Being Different Has Its Advantages.

So, as you may or may not know, my husband is deployed for the first time in almost 4 years.  The last deployment he had was right after we started dating.  Since being married, he has been home.  Not always able to travel with me, but at least he was home.  The moving process had us together nearly 24/7 for 2 full months, mostly in a car and hotel rooms.  Overall, we dealt pretty well with all that extreme togetherness, and now we get to deal with separation.  Back-to-back.  No middle ground here!  Yet somehow, we don't have much of a problem with adjusting.

Don't get me wrong.  I'm not *happy* that my husband is gone.  I wouldn't chose it if given the choice.  But at the same time, it doesn't exactly bother me either.  I'm not one of those wives that focuses on missing my husband when he isn't home.  It just... is.  I'm not one of those wives who gets sad because her husband is gone. I'm the kind that gets emotional and get happy-teary-eyes cause I am just so thrilled to have such a great husband at all.  I don't understand when my husband is gone and people ask how I'm dealing with it.  Should I be having a hard time?  I just don't see what the big deal is.  I have lived alone.  Before being married I had as many (if not more) long distance relationships as not.  I am perfectly capable of living a fulfilling life without my husband around.  Am I looking forward to him coming home?  Of course!  I wouldn't have married him if I didn't like having him around.  But his presence isn't the end-all-be-all.

I am sure it would be different if we had kids, it would be far more stressful having more to do without him home to help but since we don't plan to have kids that's not a concern besides the fact that single moms do it every day anyways.  It would also be different if he were in a different branch with more dangerous deployments.  But if we think about it, we are pretty spoiled as a culture.  No one seems to understand "how do they do it?" like being apart is the end of the world.  Because here we are fortunate enough for the norm to be living together with our family.  In other countries, that's not always the case.  Think about one of the common immigration stories- someone moves to another country to find work, to send money home to their family or to save enough to bring their family to be with them.  People who work on cruise ships, many of them are married and have children.

Being apart isn't great, but it's not horrible either.  I know I am in the minority.  Most couples, both military and civilian, really don't like being apart for more than a day or two.  Some not even that long.  Me, it doesn't entirely phase me.  So I guess I am lucky, this is one of the times where being different works in my favor.

~Katy