By National Center for PTSD

Trauma survivors with PTSD often experience problems in their intimate and family relationships or close friendships. PTSD involves symptoms that interfere with trust, emotional closeness, communication, responsible assertiveness, and effective problem solving:

• Loss of interest in social or sexual activities, and feeling distant from others, as well as feeling emotionally numb. Partners, friends or family members may feel hurt, alienated, or discouraged, and then become angry or distant toward the survivor.
• Feeling irritable, on-guard, easily startled, worried, or anxious may lead survivors to be unable to relax, socialize, or be intimate without being tense or demanding. Significant others may feel pressured, tense, and controlled as a result.
• Difficulty falling or staying asleep and severe nightmares prevent both the survivor and partner from sleeping restfully, and may make sleeping together difficult.
• Trauma memories, trauma reminders or flashbacks, and the attempt to avoid such memories or reminders, can make living with a survivor feel like living in a war zone or living in constant threat of vague but terrible danger. Living with an individual who has PTSD does not automatically cause PTSD; but it can produce “vicarious” or “secondary” traumatization, which is almost like having PTSD.
• Reliving trauma memories, avoiding trauma reminders, and struggling with fear and anger greatly interferes with survivors’ abilities to concentrate, listen carefully, and make cooperative decisions — so problems often go unresolved for a long time. Significant others may come to feel that dialogue and teamwork are impossible.

Survivors of childhood sexual and physical abuse, rape, domestic violence, combat, or terrorism, genocide, torture , kidnapping or being a prisoner of war, often report feeling a lasting sense of terror, horror, vulnerability and betrayal that interferes with relations...