EP 47: Expectation Vs Reality in Military Marriage

Your biggest fights might not be about what happened, they might be about what you expected to happen. We sit down as two military couples to unpack expectation versus reality in early military life, especially for young military families navigating the first four to eight years of marriage, moves, workups, and deployments. From Marine Corps “slay the dragon” fantasies to the slow grind of training pipelines and long stretches of waiting, we talk about the shock of realizing military service rarely follows a clean storyline.

We also dig into the military spouse side, where expectations often center on time together, dinner plans, holidays, and the hope that marriage will finally feel stable. Then the schedule shifts, the phone call turns into “I’m late,” and extended family pressures you to be “home” for every milestone. We share why that tension builds fast when expectations go unspoken, and how redefining home, setting realistic plans, and communicating early can lower conflict and protect your relationship.

A key takeaway is learning to spot the “main character” mindset and replace it with truth, surrender, and better conversations. We offer practical language you can use with your spouse, plus a simple notes app exercise to identify what’s been frustrating you and decide whether it’s an unmet, unrealistic, or uncommunicated expectation. If you want more support, email us your questions and we’ll respond as we’re able. Subscribe, share this with a military friend, and leave a review so more couples can find it.

Connect with us at hello@militarywellnesscollective.com

Transcript

Welcome And The Core Question

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Hey, well, welcome back to another episode of the Military Wellness Collective. We're super stoked that you're here joining us. We're grateful for those of you who that have been following along for quite some time. And if you're new to the podcast, welcome. Welcome. Welcome, new friends and old alike. I am, did I say I'm Brittany Brown? I think I did. Well, here I am again. And I'm joined by my husband, Joshua Brown.

SPEAKER_01 0:44

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 0:44

And our good friends, Kelly and Brian O'Day. Hey goes. Hi. And we all live in eastern North Carolina, coastal Carolina. Are y'all can Jackenville's considered coastal Carolina too, right?

SPEAKER_02 0:54

Our wind and hail insurance tells us what coastal still is. But it's probably less than yours because we're more inland.

SPEAKER_00 1:01

We are in coastal North Carolina. It's beautiful summer days.

SPEAKER_02 1:05

And it's hurricane season.

SPEAKER_00 1:06

Yes, it is. Yes, it is. But we're here. We're here. And we're going to talk to you guys about expectation versus reality. So expectation management versus reality and how this affects military life and what and we're going to talk to the young military family. So we're talking like first eight years. I mean, this is good for everybody, but uh we wanna we wanna time travel back a little bit to our first four to eight years of military life. And I'm gonna ask the guys what were some expectations y'all had coming into the military? What were some expectations you had? What you imagined military life would look like and maybe family life as a Marine Military and family life.

SPEAKER_01 1:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:54

Well, did you have expectations for both of those? Because we've all been married the whole time you guys were that never mind.

The Dragon Slayer Expectation

SPEAKER_00 2:01

Not we have all been married. Kelly and Brian have been married the whole time they served and we have been.

SPEAKER_02 2:09

I joined, I feel like I've said this a lot of episodes. I joined in the wake of September 11th, 2001. And so I joined the Marine Corps because somebody should do something and be, you know, killing terrorists. And so I thought I thought that I'd be doing that really fast and early, right? But there's this thing called an entry-level pipeline, and there's, you know, so you have to go do the training. And so I did the training, and that actually went pretty fast in hindsight. But in the moment it felt slow, like, oh my goodness. And I even waited to join a little bit because of a few different things. And and so, like, there was just this, I was like, no, I joined to do this thing, and I'm not like it's taking a long time to get there. Then my first deployment was I was on ship for the first like third of the deployment, just floating around, and like maybe we're gonna go into Iraq and be able to do our job, or maybe we're just floating around waiting for something else to happen. And so for me, there was this expectation like I'm gonna go do my job and I'm gonna go like stand on a wall and defend freedom and democracy and whatever and apple pie and mom and everything else, right? That's what I'm gonna go do. And it took a long time to get there. Eventually, I did get, quote unquote, to go do that, but yeah, it just took a long time to get there.

