The “Romance” of Military Life

Lately it seems that I continue to read more and more about people romanticizing the Military life, especially deployments. My reply to this is “WHAT?“

My problem is with the people who choose to believe, that in becoming a member of the military family, they are going to be living the “perfect” or Fairy Tale life. I can admit that in the past, while my husband and I were dating, I even had these thoughts. The excitement of travel to unseen places and the “romantic” homecomings seemed so wonderful. The issue is that people forget the realities of what they are going to be facing.

It is true that our reunions and homecomings may seem overly sweet. Of course there are lots of hugs, smiles, and tears! What people tend to forget is that we have spent months upon months apart from our loved ones. These months of separation due to deployments and missions are anything but romantic. We endure the pain of dealing with lack of communication & intimacy, becoming single parents, and the running of our households all on our own.

The typical military couple spends more time apart than we do together. Divorces within the military communities have continued to rise since the attacks on September 11th, 2001.

Do not get me wrong, I am not criticizing living the military life.
I, myself, love my life. I can honestly say that my husband’s choice to re-enlist was one of the best things that could have ever happened to our marriage and family. While there may be issues, this lifestyle suits us; BUT it is not for everyone!

Reprinted with Permission Via Jessica

Support

Military wives are some of the most patriotic Americans that exist. Everyone has their opinion as to what military branch is the best, and their opinion will not change. The problem with the most patriotic Americans is that they are so proud of the men and women who fight for our freedom; they don’t stop to realize supporting wives and families of military personnel is important too.

Wife, fiancé, girlfriend… at the end of the day, they are all equal. Each branch contributes to America’s freedom and each wife, fiancé and girlfriend supports their man and country.

I am a Marine wife, for the following points I will refer to the Marine Corps, although, if you replace Marine with any other branch, it all means the same. I am not solely focusing on one branch, but using the branch I am most familiar.

Support From Significant Other
Whether you are a girlfriend, fiancé or wife of a Marine, you matter. It should not matter where you are in your relationship and how long you have been dating your Marine, all that should matter is that you support him, you are by his side and you do your best to understand his job and the Corps. Sadly, this usually isn’t the case. This is my experience, in a brief summary:

The girlfriend stage:
I started dating my husband when he was a PFC, when they are that young, everyone around you tends to be a PFC or somewhere near that rank and age range, I didn’t really encounter any problems in that stage of his career, except for the fact that I didn’t live in the same state as him, I was going to college at a university. I think education is very important, but as a PFC’s girlfriend, I was not always accepted either because we weren’t married yet, I wasn’t pregnant and I didn’t live near him. Fine, don’t accept me for following my goals and dreams in life; I’m perfectly okay with that! I was just a girlfriend until my husband was a Sergeant, during all the years of being a girlfriend, he did not deploy, I didn’t know what I had coming my way.

The fiancé stage:
When my husband found out that he was deploying, I was still just the girlfriend, shortly after we got engaged. When I was just the girlfriend, I did not receive emails, acknowledgement or any sort of communication about the upcoming deployment from other wives, as I should have. Once I became his fiancé, I was excited, I thought, maybe, the wives on his team would finally accept me, because I was almost a Marine wife. That was not the case at all. Now I was just the fiancé, the one who was almost married, but not, so I wasn’t accepted in the ring of Marine wives. That deployment was a lonely deployment. My, at the time, fiancé was in Iraq for the first time, I was finishing college, planning our wedding and worrying constantly, thank God for my amazing friends and family that I had to lean on!

The wife stage:
Finally! We got married after his homecoming from Iraq, I was finally a Marine wife, thinking I would finally be accepted, no more drama, no more being looked down upon, I was finally an official Marine Corps spouse! Moving to California was great, I was excited to live in gorgeous Oceanside and get to know the wives! Again, not the case. Now that I’m a Marine wife, that is now not good enough, even though I am one of the few who has life goals and dreams, I’m following them and I have a college education and plan on working instead of staying at home and being lazy, spending my husband’s hard earned money. All that is not good enough, because, now I’m the only wife on the team who does not have kids. My husband and I are the youngest, and we are not parents. I will add to this saga when I become a parent, who knows what is next.

Disclaimer: In no way, what so ever, am I cutting down EVERY Marine wife in the Corps and that I have ever met, but this is usually the way it goes, especially before deployments, at the oh-so-fun mandatory family fun days! It’s so sad there is such high support for our men, but because a wife’s husband is a lower rank, or she doesn’t have kids, or live on base, she is the black sheep. What happened to Semper Fi? Honor, Courage and Commitment? A lot of female significant others have a lot of thinking to do. Respect everyone, not just your husband.

