Balancing Work and Life as a Dual Military Couple

If you're in the military and have a service member for a spouse, you know that the dual military lifestyle isn't easy. Juggling the demands of two hectic careers and trying to stay connected during the inevitable separations can strain even the best relationships. Yet dual military marriages can survive and thrive when spouses learn techniques for balancing work and family life and develop effective strategies for dealing with the stress and sacrifice they are sure to encounter.

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Anticipating the challenges

Couples who foresee the challenges of a dual military marriage and confront hardships with eyes wide open will have an advantage over those with less realistic expectations. These tips can help you understand and prepare for the realities of your demanding lifestyle:

• Accept the certainty of separation. Family separation due to deployment and remote or unaccompanied assignment is a fact of life for military families. If you are dual military, you are likely to spend even more time apart than the typical military family does. Dual military couples should not expect to be together at every duty location throughout their careers. Even when you're assigned to the same location, long hours and different schedules can make you feel like strangers passing each other in your own home. And the demanding operations tempo sometimes means that one member of a dual military couple comes home from a long deployment just in time to say goodbye to a deploying spouse.
• Expect difficult career decisions. During the course of a marriage between two active-duty service members, most couples will have to make trade-offs between career and family. Passing up a career-enhancing assignment or school in order to stay together and accepting a less desirable job so the spouse can advance are decisions almost every dual career couple has had to face. As married service members progress in rank and responsibility, these decisions often become more difficult to make.
• Acknowledge the likelihood of sacrifices by children, extended family, and friends. Dual military couples, especially those with children, frequently have to call upon family and friends to make sacrifices in support of their military service. Your parents may assume the role of caregiver to your children for short or long periods of time. Or your children may have to adjust to frequent upheavals in home and school environments. Asking children to make sacrifices and accepting help from extended family and friends can sometimes become a source of guilt and a cause for conflict in dual military relationships.
• Understand how differences in rank, career management fields, and branches of service increase challenges. There are at least three conditions that magnify challenges for dual military marriages:
• When two service members of different rank marry, they may not have the common experiences and understanding of each other's career expectations that couples who are closer in rank have. These differences can be especially difficult for officer-enlisted marriages.
• Difficulties being assigned together are greater when spouses belong to different career-management fields or communities, or have incompatible specialty designators (i.e., the same low-density specialty or different specialties not needed in the same locations).
• Members of dual career marriages between service members in different branches of service tend to undergo the greatest hardships. To be together, they have to rely on coordination across branches and on the chances that their assignment managers will be able to find suitable assignments in the areas where both branches of service operate.

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Developing positive coping strategies

There are skills, habits, and attitudes you can adopt as a dual military couple to help you work together to manage the realities of your lifestyle. They include:

• Focus on communication. Communication is an essential ingredient of all healthy relationships and a critical skill set for couples balancing family and two demanding careers. Good communication involves making a commitment to talk to each other often, even if it has to be by email, video chat, or phone. Dual military couples usually interact frequently to plan and coordinate family responsibilities around demanding duty schedules. But it's also important to reserve some time together for expressing your thoughts and feelings.
• Honor each other's career and personal goals. Dual military couples married for a long time say that consideration for each other's career aspirations is one of the main reasons for their success. Honoring your spouse's military goals means taking his or her career as seriously as your own. Sometimes it means making sacrifices in your own career choices. It can also mean learning as much as you can about your spouse's career field so you'll be in a better position to help him or her advance. Most of the time, it means showing your support in small ways such as checking your spouse's uniform before an important meeting or accompanying your spouse to a command function after a long day when you would rather just stay home.
• Be prepared to switch roles. Dual career couples learn quickly that they can't have rigid expectations for the roles of husband and wife. They need the flexibility to switch roles back and forth in order to accommodate both careers. With a deployment or change in duty for one spouse, the other spouse may suddenly have different family responsibilities. Picking up children from child care, preparing meals, paying the bills, staying home with a sick child, or maintaining vehicles — these are examples of activities that can shift in response to the demands of military duty.
• Take care of your individual needs through outside activities and support systems. Dual military couples are no different from other couples in that work life and home life can't meet all their needs. Maintaining balance in your lives means that each spouse needs a need a support system outside of work and family. Making time for friends, health and fitness activities, community involvement, and individual interests is important to maintaining a strong dual military marriage. And when you share a hobby, passion, or favorite activity that occasionally takes you away from daily pressures and gives you quality time together, it's even better.
• Develop career relationships with people supportive of your goals. As a dual military couple, you may encounter people who have difficulty accepting others in nontraditional roles and relationships, including people who may be resentful of your two incomes. In your professional and social activities, it's wise to seek out people who understand and support the dual career lifestyle and to avoid spending time with those who don't. Having a mentor who gives you sound advice on managing your career while married to another service member can be helpful, too.
• Take advantage of professional support services to help you manage dual-career challenges before they threaten your marriage. Communication, negotiation, and the ability to juggle competing demands on your relationship are skills that don't always come naturally. If you and your spouse need to improve your relationship, don't wait to seek help. Military OneSource, your installation's Family Support Center, and your chaplain can help.
• Remember to recognize and appreciate the benefits of dual career military life. It's easy to get caught up in the difficulties of balancing work and family and lose sight of the rewards. In a successful dual military marriage, spouses are able to appreciate a special kind of bond. You understand each other's experiences and can relate to the other's career triumphs and challenges in ways nonmilitary spouses can't. Be sure to stop and reflect on the positive aspects of your lives together and recognize that your experience with teamwork and shared sacrifice make your relationship even stronger.

