Military Support

I met my husband less than a year before he joined the Navy; 8 years, 2 kids, 2 deployments and a whole lot of separation later, we're still hanging in there. Has it always been easy? Absolutely not, we've been apart more than we've been together, but even so, I don't regret my decision. The main thing I hate is the stereotype of the military spouse. It's less than flattering, but it gives me something to rise above. I agree that you have to be able to be independant of your husband. They may call you a "dependent", but you have to be anything but that. If you believe in your heart that you can do this, then you can. Congrats on your wedding!

Congrats on your upcoming wedding date! Being married to the military is definately a intense experiance! It really takes a strong commited relationship to withstand all the deployments. If you have gone 4 years already, I bet you will do great! Where are you stationed? Do you have any family nearby? I've been married to my husband and the army now for about 15 years. I believe of that 15 years we have actually been together maybe 6 of those years. It makes being married easier I think as they are never around long enough to fight with! You just have to be able to be a strong independant woman and handle the weight of the world on your shoulders single-handedly!
A nice perk of being military is they have free gym access to dependants... :) And the AirForce ALWAYS has the best gyms!
Best of luck and welcome to the family!

I totally agree with MrsWilki, you should definitely get married if that's what you want no matter what your weight is. One thing you will learn after being apart of the military for a while is that tomorrow isn't guaranteed. It's sad to say but it's the truth.

I have married 2 Air Force guys both while I was active duty Air Force. Obviously, my 1st marriage didn't work out. We fought too much and he was a cheater and spent way too much money. We got married too young and were just completely wrong for each other. My current husband is perfect for me. We are going on 5 years together and I recently got out of the military. Now I stay home and raise our son. We are moving to Nellis AFB (Las Vegas) in 2 months so it's a little stressful but we are super excited. Me and my husband were both deployed at the same time in 2008. I went to Iraq with the Army and he went to Africa with the Navy. That was a hard time for our relationship but we survived.

Also I went back and re-read your first post to refresh my memory.

I notice you say that you will have your wedding in October depending on if you reach your weight loss goals.

Just my 2 cents.. when J and I got married I weighed somewhere between 180-185 pounds. I'm only 5'5''. By no means did I feel great about my body or anything. However, I can tell you in all honesty, on the day of our wedding I felt more beautiful than I have ever, or will ever feel in my life. My dress looked beautiful on me, everyone was beaming at me, my husband's jaw practically dropped (and he cried during the ceremony..though he will never admit it). It was the best day of my life and my weight had nothing to do with it. The photos are still beautiful, and even though I'm over 40 pounds smaller now I wouldn't change those photos for the world. They are beautiful and perfect because we were both soo happy.

Please don't postpone your happiness because your weight. I just met with a doctor last week who told me that the unhealthiest thing is to let your weight define you and your experiences.

Hey sorry it took so long for me to reply, I kind of fell of the wagon with my tracking the past 2 weeks and so haven't been on sparkpeople..oops! Back to the grindstone.

Finding schools is tough, we agreed before we got married that we'd set it up so he was in a city where I could get accepted to a university first. I don't want to compromise on my education, luckily it worked out for us so I was set to start school immediately after moving. It was really tough for me the first few months also. I was very homesick for my parents and friends, I was always comparing everything to my old town/university/etc. Eventually I fell in love with the people and the place but soon enough I was back here in Wisconsin. I'm moving back to the same place in about 3 months and I'm very excited. I think the hardest part is not knowing what to expect. I tend to be a worry wart and I was always concerned about all the things that could go wrong and didn't let myself enjoy all the things that could go right. I'm trying to get better about that.

Once you get married I hope many of your financial issues will be resolved. The military knows how to take care of their own. The pay may never be the highest, but the benefits are wonderful and more than make up for that (in my opinion).

