My husband and I lived together for 2yrs before he joined the Army and we got married after basic training.

If you have a strong relationship, it will be a cake walk. Yes the military can be unpredictable and annoying sometimes but if your relationship is strong you can get through anything.

If you have ANY insecurities, deal with jealousy/envy or have trust issues about your man being around other women apart from you for months at a time and not hear from him for days/weeks at a time (deployments) then this life is NOT for you.

In the past 8yrs we’ve moved 3 times & are having a 3rd child (our 4th). We are on the Far East coast and our families are in the far west coast. Unless someone visits, I can go years without seeing anyone in my family. Traveling with kids and having 2 large needy dogs gets in the way of travel and it gets expensive fast.

Not having family nor friends close to help with child care was hard, child care is expensive so I ended up being a stay at home mom for years and it was hard on me because I was a social butterfly then suddenly I felt caged & stuck between 4 walls

First duty station we rented off base. Commute sucked, hubby would be stuck in traffic for upwards of 2hrs on his way home so it felt like we never saw each other. He’d leave at 4am and get home roughly around 8pm. It was awful.

Second duty station we moved on post, thank God! Because he deployed to Afghanistan shortly after we got there so it was nice that my neighbors were going through something similar. We kinda lived in a bubble and it was awesome the way the support system is set up. I made so many friends and for the first time in years I found a new normal that I enjoyed. That support system gets you through it all. Plus it was nice that the husbands commute to work was 5mins so he would come home for breakfast and lunch.

This time around we bought a house off post. We live 35miles away from base so it’s hard again when his commute is long but it’s nice because we plugged into a church and I started working again (last day of work was this week since I’m in too much pain at the end of this pregnancy).

You really have to have a strong sense of self not to get lost and be determined to stay. If you haven’t committed to staying then you’ve inadvertently committed to leaving. This life is not for the faint of heart, you really really have to put your big girl panties on and roll with the punches. If you feel entitled to anything, it will be a rude awakening. Plans are nearly impossible to make because things are always changing. Depending on your age & wether or not you have kids and their ages- you can be adopted or shunned from certain groups. Like someone previously mentioned, military wives can be very clicky.

It does become a thing having to choose between being a supportive spouse and being your own person. Divorce rates are really high, cheating is almost a given & suicide rates are very high as well. If you believe that love is a choice, not a feeling then you can do this. But if you believe love is a feeling & you should marry someone you love then good luck...

Military relationships