The moral of the story is: all significant others of military personnel need to be treated equally. These types of attitudes and hatred actions usually occur at family and team functions leading up to a deployment, the time everyone needs a shoulder to lean on and the most support they can get. Regardless of rank or marital status, that woman’s lover is deploying, with yours, and she needs just as much support as you do. She may not adorn his last name, or wear a ring on her finger, but she supports the military, she supports our troops, she supports you and she needs your support.

via MotoWife

The Other Side of the Battlefield

My husband is currently deployed and is struggling a bit with his role in the “bigger picture”. As I recently posted in my own blog, the men and women who deploy but remain behind the  frontlines are often neglected and left out of the lime light. This creates a host of emotional ambivalence towards them. Over the years I’ve heard countless stories of men and women in non-combat career fields expressing shame and guilt that they aren’t “doing more”. And this is a tremendous burden on not only them, but also their families.

As we all know, the military does not run off guns and ammo alone. There are hundreds of other career fields out there that are just as crucial to the running of this war and this nations security. Unfortunely they’re often unseen/unsung heroes in their own right.

It has been something that has weighed heavily on my husbands heart/mind and now mine as I watch him question his worth after 14 years of honorable service. Ironically he was forwarded an email yesterday that sort of painted a bigger picture than what he was seeing. He doesn’t know who originally wrote it, but it certainly touches on something I think is important for all of us to remember and particularly those who serve, but don’t feel like it’s enough.

*Of course, the views expressed here are merely that of the sole creator of the message and do not represent the views of The United States Air Force, other military branches or the U.S. government.

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“A unique thing happened today that probably a lot folks in the United States are missing.  Hundreds of thousands of people joined a protest in the freedom square of Teheran, Iran.  At the same time people in major cities in Iran were wearing green clothes and green signs parading in the city streets.  The protesters and those wearing green were all showing support for Mir Housein Mousavi who is running against Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the current president of Iran, in their national elections in two days.  Unlike Ahmedinejad, who has been the “death to America,” “death to Israel,” “Holocaust denial” guy in news for the last few years… Mousavi and his followers favor trade and ties with the West and loosening of social restrictions!

Not only is this huge but, it is in large part the result of the work you and everyone in Iraq are doing.  Day in and day you are vigilantly, carefully, and thoughtfully executing missions that are bringing security to Iraq, and data shows it’s working.  Sometimes the biggest successes in foreign policy on the world stage are hard to perceive when they are actually happening.  See, I believe that such a massive, brave social protest in Iran against the current leadership is only possible because the Al Qaeda/Radical Islam “brand”, if you will (I’m a sucker for marketing terms…;) is in steep decline.  Iraq was supposed to be their big stand, you know — global jihad to the call against the U.S. in Iraq… we kicked the Soviets out of Afghanistan… we’ll kick the US out of Iraq.  And it is fizzling out.

The whole holy war/jihad thing had considerable momentum when they were in the news everyday killing Americans and suicide bombing everything in sight.  Idiots like Ahmedinejad seemed like regional leaders standing up to the superpower.  Now many of the bombs in Iraq are planted instead of strapped to one’s chest… I think they’re (fortunately) having party  recruitment problems. Not only that, but Obama gave a great speech in Cairo the other day. Osama bin Laden was reduced to saying things like “He only sounds good… don’t listen to his eloquent quoting of the Koran.”  Did you notice he actually called Obama eloquent!

Iran has huge influence with the Shia in Iraq………[and] whether or not Mousavi wins in Iran the shift in thinking on Main Street in much of the Middle East is away from the firebrand fundamentalism -I see that as a direct result of your sacrifice!

I want to make sure that each and every one of you remember  that your sustained presence here in Iraq at times may feel routine and “not on the front lines” but it has a real time impacting impression to this entire part of the world.  Our abilities to provide the communication systems and vital support are directly enabling us to bring security and freedom to not only this country but the surrounding ones.  So thank you for all of the hard work!”

via JustJenn

Free Email Account Restrictions May Cause Headaches

Generally speaking, I am a big fan of Gmail, the free email service provided by Google. Their spam blockers seem to be more effective than what I have experienced with Hotmail or Yahoo. I also have found that they allow larger file transfers when sending attachments, which is great when I am sending pictures to my mom of the kids. Additionally, I appreciate the chat feature also offered, where I can talk to other contacts that have Gmail accounts right out of my email account page. It makes having a quick conversation with my mom when checking my email, if she happens to be online at the same time, super simple and convenient.

