If you are dating someone in the military it can be extremely tough. As someone that was in the Navy for 5 years I can tell you that for me it didn’t really work out, mainly because I was not engaged with anyone prior to being deployed to Iraq.

But I did have many buddies that were dating in the military, and some of the relationships worked while others didn’t.

There are a couple of questions that you are going to have to ask yourself when you are dating someone in the service.

How long have the two of you been dating?  In my opinion for this to work you two should already have a tremendous amount of trust in each other, and have been dating for quite some time, at least over a year in my opinion. Given tha many deployments for service members that go overseas are at least 6 months long, so that is something that you are going to have to accept and handle.

Should you be able to do that, you have to be able to keep yourself busy when you are home alone and your partner is away on military duty. Don’t feel sorry for self or start making excuses about how you can’t handle this – if so you are bound to cheat and fool around with other people while he or she is deployed in a different country.

If you have only been dating someone for a couple of months, and then they are getting deployed, or just sign up for the military, you can almost surely bet that it is not going to work out. Save yourself the heartbreak and time, and just move on, in my opinion.

The best thing to do is to communicate as often as possible. Sending letters is a great way of communication, but with todays modern technology it is a lot easier to communicate to your loved ones that are so far away via the internet.  Instant messengers and video chat software such as Skype make it simple and convenient to talk to one another as you will be able to see each other when speaking.

If there is a child involved in the relationship it is something that you almost have to make work out. Though the person staying behind will have most of the child duties, the deployed military soldier will more than likely be getting a good amount of extra money for just having a kid.

Getting into a network of friends that are also dating people in the military would be a good idea also. Many wives are close friends of other soldiers that are deployed, and hanging out with them can make the process much easier while your significant other is away.