WOMS: The Love Prescription

They never said marriage would be easy, but I also don’t think when they warn you of the challenges you’ll face as a new couple, those will include both a life-altering health crisis and global pandemic occurring all within the first year of said marriage.

I know I’ve spoken before about some of the challenges my “new” husband and I have faced within the last three, going on four, years of our marriage, but I haven’t, I don’t think, revealed just how difficult overcoming these challenges has been for us.

Not to anyone.

If you’re like me and struggle with PTSD, then I might encourage you to read on with discretion as it might get a little intense. If you need to not read, that is also entirely acceptable. I know each of us carry triggers we sometimes can’t foresee, so do not dismay if you have to turn away because I’m about to get a little vulnerable.

For any new couple, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic would be enough of a challenge to soldier through as the entire world changed within a day. Closures, remote work, layoffs, supply chain shortages, a deadly virus you can’t see but could breathe in without warning—this is the perfect concoction for a dystopian horror flick. One which we all continue to survive through together.

But for us, for our small family of two, our momentous year of 2020 started in the hospital two months earlier to the US recognizing the ensuing pandemic and shutting down it’s borders.

The weather in the Midwest can be treacherous January through March, and unfortunately for my husband, the ground was icy as we started moving into our new unit three weeks after our wedding. From the one-word sentences he muttered upon returning home late one night, I deciphered that ice had caused him to slip and fall, resulting in a concussion. His dilated pupils confirmed it. A week later, as he lay in a hospital bed, the ER doctor told us she suspected his continuing episodes of abnormal behavior were post-traumatic seizures from hitting his head.

The treating physician’s did their best to reassure us his episodes would cease, but if my husband experienced anything similar to come back to the hospital and they would treat him.

Little did we know then that if a person has more than one concurring seizure, that means they are epileptic. We were not told this until eight months later as we sat in a new doctor’s office in early September after countless new seizures since his injury.

And he suffered three seizures before his first hospitalization.

The scariest thing about my husband’s seizures, though, isn’t what you might imagine. B”H, he does not have what use to be know as “grand mal seizures,” which is the more well-known type seen in films or TV when people fall down and convulse as they experience a seizure.

That’s not how my husband seizes.

Instead, he goes blank for a few seconds up to a minute like he’s daydreaming, but then his entire personality changes for a few hours afterwards. These types of seizures are known as complex partial seizures, or now focal impaired awareness seizures.

It is this difference in his personality I had to learn to navigate on my own during the mandatory COVID-19 isolation.

I described it sometimes to his doctor’s like Jekyll and Hyde, or Bruce Banner and the Hulk. Now before you worry, no—he never harmed me. But my once placid and serene husband who displayed little to no emotions would suddenly become aggressive, impassioned, enraged. He would lose control to the pain in his soul, and if any harm was inflicted, the lashes I endured were merely from being the closest in his proximity.

The worst part, though, wasn’t what my husband did or did not say to me during these episodes. Rather it was after he would wake up the next day, or after a lengthy nap, and had returned to his usual state of equilibrium—he never remembered what transpired the evening before.

I found myself living with two versions of my husband, and I wasn’t sure which one loved me, if at all.

Thankfully, by September 2020, when we received at last a diagnosis of epilepsy, we were also provided a better prognosis than we had endured the previous eight months. This also allowed us to change his medication, which I am glad to say regulated his seizures to near non-existence. With only one dosage increase the following summer, my husband seemed to transform back into himself overnight that autumn of 2020.

Unfortunately, the damage to our embryonic marriage continued to be neglected.

Life continued with responding to new family crises in 2021 and into 2022, but by spring 2023, our continued negligence frayed our soul bonds, I feared we were on the verge of collapse.

We had attempted marital counselling in the late summer, early autumn, of 2021, but the lack of chemistry with that therapist felt more like putting a band-aid on a gaping wound needing surgical stitches. Soldiering on, it wasn’t until this past spring I realized my limit was spent, my tolerance and patience gone, so I demanded we return to counselling.

