Control

August 17, 2010
By Jacey Eckhart


Keep your house in order. Control your wife. Lay down the law. Put her in her place. Put the wench back on a leash off the post. Control your dog or put her down.

These are just a few of the responses generated on military.com after the June 7 story about the colonel’s wife who barred from all interaction with the unit and family members after her actions were deemed harmful. During the following month, the story generated 78 pages of responses on military.com. That represents as many responses as stories involving Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, or the story about CAPT Holly Graf being removed from duty.

What interested me most about the posts on the subject was how often the dictum to “control your wife” was stated. In 367 individual responses, 50 stated that the colonel needed to “control” his spouse. That outnumbered the 32 responses accusing wives (never husbands) of wearing the service member’s rank. That outnumbered the 16 responses calling the colonel’s spouse a 5 letter word starting with B.

After the furor around the story itself died down, I found myself thinking about the idea that a service member should or even could control his spouse. How are we supposed to “control” the actions of an adult? We tell our soldiers and sailors and Marines and airmen that they are “responsible” for their family members, but that is a far cry from “controlling” them. In my experience, once a family member is too big to pick up and haul into their crib, they are too big to physically control without incurring the wrath of law enforcement.

Yet from all the responses on this story, it is obvious that the expectation a service member at any level ought to be able to control his (never her) spouse clearly lives on. That’s a bad, bad idea. We know this already.

In the Cold War military, there was a belief that you could judge a service member by the way he ran his family. If you can’t control your family, how can you control an Army? That led to a lot of culturally harmful behavior. Check out Mary Edwards Wertsch’s Military Brats for dozens of personal accounts from family members who lived with a service member who desperately tried to control the activities of their spouse, the social behavior of their children, the outward image of their family. That didn’t work during the Cold War when society was much more formal. That sure won’t work in a post 9/11 society of Facebook and employed spouses and geographic bachelors.

So what is a fair expectation for the behavior of spouses today? What is a fair expectation for a service member? Many individuals posted recommendations that senior spouses should be kept away from young spouses. Many used the excuse of bullies and crazies as their reason to stay away from all military events. But I don’t think either of those ideas is valid. I’m not completely sure what is valid. I think this is an emerging topic that we all need to think about. Here are a few things I’m considering:

1. Whack Jobs are not the norm
Maybe we should accept that some whack jobs will be with us always. In military life, we will have a certain number of bullies. Crazies. Despots. Dictators. The mentally ill. The terminally strange. The perpetually angry. We can’t let ourselves get distracted by folks whose problems need the attentions of a three-star general. Instead, we need to focus on the norm—the young. The lonely. The overwhelmed. The perpetually busy. The remarkably resilient. What can we do for them?

2. Brush up on your Social Intelligence
All professions deal with fringe members, not just the military. The key is that we must learn to deal, deal, DEAL with them. Modern military life requires some social and emotional intelligence. If we can’t figure out the particular brand of whack job with whom the unit must currently deal, can’t we Google it? Get a book on Amazon? Call in an expert from MilitaryOneSource? We have a lot more tools than they did during the Cold War. We can use them to figure this out.

3. Move on from the perfect family = perfect troops idea
The ability to lead at work does not always translate into an ability to lead at home. Our service members do have a profound effect on their family members at home. But they very rarely “control” anyone. Families are tender. They are individual. And there is no such thing as perfection. The cultural demand that family members be “controlled” or that family members are a danger to your career is very offputting to the current generation of military spouses. We need to cut that out or risk hemorrhaging the norm.

4. We lead and are led in return
I don’t think the partners in a military relationship today control each other. I’ve seen them lead each other. They steer each other toward more of the life that they want. They suggest. They argue. They encourage. They steer. They bicke. They help. They do the Velcro spouse thing for each other every now and again. This is a more complicated relationship than the one in which one person controls. But it is a stronger pattern, isn’t it? A better way. A possibility.

These are just a few of the ideas we need to explore. I would be interested to hear your ideas about this evolving trend. If you can’t post below, please email me at jacey@jaceyeckhart.com.

Jacey Eckhart is a military life consultant in Washington, DC. She is the author of "The Homefront Club" and the voice behind the award-winning CD "These Boots." Facebook Jacey or contact her at jacey@jaceyeckhart.com.