This post began while I was dating my now-husband, anxious about what life for me might entail joining the world of the Corps by proxy. I was mostly just terrified at the prospect of losing him.  But I was also concerned for how much my life might change based on his career decisions and the orders he received—things that normally wouldn’t concern a gal while dating were suddenly all important (though I kept my judgments to myself). Would he remain a reservist or go active duty? I pleaded with God for the former. Would his job be in infantry and artillery (the horror is in the definitions), or a safe, good, safe job in communications behind a desk with a chance to hike the ladder up to FBI or CIA, or maybe a career in politics? Would my honey be sent to Uzbekistan to get shredded by some extremists, or would he be there when we had babies, and when those babies had birthdays, graduations, weddings, and when it was just the two of us again to travel the world and renew our vows? Would he be there for me, or did I have to accept that he would always be faithful to his first wife, the USMC?

I had no way of knowing anything about this world until I was in it—until I fell in love with a poster boy. 

Never did I imagine I’d marry a military man. I mean, my family probably could’ve guessed knowing my favorite TV characters: a royal canadian Mountie on When Calls the Heart, a Navy SEAL on Scorpion, Joe Cartwright from Bonanza (not military but ruddy enough), any any of Tom Cruise’s military roles. Initially I liked a softer man, an artist or intellectual type, but the more I matured into a woman, the more I was drawn to the prominent masculine type.

But with my upbringing it made no sense. I was already doing “college prep” work in the third grade. It was never a question that I would have an intellectual career. With that I assumed the man for me would be another intellectual, not the doctor or lawyer my father wanted for me but perhaps a data scientist or history teacher, something less anal-retentive. But God gave me a serviceman. My husband is college-educated, bright, a strong leader and very intelligent. But his world was still far removed from mine. I knew nothing of drills and weapons, and the dozens of acronyms were lost on me. How could I survive in his world? I worried a bit before we married. I knew that saying I do would mean tethering myself to a man who was for at least the next four years property of the US government. I meanwhile was a free agent; I made that very clear. On our first date, thinking it would just be a casual connection, I made one too many jokes about the fact that “I could never” adjust to the demands of the military life. Conformity? My version of bondage. 

Is it a good idea for a woman to marry a serviceman—does she stand to benefit or suffer from such a union? Marriage has its risks regardless of your husband’s profession. Being married to an acrobat, an Olympian, a mobster, or even a factory engineer could be just as dangerous. But there’s something different about a man in service, particularly in military service. Marines, sailors, airmen and soldiers can see combat and international deployments even in peacetime, leaving you at home alone for months on end, wondering if some terrorist is chopping up your husband’s body for their gumbo dinner. How does a woman find stability, peace, safety in this kind of life? Granted, many servicemen never see combat and some never see deployment. But walking into a marriage with one means you are adding “no matter where in the world you are sent and for how long” to your vows. It’s like you go into it with a blindfold on but you know there’s a chance you’ll run into some monsters on the path. How do you prepare for something like that? Can you? 

He wanted, no, needed me to strong. But what does that mean, be strong, in this context?

The first time my husband took me to the national Marine Corps museum in Virginia, I cried my eyes out. It was too much. I felt like the world I came from was too safe, too sheltered—the highest pursuits I knew of were PhDs, residencies, entry-level jobs with six-figure salaries. Academia and STEM were all too grounded, too predictable. This felt like hell. I was pulled into another galaxy, a million miles from my version of reality. It was terrifying. And even moreso to think that the man I loved, the man I was to become one with and pledge my allegiance to, belonged in this galaxy. This was his world. They trained for war as though it were inevitable—“prepare for the worst, hope for the best” was their saying. Once upon a time it had been imminent; so many husbands have died in service since the founding of America. Needless deaths. 

My husband and his constituents believe dying for your country is honorable and just, and in a way, they are right. But in the abstract, war is needless. Peace between nations is the norm, the standard, true justice. There should never be war ever—I side with psychologist Alice Miller. But is that reality or just feminine fantasy? Is war imminent where there are borders, where there is masculinity, where there is dissent?

But seriously, is it worth it, no matter how much you love your husband? Marriage is about so much more than love—but love is what pulls you in. Love is breath in the lungs of a marriage. You can have love without marriage but you can’t have marriage without love—otherwise it becomes a cold partnership, a business deal, co-parenting. Love is the glue that makes you two one. Does love alone make it worthwhile, getting hitched to a professional weapon? 

My advice to other women before I got married was to be smart. Don’t let your heart walk you into a trap, a dangerous situation, an avoidable suffering. Use your head to pick a partner. And in many ways, I did that. I picked a man with strong values, strong faith, unwavering love. He was a quality, valuable man I knew would make an amazing husband and father. And normally profession doesn’t really matter—it doesn’t make much of a difference, unless you care about how much money he makes, but I don’t. But he happened to be a marine. When you throw that into the mix, it suddenly gets a lot scarier. It suddenly feels like a trap. Whatever abandonment issues I thought I healed from reared their ugly heads. What if he died and left me all alone to pick up the pieces of what I thought was to be forever? Could I really do everything right in picking and still be at a loss—would it mean that I made the wrong choice, that I should’ve considered his career first, before falling in love and saying I do in my heart, long before I said it out loud? Was I to blame—was I not given informed consent or did I not fully grasp the terms and conditions of this relationship?

There should be a proviso for the wife in the vows of marriage to a serviceman:  I know that he is a machine of war, trained to kill. I know that he is property of the United States government and his duty is first and foremost to his country. I know that he believes dying for America is a worthy cause. I know his coworkers might die beside him, leaving him to grieve and me to comfort him. I know he might experience extremely traumatic things that I’ll know nothing about. I know that he is a very dangerous man because of what he knows and what he can do. Knowing all this and of sound mind, I still choose him to be mine forever. 

The more I tried to understand—pursued knowledge about the nature of the Corps, of what it entailed, hoping apparently to find some reassurance—the more scared I was. Suddenly I became afraid just reading the words Semper Fidelis. Who was I? What had I become? I considered myself fearless, and personally, I was. I wasn’t afraid to die. But now there was this person outside of me and what felt like a huge risk of losing him, and it was a heavy burden to carry. I could compartmentalize my fear before we got married, while he was at The Basic School learning how to kill a man 27 different ways and I was at home studying Maslow and Freud. But it was this impending thing, actually being part of that world.

My name would appear in military records; I would forever surrender my high school dreams of living off the grid or becoming an ice fisher in Nebraska with a new identity. I was getting married (a huge deal on its own) before my prefrontal cortex was fully developed (calling into question my judgment) to a professional killer. I could sugarcoat and call him a warrior or a fighter or a machine, a weapon, but what difference would it make? His job is to kill. Protect by killing. Defend by killing. Fight by killing. War is a bloodbath. 

He is a killer. And he is my killer. It means I sleep beside a brave, strong, powerful, protective killer. It means what keeps me safe also puts me in danger—psychological danger. Not of being hurt by him but because of him—because being a brave, strong, powerful, protective man might mean he has to work far away from me or be called upon if the country needs him. The country’s needs supersede my own. I can be brave and patriotic and accept that, losing my sanity in the process, or I can reject that, losing the love of my life. In a way my mammalian brain failed to protect me and my offspring the way it was supposed to; I refused to let him go.