The Truth About Divorce After Traumatic Brain Injury

Its a relief to know there are others who understand what I'm going through. My wife has post concussive syndrome from an injury in early 2015. As she gets better physically, the emotional and mental issues have escalated. She is paranoid but open to keeping her friendships but she doesn't trust me and wants to leave the marriage. After 10 years together, this is quite heartbreaking. Only a miracle will keep us together.

My wife had a TBI 20 months ago. She's been horrible to me and her parents pretty much since she came round from here coma. She's ok with everyone else. It's like she can't stand me, I'm left as a single dad of two young children and this person who looks like my wife but is like a stranger to me. Our children avoid her and don't want to spend any time with her as she is pretty hard on them too. It's not her fault but me and the children are the ones that are suffering. My wife blames me and the children as we are the ones who have changed. I'm trapped in a very unhappy marriage that I cannot see is ever going to get better. She has told me she doesn't want to be with us anymore but she can't live on her own as she needs 24/7 care which we cannot afford and the government will only pay a small amount of money to help with. I don't want to see her put in a care home so I'm completely trapped. I can't move on. 

In 2005 age 53 my husband had a stroke. We had been married 11 years. He fully recovered physically but mentally was never the same. He was and always will be the love of my life. I find myself living with 'a man'  I never married. He suffers from Post Traumatic stress syndrome, Anxiety and depression. I loved and supported him thru all of this ( plus cancer ) for 10 and a half years. I am finally leaving him after being verbal and emotionally abused for over 10 years. I kept telling myself he could not help it?! It is not his fault. No the stroke was not his fault but doing nothing at all about his mental state and bad behaviour  and nothing to help our marriage is his fault! We now find ourselves about to be divorced. He is not prepared to help himself and get mental assistance....why because he thinks there is nothing wrong him?! People will say I am abandoning him but I say no i am not! He abandoned 'us'.He had choices and chose not to get help.now it is my turn to make a choice for me. Being 8 years younger I have a lot more time on this earth to find some peace and quiet in my life and be happy. I know I will always love him but I'm in love with the old husband and he is gone!

We made a marriage vow 51 years ago that still stands.We're in it together.

I must wonder about the study reporting the zero divorce rate after injury after age 60. I am 65 and had serious closed head brain injury from a fall five years ago. That was followed by two hemorrhagic strokes in malformed arteries resulting from the trauma. Together this has produced general and very specific forms of disconnection syndrome that especially affect my left brain control of my right brain emotional responses.

I was very recently examined in a psychiatric hospital unit for several weeks and no psychiatric problems were found. However, while there my wife of 44 years informed me that she would not be at home to greet me when I was discharged. We are now permanently separated as I cannot risk myself again to the extreme level of emotional pain I suffered when she told me she was leaving. There was no physical abuse ever involved and never any form of "wandering" or cheating by either of us. My wife simply has not been able to deal with the severe change of emotional control I have experienced.

The damage to my corpus callosum was extensive so brain hemispheres are partially disconnected and will remain that way. I now live alone in an apartment and the house we did live in is on the market. This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me and I have no way out of it and very little left to live for. I will never kill myself but it will be a relief when that time comes.

After my husband's accident he is definitely not the person I married. I will wake up to a different person each day never knowing what mood he will be in or what type of person he will be. Most days he is bearable and others I want to run away. What type of person would I be for leaving him when this wasn't his fault? But do I deserve to be miserable for the rest of my life? I have struggled with this for a long time....

His tbi injury happened 15 years ago and there's almost not a day that goes by that he does something to remind me he is not the person I fell in love with. I'm often like "who is this guy" and "why did this happen to us?" I am so sad because our lives should have been so different. Had I met him and he was like this I never would have been in a relationship with him. I hate my life with this stranger. Why? Just why?

After my injury my wife of 6 yrs , girlfriend of 20 baby mama of 12 left stating I was no longer the guy she married. I have to say I would not have done the same.

How did you correct for your acknowledged statistical bias in your study sample ("only 15% of subjects were separated or divorced"), when the separated/divorce rate in the general population is higher?