Military Spouse Career Fears

I never anticipated life as a military spouse being easy. (Heck, I never anticipated life as a regular old spouse being easy.) I don’t think anyone ever does. We pretty much knew what we were signing up for; we weighed the benefits against the drawbacks and decided that yes, we can do this.

We can move wherever they decide they want to send our service member and possibly live there alone if they get deployed.

We can live with not necessarily knowing where we’re going to be next year, or where our future kids are going to go to school.

We can live with our careers coming second to the military.

I’ll be honest: it’s that last part that always trips me up. I’m happy to move around—in fact, I’m excited to see new places and fall in love with a place we never would have considered otherwise. I’m not overly concerned about kids at this point, mostly because I’m not overly concerned about having kids in general, though that of course may change.

I’m…significantly less sanguine about the career thing.

Part of it comes from the lack of financial contribution I feel I’m making to the household. I currently work part time, but the gas to get to and from work three days a week consumes probably about a third of my biweekly paycheck. After taxes, I make about a seventh of what my husband—a dentist currently working through a residency program—brings home.

And sometimes, instead of being grateful that we can survive on only his income, I often imagine how much more we could make—and especially how much more we could save—if I had a “real” job.

If I had a “real” career.

And don’t get me wrong—this part-time job I have now is preparing me, theoretically, to move up in the industry, and that’s wonderful because it’s an industry I can find pretty much anywhere we go  (I hope). But I’m ready to move up now, and the opportunities just aren’t there, and my feet are getting itchy, and I know that comparing myself to what I see on Facebook is just a recipe for misery, but I do it anyway, and then I hate myself.

I have friends who graduated college the same year I did (2011), or even after I did, who already have tenure at their teaching jobs (at the age of 26! Could you imagine having total job security before even getting your first gray hair?), who are managers or directors of successful nonprofit programs, who had the luck and luxury of finding a job they loved and one they can stay in more or less as long as they want, because they don’t have to pick up and move every few years.

I also have friends who spent (or are spending) a few years in the Peace Corps, or Teach for America, or Americorps, and have been able to uproot and move to a new city practically without a second thought. They’ve gotten master’s degrees and doctorate degrees; they’ve gone to law school.

Because they can.

I envy them.

I envy them so much sometimes that it makes me physically ill.

I’m 26 years old, and it already feels like it’s too late to make a career change, despite the fact that I’m basically already halfway through one.

I feel like I’ll never be employable again, despite the fact that I’m currently employed, because I didn’t work for most of the time we lived at Fort Jackson and the job I have now is a step down from what I had been doing previously.

I’m in a constant terror of spending another several months unemployed and going crazy at our next duty station, despite the fact that we won’t be moving for at least another year and a half.

I’m afraid no one will want to hire me once they find out I’m a military spouse, fearing I’ll have to move again soon or not come back once I “inevitably” have kids (though this is generally more of a being-a-woman fear than a being-a-military-spouse fear).

And because I’m a military spouse, and because we’re probably in this for the long haul—only 18.5 years until retirement!—it’s a lot harder to reassure myself by mapping out my potential career trajectory (because nothing soothes anxiety like to-do lists and flow charts and spreadsheets). It’s near impossible to estimate where you could or even where you might want to be career-wise in five years when you have at least one, if not two moves between now and then.

There are the people who will say—and who have said—that I should be content to let his career take the lead and be happy with whatever crumbs happen to fall my way.

If you can make some money, great! If not, who cares, he can support you, right? But isn’t it great to have flexibility in your job?

It’s hard to know what to say to these people when my jaw is scraping the ground.

Do they think that I lost all ambition the moment the words “I do” came out of my mouth?

I knew long before we got married that my career would have to take a back seat; I’ve accepted that. But it’s not all about the money.

It’s about doing something.

Believe me, I tried to sit at home and blog and cook and take care of my dog and it worked, for a little while, until I got tired of never leaving the house and never talking to anybody. As much as I love the idea of working at home in my sweatpants, I’ve discovered that I need that daily grind, the chatting at the water cooler, the cheering for each other as we meet our goals and commiserating when we don’t.

I need something to work toward that’s not of my own creation.

And every day, it feels like the potential for an honest-to-God career withers a little bit more.

It’s terrifying.

I realize there’s no easy fix to this. Until employers become more willing to employ military spouses, until more career paths become PCS-proof, until people stop thinking that we as military spouses should be grateful that we can be baggers at the commissary, I—and many of my compatriots, surely—will continue to worry about these things.

It’s impossible not to.

Please don’t think that I’m down on all aspects of military life; the large majority of the time, I love being a military spouse and wouldn’t trade it for anything. But these fears are valid, and they’re not always heard, because we’re often expected to smile quietly and wait gracefully while our service member is off saving the world (or, you know, fixing teeth—whatever).

So, fellow military spouses: know you’re not alone when you have these thoughts. I’m right there with you, and we’ll get through this together.

Do you struggle with these same thoughts and fears? I could use some solidarity. Join in and leave a comment.

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