Welcome to Military Marriages on Monday’s.
On Monday’s, I am going to be devoting my day on the Marriage Issues of the Task Force.
This gives me a great opportunity to focus on my own marriage and to write an post each week on Military Messages.Â
So, today, we begin that series with a most obvious lesson.
Marriage is Hard Work
One of the simplest lessons to learn about when we speak of marriage is that “Marriage is Hard Work”.
We seem to think that once that we have gotten to the altar, the truly hard work was done. This couldn’t be farther from the truth.
Within the first few weeks of marriage, we begin to rest and relax. We let our guard down and expose that side of ourselves that we hid from our partner until he/she said “I do.” It is then that we become acquainted with the fact that you did marry another person, with emotions, fears, likes and dislike, and expectations just like anyone else.
We then have a choice to make. Are we going to live in conflict or are we going to get along?
While we are deployed it is easy to let our marriages lie dormant. It is easy to think that they could just fly on autopilot and everybody will land safely at the end. However, this stagnation is precisely what is doing damage to your relationship.
Marriage is hard work. A deployed marriage is hard work—in some ways harder because of the inconveniences that we deal with everyday—on both sides of the ocean.
So I ask you; what are you doing to develop your marriage while the Soldiers are in Iraq? Are you simply allowing it to run its course? Or are you taking positive measures to move your marriage forward?
Tai-Tai says
My Dad was in the service when I was a child and he was posted in Libya for 18 months we were supposed to go with him but no housing for the family was available. As a young child I remember we all looked forward to hearing from dad on the infrequent phone calls and those calls had a lot of static and other voices on it as well. We also sent packages and letters to Dad. It must have been hard for both of my parents to be away from each other in those days when communication was not as good as it is today.
We currently live away from our family in the states and the communication is so much better with email and chat cameras too. Our young son chat’s with his older sister who is in the states at University and he really enjoys being able to see her on the computer when they chat. It is really great that we can all stay in contact with so much great technology these days.
It is hard being away from family and spouses at any time but it is wonderful that we can be in contact more now.
Mom and Dad celebrate their 45 year anniversary this year, so whatever they did worked.
God bless you and your family.
Stephanie says
Your message applies to a much wider audience! I know that I avoid difficult issues with my husband until they become huge monsters that take over. However, I did notice last week, while M was in Japan, that we communicated well because we made the effort. We didn’t take for granted that one of us was in the other room and we could talk whenever we wanted to. We wrote thoughtful messages to each other, and told each other in each message that we missed the other. I hope to continue this communication in person.