First time leaving family to go TDY, looking for advice from people who have gone through time away from their loved ones.
I’ve been in for 6 years now and in that time I have been gone from home ALOT. However since I got married and since my daughter has been born, I have not had any rotation, field problem, or school where I was gone from home longer than a month. I’m no stranger to being gone from home and the family, but I’ve been lucky to where in the last year, the longest I’ve been gone from my family has been a month for a box rotation
That being said, I’m about to go TDY-R for 5 months and I can’t help but feel guilty for leaving my wife and daughter back home. This is going to be the first time since my wife had the baby that I’m leaving , let alone for 5 months. For context our daughter is 2 months old.
I’m not looking for a pity party or words of encouragement. I understand this is part of the Army. What I would love to hear, is advice from people who have had to leave their families for long periods of time (deployment, school, rotation, etc) and how you guys got through it. How did you cope, what did you do to support your spouse while she was home taking care of the kids, how were you still a good spouse to your partner during this time when their taking care of everything back home?
I know about the resources we have and there’s people the Army has for us to talk to about this, personally I always found it better to hear from people who have actually gone through similar situations and hear their advice.