Sharing Bad News through Email

Instant communication adds to quality of life.

by Sarah Smiley


Last week I discussed different strategies couples can use to deal with the delivery of good and bad news during a deployment. This problem of what to share and what not to share, however, is lost on some of the old-school military spouses who didn't have the "luxury" of email and video teleconferences. They couldn't share news instantaneously, and therefore, by the time they sat down to write a letter by hand, what ever had happened the day before and seemed urgent at the time, had by then passed and seemed trivial to mention.  

Today's military wife can fire off an email to her deployed husband about the car that won't start and the tree that fell in the backyard, and when he reads that email --perhaps one hour later -- he knows that she is still dealing with the car/tree. He feels powerless to help. A generation ago, however, the husband might have received a letter about the tree one month after it fell and tell himself, "Ah well, I bet that's over now."

Instant communication has improved quality of life for military families during deployments, but in some ways, it has also created more problems. We are connected to our husband by the press of a button and that creates a sense of urgency when it comes to negative news.

I am all for sharing you entire world -- good or bad -- with your spouse during a deployment. However, because email is so quick, perhaps we should take a moment to breathe and think before sending a message that won't seem as important one month later, when traditional handwritten messages would have arrived.