If I’ve learned one thing in this deployment, it is that everything is magnified ten times worse than normal.
It was suggested that we do a marriage retreat thing before he got deployed. Strongly suggested… and it’s not advisable to ignore strong suggestions; if you get my meaning. ;)
It was a good thing though… I wrote about it a few months ago. One of the things that the chaplain started off our sessions with was the information that all the law offices in and around the installation beef up their staff complements just before a deployment is over. Deployments are so hard on marriages that more than half of them end in divorce within the period immediately following a home-coming.
So far, it ain’t untrue – this shit is hard!
I understand now why new marriages can’t withstand this. Hell, I understand why any marriage is strained.
Arguments spiral out of control VERY easily. Stupid shit can turn into a major brouhaha at the drop of a hat. And major brouhahas, are very easily those little mildew spots that sit under the moulding in your bathtub and rot the hell out of your bathtub.
Chaplain Adams stressed over and over again that it’s especially important to maintain clear communication during throughout the deployment. It’s very easy to misunderstand and miscommunicate when you’re separated by thousands of miles and a war zone.
It’s also really easy for hot heads to help a spat spiral out of control. I myself have felt like being a bitch and prolonging arguments just because I felt wronged. Oh so easy to play the wounded party and keep the fight going so that he feels bad, then worse, then just beyond that … well, make him grovel. Oh yes – VERY easy.
However, completely unproductive; it gets neither of us anywhere. All that happens is that a ever-widening wedge appears and with every successive spat or argument (or even fight by the time the end of this story plays out), prys us farther and farther apart …
No! It’s far more important to realize how easily things can get out of control and, instead, swallow the hurt, say you’re sorry and sort it out rationally and calmly. Even if it means you have to put off the sorting out for a time when everybody feels calmer.
These last few months since R&R have been hell on earth frozen over. Stupid shit keeps coming up between us… and I know the majority of it is explained by the strain the separation causes. Most of it is really stupid shit. We sort it out, but it’s tiring. Tiring… but it has given me the opportunity to understand fully what kind of pressures a relationship has to bear in a deployment and why some break their backs on it.
I’ve learned this year, that it is priority one to ensure that he knows how I feel and that I feel it deeply. It’s important to stay connected to him. It’s important he know I am still his other half and that I am waiting for him to come home.
I am hatching a reconnection plan for when he gets back. 
I think it’ll be good fun to just go somewhere off the grid and just chill together. A way to remind us of what kept us together and strong throughout this year.
