Now That It’s Over : Homecoming: Families torn apart by the conflict may have a new set of problems to solve when the troops come marching home.

If war spectators are having a hard time parting with their daily electronic encounters with generals Thomas W. Kelly and H. Norman Schwarzkopf, Desert Storm troops and their families may be in for a letdown of their own.

Dr. Charles Figley, editor of the Journal of Traumatic Stress, says the disenchantment will be “family-related” and “associated with the transition of shifting from one set of worries and expectations to another set of worries.”

Family members may transfer their anxiety about whether a loved one would die in battle to “a new set of problems as the result of the separation,” Figley says. Roles that were assumed at home before shipping out will have been assumed by others: “What happens as the result of having someone filling in?”

In his work with Vietnam veterans, Figley has found that children may have become more attached, and closer to the parent who was left behind. Or, “they may have developed romantic fantasies about Dad or Mom in their absence that no one can live up to.”

Karen Blaisure, a doctoral candidate at Virginia Technical University who spent three years with the Navy working on “reunion issues,” warns of letdown from what she calls the “I-had-it-worse-than-you-did” syndrome--the same malady that Figley describes as “I had it worse-itis.” Blaisure says a resentful spouse may complain, “I was all by myself. I had to do everything around here. All you had to do was go over there and risk your life.”

That creates “a terrible downward spiral,” Blaisure says. “What I suggest to couples is to realize that you both have different jobs, and to show appreciation for what each of you did.” If the returning spouse is critical of actions or decisions made by the partner at home, “I tell them (partners at home) to say something like ‘If you were at home you might have made different decisions. But you weren’t, and this is what I did.’ ”

Families in this situation experience “both relief around the issue of not losing someone--and also a letdown” that comes from releasing all that fear, says D. Ray Bardill, dean of the School of Social Work at Florida State University and president of the American Assn. for Marriage and Family Therapy.

An Army clinical social worker for 20 years, Bardill also cautions that “once you are absent from your family more than one week, the family begins to adjust without you. They set up their own little system that works.” One may encounter what Bardill calls “return intrusion.”

At the Bayley Seton Mental Health Clinic on New York’s Staten Island, Martin Phillipps has run a support group since September for about 100 families of people serving in the Middle East. Phillipps challenges the idea that this war created a situation of post-traumatic stress; rather, he said, “this is prolonged stress.” Emotional and physical exhaustion are among the dangers of such stress, Phillipps says, cautioning that extreme fatigue can exacerbate existing problems and invite new issues to develop when servicepeople return.

“It might come out in feelings of isolation and alienation,” Phillipps says. “There might be problems later on. There might be a lot of crying--not right away because people will feel so relieved to have their family member back at home, but later on.”

Kevin Bowen, director of the Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, says war changes its participants. Bowen, who served in the Army in Vietnam, says he worries that this time “they’re going to bring the troops back and have these huge parades, and people are going back to life the way they knew it before.” But some soldiers “may be bringing something back with them,” he says, referring to troubling memories of what they saw in combat.

“Everybody goes on with their life, and you’re left trying to make sense of yours,” Bowen says. He suggests also that the glorious outcome may add to a sense of letdown for some returning soldiers: “This is supposed to be this splendid victory. People don’t want to hear your problems.”

Tony Jurich, a clinical professor of marriage and family at Kansas State University, echoes this concern: “We’re going to be very happy and sit there and cheer when the people come home. It’s kind of like Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame. Then we end up with the problem of these people being ignored. All of a sudden, we don’t have a whole grade school writing them letters.”

For families and returning troops, letdown will not necessarily set in immediately. There will be a honeymoon, Blaisure says, during which life seems temporarily idyllic.

“It’s important to know that there’s a wide range of normal (in the duration of the honeymoon),” he says. “For some it may last a month. For others it may last an afternoon.”