How to Survive a Deployment in 7 Different Ways
Iāve been doing this Air Force thing officially for 5.5 years now (unofficially for almost a decade). First I was a girlfriend, then we got engaged, and then I donned the title of an Air Force wife; my husband has been away for at least a quarter of our entire relationship. During those years weāve endured a ridiculous amount of deployments, and countless TDYās (basically business trips for military folk), and one thing always remains the same every time he leaves: My goal is to just survive. Over the years I’ve heard people tell me, “I don’t know how you do it,” so many times, I figured I should finally explain how it is that I actually do it and survive a deployment or TDY.
Let me make myself clear: before I met my husband I was a pretty independent woman. I had a career, I traveled solo, and I lived in an area where I always had some sort of social engagement happening. I donāt want you to think that Iām some clingy, totally-dependent-on-her-husband housewife now. The thing is, being someoneās other half makes you part of a team. And when youāve been a team player for that long, it takes some readjustment to figure out how to do things alone. When itās just the two of you (or more if you have a family), you get into a rhythm, and daily routines become the norm, but when one person is out of the picture, things get shaken up, and you need to make adjustments to that plan.
From being a girlfriend to now being a wife and mom, Iāve discovered several things that help me get by during those days, weeks, and months apart, and Iām going to share those with you.
Seven Different Ways to Survive a Deployment:
1. Make yourself REALLY busy.
I typically lead a fairly busy life. Between work, play dates, book club, MOPS meetings, trips to Target, school, and countless other things that pop up during the day, Iām out of the house often. But once my husband is away, I try to get out of the house even more. Iāve discovered that I miss him more when Iām home to lull around. Boredom sets in, and everyone in my house gets more irritable when weāre not doing something. So I make myself really busy. Like, so busy that come bedtime, I donāt even have the energy for my mind to race and think or worry about things.
I plan extra trips outāinstead of doing all of my errands at once, I spread them out throughout the week. I try to get out and see friends more often, and we go to more story times or parks. Staying out of the house more means that we also eat out more often, but I have a trick to this: look for places where kids eat free! Several places around town have different kids-eat-free nights, so we hit those up to make those treat nights a little more affordable. Itās obvious that someone is missing from our table when heās away (we usually eat at home for almost every meal), so we eat out a little more often when heās away. Ironically, the house is actually 10 times cleaner when heās gone, because I spend time picking up at night instead of lounging next to him on the couch.
My rationale behind this is that if weāre busy, we wonāt have time to think about how much we miss him being away.
[Tweet “How to survive a #deployment, tip numero uno: make yourself really, really busy. See more tips here:”]
2. Get into a new routine ASAP.
My husband does a fair share of stuff around the house, and Iām incredibly thankful for all he does, but when heās away itās blatant what holes need filling. Take bedtime for example: he handles the toddler while I tend to the baby, but if heās away, I suddenly have sole responsibility. I try to get into a new routine for everything as fast as possible so that we can have a since of a new normal sooner, rather than later.
To be honest, this is the part that makes me fret more than anything else. Bath time for everyone (myself included) always makes my blood pressure rise (because how with a baby and a toddler??!!), so I try to rip off the band-aid and make a new normal quickly.
3. Communicate. A lot. (Or as much as you can)
This is a biggie, and has been since day one of my relationship with my husband. We talk all.the.time. It doesnāt matter if heās in the room next to me or literally around the world: we keep our lines of communication open, always. Figuring out when we can talk (on the phone, via text, over FaceTime, or even snail mail) is our first priority. Iām that woman who has a cell phone basically attached to her, especially while heās away, and Iām not sorry about it. If weāre out to dinner it will be on the table next to me. Of course, he keeps all the top-secret-classified mumbo-jumbo under wraps, but I tell him about our day and keep him informed on everything we do. Well, not everything (because aināt nobody got time for that), but I do my best to let him know whatās going on, even if itās just in an email at the end of the day or a quick text. He doesnāt get to be around, so I do my best to keep him updated in our lives so he doesnāt ever feel disconnected.
