*This piece is not about blame. It’s a reflection on the impact that repeated absence had on me, and what healing now requires.
The start of a new year carries a quiet expectation: reset, renew, and move forward.
We talk a lot about fresh starts—new routines, new goals, new versions of ourselves. But sometimes a new year doesn’t bring motivation or clarity. Sometimes it brings honesty. The kind that shows up when the noise settles and you finally stop outrunning what still hurts.
This year, that honesty looks like naming something I’ve carried for a long time.
No one tells you that you can love your husband deeply and still feel abandoned by him.
They don’t tell you that understanding why he leaves doesn’t soften the ache of being left. Or that you can support the mission, the career, the calling—and still quietly grieve the husband who couldn’t stay.
In the military world, leaving is normalized. Expected. Applauded, even. Deployments, trainings, schools, TDYs—each one wrapped in language that makes absence feel noble and necessary.
But normalizing it does not erase the impact.
When your husband leaves over and over again, your body doesn’t file it away as service. It remembers it as loss, etching the pain deep inside—creating trauma no one wants to talk about.
Over the years, I learned the same lesson again and again: I would have to become enough for myself. I learned how to rely on me.
I became efficient at holding down a household, parenting solo, making decisions without backup, showing up strong because there was no other option. I learned how to compartmentalize fear, loneliness, and resentment because there was no space or time for them.
There was always another countdown, another departure date—no time to heal, always something brewing on the horizon, quietly stealing my peace and wrecking my nervous system.
And when my husband came back, everyone expected relief. Gratitude. A return to normal.
But normal didn’t exist anymore—there was always a new normal to figure out.
Because every return carried the weight of the next leaving. And somewhere along the way, my nervous system stopped trusting permanence. I love my husband, but I’ve never fully relaxed into the idea that he would stay. I couldn’t. History has taught me otherwise.
Even now, close to retirement—knowing he likely won’t have to leave again—my body is still searching for that peace, but quietly telling me it will never come.
People are quick to judge—or correct me—when I use the word abandonment.
He didn’t abandon you.
He didn’t have a choice.
You knew what you signed up for.
Maybe all of that is true.
But impact matters more than intent.
And the impact was this: when I needed him the most, he wasn’t there. Physically absent. Emotionally unreachable. And even when the reasons were honorable, the absence was still processed the same. The resentment was still mentally filed.
I don’t think I was angry at my husband so much as I was grieving the marriage I thought I’d have—the shared weight, the everyday partnership, the consistency. I was grieving the moments I handled alone because someone else had to go.
And that grief didn’t disappear just because the uniform came back through the door.
It settled quietly. It hardened me in places. It showed up as hyper-independence, emotional distance, and an undercurrent of resentment I’m only now beginning to understand.
Forgiveness is often talked about in military marriages. But forgiveness requires safety and change. And for years, neither felt possible—not when leaving was inevitable, not when goodbyes were guaranteed.
So maybe this new year isn’t about forgiving faster or being stronger.
Maybe it’s about acknowledging the wound that was never named…
Maybe it’s about admitting that loving a husband who can’t stay—even for the right reasons—changes you. That repeated absence leaves marks. That resilience often comes at the cost of softness.
And healing doesn’t always look like moving on—because sometimes you’re just not ready.
Sometimes healing looks like telling the truth. Like finally facing what you’ve kept buried for twenty years.
Healing, for me, has been finding a word for how I’ve felt for almost two decades.
And it doesn’t come with a neat ending or a lesson wrapped in a bow.
But I do know this:
Pretending it didn’t hurt never made it hurt less.
Naming it is where healing begins.
And in naming it, I finally found a way forward.
And maybe—just maybe—that’s where this new year truly begins.
And remember, you are not alone, your feelings are real and valid!
I’m writing honestly about military marriage, repeated separations, and the emotional cost no one prepares you for in my upcoming memoir, Hurry Up and Wait: Confessions of a Military Spouse. This space exists for the conversations we were never taught how to have—and for the healing that begins when we stop pretending we’re fine.
If you know someone who might need these words, feel free to share them. And if you’d like to stay connected, you’re always welcome here.
Written by Emily M- A military spouse of almost 20 years
