The Tougher Side of the Job
“I’ve lost sleep over someone in the unit getting a DUI. I worried endlessly about their family and how they would survive through this rough patch.”
“We are required to do nothing but expected to do everything.”
“As a military spouse that watched my husband work many late hours ‘because the boss was still at work,’ I tried to remind him many times unsuccessfully that he was now the boss.”
“The blackberry was the third person in our marriage.”
“The night before my husband has to issue a Letter of Reprimand or an Article 15 or take a stripe, I can see the anguish on his face. He doesn’t want to do it, but he has to. He doesn’t want to ruin someone’s career and he’s upset that they gave him no choice. “
“The highs are really high and the lows can be life changing.”
“Life as a Command Spouse is not always sunshine and rainbows. Sometimes we see the good, the bad, and the ugly all in the same day. We may be welcoming a new baby in the morning or sitting in on a death notification in the afternoon.”
“Things we say or do WILL affect our spouse’s job.”
“When my husband leaves work, work always follows. The phone rings, blackberry buzzing, emails fire in, it’s never a quiet family night. He always puts is troops first. I admire him for doing so, but it can be very frustrating on the home front.”
“The weight of the company is on our spouse’s shoulders. I can see it on his face when he comes home, before he goes to bed and when he wakes. The company never leaves his mind.”
“Mandatory fun is not fun for us either.”
“We never stop wanting our spouse to do well and succeed.”
“I don’t think people realize how hard our spouses work. At the end of the day, he would let his guys go home to be with their family but that created hours of work that he had to do. The people would complain (as I did when we were younger) that their husbands had to work holidays or late hours. I wish that I had realized how much the commander takes on to allow the younger guys to have a life outside the service.”
“We wear many hats! Some we like, some we love, and some we hate, but we put them all on with a smile.”
