Thank you Kyniska. My wife is indeed a supportive partner, and for that I am blessed. I don’t want to be overdependent on her to help me with this, as that, too would be unhealthy. This is a journey I have to make on my own, but it is a remarkably strong and painful process. I do like your comparison of PTSD to a physical injury and I had not really though of that before. I have always been against medication – for personal fears that it will change me and professionally they can affect my work. I do journal but get annoyed with myself when I write too much. I can meditate sometimes, which helps. For me, the worst part is if I meditate on it, I can actually FEEL what it is to be in a fully trusting, open and caring relationship and it FEELS wonderfully liberating. My wife is already there with me, but I cannot join her as easily. I am still so fearful of being hurt, betrayed, the subject of an unspoken joke. It’s amazing – I think there’s a whole mass of people on the planet that are probably very nice, but very wounded. We all respond so differently to hurt. I built this amazing wall to keep out those invisible arrows to my soul. As soon as I started tearing it down to open myself up to my wife, the old enemies were still at the gate shooting arrows. Healing is a difficult process.