Friday, July 16, 2010

Trying to Understand the Hype

So I've come across several ladies who strike me as desperate to be a military spouse. One even told me it's her "destiny." I realize that they have military family members, or maybe they were a military brat growing up, but when they're 18 or 19 and they feel it's their calling, I think they're crazy.
The way I see it, being a military spouse isn't a calling. Being a service member is a calling. You dream of being a banker, doctor, lawyer, mother, father, etc. If you dream of the day you'll be a military spouse, and that's all you can think of, or your life revolves around rushing out and marrying a service member, then you're crazy. You are the reason the rest of us have a bad reputation as a military wife.
The ladies who marry into the military at a really young age, mainly the ones fresh out of high school, are the ones who later realize that they didn't get the time to transition between gradution from high school and being an adult. They jump into their marriage so fast that it practically spits them back out. They realize that they really didn't know what they got themselves into.
Military life is hard. The spouses are constantly coming and going. The wives/husbands that are left behind have to help transition the kids, pay the bills, clean the house, work, run the errands, take the kids to school/sporting events, etc. It's not all about being a military wife.
For those of you who feel that it's so different and boring being a civilian wife, let me put things in perspective. There's no difference in the day to day life. The only real differences are that your spouse is gone all the time, you can't move where you want to move to, you can't take a family vacation when and where you want. You begin to understand that most of your time, you're single. You do everything like a single person when your spouse is gone.
For those ladies who feel it's they're calling, understand that there is no such thing as a calling. Face it, if something happened tomorrow and you lost out on that chance to be a military spouse or girlfriend with your current boyfriend or husband, you'd try to find someone else to help make that "dream" a reality. It's the girls like you who end up feeling like your trapped. You end up being unfaithful to your spouse and make a name for the rest of us who don't deserve it.
Now, I'm not lashing out. I'm just hoping that someone takes into account for the fact that it's a hard life. It's not all the glory. I just get frustrated with the ladies who feel that they have to rush out and marry a military guy, and if things fall apart, then they move on to the next. I can tell you right now, most of these ladies want the "glorified" title and the benefits, but in the end, they are the ones who give us the bad reputation and tarnish that title.

3 comments:

  1. lol I really don't get it. Why do these girls think they HAVE to be a military wife or their life is over? They think civilian life is so boring, but the fact is, take away the deployments and military control over your spouse, and you live a civilian life.

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