"In A Relationship With: The Army"

Every time I'm doing my usual "Facebook Creeping" & see some little girl, over hype up her army relationship & how tough she is and how hard her life is I wanna puke.
I used to be an Army girlfriend. I fell for a guy who was deployed in Iraq. A few second phone call to know he was alive was the best day. I didn't complain, I didn't whine, I didn't get upset when we couldn't talk.
I lived on post with him when he came home & sure I had all of the Teddy Bears and cute things but I never, once, hyped up the relationship because he was a soldier. I never, once, thought i was more special than any other girl because i was with him. It was a relationship, a normal relationship that had some tough times added to it by the army. But what relationship doesn't have tough times added to it by a job, or some other outside force?
I feel like these girls are so proud that they're dating soldiers that it looks like they're dating the army & not the man. In the end, at the end of every day, these soldiers are men & they want to be men, they want to be talked about like men and not like "soldiers". There is more to them than the army & you need to find that.
I may no longer be an army girlfriend, and that is fine by me, but I will never forget what it taught me. How it taught me to grow up & put somebody else before me. To be grateful for the little things. To be patient and to be understanding.