I've been MIA for a little while and it doesn't feel good. I apologize for not replying to the lovely comments I have gotten in the last few months. I read them as they came and they really made my day. I thank you for sharing parts of your life with me. I will write back soon.
Things are a bit difficult for me right now and am trying to figure some things out. I have so much to say, and hopefully soon I will be able to post a lot of that.
My husband has been deployed for about a month now. We haven't been able to be in touch as much as I'd like, and so it is difficult to have meaningful conversations aside from "Are all the bills taken care of? Did you run the cars this week? and How's work?" After the issues that we had early this year, we decided to work really hard in our marriage. We've had very good times, times that make me feel that we are stronger than ever, and bad times, times that make me re-think the longevity of our marriage. Not saying anything groundbreaking, but communication is key in a relationship, especially when your marriage is in trouble. Unfortunately, a deployment doesn't make this any easier.
We both agree in that our focus right now is to ensure that he stays safe and emotionally stable. We will both do our best and stay as close in thought to each other as possible. I will continue to use this time to figure things out for myself. We have no rush in making a decision about our marriage.
I really wish that my worries were about anything else, but if that were the case, I wouldn't be the person that I am now... and I like myself very much.
Showing posts with label deployment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label deployment. Show all posts
Sunday, May 6, 2012
Thursday, March 15, 2012
The Hardest Three Firsts
It's been months since he last had to fly somewhere because of work. We were actually very lucky in how things turned out this year. He was scheduled to deploy a few months ago, but a week prior to the tentative date (everything is always tentative until the plane takes off) his deployment got postponed indefinitely.
The first taste of our time apart will be short in time (a few weeks), but soon after that we are looking at an actual deployment (although this time it's shorter than usual, wohoo!). Spending time apart doesn't have to be a bad thing, and it isn't most of the times (I'm speaking as a woman with no kids). It really is what you make of it. A good attitude and a plan do make a difference. There are tons of things to do when he is gone that I normally don't get to do as much when he is around:
- Hanging out with my girlfriends more frequently.
- Not showering or having to shave my legs every day.
- Getting to wear my big ugly panties with no qualms about it.
- Watching Wicker Park for the 100th time (that was me yesterday night).
- More reading time.
- Dedicated painting time.
- Geeking out for hours on end.
- AND, I get to shop and come back home without grouping some of the bags to make it look less expensive (although my husband has never balked at my shopping talents).
This is all fine and dandy, but there are three things that are tough every time he leaves; without fail. The best thing I can do is to face them head on and prepare for them:
The first night without him, the first morning waking up alone, and the first time I come home from work to a house missing a husband.
As much as I try, I just can't truly feel happy during these days, so I figured why not enjoy the sadness? I plan it all out. I already know I won't be able to sleep until two or three in the morning, so I pick an easy-to-read book, a few girly or car chase movies (Death Proof is a rare and amazing find), and various snacks to choose from. When I go to sleep, I usually allow the dogs to sleep in bed with me (only the first night), make sure the gun is loaded and ready to go (and I definitely know how to use it), and put on Bjork's greatest hits.
To help the disorientation in the morning, I normally place a pillow or a folded blanket on his side of the bed. Yes, this is a bit weird, but it's mostly so that when I wake up I don't see an empty space next to me.
Coming home from work to a house missing a husband is something that I had not been able to find a way around... that is until recently. If it is possible, I work from home or take the day off. In that way, there is no leaving and no arriving home. Yes, the next day I usually do have to get out of the house, but by then I am doing a lot better.
It does get easier when the trips are more frequent. That is because it gives me time to get into that mindset. I do wonder how other spouses or live-in girlfriends deal with these three firsts. I also wonder what girlfriends go through.
Now that these three firsts have passed, I have done 6 of the fun things I listed above. Oh yeah, and I am only getting started.
The first taste of our time apart will be short in time (a few weeks), but soon after that we are looking at an actual deployment (although this time it's shorter than usual, wohoo!). Spending time apart doesn't have to be a bad thing, and it isn't most of the times (I'm speaking as a woman with no kids). It really is what you make of it. A good attitude and a plan do make a difference. There are tons of things to do when he is gone that I normally don't get to do as much when he is around:
- Hanging out with my girlfriends more frequently.
- Not showering or having to shave my legs every day.
- Getting to wear my big ugly panties with no qualms about it.
