Boyfriend wants to join the marines, but our futures no longer align

[Huneybearz]

Me (21F) and my boyfriend (21M) have been together now for 3 years now. Our whole relationship we’ve talked about our future, what we want, how many years we expect to be together before marriage, all the fun stuff. I’ve made it very clear that what I want in my future is a 2 parent household with both parents actively in our children’s life, not missing any important details of their childhood, and a stable partner, there for me emotionally, physically, just to be my rock. I’ve been thru a lot in my childhood, and I feel having a control over making sure my children’s lives are better than mine was, would heal me. He’s been aware of that, and agreed to a life like that with me due to us having similar values in that sense.

Now a few weeks ago he came to me, told me he wanted to do four years in the army, and he would be doing something safe, promises of coming home every night, and being there for me and our future family. I was taken aback as he had never mentioned the military, and I can’t necessarily say I was happy, but I agreed. Now he’s coming to me saying it’s his dream to be in the marines. He wants to be in the field. He’s not going to be home every night. And I just broke. Tried to compromise, there appears to be no solution. This is really what he wants to do, and he wants to start this whole little journey off married. Granted I already knew the question would be being popped soon, just not so happy about the circumstances it’ll be popped under. Among other things marriage is a commitment, a promise. And it feels like there won’t even be a honey moon. I’m at the point in my life where I want to get married soon and have kids in a few years. However I can’t necessarily see myself being happy if my husband isn’t around, if he’s missing their first steps or first words, or miss that first day of school. It would break me. The moving around constantly would break me. But I love him. Everyone around me has told me even though I love him he’s not thinking about me, he’s not thinking about our future, and that I need to leave him and put myself first. That if he won’t come to a compromise, about OUR future I need to just leave and focus on me. But I can’t wrap my head around it. That’s the main issue in our relationship and I’ve been dreading anything he talks about marine, his fyp being all propaganda, it’s just a trigger for me, and I can’t help it bc I see myself being so miserable. I feel terrible. I feel like a terrible partner because he makes it out to be me not supporting his dreams. But what about my dreams ? What about my values?

I just need advice. Did anyone else feel like this and still stay and it ended up being happily ever after? Am I overthinking it?

Be realistic.The odds aren’t good.

If he only wants to do 4 years and you can cope with long distance then I see no reason why he shouldn’t, you’ll only be 25/26 when he leaves you can marry and plan children for then.

You are very young. I have a son your age, and frankly I'd be horrified if his gf was planning out their future with marriage and children like this.

People change a lot in life, particularly from their teenage years to early 30s. It's unlikely that your dreams will remain the same and it is very foolish to not think that what you want at 18 will be the same as what you want at 35.

You seem to be looking for security, whereas he is looking for adventure. I think you should accept that you now want different things from life and see how that works out, but do not marry at this point, whatever you do.

I’m so sorry. I know this pain very well, when you love someone but are faced with either letting them go or having a life you don’t want. Whatever you decide I wish you the very best and the strength you will need in the coming years.

Absolutely this. You are so young it’s not surprising your dreams are forming and crystalising and as they do, it’s clear they are misaligned. Split now and chase your own dreams op. Mature, and heal yourself. For goodness sake don’t marry him, it won’t work out.

My daughter is your age and joined the Royal Navy last year. She’s still in phase 2 training but she’s loving it.
You’re both very young, at this age uni you have to follow your dreams and a secure career.

Military life is not easy and not for everyone, dd has seen this as her future will hopefully have no regrets

I would say - be patient, let him apply, be selected, do the preparatory training and then go.
Don’t get married, but don’t give up hope yet…
Even if accepted, theres competition and a reasonable injury and failure rate.

There was a lady posting similar here last year - he went, he needed to go through the process to realise that it wasn’t actually what he thought he wanted after all, and if I recall, there was a happy outcome.

