“I can hit a kid in the chest with a PBJ, going 70, from the front seat of a minivan without taking my eyes off the road. If that counts as a new skill, I acquired it because of deployment.”- Drew Driscoll
Deployment- it’s either going to happen, it’s happening right now or it has happened.
For me, it’s going to happen.
When will it happen? No clue, but when the Navy calls for her, we will be ready!
We think.
No wait, we WILL be ready!
We knew that by joining the military that the day will come when she needs to deploy. We have talked about it and what I will do while she is gone and what she will do as well.
She wants me to go “do things”. She doesn’t want me to sit at home and wait for her to return. There was a point at our first duty station where we thought that she would deploy, so I was making some plans for things to do. One of the things I was seriously thinking of doing was going to either Edinburg, Scotland or Dublin, Ireland and running one of the Rock and Roll half-marathons.
Why not right?! I still might do that if and when her time comes to deploy.
As male military spouses, we go through the same things as female military spouses do when it comes to deployment.
How we do things will differ, but will be mostly the same, with a touch of “masculinity”.
Although my wife hasn’t deployed yet, we have gone through multiple TAD assignments. Each one is getting a bit easier for me and I am using this as “training” for when she does deploy.
For starters, I develop a routine so that I can find a rhythm that works for me. I usually pick up some shifts at work, I workout more than usual and I make a list of things that need to get done around the house. My routine is basic, yet simple enough that I can break away if she gets a chance to call and talk.
Since I have yet to experience a deployment, I asked my fellow male military spouses what they went through when their wives deployed. We also don’t have kids so I wanted to know how they handled that.
One male military spouse, Drew Driscoll, said that they got all their financial documents in order, they talked about deployment and what the other was going to do. And since they have kids, they took a trip to Disney before his wife deployed, because God forbid if something was to happen to their mom, he wanted any memory they had of their mom to be there.
Everyone recommends to get your WILL updated and POA as well so that if we have to make some financial decisions, we can.
Others suggested that you stay busy and set goals that you can work toward. One male spouse moved back home with his parents and bought a project car to work on with his dad.