- Watching Wicker Park for the 100th time (that was me yesterday night).
- More reading time.
- Dedicated painting time.
- Geeking out for hours on end.
- AND, I get to shop and come back home without grouping some of the bags to make it look less expensive (although my husband has never balked at my shopping talents).
This is all fine and dandy, but there are three things that are tough every time he leaves; without fail. The best thing I can do is to face them head on and prepare for them:
The first night without him, the first morning waking up alone, and the first time I come home from work to a house missing a husband.
As much as I try, I just can't truly feel happy during these days, so I figured why not enjoy the sadness? I plan it all out. I already know I won't be able to sleep until two or three in the morning, so I pick an easy-to-read book, a few girly or car chase movies (Death Proof is a rare and amazing find), and various snacks to choose from. When I go to sleep, I usually allow the dogs to sleep in bed with me (only the first night), make sure the gun is loaded and ready to go (and I definitely know how to use it), and put on Bjork's greatest hits.
To help the disorientation in the morning, I normally place a pillow or a folded blanket on his side of the bed. Yes, this is a bit weird, but it's mostly so that when I wake up I don't see an empty space next to me.
Coming home from work to a house missing a husband is something that I had not been able to find a way around... that is until recently. If it is possible, I work from home or take the day off. In that way, there is no leaving and no arriving home. Yes, the next day I usually do have to get out of the house, but by then I am doing a lot better.
It does get easier when the trips are more frequent. That is because it gives me time to get into that mindset. I do wonder how other spouses or live-in girlfriends deal with these three firsts. I also wonder what girlfriends go through.
Now that these three firsts have passed, I have done 6 of the fun things I listed above. Oh yeah, and I am only getting started.
Friday, March 9, 2012
Dangerous Assumptions and Superman Thinking
Miscommunication is not a new thing when it comes to marriage, especially a new one. Add several months of long-distance contact and a hefty load of stress and you are now looking at big problems. This is what happened to my husband and me.
There are different levels of stress, frustration and feelings of loneliness. We assumed that we would always be able to deal with them. We failed to see that as strong as we both are, we also have moments of weakness. We are human after all. It is easy for him to remember this of me, and sometimes he forgets how strong I really am. On the other hand, it is not as easy for us to remember that he is not Superman. Sometimes I say this jokingly, but now that I reflect on last year, we subconsciously (and stupidly) assumed that he was.
When we got married, we made a commitment to each other to share our burdens as much as our happiness. Now, due to his profession, this comes with a disclaimer confidential information remains confidential, so this adds a layer of difficulty when trying to communicate our emotions. We are still great when it comes to fixing external (non-relationship) problems and sharing our happiness. However, due to the above assumptions and superman-thinking, he slowly, but surely started keeping his emotional burdens from me. I was too distracted with myself, the house and other things, and I didn’t want to stress him out even more by asking him to work harder on sharing his emotions.
So how did this turn out for us?
I started feeling as if all he wanted from me was to take care of our dogs, house and other belongings while he was gone. Although this is highly important, my role as his wife and best friend were close to non-existent. I knew that my feelings were wrong and so I powered through it because I knew how difficult the training that he was going through was. I bet a lot of people know this is, but a good percentage of the training that SEALs go through have little to do with physical challenges (except for sleep deprivation), but mostly mental.
As months went by, my husband began to separate himself from his true self – in his mind he had no family, friends or anything else but the training that he was going through. This is too robotic for even someone like him, and thus he started drinking alcohol… way more than what he is used to. When it came to our conversations, he would say that he was fine, or that he couldn’t talk because he needed to get some sleep. When he felt like sharing his feelings with me, he was usually exhausted. That made it very difficult for him to think of ways to communicate effectively while removing confidential information, and so he would decide to keep his emotions to himself. Long story short, he successfully completed all of the various training events throughout the year, as that was our first priority, but it left our marriage in a bad state.
What I’ve learned so far is that although Navy SEALs get tons of training to do their job amazingly well, they didn’t use to get a lot of training for how to deal with their challenges at home. When my husband joined the teams more than a decade ago, these types of services and training opportunities were very few and some thought of as being underdeveloped. Nowadays, based on what I’ve seen, there are several programs, services, workshops, and more especially designed to help our community through family and personal development.
