There are countless relationships to balance in this milspouse life. Our kids, friends, neighbors, spouses coworkers, and of course, our service members!
Relationships need communication, compromise, and the ability to adapt. Command Team has decades worth of experience navigating these situations and share their professional and personal knowledge on various relationship topics.
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Many of you might be wondering why I’m wearing my wedding dress on a seemingly random Thursday. Well, two reasons: life is short (so why not?) and today, as you might have gathered, I am talking all about military marriage—specifically the lessons I’ve learned since saying “I do” to my infantryman 10 years ago.
I joke that military marriage years are like “dog years,” so really we are somewhere between 50 and 70 years together based on all of the life experiences we’ve had in the last decade.
When I was in high school, my four girlfriends and I would all bring bagged lunches so we could race to my friend Christina’s house every single lunch break so we could catch as many minutes as possible of Jerry Springer… I’m not even joking. If you’ve never seen it, let me break it down for you: it’s a hot mess of a talk show full of angry, cheating spouses, paternity tests, on-stage fistfights broken up by bouncers, best friends being torn apart by lies, and the list goes on. It was a way to watch all of these crazy things, then turn it off and go back to your normal day and think to yourself, “Wow, I’m so glad my life is not like that.”
I mean, why air all of your family’s dirty laundry in such a public way? Oh yeah, because people love to watch it—me and my 16-year-old friends included.
At the end of last month, my husband and I happily celebrated our 11th anniversary together with a long weekend away.
Yup, even with four small children at home, we find ways to make time for each other to keep our friendship and relationship strong. The moments we get to sneak away are not nearly as frequent as they used to be, but I cherish each one. From random nights we stay up after the kids have gone to bed to play cards, or when I decide to take an interest in one of his newest hobbies to watch the excited child inside of him show between the cracks of daily life.
My grandparents are adorable.
Grandpa had a big smile and loved overalls, living a country life, and Boy Scouts of America.
Grandma was an archeologist that participated in numerous digs in South America and the southern United States. She barely reached 5 feet tall and would stretch on her tippy toes and eventually had to climb onto a step stool to mark how tall each of her 60 grandchildren had gotten when we came to visit.
At some point in their love story, they coined the phrase, “Isle of View.”
Marriage is hard work. Then throw in the fact that your spouse serves in the military. The hard work factor just jumped up a few levels.
Can I get an amen?
My husband and I are going on almost 16 years of marriage, with all of them being within the context of the Army. We certainly don’t have it all figured out, nor do we have a perfect marriage, but over the years we have discovered some core values that we implement in our marriage that help us weather the stress of all that life throws at us. You can read about the top five things that I do to best support my husband and keep our marriage strong in this blog post.
In this post, I am going to delve a little deeper into the importance of being your spouse’s #1 fan.
Long, long ago, in a city far, far away (Hanau, Germany, to be exact), two young kids met and fell in love.
Life was amazing! They could go on hikes in Switzerland, take the train to Paris, have goulash in Hungary… They thought to themselves, “Man, marriage is awesome. We are totally rocking at this! I mean, honestly, how hard can it be?”
Well, fast forward about 15 years, four deployments, and three kids later, and those young kids have the answer to that question—marriage can be hard.
Really, really hard.
Like, Houston-we-have-a-problem hard.
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