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What To Look For In A Military Spouse Best Friend

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What To Look For In A Military Spouse Best Friend

I have been a Military spouse for just about ten years now. During those ten years, I have made many friends. And a couple of best friends. These ladies are very special to me, even now when we don’t live near each other anymore. In the Military world friends always move away, even your best friends and there is nothing you can do about that.

I have been through deployments with a Military spouse best friend and I have been through deployments without one and it changes things. Having your own BFF to get through the deployment with will make it easier. You can depend on each other, vent with each other and tell each other that it is going to be okay. The hard part is finding someone to do this with. It doesn’t always happen and when you are moving a lot as you do as a Military spouse, you are always having to look for new friends.

What To Look For In A Military Spouse Best Friend

 

I know for me, finding friends is the easy part. Finding best friends is not. It takes a lot of work and yet you can’t force it. Best friends just happen sometimes and even if you really like someone else, they might not be the person to fit that role.

So what qualities make up a Military best friend? How do you know they are the one to fit that part of your life?

As a Military spouse and mom of three boys, this is what I think you should look for in finding a Military spouse best friend.

  • That you click. As I look back over my closest friendships, they all have one thing in common. We clicked. Almost right away in most cases. As soon as we started hanging out, it just worked and we knew it. I know sometimes you can be friends with someone for a long time and then get closer to them but I bet if you looked back at when you first met you can see that you did click right away, even if it took a while to get there.
  • That you can vent to them. If you have ever been through a deployment you know that some days you just have to vent. If you can’t do that with someone, it is going to be hard for them to be your buddy during the deployment. You need someone who you can vent to and that isn’t going to come back with a “suck it up and don’t talk to me about that anymore” type of attitude.
  • That you can depend on them. I have a very hard time asking for help, even when I need it. However, sometimes things happen and I have to call someone to help me. It is always nice to have that person you can call to help you out and not have it become an awkward situation. Whether it is because your child needs to go to the ER, your car breaks down or you need emergency babysitting help. It is nice to have someone to call and to be available for them if they need you in that way too.

Making friends is something all Military spouses have to do. Making best friends is the most important thing, especially when your spouse is away and your own family lives across the country or even the ocean.

What do you look for in a Military spouse best friend???

The 3 Social Media Sites That Bloggers Should Be Using

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The 3 Social Media Sites That Bloggers Should Be Using

The 3 Social Media Sites That Bloggers Should Be Using

When you start a new blog it is important to also set up social media accounts to go with it. I actually did this differently. I had a Twitter account before I had my blog. It came soon after but still. I decided to join Twitter on a whim back in 2009. I am not even sure why. I started connecting with others, mostly photographers. It was fun to share my work there and see what others were doing.

Once I started my blog I ended up finding other Military Spouses on Twitter and connecting with them. I also started a Facebook page for my blog and a few years later a Pinterest account.

There are a lot of social networks you can join but there are 3 sites that bloggers need to make sure they are on and using on a regular basis 🙂

Twitter- Twitter is a great place to connect with others and share your blog posts. I also like to find other blog posts to read on there as well. It moves very fast and has the biggest learn curve but it is worth checking out. I don’t just tweet about my blog. I tweet about pretty much anything that comes to mind. I use lists to keep up with the people I follow and I also set it up to share my blog posts on there throughout the day.

Facebook- Starting a Facebook page for your blog is pretty easy. You can just use your blog’s name and get it going. Start off sharing the page with your friends and family members. Then their friends will see it and you will start to get likes. You should then talk about your new page on your blog as well as other social media sites. You can join Facebook groups to help get you likes. The Milspouse Blogger’s group I am in is great for this. Growing your Facebook page can be difficult. I still haven’t totally figured it out but there is a lot of advice out there on what to do. I really like Hollie Homer’s videos about how to grow your Facebook page and different tips and tricks to use.

Pinterest- If you are not on Pinterest yet you should get on over there, especially if you have a blog. It can be a great way to generate traffic but it is also a great way to share other’s work as well as find new ideas. I try to always have a photo in my posts that could easily be pinned. Then I make sure to pin it myself to get it started. My hope is that others will repin it either from Pinterest or from my site directly. I started off with a personal account on Pinterst but switched to Business once they started offering that. Changing over is easy to do and you should do it if you are using Pinterest with your blog.

I also really like Instagram and although I am following a lot of people I have met through blogging, I don’t use it as much for my blog. Some people do and have great success with that. I find that because I can’t post a link when I post a photo that it is hard to connect the two. I enjoy sharing photos I have taken, quotes I enjoyed or anything like that. I didn’t include Instagram in my list because I think you can get by without it as a blogger but it can add to your social media experiences when it comes to blogging.

What about you? What are your favorite social media sites to use with your blogging?

