Any advice for deployment?

[Ellek73]

Hey everyone I know I've posted a few times here but I'm still pretty new to this military life... My boyfriend graduated A school in May and is now at his first base. He's set to be deployed here soonish and to say I'm anxious is an understatement. I know being only a girlfriend there isn't much I will be told and I do have pretty open communication with his family I just wanted to know if anyone had any advice for things I can do or remind him to do to be prepared for all this? Or just any advice in general for how to handle deployment? This site has been so helpful through everything we've been through so far and I am so grateful to all of you for any support or advice you can offer me! Thank you!

[Jenn_NicksWifey]

You can ask him to add you to the ships frg Facebook group and info mailings. If he puts you on the list, you'll receive updates if the ombudsman or frg send them out. Mostly, write to him, send him care packages and be patient. If the ship is in River City (no communications going out) he may not be able to email you, but often he'll be able to receive yours. You'll have to get his ship mailing address and email address from him.

Respect opsec, loose lips do indeed sink ships and you don't want him to get his ass chewed because you have a deployment countdown on your Facebook (seen it happen). It's sometimes lonely not being able to discuss certain events, but it's incredibly important. And it feels bad when he can't tell you stuff, but it's important that certain info not be released over unsecured lines (like email or phone calls). Try to be understanding.

Be flexible. Celebrating holidays, anniversaries and birthdays will need to resolve more around his work schedule than the date on the calendar.

Do something for you. Set goals, make a plan to reach them and go to it. Don't sit idle while he's away. College classes, jobs, hobbies, something. If you don't, you'll feel crappy when you don't have anything to tell him about, and you'll feel like he's accomplished so much and you haven't. Also, filling up the time with productive stuff helps keep you in good spirits when you're missing him. Stay busy, but not just busy work, accomplish some stuff.

My husband has been in 5 years and he's about to embark and deployment #3. Yay for shore duty when he gets back! We keep journals when we're apart. Little day to day stuff that you might forget to tell him by the time he's home. Something funny that happened or something you thought about that you'd normally share with him. It helps you feel connected because you're writing to him and it feels kind of like talking and then he doesn't feel like he missed out on everything. We have kids, so a lot of the little adorable or frustrating things they do go in there.

Good luck, stay flexible and give him the benefit of the doubt if you're worried about something. He has, literally, no control over when he'll be able to send you messages. Oh, and we use FB messenger a lot, it's easier than email if we're both active. IDK if everyone can use it. When he's in Port, FB messenger calling over WiFi is awesome, but at least for my husband, ports with WiFi aren't frequent. He did do it in Hong Kong last time, but that was the only Port that had it.