Meet William, Air Force Male Military Spouse
This is the first video in a two-part series featuring Air Force spouse William McEvoy.
William and his wife have been married for over three years, but have been a serious couple for about nine.
"It pretty quickly donned on me that, if we're going to be together, my traditional image of an academic - of a history teacher, you know, looking for that 10 year spot in the University, directing graduate students - that trajectory, if I wanted to be with my wife and have a family, wasn't going to work for me." - William McEvoy
What Research Shows about Managing Career Expectations
People still kind of expect that men are still going to have a job. That even if the wife has a career there is still a strong expectation that males are going to have a career that they're going to produce income.
You'll even see with a lot of couples they might even strongly believe that each career is equally important. But you can see this in different kinds of ways in research that, if the male doesn't have a good job, men are even much more reluctant in that circumstance to even want to get married because it kind of effects, maybe more because of History, their identity of who they are and what they bring to the marriage and how they feel in terms of what they bring to the marriage.
Scott Stanley, Ph.D.
Center for Marital and Family Studies
University of Denver
Video also found on SpouseBuzz by Military.com:
Depression and the Male Military Spouse
Thousands of military spouses suffer with some degree of depression, but I believe male military spouses could be at greater risk simply because we're men.
Relax ladies, I'm not trying to start a competition of who gets depressed more often and why. And guys, I'm not saying that we are so weak-minded we can't handle the rigors of being a military spouse.
From birth, many of us have been raised to be the family's decision maker and leader. And not just by our parents, but by society as a whole. Nearly every school book, super hero, television character, movie script, and marketing tool has trained men to believe that we are the protectors, we are the providers.
We can't just flip a switch and happily remove ourselves from these roles once we say “I do” to military life.
It's not that easy.
Macho Spouse Man-to-Man video series
I started the Macho Spouse Man-to-Man video series specifically to help male military spouses realize we are not alone. These videos allow men to share un-edited, personal insight into how they handled their own feelings of emasculation, isolation and depression.
In this video, male military spouse William McEvoy talks about how years of struggling to maintain his career and self-worth sent him into a depression. It's a story many military spouses, of both genders, can relate to.