When my husband and I realized that our marriage was in trouble and that we needed to improve our communication, emotional regulation and coping skills, he moved into action (he beat me to it!). Just like anything else, he faced it with all the focus and determination that he would place for a work-related mission. Before I knew it, we were enrolled to use a service called FOCUS. Here is some information regarding this service:
FOCUS is Family Resiliency Training™ for Military Families, which includes those without children. FOCUS has helped us learn to improve the following skills:
- Emotional regulation
- Communication
- Problem-solving
- Goal setting
- Managing deployments (or long intensive training trips)
http://www.focusproject.org/
As I know, this service is then developed to work with the specific needs of the community – Navy SEALs and the Marines, for example, have plenty of differences. Again, it is not couples therapy and their goal is not to help us save our marriage; these are skills that we can apply to our relationship with ourselves, each other and others.
So are we now Superman and Superwoman? Not really. If things work out between us, we know we'll never be and we like it that way. Hey, even Superman has his kryptonite. Nevertheless, we are better equipped to deal with multiple deployments, we now understand each other better thanks to the new skills we’ve learned, and we will now also be able to do a better assessment of our marriage.
There are different levels of stress, frustration and feelings of loneliness. We assumed that we would always be able to deal with them. We failed to see that as strong as we both are, we also have moments of weakness. We are human after all. It is easy for him to remember this of me, and sometimes he forgets how strong I really am. On the other hand, it is not as easy for us to remember that he is not Superman. Sometimes I say this jokingly, but now that I reflect on last year, we subconsciously (and stupidly) assumed that he was.
When we got married, we made a commitment to each other to share our burdens as much as our happiness. Now, due to his profession, this comes with a disclaimer confidential information remains confidential, so this adds a layer of difficulty when trying to communicate our emotions. We are still great when it comes to fixing external (non-relationship) problems and sharing our happiness. However, due to the above assumptions and superman-thinking, he slowly, but surely started keeping his emotional burdens from me. I was too distracted with myself, the house and other things, and I didn’t want to stress him out even more by asking him to work harder on sharing his emotions.
So how did this turn out for us?
I started feeling as if all he wanted from me was to take care of our dogs, house and other belongings while he was gone. Although this is highly important, my role as his wife and best friend were close to non-existent. I knew that my feelings were wrong and so I powered through it because I knew how difficult the training that he was going through was. I bet a lot of people know this is, but a good percentage of the training that SEALs go through have little to do with physical challenges (except for sleep deprivation), but mostly mental.
As months went by, my husband began to separate himself from his true self – in his mind he had no family, friends or anything else but the training that he was going through. This is too robotic for even someone like him, and thus he started drinking alcohol… way more than what he is used to. When it came to our conversations, he would say that he was fine, or that he couldn’t talk because he needed to get some sleep. When he felt like sharing his feelings with me, he was usually exhausted. That made it very difficult for him to think of ways to communicate effectively while removing confidential information, and so he would decide to keep his emotions to himself. Long story short, he successfully completed all of the various training events throughout the year, as that was our first priority, but it left our marriage in a bad state.
What I’ve learned so far is that although Navy SEALs get tons of training to do their job amazingly well, they didn’t use to get a lot of training for how to deal with their challenges at home. When my husband joined the teams more than a decade ago, these types of services and training opportunities were very few and some thought of as being underdeveloped. Nowadays, based on what I’ve seen, there are several programs, services, workshops, and more especially designed to help our community through family and personal development.
When my husband and I realized that our marriage was in trouble and that we needed to improve our communication, emotional regulation and coping skills, he moved into action (he beat me to it!). Just like anything else, he faced it with all the focus and determination that he would place for a work-related mission. Before I knew it, we were enrolled to use a service called FOCUS. Here is some information regarding this service:
FOCUS is Family Resiliency Training™ for Military Families, which includes those without children. FOCUS has helped us learn to improve the following skills:
- Emotional regulation
- Communication
- Problem-solving
- Goal setting
- Managing deployments (or long intensive training trips)
http://www.focusproject.org/
As I know, this service is then developed to work with the specific needs of the community – Navy SEALs and the Marines, for example, have plenty of differences. Again, it is not couples therapy and their goal is not to help us save our marriage; these are skills that we can apply to our relationship with ourselves, each other and others.
