Marriage and the Military

I read a post the other day that got me thinking.

Everyone always says that the first year of marriage is the hardest.

I was pondering this statement and I came to the realization that our first year of marriage was hard, but I wondered if it "counted." You see, D was deployed for most of our first year of marriage. We had our wedding May 17 and he left for Iraq a month later.

So obviously, that first year was hard. It was hard in ways that don't even compare to what most couples go through in their first year of marriage. But would it have been hard if we had been together?

I decided that our first year didn't count, since we were 7,500 miles apart. I decided to take a look at our second year of marriage. Yes, it was a hard year for us. Looking back on it, though, we were going through a lot of the reintegration issues that are common among military families after a deployment. Oh, we also moved, found out we were pregnant and had a baby. Can you say stressful? But would it have been hard if I hadn't just spent a year wondering if my husband would come home to me?

I suppose the second year of our marriage was a lot like what most couples go through that first year, but intensified. I mean, we all have to adjust to another person's habits and quirks, but I think that for military families, its different. We spend a year (or sometimes more) worrying about the safety of our loved ones and then one day, they're back in our house, unloading the dishwasher wrong or messing up our routines.

In a way, I think that D and I are really just starting our first year of marriage, in the sense that we're in the same country, living in the same house, and we're not dealing with lingering issues from his all-expenses-paid, year long trip to Iraq. I just wonder if it will be as hard as they say it is.