If you're still living in a civilian area then I feel your pain about finding people to relate to. Luckily I have a couple girls on facebook who also have deployed husband's and we chat and vent our frustrations to one another. But it's just not the same as having a face-to-face conversation with someone who really understands the way of life. My friends and family here are all fantastic and as understanding as they can be. The worst part for me is the sympathy. I hate to be talking to someone new, and inevitably it comes up that my husband is deployed, and immediately they give me those puppy dog eyes... "ohhh I'm sooo sorry" Hah. I want them to treat me like a normal person and not like I'm about to have an emotional freak-out (not that every military wife doesn't have emotional freak outs once in a while! hah)

There are some days where it seems overwhelming as hell but just take it one day at a time, remember all the reasons why you love your fiance, remember his laugh and his smile and imagine all the good times you will have and forget all the stressful times. The next morning you will find that things are a tiny bit better...soon it will be 6 months or 1 year later and you'll be in his arms and your life will be set-up and you'll forget what it feels like to have a sucky day..every day. It's not easy, but it's worth it. Like my husband tells me "In a few months this will all just be a bad dream"

I can relate to this very, very well.

I was born and raised Navy, I joined the Navy, and I married Navy! Dad was in for 29 years, and even after he retired, he took jobs overseas. I served for nine years, and met my husband in the Navy. I was his relief on Diego Garcia, talk about a random way to meet a mate!

The first two years we were married, I saw him for a grand total of 28 days. I was also active duty, we were not stationed together, but we were both in Japan. Eventually, I chose not to re-enlist because we simply could not get co-location orders. Same rate, same paygrade, essentially the same job specialties. So I became the dependent wife, running the house as he finished his 20 years. I tell you, that retirement pay and the health care is GOLDEN. I'd be dead if not for Tricare, literally.

Because I had been raised Navy, being away from family was not as hard for me. Moving all the time felt normal. Making new friends and saying goodbye to old ones came naturally. Am I a bit of a loner now? And I know what you mean about military wives, they can be a tough group to blend into ... my friends were through the Navy or through my civilian job on base once I was a dependent. And yes, it is easy to fall into a single lifestyle while your spouse is deployed. At least you have better communications than we did in the Dark Ages!

We didn't have children, but kids are resilient and can adapt well to the military life if YOU set the example. You might feel like a single parent, but you will learn your strengths quickly enough!

Support is important, so finding other women who can relate to the lonely times and the struggles of re-adjusting after each separation is important.

Hang in there!

Hilary, I really appreciated your story. I think you're one of the only people who has told me that being a military wife can be a great thing. I moved in with my fiancé in December 2010 but because we're both so young and new to this I ended up having to move back in with my parents only 6 months later because we had serious financial issues and I couldn't find a school in his area. It was lonely at first because I was 600 miles away from my family and all of my friends, but I came to find out that the military has a great built in support system for people like me. But I must say, I only found a few actual military wives that wanted anything to do with me, the others didn't seem to want me around for whatever reason. But I made friends with other military girlfriends quite easily. I loved being around that kind of atmosphere, military life is so much different than civilian life and I really miss that closeness.

However, now that we're back in a long term relationship it seems even harder than it was before we lived together. I'm always looking for people to relate to because none of my friends understand what this is like and sometimes it seems impossible to deal with.

Look forward to hearing more from you. =D

Hi! I'm Hilary.

I don't blame you for posting on here, I've had bad luck with the military teams (not very active it seems). My husband is in the Army and we have been married for 1 1/2 years. We got married in August 2010 after about 2 years of a long distance relationship (he was in Texas, I was in Wisconsin). We were together for 2 years prior to him joining the Army. He deployed to Iraq while we were still dating, I was beginning college so it was a lot of tough transitioning.
As soon as he got back from Iraq he came to visit me and proposed, we planned our wedding in about 8 months.

Anyway, after our wedding I moved out to Colorado to live together, I continued school out there which was wonderful. It was hard because I was the furthest from my family and high school friends than I had ever been before, but it allowed me to breathe and realize the person I was becoming as a young-adult, I found myself to be much stronger than I ever knew. My husband is my very best friend & so living with him was like a dream. Of course there are adjustments to be made the first year of marriage (and the rest of your lives I've heard haha) but we didn't have many problems. I was pretty aware of the life I was "getting into" before I moved out there. I found that I absolutely love the military lifestyle, I love the community, the structure & how close the families can get to each other. I met some of the best people I've ever known.