However, recently, I experienced a huge con in having a Gmail account that has made me re-think the benefits of their service, and felt it was something that other spouses, in similar situations, might appreciate a warning, so my experience does not happen to them.

 

My husband is presently deployed. He is in the Navy, and halfway through this current deployment with his ship. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Navy ships, during periods of time when a ship is out traveling, a girl’s best friend is her spouse’s email address. From what I have experienced, during those times when the ship is not in port, the only contact I have had with my husband has been, via email. As I am sure you all know, or would assume, due to security reasons, sailors are restricted to using their ship address for emailing family members, just as they are restricted from surfing certain types of websites, and from what I am familiar with, instant messaging programs are also a big no-no.

 

Over the last week or so, my husband has found certain times throughout each day, where he has been able to sit at his email and communicate with me. So over the course of the week, we have been having email conversations, that are very much like instant messaging, for anywhere from one to two hours at a time. Of course during that time frame we have been discussing our family, financial things, checking on how we are doing, etc., so our email conversations have generated lots of responses. I have several emails sitting in my inbox now which have 60 plus replies attached to them.

 

After about a week of these email conversations, there was an afternoon where my husband and I were chatting, and discussing my daughter’s plans for her summer trip back home. During that time we sent approximately 20 emails to one another. When we were finished, I inadvertently closed my web browser. However, I had a few other emails to send out, so I reopened my web browser and I attempted to log into my email.

 

What I got, was a lockout page, which advised me that due to my excessive and unusual account usage, my email account had been disabled for an in determinant amount of time. There was also a link for customer support attached to the page. Of course, I was extremely frustrated. Here was my only way to communicate with my husband, and unlike a lot of people I know, I don’t have multiple email accounts. I rely solely on my one Gmail account to correspond with not only my husband, but also family and friends.

 

Gmail’s customer support page consisted of an email address where you can submit an incident report. Great, but I am locked out of my email account. Not to mention the fact, that I happen to be one of those people who prefers live communication when dealing with a computer based support issue. However, I created a second email account, and submitted an incident report.

 

What I got back was a cookie cutter response apologizing for my inconvenience, and offering me very broad suggestions on how to reconcile the lock out. IE: clearing my browser cache. However, my lock out was due to the “excessive” emails I was sending and receiving from my husband. So I did some further research, and found a contact number for Google’s headquarters, thinking I would be able to get some kind of resolution by calling them directly.

 

Unfortunately, right in their recorded telephone greeting, Google’s corporate office clearly states that they offer no live support for Gmail customer service issues. I figured I would attempt to talk to someone, thinking if they have a way to monitor my account, and see that there were multiple emails being generated to and from my account, perhaps, they would be able to see that the emails were all between me and one other account, that I wasn’t spamming and in fact, the email address was a .mil address.

 

Of course, because we are presently stationed in Hawaii, by the time I contacted Google by phone the first night, they were closed for the evening, so I was left to attempt contacting them again in the morning, if my account as still locked down. Which of course it was. When I called their customer service number the following morning, I calmly explained my plight, prefacing it with the understanding that I read their terms of service, and also had listened to their recorded greeting and that I realized they had no live customer support for Gmail customers, but that I was frustrated due to the lack of resolution that I received via online support, and emphasizing the fact that I was being prohibited from communicating with husband, who is a deployed Armed Forces member.

 

I was apologized to and asked to hold. Ultimately I was left on hold for about 20 minutes, and then the line was opened again, I was hung up on. This of course prompted a second phone call. Where I again re-iterated my situation, made mention of the previous phone call attempt with their customer service line, and voiced my frustration with the fact that not only was I locked out of my email account for trying to talk to my husband, that I was given no reliable way to try and resolve the issue, either through their web support, or via live customer service. The outcome of said phone call was that this second customer service rep advised me that he would pass my complaint on to his supervisor, and he too hung up on me. Needless to say, I was unable to have my account unlocked. It remained inaccessible for 30 plus hours. During which time, I was not able to communicate with my husband.

 

I think it is important to advise as many military spouses as I can, of this unfortunate experience. It would be upsetting for me to find out someone else underwent the same kind of experience and frustration with their email provider, merely because of some restriction that would disallow them from having a lengthy email conversation at one sitting with their deployed spouse. Moreover, I would urge those of you who use Gmail as your email provider to keep in mind my recent experience, so that emails do not become lengthy with response attachments, thus creating an opportunity for your email account to be subject to the same kind of lock down.

 

As stressful as deployments can be, it seems silly to endure additional created stress caused by an inability to communicate with a spouse, because of something as petty as email restrictions.

 

via MissAntonia