SPEAKER_01 3:45

So patience was huge for you. Yeah. For me, I saw this commercial when I was in high school, and it was this guy wearing normal clothes, and he starts running through an obstacle course with like this corkscrew with like blades on it, and he's climbing and doing this, and then there's this dragon, and he pulls out a sword and he slays the dragon, and then he shows up in his dress blues and this fireball. And I'm like, and then he and then he does the he flips the sword up on the shoulder, and he's just saluting man. I was like, Okay, I'm gonna go find a dragon to slay. That's right, and that was my expectation to find a dragon and to kill it with a sword.

SPEAKER_02 4:27

That's right. My first Marine Corps commercial I remember was the Living Chessboard. This was a long time ago.

SPEAKER_03 4:34

Oh, I remember that one.

SPEAKER_02 4:35

There's there's this living chess, and he's like the propaganda work with a sword, and then at the very end, of course, he turns into Dress Blue Is it Man.

SPEAKER_00 4:43

If you are wondering, because you've never seen these commercials, thank God for YouTube. Look them up. You can find them. Late 90s, early 2000s Marine Corps promotional videos. Yes, just watch them, they're great.

SPEAKER_02 4:55

So that was our competition. Like we're gonna go slay some dragons. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:02

And then I didn't actually think I was gonna find a dragon, but like I I thought, oh, I'm in it's 2002 when I joined. So I was like, okay, I'm gonna go to war. There's gonna be battles, there's gonna be fights. But yeah, same expectation, the same reality happened, though. Like the process of training, the process of getting there. And then when you get there, it's very slow and monotonous.

SPEAKER_00 5:26

Rolling tires across fields and then back across the field. Do you remember that? I remember those scene.

SPEAKER_01 5:32

It's just very slow and drags out. And there was one other expectation that I want to point out that a lot of people don't know. When in the commercial, when the guy flips the sword up and it hits his shoulder perfectly, that doesn't happen in reality. What they did is they filmed it in reverse and then they reversed it back so that it looked so he just flipped it down, but it made it look like he was flipping up and it went perfectly. Yeah. And sword manual doesn't work as well in real life.

SPEAKER_02 6:02

And so I think we've we've seen a lot of folks in our church. Some of them have like come in similar, kind of like guns blazing, ready to go slay some dragons and you know, kill bad guys and protect mom and apple pie. And then they're like sitting somewhere not doing that. Yeah, they're sitting in a barracks room in Okinawa, Japan. They're sitting in a tent in Norway. They're sitting like they're just they're like, what are we doing? Like experiencing a lot of the suffering I would experience to go do the real thing. Yeah, but I'm just sitting here not doing anything. Or the converse, some people thought they were just joining the military to get their college paid for, and they weren't gonna have to do a whole lot. And all of us, they're the ship they're sitting on, all of a sudden it's like, hey, we're going towards Venezuela, or we're going towards Iran, or we're, and now all of a sudden they're in the throes of combat and it happened fast. They went from like peacetime mindset to combat mindset really fast. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:09

I just oh, do you want to say something else? Go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 7:12

I was just giggling because I've met a few people in the military that joined because they were getting their college paid for, or they joined and they joined a specific job that was like something that would not be where they thought they were gonna be like they're an AMO tech, or like something that is supply or something like that. And they get put into this like in the army now situation where you know he joins for it's an old Polish wars movie. Not a good movie. We're we're not advocating for not a good movie. But he joins for like to be a water purification specialist, and he's just like, What am I gonna do? Go to war with a water balloon? Like that's not gonna happen. But then oh, the des the desert is where the war is, so they send him over there, and he's like, What? No, I'm not supposed to go to combat.

