Stories Around the Table by More than 40 military family writers

Author:More than 40 military family writers
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Elva Resa Digital
Published: 2014-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Smokin’ Hot Romance

Jacey Eckhart

I didn’t marry a smokin’ hot guy in uniform so that I could toddle off to the commissary for American cheese and white bread. I wanted nights of unbridled longing. I wanted romance. I wanted to be swept away by passionate kissing, dammit.

I got that. Whoo, boy, I got that. And a lot more—including the American cheese and white bread, thanks.

The thing about a military romance is that it is so intense at the beginning that even the most practical woman—or man—throws all caution to the wind and agrees to follow this sailor, soldier, Marine, airman or Coastie to the ends of the earth. You don’t really want that wicked romance to end, do you?

You do not want to go from passionate kisses to a dry little peck on the cheek worthy of Eleanor Roosevelt. You don’t want to be the wife who gets so caught up in her kids that her husband develops a mom fixation worthy of Elvis. Most of all, you do not want to be that couple who drifts so far apart over the dishwasher and the deployments and the all-too-frequent moves that you can hardly remember why you went on this adventure in the first place.

Every time I hear about a break-up like that I have to take to my bed with a cup of green tea and a hot water bottle. Do those people think true love happens every day?

It doesn’t. That is why I always pay attention to those older military couples who still like each other and enjoy each other’s company. I pay attention to the ones who hold hands. I spy on the ones who can make each other laugh, because I want to learn their secrets.

Anyone can be in love the first year they meet, but it takes something else to still be in love ten or twenty or forty years later. How do those people deal with all those swim meets and spelling words and closets spilling forth with military gear without losing the romance?

They work at it. No, I take that back. “Work at it” sounds unpleasant. Like something you would do at a gym. Let’s say instead that they organize their lives to maximize all the love they gather along the way. They tend the relationship. They make some room for talking and hugging and kissing and, well—sex. Here are a few things I’ve learned from still-in-love couples during my many years as a Navy wife and military columnist that might help keep every military romance simmering for years.

Kiss like you deploy tomorrow. Every civilian thinks that we military folks spend the weeks during deployment caught up in rapturous last-minute sex. Not so much. The weeks of preparation before deployment are a lot more like having your head waxed very, very slowly.

Because the days leading up to deployment are stressful, the deployment kisses have to happen every day. I don’t mean you have to rush out to his car when he comes home and stick your tongue down his throat for half an hour.

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