Robert walked into the FRG meeting and took a seat. In a roomful of women, he was the only man, the only person in the room with a wife in a war zone. He missed her. Mornings he'd wake up with his body squeezed onto the edge of the bed as if his wife, a major bed consumer, were there. Even in his sleep, he was saving her place for her.

Only 7 percent of active-duty military spouses are men, honorary sisters in the sisterhood of war. Robert was 49 years old, married 18 years, alone with his teenage daughter on a base in Germany. He became co-leader of the FRG -- he'd been through deployments before and knew to stay busy. He knew not to let himself imagine his wife in Iraq, the dangers that could befall her.

Whether they participate in any kind of support group, men with deployed wives face the same challenges as women with deployed husbands. The only difference is that they react like men.

Ken Meyer was on the phone with his wife, Angel, who was deployed to Iraq, when he heard a loud KABOOM on the other end of the line, and Angel yelling, "Oh s---!"

Instantly Ken's heart pounded in his ears. Blood rushed to the muscles that move the bones. His whole body tensed as if the caveman who lived at the base of his brain could actually hurl himself from his kitchen in Rolesville, N.C., all the way to Baghdad to shield his wife with his own body.

She came through that one without him.

Each month, Ken went to the FRG meetings. He knew between meetings the wives were calling and e-mailing and confiding in each other and not him, but that was just fine with Ken. They were mostly in their 20s with kids, and he was 43 with two cats, two ferrets, and 10 goldfish. They were women and he was a man. If someone had a problem, he wanted to solve it and they wanted to talk about it. He was glad to help out if something was leaking or breaking. But he didn't necessarily want to get into how everybody felt about the leaking and the breaking.

For Robert, the FRG was crucial, too. Not only did it help keep him busy, but it was a refuge from the stress of caring for his daughter alone, who was 16 and dealing with a new school and her mother in a war zone. Talking to the mostly young women in the FRG was like talking to younger sisters.

Still, he wondered if a few of them didn't have an issue with a man attending the wives' coffees. He worried about how the men downrange would react, but they didn't seem to see him as a threat. It was among the women that a rumor briefly made the rounds about him and his female co-leader. It was nothing all that interesting, just someone's imagination run amok because he was a man and they were women, and it blew over.

But the next time his wife deployed to Iraq, he didn't have the FRG to keep him busy. Some new members were so uncomfortable with having a man involved that he was asked to resign his leadership position. It was a tough and lonely deployment.

We need to remember that while there is a social aspect to FRGs, they are not social clubs. Their main purpose is the mission. It's in their name: Family Readiness Groups exist to make sure all eligible family members -- including husbands -- are mission ready. That way their servicemembers don't have to worry about them and can stay focused on completing the mission downrange.

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