Military wife

[GinevraWeasley]

My husband is in the military, I am frequently referred to as a Military wife. This really annoys me for a couple of reasons. I am actually qualified to a higher level and get paid a lot more than my husband but he is not defined by my career. Additionally this seems to be a term reserved for female spouses, I have never heard a man referred to as a Military husband. Some people seem to like it because it they say it expresses the difficulties of being married to someone in that career, but I have never heard my friend get referred to as an "offshore workers wife" despite their relationship experiencing the same difficulties with unpredictability and distance.

I actually think the term encourages women to give up their lives/careers and become a trailing spouse without considering long term implications e.g. should the marriage break up, life after the military where private rent is far more expensive, moving children's schools every couple of years etc. It's almost referred to as the equivalent of a job title.

Just wondered if anyone else was in a similar situation and hates this term?

Maybe we should have a reality check here. The army’s the last bastion of sexism, what do we expect?

The term military spouse is becoming more popular. By the very nature of the amount if men serving compared to women there will always be more military wives than military husbands until alot more females serve (and let's not forget same sex marriages/relationships too). Ive not heard the term military husband actually being used but have read and heard the term military spouse. I know of 2 military husbands and yes they get referred to as military spouse. I don't recall any military husbands back when I was a kid growing up on the patch.
It will probably take time for it to change completely but there are small changes with the times already happening.
However, the military follow tradition widely and some terms/traditions etc can take a long time to die out.

A bit off subject but I find the whole trailing around thing ridiculous in this day and age. We're beyond the days of whole regiments being wiped out so I dont know why its not all done locally.

It's a bit difficult commuting between Brussels and Cornwall, or Oman and Cornwall, or Naples and Devon, so some wives do decide to move. I stayed in and around dh's base port area in our home for 20 years until he got a second foreign on the trot,. At that point, I moved. Staying in one place meant I had a job, but it did mean years of weekending, as the RN does its business in different places, from Teddington to Northwood to the US, to Shrivenham, in dh's case...none of which are remotely near Devonport. Had he taken an extension, it could have been Faslane, or MOD, and London tends to be unaccompanied. It meant ds was educated in one place til he was 10, then we moved abroad, and he went to an international school.

My db went to boarding school, but I was educated in one town for 7 years, whilst Dad was at sea, or my folks weekended.

OP, the salary depends on the rank. Housing post services can be organised from early on. Both my parents and dh's (we are both Naval kids) owned their own houses, so we always had somewhere to come back to, and d had his own place before we met. Db does as well (still serving). Whilst we may move and live in MQs, our houses are there for retirement or when you get an unexpected hiatus back in the UK between foreign postings.

Military does not only mean the Army. iirc, but the Royal Navy and the RAF as well.

Military wife is a useful shorthand in some places, especially international HQs where you will have a mix of serving military personnel, international staff (often ex military personnel), VNCs, etc. It does tend to be military spouse where we are atm though, as lots of the international military personnel are female, and bring their husbands.

I was a military wife for many years - we often lived in army accommodation and my children were dubbed "Army brats" - a term which ( as adults) they still use with good humour. None of us took it as an insult - these terms were merely descriptions of our lifestyle and they didn't define us at all.

I'd certainly say that anyone who marries a military person should try to educate themselves as to the life as it is lived. It isn't like other people 's lives at all. Education suffers for children who move around frequently , your job prospects can be very limited as a spouse, friendships fracture and often don't recover. Spouses have to cope as a single parent for months at a time, with little or no support from far-away family. Divorce is much more common than in the civilian world, and for good reason.

Women who say " I have a great career on my own" are in the minority. Moving around - and often living away from the cities - means that jobs for the non-military spouse are few and far between. I was lucky to be a nurse and had no trouble finding work, but having a career path was impossible . Hard to climb the ladder of success when all you've done is to work for a few years at a time in a variety of care homes. Most of the girls I knew, ended up as retail workers or bar maids despite having good qualifications.

Being called a "military spouse" is the least of the problems associated with the life !

I found it more irritating to be greeted with horror at dinner nights because they were expecting a man, to be honest. Or to be called ‘sir’ fifty times a day by phone or email because the very concept of a female officer was too much to absorb. The lunches where they invited belly dancers to entertain the gentlemen always went down a treat too. Especially when they hit on the idea that the only two females in the mess should perhaps join in? Presumably our only function being to jiggle and entertain the menz, after all.
I think ‘wife’ was the least of my worries at any point tbh.

Actually, in all seriousness, the worst was being blindfolded and tied up with my own shirt and being groped in the officers mess bar by six colleagues.
I can retain a small amount of sympathy if indeed they are still using the term ‘wife’ in your neck of the woods. I haven’t heard it for years. It’s all spouse most places.
The military is a weird place though. It’s the only role where they essentially expect you to take over 100% when they remove your spouse and then revert immediately. You are expected to fulfil a community role yourself (I was a CVO, but also as CO’s spouse you end up de facto running a support organization whether during deployment or otherwise.) I found that there was probably more respect for a ‘wife of’ than for a servicewoman. Probably because you were doing the ‘right’ thing and not actually any sort of career threat.
Having been both, I recognize the sexism, but on the whole there is a huge recognition for what spouses have to contend with, and an expectation of their resilience and ability to get the job done. Serving females, on the other hand...

It's never bothered me to be honest. I have my own job and I've lived both on and off camp.
What always makes me laugh are the camp rats, they're the ones who think if they venture off camp something terrible will happen to them. So they're posted abroad for say three years and never attempt to learn the language, despite being offered free classes and do all their shopping in the NAAFI. ( Thank god the passion for Ron hills with stilletoes died a death )
That said, try being the foreign wife of a squaddie as I am....that gets you called some names way stranger than military wife. 😅