Sunday, December 11, 2011

Has anyone else experienced a funky adjustment period when their soldier comes home?

My guy went off to training in June and just got back from training a few days ago. And we've been bickering since he got here. For us...we're not married yet, we're fresh out of college and still living at home. So the adjustment wasn't a matter of him coming in to my world where I'd gotten used to running things and trying to change stuff up (although I do admit, I am having to get used to him being here again). It's more so about his schedule. He's only here for two weeks, he doesn't see his family every day, he hasn't seen his friends in 6 months. And for me, at first, I really felt put on the back-burner, as if I was being treated as an after-thought. I guess I had over-romanticized his homecoming, and when things didn't go as I expected them to, there were a lot of hurt feelings, and I found myself snapping at him, getting angry at him over small things, just overall wanting to get away from him. And he may have ruffled my feathers a little, but it just didn't warrant that kind of response. I've recently come to a few realizations about me and him and us, and am slowly understanding that y'know, I'm gonna be here anyway, he only has two weeks to spend with them. It's not all about me anymore, he's not here every day like he used to be, and so there are a lot of adjustments that come along with that. It's our first long time apart, so I'm not a veteran yet who knows how to deal with all this, I'm still learning. But I wonder if anyone else has experienced this funky transitioning/adjustment period before? In any situation, with a returning soldier? I feel like when we got into it, everyone cautioned us about how to deal with deployments and being apart for months/years, but no one really prepared us for what it would be like when our men and women came home.

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