Military Couples and the Unique Stress of a Life in Service

This is personal for me

I am a military spouse. I know what it is like to hold everything together when your partner is deployed. To manage the house and the kids and the anxiety and the loneliness and then have to figure out how to reconnect when they come home and everything has shifted.

I know what it is like to love someone who has seen things you cannot fully understand. And to feel like no one in your civilian life really gets what your daily reality looks like.

That is why I work with military couples. Because this life is different and it deserves a therapist who actually knows what it is like.

What military couples face that others do not

Deployment and long separation. The mental load that falls on the spouse who stays. The disorientation of homecoming when expectations and reality do not match. Trauma from combat or service that does not come home with a name tag on it. The loneliness of being new to a base where you do not know anyone. The invisible grief of leaving community every few years.

Military life asks a lot of couples. More than most people realize from the outside.

What helps

Therapy that starts where you actually are. Not a generic couples model applied to a context it was not designed for.

For military couples that means understanding the operational tempo of your life, the specific stressors of your situation and what each of you actually needs to feel connected in the midst of all of it.

It also means building communication tools that work when one person is on the other side of the world with limited contact windows and tools that work for the complicated feelings of homecoming.

Immediate openings for couples counseling and individual therapy in Layton, UT and telehealth throughout Utah. To get started, call 801-525-4645 and request Candace Lance. You can also view and my profile on Psychology Today or on Therapy Den.