I tell him when I'm pissed.

So here’s something that I have been having issues with since I became an Army wife, especially since pretty much the whole time I’ve been an Army wife, my husband has been deployed. When I read about or hear how other wives deal with stress and bad things happening while their husbands are away, I just don’t get it. Everybody says, “No, don’t tell your deployed husband about any bad things. You don’t want him to worry about you – all of his attention needs to be on the mission, and not on you. He’s got it bad enough as it is.” Now, for some marriages, that might work. But for me and mine, that couldn’t be farther from how it needs to be.

I feel like if I were to just put on a happy face no matter how sad or upset I was, our marriage would kind of be a fake for 15 months. As far as I’m aware, Aaron is still the man he was before he deployed, and I am still the woman I was before he left as well. When I’m sad, I need to talk openly to my husband about it. When the truck breaks down and the car gets a flat tire on the same day and I don’t have a ride to the shop so I have to run in the 105 degree weather 2.5 miles to pick up one of the vehicles and I want to vent about it, I’m going to turn to my husband for support. Don’t get me wrong – I know that what he is going through, and the conditions in which he has to slug through every dehydrating day, is far beyond my comprehension. I know that. But I also know that venting to my husband is not just me being selfish. He needs it just as much as I do. He needs to know that life has not continued in the same, easy way it was before he left. He needs to realize that I need him more than he or I really know. And if I have to go through a day that has been made harder because he’s not here to help me, I want him to know it. Not so he feels guilty or worried, but so he feels like he’s still a part of me, and that he’s needed by me. If one of those hard days happen and I brush it all off and tell him everything is fine and that I had no problems, I would be lying to myself, my husband, and our marriage.

I like that my husband worries about me. In the end, I am a pretty self-sufficient and capable woman, but it feels so good to know that the man I am with truly cares about me, because I have never cared about anybody the way I care about him. So, that being said, even though the non-disclosure thing works for some military marriages, it doesn’t fly in ours. And I think we’re okay with that.