Military Wives: Looking Beyond the Bad Experiences

It seems that more and more lately I have been hearing a lot of offensive comments about military wives, in particular insinuations that a majority of military wives are over weight and promiscuous.

I am among a large number of military wives that stay faithful to their husbands and I happen to be about 15 pounds heavier than I should be. This is fifteen pounds that I have tried walking off, going to the gym, home video exercise tapes and dieting.

The truth is that obesity is a growing problem among society itself, not just the community of military wives. Also, cheating and gossip have been a problem among couples of any type, not just the military couples.

Granted the military does have a high divorce rate, but so does America as a whole. I searched the net and could not find an exact statistic on military divorces, but I did find that forty to fifty percent of all first marriages nationwide end in divorce.

I feel that categorizing these women is unfair; the whole world is full of these problems. Yes, the military has more than its fair share of cheating and gossip, however the soldiers can be just as unfaithful as the wives.

Military wives have to be strong women. We must be a married, single mother during times of deployment. We need to be prepared to up and move if given the orders, possibly to a foreign country where we won't know anybody. We need to know how to deal with separation from our spouse for sometimes years at a time. These are just a few of the qualities that a military wife needs to have.

Being married to the military isn't a free ride; we pay the price to ride this roller coaster.

There are many women out there who don't believe in the sanctity of marriage and a number of these women are military, but it is not fair to the ones that do believe in it, to be put into a category like that.

If we are to be judged for what others do, then maybe people should look at the good things many of these women are doing instead of the bad. Many of these military wives and husbands are hard working, wonderful parents and spouses.

Seeing only the negative and nothing positive is seeing that glass half empty. In this world there are bad things everywhere and bad people everywhere. I am a firm believer in if you think that something is so bad, don't just talk about it, stand up and try to do something about it.

You may not always be able to fix the problem, but at least you will know that you have tried.

Please always keep in mind that just because many people of one race, religion, community or area are one way, does not mean that everyone else is the same.