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DocGreek
02-24-09, 08:24 AM
Ladies, and Gentlemen....This Forum is dedicated to "Marine Spouse". Experience, is the greatest teacher. "Young", men and women, who want to marry, just before entry into ANY Military service, should have mandatory counseling, and be given the true perspective, of being the spouse of a military volunteer. Sometimes, romance, and sex, clouds the reality of the truth. Teaching young people, what good communication means, is the number ONE lesson to be learned. An accurate description, of what the service member will experience, from day one, enhances the overall picture. PLEASE....give these young people a good foundation, to start "THE" experience......DOC :thumbup:

thewookie
02-24-09, 12:48 PM
figh dolla make you holla:banana:

Idena
02-24-09, 02:54 PM
Unfortunately (or sometimes fortunately, depending on perspective), no one can mandate counseling for spouses. However, those who come seeking counsel are getting a leg up & should definitely be encouraged.

I'm not really a seasoned spouse yet after only four years, but I'm always willing to offer what I know to someone who needs & wants the insight.

thedrifter
02-24-09, 03:06 PM
Unfortunately (or sometimes fortunately, depending on perspective), no one can mandate counseling for spouses. However, those who come seeking counsel are getting a leg up & should definitely be encouraged.

I'm not really a seasoned spouse yet after only four years, but I'm always willing to offer what I know to someone who needs & wants the insight.

You can say I'm a seasoned spouse 32 years, and I help when asked....;)

Ellie

Rocky C
02-24-09, 04:21 PM
Ladies, and Gentlemen....This Forum is dedicated to "Marine Spouse". Experience, is the greatest teacher. "Young", men and women, who want to marry, just before entry into ANY Military service, should have mandatory counseling, and be given the true perspective, of being the spouse of a military volunteer. Sometimes, romance, and sex, clouds the reality of the truth. Teaching young people, what good communication means, is the number ONE lesson to be learned. An accurate description, of what the service member will experience, from day one, enhances the overall picture. PLEASE....give these young people a good foundation, to start "THE" experience......DOC :thumbup:

You are so right DOC!!!!!!
Came home on leave, got a girl from my hometown pregnant, married her and moved her to North Carolina with me, I was only 19, didn't know sh*t, ended in divorce......

skittlejen
02-24-09, 06:29 PM
Hi. This seems to be a good place to ask this. What is the military spouse experience really like? My fiance is leaving in a few weeks for MCRD so as you can imagine it has been rather hectic. We are trying to do the right thing by talking to our pastor and other married couples we know, but honestly haven't had the perspective of military couples. What do I need to know?

Megarie23
02-24-09, 09:28 PM
So true! I've been married to my husband for 5 years--he spent 4 of those years in the Navy and now he has joined the Marines....but communication is key for any relationship (military and non). The distance forced upon some military families is so difficult and it's certainly not a lifestyle meant for every couple.

JohnEaceHunt
02-25-09, 04:49 AM
June '09 be 39 years to the same one for me. Its what each of you make it.

MrsNix
03-11-09, 12:27 AM
I am discouraged by the numbers of very young women I see marrying very young men who are about to, or have just joined, the military. Because young people don't have the perspective or humility (both of those things tend to come with age) to listen to their elders, my message here will likely fall on largely deaf ears. The draw of youthful hope, sexual excitement, and the glittery mirage of adult independence will continue to pull young people into the deep end before they can swim, and I understand that. The saddest part is that most of these young adults don't realize what they've done until after some children have been created in these marriages of folly...leaving a mess that cannot ever be satisfactorily cleaned up.

My advice to the very young is this:

EVERY person your age who enters into marriage believes with absolute conviction that THEY are the special exception to the divorce statistic.

Their relationship is different.

Their circumstances are not like those "other people."

They are more mature.

They have read more books.

They love each other more.

They are smarter and know what they're getting into.

I am here to inform you that you are not as unique as you think you are. Your "love" is not yet old enough and tried enough to stand up to the rigors of military marriage without preparation and mature thought. I am likely not the first person to say things of this nature to you.

Do you honestly believe that the reason your parents, people like me, and every other adult you hear this same admonition from are simply begrudging you something? Do you think that we're all just out to kill your joy...or that we're stupid...or that we don't remember being your age? Do you honestly think that the adults who love you wish to deprive you of the joy of a happy marriage?

Or, perhaps, just maybe...do you think it's because we have been where you are? We have been your age. We have also been 25. We have also been 30. And you? You have only been where you are to this point. Perhaps, we have a perspective on life you could learn from. I hope you can open your rational mind and your ingrained common sense enough to entertain what I‘m telling you in this little letter on the internet. I write it with the hope that I can convince just one or two people to think, reflect, and arm themselves for the road ahead in this glorious, horrible, respectful, frightening, and wonderful military life.

--------------

I have no doubt that your love is real. I’m sure that it is. What I’m less certain of is whether or not you both have the maturity, commitment, and depth of character to feed that love through the hardships of military life instead of killing it off before it can bloom.

