I've been noticing lately. A lot of the friends that I have who's husbands are home, are having a lot of marital problems, and have been fighting a lot. But the friends I have whose husbands are deployed, are having very strong, very functional relationships. Why is that? Yes, I'm going to analyze it, break it apart. And I want to welcome you guys to leave comments on your opinions as to why it might be as well.
I'm going to change their names for their privacy, but here's what's happening right now in the life of my friends. Hannah, has been having explosive arguments with her husband and has been breaking things in her house, things that are valuable, but she is blind with anger. Then, when I saw her the other day, she had bruises on her arms, I asked her what they were from, but I already guessed. Her husband had pinched her. He pinched her hard enough to leave awful bruises on her arms. It made me sick.
Kara and her husband have been "on the rocks" for a while now. She's left him before, more than once, but she always comes back. She wants her daughter to be raised around her father. Mark, her husband, has never really laid a hand on her, even though their conflicts are usually pretty intense. Their relationship is full of distrust and malice. There's stubborn distaste and even retribution. But lately, she's informed me that he's grabbed her throat, which is more serious than his usual expression of yelling and calling her a "bitch" and a "whore". It also makes me sick.
Jenna, another friend, is having a lot of trust issues and deep feelings of inadequacy. She feels like her husband doesn't love her because she doesn't "look" like she did when she was younger. Because she's gained a few pounds and she's bigger. She can't talk to him about it because she doesn't trust him enough to talk to him about something that serious.
Now here's the good stories.
My friend, Elizabeth, her husband has been gone since the beginning of August. She only gets to talk to him every now and then, but when she does get to talk to him, she treasures every moment. Every second, every minute, she is thinking about him and thinking about how much she misses him. She dreams about him coming home and she dreams about holding him in her arms. There is nothing she loves more than him, there is nothing she WANTS more than him.
My friend Ashley, her husband is actually deployed with mine. She talks to him on skype as much as she can, and she treasures every text. She is working extremely hard to lose weight while he's away, not just to impress him when he returns, but to keep her mind away from how much she misses her best friend.
And then theres Sarah, her boyfriend has been gone for four months, but her love has not wavered one day since he's left. She wasn't dating him for that long before he left, and since he's been gone, she's found out her mother is very sick and her sister has been a huge bitch through everything. Despite her struggles, she strives to keep her faith in her boyfriend, in the man that she has fallen desperately and passionately in love with, thousands of miles away.
Tell me why this is, readers. Tell me why it's all happening like this and tell me what you think. Is it unusual? do you think that the distance between lovers improves the relationships? Or is it only a coincidence?
It is what I feel to be incredibly simple. We take what we have for granted. We don't know what we've got until it's gone. But the MAJOR thing I see here is with every relationship where the couple is together they don't communicate. With those of us fighting to keep in touch with the one we love, not communicating really isn't an option. Communication is the big C of relationships without it we fall apart and out of love.
ReplyDeleteSometimes, being apart is a good thing. It makes you miss each other so much that you just forget all of the bad things and treasure the good ones. It brings excitement and butterflies in your stomach if you know what I mean. I think every deployement makes you stonger as individual and as a couple.
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