4. Cereal for Dinner (or something just as easy)
I LOVE making dinner for my family. Love it. But when heās away, Iām a huge slacker. I should probably just leave my credit card with Chick-Fil-A and McDonaldās because we go through the drive-thru a lot. Donāt judge. Cereal and delivery pizza also become an honorary food group, and Iām not afraid to admit that. Donāt get me wrong, Iāll still cook and use fresh ingredients, but not nearly as much as before. Itās hard to cook for one person (and a picky toddler), so I choose sanity over having leftovers that would end up in the trash.
[Tweet “How to survive a #deployment? It’s all about having cereal for dinner. Can I get an amen?”]
5. Bribing
I hate that Iām admitting this, but I bribe my child a lot while heās away. I know this is something Iāll need to stop doing, but gosh darn-it, sometimes I just donāt have the patience for a toddlerās antics, and itās amazing how quickly she will do something (or eat something) if thereās a cookie or ice cream at the end of the deal for her. I know what youāre thinking: āGosh, Jess, havenāt you heard of childhood obesity, especially with all of this fast-food-eating and chocolate chip munching youāve got going on?ā And my answer to that is, āYouāve clearly never been a solo parent for more than a day or so.ā (And seriously, if you solo parent and are apparently super mom and cook your kids healthy, organic meals for every meal, either write your own post on how to rock at this without damaging your children, or just keep your mouth closed and let all of us figure out our own survival methods.) Bribing, my friends. It works.
6. Go Home.
When I was dating my airman, and even when I was a new wife, I read a lot of different blogs and forums with other spouses shamming and bullying military wives for going back home during a deployment. Basically, they had the point of view that you “signed up for this,” so you should be able to suck it up and do it on your own. Well, I think thatās hogwash. Now, if you have kids in school, I can see how the timing could be tricky, because of school and sports commitments, but if you have young kids and are a stay or work at home parent, then going home can be an excellent way to make the separation fly by.
Luckily, both sides of our family live in the same city, so it makes our trip more convenient; I especially like going back, because itās time my kids get to spend with their familyācousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc. Since weāve had kids weāve cut down on our trips home (especially over the holidays), so going home while heās deployed is especially timely.
Everyone says that it takes a village, but who says that community can only be your military family? While I think FaceTime is one of the best inventions out there, letting my kids see their family face-to-actual-face is literally priceless.
7. Ask for Help.
Women have a hard time with this one, because we like to pride ourselves in being able to do it all. Well, ladies, I have some news to break to you: Superwoman is a fictional character, and I have yet to meet someone who has it all together. Asking for help is usually the absolute last thing we ever want to do, but my suggestion is to figure out what it is you need help with before you get to that tipping point.
Make a list of all the different ādutiesā on your list: childcare, housekeeping, lawn maintenance, cooking, chauffeur, etc. Once youāve made your list, take a good look at it and find reliable people who can help out with everything just in case you need it. Find a lawn guy, squeeze room in your budget so a house cleaner can tackle that absolute least-favorite cleaning job; ask some other moms if you can start a carpool to eliminate going back and forth a hundred times a week; get some friends together and create some one-pot freezer/crock-pot meals so you can quickly put dinner together instead of agonizing over it (and eventually scrapping it and getting fast food instead).
Ladies, know your weakness and find a way to fill that void by straight-up asking for help. Trust me, itās sometimes incredibly hard to ask at first, but the benefits completely outweigh that awkward moment.
[Tweet “If you’re a #milspouse wondering how you’re going to survive a deployment, check out these 7 tips”]
You can do it!
