I am currently stationed in South Korea on a one year remote assignment where my family cannot join me. I came here last August after being stationed in Illinois for three years. After I leave in 137 days (yes I am counting), my wife and I are going to Hawaii for another three years. We found out in March 2002 that I was coming here and in May, found out we were going to Hawaii. My wife had put all her eggs in one basket and hoped we would get to California. Ever since she found out about Hawaii, there have been problems in our marriage. Since the day we got the news we were going there, my wife has never been entirely thrilled with the prospect of going there. I have always been under the impression that she was "trepidatious" (her word) about going to Hawaii because of the financial problems we ran into during our first move. We were married in February 1999 and moved from Nebraska to Illinois in July that same year. The cost of living went way up and the monies went down putting us in a bad situation. So bad to the point we declared bankruptcy.
Being on the downside of a one year tour, it is time to outprocess and one part of this is to get tickets. Whenever I brought this subject up during our phone calls, she didn't really answer any questions I had about her going, what we would do with the car, when we would go, etc. A couple of weeks ago, I asked her about Hawaii and she didn't say anything. I knew she had something to say and asked her what was on hermind. It was at this point she finally said she was not going to Hawaii with me. As soon as she said that I hung up the phone with my mind racing. I can't tell you how many thoughts ran through my head in the five minutes it took until she called back. We then talked for an hour plus and it that time she told me the reason she didn't want to go. All the time I thought it was financial, she told me the problem was me; the way I treated her, my temper, the way we didn't talk, the ways we ignored each other. I never realized how bad our marriage was when we were in Illinois until that day. She went into more detail about the above topics and firmly said she was not going and she was going to start going to college full time in New Orleans (where she is living for the year I'm here) and get a part-time job. It hit me pretty hard I was going to lose the woman I love and all because we didn't communicate with each other very well, if at all. I guess I didn't want to think things had deterioted so badly. By the end of the conversation we had everything patched up or so I thought.
I talked to her a couple of days ago and the same topic came up again. She was adament again that was not going to go with me. Her points were the lack of communication, the way we treated each other, etc. I asked if we were going to get divorced and she said "no" because she still loved me. I asked her how the situation we are currently in would be any different than the one we would be moving into in September, when I get to Hawaii and she still lived in Louisiana. The only thing that changes is me moving about 4000 miles closer to the west coast of the U.S. I told her I didn't see how our marriage could work long distance for three years while she lives her life in New Orleans. We went back and forth for the next two hours and realized that if communication was the main cause of the problem, living thousands of miles apart probably wouldn't solve anything. We are on the right track now that all the points of discontent are in the open. I can only hope the next 137 days goes by so I can get back to the woman I love. Thank for letting me rant.
