exNavyOffRec
Well-Known Member
There are not dollar bills involved are there? Just having a flashback to guys in nuke school
-
Please take a moment and update your account profile. If you have an updated account profile with basic information on why you are on Air Warriors it will help other people respond to your posts. How do you update your profile you ask?
Go here:
Edit Account Details and Profile
Life of a Naval Aviator, how you manage work and personal life.
- Thread starter WannaFlyHigh
- Start date
WannaFlyHigh
Well-Known Member
Awesome that you made it work out with the two careers. The medical field is so demanding on its own.
Going to wholeheartedly disagree with you on this one. This seems like a really archaic view of spouse life in the military. While spouse groups can offer shared commiseration/sympathy/empathy for what they are all going through, there's no requirement for a spouse to be part of one in order to feel supported and for your relationship to work out. Maybe they have a strong friend or family support group outside of your command/base that they feel closer to than your commands spouse group.
Example: I had a buddy in my JO squadron whose wife had chosen to stay in her hometown after finishing school knowing that we were in the middle of work-ups and about to deploy. She had family, friends, and job opportunities there and did not want to move for fear of losing all that. He cajoled her into moving to our duty station arguing exactly what @AllAmerican75 did: "you need to be here for the shared experience with all the other spouses". After moving she couldn't find a job in her field at our duty station. Her resentment for his insistence that she move grew to a point where they ended up getting a divorce. Is that the case in all situations? No, but you can't just say that spouses NEED to be willing to integrate in order to make your marriage/relationship work.
TL;DR: Your partner/spouse is entitled to be their own independent person and shouldn't feel obligated to integrate into Navy support groups if they can find the same support elsewhere.
The point I was trying to make was there needs to be a local support group for your wife that can help her and understands what she's going through. Whoever that is, doesn't matter. The last thing you want is your wife to be alone in a new location while you're gone. The only thing worse than that is if she has people who have no idea what it's like to be a military spouse and are filling her head with nonsense like "Girl, he's no good for you, you should leave him." You may disagree but I'm speaking from my personal experience. The only way you succeed as a husband-wife team is if she is A) completely bought in on being a "Navy wife" and all the pros and cons that come with it and 2) she has a support network of some kind wherever you're stationed.
I would argue that was going to happen at some point regardless of the timing. You can't bet on homesteading as a mil spouse. I think you make a good point that someone's personal network not be entirely the spouses club, single parenting, and tending house like its the 1960s.
That being said, whether we like it or not, the Navy is still designed around a head of household (usually male), single income family. That's hard enough as it is, and only gets more complicated when you try to layer in geographical limits, spousal employment, or other things. Have I seen it work? Sure, but those are anecdotes and likely elide a shitload of difficult choices (like @gparks1989 story).
It's also why so many of our female 1310/1320s choose to date/marry other military folks or make the difficult decision to pick between their flying navy career and a family.
BT BT
To the poster asking, my only advice for dating in flight school or the Navy is take things really slow and over communicate on expectations of the lifestyle. "It's not all choker whites and dining outs"
Speaking from personal experience on the other end of this, until we left CONUS, I had no need for any kind of Navy-affiliated support. I had a job, I had friends--none of whom were military-affiliated, and that was more than enough. When my spouse deployed, they had no idea what that was like, but there were still supportive and helpful. I attended an occasional OSC meeting but only because I thought I was supposed to. I didn't nurture those connections. I didn't see a need or feel a connection with anyone.
To me, the most important thing is just making sure everyone is in the same page. If one person has doubts about staying long distance, then they both need to be okay with the spouse moving, frequently, and probably taking jobs below their qualifications, and/r being unemployed for a while. Or both. If everyone is on board with someone staying at a different location and being apart for a couple years, cool. Just talk through that and make sure it means the same to both of you. Are you putting off having kids? if not, are you realistically going to be okay with your spouse living in Florida with your kid(s) while you are in San Diego or Japan, and not seeing them more than a few weeks a year? I know people who've made that work. I don't think I could do it. But what I could do doesn't matter.
If you move overseas, is she willing to come along, even with what that means to chances of employment, getting to see family and friends, etc.? If spouse quits to follow and ends up underemployed, how do finances work? Are you both okay with them being a stay-at-home-parent since you'll be away from family support and they likely will be underemployed anyway? What are the expectations in that from both of you?