Finding a new psychologist who specialized in traumatic brain injuries and PTSD, we started over.

You see, around December 2022, the grief I had been ignoring, that I thought I had dealt with, overflowed until I could no longer contain my torment. I could no longer deny what I had lost in my first year of marriage. Furthermore, having already endured one life-altering brain injury in my mother at the age of ten, the past trauma I thought I had avoided projecting into our present situation collided with my new trauma.

I was a weeping mess.

I still am.

So when our history repeated itself this past May, just in time for my birthday no less—I declared annihilation.

My heart, my soul, was Hiroshima, and I told my husband if we were going to find our way back to one another, then it would require a lot of rebuilding. Together.

B”H, he agreed.

The first thing we did was buy the book, The Love Prescription, by renowned psychologists Drs. John Gottman and Julie Schwartz Gottman.

I think this little book helped save our marriage.

After enduring three years of neglect, resentment, and trauma, this simple, condensed but not watered-down book helped us, within one week, find ourselves again. Find each other again.

The way the book is broken down is in succinct, bite-sized portions to be read per day, accompanied by a daily exercises. They’re simple tasks such as saying thank you or giving a compliment, but ones which are so quickly and too easily neglected even though they are vital, essential, for maintaining your connection to one another.

As each chapter builds, each day, you build new habits to incorporate into your routine. They also recognize the limitations many of us have on our time, and help you find those moments within a busy day where you can pause to be together—even if only for two minutes.

Another version of this are the five magic hours each couple should spend together per week, and the chart to the right explains how. This is something our psychologist suggested weeks before we read this book. As we attempted to find and maintain these five hours, we realized how little we prioritized our relationship, and more importantly, how from the challenges of our first year of marriage we developed habits that though worked during that time of survival, were insufficient to sustain us through a lifetime together.

We forgot how to have fun.

Their prescription of small doses of interaction throughout your day, week, helped us reconnect in ways I have been yearning for since that first year when everything changed between us because like them, I know a relationship is built on the small things over time, not the big grand sweeping gestures attributed to the unattainable portrayals of romance by Hollywood. If I regret anything, it is that we didn’t seek marital treatment along with my husband’s medical treatment during that first year, but the Drs. Gottmans’ prescription was enough to get us back on our feet.

And though, yes, we still have a lot of work to do, to clear away the debris and rebuild our lives together, the clouds have parted revealing the sun which too long hid behind them, illuminating our path.

While this isn’t one of my more typical book reviews, not just because it is for a non-fiction book, a part of me knew I needed to share our experience not to gain sympathy from my readers, but to let each of you know you are not alone with whatever horrors you face. We each go through our lives sometimes wondering if anyone notices us at all. I may not know you personally, but I do notice your pain.

If you are experiencing any sort of distress, seek help now. As scary as it is to reach out, it is worth it—you are worth it.

I also want to reassure you that despite all the pain and trauma my husband and I both faced these past three years, we somehow, by the mercy of Hashem, would find our way back together. There were pockets of moments sprinkled throughout the years when the pain did not exist, but recently those pockets of time got smaller and smaller, less and less frequent. Soon, my husband felt too distant, and I wasn’t sure how we would, if we could, find our way back again.

This little book showed us the way.

As I said before, I know that first step can sometimes be as overwhelming as the pain you’re enduring, and it can be utterly terrifying, but it is worth it. I promise. Seek the help you need because your life is sacred. Don’t lose hope.

And if you’re facing a marital crisis, if you are in need in anyway of finding your way back to your spouse again, let me recommend The Love Prescription because I know it has helped my husband and I start over, it has helped us reconnect.

Wherever you are reading this, I hope you will take that first step. I know you’re brave enough. Hang in there and take of yourself. There’s only one you, and the world needs you.

Shalom.