Some male spouses also went through bouts of loneliness and depression, that non-military spouses sometimes have a hard time understanding.
There has been drinking involved, but there have also been goals set and achieved. You find out things that will make the next deployment a bit easier, or so you hope.
Loneliness seems to be the main issue when it comes to coping with deployment, especially when you have kids. Sure there is FaceTime and email, but when Drew was able to FaceTime with his wife on deployment, it turned out to be a “kids yelling at the iPad” session.
Some of the dads even said that they would have someone watch the kids so that they could have some alone time- which ranged from a long gym sessions, a quiet movie on Netflix or even taking a nap. They needed to make time for themselves and during that time, they did whatever they wanted to do.
When it came to support from their wives command, it was hit or miss. One male military spouse said that a month before his wife was to come home, the key spouse called him and left a voicemail asking how things were going. The spouse said there was a lawn mowing service, “But you probably don’t want that”, and if he needed anything to go ahead and browse the “wives….er spouses website”. He was so frustrated that he didn’t return the call.
Another male military spouse had somewhat of the same experience, but the second deployment was much better when it came to support from her command. Drew ended up finding the Macho Spouse website and Dave Etter’s Male Military Spouse Radio Show and both of those helped him get through things.
Another male spouse had a rough first deployment with his wife’s command, but the second deployment went much better and he even hosted a spouse club event at his house.
It might take us a while to adjust to our wive’s being gone, but we will come around. I am sure female spouses go through a similar experience.
All of us are going to go through one of the stages of deployment. As I mentioned in June’s article, will you be the one that reaches out to a fellow spouse whose husband or wife is deployed or will you hope someone else does?
Even a simple “how are you doing” or another gesture of kindness will let them know that you are there and if there is anything they need, they can ask–especially if you have been through a deployment and know what they are going through.
At the end of the day, we are one big military family looking out for one another.
