YOU AND YOUR PARTNER: COMMON REACTIONS

• Difficulty re-establishing emotional and sexual intimacy.
• Feelings of excitement, disorganization, resentment, frustration.
• Grieving over loss of freedom and independence.

What can you do?

• Communicate openly and honestly — accept your feelings as normal and not a threat to the relationship.
• Try and be patient with yourself and your partner.
• Renegotiate your roles and responsibilities — the workload can again be shared, but perhaps in a new way.
• Celebrate together the personal growth each has achieved during the separation.
• Continue to participate in a support group/network.
• Seek professional counselling (clergy, social worker, doctor, psychologist) for continuing signs of critical incident stress or other concerns.

HOMECOMER"S REACTIONS

• You may want to talk about what you saw and did. Others may seem not to want to listen.
• You may not want to talk about it when others keep asking.
• You may miss the excitement of the deployment for a while.
• You may experience a range of emotional reactions such as excitement, disorganization, resentment and frustration.
• Some things may have changed while you were away; roles may have changed in managing basic household chores.
• Face-to-face communication may be hard at first.
• Re-establishing emotional and sexual intimacy may be difficult.
• Children may have grown and may be different in many ways.
• Partners may have become more independent and learned new coping skills.
• Partners may have new friends and support systems.
• You may have changed in your outlook and priorities in life.