I have been an Army wife for a little over 7 years now. Before my husband joined I had some idea about Military life, but I really didn’t know what it truly meant to be married to a soldier. A lot of people don’t. If you don’t have a close family member or friend in the Military, it can be hard to know what it is like. You can watch Army Wives all you want but it still won’t give you the whole picture. Over the years I have encountered myths about the Military life and I wanted to show clear them up.

1) All Military spouses are about the same age, have the same education and have the same goals. This is completely false. While a lot of Military spouses did marry quite young, we all have different goals. Some wives have college degrees, some don’t. I have even met a few working on their PhDs. Some spouses are quite young, others are older. I was 26 when my husband joined which is on the older side for an Army wife. Some work full-time in their own careers, others are stay at home and may have work at home jobs.  There is not one size fits all for the Military spouse

2) You only go through one deployment. There have been so many times when my civilian friends act shocked that my husband has to deploy again. There seems to be the idea that someone deploys once and that is it. It is simply not true and for a lot of us in the Army, deployments every other year are very common. Other branches have different deployment schedules but most Military members do deploy many times during their career.

3) All Military spouses are women. My husband is in the Infantry so we don’t have men spouses in his unit but a lot of other parts of the Military do. There are men out there doing exactly what I do while their wife is off at war. It can be easy to just assume that all of us spouses are women but we can’t forget that we do have a lot of women with families who serve in the Military and that their husbands need just as much support as us wives do.

4) Everyone is the same religion and has the same political beliefs. I think there is this idea that the Military is made up with people of a certain faith or political belief. This simply isn’t true. People of all faiths make up the Military and people with all types of political beliefs serve. Not everyone believes the exact same way. It is important to remember that just like other Americans, Military families come from all different types of backgrounds and cultures. We are not all the same.

5) Life is hard for us all of the time. We as a Military family do go through some pretty hard and difficult times but it isn’t always that way. When my husband is home and doesn’t have to train it can be a pretty normal life for us. Of course since the Military is unpredictable a lot of the times there tends to be some frustrating moments, but we do have some pretty great times as well.