My mother’s right hand rested on the large panes of the airport windows. I watched silently as she choked back her tears and dabbed her eyes. I saw her tuck her fear and worry away, in a place deep inside where we couldn’t see. She straightened up, turned to face us with a small smile, and drove us home.
As a military pilot, my dad spent his share of time on deployments–living away from home, most often on an aircraft carrier practicing maneuvers. These were usually 6-months stints, but occasionally lasted as long as a year. As a child, this meant that I missed my dad, sure, but I was blessed with the naïveté of childhood: I always knew he’d come home. He’d miss some basketball games, we wouldn’t go to the golf course for awhile, and his easy-to-open wallet would be MIA for a time, but eventually he’d return and life would get back to normal.
And for us, it did. He returned safely every single time, and our family weathered the small storms of re-adjusting to life as a family of 4 under the same roof. As I think about those adjustments, I realize how well the rest of us would be served to apply some of the same ideas.
- Respect Your Differences. No two people are created exactly alike, right? So why do we expect others–including our spouses–to do things our way? When a military dad, for example, comes home from a long deployment,he needs to recognize that his wife has been carrying the child-rearing and home-caring burden alone for several months. At the same time, his wife needs to recognize that her husband is still half of her couple: his ideas count, too. Even as a non-military spouse, this notion took me awhile to put into practice. When I put our kids to bed we have a quiet, leisurely routine that includes bathing and reading. When my husband tucks them in, his method involves lots of roughhousing and laughter. At first, this bothered me. “We want them to go to sleep,” I’d complain, worried that the raucousness would create another hour of arguing about bedtime. In time, I realized that my husband’s routine is creating a unique memory and bond with our boys. In other words, his way works, too.
- A Room of Your Own. After we get married, and especially if we have kids, the time pressures of work and chores and life leave little time or energy for frivolous personal pursuits. This is especially true for military families, when one spouse deploys on a regular basis. The reality, though, is that these types of pursuits are rarely frivolous. Hobbies feed something–they fuel a desire, a gift, an internal need–that isn’t easily fed in other ways. When both spouses pursue some personal interests, it keeps married life interesting.
- Listen to Your Spouse. I’ve written about this one before. It seems so obvious, but really listening is harder than it sounds. Couples who spend time apart need to take time to re-integrate their lives, and to hear how the other person feels. But couples who don't spend much time apart need to do this, too. It’s hard to put our own preferences and agendas aside, but that’s a necessary part of truly listening. If this is tough for your and your spouse to do, try making lists, separately, of the topics you’d like to discuss and your ideas. Then share them, one at a time, without rebuttal. Think about how you can work out the issues together–compromise is almost always essential. When we do this, I’m surprised (how arrogant!) at how often the compromise we reach works better than my original idea.
- Be a Team Player. There’s no I in T-E-A-M, right? And as a married couple, you should, in fact, be a team. This can be easy to forget if you’re trying to do everything your way and on your own. The beauty of playing for a team, though, is precisely that you don’t have to do it on your own. On a team, everyone plays a different position. Each position has a different responsibility. By working together, the players are far better than the individual. Okay, okay, enough of the sports analogy! But, like most clichés, it’s been around forever because it’s true. It works. Teamwork, friends, it’s all about the teamwork!
photo credits: larryzou and DVIDSHUB
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