Another Military Couple Bites the Dust

[Ban Hammer 13,346]

Another military relationship bites the dust. Lt. Andy Baldwin and Tessa Horst, who met nearly six months ago on ABC's reality dating show, The Bachelor, have called off their engagement. Besides the obvious coincidence here — six months is also the length of time for most Navy deployments — of which I'm tempted to make an obnoxiously trivial parallel, the couple cites Andy's upcoming assignments and possible relocation as reasons why they can't immediately consider marriage. Well, that and they met on a reality dating show, but whatever.

Baldwin's mother, in an interview with the Intelligencer Journal ,Baldwin's hometown paper in Lancaster County, Pa., said, "Andy didn't want [Tessa] to move out to Hawaii and be there for a year, when he's hardly going to be there anyway … I think the fantasy wore off and reality set in."

The military reality, that is.

Despite the way they met, Tessa and Andy's plight is not unlike that of other military couples. Uncle Sam is famous for causing fast nuptials when duty calls. My husband's grandmother, for example, married her husband right before World War II and didn't see him again for six years. My grandmother, Doris, also had not been married long when my grandfather, Big Jack, was sent away to war. They went on to be married for almost 60 years. WWII separated my other grandparents for three years, an insignificant amount of time when you consider that they too were married for six decades.

More recently, my mom married my dad a year before his first deployment in 1976, and she had their first baby [raising hand] while he was gone. They have been married 32 years this October. On their 23rd anniversary, Dad had been deployed a total of 11 years — half their marriage at that time. I married Dustin when his flight training, just a few hundred miles from where I was living, had come to a close and he would be transferred elsewhere. Our honeymoon consisted of pulling a U-Haul trailer from Virginia Beach, Va. to Pensacola, Fla., where we lived for a mere eight weeks, and then traveled to wherever the Navy sent us, which ended up being San Diego. And, after a couple of deployments and three children, Dustin and I have been married for eight years.

My point: Break-ups that seemingly occur "because of the military" have less to do with the rigors of military life than they do with the couple themselves. For all the stories of long, successful marriages that came out of WWII, there are surely just as many stories about ones that failed. All of which is on par with reality. Some people are meant to be, and some are not. Uncle Sam doesn't change that; he just tests it faster. There's nothing like the military to give "for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do us part" a run for its money before the bride's bouquet has dried out and lost its leaves. In fact, the whole idea of a "honeymoon" period is a joke for most military couples. But that's life.

The story of Andy and Tessa's break-up was sent to me by an ever-vigilant reader named Pat who sends me interesting news stories every now and then. In her e-mail, Pat wrote, "P.S – I am not absent sympathy for the hurt." Because I have come to know Pat and her astute grasp of reality, I'll assume her tongue was in her cheek.

Sure it's sad that a couple has parted ways, but if you're tempted to blame the military for the would-be Mr. and Mrs. Andy Baldwin's demise, there is no need for sympathy. Already, bloggers, some with an obsessive attraction to Andy and Tessa (named "Andessa" by cultish followers), have begun claiming that if it weren't for the mean, oppressive military, Andessa would "live forever!"

Really?

If you believe that, consider this: When a couple gets married and immediately uproots to a new location (compliments of Uncle Sam), all they have is each other. Literally. Then, if the servicemember is deployed, all they have is faith, love, and, hopefully, e-mail. It's been my experience that these conditions make relationships that are "meant to be" stronger, not weaker.

It is a fallacy, really, that the military lifestyle makes or breaks a marriage. The lifestyle simply separates the strong from the weak quicker than most. And for Andessa, that separation came quicker than — well, quicker than a deployment to Iraq.

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[eric&gen 0]

All well sucks for them lol.

[nora &ryan 0]

Well we survived our second deployment … and still more to come