Both parties need to be self-aware enough to really think through the possibilities, and honest enough to talk about needs and expectations. Talk about the hard shit--parenting, finances, employment, access to family and friends, etc.--and how Navy life can affect all those things. You never truly know until you are in it, but if you are honest with yourselves and each other, you probably have a pretty good idea. If yoy want things to continue with this casual interest, continue them. If it gets more serious, talk about whether she'd want to come visit at your next location and see how it works.
~~
For the Cyrus' question, I started dating Husband in primary, but we'd known each other for years. I was still in college I visited whenever I had a long weekend and we could scratch up enough money between the two of us to Priceline (damn, that ages me!) a ticket to Corpus or Milton. When I graduated, I agreed to move to lovely Milton to live with him and his roommates, and we got engaged. Id say just be open to whatever, but not overly invested in finding someone. If you do, cool. Try to make it work. It either will, or it won't. I wouldn't just end something because you'll be moving unless you aren't interested in trying to continue them. If the moving is a hinderance, things will end soon enough on their own.
My wife made some of her best lifelong friends during my JO tour. It's about 10 years later now, they are still in touch, and a couple of them with her on a daily (sometimes seemingly hourly) basis. That doesn't mean that any of them adopted "the navy" lifestyle. It was probably more in spite of that than anything that they became really close. Don't make your wife go to the events she doesn't want to go to and tell her to look happy. I was too busy with workups to try and influence who she befriended, or what she did (not that I would have wanted to). Some spouses eat up the mil life, which is cool too. Mine didn't, and it didn't make a bit of difference, professionally or otherwise. My wife and I are similar to Vill's situation....had known each other long before the military (she only moved in with me at the end of the VTs), and she has always had her own career and civilian friends, even today. There is no "one size fits all" solution to this debate. Some relationships/marriages don't stand the test of the Navy, either way.
Dual mil perspective - we met when I was a flight doc, he was an FRS instructor & we ran w the same crowd. Got serious years later when I deployed & he was either a WTI or in charm school/JPME (old brain cells …) and he watched my dogs.
Each of us made trade offs along the way (only so many places a carrier air wing guy & super specialized doc can go together) but we’ve done OK. I got great medical training & travelled internationally for work (research protocols) a couple times a month pre-kids. He flew for 15ish years, became a ninja planner/policy SME, & did his time in $hitty but fun places. We've both retired in the last 2 years - he’s a stay at home dad with our kiddos, organic farmer, & surf bum. I’m a GS doc/researcher & now and then get to drag my family along to interesting places for a week or so. I’m sure he occasionally misses the adrenaline/testosterone/caffeine life, and it’s unlikely that my current projects will be the plot for a movie. But overall we’re pretty happy.
Ironically, one of my bridesmaids was a flight doc w me, & got out of the Navy to train at the same hospital and same time as me. She & her husband have a similar story - circumstances worked for them, compromises were made, they’re not where they each dreamed they’d be, but they have a pretty awesome life.
Figure out what’s important to you & do what you need to do. Everything else is extra.
Each of us made trade offs along the way (only so many places a carrier air wing guy & super specialized doc can go together) but we’ve done OK. I got great medical training & travelled internationally for work (research protocols) a couple times a month pre-kids. He flew for 15ish years, became a ninja planner/policy SME, & did his time in $hitty but fun places. We've both retired in the last 2 years - he’s a stay at home dad with our kiddos, organic farmer, & surf bum. I’m a GS doc/researcher & now and then get to drag my family along to interesting places for a week or so. I’m sure he occasionally misses the adrenaline/testosterone/caffeine life, and it’s unlikely that my current projects will be the plot for a movie. But overall we’re pretty happy.
Ironically, one of my bridesmaids was a flight doc w me, & got out of the Navy to train at the same hospital and same time as me. She & her husband have a similar story - circumstances worked for them, compromises were made, they’re not where they each dreamed they’d be, but they have a pretty awesome life.
Figure out what’s important to you & do what you need to do. Everything else is extra.
Great story. It's hard, but it's so rewarding when it works out.
She is one jealous bitch, too...
Probably should have that attitude toward my ex ahah