My Why?

Knowing and understanding that maintaining a long-lasting marriage is rare for service members; however, marriage is not. 

As a service member myself and being dual military, I have witnessed too many of my brothers and sisters lose their marriage over the harsh demands of military life. My husband and I have dealt with all these adversities that the military has to offer, for example, long-distance relationships, irregular working hours, pre and post-deployment integration, and that's just a few of the military lifestyle. There are also the everyday intimacy roadblocks that all couples endure, such as communication and cultural differences.

A brief history of my husband and I, my husband is from Texas, and I am from Haiti. Our primary Intimacy will be communication, being that when we first met, I was still working on my English. Now through the course of our relationship, we discovered our many cultural differences, which, as you can imagine, created a lot of friction and put a strain on our level of Intimacy. The intimacy roadblock, as you can see, we're already set in place long before the military. Now, it was only to my surprise that our cultural differences were an issue; later on, our differences were the driving force of our attraction to each other. Those very differences are what kept us guessing and on our toes and made our relationship fresh and spicy. 

Now, let's throw in separations, Pcs's searching for childcare, deployments, and career changes; you and your spouse's Intimacy can get lost in translation. It was only through these processes that we struggled to attain a long-lasting and healthy marriage. We had what we believe was a decent level of knowledge regarding Intimacy, but it wasn't practical. We didn't know what real Intimacy was or was aware that it was the foundation of any long-lasting marriage.

Needless to say, my husband and I had to humble ourselves and take what we thought was Intimacy, eliminate it from our minds, and work on the basic principles of true Intimacy. It only changes the course of our marriage; we were able to communicate our wants and needs effectively. Also, we were able to grow and learn new things about each other, which strengthened our bond. 

It was a long journey to understand Intimacy. We attended couples counseling, boot camps, therapy, and workshops through; military one source, Marriage Boot Camp and Credo. I can honestly say it gave us the right tools. Couples therapy had many challenges because we were both Active Duty, a pre-teen, and an autistic son. Furthermore, with the Lord's blessings, we are now POISED!