Deployments stress every relationship
By Kelly Kennedy
Times staff writer
Master Sgt. David Abrams fell in love with his wife, Gina, the first time they met.
“I saw her up in her father’s church choir,” Abrams said. “It was literally love at first sight.”
But 22 years after the pair married, he deployed to Iraq with the 3rd Infantry Division for his first combat mission. The distance, he said, “hit me in the heart with a two-by-four.”
“We just had no idea,” he said. “There’s really no way you can prepare for being apart.”
In Baghdad, he saw war’s fallout on relationships: Dear John letters, infidelity and stress over how things are going back home.
“I’ve heard stories, but those are other people’s relationships,” Abrams said. “I feel bad, so I try to keep myself as a role model.”
There are some problems inherent to all military marriages. Even without war, soldiers spend months in the field or off in Sinai or South Korea without their families. Spouses have to learn how the military works. the levels of stress can be comparable to those of other career fields with high divorce rates, such as law enforcement or air traffic control. Add a deployment, and things can get shaky.
Army counselors and chaplains said they were surprised by just how precarious the bonds that reach back home can be when a soldier lives in a war zone.
“About 50 percent of the counseling I did was for relationship issues,” said Chaplain (1st Lt.) John Barkemeyer, who last month returned from Camp Bucca, Iraq. “Which was astronomical in terms of my perspective. People are fighting and shooting and dying, but they want to talk about their relationships.”
Barkemeyer, who served with the 344th Medical Command, said he prepared for combat duty by looking at the effects of war on soldiers, as well as how to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Though Barkemeyer said he found the soldiers inspiring because of the jobs they performed willingly every day, what he saw and heard in the war zone stunned him.
“I was surprised at the amount of infidelity,” he said. “And the perception — the fear that it was taking place” back home.
The long-distance rumors can cause flare-ups in relationships in which both parties are faithful, Barkemeyer said, because they see and hear what other people are doing and that makes them suspicious.
“You have to be explicit,” he said. “If there’s a fear, you have to say, ‘Look, honey, I really do love you, and nothing else is happening.’”
In some cases, however, Barkemeyer said the deployment offers couples an opportunity to see if they should be together in the first place.
“If it’s a shaky relationship, they might say, ‘Let’s not try to pretend this is going to work while you’re gone,’” he said. “A lot of folks are just taking the chance to be honest.”
Workload increases
Sometimes, as soldiers focus on their own lives in Iraq or Afghanistan, they can’t connect with what their spouses are facing back home, said Col. David Fenell, a counselor in the Army Reserve Medical Corps who recently returned from serving with the Joint Operations Task Force in Afghanistan.
“We were in combat, but we’ve got a very specific mission,” Fenell said. “There are moments of terror, but all we have to do is one job.”
At home, spouses take over deployed spouses’ responsibilities, as well as their own.
“They have to do both jobs,” Fenell said. “Their workload goes way up. We’re focused on the mission, rather than the broken-down car.”
And that’s not something either party is used to.
“This is pure speculation, but pre-9/11, you’re in to get your education,” Fenell said. “It was an Army that wasn’t deploying heavily, and you could have a fairly normal life.”
That changed quickly after the Sept. 11 attacks.
“The couples were shocked by all of the deployments,” he said. “Some couples have the resources to deal with that, and some don’t.”
People going through deployments often face the same issues, Fenell said. He travels from post to post training civilian counselors on how to work with soldiers and their spouses.
“The best thing you can do is to keep the communication channels open through all of it — don’t allow it to escalate into anger and hostility,” he said.
Chaplain (Maj.) Jon Kegley, who serves at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, Calif., said deployments may be the least of some couples’ problems.
“I think they could make more informed choices,” he said. “Getting a marriage license is simpler than getting a driver’s license.”
Kegley teaches a course called Premarital Interpersonal Choices and Knowledge that is aimed at preventing the “AIT marriage,” or recruits who get married because they want to keep dating after training ends. If they get married, they can be stationed together after their schooling. Or, if they don’t get married during training, they continue a long-distance relationship, then get married after spending a minimal amount of time together.
Often, couples haven’t dealt with issues needed to maintain a strong marriage, such as problem-solving skills, co-dependence issues or communications problems.
“Just the preparation for deployment can be enough of a change to consider divorce,” said E.C. Hurley, executive director of the Marriage and Family Institute in Clarksville, Tenn. “I see more people just before deployment, then it starts up right after redeployment until there’s a secure routine established.”
Sometimes, after redeployment, soldiers deal with other issues that adversely affect their relationships: acute stress, post-traumatic stress disorder, irritability and intense emotions.
Hurley said couples have to work to remember what drew them together in the first place and to make some time to rekindle the “fun” in their relationships.
“When a marriage works well, it can be the best thing there is,” he said. “When it doesn’t work well, it becomes one of the most devastating situations.”
Help from veterans
Kathy Ammerman, whose husband, Lt. Col. Dan Ackerman, deployed to Bosnia and Iraq with the 432nd Civil Affairs Battalion out of Green Bay, Wis., said she tried to draw on the good experiences to bring the spouses in her husband’s unit together. And she brought in local veterans groups to help.
“These are voices of experience for our young friends,” she said.
The vets worked with the families to organize a homecoming for the troops — an enterprise that took months to plan and provided a venue for people to talk.
“I told them to remember how proud we are of our soldiers,” Ammerman said. “There are not many people willing to do what our soldiers are doing. Help each other, and ask for help.”
And, she said, make sure the pride applies to the relationship, too.
“He had complete faith in me — complete trust in all my decisions,” she said. “He never second-guessed or criticized.”
Ammerman said she gave as good as she got.
“I never blamed him for the deployment,” she said. “It hasn’t always been easy, but my husband was always proud to serve, and we were so proud of him.”
Master Sgt. Abrams said his marriage has also seen some rough spots, but counseling, talking and a willingness to focus on each other kept it strong during this deployment.
“I think our relationship is at a point where we’re so solid,” he said. “But it has been hard just being away from my soul mate.”