SPEAKER_02 7:58

Yeah, well, that's a big expectation, too, is jobs. Like people think, and it could go either direction. Like, I'm gonna join to be an infantryman, and then through the process, they are a water purification specialist or an administrator. Or some people say, Hey, I want to be in the Marines or I want to be in the Army, but I want to do something like way behind the scenes. And so they want a behind-the-scenes job. Well, sometimes the behind the scenes becomes the front lines really fast. And so, yeah, those expectations are just massive. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:31

So

Slow Pipelines And Monotony

SPEAKER_00 8:31

I just think it's funny as we sit here and we hear y'all as the men who were in the military, Marine Corps, your expectations of those first four years, maybe even the eight, but let's for first four years, you thought you were gonna slay dragons, you want to do all these crazy things, like old school G.I. Joe style. But Kelly, you married Brian like right away, right? You did all of it together, and I married Joshua right away. Yeah. So we heard the guys' expectations of their first four years. I did not hear. It was all like, whoop America battle. Can't wait to get out. What was your expectation?

SPEAKER_02 9:10

And then we'll come home to our wives. Like that was like that was obviously important. She'd be there like with a cold beverage and like just talking about how awesome we are, yes, and just like thank you for your service. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:24

Like, so what expectations did you go in? You know, you're a young married wife, your first four years in the military.

SPEAKER_05 9:30

I know it's just as they were talking. What were my expectations? I, you know, I had a lot to learn because I didn't come from like knowing much about the military. So I feel like Brian kind of prepared me, like, I'm gonna deploy. We're gonna move a lot. You know, this is like it's just gonna be different. And good job, Brian. I so I remember like hearing that, knowing that, going into it. But I especially like we got married at the beginning of your Marine Corps career. I mean, yeah, pretty much beginning. I also married my best friend and expected to be with him. Yes, yes, and I didn't. And I I know that it's like you knew that going in, but it's like you don't know really what it's gonna look like. And so just our I think of our first three years stationed in Camp Lejeune, me living on base, when we talk about like I literally have lived in that house by myself, pretty much because even though you deployed, there were workups, like we could not plan trips, we couldn't plan things. Like I just remember like feeling like we couldn't do much and I couldn't plan on you being home for dinner, you know, and it was just like learning to, but I also think that is a great opportunity to when I when I see the word managing expectations or hear that word, I think like for my own good, surrender. Like so it just like I look back and I can, and you know, hindsight, you learn a lot. I feel like God was teaching me so much about I am not in control and I need to surrender because this is what my life looks like, whether I like it or not, and what am I gonna do with that? You know, and so I think I had to work through all kinds of stuff. Another expectation that I feel like we had talked about, just like probably engaged and just a few months married, talking about like, okay, holidays, whose family are we gonna visit? Because our families live in different states, and we had made this plan like, okay, this year we're gonna do Thanksgiving here, Christmas there, and just had the plan laid out in the first Christmas. It was like, and you're not going anywhere, you're staying a kid machine because you need to be, you know, they had you on a yeah, tether. So, like it, you know, just like our plans with that, like we're out the window. It's just like, okay. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:47

Yeah, and sometimes family of origins have expectations, like, well, yeah, but you're gonna be home every Christmas, right? You gotta come home for Christmas and every wedding and every funeral and every birthday and every like it's almost like the expectation is oh, you're just away on this extended little thing you're doing.

SPEAKER_00 12:06

How cute is that? You're just away. You're gonna come back. I'm air quoting home, where really you're making a home where you're at now. Like this is where you live. This is now home. The military's not just this fun little excursion like that. You've gone on. Yeah. I mean, even if you only plan to do four years, it's still four years of your life that you're doing a job. It's not some little hobby. If you think the military is going to be a hobby and you haven't joined yet, go talk to somebody. That's not true. What about you and Brittany? Expectations. I uh the same. I married my best friend. I