That sounds really harsh doesn’t it? It’s not an insult. It’s the truth. It takes a few trips around the sun to become the adult you’re going to be. At 17, 19, or 21, the vast majority of human beings are not who they are going to be. For that reason, I implore you to take a look around you and seriously consider what you’re about to do from as objective and clinical a viewpoint as you can muster.

My advice is that you wait. Not break up. This is not an all or nothing proposal. Your choices are more complex than “get married right now” or “break up.“ Continue dating. Continue your engagement. Continue on your monogamous path toward marriage. Don't give it up as lost. No one should tell you that you cannot possibly make this work...and I would certainly never say such a thing. My husband was 21 when I married him (I am a few tiny years older), so you can see from this that I don't by any stretch look down my nose at young marriage.

You love each other enough that you want to dive into a marriage that will send you a lifetime of deployments...surely, then, you love one another enough to experience a dry run before you put on the rings and create a family together? Surely, you can wait through boot camp, MOS school, and one combat tour. Put on that Marine fiance coat and wear it around town for a while. Make sure it fits and keeps you really warm before you tear the tag off and head out to the Arctic tundra.

No one buys a car without a test drive. Entering a military marriage with less care than you would give to the purchase of an automobile would be childish and adolescent impulse to the extreme. Only idiots, addicts, or children would behave with so little circumspection and control.

Date through a combat deployment and see if the relationship is still there after he comes home. Did your relationship grow? Did you learn to respect him even more? Examine how your military fiance handled the separation. Did he call as often as he could? Did he write you and wish for you often. Was he hostile or "different" in ways you didn't understand? Did he talk to you about his fears and lonely times or did he brush you off? Examine how YOU handled it. Did you miss him after the first month? Did you return to your usual routine and make the best of things after a while, or did you wallow in emotional lows you couldn't control? Did you find yourself joyfully sending letters and packages or did you find yourself fighting off feelings of resentment that he wasn't there. Were you angry with him for leaving? Were you tempted to cheat?

YOU DO NOT KNOW THE ANSWERS TO ANY OF THOSE QUESTIONS UNTIL AFTER THE FIRST DEPLOYMENT.

You know how you want to answer them. You know what you think the answers will be. But we don't marry successfully for life on "I want" or "I think." We marry successfully only with "I know." So wait through a deployment. Know the answers to the important questions. Once you get that under your belt, you will be in a much more rational place to make a decision about the rest of your life.

Don't imagine that you're going to marry a man who's going off to boot camp now...and then hound him to quit for four years...and THEN be happy.

Don't imagine that a boyfriend who doesn’t trust you to be faithful while he is away in boot camp unless you get married first will suddenly become a patient, respectful, and trusting husband once you have a ring on your left index finger.

Don't imagine that you are the same couple today that you will be after you have children, and don‘t imagine that you are in total control of when you will have kids. Every birth control method has a failure rate…ask 90% of the parents out there what types they were using when they got pregnant anyway.

Don't imagine that you are the same people today with the same fears, world view, perspective, and priority list that you will grow into when you are 25...when you are 30, etc.

You can avoid catastrophic misery and a lifetime of regret by taking some time to do things in the right order with the right amount of humility and patience. It is hard to be patient when you are in love. It is hard to resist the impulse to “make things permanent” between you when you are about to watch the man you love go off to make HUGE changes in his life by becoming a member of the military. You want that security. You want that stability. You want that assurance that he’s going to stay with you and let you go on the ride with him. But REAL stability, security, and love are not created from that place of need and fear and uncertainty. You need to know that. The certainty must come FIRST. You need to believe the people around you who are showing you the right road to follow. We want you to be happy. We want you to thrive. We want to welcome you to the Marine Corps family and embrace you and your marriage. I am coming at you from a place of experience and success in the hope that I might be able to give you that firm and stable platform you can leap from with confidence.

Enough preaching. I think you get my point.

------------------

I beg you to consider all that I have said here. I beg it of you because I have SEEN so many people make mistakes and suffer for it. I have held the sobbing shoulders of young Marines who returned to empty homes because their wives couldn't take the loneliness of deployment and left them. I have seen the faces of frightened and lonely children who have a military father deployed and an angry, depressed, and resentful mother. If I had a nickel for every time a young military wife has said to me, “I didn’t know it would be like this,” I’d be a rich woman.

All I want is for other people to have a fair shake at avoiding all this ugly stuff...so that they can experience the joyful marriage of mutual respect and love and companionship that my husband and I have been so blessed to find in one another. Happy military marriages are created every day all over the place. They don't just "happen," though There is no luck involved. There is only personal character, personal commitment, and reasonable planning.

Stack the deck in your favor and use your good sense so that you can avoid the ugly and obtain what you're really after...which is a happy life with a partner you can respect, love, and depend on.

Petz
03-11-09, 12:54 AM
Unfortunately (or sometimes fortunately, depending on perspective), no one can mandate counseling for spouses. However, those who come seeking counsel are getting a leg up & should definitely be encouraged.

I'm not really a seasoned spouse yet after only four years, but I'm always willing to offer what I know to someone who needs & wants the insight.


um... I was under the impression that I can make the Marine goto marriage counseling..... has that changed?

