You'd be surprised how easy it is to leave a soldier on deployment. You can do it with a letter. (He can't argue with you. He doesn't have a phone.) If you lay the groundwork early, saying to the soldier before he leaves, "This will be the end of us, we might as well admit it," it's that much easier. The letter won't even come as a shock.

And if you have children with that soldier? You can handle all that with a letter, too. He'll write it -- because he cares about the kids, because he wants to work with you to do what's best for them even though you're leaving him -- and you'll give it to them. Here again, you will avoid a nasty confrontation. Who will they cry to? You? You're just the teary-eyed bearer of the letter. Him? The one who's sweating it out in the desert?

There will be no moving truck, no boxes, no house torn asunder. The soldier is peeing in a bucket as you pack. He doesn't care who gets the couch.