3) You could wear a black trash bag and heels to homecoming. Honestly, he’s not going to care.
Okay, before we go any further, please don’t wear all this get-up. The internet is sometimes a cruel place, and there is a camera phone around every corner. So please don’t be the “Homecoming Trash Bag Girl” that goes viral on Facebook… your kids will thank you one day. But the point is, after months of being apart, your sweetheart really doesn’t care what you wear.
They just want to see you.
Now, that’s not going to stop you or me or anyone else from spending countless days fretting over the perfect outfit, cruising Pinterest for the perfect hairstyle, or obsessing over how good our legs look in 20 different pairs of heels. Just don’t get hurt if your spouse is so glad to be home that they don’t notice your manicure. And for our male spouses out there, I have no idea if you all worry about this as much as we do. But, inquiring minds want to know…please share!
2) Homecoming is the hardest part of any deployment.
This isn’t the case for everyone, but it has proven true in my experience. For some people, readjusting to your spouse at home can be hard, and there can be a lot of guilt for those who struggle with it. You may think “I should just be so grateful that they are home, we shouldn’t be having any problems.”
Or, “There are people who still don’t have their loved ones home, I don’t have the right to be aggravated by him, or not be able to cherish every moment of being re-united.” You may assume that things should just fall back into place, like they were before he or she left. It took me a long time to get past that expectation and the guilt.
But I realized that, like it or not, my husband and I had both changed. We had both been forced to tackle new challenges, or situations. We had new experiences, and we were not able to physically share those experiences with each other. It was not reasonable to expect either one of us to just turn back the clock and go back to “normal.”
It would take some time to learn about these changes, adjust to them, and see how they fit into our life moving forward. Don’t get me wrong, these changes are, for the most part positive. But they are changes, and they take some time to get used to. Give yourself that time.
1) While hard, homecomings can also be a chance to fall in love with your spouse…all over again.
There are plenty of things to complain and be upset about when you are married to the military. Certainly “multiple deployments” is high on that list. Everyone needs to vent, scream, and cry on occasion. But at some point you have to look for a positive.
For me, that positive has been falling in love with my husband over and over again, thanks to the many separations we have experienced. With each deployment, we improve our communication skills through letters and emails. Every time he’s at a lengthy training exercise, I am reminded of all the things I love the most about him, which is sometimes hard when we are in our daily grind.
And even when he is just gone for the night because of duty… my heart really does grow fonder due to absence.
Those are the things I wish I knew as I waited for my husband to get off that bus almost 10 years ago. Homecomings have honestly been more of a challenge than I ever imagined… but they can be a positive part of military life, even if they don’t live up to a Hollywood version meant for the big screen.
Be flexible, keep your expectations in check, communicate with your spouse, and ask for help if you don’t feel like you and your spouse are adjusting well.
