You must be this crazy to enter

I have often wondered what would happen if defence spouses had to pass a psychological evaluation in order to be recognised as an official defence spouse. How many of us would pass? One thing I know for certain is that there are a few that would be committed straight away!

Now I do have a few army wife friends who are crazy. But these are the women who are crazy as in fun, spontaneous and with a wicked sense of humour. That is a good crazy. But unfortunately I am beginning to frequently encounter the other type of crazy – the bad crazy. And they are no fun at all. Sure it may be fun to laugh at them, but just get to close because their toxic crazy has been known to spread throughout a whole group of people! I can just imagine psych interviews with bad-crazy defence spouses going like this:

Interviewer: “So do you think you get along with most people?”

Crazy Defence Spouse 1: “Yes I have lots of Facebook friends. But if you have a different opinion to mine I will launch into an incoherent rambling argument with you and then block you. I will then block every other person who may have once had a passing conversation with you.”

Interviewer: “Can you tell me how you would feel about your husband being deployed for a long period of time?”

Crazy Defence Spouse 2: “No, I can’t because then I would be in breach of OPSEC.”

Interviewer: “Well this is just a question about a hypothetical deployment.”

Crazy Defence Spouse 2: “You said deployment. Now Defence is breaching OPSEC. OPSEC. OPSEC!!!”

Interviewer: Do you think you will have enough support for your family while your husband is in the Defence Force?

Crazy Defence Spouse 3:  “Well we have chosen to be non-breeders therefore we will not being having children. I don’t think Defence should have to provide more support to families just because they have chosen to be breeders. We are non-breeders but we know everything there is to know about raising children.”

Interviewer: “Do you think you will be able to handle running a household and making important decisions on your own while your husband is away?”

Crazy Defence Spouse 4: “As long as I have Facebook, I’ll be fine. Like, when we were trying to decide when to have children, I just asked hundreds of strangers on a Facebook group to take a vote on when I should start having kids. Takes all the pressure off!

I think in this lifestyle, it actually helps to have a teeny tiny bit of crazy inside of us. So I really hope they never bring in psych evaluations for spouses – because I think some people would have men in white jackets with huge butterfly nets, pounding on their door :-P

Until next time,

C.