Contradictions and Praxis Contextualized by Wartime Deployment: Wives' Perspectives Revealed Through Relational Dialectics

Strategies that military couples use to manage contradicting experiences or competing demands during deployment may affect their marital satisfaction and personal stress. Contradictions that deployed Soldiers' wives recalled experiencing were coded and organized into themes. Three main contradictions of deployment were identified (i.e., tension between uncertainty and certainty, autonomy and connection, and openness and being closed), and couples managed these contradictions with strategies of denial, balance or compromise, and moving back and forth between conflicting needs.