Reuniting with a Loved One After a Long Period of Time
When a period of time has passed without that someone special in your life, there is a big chance that you are going to be filled with a lot of different emotions. During the time they were away you may have had to adjust your surroundings, changed the way you now do things daily around the house, and even how you feel in their absence. No matter the changes that you have made, your loved one’s return sparks a new level of adjustment.
When our children go off to college and come home, there’s an adjustment for everyone. They might be expecting their room to look the same as it was when they left, but you have changed it into a sewing room or a guest room. When our military spouse returns home from a safe tour overseas, they might need to go through a transition time to reacclimate themselves to civilian life in order to be the best partner in life they can be. No matter the time of separation, reuniting, especially in the home environment, can be challenging.
New routines may need to be established, and much communication will need to take place. Having a healthy level of compassion for each other is necessary for this experience to be successful. In a way, this reunification is a form of starting over. It’s a way to make a new beginning with hopefully even more love and caring than there was before. However, it is also going to take a good amount of ongoing communication and patience as both of you adjust to the change together.
Just like with ‘redo’ or ‘re-start’ of a relationship, there is going to be a good amount of negotiation and compromise, because things are not as they we before and need to be revisited and/or adjusted. For older children coming home from college, there might be some new adjusted rules that they may not be accustomed to since living away from home…
