There's an old saying the Navy that the toughest job in the service is being a sailor's wife. I don't entirely agree. I kinda think its tougher to work on a flight deck where you duck down under the wings of planes taxiing up for a cat shot or landing said planes on a moving postage stamp or even submerging for months at a time in a sub. But it's certainly a damned difficult job, and not one I'd ever expected to do until I fell in love with my sailor in 1987.
I probably wasn't the worst wife in the history of the Navy. I wasn't shaking up with other men behind his back or spending us into debt or drinking myself into a stupor four or five nights a week. But I hated a lot of the sheer BS required of you, and simply refused to play their game. In the 15 years we were married while he was active duty (we'll be married for 23 in August), I attended precisely 3 Navy events, and one of them was his retirement. My husband didn't mind--he had no interest in attending Christmas parties which were pretty much geared towards families with kids, rather than adults. The real problem was that I didn't fit in at all, and that made those years lonely and isolated in many ways.
I went to one E Wives Club meeting, but when I saw 6 Moms with 15 kids, I decided it wasn't for me. Again, it was completely oriented toward people with children, and, because I got the newsletter, I quickly saw everything was planned around kids. There was nothing for wives who didn't have children, period.
I also attended the first 20 minutes of a pre-deployment briefing. Someone brought her new baby to the briefing and plunked the kid on my feet and said, "You don't mind, do you?" I told her, "Yes, I did." But I soon realized I was gonna end up talking with her in a discussion group--and my husband explained she was former active duty who'd gotten pregnant, gotten married, and gotten out--and her sole purpose in being there was to show off her new toy, the one sitting on my foot. I told him I was going home, that this was gonna be a waste of my time. And it would have been, because the entire briefing centered around finances (I already knew how to pay bills, thank you very much), handle car emergencies (during the previous deployment in the Gulf War, I'd had constant car problems, and traded it in on a new Toyota), and handle the separation issues kids have--not a word about how a woman coped with the lonely nights and a need to feel someone's hand on your skin, or how to keep up a brave front when you really want to cry for sheer worry. I left. The briefing book pretty much said it all. Wives didn't NEED help except with practical stuff, because naturally the husband handled all that important stuff when he was home.
All military families face similar problems, but some of us aren't able to build a support network with fellow wives because we simply don't fit the mold. My husband had gotten out of the Navy twice, and thus was older than the average E5. I was 49 when we married, a widow, childless by choice, a feminist, a librarian/teacher with two master's degrees, a Wiccan liberal Democrat who'd lived up and down the East Coast from Miami to Maine, visited 5 countries, and was childless by chocie. I was a big city woman, not a small town girl. The average wife in base housing (horrible housing that looked like welfare housing that hadn't been maintained) was 25 or younger, with two small children, came from a small town in the Midwest or South, a Christian (mostly conservative fundamentalist), and had at best an A.S. Our politics, our religion, our window on the world were utterly different. Friendship requires some common ground, some shared intersts, even if it's only that your kids belong to the same Girl Scout troop. I had little to nothing in common.
I had people I waved at across the street, but there was no real friendship involved--age and attitudes and life experiences were too dissimilar. The only one I talked at any length was the woman who put herself through college to become an R.N. She paid her way by stripping. I had to forge my support network with ciivilians through the SCA.
Some of you will probably think I'm being a snob, disdaining the company of women because they were less educated and experienced than I. Not true. My best friend was 10 years younger than me and a SaH Mom, but she was a science fiction fan, who read a lot and followed politics and understood Wicca. . My civilian friends were about their age and were working their way through school. But we had common interests. We had something to talk about. I tried very hard to build bonds with my neighbors, but their lives centered around children. And I had no kids, and I wanted none, and I didn't particularly enjoy small kids--except when I control the situation; I loved being an elementary school librarian. The truth is, I am pretty good with junior and senior high kids on a one-to-one level, but the small ones? Not so much.
Being childless by choice made me stick out like a sore thumb. The isolation eventually sent me into clinical depression. I went to Family Services where my counselor, who apparently didn't pay attention to a damned word I said, would urge me to join a play group (no kids), volunteer at my child's school (no kid), join a church (I am Wiccan), volunteer at the daycare center (what part of "childless by choice" did she not get?). After 6 weeks, I fired her, sending her into a temper tantrum. They sent me a questionnaire about my experience with FDC, and I told them the truth. So, apparently, did a bunch of other people. The entire staff got fired, including my incompetent counselor.
What I am trying to say here is that civlians don't unserstand how regimented military life really is. Since Basic Allowance for Quarters doesn't cover all the rent, let alone the heat and electricity, many of us are forced to live in crummy housing where our neighbors are selected by rank. E wives don't meet O wives, because fraternization is forbidden for the active duty member. The Wives Clubs are broken down by rank in the Navy E (E1-E6), Chiefs and above (E7-9) and O. The people you meet are the people in your spouse's rank level. Which means someone like me--older, better educated, not Christian--is a large square peg in a small round hole.
Get a job, some of you are likely saying. Not that easy if you're well-educated. You can sub in the school system but they won't hire you for a permanent position because you'll only move in a couple of years. You can't get low level jobs at stores because you're over-qualified. In the 15 years he was active duty, I worked fulltime for only 18 months. In Japan I made a few hundred dollars a month teaching English. And, believe me, I tried my damnedest. Yes,there is something called spouse preference which means that if one of the minimally qualified applicants for a job is a spouse, they must be given preference--but only after they've gotten into the civil service system in the first place. TO get in, you have to take a job that's mostly clerical. I'd have done that--but the Catch 22 is someone like me is over-qualified and can't get hired at the entry level.
The military is rigid and unyielding. Being a military spouse is difficult enough as it is without adding isolation into the mix. Unfortunately the military PoV is that one size damned well better fit all--and if it doesn't, you're on your own.
Things I'd like to see:
1. Programs for women without children--those who haven't had their kids yet or don't want them. I ran into a handful of younger women who didn't plan to reproduce until a few years in the future; they were as unhappy as I was with the way programs were handled.
2. Programs that recognize the individuality of every spouse, and are tailored to the needs of that person, not some mythical average wife. While many will benefit from the ideas my counselor threw at me every week--quite a few won't. Treat us like individuals, not cookie cutter people.
3. REAL support, not just lip service, for women who want or need to work, and a reworking of spouse privilege so that if a spouse is minimally qualified, they get the job, even if they're not in the civil service system yet. This should be especially true overseas. I applied for a library job for which I was well-qualified. Hiring me would have saved them paying housing and the cost of moving someone over to Japan. Instead, they moved a non-American citizen over from the states and had to pay him housing allowance. The move alone costs around 10-20 grand, and his housing allowance would have been around $1800 a month. In the remaining 5 years, I could have done that job, they'd have saved $125,000--and given a wife a job.
4. Pay all the costs of rent and utilities for those living off base. After all, they pay for heat and electricity on base. Just not having to scrimp to pay the bills--heat in Maine can easily run $00 month--will take some of the stress off.
5. In deployment briefings, don't talk down to us. We're not idiots. Provide real programs, and include wives who don't have kids.
6. RESPECT US. Unless you want to go back to the old Roman way where military people can't marry till they've served their 20 years, we're gonna be around. We can be your greatest asset or your biggest problem. Work with us, and we're an asset. Treat us like we're an unwanted and ugly mole, and we'll be a huge problem.