So are we now Superman and Superwoman? Not really. If things work out between us, we know we'll never be and we like it that way. Hey, even Superman has his kryptonite. Nevertheless, we are better equipped to deal with multiple deployments, we now understand each other better thanks to the new skills we’ve learned, and we will now also be able to do a better assessment of our marriage.
Friday, April 8, 2011
A non-deployment deployment (uh?) and the frightening second month.
I am truly useless at work right now, I have neglected my blog for way too long and for that reason I am feeling guilty. My husband has been in Washington state, training, for the last 3 months. After he arrived from deployment late last year, he spent most of his time at home. I was getting used to waking up to him (which I love), cooking for two (which I love), having lots of sex (which I really love), and having to shower everyday (which I am not too fond of). Four months later: I wake up alone, still cook for two as my tummy can attest to, have had rationed sex (visited my husband in two separate occasions) and full use of his electronic sub par replacement, and only shower every other day… OK, I sometimes skip two days.
Aside from the mundane, this time around it was harder to adjust, but why? Even though my husband is in the United States and in no military-related danger, he has been working from 5am ‘til 10pm most days. His training is extremely mentally-draining. It was hard for me to understand that; I keep forgetting that he is not superhuman… it is his fault though, he should stop acting like one most of the time. When he mentioned that this was as difficult to him as going through BUD/S was (BUD/S - Basic Underwater Demolition/Seal a.k.a. Hell on Earth), it is when it truly hit me. Man, was I a baby during the second month?! I seemed to be missing half of my brain and I needed his feedback on everything. I was driving us both crazy. Out of all the things I would ask him his feedback or direction on, I already knew what he was going to say and I already knew how to get the task done. Introspection is a bitch sometimes (sorry for the language).
Now why was I not a baby during the first or the third month of his non-deployment deployment? Not that I am an expert, but based on my experience during his first long trip (4 months), last year’s deployment (7 months), and his current training (3 months, one more to go), the first month is mostly dedicated to showing the world (yeah) that I am strong enough to deal with this. As childish as it sounds, I do think that is the case. I usually have about a 70% assurance that he will be going on a long trip by a certain month – a month prior. Therefore, I place it on my mind and begin to prepare for it emotionally and also mentally, by making sure his to-do list matches mine amongst other things. Now when he leaves, I am all motivated to show him how much of an amazing wife I am, and how lucky he is to have found me.
A month later – so what happened to the line of his to-do list to make sure that all the vehicles were prepared in case of an emergency? Was “putting more than a quarter of gas per car” not part of his idea of what “preparing a car in case of an emergency” is? So of course, after turning on the vehicles every other week to make sure that the batteries won’t drain, I accidentally (just humor me) ran out of gas. I forgot about it for a few weeks, then something big happened and I needed to move one of the cars. Here is how it went:
- Looking for a gas can in our humongous garage (texted him inquiring the whereabouts of said gas can)
- Didn’t know how to open the mouth of the can – child proof (texted him for instruction)
- The tip of the gas can funnel was too big for the car’s fuel opening (texted him for possible troubleshooting)
- The battery drained after two weeks of sitting (texted him to ask for the location of the jump cables)
- Jumped it and promptly freaked out when I realized I had to drive it to the gas station to add more gas before it would ran out again – I don’t know how to drive manual transmissions (texted him to complain about this being such a pain the ass)
- Miraculously arrived to the gas station without stalling or rolling back a hill (no text!)
- After leaving it running for a while and looking creepy for idling there for a long time, I turned it off and put some gas – it kept clicking after only 5 gallons (texted to communicate my baffling finding)
- Car was not turning on, waited for friend while telling the guy next to me about my car troubles (no text)
- Almost died, when the guy I was talking to for a few minutes, left the gas pump in his car and drove away with it (texted to communicate my near death experience)
Aside from the mundane, this time around it was harder to adjust, but why? Even though my husband is in the United States and in no military-related danger, he has been working from 5am ‘til 10pm most days. His training is extremely mentally-draining. It was hard for me to understand that; I keep forgetting that he is not superhuman… it is his fault though, he should stop acting like one most of the time. When he mentioned that this was as difficult to him as going through BUD/S was (BUD/S - Basic Underwater Demolition/Seal a.k.a. Hell on Earth), it is when it truly hit me. Man, was I a baby during the second month?! I seemed to be missing half of my brain and I needed his feedback on everything. I was driving us both crazy. Out of all the things I would ask him his feedback or direction on, I already knew what he was going to say and I already knew how to get the task done. Introspection is a bitch sometimes (sorry for the language).
