The two models I used in looking at the interviews I did of these women were Hill's ABCX model, A being the event--it's an old model of family systems therapy--and the other one was the circumplex model, again a model of family therapy, family functioning.
I interviewed the women for an hour and a half to two hours. The interviews were recorded, then transcribed, and then I coded all the data I received in different categories of ambiguous loss, which I spoke about--family in crisis, any instances of adapting or having to adjust their behaviour or the family's behaviour around the veteran. So I was able to write up all of that. I defended it at the university, and it's now published on Theses Canada as part of the research.
The next piece you had was about the statistics of marriages breaking up. I've spoken to nurses who work in support of the women. The research says it's 60%. The nurses I spoke to said realistically it's 80%. They would argue that in the ones that don't get reported, the marriage breaks up; it just doesn't get documented because they don't formally divorce. Closer to 80% of the marriages do not survive, so eight out of 10 marriages do not survive.
A wonderful author by the name of Dr. Pauline Boss speaks about ambiguous loss as frozen grief because it's difficult to grieve someone who's standing in front of you but isn't the person you married. I heard over and over again that violence was certainly an issue. I heard a story of a woman who had been married and had two children. She was waking up at night with her husband having her pinned to the floor and his hands around her neck. He was having a flashback. So she had to leave the marriage because she wasn't safe.
Inappropriate anger--they lose their guard. We all think things sometimes but we don't say them. In a lot of cases the men said things that were hurtful without thinking about what they were saying, or used violent language that was mentally abusive.
An inability to maintain an intimate relationship on any level, whether that was conversing or even further on the spectrum of being intimate; they just were not able to function in that way. They retreated into their own world of imagination, and desolation in a lot of cases.
I'm trying to remember your fourth question--the rural areas. I'm not sure how it can be managed. I know it was difficult for the families in really rural areas because it's a small town; she talked about forming a support group for women who were like her because it wasn't an area where a lot of military families commuted from, but then everybody in the small town would know what they were doing because word would get out if they had a meeting at the library: “Oh, you're the group whose partners have....”
So there was the stigma of mental illness. This is the same woman who said if her partner had come back with a physical challenge, it would have been fine.