Making friends is a skill you can learn and as a military spouse you get a lot of opportunity to practice doing so. We continue to share stories and ideas based on how other military spouses have made friends.

Being a military spouse allows you an opportunity to become part of a sisterhood that will last a lifetime. This is how Holly talks about her military spouse friends: It’s a sisterhood. She never imagined her life would be blessed with so many strong, courageous, self-sacrificing women. This sisterhood welcomed her with open arms from the first day she arrived at Fort Riley, Kan., as a new bride many years ago. Although the faces in this sisterhood changed as she moved constantly all over the world with her husband and family, the bond these military spouses felt remains rock solid even today.

Holly would tell others, “If we were meant to be on this earth by ourselves, we would have been put here by ourselves. Here’s a news flash. We are not here by ourselves; we are not expected to go through this life by ourselves.” This sisterhood believes in helping each other along the way and not worrying about whether or not we are able to repay that person who helped us during a difficult time. Kathie would say — borrowing from the book “Pay It Forward”— our job would then be to help someone else when we saw an opportunity to do so. That’s how it works. We help other military spouses and they help others and the cycle of community never stops. As we mentioned in Part Three of this series, if your spouse is deployed try befriending another spouse in the same situation.

A word of caution: Don’t just surround yourself with people only to be around people. Look for positive people. Holly, who is very empathetic, found that negative people drained her energy.  When you live in this challenging military lifestyle, you need all the energy you can muster. Sure, we all need the opportunity to vent frustrations, but the last thing we need is to be surrounded by negative, constantly complaining people who can pull us into their negative spirals and cause added stress.

Don’t Limit Yourself to Activities on Post or Base
It’s great to have a mix of friends, both military and civilian, to enrich your life. Many military spouses discovered what we have over time. We need our military friends because they truly understand what we deal with as we face a deployment or yet another move. They speak our language and can share important resources available through the military. But we also want our civilian friends because they quickly connect us to community resources we might not find otherwise. They take us away from the constant diet of military news, and they enrich our lives by exposing us to new worlds outside the “gate.” Plus, we think it’s important that we all connect more with the civilian community so that there isn’t such a big divide between our military and civilian worlds.

Be open to connections as you go about your daily routine. Kathie can remember making friends while she was sitting next to military spouses at a workshop, or talking to someone on the telephone at a local Mac Club for computer help, or just going to chiropractor.

Army spouse Tara shares this story:

“I also have a best friend who lives in the town right outside of post about 30 minutes from me now. When I lived in the same town, I shopped at the local Wal-Mart. We were new here, about two weeks into our tour. We were both standing in line to get pictures. I had my daughter, Wrena (four years old), in the cart and she had her son, Zane, in the cart with her. It was a long line and we stood there forever. I just started up a conversation. Once she walked away I thought, man, I should have gotten her phone number. Lo and behold, two minutes later she came back and she said, ‘I really should have gotten your phone number.’ Turns out we’re both from the Midwest, our kids love each other, our husbands are friends, and we do tons of family things together. It’s great to have them here with us at Fort Stewart.”

Too Shy to Speak Up?
So … what if you are shy? Well, for one thing, you aren’t alone. Fifty percent of Americans label themselves as shy. Like many of them have, you can learn to be more comfortable connecting with others by learning new skills and behaviors. Even those people who aren’t shy can learn from this information.
 
Tap into resources that help you connect. A favorite book of ours is a book by Anne Baber and Lynne Waymon called “Smart Networking” (formerly “Great Connection”) and their follow-up book, “Make Contacts Count.” Both are filled with ideas of how to start conversations, join groups already in conversation, and how to get and keep connections going. The authors share how to remember names, how to leave a conversation when it’s time to do so, how to help people remember your name, and how to ask questions that trigger conversations. Kathie credits those books with helping her move past her introverted nature to connect with people with each new move and in each new group situation.

Excerpted with permission from Help! I’m a Military Spouse — I Get a Life Too! How to Craft a Life for You as You Move with the Military (Second Edition released April 2007 from Potomac Books, Inc.)  by Kathie Hightower & Holly Scherer. For more information on their writings and workshop go to www.militaryspousehelp.com