90 The Professional Counselor | Volume 14, Issue 1 to stay with them . . . and you’re generally not near your family, which is very hard” (P5). Another described how “Once I have started on something and I’m like, ‘This is it, we gon’ be here for a while,’ then my husband is like ‘nope. Military said we got to shift and move again’”(P2). These constant changes resulted in career struggles for the spouses. One asked, “How can I get this [job] if I’m never at one place for long? . . . How do I uproot everything that I know or everything that I am doing to follow my service member?” (P2). Another described how “moving, changing jobs, not being able to have a secure profession, you do it because you have to . . . but that doesn’t mean that there’s not a whole lot of emotional and mental load that goes with it” (P3). Another challenge for military spouses was constantly changing family dynamics. One described the difficulty in constantly changing work schedules: “We have to kind of get into this routine without him and then when he comes back, because it’s different while he’s away. We gotta kind of try to fit him back into our routine when he gets back” (P4). Another discussed the challenge of transitioning to being the sole caregiver during a deployment: “If I go down with COVID, what am I going to do? Because, like, I was literally IT. No one is going to want to take my kids. . . . That was the first time I ever felt, like, fearful” (P7). Mission Priority In addition to constant change, the spouses also mentioned the challenges of the military’s clear prioritization of the mission above military members and their families: “If something is going on at home, we’re going to take care of our active person first and worry about your family later” (P2). The participants described how this focus on the mission is so intense that it affects service members physically, which increases the burden on military spouses to care for them: “My husband’s health suffers because the mission is most important to him” (P1). Theme 3: Outside Expectations of Spouse Resilience Expectation to “Suck It Up” The spouses described others’ expectations for their resilience. First, they described the military’s expectation that they “suck it up.” One described how “you have a lot of the ‘suck-it-up’ mentality, and I would say when you have the leaders who kind of fall under that, whether it’s seeking the mental health treatment or having stigmas with that” (P6). Another explained that “there’s so much focus and emphasis on just being resilient and sucking it up” so there is often a mindset of “‘Oh well, military spouses are resilient so they signed up for this, they know what it takes and they just have to get over it’” (P3). Another spouse described how “they put so much pressure on you to be like, just make it work, that you’ve gotta figure out the way to make yourself happy, and that’s hard to do” (P5). Participant 7 summed up the military spouse mentality as a whole: “You toughen up and you make it work. You know?” The participants felt their overall resilience would be enhanced if individuals outside the military community better understood the challenges faced by military families. One participant felt the “suck it up” mentality stemmed less from the military community itself and more from outside communities who might not understand the struggles of military family life: “So when . . . you’re going through another stress of a PCS [permanent change of station], you can’t find a house, they say, well, at least you get a house allowance, at least you get free health care” (P6). Participant 3 expanded on this idea by stating, “I just honestly think that a greater understanding of what sacrifices that military spouses make . . . would increase resiliency, because there’s just so much lack of understanding what it actually entails.” Lastly, one participant mentioned a sentiment they
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