OMG Mrs Nix, you just wrote a novel... another vote for you to be the spouse rep for the site.

also a great book to read for both partners is "the five languages of love" it will help you better understand what you spouse perceives as love. it's not always buying things or saying sweet nothings... or even cleaning and cooking.

KawiGunny
03-11-09, 07:12 AM
um... I was under the impression that I can make the Marine goto marriage counseling..... has that changed?

OMG Mrs Nix, you just wrote a novel... another vote for you to be the spouse rep for the site.

also a great book to read for both partners is "the five languages of love" it will help you better understand what you spouse perceives as love. it's not always buying things or saying sweet nothings... or even cleaning and cooking.


You can make a recommendation to your chain that the Marine attends marriage counselling. He will have his oppertunity to plead his case with the CO. Just have to remember...... you can't make the spouse go. If both don't go..... it's a waste of time.

MrsNix
03-12-09, 02:37 AM
Some of the marital retreat-type seminars that I have seen offered through the USMC have value for young or inexperienced couples who might not have ever actually sat to think about how their partner views the world. Also, if there is aggressive or abusive hostility in the home, I would naturally recommend counseling.

In my experience, however, I have become rather skeptical of the typical "go to therapy and complain for 40 minutes per week" method of working out marital issues.

I strongly recommend visiting with chaplains. Regardless of a person's faith, I have found that a counselor approaching problems from a faith-based perspective is more likely to pull a couple out of yelling and complaining at one another about who's to blame and steer them each toward their individual moral obligations to the marriage.

Moral Obligation.

In my mind, that is THE key concept in healing marital strife. If you can manage to get each spouse to understand, embrace, and find motivation to satisfy his or her own moral obligations in spite of their anger...things work out. Each time I've seen a couple go to a chaplain rather than a civilian therapist for marital help, this was the first object of the therapy. It works.

HisSemperFiWife
03-12-09, 04:26 PM
My love for my husband is not conditional upon his actions or reactions... but his leadership in the marriage sure makes a huge difference. I pray for God to make me what he needs ...and never nag... but I do speak the truth in love when he asks. I made the covenant... semper fi. I have done spouse bootcamp too ;)

JohnEaceHunt
03-12-09, 04:39 PM
Semper Fi Wife, I commend you. I pray our God will continue to bless and let your Marrage continue to grow. I once commented,'its what each of you make of it'. I pray God will protect your Marine and all others that are fighting for our way of life. Semper Fi, and God Bless.

HisSemperFiWife
03-12-09, 04:48 PM
Semper Fi Wife, I commend you. I pray our God will continue to bless and let your Marrage continue to grow. I once commented,'its what each of you make of it'. I pray God will protect your Marine and all others that are fighting for our way of life. Semper Fi, and God Bless.


Thank you sir for the nice comments! and thank you for serving! :angel:
Also have a son who is Sergeant now in year five. He, his faithful wife and precious daughter are based out in IWO. He finally graduated from EOD school last year. He's seen a lot of action.

My Sergeant was door gunner in Nam.:usmc:

JohnEaceHunt
03-12-09, 05:11 PM
Semper Fi Wife. That is Great. I was in HMM-265 from April'69 as Crew Chief until I was med-evaced on 27th of Aug. '69. We could have flown together, or been in the Air bout the same time. I hope he is doing well. I hope your son and his Family are doing well, and God will watch over him and all his fellow Marines. My Son deployes to Afghanistan tomorrow, and just Pray he will return safe as well. Again, Semper Fi, and God Bless you all.

DocGreek
03-12-09, 06:40 PM
ACE....My prayers are flowing out to you, your son, and your family. If you want to talk, or yell, at someone.....I'm always available. That goes for the rest of you BUMS, TOO!!!......DOC

JohnEaceHunt
03-12-09, 06:48 PM
Doc, Thank you Greatly. Seem to feel like I did the night before I left for the 'Nam. With Gods help, we will get our Son back safely before long. Semper Fi, Doc. Ace.

Petz
03-13-09, 12:42 AM
Some of the marital retreat-type seminars that I have seen offered through the USMC have value for young or inexperienced couples who might not have ever actually sat to think about how their partner views the world. Also, if there is aggressive or abusive hostility in the home, I would naturally recommend counseling.

In my experience, however, I have become rather skeptical of the typical "go to therapy and complain for 40 minutes per week" method of working out marital issues.

I strongly recommend visiting with chaplains. Regardless of a person's faith, I have found that a counselor approaching problems from a faith-based perspective is more likely to pull a couple out of yelling and complaining at one another about who's to blame and steer them each toward their individual moral obligations to the marriage.

Moral Obligation.

In my mind, that is THE key concept in healing marital strife. If you can manage to get each spouse to understand, embrace, and find motivation to satisfy his or her own moral obligations in spite of their anger...things work out. Each time I've seen a couple go to a chaplain rather than a civilian therapist for marital help, this was the first object of the therapy. It works.


imagine the counseling sessions in the movie 'old school' .... the "40 min btich sessions" in that are hilarious! that's exactly what you are refering to I know it!