Suck it up Buttercup

It always amazes me to see wives that whine endlessly about how their lives are falling apart because their husband is gone.  I'm not saying I enjoy having my husband gone for long periods of time, in fact I hate that part of the job, but if there is one main point to my life it is that I know how to take care of myself.  I see civilian wives sad because their husband is away on business for a week and how sad they are.  I urge them to look at it from my side.  My husband’s business takes him away for a week or more on a regular basis for training.  That is nothing.  Any wife that gets upset when there husband is not in harm’s way and gone for less than a month is being a little to codependent for me.  Try having your husband’s job take him from you for 9 months or more and stick him in a country where he is hated, in constant danger of being shot at or having things explode.  His job takes him to an area where a part of the local population wants nothing more than to see him dead.  When your husband is sent on a business trip, where there is a threat of him being killed, then feel free to say something about how hard it is.  Until then, I don't really want to hear about it.  Now for those wives that are military that want to whine and complain that they can't survive without their other half during a deployment, really?  Yes it makes me sad to realize my husband will miss everything for the next year but I know I can survive.  If nothing else, I am resilient and grown up enough to handle things back here and my husband can take comfort knowing he doesn't have to worry about me or the kids.  From the beginning of our life together, I have made sure that I would have the ability to survive while he was gone.  I have even gone through a pregnancy without him there for most of it.  Instead of being dependent on a man, I am independent and can handle paying the bills, getting the care maintained or even repaired, driving around a new place, and anything else that life throws at me.  My husband doesn't handle the finances at all; I bought the furniture on my own, and am even the one who handled the negotiations for our last car.  I doubt he even knows how much he gets paid.  He is actually dependent on me to take care of everything at home, and I know some people think it shouldn't be that way, but it has to be.  His job is too important to be interrupted by worrying if all of those things are taken care of while he is away.  When your husband leaves you for a deployment, everyone has a similar reaction and goes through a grieving process.  The differences come in the way you portray yourself to the world and how much you let it interfere in your life.  Just because a wife holds her head up and doesn't breakdown in public, is not proof that she is uncaring.  Rather, it is proof that she has the strength to pull through and be strong for her family and knows that life will go on.  You can do two things during this time; let grief consume you and becoming a blubbering whiny mess or lift yourself up and start looking forward to the future and act like an adult.  You were old enough to get married and leave mommy and daddy.  Now it is time to suck it up, put on your big girl panties, and deal with this life.  Life goes on while they are gone and I guarantee your husband wants you to continue on and not be sitting behind a computer crying that you can't live without him.  Get off your butt, take a shower, and get out and learn something new or go out to lunch with a friend but most of all quit feeling sorry for yourself.