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Making tough career-and-family decisions

Nearly every dual career couple will at times question their ability to manage the strain of two demanding jobs, difficult separations, and the expectation that both spouses place their military duties ahead of family obligations. Becoming parents is often the event that brings this concern to the forefront. With parenthood often comes the realization that at least one of you may not be able to continue supporting the military mission with the same level of commitment. Sometimes a decision for one spouse to leave the service is simply the result of a desire to be fair to the military, their unit, and co-workers. Dedicated service members make this decision with difficulty when they feel they are not able to fulfill family responsibilities and give 100 percent to the mission.

It's important to remember that no single option is the right choice for every couple. Leaving the service or switching from active to Reserve duty is an individual decision based on each couple's unique circumstances. If you are struggling with this decision, it may be helpful to talk things over with an unbiased professional. Your installation Family Support Center, chaplain, and Military OneSource can help you connect with the appropriate resources.

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Actions every dual military couple should take

If you and your spouse understand the challenges of dual military careers, accept the demands on your marriage and family, and plan to stay in the military together, there are steps you can take to increase your chances of achieving personal and professional goals. Here are a few suggestions:

• Take a proactive role in finding joint assignments. Each branch of service has a program for assigning married couples to the same duty location or within 100 miles of each other. Programs such as the Air Force Joint Spouse Program and the Married Army Couples Program do their best to ensure joint assignments, but there are never guarantees.
  
  Joint spouse programs also coordinate assignments of service members married to active-duty members of another branch or to members of the Reserve and Guard, but these situations tend to be more difficult to accommodate. Experienced couples usually recommend taking a personal and active role working with military personnel managers to identify assignments that meet both family and career goals.
• Seek agreement on dual career expectations. Married service members rarely pursue their individual careers with equal drive or expectations for career advancement. When both spouses are on ambitious career paths, they have made a choice to accept more separation and hardship in their marriage, and they usually don't try to raise children at the same time. But if you're like most dual military couples, one of your careers takes the lead and the other follows. Or perhaps you've agreed that neither career is more important than staying together as a family, and you make career decisions accordingly.
  
  To avoid marital conflict resulting from different expectations for joint careers, it's important to come to an understanding as a couple about your career aspirations. Having a shared vision for your future and a commitment to joint decision making when choices have to be made will help you keep career goals from getting in the way of relationship goals.
• Meet all military requirements for deployment planning and keep plans current. As a dual military couple, you are required to have a Family Care Plan if you have children or certain other categories of people who depend on you. Wills and powers of attorney are also essential legal documents for military personnel. Your command, installation Family Support Center, Legal Assistance Office, and Military OneSource can provide you with information and help with creating a Family Care Plan and obtaining legal directives if you don't already have them.
• Have realistic contingency plans with options for different scenarios. After completing the required planning documents, you may discover a need to develop contingency plans for different situations that go beyond the military's requirements. For example, you will need a plan for making sure your bills are paid and your finances are in order when you, or your spouse, or both of you are deployed. You may also need to have different plans depending on the time of year or length of your deployment. For example, if a grandparent is caring for your children during a joint absence, the children may go to her home in the summer, but if you'll be absent during the school year, she might come to stay in your home until summer recess.
• Give your best to every military assignment. It may seem obvious, but service members in dual military marriages improve their chances of favorable consideration on dual career issues when they work hard and do an outstanding job. Your chain of command will be more invested in keeping you in the service and together with your spouse when you are a proven performer. It's also likely that commanding officers will take a greater interest in both of your careers when they know you both, so participating in each other's command activities may have benefits beyond simply being there for each other.

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Other resources

Your installation's support services

Each service branch sponsors information and support programs for service members and their families. You can call or visit any installation Army Community Service Center, Marine Corps Community Services, Fleet and Family Support Center, or Airman and Family Readiness Center regardless of your branch affiliation.

If you aren't near an installation, National Guard Family Assistance Centers are available in every state. The Local Community Resource Finder on the National Guard Family Program at www.jointservicessupport.org will identify your closest center.

Military OneSource

This free 24-hour service is available to all active duty, Guard, and Reserve members (regardless of activation status) and their families. Consultants provide information and make referrals on a wide range of issues. Free face-to-face counseling sessions (and their equivalent by phone or online) are also available. Call 1-800-342-9647 or go to www.militaryonesource.mil to learn more.

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