In no particular order, here’s a common topic military couples may fight about.
The Military
The military is one helluva of a homewrecker. Since this is a heterosexual military spouse blog, I’m going to refer to the military as a “She”. She gets to decide where my family is. She gets to keep my husband working insane amounts of hours. She gets to decide if we are together during birthday, holidays, anniversaries, She get to choose if my husband deploys and where he goes. More than likely, you might found yourself saying “I hate the military” or “or the military sucks” at least a few times. (Disclaimer, I am 100% a patriot, I do not actually hate the military or think the military sucks.) In the civilian world, if you hate your job, you could search for another job. In the military world, you sign a contract, saying that if you don’t fulfill that contract, it’s punishable by law. It’s not that you are ungrateful of what the military provides, it’s that military life can sometimes be frustrating or unfair. So you guys may fight about what the expectations of military life are asking of you.
To help resolve:
- Look on the positive: the military does provide a lot compared to the civilian world. For the junior officer or enlisted folks, the pay may not be there, but the benefits are.
- Manage your expectations of the military, as in… keep them low. I wouldn’t say be pessimistic about things, but I would say don’t ever expect anything to be permanent. If you both accept that change is part of your life, then you’ll be a lot happier.
- Remember that it’s temporary. If your active duty spouse decided to be career military, remember that it’ll be only about 20-25 years.
- Know that most everyone in the modern world complains about their job every once in a while
- Accept what you cannot change. You can’t change your duty station, you can change your attitude about it. You can’t change the service member’s working hours, you can make the time you do have together to be exceptionally memorable. You can’t change the timing of the deployment. You can change your goals during deployment.
- If all else fails, remind yourself that military life truly is temporary. (Unless one of you is like a 3 or 4 star flag officer… in that case, good luck.)
See other common conflicts military couples have:
Money
Kids
Division of Labor
Communication
Trust
The Future
