Love and the Military
Part 1 Military Girlfriend
Adaeze Oputa
Issue date: 4/6/09 Section: Features
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Adaeze is a senior marketing major from Nigeria.
Anyone who knows me knows that I am an extremely impatient person. They will also tell you that I'm no romantic. However, a lot of these things changed when I met Thomas Matthews.
As funny as this may sound, I was not familiar with anything that had to do with the military before I met this man. Thomas and I met in the fall of 2008. At the time I was not looking for a relationship due to a past experience; fate however had something else in store for me.
That semester was a hectic one, and sometimes having someone there that I could talk to helped a great deal. We did almost everything together; he proved almost all my "American Boy" theories wrong.
He did have values, he was very respectful, extremely courteous, kind and intelligent, however one question I always had on my mind was, why he joined the army. I never could understand why anyone would sign their life away.
I know he didn't enjoy the Personal Training (PT) every morning or the field training exercises (FTX) more than once a month and yet he served ever so diligently. A semester had passed and I made a great friend.
I was extremely excited to see him again the following semester, but not as excited, because that would be his last semester in SC State. This is when things started to become a little more realistic. I had to make that decision on whether or not I wanted to be romantically involved with this great guy I just met, or just enjoy the friendship while it lasted.
It was comforting to find out that Thomas shared my sentiments as well, because soon enough he asked me to be his girlfriend and of course, I said yes. Little did I know that saying yes to Thomas would mean saying yes to his military life style.
After we officially started dating, things became more strenuous. He went on more assignments which took him away on weekends. We spent less time together because he was busy with school work or military assignment.
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