There’s no question that being left behind can cause some feelings of abandonment. I remember the first time my fiance deployed there was a bit of a back and forth at first about whether or not he was gonna be able to deploy. I remember when he first said he might not be able to go I was overwhelmed with joy and thought how great it was that he would be staying. Opposite of my enthusiasm was his constant fight with his unit to get paperwork and things straightened out so he could go. I didn’t understand. I thought this was a gift from God that he would be able to stay home instead of going overseas. I asked him to let it go and just stay home with me or find a way to get out of it. At the time I didn’t realize what I was asking, but to help you understand my thought process at that time I’ll give you a little background information. I was young and had only been in one other relationship and that was with my “highschool sweetheart”. We were together for 9 years and had a child together. We ended up separating when our son was a year old. We started dating when we were 15 and had our son at 23. We started young and it was what people refer to as a young love. I agree now, but again when you’re young everything seems like the end of the world. Oh the naiveness of youth. So after losing my best friend and dealing with having to learn to split time with my son, a week on and a week off was what we had agreed to, I had finally found someone that I felt like I could trust and became very close to, and had a real connection with and all of a sudden he was fighting so hard to leave me. (Not true, but this is how I felt and what I was thinking).It felt like he wanted to leave so bad when he had the opportunity to stay, so when he actually ended up deploying with his unit I felt like he had abandoned me. Fast forward some years later and I’d like to think a few years wiser, I understand now that what I was asking him to do, not deploy with his unit, was wrong. You can’t ask a man who made a commitment, before he had even met me, to walk away from that commitment. These are men and woman he trained with, built a bond with, and took an oath with. Him wanting to deploy had nothing to do with him wanting to leave me and everything to do with him wanting to keep his promise to his country and the men and women that had become a second family to him. They trained together and learned to depend on one another. They were supposed to trust each other with their lives. For me to ask him to have the rest of his unit go overseas to fight for their country or serve in whatever way they were called to serve and have him stay behind and abandon his brothers and sisters and break that bond of comradery was selfish and unfair and that could’ve potentially caused more harm to him mentally than to have him go through the hardship of him being away with his unit. I’m not saying that you aren’t entitled to your feelings, and in certain situations your feelings might even feel well validated. Mine did at the time. I’m just offering insight to those feelings to help you understand what I didn’t back then. They aren’t running away from you, or leaving you. They are showing you that they are men of their word. That they honor their commitments. Fact of the matter is, they are most likely just as hurt, frustrated or scared as you are. Most of our service members aren’t in a rush to deploy, but they believe in the oath that they took and no matter what is going on in their lives (including their love lives), when they are called to duty, they believe that above all else they need to honor that. In no way does that negate their love for you or their desire to be with you. As military spouses this is what we must learn to understand in order to separate their duty and loyalty to their country from their love for us. By being able to do this it allows you to have a more positive mindset and it allows you to be more supportive of your spouse during a time when they need it most. It is hard on both sides, but understanding this difference can help ease a lot of tension, frustration, and questioning on your part. There is no denying that deployment relationships are hard but they also allow you to build great strengths in each other as a couple. It’s never going to be easy for you to be separated from your significant other for the long periods of time they need to be away from you, but my hope is that like me, you will learn to understand the difference between his love for you and his loyalty to the oath that he took as a soldier. So when it’s their time to serve, try to remember these words of advice that I have shared with you, and don’t take it personal. He’s not leaving you. He’s honoring his commitment, and for me, that’s a man I can stand behind. That’s a love I can fight for.
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