Article on Times Online - Keeping love alive in service marriages

[mrsmcdreamy]

Saw this on times online and thought some of you might find it interesting...

www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/relationships/article5561924.ece

if the link doesn't work, just search for 'army wife' on the homepage.

Some good points.

I can see why marriages are failing, its hard on both sides.

I HATE the months leading up to the deployment, DH was told he would be alongside all year with a ship in refit, the other week he picked up his Iraq medal for last year and gets told he's got another 6 months out there a day later! I am fuming and we are already arguing, he's not going until August, the worst bit is he won't get harmony time 3 months in, non of the ships (small ones anyway, not sure about the big ones) out there have been, just rotating the crews every 6 months. It is shit for everyone.

When hes away i get into a rountine, but i have major blips and have atleast one major melt down.

We both have unrealistic ideas of what will happen when he gets home, causing more arguments, he expects sex 32 times a day and i expect 2 weeks away from the DC .

So all in all, it's pretty shit, but hey "we knew what we were getting into when we married into the forces" Grr.

4 years left, 4 years left, 4 years left.

Yeah but we didn't really know what we were getting into, did we? You can try to prepare yourself and rationalise everything, but it still doesn't actually prepare you for anything. TBH I still have no idea what I am getting/have got into!

I think I like being in control of my life too much!

Yes, when we got married we knew we were marrying a service person, but for those who married pre-2001, no-one expected things to get as bad as all this did they?

Have you read the 7 stages of seperation book? It think it's a Navy publication, but it's so true, and just realising that it's all stages, and has a cycle to run does help a bit. Strangely.

Just realised that a synopsis of the 7 stages is at the end of the article.

While I do think that there has to be help for spouses and families, I have seen it go the wrong way - in some bases in Australia there is a real culture of 'woe is me, I can't cope' among some wives - and not just for deployments, but even if their OH goes out bush for two weeks! There is even a course called in Darwin called 'Surviving Deployment' - and it is for the spouses, not those being deployed! I actually had a bit of a tantrum about that in the mess one day, saying I thought it was rather sexist to think that women couldn't survive their husbands being away, and that it was developing a very negative culture. There are some women (and it is always women, alas) that as soon as they get involved with a guy in the Army get inculcated into this mentality, so when it comes for him to leave they fall to pieces because that is what they expect they have to do.
And in Australia we really had hardly any Army people go anywhere before Timor in 1999, so I think it has been even more of a shock there (though for all the talk in Australia of 'a high operational tempo' it is not nearly as bad as here or definitely not the USA).
I know it is hard - 6 weeks after I moved in with my then boyfriend, now husband, he disappeared on Australia's first major deployment since Vietnam. There was no internet, just one satellite phone call per week, usually taken at 4 am in the morning. I didn't know when he was coming back.
When he was deployed to Aceh it was with less than 72 hours notice (due to the Boxing Day Tsunami). We were meant to be moving house less than a week after he left, and I had a four month old. Yes, it was bloody hard, but you get through. Was there a period of adjustment when he got back? Of course, but so it is for miners who work in fly-in fly-out jobs, and other professions.
Our neighbour was a bit the opposite - her husband was Special Forces and she was quite used to him being away. Now he had a 'regular' posting and was home all the time she was despairing at having him under her feet all the time
Sorry for the long post, and going a bit OT, but this is something I feel very strongly about and it will be interesting to contrast the attitudes and opinions now I am in the UK. But I do think that sometimes we (the Defence Community) can be our own worse enemy when it comes to supporting ourselves.

I was in the RAF, and am now out and my DP is still in the RAF. I 'should know better' as I was in and understand what forces life involves. HOWEVER, try explaining that to me at 3am, being sick, with 2 YO DD crying with virus. DP camping out with his job in the highlands, on a tree hugging session, and they didn't want him to come off the mountain. At 7 months pregnant, you can always tell if your DP/DH boss is a family man - if not, they don't care!!
I like to rant about this, as I feel passionately. If DP was Gay, his bosses wouldn't dare oppose his 'home' time.
I do get on with it, and I think it has just been a couple of bad weeks, linked to lack of support my DP can offer.
We have found it difficult at times, as his job takes him away most months, but then again, that is 'life in a blue suit!!'
Grumble over with!!

herbie - my thoughts exactly. Yet again, the UK media think there is only one branch of the Armed Forces! I did in fact contact the BBC last night because of the bottom sentence in this article

Anyway, in repsonse to the OP, I married 15 years ago. DH ahd just come back from a tour of NI. We had only been married a few years when Bosnia/Kosovo kicked off, and its been going downhill since then - the situations they are put in I mean, not the marriage.
We were always lucky as I think the RAF can be a bit more understanding when it comes to families.

Salty - It says British forces....have they changed it??

ooh, they have changed it, where is says "British forces" now, earlier it said "The Army".
Someone must have read my complaint after all!

Brilliant!! Well done you!

If we all keep on at them, maybe they will realise, and automatically say "Armed forces" instead of "Army"