Hey Spoonhound.....good friend sent me your way. First, I'm active duty Air Force. Second, truthfully, killing yourself won't fix anything. You know the briefings we go to. It ain't gonna fix nothing. Your kids, whether or not you stay married, are going to want to see and love Dad ALIVE.
Now...I know what you are talking about. I am 36 now and I was married for 15 years....15 years. I was deployed to Al Udeid for 4 months (Sept 05- Jan 06) and this same thing happened to me. It started to go downhill about 2 weeks after I left.
I'm not going to babble about what happened because it is almost exactly the same as what your W is doing to you. While this was happening, I lost a lot of weight...couldn't sleep at all, wanted to call home all the time just to HEAR her voice, to have a chance to talk to her. See didn't want to talk to me at all. It was like who was going to say something first and how long would the talk last. I tried to get home to 'fix' things but no luck...you know how that is. If it isn't an absolute family emergency the armed forces just says "Sorry...wish we could do something." My biggest suggestion is to go and talk to a life skills counselor. I don't know what they call them in the Army but it used to be called mental health or behavioral science. These guys or women are great counselors and NO info gets back to anybody. It feels really good to talk to someone and get these things off of your chest.
I felt worthless and down and sick and scared when my now EX told me she "just didn't love me anymore" and "just don't want to be married anymore". Needless to say, I found this website, some great friends and support here. It helped to put things in perspective. A ton of advice from people who have been there and done that. I really wish I could call and talk to one of the DB coaches but I just have not been able to afford it. You can still get through all this crap that is going on. Read the posts here, past posts, keep emailing and just keep your chin up. This is really hard and it is compounded by the fact you are in the sandbox and can't do s?%t to 'fix' things.
I know one thing that started the ball rolling for me was I needed to stay in touch with my kids. I thought I had been. That was a permanent change for me. I love my kids...hold them up high on a pillar. I just showed it wrong in the past. My two kids know now that their Dad loves them more than fishing, hanging out with friends, etc. I didn't give those things up but just put them on hold and dedicated myself to never doing what I did before and that was paying 100% to my two kids.
I am stationed right next door to Ft Lewis here in Tacoma, WA. I'll post more in about 4 hours, 1900 PST. I go to work then. Stay strong man...I'll help as much as possible...but killing yourself? It ain't fair to your kids...and your wife may piss away the SGLI before the kids are old enough to benefit from it.....so is it worth it? NOPE.
