Seven Year Switch couple: ‘Where we went wrong’

S Sarge has kept his history hidden from partner Stacey Louise

tacey Louise can pinpoint the moment her relationship with Sarge broke down.

‘At the two-year point, the cracks really started to show,’ Stacey reveals exclusively to New Idea. ‘At first, we were in the honeymoon period – I’d found this man who shares all these dreams with me, but we were so busy doing everything else that we stopped putting in to our own relationship.’

But behind the cracks in their relationship lies a bigger issue haunting Sarge from his army days, which he has kept hidden from his girlfriend.

‘Sarge does have a lot of issues he is dealing with from the army – post-traumatic stress disorder [is one of them]. He’s never spoken to me about it, so it’s not something [I’m meant to] know,’ Stacey reveals.

In fact, Stacey Louise is only aware of his disorder because she stumbled across some papers in their house detailing his diagnosis.

‘I’ve seen paperwork lying around where it says he’s been diagnosed with PTSD, but he’s never spoken to me about it to this day,’ Stacey explains. ‘I haven’t heard what the tragic events are [that led to this]... I don’t know if I want to know.

‘I’m here to support him, but you can only keep things from each other for so long.’

Stacey Louise also floats the idea that Sarge may suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). There’s a telling scene in the first episode, which shows Sarge, 42, demanding order in the fridge they both share at home.

‘I grew up in a loving family where, if there was

something in the fridge, you just helped yourself. Sarge hasn’t had that upbringing. He came from a broken family and then went into the army,’ Stacey says. ‘I don’t know that it’s OCD, but it’s definitely his way or the highway. ‘He likes things done a particular way.’ And while Sarge wrestles silently with his demons, Stacey Louise openly speaks about the darkest moments of her life when she suffered a bout of depression while watching her dad die from Huntington’s disease.

‘I was so depressed,’ Stacey Louise bravely shares. ‘I was so stressed and anxious about the future – thinking that I didn’t have one. When I looked at my dad, I would be thinking – this is going to be me soon.

‘I would have nightmares that I had been locked in a nursing home and they wouldn’t let me out.’

But everything changed for the 36-year-old boot camp business owner when she discovered she didn’t carry the Huntington’s disease gene.

‘When [the doctors] first told me, I didn’t believe them,’ she remembers of that time. ‘I had spent so much of my life thinking I was so much like my dad – I’m Daddy’s girl, I’m going to have Huntington’s disease, this is the way I’m going to live my life. I had to have counselling then – you need time to process it.’