I am another who thinks it is a very honest and quite accurate of living with someone who has been fundamentally changed after a traumatic incident. My mum feels pretty much this way about my dad, down to feeling he is her brother rather than her husband and that the man she fell in love with is gone. I think it would be of enormous help to her to know that this is normal in its own way, that other people feel like this, and that it doesn't make her a horrible person.

Hear hear, Aich. Is she supposed to pretend that all is rosy and she adores having to be the long term carer for a man she was on the brink of divorcing/was on the brink of divorcing her before the accident? And who has changed out of all recognition? It would be doing a massive disservice to carers everywhere if she were to pretend to be the selfless "angel in the house".

but she needs the MONEY! how else is she to support her dh and dds? this is how she makes her living.

i have always thought she was a bit of a twat but that doesn't stop me feeling terribly sorry for the situation that she and her family currently find themselves in.

I've always thought that she was a bit of a twat tbh.

Selectivememory Yes she could have, doesn't matter if that is her profession she could exercise some control and give her family and husband some privacy and dignity, as much as she has 'suffered' her husband is the one thats had to experience it.
It's him I feel sorry for.

I feel sorry for her.

They were on the point of their marriage breaking up, he is then seriously injured and has changed personality. She has stayed with him and supported him. She must feel enormously guilty and she has her children to consider.I can't really see what she has done wrong, other than writing about it.

She is a journalist, what else would you expect her to do?? She could not write about it, but it is probably so all consuming she probably can't think about anything else.

Actually, I'd add that "people outside" do not want to hear this, often to the extent that they won't and can't listen.

"People inside", on the other hand, quite probably need it. I am quite sure, on a second reading, that it is the second group, not the first, to whom this article is addressed.

That, i would guess, is why it is so very much in the first person, with no "shoulds" or "oughts", or blithe assurances for a happy ending - all of which would make for a more comfortable read.

I suspect its main "purpose" is as a sharing of experience for those who feel terribly isolated by the social stigmatising of difficult, ambivalent feelings. It reads quite differently (to my ears, anyway,) from some of those articles which sort of "dump" personal stuff, or are v. difficult-to-read acts of public self-justification.

I don't know - I think these personal trauma articles are extraordinarily difficult for us, as general readers, to deal with. I'm looking forward to the time when the mania for them has passed.

It must be awful.

I see no reason why she shouldn't express how she feels (and earn a few quid into the deal).

Maybe she will have discussed these feelings and the article with her husband already. He will be as aware of the dreadfulness of the situation as she is.

For my two-pence-worth, I thought that was probably quite helpful. She deals with some of the more difficult aspects of an event like this.

I think there is an enormous pressure of silence on those who have to deal with something like this. Vocabulary, shared experience in the public domain and some kind of honesty about how difficult it is dealing with deep personality change must, surely be helpful.

And she's a journalist. It's her job.

You know, going back to the original OP - I think this is one of the hardest things people deal with, and there is enormous guilt about it. A lot (as in most, I think) of relationships just do not survive. So, I think she "dares" write about it, because, actually, I'll bet she has some insight into how pernicious the social pressure of silence can be.

People just do not want to hear this stuff.

why so nasty, ladies? she probably really needs the money, and it's an interesting story. poor family.