It sounds like what you are doing is the pattern you had known in the past where he would come home then be away to serve. Even then you were intimate because you knew it would be a while before you would be able to again. This was an established routine in your relationship while he served. At the same time you learned how to have your own career too. We are creatures of habit and we can get into a routine where we unknowingly just follow a routine to free up our mind to think about other things and yet it's our way of gaining a sense of subconscious control too.

Your husband is used to seeing you during leave and then going off on a tour of duty where he is in another routine entirely that you are not a part of. Part of the reason he has not bonded with his children is because he did not really get to bond with them during his leaves when his main focus was to be with you.

Those that get involved in the service are first of all young and they go through a lot of training and in that training it's very repetitive. It genuinely becomes someone's life style and how their brain gets wired to that life style. When their time in the service stops they WILL look for something that allows them to replicate that type of life style because it's how their brain is now wired to operate.

You cannot compare the life style you got accustomed to with others that never lived that lifestyle. Also, you learned how to work and basically hold the fort of your homelife while your husband went off to serve. So that too is "learned lifestyle skills". It's also a pattern you got used to living.

It's very important to understand this FACT @Here we go again because what is normal for YOU is going to be different from what is considered normal to others. You simply cannot judge yourself for this either or put yourself down as that's really not being fair to yourself.

You were both young when you got married and you both learned to live a certain lifestyle. It's important to recognize the fact that you learned how to thrive in that lifestyle and you were able to actually learn to have a career too. You developed a certain kind of relationship style around what you both chose as a career path. What you have described of a pattern really isn't something "new". What was new was how he came home and was also suffering from ptsd and that new change in pattern changed YOUR pattern. So, in effect you had to suddenly deal with a lot of CHANGES you were not prepared to deal with. When I read about what kind of relationship you had, it's not the typical "abuse relationship" that others share. The dynamic of your relationship has been different. Truth is you never were interested in having a relationship with someone else, you were living the lifestyle that revolved around his serving and many women are loyal to their men that have to go off and serve for several months at a time. Like these other women you had a plan for what you wanted, that's pretty normal, but that plan did not include dealing with a man that got so traumatized he developed ptsd. When a partner develops ptsd it changes the relationship a lot, it changes the person struggling a lot and quite honestly, it's not INTENTIONAL, but instead intrusive. And it could be that YOU are connected to his old life that he can't live anymore too. You can be a reminder and when it comes to that kind of dynamic, that's really hard to address. Truth is he never planned what happened to him either, no one plans to experience ptsd and how much it changes a person. Yes, it can seem selfish, but, if you can understand what it means to need to distance from reminders it's more understandable. Doesn't mean it's fair.