Bide your time…
(ex military)

I’m sure you love him, but you’re both too young to have your lives mapped out before you. What happens when life throws you a curveball as it always does? Where will you go / what will you do? It’s lovely to be settled but there’s no fun in your plan so at such a young age I’m not surprised he wants to love a bit first.

You've had some great advice here OP and I'm only really going to echo the others.

• It's right and appropriate for him to give this a go at his age, actually, I applaud him for it.
• Your perspective on this viewpoint is equally reasonable and appropriate.
• Being a military wife is HARD. I was 21 and DH was serving in Iraq whilst I was pregnant and trying to do my degree (0/10 do not recommend).
• My sons have grown up with DH not being there for long chunks of time and having him get up from dinner to zoom down to Brize and go who knows where.

On another note, I would gently encourage you to seek counselling. It's very understandable to try and make everything perfect for your children after a less easy start. However, that's a huge amount of pressure on you and them.

Wishing you all the best.

He doesn’t realise how selfish it is for him to want to get married before going off on his dream. He wants to explore his ambitions with you at home waiting for him to drop back in every few months. Don’t marry him, and you should explain you understand he has these goals, but you aren’t going to sit at home for 4 years waiting for him to decide if he is going to stay in the military or not, so it’s best you go your separate ways and if he does leave and you’re available you can talk again.

Don’t get married, there is nothing wrong with him joining marines, but the issue is he has moved the goal posts and also he wants it all on his own terms.

Signing up to be a military wife at the start of your marriage is not beneficial for you, but many military men are advised to get a wife for their own emotional and practical support etc.

So it sounds like wants to go out and pursue this career and have wifey waiting at home. That’s fine if you were ok with that and had experience being a military partner so you knew what you were signing up to .

But to jump straight into being a military WIFE right after you get married means you don’t get to test it out to see how you’d feel about it. And the reality is if turns out you don’t like it while he’s away, you’ll feel more inclined to stick it out if you’re married.

He knows that which is probably why he’d be happy to tie you down before he joins the military.

Let him do his thing career wise of course , but don’t get married or pregnant to this man right now

You’re both far too young to be thinking of getting married. You can both have your dreams but maybe not with each other.

@99bottlesofkombucha I agree with this and I’m surprised more on the thread haven’t clocked the selfish nature of this young man.

This is really what he wants to do, and he wants to start this whole little journey off married.

It would be different if he said let’s see how it goes and after the 4 years we can see if we still want to get married. But to suddenly make this announcement and say he still wants to go ahead with marriage soon, shows he is being quite selfish and even quite cunning about this.

I suspect he’s been planning this for longer than he’s let on.

People are saying that you are too young for marriage but I disagree but you must let him scratch his itch.
As previous have said he might get a shock when reality hits. Of course the opposite might happen. But unless he knows that it will always be between you. While he is away he might change and so might you but if you come through the other side your love will be a lot stronger.
Support him in his wish. If he's successful he will gain a lot of skills that can be used in a later career.

He can’t possibly know how long he will want or where this path might lead.

OP, apart from popping out babies and playing happy families in a 1950s kind of way, what are your future plans? Do you have any qualifications? A career? Do you want to travel? What do you want to achieve in life?

You seem to see your boyfriend as a LEGO block in a life plan that is vanishingly unlikely to materialise, whether or not he joins the RM. Raising children is most definitely not effective as therapy - just scroll through Mumsnet and see how many people with no troubled history struggle to cope.

It seems as if your boyfriend has done a bit of growing up and realised that he wants more from life. Now you need to do a bit of growing up too. Either support him as he spreads his wings, or let him go, but for goodness’ sake, don’t get married as a way of solving this.

You don't have to have children the moment you're married. You could wait until 25 - and if it turns out that either one of you feels that it's not right by that point, it's relatively simple to divorce and start the next phase of your life with plenty of time again - having children at 30 is not any different biologically and you'll be in a better place financially by then with 10 years of a career and savings/financial planning to cover housing, time off work and medical bills; plus you'll be more likely to have come to terms with whatever is in your childhood that makes you describe their role as being to 'heal' you.

