Netta Barzilai Describes Living With a Partner's Post-Trauma and Its Toll

Netta Barzilai said her relationship with her former partner, Guy Raphael, turned into a dependent system after he returned from Lebanon suffering from post-traumatic stress following the war. Speaking with ynet military correspondent Gal Gannot at ynet and Yedioth Ahronoth’s “A State of Post-Trauma” conference, held with the Histadrut, she said trying to save him became “the project of my life,” but “it was not a project that succeeded.”

Barzilai said Raphael, who had worked as a financial analyst, came back changed, began saying people at work did not understand him, woke up every night at 3 a.m., and sank into deep darkness. She said she blamed herself, stopped working, stopped creating, stopped speaking with her family, and withdrew from friends as she tried to be “the rescuer.” She said that dynamic was “almost complete self-erasure” and another daily trauma.

She said post-trauma can make it impossible to say kind words, so a relationship becomes a dependence rather than mutual support. “It is not a relationship, it is a system of dependency,” she said, adding that the sufferer is harmed twice, once by the injury and again by hurting those around them. Barzilai also said she became ashamed to tell her parents what was happening, and that after the couple went public, many women told her their mothers had only then understood what they were going through.

Barzilai linked the experience to her new album, “Serenade,” which she said reflects the period since October 7. The album, set to launch next month at Amphitheater Shuni, includes the hit “Oxytocin.” She said making music is first of all “therapeutic” for her, and described the record as moving through stages of grief. She also said the album was her way of acknowledging that “we cannot continue as usual” and must confront the scale of the trauma and how to heal from it.