AIR FORCE 1995-2015 — Twenty years in, then a divorce

I did twenty years, retired as a Master Sergeant, walked out of Lackland with a pension and a plan. The plan did not include my wife of nineteen years filing for divorce four months later. Looking back I should have seen it. I'd been gone for so much of our marriage that what we'd built was a long-distance logistics arrangement, not a relationship. When I came home for good, the logistics arrangement didn't have a job anymore. Neither did we. I went to Give an Hour for therapy. Free. The therapist had worked with military families for twenty years. She gave me language for what had happened: it wasn't that we'd fallen out of love. It was that we'd never really practiced being in love in the same room for more than three weeks at a time. We're divorced now. We're also friendly. I see my kids every other weekend. I'm working on figuring out what I am when I'm not a uniform. It is the hardest project I've taken on in my life. I would not trade it.