Relationships: The Collateral Damage From Military Transition

The people you care about most are at the highest risk of becoming collateral damage through your transition and reintegration back to civilian life. When I was first commissioned on active duty, the saying was - "if the Army wanted you to have a family, they would've issued you one." Family requirements competed with military requirements, and personal relationships often became the price you paid for a successful military career. When I retired from active duty in 2015, this was no longer the case. The military family became the core strength of the military community. The military recognized that strong families were essential to retain committed volunteers and the very essence of the desired culture for the organization.

So what happens when you leave? Service members face an Identity Crisis when they separate from the military that poses a significant challenge to personal relationships. As you forge a new path for life beyond the military, you want to ensure that the people who stood by you before continue to do so. Transition is hard on the individual, and it is also hard on your relationships. In military families, you aren't the only one going through transition. Understanding the deeper psychology at play can help you manage and even strengthen your relationships through the difficult process of military transition and civilian reintegration.

When I left the army as a junior captain, I was single. When it came to dating and new relationships, I was what you might call "clingy." I had a knack for pushing relationships well past their serviceable life span. Because I didn't recognize my own identity, I wasn't a good partner for anyone else. I didn't know it at the time, but I was substituting the positive rush of a new relationship for the trust, respect, and belonging I once felt from the military.

The comfort we enjoy from the connection in the military comes from the release of two happiness chemicals - serotonin and oxytocin. These are selfless chemicals that come from the deep pool of respect, purpose, and trust we feel through the military. When you leave the military, you drain the pool. You depart the safe zone created by the military culture, and my tendency was to replace that with the dopamine and endorphin rush I got from the prospect of romantic relationships. This is what Dr. Shauna Springer calls the "cocaine rush phase" of the courtship, and if not recognized and challenged, might prove to be a poor substitute for the joy, connection, and belonging you once felt in the military.

Like too many transitioning veterans, I learned this the hard way. I had no appreciation for the deeper psychology of the cultural shift. I didn't establish a firm foundation of my own identity that I could bring into a new relationship. Not only was I failing to connect to a professional opportunity that was fulfilling, I wasn't able to connect with anyone to share my experiences with in a loving way. Although I met my wife before I returned to the army after 9/11, we didn't start dating until months after I had returned to active duty. Thank goodness! I wasn't in a place to build a healthy relationship.

The second time that I left the military, I had a family. The military life was all my family had ever known. For military families, the ongoing cycle of deployments creates a shared hardship that forges strong friendships across the military community. When it came time for me to retire, I was so focused on my transition that I didn't take into consideration that each member of my family was going through their transition from the military as well. Their perspectives were not necessarily the same as my own. Case in point - my wife, Jill, had been a successful hospital administrator before we got married, and I completely underestimated the challenges she faced when trying to return to the workforce. Stability in a community was something foreign to our young boys who had only known the transitory life of the military family.

I was wrong to assume that separating from the military would be just like any other move for my family. After all, this wasn't a move in the military, it was a move from the military. Even though family was one of the main drivers behind my decision to retire, I didn't do a good job of facilitating their transition. I didn't account for the possibility that our roles, functions, and even identity as a family would evolve through transition and reintegration. I was wrong.

I got lucky. Our family had enough resilience to negotiate the individual and shared challenges of transition, but I will admit that it continues to be a working progress. We've had to modify roles. We've had to remind one another about the things that were most important to us. In hindsight, I should have invited my family to actively participate in the transition planning. I should have been more attentive to their perspectives, questions, and sources of anxiety. In the military decision making process, we identify Commander's Critical Information Requirements to recognize decisive points in the execution of military operations, and using that framework, I should have recognized our Family Information Requirements to shape our family's journey through transition and reintegration. That is why I've included strategies for developing these in Beyond the Military: A Leader's Handbook for Warrior Reintegration.

Because I didn't manage relationships well during either of my transitions, I asked Dr. Shauna Springer to write about relationships and create the exercises included in this book. With more than 20 years of relationship building experience spent working within the military and veteran communities, she incorporates actionable strategies for single, dating, and partnered relationships. The founding premise used throughout this book was not for relationships to survive - but to thrive and become stronger through the life altering process of military transition.

The military has collected a lot of data about families in the military, but there just isn't much information regarding post-military relationships. Personally speaking, I know of way too many whirlwind, unhealthy relationships that occur at the threshold of life after military service - my own included. I also know of too many marriages that don't survive through the transition and reintegration process. What's so ironic is that the idea of "family" is one of the main reasons why service members choose to cross that threshold. That is why more than a third of the book, Beyond the Military, is designed to help you focus on your relationships. It is why the Integrative Program of Transition includes Family Adjustment as one of the six factors to successful civilian reintegration. Our relationships should never become a casualty of the transition mission. They represent the core of what makes us successful in the military and beyond.

Beyond the Military: A Leader's Handbook for Warrior Reintegration will be released on November 11th and is available now for pre-order through Amazon. For more information, please email [email protected].