Deployments aren’t fun. They test our patience, our marriages and our multi-tasking abilities. They require us to be both mom and dad, and to put our own feelings aside to support our spouses. But deployments also make us stronger. They reveal hidden talents we didn’t know existed, and give us the opportunity to learn about our spouses and solidify our partnerships.
 
Jennifer and her husband, a Captain in the Marines, have been through four deployments together. “It’s taught me to solve my problems by myself,” she says. She remembers the time her clothes dryer broke while her husband was overseas. “He was googling ways to fix it and trying to email them to me.” Jennifer’s father-in-law ended up fixing the dryer, but she learned a deployment lesson. “He can’t always help me from far away, so I have to learn to take care of things myself.”
 
Being a military spouse is always an exercise in flexibility, but even more so when your partner is deployed. “We were meeting in Italy for R&R (Rest & Relaxation) and his plane was delayed,” says Colleen, who is married to a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army. “I was alone in a foreign country and I had no idea when he would get there!” Luckily, he arrived the next day, but Colleen had to remind herself that she was capable of handling the change in plans – and not to be angry at her husband. “He was just as frustrated as I was!”
 
The hardest lesson for Tanya to learn was that she and her husband, a Sergeant First Class in the Army, were both doing the best they could in a difficult situation. Tanya and her two sons had to PCS (Permanent Change of Station) while her husband was deployed. “I was really stressed out and he wasn’t as supportive as I wanted him to be. But I had to realize that he wasn’t being a jerk, he just had some pretty big stresses of his own overseas.”
 
In any relationship, partners change over time. But for couples going through a deployment, a lot of those changes happen while they are apart. That can put a strain on the relationship, and it takes time to figure out how you fit together again. “That’s the best deployment lesson I’ve learned,” says Sarah, who just finished her first deployment with her husband, a Senior Airman in the Air Force, “we really can ride out life’s ups and downs together and still make our relationship work. It makes me really proud of us.”

Read About Katie’s Deployment Lessons.