Military Spouse Reality Check

SPEAKER_00 12:41

I knew he was going to deploy to go to war. It everybody was at that time. We were stationed at Camp Pendleton instead of Lejeune. But I did think like, oh, this is so fun. We're gonna build a house together and we're gonna be together, and we're gonna go to the beach, and we're gonna go to LA and all these fun places all the time. He's gonna be home every night for dinner, and I didn't know how to cook then, but I tried, you know. So I thought, okay. And what else did the expectations that have? There's just so many, you know, all the things you think of as a little girl when you're gonna get married, you have those expectations. I did coming into the military and not realizing military life is not pleasant, Bill. That's not a good movie either. I'm not endorsing it, but it's not a you know, just a nine to five, nine to four, and everybody has ice cream at 5 30 after dinner. That's just not how the life is. Uh one thing I remember very clearly that used to make me really angry. This is embarrassing to say, live, but I'm very curious now. No, you know, that's was when he would text well, we didn't text, he would call and say, I'm gonna be home at this time. And then you know he would get caught up because that's a reality of the military. Yeah, and then I wouldn't hear from him. And so I thought, oh, he's gonna be home for dinner. And every night that was happening and he was not home for dinner, it would make me so mad. Like you said you were gonna be here. And I had an older wife say to me, You have a choice, Brittany. You can be angry every night he doesn't show up for dinner, or you could put his leftovers on a plate, cover them up, and heat them up in the microwave and sit at the table with him when he gets home and enjoy them. Like you have a choice, you don't know what's gonna happen to him. I think they were Vietnam veterans. Her husband was, and she she did not let me get off easy. She just told me you have a choice. And I know that sounds so stupid, but it was an expectation. You said you were gonna do something. I have this expectation now, and it's not happening. And I think that happens a lot in the military life.

SPEAKER_05 14:46

Well, I was thinking too, like, as all we're all talking about these unmet expectations, like we have to do something to them, you know, and we can like be angry about it, or you know, or I don't know. I just think it's it's a good opportunity for wrestling with whatever is there to wrestle with.

SPEAKER_01 15:03

There's so many expectations that get thrown around. I think of the the that picture of the World War II sailor getting back and has like the the kiss with the girls in Times Square or something like that. Yeah. Like everybody expects that's what it's gonna be like when guys get home from deployment.

SPEAKER_05 15:21

Yes, there's set of expectations.

SPEAKER_01 15:24

When guys leave for deployment, there's this expectation of how that time is gonna be spent leading up to the time when when he actually leaves. There's expectations for field ops, like how long you're gonna be at the feet in the field and when you come back, and the time before you leave and the time when you get back. There's expectations for you know, meals in the evening, like you were talking about. There's just there's expectations when you watch a war movie and you think that's what it's gonna be like, and you go over to some austere location, and it's like what the movie doesn't depict is you know prickly heat or how you feel, like how sticky it is you haven't showered in days, w like the rash that you have, the blisters on your feet, the the things you feel, like the sweat that gets in your eyes, like it doesn't it doesn't show in war in war movies the exhaustion of I mean uh in a in a war movie uh you know the the hero's running all over the place doing all these things and he has a little drop of sweat coming down his brow, and it's like, oh yeah, that must be difficult. When in reality, a lot of those movements and a lot of those things are like you are dead tired. You're breathing heavy, you're sweating like crazy, and it's just a dirty, nasty thing that it just doesn't prepare you for. Your expectations are you're the you're the main, you have like this main character like motive and everything's going your way, but it it doesn't usually turn out that way.

SPEAKER_02 17:03

Yeah, I I love the word main character. One ex if we could cast like classify all of these expectations, one common denominator of all of them is we see ourselves as the main character. Yep. Yep. And we're not. Yes. We're never not we're not the main character. We actually are we exist to worship God and to serve others, not to be the main character. And so

Holidays, Family Pressure, Redefining Home

SPEAKER_02 17:32

yeah, like what what should we be doing with these expectations?

