Surviving Separation: Your Voice

This is part two in a series about surviving separation from your spouse. Read all posts in this series.

Gregg and Hallee - 1 week after his return from Afghanistan in 2003

Gregg and I have been married for over seven years. We didn’t live together until our first anniversary. Three months after we married, he deployed to Afghanistan. A couple of years later, he changed his military specialty and went to school 400 miles away for eight months. A couple years later, he went to another school, even further away, for six months. He is currently in Afghanistan again, this time as a civilian contractor, and has six more months there before he can come home. On top of these extended absences, his civilian job had him away from home for months at a time, when he would come home on Friday night and leave again on Sunday. We have spent more time apart than together, so we have learned how to have an abiding, intimate relationship even though we’re, at times and currently, thousands of miles away from each other. This series will provide you with little tips and hints we’ve picked up along the way.

I love my husband’s voice. He has a rich baritone voice that just makes my heart go pitter-patter in my chest. I love getting emails from him, but I LOVE hearing his voice.

He is the one in control of being able to call (not that he has a lot of control over that.) When he’s able to call and if he can get a line out, he can call and we can talk for ten minutes at a time.

I cannot call him, but I can leave him messages.

He has a MagicJack phone. It’s a voice-over-internet phone that doesn’t require a service provider. For a fee, you purchase the phone jack that you plug directly into your computer USB port and voilà – you have phone. But, the cool thing about it is that there is a web-based voice mail system. When I call his number, I can leave him a voice mail and he will receive it in his email as a .wav file.

It’s awesome. If I’m thinking about something and I’m driving, I can just give him a quick call and have a one-sided conversation. The kids call and tell him goodnight or good morning. If I want to just have some connection with him, I call and listen to his voice on the message then leave him a message.

It’s a small thing, but it adds such connectivity to our life. Something that we need with such a lengthy separation.