I’m definitely not an expert, by any means, but I have done this a time or two, so these are some things that help me. I think it’s also important to note that some days you won’t survive a deployment. Some days will suckāa lot. Murphy (as in Murphy’s Law) will most likely pop in during the separation and screw everything up; you’ll have really hard days, and days when you literally count down the minutes until nap/bedtime, and days when you leave the Disney channel on all day long. But you know what? None of that matters. All that matters is that you can do it, and you will do it; you will survive a deployment, because you have to.
Do these tips ring true for you? I’d love to hear what tricks you have up your sleeve for keeping things (somewhat) together while you’re going at it alone.
Spot on, especially the bit about going home. My husband deployed two months after we got to Texas. I toughed it out for a month alone before I hit my breaking point and admitted I was miserable and wanted to go home. I caught SO much flack for it from other military wives! I couldn’t believe that people felt the need to criticize and comment. I was gone for most of the deployment and it was the best decision I could have made for myself and my sanity. If you’re only in some random place for your husband’s job and then he leaves…why on earth would you stay??
I honestly have no idea how you military spouses manage it. It was relatively easy for Dan and me to be long-distance before we were married. But when he moved to Atlanta almost two months before I did, being apart was SO hard on me.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with going home during a deployment. I overlapped a trip to see my family while Dan was on a business trip back in April.
Great tips! Especially #1 to be super, super busy. We haven’t dealt with a long deployment in over 5 years now (and hopefully won’t ever again, since he left Active Duty), but even when his AT (2-weeker(ish) Reserve commitment) hit while I was on maternity leave, I made sure to fill our days with playdates and zoo trips and library visits. Also, the cereal for dinner should be in every mom’s arsenal. I’ve heard one friend call it “YOYO” night –for You’re On You’re Own. (Basically, everyone can fend for themselves and for younger tots, that’s usually a bowl of cereal.)
I have a lot of friends in this situation, and think this is such good advice!
Thank you so much for this post! My husband is Army and has yet to deploy (thank god) but I am sure he will someday and it is great to have posts like this to come back too!
So happy it may help you in the future. And I hope the deployments for him won’t happen for awhile, but when they do, know that you’ll be able to do it!
Seriously spot on. I dread the thought of deployments we have coming up, but it’s comforting to know there are other military wives out there going through the same thing!
The dread and thinking about them coming up is the worstāseriously sometimes worse than the actual beginning stages of the deployment. Thinking of you while you get ready for whatever deployment you have coming up!
There’s so much that rings true here for me. I’ve never been one to go home during deployments or TDYs, but pretty much everything you said here resonates exactly for me. Staying busy and ripping the band-aid off on our new routines as quickly as possible are definitely key for me.
We’ve endured 2 deployments – both leaving me to solo parent, first a newborn and then 2 toddlers – and countless rounds of TDY. Throw in all the out of town classes my husband has to attend for his day job (hello Reserve family life – foot in both worlds), and we’ve racked up a whole lot of time apart since we got together 10 years ago.
We live in a heavily military populated area, but the folks around us are almost all in non-deployable positions so the service members are around nearly all the time. Sometimes that feels like a slap in the face when I’m slogging through another month in the trenches on my own. After a lot of emotional exhaustion from faking happy, or failed attempts at staying a step ahead of the lonely, I’ve figured out that for *me* the only way I get through is to basically hibernate…isolate myself from everything and everyone, only going out when we’ve emptied the shelves and I’ve run out of library books to read.
Oh man. That sounds like an incredibly tough situation to be in; I’m so sorry you don’t have a lot of support where you are. Good for you for figuring out what works for you, though.
Thank you so much for writing this. We have our first deployment coming up, and since we got the news and started preparing it has been a real struggle some days. I try to take each days and say to myself today, I am going to be positive, I can’t control what I can’t control, and I am going to enjoy the moments with husband before he leaves, and some days I succeed and others something gets to me, but what can you do other than take it take day by day and keep moving! My husband is a reservist so we don’t live near a base with other military families going through similar struggles so it is nice to read this and remember there are other military spouses going through the same thing.