SPEAKER_00 17:37

Yeah, that's interesting. I just think of what you just said, we must decrease, you must increase, is what I think of. Uh but before we get to what should we do with them, I just want to point out we heard the men's perspective of expectations in their first four years, and then the women's, and there wasn't, they did not match. There was not even like, oh, look cute, these are braided together. Which creates we can laugh about it now because we're looking back, but we know some of you are in the thick of it. You're not laughing. You're like, whoa, we we are not communicating, we're not on the same page. We hope that this just showed you. You're probably not, because you both have you both have expectations of what this life is gonna look like together, married, coming in. And you've you've got to talk through some of that and get on the same page. And I love what Brian said. It was a good word, Kelly was right. Like, you're not the main character. And so as you come into these first four, six, eight years, and the guy has a view of this expectation of he is a military guy now. And this wife is coming in like, I'm a military wife. I know somewhat of what that means, but you still hold all these views of like what it means to be with your person all the time now. And that's not really realistic. So I think Brian's question here, what do we do with that? Is is very good. So we're about to get some practical, we're about to get real practical here.

SPEAKER_02 19:03

I think also just one other expectation that I wanna that just kind of looms always and forever for all of us is like this expectation of how long is this military life gonna last. And we've we've talked about it a little bit, but some think, well, this is like a four-year thing or a short thing, or I gotta get out as soon as possible. Others are like, I'm gonna do this for a long time or the rest of my life. That's just a big expectation that a lot of times husbands and wives aren't on the same page about. Right. And we're allowed to change our mind. Like at one point, I thought, actually, for most of my career, I thought I'm going to be in for as long as they let me be in. Right. I'm gonna do 10, 20, 30 years, at least 20 or 30 years. And the Lord called me out of 10. And so, and there's other people who think they're gonna do a short period of time and they become convinced that God's going to extend their time. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:02

I love that, like holding it open-handedly. And Kelly used the word earlier in this episode, surrender. Like we need to surrender our expectations. I think that is when Brian asks the question, what do we do with these? We need to lay them down and and surrender them.

SPEAKER_03 20:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:18

Because our expectations usually aren't from the Lord. It's something we want and self-centered.

SPEAKER_02 20:23

I love that. Like that's probably the best verb. Surrender. The one that maybe is a little before that one is to look at it and to look at reality. So an expectation just kind of in its very essence is a prediction about the future. And we're really, as human beings, as fallen human beings, we're really bad at predicting the future. And so we need to realize that, like, okay, I expected that, you know, I was gonna be the main character in the story of America or of my life or my marriage or whatever. Like, I picture I'm gonna be the main character. Well, let's look at that. Okay, that's not true. That has proven to be not true, and then replace that with what is true and surrender to what is true. What is actually true. What is actually true is the desert is hot, and it's not one beat of sweat, it's literally every pore of your

The Main Character Myth

SPEAKER_02 21:26

body is sweating.

SPEAKER_00 21:28

There's no dragon dinosaur thing that you're slaying.

SPEAKER_02 21:32

Right. Yeah, and there's no cameras on you and like turning from sweaty slaying dragons to perfect, pristine dress blues with the sword perfectly hitting your shoulder.

SPEAKER_00 21:44

And no transition videos like they do now on Instagram and TikTok, you know? Like, the snapping, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:50

Yeah, that's the modern version of it. Yeah, and there's no, you know, this perfect home life where, you know, the meal is perfectly prepared the moment that he walks in the door because it's all on clockwork and the kids are all dressed in matching neutral colors and you know, like all that stuff. Just yeah, it doesn't mean that.

SPEAKER_05 22:14

And wouldn't you say, I mean, that that is actually for our good? I mean, if if it went as we expected or desired. I mean that it just wouldn't be good for us personally because God knows exactly what we need, each of us individually and knows our hearts. And I just can look back and think, you know, if my expectations were just met every time and, you know, just the the bad things that would come from that sometimes, like pride and thinking that I know best. Not looking to him, you know, like maybe looking to my husband for my happiness. Um just I don't know, all kinds of things that probably wouldn't be good. So I feel like it's good to be confronted with you know how we are wrongly having expectations.

