Like others, she has found support on Facebook from those who share her situation - the strain of having a boyfriend in the military, and often in a war zone. First-time deployments can unleash emotions and questions that are addressed in more than 1,000 Facebook forums. The military provides support groups, which helps, but most are limited to spouses and families of service members.
"The nice thing about Facebook and similar virtual worlds is it allows people the 24/7 opportunity for interaction, and the terrible constraint of distance is totally eliminated," said James Katz, director of the Center for Mobile Communication Studies at Rutgers University. "It opens up a whole new world, environment, for people to be able to share feelings and get support from others and learn from others."
Such support systems didn't exist for Jessica Caputo of the Tacony section of Philadelphia seven years ago, when her high school sweetheart was sent to Kuwait. Attending college near Pittsburgh, she fell into a funk in his absence.
Few of her dorm mates could relate to her, and she felt disconnected from her boyfriend's world, she said.
"As a girlfriend, you get no information in terms of what they're doing, how the battalion or unit is doing. All that information goes to his mom," she said.
In addition to military outreach, the USO also has a number of programs. But girlfriends, boyfriends, fiancées, and wives living away from the base can feel isolated, said Kristen Lowe, development associate at the Philadelphia-area Liberty USO: "It makes sense for them to seek out [others] to talk to online."
That was what Caputo tried to do in 2003, when she started looking for online support groups.