Now why was I not a baby during the first or the third month of his non-deployment deployment? Not that I am an expert, but based on my experience during his first long trip (4 months), last year’s deployment (7 months), and his current training (3 months, one more to go), the first month is mostly dedicated to showing the world (yeah) that I am strong enough to deal with this. As childish as it sounds, I do think that is the case. I usually have about a 70% assurance that he will be going on a long trip by a certain month – a month prior. Therefore, I place it on my mind and begin to prepare for it emotionally and also mentally, by making sure his to-do list matches mine amongst other things. Now when he leaves, I am all motivated to show him how much of an amazing wife I am, and how lucky he is to have found me.
A month later – so what happened to the line of his to-do list to make sure that all the vehicles were prepared in case of an emergency? Was “putting more than a quarter of gas per car” not part of his idea of what “preparing a car in case of an emergency” is? So of course, after turning on the vehicles every other week to make sure that the batteries won’t drain, I accidentally (just humor me) ran out of gas. I forgot about it for a few weeks, then something big happened and I needed to move one of the cars. Here is how it went:
- Looking for a gas can in our humongous garage (texted him inquiring the whereabouts of said gas can)
- Didn’t know how to open the mouth of the can – child proof (texted him for instruction)
- The tip of the gas can funnel was too big for the car’s fuel opening (texted him for possible troubleshooting)
- The battery drained after two weeks of sitting (texted him to ask for the location of the jump cables)
- Jumped it and promptly freaked out when I realized I had to drive it to the gas station to add more gas before it would ran out again – I don’t know how to drive manual transmissions (texted him to complain about this being such a pain the ass)
- Miraculously arrived to the gas station without stalling or rolling back a hill (no text!)
- After leaving it running for a while and looking creepy for idling there for a long time, I turned it off and put some gas – it kept clicking after only 5 gallons (texted to communicate my baffling finding)
- Car was not turning on, waited for friend while telling the guy next to me about my car troubles (no text)
- Almost died, when the guy I was talking to for a few minutes, left the gas pump in his car and drove away with it (texted to communicate my near death experience)
- Jumped it, idled for a while and drove home without stalling. Parked it almost where I was supposed to park it at (texted to ask whether it is possible to push it back when in neutral. Yeah, this is how ridiculous I was)
- Tried to turn it back on just to check on the battery and nothing (texted husband to ask him what the problem could be, and to give him my theory that the new battery is most probably not the problem, but the alternator - 'cause I am suddenly a mechanic)
I am ready to slap myself as I am writing this! I can't subject anyone to this any longer, so long story short, after he told me to "Stop acting dumb and to be my independent and smart self" I snapped out of it and month three and the begging of month four have been nagging-free. Yay!
This might be just happening to me, not necessarily a military wife thing, but now that I see a pattern, I do need to work on eliminating it, or at least protecting him from the frightening second month.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Deployment Blues
It's been a while since my first post, but in case you are wondering, insecurity has not reared its ugly head since then (Yay!). What has actually reared its ugly head is our first deployment together (Wah, Wah). A lot of things have happened since he left that has made life very difficult (financial surprises - the bad kind and pesky neighbors). Nevertheless, it has helped us grow as a couple even if from afar. I do miss my husband, but I am an independent woman at heart and so it is not terribly hard. I've been keeping myself busy: Taking care of my dogs, hanging out with great friends, concerts (this weekend will be Lamb of God, Korn, Rob Zombie and more...), painting, watching lots of movies, reading lots of books, learning how to drive my motorcycle, etc., etc. I've also been lucky enough to have constant contact with my husband, but as I said earlier, the key is to continue to be strong and independent.
I've also had the chance to do a bit of introspection. To be honest, I thought that this was going to be harder (deployment), but in a way I am not so surprised. See, I think my husband and I choose well. I think being a military wife amongst many things bodes well for me, and my husband was a SEAL before he knew what that was, so all in all, lucky us.
I've also had the chance to do a bit of introspection. To be honest, I thought that this was going to be harder (deployment), but in a way I am not so surprised. See, I think my husband and I choose well. I think being a military wife amongst many things bodes well for me, and my husband was a SEAL before he knew what that was, so all in all, lucky us.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)