A blog follower of mine requested that I touch base on the communication aspect of the military life so I decided I was going to talk about the issue Ryan and I had while he was on deployment. The man I always make out to be wonderful and perfect had a GIANT flaw during deployment: communication.
Yeah, he emailed me once a day usually. Some days he just plain forgot and that made me feel like crap. The thing with those emails though? He never really said he missed me. He never openly expressed how he felt about being away from me. I always told him I missed him and he never said it back. I always told him how sad I felt that day and why I felt that way and his reply would say how much work he did or didn't do that day or how tired he was then a quick I love you! and off to bed he went.
That wasn't my issue though. My issue was hearing his voice. I can honestly say I heard his voice an average of ONCE a month while he was deployed. I saw his face ONCE the whole time he was deployed and that wasn't even on Skype, that was in a picture he sent me when he hit his first port of the deployment. That was all I got. Every time they were in port I dealt with hearing "Skyping with my hubby!" or "Yay my hubby called!!!" and I just got let down time and time again.
See, Ryan was a freshly married man who didn't really get bothered about the seperation as much as I did. Again, that broke my heart. You married me because you supposedly love me so much? Why don't you f****** miss me? You REALLY wanted to spend the rest of your life with me but you don't miss me when you're gone?? Deployment murdered my heart and it wasn't until about a month before deployment was over that the pieces were put back together.
Back to the port visits... This was a never ending cycle: Email from him says he will be in port tomorrow. I get excited because this means I get to hear his voice for the first time in a month! He says he will call me. He gets really drunk and forgets to call me. Port after port after port this happened. About a month before Ryan was to return home I had the last straw. He promised a phone call and I never got one. It was around midnight my time and 5 or 6 am his time and he called me. I was deep into my second bottle of spumante at that point and in He woman Ryan hater mode. His call surprised me and I started bawling and then and there my drunk self told him everything. How badly he hurt me every time he did that and just how often he did it. He didn't even realize he was doing it so much. I told him to never tell me he would call me while he was in port again because I couldn't handle him breaking my heart even one more time and he said okay with a certain shyness and guilt in his voice. Then he had to go because they were pulling out of that port and that was that.
About a week ish later I got the "I'm about to be in port" email and I didn't really know how to respond except for with a "Well, if you can call me, cool. If not, cool" attitude. Ryan called me that night. He was drunk, I, not so much. But what happened that night was the breaking point in that never ending monthly cycle. Ryan apologized. Ryan cried and told me how much he misses me and wishes he were home. Ryan told me how much he loved me and how bad he felt for hurting me so badly. Ryan was finally saying everything I had longed for him to say during the whole deployment and, in Ryans voice, you just knew he was being honest and had completely opened his heart to me. Ryan made up for all the pain I had felt in just that one conversation and we fell in love all over again before he even got back from that deployment 3 ish weeks later.
That was my skeleton. Only 1 or 2 people other then Ryan and I knew about that before now. The only advice I can give for those of you that are having issues with communication is, if you can't find a way to work through it, it's not supposed to be worked through. If that man or woman truly loves you, he or she will find a way to make it up to you and you never know when to expect it so just keep holding out for him or her. Just when you think you can't take it anymore, you might get the surprise of your life.
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3 comments:
I think there are so many stories from deployments that people just gloss over like they didn't happen. Your honesty is refreshing!
It was a big deal to me but I just didn't want people thinking Ryan was a bad guy because he isn't. He just had a big ole deployment flaw lol.
So, I don't even have a deployment issue, and I still feel the neglect that accompanies a man of few words. It's certainly a common "woman-problem" that I feel men will never relate to. I tend to suffer from separation anxiety of some sort; mostly because I have grown accustomed to a lifestyle where I'm never alone; even if that means it's just me and the dog. But I've lived with roommates for years now, and been in long, back-to-back relationships that keep me busy. When David or I go out of town for the weekend, I feel the itch to call him, text him, hear his voice. I get upset when I'm getting ready for bed and I haven't heard from him all day. I get paranoid that the reason he doesn't say that he misses me is because he doesn't. Either that or he's too busy enjoying his time away from me to be bothered by calling me.
It's natural for a woman to miss the wonderful things in her life, if not for a long deployment, than for a few days, hours, minutes. You loved him. You still love him. That's nothing to be ashamed about. Thanks for opening up. <3
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