I wrote a follow-up post about military husbands for the Milspouse blog. The first one—‘Are Male Spouses Really “Doing Fine”?’—got a pretty good response.
What I’m hoping to do is start a conversation about how to better support the military husbands out there. It’s a weird world, especially for those of us who are, and always have been, civilians. Even more especially for those of us with kids. Whether you’re a full-time stay-at-home-dad, or you’re ‘just’ in charge of getting the kids ready in the morning, dropping them at daycare/school, and then making dinner and helping with homework and putting them to bed, it’s a big responsibility, a responsibility our culture has not trained us for.
And the problem is, we don’t ask for help or utilize the support groups, maybe in part because we aren’t comfortable talking about our frustrations, fears, etc. with women. There are some things guys can only talk to other guys about. There are also some things women can only talk about with women. So, we need to take advantage of the support forums the services provide (FRGs, spouses’ clubs) in order to connect and make friends. We also need to speak up about the internet resources that are available.
Whatever macho bullshit is keeping men away from the support groups needs to be set aside.
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