It's very easy to think that feeling unloved, neglected, abused or unwanted can be fixed by having a baby that will love you unconditionally, but what happens often is that they make it worse - a baby that cries can be interpreted by a traumatised parent as it meaning they hate them, that they're a bad mother, that they're just going to repeat all the trauma of the past - even before you add in complications from birth, the cost and effect upon a career, the lack of maternity leave (or sleep), etc. To cope with the demands of a future baby and children best, take time, get therapy, get settled and secure in yourself, your work and your home before you consider conceiving.

First it was home every night, now it’s he will be away for a lot over a period of 4 years. Next it could be he is signing up for another four years and so on.

So my friends husband was in the US army and he proposed when he came back to the U.S. and they’re still happily married a decade later.

I like that they both got to do their thing - while he was in the army she was also away travelling, visiting family and teaching abroad for at least some of the time . I feel that was a lot more respectful and they both got to explore and further their career before settling down back in the U.S.

I hope you do have your own ambitions and plans too, OP.

You're both really young to be planning out whether you will both be at home on your children's first days at school. Your boyfriend is right to pursue what he wants and not be tied down by all these plans, and you should do the same. It would be far better for you to get over your past problems independently and by living a good single life, rather than by placing all the responsibility on your future children. I hate to mention it, but you're not guaranteed to have them. And you certainly can't guarantee that their father will be around to see first steps etc, because the chances are definitely that that will happen when he's at work if you want him to support you.

The odds of the OP returning to the thread aren't good either, by the look of it.

One of my relatives was in your position OP - she knew she couldn't hack the military wife life, so they ended it. She really did love him and was heartbroken tbh.
But - maybe you can hack it? Time to think about what you actually want from life - aside from giving your children a perfect life.
As many others have said, please don't make the purpose of life having children and giving them the perfect life. It really doesn't work out that way - wanting the best life for your children is absolutely admirable, and should be what every parent wants - but you shouldn't have children in order to heal your own bad childhood.
I wish you the best, whatever you decide.

As others have said you’re still very young. Military life isn’t for everyone and it can be tough during deployments if you’re on base. I moved off base 10 years in as I hated the hierarchy of being the wife of an x rank marine. Some of the wives think they’re the same rank as their husbands and I found it horrible the way some of the wives treated the lower “ranking” wives. It’s not all sunshine and roses put it that way and there can be a lot of bitchiness between wives of commissioned officers. The higher the rank my DH became the worse it got…

If you’re thinking of having children remember you WILL be a solo parent if deployments happen (and they do). His job will aways comes first, it’s just the way it is. He won’t be there for every “first” if you have children, he won’t be there for every birthday or Christmas, you won’t always have family support near you either. The accommodation isn’t always great either. Would I change how our life was? Absolutely not. I met so many fabulous friends. Am I glad he’s retired now? Definitely! If you chose the military life never lose sight of who YOU are along the way. To be perfectly honest, from what you’ve said in your OP it’s not the life for you.

But why should she even get married given she’s really struggling with the idea of her boyfriend heading straight out into the military after they tie the knot?

I don’t think there’s any reason to marry at age 21 when you’re having these kind of significant reservations about how day to day life will be .

Marriage vows should be entered into with relative confidence (although of course no-one knows for sure what the future holds). But if you’re having major doubts at 21, I don’t see the benefit of going ahead with it when you have so much time? Why not just continue to be in a relationship and see how she feels when he comes back out - if they even last that long.

Divorce can be really hard for some people and with OPs past she may struggle with it especially. At any rate it’s waay easier to leave a relationship with no kids than to leave a marriage with or without kids involved. And not everyone wants a divorce under their belt by age 25.

Yes it happens and sometimes unavoidable, but Op would be increasingly her likelihood of experiencing that if she goes ahead with this marriage now.

What are your plans and goals, OP?

Are you in the UK, OP?