SPEAKER_02 23:02

Yeah. So expectations are not just predictions about the future, but they're our desires for what the future is going to look like. And James in James chapter one he says that our desires when they have conceived give birth to sin and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. And so actually our fleshly human desires not our deep God given desires but our fleshly surface desires actually lead us into temptation which gives birth to sin which ultimately brings forth death and so just seeing that like expectations are so often just misplaced desires. Oh okay so we want to I'm summarizing here. So we want to look at it we want to confront our expectations with truth we want to surrender our expectations to the truth of the Lord another one we haven't talked about is we want to communicate and we want to process especially with your spouse so or a brother or sister in Christ same gender to really process it out or couples processing it out together. Like man I really when we started into this I thought you were going to be home every night for dinner and I'm realizing that's not possible and me holding that expectation over you isn't fair to you. Man if you could say that sentence that'd be that's freeing hey I thought when I came home every night from work you were going to have the house perfectly pristine and all the children dressed in the latest fashion and hot meal waiting on the on the table. I've realized that that's probably not going to happen because I can't even tell you when I'm going to be home or if I'm going to be home or whatever the case is. And so just communicating that out I think can be helpful.

SPEAKER_01 24:59

Yeah I love the way you put that too because it put it back on the person with the expectation. Yes. It was because so often when I hear people talk about what their expectations are is they use that phrase as a like accusation towards somebody. So they'll go to their their wife will go to the their husband and say well I expected you to do this. And it's like that's like a right yeah like their expectation was what wasn't met and it was what they were supposed to be doing. And so often we need to take that one step further and go, well if he can't control that or if she can't control that who who's wrong here? Is it the expectation you had or is it that they didn't fulfill it. And so we need to realize it's usually our expectations that are off.

SPEAKER_02 25:51

And the expectation was unmet sure it was probably uncommunicated and it was probably unrealistic. Mm-hmm or impossible I really expected you to do this. Well that's not possible.

SPEAKER_01 26:05

Or just no one thought whether or not that was even the reality or not. Right. Like or that they could control it or not. And by impossible meaning it it wasn't practical for anyone but somebody thought oh yeah you should be home at this time every day.

SPEAKER_05 26:24

And this all gets better with talking because I was just thinking like how encouraging we've been married 22 23 years here at

Look, Surrender, Then Communicate

SPEAKER_05 26:31

the table and we have less and less of that I feel like in marriage because we've just learned to communicate about it and talk about it. And so I mean there's hope. We have lots of stories.

SPEAKER_02 26:44

Oh yes you know even now but there's not as many and we can get through it in a better way because we've learned to talk but again just that communication yeah communicate with one another as husband and wife also communicate if if it's summer and you're able to go back home like communicate with your family of origin like when you're going to show up when you're not going to be able to show up if you're going to be able to come back home if it'd be better if they visit you. Communicate these types of things communicate based in reality is really going to fight against a lot of these temptations for people with very conflicting expectations like coming into the same space and you are just it is a recipe for relational disaster when people show up with uncommunicated and unrealistic expectations it is just a recipe for disaster.

SPEAKER_00 27:36

I love the look at it first like you have to recognize that you actually have an expectation.

SPEAKER_04 27:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:42

Like if you don't recognize it then it's just going to continue to be mayhem and dysfunction you have to recognize it. And I think early on in our marriage like Kelly said as we've gotten older and have been married longer it's easier for us to see that and communicate it out. I wasn't the greatest at recognizing that I actually had an expectation that was not realistic. It was just it what for the life we lived what I saw on Dawson's Creek or Gilmore girls, whatever we were watching at the time One Tree Hill, not that any of those are great shows, right? And a lot of that was dysfunction too. But whenever I was watching then you know Hallmark where it's like oh this perfect little this is how married life is that is not real and and we have to recognize that and it until you recognize the expectation that you're holding you can't communicate it to the other person. And the more you start communicating with one another and not holding back because you're worried about how they're going to feel it's going to be very helpful.

