Toni Anderson

How Does Your Husband Help While He’s Away?

Jolyn and her Air Force husband have been married for 14 years and have three children. They have so far navigated nine major moves, one deployment and countless TDYs.* She blogs over at “A Military Family Blog (a life like any other)” about the kids (of course), household projects, financial issues, traveling and cultural observations … and whatever else happens to catch her fancy. She loves to visit The Happy Housewife for inspiration in frugality and fruitful living, as well as practical tips for feeding my family healthier meals.
*TDY stands for Temporary Duty: military speak for business trip.

Early in our young marriage my husband was away on TDY (again) over my birthday. I can’t recall if we talked that day or not (this was well before the internet was everywhere) but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he called to at least wish me a happy birthday. But when he returned I asked him why he never got me anything, even just a card, while he was gone. He replied that since he couldn’t be around for the actual day he hadn’t seen the point. That went over well.

Since that time John and I have honed the art of coping with frequent separations as though they were second nature. Sort of. Unless, you know, it’s a short-notice trip timed for the day the movers come and you’re seven months pregnant with your third child and just landed in a foreign country. Just to, you know, throw something out there.

Something’s always going to throw you for a loop, but in general we each know our roles: he maintains the cars and works on procrastinated chores from the honey-do list and acknowledges birthdays while he’s gone; I add things to the honey-do list as quickly as he can scratch them off and basically run around like a crazy woman until the moment he leaves when I finally sigh and lean back and make the kids macaroni and cheese and chicken nuggets for four days straight while I smugly munch on my solitary bowl of salad until even I can’t stand it anymore.

Separations can be hard, whether you’re military or not. They can be especially hard if you married someone whose job frequently takes them away and you didn’t exactly understand that was part of the package deal. In my case, when I got married I was military, too. I knew the deal. However, it’s one thing to be the one going away – and quite another to be the one left behind.

Let’s just say that even if you didn’t exactly know what you were getting yourself into when you married your frequent flyer husband, you’ve since come to terms with it and pulled yourself up by your own bootstraps, so to speak. What sorts of things help you to cope while your spouse is away? What sorts of things does he do to help?

So far as I see it the challenges boil down into two main issues: communication and finances — and communication about finances. Problems with these are cited as the main cause for marital discord even in relationships that don’t face the challenges of frequent separations. How much harder is it, especially for a young, newly married couple, when your relationship is tested — and assumptions brought to light — over long distance?

I knew a lovely young woman at our last base whose husband was getting ready to go on a special TDY. It was some high-security mystery business that offered a premium Per Diem — that amount service members get paid to cover daily expenses while they’re traveling. In this case, it was such an exceptional amount that there was no way her husband was going to use even half of it, and depending on how long he ended up being away (that was also a secret) they stood to rack up some serious savings. She was already dreaming about a down payment for a home.

The next time I saw her I could tell that things hadn’t gone exactly as she had assumed they would. The per diem rate was as great as her husband had told her it would be, but he had also spent a greater part of it on his daily expenses, mainly by ordering room service to his hotel. She was obviously very disappointed, but she just shrugged it off. It was probably very difficult for him there, she reasoned.

Listening to her story reminded me of how difficult it can be to be on the same sheet of music as your spouse when you really haven’t been sharing lives together all that long and you’re a thousand miles apart when you discover that you’re not even playing the same song. And though I did not share this story with this young woman, I was reminded of the first time my husband had a prolonged TDY very early in our marriage (again, well before the internet) and he was complaining to me about how sick everyone was of eating fast food all the time and how it was messing up their digestive systems and such. (Only his vocabulary was much more colorful.)

Well, I thought that was just about the silliest thing I had ever heard. “Don’t you have a mini fridge in your room?”

“Um, yea.”

“So why don’t you get a loaf of bread and some lunchmeat and cheese and make yourself some sandwiches? Better for you and you’ll save a bunch of money!” I’m pretty certain I outlined to him exactly how much, too, with nothing but love in my tone I’m sure. At least I didn’t have any grand notions of starting a down payment for a house.

The idea of going to a grocery store had seriously never occurred to him, nor to his roommate, nor to all the other knuckleheads he was hanging out with. Some time later we talked again, the night before he was scheduled to leave.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Oh, I’m just sitting here trying to eat a dozen sandwiches and a bunch of other stuff that I got at the store last night.” Yes, two days before he was scheduled to finish a four-month (or was it six?) TDY he decided to take my advice. It was a good thing he was so cute and we were so in love and he was a thousand miles away or I might have had to bop him one on the head.

It really is a misnomer that you can make money on a TDY. If you are very frugal you can come out ahead, but probably just enough to make up for the extra expenses that appear out of nowhere, like the pizzas you ordered out with the kids as special treats while dad’s away, or the car repair you had to pay a shop for because your “mechanic” wasn’t available. And the car will need work while your husband’s gone, it’s a guarantee. If you happen to be mechanically inclined yourself, God bless you.

But I am very grateful that my husband does try to cut corners where he can when he’s away, which mainly means that he limits his eating out as much as possible or limits his alcohol intake when he does. Not a small thing — I have a friend whose husband regularly eats in steak restaurants and consumes indiscriminate amounts of alcohol on his TDYs while she’s at home dining on PB&Js with the kids. She shrugs and says she’s given up trying to talk to him about it and simply plans accordingly.

When scheduling his hotel accommodations, my husband has learned to try to reserve rooms with a mini fridge and even a microwave when possible, and he has learned to make sandwiches. I appreciate this tremendously. These are such little things, but they show that we are now on the same sheet of music. We are singing the same lyrics. Granted, sometimes we are not singing in the same key, but that’s what email is for. God bless the internet.

I would love to know what things you and your husband have found helpful to you while he’s away. Even after fourteen years, it is still a learning curve for us — mainly because the military keeps changing the rules. And those pesky kids — why do they have to grow up and lose that short attention span?

I for one can cope quite well on my own when my husband is away, thank you very much. Except when I can’t. Those are the times when a few words of appreciation from him or a note of praise can go so far — they can even breach a thousand miles. Especially when it’s my birthday.