Acceptance of fact.
JoeUser Forums
Dr Guy made a comment on a previous article about how my husband and I seem to have accepted that he might have to redeploy in January. The response I wrote to him got me thinking about the way I see things regarding deployments and TDY's and military affairs that cause our loved ones to leave us for months and sometimes years at a time....so I decided to make a full article out of it. Please forgive me if I ramble, I'm writing this as it comes to me.
As far as I'm concerned, there are four things in my life of which I am absolutely sure: that my husband loves me, that I will one day die, that as long as I'm alive I'll pay taxes in one form or another, and that he will, over the remainder of his military career, deploy again. And again. And again...and then probably some more.
I guess that I don't fully understand the people who divorce because of deployments. I can understand that they can't take the separations and the lonlieness - I know how bad that pain can be. But what I don't understand is their solution to that problem. Because they can't handle being apart, they take measures to separate themselves from each other permanently. Doesn't make sense to me.
So, as said - I know and he knows that he's going to deploy again. It's a fact. Because it's a fact, we have to deal with it. There are a number of ways to do just that, but the main two that I've seen put into operation are as follows:
The wife resents the husband's deploying and lets that resentment cloud everything she does and says. She can't get over that he's leaving again and she'll once again be alone with the kids and the house and all the accoutrements that come with a marriage, house, and children. She's miserable, and her misery rubs off on everyone else. There are fights about him leaving, there are accusations of abandonment, there's a whole lot of sadness and heartache and a lot of mean words are said in anger and out of spite. The closer the deploy date gets, the worse the fear of the upcoming months of solitude and the resentment get...and the worse the fights get. By the time he leaves they're both bitter and angry and tired of hearing each other. She kisses him goodbye with resentment and anger in her heart, and then goes home to spend the next however many months regretting all the things she said to him that hurt him and wallow in her insecurities. She was mean to him, she made him and herself miserable, and now she worries that he'll remember her that way and will meet someone 'over there' that makes him happier than she did before he left. She's hurt, he's hurt, and no matter how hard they try they can't seem to patch things up and convey to the other just how sorry they really are.
The second scenario is this:
The wife is upset that her husband has to leave again. She doesn't want him to go, but understands that he has to. She tries her best to make the time that they have left together as memorable as possible; to try and fit some serious quality time into the days preceeding the deploy date. She's determined to give him the best of herself, to remind him of why he married her, to show him just how damn much she loves him so that when they're apart they'll have some awesome memories of their time together to carry them through. By the time he leaves they're acting like they're newlyweds and have realized just how much they mean to each other...and they also have a renewed comittment to their marriage and are determined to not let something as relatively trivial as a deployment break their union. She kisses him goodbye with tears in her eyes and her heart near bursting because it's so full of love, then goes home and reminisces about how much she loves him and how good they are together.
I've seen the above described scenarios played out too many times to count - and I've been a player in both of them myself. I know from personal experience that kissing him goodbye with anger is a good way to guilt and worry yourself near to death and perpetuate the misery that you felt before he left. I know too that kissing him goodbye with your heart overflowing with love really hurts; in fact it's probably more painful than being angry and spiteful....but there's no guilt, no insecurity to beat oneself up with. There's only love, and the pain that comes from being separated from the one you love above all others. I'll take love over insecurity and guilt, any day.
When I was Key Spouse, I used to counsel other wives that "You can kiss him goodbye with a smile on your face, or you can kiss him goodbye with a scowl. Either way, you're going to have to kiss him goodbye". It's true. He's going to leave, no matter how you send him off. I guess the thing that you have to ask yourself is how you want him to remember you when he's gone; how you want to remember him when you're home alone.
You'd have to be incredibly stupid, incredibly selfish, or lying to yourself about the state of your marriage and whether you really love him if you choose the first scenario over the second.
For me...well, there's no choice. There's only one way I'm letting go of my love, and it's not with bitterness and spite.
Copyright Karen E Frederick, 2005
