Military life can look quite different depending on your service member’s MOS, time in service, rank, and location. Some service members deploy more often than others. Some go to more trainings. Over the years, things can change. You will have periods of time when they are gone a lot, and periods when they are home.
Sometimes military life is a monthly drill weekend, two weeks in the field, and random trainings with a deployment every five years.
Sometimes military life is coming and going on a regular basis, home for two weeks, gone for three. And repeat.
Sometimes military life is a nine-month deployment, home for a year, then get ready to do it again.
Sometimes military life is a CQ, right on the day you need them with you the most.
The reality is, there will be plenty of times when your spouse is away from you, and you miss them. And some of those times will be longer than others.
Sometimes, we as a military community want to play the one up game. Where your spouse has to be gone X amount of days before you can miss them. We want to say that a shorter deployment is much easier than a longer one. We don’t want to hear anyone whose spouse is gone for a shorter amount of time than our spouse is, say they are having a hard time.
But the truth is, it is okay to miss your spouse, no matter how long they are gone.
You see, over the years I have realized something. While longer deployments mean more days to get through, shorter deployments can still be very difficult.
While drill weekends are so much shorter than other times we have been apart, they tend to happen at the wrong time, make that weekend pretty difficult.
While a two-week training is nothing compared to being gone all summer long, that two-week training can bring up a lot of emotions for people.
It’s okay to miss your spouse, no matter what you have been through in the past, or what you might go through in the future.
It’s okay to miss your spouse when you are the only one at the soccer game, for the third week in a row.
It’s okay to miss your spouse because it is your son’s first day of kindergarten and your husband has to look at photos from the day, instead of sending them off by your side.
It’s okay to miss your spouse because you had a date night planned and CQ got in the way.
It’s okay to miss your spouse because he has been in South Korea for five months, and he has seven more to go.
It’s okay to say that life is better when they are home and that you are having a bad time when they are gone. It’s okay to yell surrender. It’s okay to talk to others about this.
As military spouses, our lives will change over the course of our service member’s career. Sometimes we will be the one there for our friends, helping them through the deployment. Sometimes we will be the ones who are missing our spouse so much, that hearing their name makes us cry.
At the end of the day, it’s okay to miss our spouse, to want them back with us, to want them not to have to go as much. Doing so doesn’t make us weak, it makes us have to figure out how to be strong.
So if you hear people say that you don’t have the right to miss your spouse because of whatever reason, ignore them. You do have that right. Whether they are gone for the weekend or for over a year. You are a military spouse, and missing your love is apart of the deal.
Going through a deployment? Check out my deployment posts; they should help 🙂
[…] It’s okay to miss your spouse, no matter how long they might be gone. While a long deployment is going to be harder than a drill weekend, that doesn’t mean the spouse going through a drill weekend is having an easy time with her husband being away. And while you might be able to rock a month-long training without a beat, someone else might need to have a 10-minute crying session every night to get through. […]