Re: Success Stories - Anyone been married to a pilot for 10+
I am considering an exit plan from aviation because I think it destroys personal life.
Why do you think aviation is responsible for destroying personal lives? How is aviation itself responsible? I'm not trying to be offensive, rude, or obnoxious, but you made a very specific question and followed it up with a very open statement that needs to be defined or explained a little bit better if you want to receive valid, useful feeback.
Are you talking about personal lives in general or specifically marital relationships? I ask because you implied that you are looking for responses from wives married to pilots. What do you mean by, "destroys personal life"? Could you give any examples of how personal life is destroyed specifically by aviation?
For the purpose of discussion, does it make a difference if the wife is also a pilot? What about if the wife is the pilot that the (non-flying) husband is married to? Also, I am assuming that when you say "pilot", you mean a full-time professional pilot.
It seems very likely to me that there are many wives who have remained married to a pilot for more than ten years, and I am sure there are also some whose marriage lasted fewer than ten days. Due to the lack of consistency when the variable of marriage to an aviator is held constant, a correlation between a career in aviation and separation/divorce cannot be made.
I have heard very similar concerns from soldiers and their wives, physicians I have worked with, and also from guys I currently work with in Nuclear power generation. Because of those experiences, and also the fact that relationships are very complicated and can be affected by many different variables such as age, race, income, unrealistic expectations, addictions, etc., I wonder if the problem isn't with the careers, but with the relationships themselves.
If the question and statement you made were raised with regards to possible anxiety in your relationship, and not merely for academic purposes, then I would recommend you meet with a marriage counselor and get professional help.
Finally, is this concern the true reason you are thinking of bailing out of the industry (pardon the pun), or are you looking to justify an exit out of aviation to yourself? You need to be completely honest with yourself about your true motive for leaving aviation if you are going to make the right decision. Taking good medication for the wrong condition doesn't make the illness go away. Sometimes it is very, very hard to be completely honest with ourselves, but it isn't healthy to deny the truth.