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**Sibil**
I just wanted to let you know that I've been there. Not on the same level--my husband isn't military and hasn't been deployed, but we've spent up to 12 months apart several times since we first started dating with poor communications technology, limited time to talk and totally different life experiences.
We live together, but we both travel so much for work that we spend 3-4 months of the year apart, interspersed with time together in which we're so deep in work that we hardly see one another. There have been times that he has picked me up from the airport and confessed that he doesn't know what to say, because its as if I'm a stranger. That's not to say we aren't happy, we are. But we've had to learn to take advantage of the limited time we do have to spend together without competing priorities.
Fortunately I have a lot of close friends who have somewhat non-traditional relationships where both spouses travel internationally for long periods of time, and they are a good support network, but the harsh reality is that a lot of marriages in my line of work just don't work out. People grow apart, life in war zones or third world hospitals or refugee camps is taxing and psychologically draining. These experiences can inexorably change people. And spending weeks or months alone in a hotel room or a strange city definitely lends itself to loneliness and wandering eyes, no matter how exciting your destination.
All of this is a long way of saying if you ever need to commiserate, I'm here 
Re: **Sibil**
Thank you, both of you. ?I don't know that there's a whole lot of encouragement knowing that other people face those challenges, and that the majority fail. ?That's certainly true in the military. ?Most marriages suck or end in divorce. ?We like to think we're better than that, and our military friends look up to us as being different than the norm, but we're also subject to the same pressures. ?Even our strong egos won't let us pretend that we're immune to what cause others to fail.
I think a big concern is what mxolisi mentioned, that people change so much when they're faced with war and other horrors. ?I love H because he's sensitive to the world around him, in injustice especially; if he wasn't changed by being in a war zone then he's not the man I married. ?So that's my catch 22. ?He doesn't change, and I was wrong about him, or he changes, and we face the fallout of that. ?Change isn't necessarily bad, but I'm not going to be there him, helping him make sense of it, when he returns. ?That might be a good thing; as you guys know, the hardest part of a separation is learning to live together again.
I just keep telling myself that it wouldn't have been better if I'd stayed.?He'd still work 7 days a week, 12-14 hours a day which was really tough on us, especially since I wasn't working, and I couldn't escape the town I was in because there were no snow plows. ?So, yeah, this is better. ?Thank you for commisserating in my pity party