9 months after we got married he deployed to Afghanistan. I knew this was going to happen before we got married & was prepared. I moved back to Wisconsin to be near family while he is gone. I made that decision before I really got accustomed to Colorado and had to follow through due to school obligations, but sometimes wish I had stayed in Colorado to be near the military lifestyle and support. It has been a tough last 9 months with him gone, this deployment has been more difficult for me than the last one because I now know what it's like to live together. Thankfully he will be home in a few short months, and I will be moving back to Colorado.

I'm not sure if you really wanted a full story but found myself blabbing hah. But listen, being a military wife is the absolutely most rewarding experience I've ever had. It is the hardest thing to be apart from my husband, but I feel so blessed to know what it feels like to see him for the first time in months, to fall in love all over again every single time we see each other, because we know what it's like when we have to go to bed alone.

Congratulations on your engagement! I am more than happy to talk if you ever want to.

There are lots of teams for military support. Go to Community, SparkTeams, then search "military."

Thank you both for serving our country!

Hi!
I can give you some insight on the military thing. My husband and I were both in the military for 10 years. It was EXTREMELY difficult and we both decided to get out because we knew it would tear our marriage apart. We met when we were in the military, dated in the military, and got married in the military. He was a pilot in the Air Force and was gone all the time. I think he was gone about 6 months every year for the first 4 years of our marriage. It was hard to keep a relationship going because everytime he went away I had to figure out what to do on my own. I ended up having a lot of single friends and did what single people do - went to bars, nightclubs, and parties. When he came back, we didn't really know how to be "married". We fought a lot because of the constant separations. I knew I didn't want to be in that kind of relationship especially if we started a family. So he changed his job so he wouldn't be gone all the time. This helped a great deal. However, I was in the military too so I was gone about 1-2 weeks every other month and had to deploy as well. I got out too so we could start a family. I have to say, having both of us in the military was better because I understood why he had to go all the time, but it did not make me happy. With you not being in the military, it will make it tough to understand why he is always gone. In addition, you will have to move every 4-6 years or so. So you have to be comfortable with that and able to pick up and move all the time to places you may not like. You may even have to move to another country.
All I'm saying is marriage is tough when you are always together, but it's twice as hard when you are separated all the time. A lot of military marriages don't work out because of this. I don't want to sugarcoat the military marriage. I want you to go into it with your eyes open and not be surprised by the constant separations. You have to ask him if he plans on staying in for 20 years for the retirement. If so, you will have to support his career the entire time and be comfortable changing jobs and homes every few years. I know I couldn't do it for very long so that is why we both got out when we did. We loved each other more than the military and it's worked out.
Good luck!

I couldn't think of a great topic title for this, but basically I'm looking for other people who are in relationships with members of the military. I have been with a member of the US Air Force for 4 years and I know how stressful it can be, especially for people dealing with the long distance aspect. I'm hoping we can support each other because this can be a very stressful life choice and it's hard to go through alone. I look forward to getting to know everyone and hearing your stories!

My fiancé and I started dating after we graduated high school. Though I had no idea at the time, he has recently told me that he joined the military because, even then, he knew he would eventually want a family with me and he wanted to be able to support us. I understand why he did it, but his decision to join so soon after we started dating definitely put major strain on our relationship. We had a very rocky beginning and it took us a good year to actually get into a stable place. He left only six months after we started dating and I had never been in a position where the guy I was seeing lived more than 20 minutes from me. We fought constantly and took many "breaks" (never actually lasting more than 24 hours).

On June 14th this year we will have been together for four years and we're planning a wedding for October 13th, granted I can reach my weight loss goals. He's an amazing guy and I can't wait to marry him and start our own lives together.