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Deployment and Marriage
stavesacre
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I want to preface this with a few things, one I love my wife. I have been with her for nine years, 5 of which we have been married. Two, I love my job. I am a Marine, currently serving in Iraq. I do data work, so I'm not in the harshest places, but I deal with much of the same things that everyone experiances out here, heat, frustration and anxiety moving from place to place on convoys.
This is my third deployement, second to Iraq. We've been married for all three. I dont ever really have a problem with leaving, im pretty self sufficient and mind myself well. But my wife, hates being alone. Its made her sick, and its made her not act like herself. Shes never happy when I am gone. I believe, fully, that she loves me. But she has told me, many a time, that she will not do another deployment. She will get a divorce if it came to that.
Now, I am more than willing to get out of the Military, and I put that option up before her my last enlistment, but we both decided to stay in. Now this deployment is really killing her, and us. My question, my concern is that she will always have this problem. I know that my job, civilian or not, will take me away no matter what I do. Maybe not as severely as this one, but I know it will. And it bothers me that she doesn't have the same level of commitment that I do, to stay through something like this.
Is it wrong of me to think that for her own sake that we might be better off not together? As in, I want her to be happy, and I feel that since I don't fit the bill enough for her to want to stay through a deployment that maybe she would be happier with someone else.
I want her to be happy, even if that means not with me.
Should I give her that option? Tell her how I feel about the whole thing and see what happens?
I know this might sound a little odd, but I really jsut want the best for her. And I wanted an outside opinion.
This is my third deployement, second to Iraq. We've been married for all three. I dont ever really have a problem with leaving, im pretty self sufficient and mind myself well. But my wife, hates being alone. Its made her sick, and its made her not act like herself. Shes never happy when I am gone. I believe, fully, that she loves me. But she has told me, many a time, that she will not do another deployment. She will get a divorce if it came to that.
Now, I am more than willing to get out of the Military, and I put that option up before her my last enlistment, but we both decided to stay in. Now this deployment is really killing her, and us. My question, my concern is that she will always have this problem. I know that my job, civilian or not, will take me away no matter what I do. Maybe not as severely as this one, but I know it will. And it bothers me that she doesn't have the same level of commitment that I do, to stay through something like this.
Is it wrong of me to think that for her own sake that we might be better off not together? As in, I want her to be happy, and I feel that since I don't fit the bill enough for her to want to stay through a deployment that maybe she would be happier with someone else.
I want her to be happy, even if that means not with me.
Should I give her that option? Tell her how I feel about the whole thing and see what happens?
I know this might sound a little odd, but I really jsut want the best for her. And I wanted an outside opinion.
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Also, consider getting her into a new hobby, it could help her get her mind off the loneliness.
This is blind advice; I have no marriage experience.
Best of luck, mate.
I understand your frustration. You have answered your own question, if she can't handle the heat, let her get out of the kitchen.
Call me crazy, but it doesn't really sound like you want to be with your wife. After all, you did put your career in front of her. I don't think it is selfish to request that the person you marry be there for you. I understand that this happens to every married enlisted man, but it still seems like a decision that you made against her wishes, especially if this is the third time. Now I know serving the country is important, but I think it is a bit selfish of you to get married and then take off.
And I'm making an assumption about deployment being mandatory. I don't think there is a get-out-of-jail-free card for it.
I know that tone is horribly hard to read over text but believe me when I say that I desperately love this woman. We've been together for a long time, and trust me, if I had wanted to leave her for my own selfish reasons I would have on a couple of occasions. But I wanted to work through those things. As well, we both sat down and talked about my re-enlisting, and would never have done it without her approval. That of course, was when I wasnt staring at a year long deployment (my first two were 7 months a piece). Like I said before, tone is hard to read in text I put these words down as a plea, not with anger or frustration. I just want her to be happy.
There are some people who do not handle long distance relationships well. I am one of them, and it sounds like your wife might be too. She wants the companionship of the man she married, and no amount of cats or dogs is going to replace that. There are plenty of jobs without travel requirements. You almost sound like you're looking for a rationalization for leaving her.
[Edit]: You posted that as I was replying, so I apologize for any redundancy
In general, being deployed is stressful enough, but doing it with a wife back home can be even worse. Would daily phone calls help her? I was on TQ and the MWR tent had a bunch of VOIP phones (cheap stuff too, was $25 for 10 hours of talk time) that had good connections. The first 2 months I spent in Iraq my girlfriend had a call from me every morning. Sure, she turned out to be a cheating whore, but thats not the point.
I don't think that a divorce would make her happy, but I think in her mind she thinks that throwing down that gauntlet will somehow keep you from going. If shes going to be unhappy without you, she'd just be unhappy even longer with a divorce.
And regarding the further deployments, how long until you can PCS/PCA? You might wanna try to talk to your monitor and see if you can't snag a nice billet somewhere non-deployable for a bit.
What unit are you with anyways? I had a decent amount of friends in data.
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However, I have great respect for those who do sign up for the military, either combat or support, and to me, it doesn't sound like something one could do without the support of their significant other. It's not just a job, but a commitment, just as to a slightly lesser extent, is being a cop or FF (minus the travel).
I don't know if it's a binary situation, but your wife has to understand it's what you do, and if she doesn't, I don't know what to suggest.
First, I don't think ending a healthy, loving relationship is the right option here. You want what's best for her, and dissolving a marriage hardly seems like the right choice.
