About 3 years ago I got married my wife and 40 days later, I left her high and dry for 9 months.
Now, before you go thinking I'm a terrible person, she was mostly okay with it.
We had been engaged for a little over a year at that point and everything was going smoothly as the wedding approached. Then, I felt it weighing on my that now might be the right time to join the military.
As you can likely guess, my wife wasn't exactly ecstatic about it, but she supported me in what was ultimately our decision. I signed the papers and had a date to leave for boot camp. It was 40 days after our wedding date.
This resulted in an interesting situation and dynamic. It meant since I was leaving so soon after we got married, it didn't really make sense for us to get our own apartment yet, but this also meant that we had no place to live for a little over the month. How did we solve this problem you ask? We stayed in 15 different hotels as we traveled to and from places we needed to be over that time.
Then it was time to leave.
I left for boot camp knowing that over the next 2 months I would have very little communication with my new wife. We talked maybe a total of 2 hours over that 2 month period spread out over maybe 4 phonecalls. As you'd expect, that was a very fun experience.
Then I got out of boot camp and the hard part was over. I went on to follow-on training, and while I still wasn't with my wife, I at least got to talk to her when I wanted to. This meant we could actually at least pretend to be married – if you can call a few phone calls a day that.
I moved from Chicago to San Diego for more training and another 6 months away from my wife. While I was there she got to come out and spend 9 days with me, which was the most continuous time we had seen each other in the last 9 months.
Finally, I finished up my training and returned home to serve out my reserve duty after about 9 months of initial training. This was all planned and life was back to normal.
Now, whenever someone asks about getting married, I mention to them that leaving for 9 months after the wedding is generally not adviseable. However, it seems to have worked out well for us.