Guest Post: How The Military Assisted in Love

Today I have a fabulous guest writer who is sharing her story about how the Canadian Military helped her love take off!  Check out Hannah and learn more about her lovely husband and their story!

In 2008, I was in my final year of university, newly single and very poor! It’s also the year that I met my husband, embarked on a long distance military fuelled relationship spanning England, Canada, Afghanistan and places in-between. If you had told me that at the time, I would have laughed. In your face. Very hard.

Being rather the typical British student, my weekly budget was often limited to £10 ($15-20 CAD); it was unusual for me to choose to book a train ticket that set me back an entire £35. However, my friend in Leamington Spa was throwing a Halloween party, and needing a break from the already mounting pressure of my final research project, I jumped at the idea. Trains in the UK are fabulous, except on Sundays, where they are full and it is not uncommon to sit on the floor outside the washroom for 3 hours! Since Sunday would be my day of return, I splurged and bought first class tickets. I needed to write my research paper, didn’t cha know?! It would have been my first premier seating purchase but with free dinner included, how could I not do it? The stars must have aligned that day because the whole first class package cost me £27, I could not turn down such a deal!

After a fabulous weekend in Leamington Spa, I found myself running at full speed to the train station because time keeping was not my strongest point. I finally made it, breathless and sweaty. I hopped on the train and went to find my wonderfully reserved seat, free from the smell of toilets and equally-poor-as-me students. It was a marvellous feeling, all of which lasted about 30 seconds because someone else had already discovered the joys of my reserved seat. Someone had committed a British train-iquette faux pas; sitting in a nearly empty carriage in the only reserved seat. Who was this idiotic imposter, sat in my reserved, specially requested seat, ruining my first-first class train experience? I glared at him, and then sat across the aisle, I must have been feeling particularly British that day because I didn’t want to be impolite and ask him to move.

Eventually, he took my glaring to be making eyes at him and, being the brave soldier that he is, he struck up conversation. To give The Canadian some credit, he kept at it for 3 hours, which is no small feat (I really was upset about not having my reserved seat!). I eventually warmed to him, willingly sharing my money saving tips for Manchester tourists. Apparently this amused him, what with him being a non-student, on leave from Afghanistan, single, North American tourist in England for the first time. Still, it was how my relationship developed and the start of a relationship filled with long distance and ‘making it work’. Is there a better way to start a relationship? Daunting long distances? Check. Different cultures? Check. A dash of complexity, courtesy of the Canadian Forces? Check.

A week later, I had decided this was the man I wanted to marry. We embarked on a long distance relationship that took place in 4 different time zones (Afghanistan – Manitoba – Alberta – Afghanistan [again!]), over 8,000 km, 4 nine hour plane journeys, thousands of dollars in plane tickets, hours of anxiety about last minute military vacation changes, 200 pages of Facebook messages (we had to print them for immigration!) and hundreds of dollars in phone bills. I finally took the leap in 2010 and moved to Edmonton, Alberta, ultimately ending the long distance relationship. Or so I thought, it turned out I’d just ended the first long distance relationship we were to have. Since then, we have navigated numerous exercises, a deployment, intense culture shock on both sides, a cross-country move, a handful of international visitors and taken on Permanent Residency. It has been so exciting and often I sit and revel in how bizarre it is that our relationship hinged on so many aspects being in the right place at the right time and a whole heap of hard work. Anyone with experience in the military circles has an idea of how draining and exhilarating it can be to make a long distance relationship work.

Fast forward 3 years and I find myself sitting in a Prescott, Ontario, having just received my permanent residency and entering the fifth year of our relationship. It has been such a long and exciting journey already. I am in awe of how much we have both grown and developed during this time. I genuinely knew nothing of the military before jumping in head first, but it has been a humbling and fantastic experience.

How did you meet your partner? Was the military lifestyle expected? Did you know, as they put it, what you were getting yourself into? What are your tips for making short- and long- term long distance relationships work?

Hannah can be found at The Lemon Hive (www.thelemonhive.com), where she writes about creative expression and enjoying the small things in life, because those are the things that make our life rich! She thoroughly recommends dunking biscuits in cups of tea.

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