I've worked with the military quite a bit, namely the Navy. I know there are programs like Marine Corps Community Services (MCCS) to help. They will be able to give her information about local support groups, and let her know about upcoming events. I would suggest she get to know some other family members from your unit too, as I doubt you're the only one in your unit who is undergoing the kind of stress you mention. Sharing the burden with others can help dull the pain of a loved one's deployment. She may also want to look in to some MWR programs as well (The M does stand for Morale after all).
Without a doubt being the wife (or husband) of a Marine is a tough damn job. She's stuck with you through three deployments - if that's not true love, I don't know what is. You might end up leaving The Corp one day, as you discussed. Until then, she's going to have to learn how to cope with your career. I hope you can reach a happy medium, for the sake of your relationship.
Keep your head down out there, stay safe.
Both my brothers-in-law were married before they went into OCS and their marriages have been strained because of it. I think a lot of people feel it's an unavoidable consequence of the situation. Some women are better at dealing with this, but most will go nuts at some point.
I hear that Marines have it a little better than Army guys in that they're not getting deployed for such long periods; why can't you just make it through this last deployment and come home? Why are you so sure that your civilian job will take you away for long periods? Compared with staying in active duty, your options are infinite once you come home. Surely you'd be better equipped to work something out with your wife if you came home?
I'm with RCT-2 HQ Co, Semper Fi!
I really appreciate the advice, and comments. I decided to bite the bullet and tell her how I felt, and we are talking as I type. I'm hoping that it all works out, at least until the rest of this deployment is over. Then I am shooting for something with a bit of down time. I think we both can agree to that for the rest of this enlistment.
Once again, thanks.
For the health of your relationship, you're probably going to have to choose whether you like being in the army more, or being with your wife more.
I personally think that that's what it's going to boil down to.
I am a corporal in the Army, and returned from a 14 month deployment in November. I met my girlfriend while deployed (she's also a Soldier), and the two of us have been together since. Almost a year and a half now... Once we returned to the States, she was sent to the east coast for school, and I was sent to the west coast for my own schooling. Maintaining, and growing, a relationship is something that I am all too familiar with.
There have been some great advice given here, but perhaps the biggest that I have to give, is that you need to tell her over and over again that you are doing this for her, and for the both of you. Tell her repeatedly all of the positive things that came about because of your service, and if you are planning for a family together (or if you have one already) say again how much good your service does for all of that.
Good luck and God speed out there, and come home safe.
CPL Hermida
how can he decide that this one will be "the last one"? can you just quit the army, or are you stuck for a set time period?
edit: my apologies for my ignorance, but my only experience with Army is through AD and other assorted media.
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For anyone interested, my wife and I talked it over, and are going to keep pushing through this deployment (I should be out of here in December) I have two weeks of R&R in about 20 days which will help out alot I imagine.
From there, not sure. We're going to have to sit down and talk pretty hard about what to do. But we were planning on going to Japan, which has a drastically different deployment cycle (1 month deployed, 2 months at home). Thats all just depending on what she feels she wants. Bottom line is that I'm not going to put her through another year long seperation again. I dont think she's kidding anymore when she says she'll break one of my legs so I don't go.
Is she selfish for wanting you around? To some degree, yes, but I feel like expecting a marriage to involve two people who spend the bulk of their time together is not at all unreasonable.
I've seen a few marriages break up, or nearly do so because one person (for whatever reason) moved somewhere else, and was essentially "seperating" from their spouse without going through the formalities. It sounds to me like despite your feelings about her, that she's only particularly important when she (and your marriage) don't interfere with things you'd rather be doing, but maybe I'm wrong.
I know my mother-in-law has often commented at how alone she felt when her husband (my father-in-law) was deployed early in their marriage, because it felt like he clearly was more interested in his own thing than in their relationship, which she felt was the most important thing in both their lives (or should have been)
Regardless of how things go, please do not get your wife pregnant and then continue to serve, because I can't think of anything more selfish and irresponsible.
I'm not married, but I am in the military (almost seven years now) and I've witness my fair share of people in marital distress. If you value your marriage, then you need to get out. IMO, she was probably saying yes and hoping you wouldn't. Women don't always say what they mean. You have to read their minds. You have to decide what is more important, your wife or your job. If she'd had as much difficulty as you say then you're lucky she has stayed with you this long. I'm sure you know that a lot of soldiers, marines and etc return home to find their spouse has sold everything and left town...
As far as I'm concerned, every deployment is optional. No one is forced to sign up.
There are a lot of factors involved with reenlisting, and frankly we have no business getting into that, all we know is she said go ahead and reenlist. Yes, women do say yes and mean no sometimes, but if they do that on such an important decision, they are a damned fool. If theres an important decision to be made, you say your mind so you get the best possible outcome.
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Agreed. The whole thing is a sticky situation, but I think it should at least be clear by now that re-enlisting *AGAIN* is a bad idea for his marriage.
Also, given the contractual nature (although different sorts of contracts) of both marriage and military service, it's best to get that shit worked out well in advance, rather than winging it and hoping to be able to honor both at once.
So, I tell the fiancée the good news... And she's ecstatic that I made it, but became very sad when I told her that I was considering it. We fought about it for several weeks (not little baby fights, big screaming fights) until finally we decided it would put far too much strain on our relationship of for me to consider. I mean, being in DCI has been a dream of mine since I was fourteen, but I love my soon-to-be wife more than anything and if that is something that I need to give up to be with her I will do it. And I know in a similar situation, she would do the same for me.
Now, if there is anyway you can get out of being deployed, really think about it. Obviously you care about this woman. Is a high-stress recruiting job where you get to see your wife worse than being deployed in a high-stress situation where you don't? (If these are readily available, I have no idea.)
So yea, there are outs.
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