started medication. As a mental health nurse himself, he was a very challenging patient. But he committed to doing the work.

Marriage is hard. At least, that’s been my experience. I always heard older couples say marriage takes work. I didn’t understand what kind of work they meant until nearly 25 years in. It’s not physical or even just mental work. That’s easy. I can grind in the gym or garden, write for hours. The work I’m talking about is emotional. The kind that leaves you exposed, raw, and vulnerable. It doesn’t earn you money, degrees, or six-pack abs—but it takes everything out of you.

We didn’t separate. I believe in second chances. I saw how hard he was working to change. After years as a nurse, I know most people won’t do that. It’s too hard. They lose steam. They don’t see a reason to keep going. Watching someone genuinely fight to heal is inspiring. And I know Mark didn’t just do it for himself. He did it for me. And for our daughters.

This story isn’t about me—but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t feel responsible for Mark’s near suicide. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t angry or resentful. My father died by suicide when I was a child. I found his body but didn’t tell anyone for years. I was afraid. I didn’t want to get in trouble. And there were other things I needed to deal with. I didn’t start therapy until our younger daughter left for college. It took over a year before I could even connect emotions to events. I had developed dissociation too. I had learned to shut off emotions that were too scary to feel. I stuffed anger down until I exploded. Mark wasn’t the only one people had to tiptoe around.

It’s taken years, hospitalizations, therapy, couples’ retreats, and many tears—both his and mine—to reach a place where we can speak openly without lashing out or shutting down. We don’t always get it right. Having space now that our kids are grown helps. Letting them go was another thing we brought to therapy. The work is messy, ongoing, and far from the stuff of feel-good news clips.

I’ve learned that conflict isn’t the enemy. Avoiding conflict is. Being afraid to speak up. Being ashamed to ask for help. That’s what creates emotional distance and leads to bigger problems. He’s learning to share, even hard things. I’m learning to speak up. We try not to take each other’s moods personally. We’re still working on asking for help—but we’re working. Our house feels like home again. We both sleep at night. We even have matching CPAP machines. Apparently, I also needed help with sleep. Our story isn’t a fairy tale. But we managed to avoid a tragic ending.

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Wendy Arena is a writer who took a 25+ year detour into the nursing profession.  She is married to an Army veteran who took the same detour.  They have two grown daughters-one of whom is also in the Army-and enjoys bodybuilding, cooking, and traveling.

As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.