Long Times Apart

I've been forced to think about spending extended periods of time away from my chosen partner in life so much more than I thought I would in an ordinary, committed relationship.

As a military spouse, it's not just deployments we deal with. Sometimes it's weeks of twelve hour shifts, or spouses switched to odd shifts, other times it's trainings at far away bases for 2, 3, or 6 weeks.

Recently, a marine was upset that, just after a 7 month deployment away from his baby, he was going to have to "deploy" for 3 weeks to another base. I said, "you mean TDY?" He said, "what's a TDY?" If the different branches have different ideas about what their job descriptions are, how are we supposed to understand how to support each other? Do the various branches really want to support each other? I hear lip service to support in public, good natured ribbing of each other, and then I hear muted grumblings about each other under their breath. Perhaps we don't understand each other like I thought.