SPEAKER_02 28:41

Just communicate how you're feeling yeah get around another one is get around some real people. Yes. Like we you talked about the movies and shows and you know obviously social media is a pretty bad place for this as well. Like get around real people maybe real people that have been in this life slightly longer than you. Hopefully that's part of what we're providing in this podcast is hey we've we've lived this and we've learned some things and we're just trying to talk to our younger selves of how we would do it differently and hopefully that's helpful. But you really need some real people that you're around that are living this life with you.

SPEAKER_00 29:19

Yeah to look at it communicate it surrender it it's so good so good. I know there is a lot we could continue to talk about on expectations management and living in reality in the military life because we're constantly having shifts and changes not just moves but deployments workups or deployment getting canceled getting shifted all the things that we deal with as military families you need to keep that on the forefront of your mind because expectations just really have no place here. They don't really have place anywhere but especially in military life like it is the biggest thing God used to strip me of thinking I had any sense of control. Like it's just rip it away like so you your expectations need to be surrendered but looked at first.

SPEAKER_01 30:13

Does anybody have any last minute things they want to say before we close us out oh man I have one but I don't know if I should already say so there's there's also a huge expectation I think when it comes to casualties of war so often it has to do with like training accidents. Sometimes it's m equipment malfunctions a lot of times it's due to things that we don't really expect and usually when there is some sort of kinetic battle that happens so often we think when there's an injury that happens it looks like in the movies and it's like the bullet hit a certain spot but that's never the case it's usually coming from weird directions hitting weird parts of people's body like the expectation should just be chaos and not what you

Expecting Chaos In Danger And Loss

SPEAKER_01 31:11

would expect.

SPEAKER_02 31:12

So expect the unexpected as they say and that would be and only infantrymen get hurt and die and and the the danger ceases when our active duty time ceases. But we've talked in several episodes about the suicide epidemic among veterans. And you know the number of people who die in training accidents the number of people who die on the roadways on leave and all those types of things. And so yeah that's yeah there's a lot of expectations that touch lots of things.

SPEAKER_00 31:46

Sorry that was just hanging in the back of my mind I felt like any at the end babe letter up and on yeah we need another episode on expectations in combat. Yeah I don't even I feel flustered.

SPEAKER_01 32:00

Sorry you have three I know that was a normal flow that was good.

SPEAKER_00 32:05

That's good. I asked for it. So just let me leave you with this so we can wrap it back in expectations not really great. You need to surrender them to reality you need to recognize when you're having expectations and if you're a young military family who's never really thought about this now would be a great time to think about that. Maybe sit with a notebook or your iPhone or whatever phone you have, pull out the notes app and write down some things that have maybe been irritating you or you've found frustrating lately and see if those are unmanaged expectations that you need to communicate through with your spouse. Or if you're struggling with extended family, family of origin that lives away and something frustrating is happening, maybe process through that maybe it's an unmet expectation that y'all need to discuss and that we want to be peacemakers, not peacekeepers. And so hopefully this is helpful to you. If you guys have questions about how to work through managing expectations and living in reality as military families, we'd love to field those. You can email us at hello at military wellness collective dot com. That's hello at militarywellness collective dot com and we'll answer you within a

Practical Takeaways And How To Connect

SPEAKER_00 33:11

three day period probably just be realistic within 48 to 72 hours.

SPEAKER_01 33:16

You just set an expectation there this is true.

SPEAKER_00 33:20

I'm telling you it's not going to be in five hours okay it's not gonna happen. Anyway we love you guys we're so glad you're here if you found this episode helpful we encourage you to share it with someone else and pass the podcast along. Thanks guys