Now, most people may think that life is all sunshine and lollipops once a spouse returns. That's true for like one week. Then you have regular life to deal with. Then it is the uh-oh, there is another person here. Let me tell you, no matter how great your marriage is, this kind of thing is the toughest thing to deal with. No matter how much talking you try to do before hand about this adjustment, it is never quite what you think it will be. During the deployment, we communicated wonderfully. We knew the thing that would be tough when he came home. But yet, they were still tough.
For my husband, the way it seemed to me, was he was like a dog who had to pee and put his scent on everything. Crude comparison I know, and no he didn't really do that. I don't blame him. We has to live out life for a year without him and now he needs to be apart of the family again. The hard part of this is that I was the one in control of everything so therefore I know best. So when he does something in a manner which I know will not work, I tell him and he does it anyway. That's one example.
Another would be my ability to view things in big picture. As in, well if you go out with the kids and play a lot and it is like 1pm when we get back, they will be hungry and you can't just grab chips and dip to satisfy your own hunger while the kids are still hungry.
Now I truly do understand that this is a woman thing. It is true. Woman are better at multi tasking and thinking about how everything will affect everything else whereas men are really good at focusing on one task. Neither is better than the other, but they are quite different. I am all about women's rights and choosing what we do, but I must admit, I think due to the nature of how a woman's role was for so many thousands of years, we have evolved to be able to be the better multi tasker. I mean, the basic is women who have a child will at some point have to multi task by the simple virtue of being pregnant.
But I digress. It is hard to have to give up the control that I had over everything. If something didn't get done, I knew it was my own doing. If something was on the floor or dirty, I knew it was me and it didn't make as upset. You really have to adjust so much. My husband is use to his job and only himself.
He is also now home with the children who he has not seen in a long time. So naturally he wants them to be happy. This is sometimes an issue, as he has a hard time telling them to wait or no. It is as though whenever they ask him something, he feels compelled to do it. I don't mean by giving in to giving them candy and such, but simple things, like helping in a video game, or playing. But sometimes he really needs a break, and he doesn't always tell them that.
This leads to the next issue. He has also been away from me for that long. It is hard for me to convey that. I understand he wants the children to be happy and it isn't as though he doesn't care about me, but it simply something that we have to work on again. Most married couples with children have this problem, but to throw a deployment on top of it, well, it makes it more difficult.
It always takes a lot of communication during this time period. And we are not different people, but we have to get use to each other again. That's one thing about military life is that things are constantly changing so much and you have to readjust everything. Priorities have to be modified on occasion. It sucks. It's not fun, but it is our life, and in the big picture, I am okay with it, even when it does suck.
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