When Deployment Tests Friendship

I don’t know about everyone else, but when people (civilians or new military spouses) ask how I get through a deployment, my answer is, “Friends.”

I think family is great if you have a supportive and healthy one, but friends are what really do it for me. Especially early in the deployment, I made a point of talking to someone, either face-to-face or over the phone, every single day so that I didn’t feel so alone. I live alone, without pets or kids, and my schooling doesn’t lend itself to a lot of free time. Hearing someone’s voice and getting to talk to them was absolutely crucial to not feeling so isolated.

I find it helpful to have a variety of friends. Keep some civilian friends so you can occasionally have a conversation that is not about the military, and hold your military friends close so you can talk to someone who really knows what it feels like to be missing your favorite person and worrying about them every day. That’s also why I find friends almost a better resource than family—because no one in my family has a real clue what it is like to be in this situation.

My military spouse friends do.

It distresses me when I hear or see new military spouses who are so shaken by being alone when their service member deploys, yet won’t try to get involved with their SFRG. Some refuse to have anything to do with the military because they’re mad it, or they try to get all their support from online resources.

Obviously, I’m not against online resources, but nothing beats hearing a caring voice or getting a hug. Social media can’t reach out and hug you. Sometimes it seems like all the recruiters’ lines about “the Army will take care of everything for your family” has been translated to, “somebody will show up at my doorstep with a plate of cookies and assign me a deployment buddy.”

That isn’t realistic.

The people who know what it is like to be the spouse of a deployed service member are also spouses of deployed service members, trying to hold down a job, a family, be two parents in the body of one, etc. We have to be willing to put ourselves out there and make a little effort to get to know people, and we cannot expect the first person or group we try to instantly click with us (though it occasionally does happen). Friend-hunting is sometimes a little like job hunting; you have to keep at it until you find one—not just give up when the first interview doesn’t work out.

But one thing I’ve noticed is that I’m starting to separate my friends into two categories: “deployment” or “crisis” friends and permanent friends.

I’ve had several friends that I thought were my good friends during the deployment, who then turn around and drop me like a hot potato as soon as their husbands came home. I’ve also had friends who only had time for me when their life was in crisis. Once it calmed down, they disappeared, leaving me to deal with my service member being shot at daily or readjusting to him being home and coping with the loss of what I had thought was a friend. I’ve seen this happen to others, as well—people bond during the stress of the deployment, to drift or break apart when that stress is relieved.

I’m starting to think it is the normal course of things.

So at this point, people are crisis/deployment friends until they prove they are permanent friends. Maybe that’s the way it is supposed to be.

But maybe, just maybe, if we attempt to support each other in the easy and the hard times, it can be different.