Message ID: bk1sek$mhel2$1@ID-202214.news.uni-berlin.de
We have three children under the age of 3. I know that more than anything my children and I need him around. He refuses to even consider the offer and can't wait to go into combat and leave us behind. This has caused many arguments during the past few months, but he still won't budge.
As a soldier's wife, I know there are sacrifices to be made, but am I selfish to want him to stay here at home where it's safe?
-- SOLDIER'S WIFE IN COLORADO
Selfish? No. Human, yes. However, your husband is career military -- and the possibility of combat is a reality that goes along with it. It will take courage and resiliency on your part, but you will not face the separation -- or the risk -- alone. The families of everyone in your husband's unit, not to mention those already deployed, experience the same separation anxiety. I hope you all can emotionally support each other. There is strength in numbers.
OK, your husband has been in the army for 8 years. I don't think that after all this time, his career, the consequences and the risks thereof should come as any great shock to you. He is in the ARMY - soldiers go to war. Get it? That is the implied risk of the career he has chosen. If this risk was unacceptable, why did you marry him in the first place and why did you breed like a rabbit when you did?
So you have three children under the age of 3. That makes a difference how? Is that supposed to make you somehow exempt? Are the lives of your husband's comrades in arms who do not have children somehow more "expendable" than that of your husband? Do they not have wives, husbands, companions, parents, friends, brothers and sisters, cousins, nieces and nephews who are just as frightened, worried and concerned about their loved one as you? Or in your white-picket-fence entitlement world do their losses have less meaning than yours?
Whatever one may feel about this war, what cannot be denied is this: Your husband has spent his entire career waiting and training for this moment. If you did think that he would not choose to perform the duties for which he has been training for his entire adult life you are in serious denial.
Mr Abby's ancestors were seafarers, from the days of the sailing ships, (as a matter of fact, his grandfather was captain of the last commercial sailing vessel to leave Halifax Harbour under canvas) to the present (his uncle, who served in the merchant marine in WWII and the captain of a super tanker until he retired about 10 years ago). This was not an business without risk (his grandfather was shipwrecked 3 times and his uncle had his butt out on an oil tanker in convoys in the Atlantic) and frequently these men were gone for months, if not years. Those were the days when the only contact was post, and that was sketchy and slow. They did not have the niceties of cell phones and e-mail to stay in touch regularly. And their wives survived and raised their children too - for the most part alone.
You should be ashamed of yourself. Suck it up, quit whining and move on.
Childfree Abby
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