Hi Sasha: My man is rejoining the military after being out since a few months before we started dating 2 years ago. I've never really known anyone who's been in the military before I met him. He's joining a "gentler" branch than the one he used to be in. He will be training for a very important job: flight engineer. He has to go to school for what basically amounts to 8 months, 5000 miles away from where we live. One of the schools he has to go to is one where they basically force him to survive in the wilderness, and then capture and torture him for 3 weeks. I won't hear from him at all during those weeks, plus I have to delete my Facebook so they can't use info about me to torture him.
I can't move with him because I have a job here that I love, and I'm in graduate school full time. My issue is that I don't have a ton of friends, never have. Since my guy and I started dating, we've pretty much been attached at the hip, doing all our social stuff together, we live together, etc. Basically, I'm asking how I should deal with my possible paranoia and jealousy that he's going to be having a great time in an actual city 5,000 miles away, while I'm stuck in my hometown that I hate, and has 3 bars full of creepy old men. I want to address this because I don't want to lose him by calling him all the time and bugging him, but I also don't want to be bored. L
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Okay, wait a second. Am I missing something here? What the f-ck are you going to be jealous of? It's not like the dude is maxing and relaxing at the Hilton. He's being shipped off for simulated torture!?!?!
Look, relationships are always kind of crap shoot and they become even tougher when time and distance get in the way; that’s just the reality of it. But if you intend on making it through to the other side L, you're going to first need to get a muther f-cking grip.
These 8 months apart are going to be hard for you but especially for him. Military training is no joke – it’s relentless, so the dude will barely be able to crawl out of bed much less crawl into someone else’s. If you’re paranoid about him falling in love with another soldier, I really don’t think you have much to worry about here.
L, it’s pretty clear to me that you’re projecting your own insecurities onto this relationship. I know the anxiety of what life will be like without him is setting in, but you can only boohoo about it for so long. Instead of wallowing in your sadness and loneliness - do something about it! Push out of your comfort zone, meet new people, and start finding things that fulfill you outside of your relationship. This is your chance to bring amazing things, other than your boyfriend, into your world. So flip the script on this situation and look at it as an opportunity for you to do some positive things for yourself, which in the end, will only benefit the relationship in the long run.
Thanks for writing in and keep your LIFE + STYLE questions coming to [email protected]
