Fast forward about two years later and he was off to deployment number three. This is where those other typical issues for all marriages came in loud and clear and started eroding our marriage. Bad communication, anger, disappointments, disagreements, dissatisfaction, power struggles, under appreciating, laziness…all of those things did damage to us. Trying to work on a relationship when a significant other is thousands of miles away fighting a war did not work, not for us at least. I still loved him, he still loved me, but there was a great disconnect, and I’m not just talking about the distance. We decided we would wait until he was home to work it out.
You all are familiar with that military waiting game right?
Homecoming was typical, until the joy of it ran out. We could no longer ignore the problems we discovered when we were apart. So we began the process of falling in love again for the third time. But first, we fell out of love. I have never felt so confused about anything in my life. He debated moving out and I was not ready for that until one day I experienced so much anger…I was ready, and told him he needed to leave. I think when I said that out loud he realized what would be lost. There were these moments I knew for sure we were done, there was no going forward… at least not together. We had hit rock bottom. So, I asked myself deep, real questions and he did the same.
Was there still love? Did we get it wrong in the first place? Have we changed too much to still be in love?
You know what they say, when you hit rock bottom… you can only go up. There were days, moments, snip-its of who we used to be… and there was hope. It has not been easy and progress can be slow. And I had to get real about some issues. I could no longer be pointing fingers! I could not play the blame game, I could not say it was all him or that it was the Army’s fault. I owned the things I did less than perfectly, and I accepted the fact that we had both changed. We were no longer the loved crazed kids who had all the energy in the world to take on the world. We were older, worn down, different, multi-faceted individuals who both changed over the last fourteen years. He let me know what he was unhappy with and I put him on notice of what I was not happy with as well.
Real quick, before I put my pointing finger down, I want to make one thing clear. My husband is a very different man than the one I married. When we met he was fun, happy, content, determined, energized, giving, and optimistic. Since then his outlook on life, his truths, his experiences have left him jaded, angry, discontent and most of all powerless. Yes, war has changed him, but little by little his true self is revealed.
So what did we do to go up?
We talked. A LOT. We literally stayed up to the wee hours of the night, functioning on very little sleep, because we never fought or discussed these things in front of the kids. When I say fought I really mean discussed. What we did was work at it, one day at a time. For all the talking we did I think we may have been catching up on all the time spent apart, and missed conversations that never had the opportunity to come to fruition. I’m talking about a deployment overseas right now, but even without three of those, he was always traveling and spent months away. We made our relationship a PRIORITY (something very hard to do when you’re married with children) and looked outwardly to bring satisfaction to our significant other rather than to our self. And so far it is working.
We are lucky that at this point our kids are old enough to watch their little brother while mom and dad go out on a date. We talk about EVERYTHING and address issues IMMEDIATELY instead of letting them stew and fester inside of us. I have made compromises for him and he has done the same for me. We compliment, appreciate and DO NOT take for granted the things that are good. We are still a work in progress but we are also STILL in love with one another.