The Blessing Of A Military Marriage

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The Blessing Of A Military Marriage

The Blessing Of A Military Marriage

I do a lot of reflecting sometimes. I have always kept a journal and I like to think about where we have been as a couple and a family and where we are going. We have had to make a lot of choices over the years. When to have kids. To move across the country. To join the Military. To buy a house. To stay in Tennessee. To join the National Guard.

Sometimes it is way too easy to look back and think we shouldn’t have made certain choices.  However, I don’t like to look at my life like that. Is it possible we mad bad choices in the past? Yes. Does that mean the rest of our lives are messed up? No.

One of the biggest life changing choices we made was for my husband to re-enlist in the Military at age 30. It was something that we talked about for months beforehand. It was hard to go ahead with it at first. We were not sure what it meant or what it would be like.

As I think back over the last 10 years as a Military spouse, I think in the end there have been many blessings in our marriage because of it. Don’t get me wrong. Would I have prefered to have a husband who had never left us? Perhaps, but that wasn’t how life has been for us. For the last 10 years we have said goodbye to each other too many times to count. I have been in solo parenting land off and on and that gets to me. I never thought I would be parenting alone so much of the time.

But at the end of the day, there are blessings in a Military marriage.

We know what it is like to miss our husbands. Can you imagine never missing your husband? I can’t. I am not sure what that would be like? After so much time in this lifestyle, I can’t even wrap my mind around it.  I think missing someone can grow the relationship in a way nothing else can. It can also be a factor in how your relationship is doing. If your spouse is gone and you don’t miss them at all, what does that say? It tells you something isn’t quite right. It tells you that there is probably a reason for it and you and your spouse need to figure it out.

Homecomings can be the highlight of our Military experience. The feeling you get when you see your spouse again is hard to explain unless you have been through it. Knowing that the months of waiting and worrying has come to a close and knowing you will finally be back in each others arms can be the spark that your marriage needs.

Watching your spouse in their uniform can be inspiring. You know they are doing something good in the world and you are there to support them through it. It can be exciting to know that you and your spouse are apart of history, working to make the world a better place. There is just something about feeling that way that can help your marriage thrive.

I remember during one of our R&Rs my husband told us that through these deployments we will become that much stronger. I think this is the case for us but I know the reality that it isn’t always the case. I think deployments either make you stronger as a couple or can cause you to break.

If you are new to the military life and are worried a bit about your marriage, keep in mind that there are blessings of a Military marriage. As hard as the lifestyle might be, they are there if you look for them.

How do you feel that the Military has blessed your marriage?

 

Dealing With Jealousy When You Are A Military Spouse

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Dealing With Jealousy When You Are A Military Spouse

During my time as a military spouse, I have experienced a variety of emotions. Happiness during homecoming. Sadness during a deployment. Getting excited about a new duty station or promotion. Loneliness when a friend moves away. There are a lot of different emotions we feel during the time that our spouse is serving in the Military. One emotion that we can feel, even if we don’t want to, is jealousy.

Dealing With Jealousy When You Are A Military Spouse

This can happen when you least expect it. Jealousy can happen over a deployment schedule, a promotion, a pcs or just life in general. You can be happy for someone and still feel that green-eyed monster creep up. It can be hard when you are waiting for something to happen, and it happens to someone else first.

I have felt this way over the years. I feel bad when I do. I have felt this way when I felt like my husband was always deploying and others were not. I have felt this way when waiting for my husband to get a promotion. I have felt this way when someone else seemed to be holding it together better than I was. I have felt this way over little silly things that I would never want to share with anyone.

Jealousy happens, but it is what we do with it that matters.

One big lesson I have learned over the last ten years is that the Military isn’t fair. Some people deploy more than others. Promotions don’t always happen even if it feels like they should and some people get better duty stations then others. Sometimes you are going to be surrounded by good friends and other times you will be the lonely one still trying to make new friends since you old friends moved away. It is one big cycle.

Some years are going to be better than others. That is the nature of Military life.

If you are feeling jealous of someone else, know that it can happen, especially in Military spouse life when we know so much about what other people are doing. When our community is so small. Maybe your husband just left again, and theirs just got home, and that is causing you to feel jealous. Think about the times when you were experiencing what they were. Think about how you will be in their place in the future. Try not to let it get to you and remember that by the time you are getting ready for homecoming, they could be getting ready to send their spouse off again.

Think about everything you have and how lucky you are. Remember that even if it feels like everyone else has more than you do, others have less. There is always someone going through something worse.

Try not to let jealousy rule you. Focus on what is going well in your life and work on what you don’t like. Let go of anything you don’t have control over. It simply isn’t worth your energy if you can’t do anything about it anyway.

Do you ever struggle with jealousy? What do you do about it when the green-eyed monster hits?

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