Your home front experiences and feelings about those experiences are valid, and you should be able to clearly communicate those with your spouse! Just as you want to better understand your spouse’s perspective during redeployment, your spouse also wants to understand yours. He might not want a list of everything you experienced on the home front (remember, although we’ve made huge sacrifices and endured massive life trials, our spouses have likely endured much more than we could ever imagine from our comfortable beds and air-conditioned homes). But he does want to know about your life for 15 months without him there. He wants the same great relationship that you do, and he wants to understand you the way you want to understand him. When you clearly communicate about issues that may come up during the reintegration period BEFORE they arise, you and your spouse can be pro-active instead of re-active. By communicating about anticipated issues, you can act preventatively and foster understanding in both parties.

Home Front Activity or Experience	How does this activity make you feel?	How will this activity change when your spouse returns?	How might this make you feel?	If you don’t communicate these feelings to your spouse and instead begin acting negatively upon them, how might you make your spouse feel?	How can you lovingly communicate these anticipated feelings to your spouse so that he can better understand your perspective during reintegration? What can you and your spouse do now to prevent future conflict in this area? What is your plan of action? What are your expectations for each other?
Example: Making all the parenting and discipline decisions	In control, authoritarian, in charge, lonely, stressed out, burdened, worried that I’m not going to be able to do it properly by myself	We will once again share the rule-making and disciplining responsibilities	Relieved, less stressed out, perhaps a little less in control, possibly frustrated because I will have to compromise and won’t always get my way	If I place all the parenting responsibilities on him, he might feel overwhelmed and stressed out. If I get frustrated because I’m no longer the sole decision maker, he might feel unappreciated, excluded or no longer part of the parenting process.	Honey, I am so excited that you are coming home, and I love that you are once again going to be involved in making decisions about our children’s upbringing. My expectation is that we will make the household rules and discipline measures together. But you might have to be patient with me, because I am used to making all the decisions myself. If I get too controlling, please just stand on your head, blink twice and sing the Star Spangled Banner. This will be my cue that I’m being too controlling. Then, after I finish laughing, we can non-defensively talk it out.