Understanding

A has been gone for the previous two weekends, is gone thurs-sun this weekend and will be gone again next weekend. I feel like we are back to living an aviation dominated life. But at least his absences are mostly his choice and aren't company dictated.

I think that spending so long at home with us helped cement with in how much he misses when he is gone. The project he is working on now, he says he's only doing in order to have something left behind to take care of us when he's gone (a little obsessed with the 20 year mortality thing already) and that he wouldn't be away from us so much if he didn't feel he needed to do that. It's a sweet sentiment; I think he needs some time away from us anyway.

In class the other day, we were shown a training video about cognitive-behavioral therapy in a marriage counseling situation (it doesn't matter if you didn't get that, it's not pertinent). It was a couple who were in for marriage counseling. The woman worked part time and the man was a traveling pharmaceutical rep. It was strange because every problem and episode that they showed in the video seemed like something we had been through in our relationship- the "you're never there", "you never do stuff", "when is my free time", it was all in there. All of the young 20somethings in my class thought the woman was a nag and was controlling. But I stood up for her. I said "until you have a traveling husband, you have no idea what it's like". When he's gone, you literally have to handle everything and then *poof* suddenly he's there again and you aren't alone and then *poof* again and he's gone. He only has limited time at home and a long list of things you need him to accomplish. And that has to be combined with some free time for each of you and you as a couple. No wonder she nags him to get stuff done, she's got a lot riding on his accomplishing his tasks. I think even the instructor was surprised at my conviction. Even though the video had nothing to do with traveling spouses, they all got a good lesson. And they'll probably choose never to marry one now.