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Trust your spouse to block your fall
Military spouse
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If you’ve ever participated in the trust-building exercise where you free-fall backward, trusting that your partner will catch you, then you’re familiar with that feeling of fear that comes with trust.
If you’re with a group of people taking part in the exercise and you notice the pair ahead of you fails — one person can’t catch the other before he or she hits the ground — it may become harder to trust your own partner.
Deployment is a lot like that. You’re forced to trust your spouse in ways you’ve never had to before. Much like the trust-fall exercise, where you can’t see your partner and must believe he or she will do what they’re supposed to, the distance of deployment means trusting without seeing.
And this goes both ways. Both the soldier and the spouse have to trust each other to remain faithful. They have to trust each other to manage the finances properly — to pay bills on time and not spend money frivolously. Although these things seem simple enough — everyday tasks and promises that come with marriage vows — when you see the pair beside you fail, it gets harder to trust blindly.
My husband and I have noticed this a lot during the past seven months. As other couples struggle to trust or be trustworthy, their relationships fall apart right beside us. It’s impossible to ignore the pain they experience. And it’s nearly impossible not to imagine the same thing could happen to you.
It seems the most important thing to remember is that you only have to trust your partner, not others. To remember that you’re not falling into the arms of someone else, but your own spouse, and that the mistakes of others are not the mistakes of your soldier.
So although many around us seem to be falling, I try to remember that my husband has never failed to catch me, and I have no reason to believe he’ll ever let me hit the ground.
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