While retirement from the military feels like the ultimate freedom, the transition from active duty to retired status can require great sacrifices. When a service member retires, the military family goes through a major life change together. The realities of this change may be surprising. Understanding military retirement from the perspective of the military spouse reveals hidden truths of what spouses can expect as their partners shift from active duty to retirement.
Challenges of Military Retirement for Spouses
Adjusting to Civilian Life
As much as military spouses feel that civilians do not understand their life, when a military member retires, military spouses help them walk a path that is also unknown. Civilian life is a new chapter with less requirements as far as military formality. But it is also a drastic shift for the service member. The civilian world operates on a completely different set of rules.
While there is no course to teach you how to be a military spouse, there are also no built-in services and community when you return to civilian life. From signing up for Tricare as a retiree, and going on the job hunt, the military helps you get started with the Transition Readiness program. Once the official retirement date is reached, it takes a proactive approach to staying on top of benefits.
There is no longer a guiding system to walk you through what you need to do next. Military spouses may be that guide for their service member. Where military orders were once issued before a service member could do anything, success in the civilian world requires each individual to be proactive.
Use a transition timeline as a guide to assure every step of retirement is as smooth as possible. Also, join a military spouse retirement group on social media to ask questions of those who have already navigated the retirement process.
Finding Community
Military spouses are always eager to support each other and build community together. Joining their unit for family events or hosting coffees with neighbors to connect and build friendships are normal activities for military spouses. In the civilian world building connection and community is not as easily accomplished. It takes a wider network and a bigger time commitment to build friendships in retirement. This may be different for those going home to areas with established community of family and friends.
Being new is familiar for all military spouses, but not familiar for many in the civilian world. It may help to plug in to a local church or volunteer with a service organization to meet others with similar interests.
Discovering A New Purpose
Retirement is the start of a new and exciting chapter of life. Where military life once made some interests impossible to pursue for the military spouse, retirement presents a new season to set new goals.
The career that could not be maintained due to frequent moves of military life, can now become a focus. The pursuit of goals that were on the backburner can now be brought to the forefront.
Retirement Brings Opportunity
Military spouses anchor their families, when the service member answers the call of duty, by being the one who keeps the home and family running smoothly. While that is a character-building role, it also presents a limit to what the military spouse can pursue on their own.
In retirement from the military, the boundaries shift. There are no field ops or deployments. There are no more PCS moves every three years. There is stability and the chance to grow roots. It is a season to thrive after years of service. The frequent moves of military life are behind. A new purpose can be found.