Day 11: How To Piss Of A Military Spouse

Don’t you watch the news? No! They don’t get to come home for any of these things. Please don’t ask again.

5. “What are you going to do to keep yourself busy while he’s gone?”
Short answer: Try to keep my sanity.

Maybe there’s a military wife out there who gets bored when her husband leaves, but I have yet to meet her. For the rest of us, those with and without children, we find ourselves having to be two people. That keeps us plenty busy. We do get lonely, but we don’t get bored, and drinking massive amounts of wine always helps keep me busy.

6. “How much longer does he have until he can get out?”
This one is annoying to many of us whether our husbands are deployed or not. Many of our husbands aren’t counting down the days until they “can get out”. Many of them keep signing back up again and again because they actually love what they do or they VOLUNTEER AGAIN and AGAIN to deploy because there is work that needs to be done.

7. “This deployment shouldn’t be so bad, now that you’re used to it.”
Sure, we do learn coping skills and its true the more deployments you’ve gone through, the easier dealing with it becomes. And we figure out ways to make life go smoother while the guys are gone. But it never gets “easy” and the bullets and bombs don’t skip over our guys just because they’ve been there before. The worry never goes away.

8. “My husband had to go to Europe for business once for three weeks. I totally know what you’re going through.”
This one is similar to number two. Do not equate your husband’s three week trip to London/Omaha/Tokyo/etc. with a 12-15 month or more deployment to a war zone. Aside from the obvious time difference, nobody shot at your husband or tried to blow him up with an I.E.D., your husband could call home pretty much any time he wanted to, he flew comfortably on a commercial plane, slept between crisp white sheets and ate well. There is no comparison.

*we know it’s meant with the best of intentions but it’s soooooo frustrating. And this isn’t to say that Y friend with husband/loved one away on business misses them any LESS, just that that is the ONLY similarity. There’s no fear for their daily safety, health, and wellbeing. I have a friend who’s Fiance is working in the far east, he’s been there for a very long time, and I totally Sympathize with her.

9. “Wow you must miss him?”
This one also gets another big “duh”. Of course we miss our men. There are some wives who do not and they’re now divorced.

10. “Where is he exactly? Where is that?”
I don’t expect non-military folks to be able to find Anbar Province on a map, but they should know by now that it’s in Iraq. Likewise, know that Kabul and Kandahar are in Afghanistan.

11. “Well, he signed up for it, so it’s his own fault whatever happens over there.
Yes, ignorant, he did sign up. Each and every day he protects your right to make stupid comments like that. He didn’t sign up and ask to be hit by anything, he signed up to protect his country. Oh, and by the way, he asked me to tell you that “You’re welcome.”

12. “Don’t you miss sex! I couldn’t do it!”
hmmm, no I don’t miss sex. I’m a robot. seriously…military spouses learn quickly that our relationships must be founded on something greater than sex. We learn to appreciate the important things, like simply hearing their voices, seeing their faces, being able to have dinner together every night. And the hard truth is, most relationships probably couldn’t withstand 12 months of sex deprivation.

13. “Well in my opinion…..”
Stop right there. Yo, I didn’t ask for you your personal political opinions. Hey, I love a heated political debate, but not in the grocery store, not in Jamba Juice, not at Nordstrom, not in a bar when I’m out with my girls trying to forget the war, and CERTAINLY NOT AT WORK. We tell co-workers about deployments so when we have to spend lunch hours running our butts off doing errands and taking care of the house, dog, and kids, they have an understanding. We do not tell co-workers and colleagues because we are giving an invitation to ramble about politics or because we so eagerly want to hear how much they hate the President, esp. while we’re trying to heat up our lean cuisines in the crappy office microwaves.

last but not least….

14. “OH, that’s horrible…I’m so sorry!”
He’s doing his job and he’s a badass. Don’t be sorry. Be appreciative and please take a moment out of your comfortable American lives to realize that our soldiers fight the wars abroad so those wars stay abroad.

And I almost completely forgot, I need to ADD #15…thanks Sherry for reminding me!

15. “You knew what you were in for when you married him!”

A big screw you on this one!  Some might have, and to a point we expect separations and bureaucratic BS. We don’t “expect” wars, alot of spouses were married to their soldiers during peace time. We actually hope they don’t come up. But they do. And when they do, we figure out how to handle it. And this is a very personal thing for ME. Because I married a CIVILIAN! I didn’t know when I got married that nine years later my husband was going to enlist. I am not, nor will I ever BE Psychic, so don’t EVEN go there. Now, I will say, when he DID enlist, I knew there would be deployments, because it was post 9/11. But not all these guys joined during war time, not all MOS (jobs) deploy to combat zones, or at all, so there are some spouses that do not in fact know what they’re getting into. We did vow for better or worse, but we reserve the right to bitch about the “worse” without getting this thrown in our faces.

And knowing what could happen, and knowing what it is going to be like when it does happen are two totally different things.