Long before I was a military spouse, a lawyer mentor I deeply respected gave me a piece of advice before I left for law school. It wasn’t “move into the library” or “study your brains out.” He said, “Go to everything. Make friends. This will be your community, and you need them.” It felt surprising given the notoriously competitive nature of law school, but I took it to heart. I put on a brave face and went to most everything. My mentor was right: I did need friends to survive those three years, and, following his advice, I made the best of friends. I call them my LawFam, and twelve years later, with all of us scattered around the country, we still meet up one weekend a year to just be together.
Now, as a military spouse, I find myself regularly in a position of needing new friends. Either we moved to a new duty station, or my friends have PCSed away. Of course, I can call and text old friends, but it’s really isolating not to have a village where you physically live. I particularly feel it in this season of my life managing the family and home fulltime. I don’t even have coworkers to gossip with!
It’s been fifteen years since my mentor gave me that advice, but I still use it because, unfortunately for my comfort zone, I haven’t found anything better for making friends. Of course, “go to everything” is not actually realistic for my current phase of life, so I amend the advice to “go to some things.” If you don’t show up, a village can’t show up for you.
To be fair, it’s not easy advice. It’s extremely uncomfortable to go to things when you’re new and alone. But it can be worth it.
Five years ago, we had our first official PCS as a family. My husband-of-one-year and our new baby moved across the country. Almost immediately, my husband told me his squadron was having a family day at a local water park. Do you know what I did not want to do two months postpartum? Put on a bathing suit and go meet my husband’s coworkers and their spouses.
My husband gently encouraged me to attend with him, saying another family had just moved in who also had a baby boy. I did ultimately go, but I was not excited about it and deeply self-conscious. When we arrived, my husband introduced me to the family he had mentioned. Was it kismet or best-friendship-at-first-sight or two women who both desperately needed a friend? I guess it doesn’t matter, but that’s how Mandy and I found each other: feeling awkward, squished into bathing suits, holding tiny babies at a waterpark we didn’t really want to be at.
Mandy and I both credit each other for our mutual survival over the next three years at that duty station. While we had a lot of fun together, it was also an intense time. We were navigating new motherhood, frequently without our spouses, and both experienced loss and grief. We needed each other to weather it.
Now, five years later, we’re at our second duty station together. Our little boys are best friends and act more like brothers. We basically coparent them. I am so grateful for Mandy. Maybe the two of us would have connected eventually, but I needed her immediately—and that wouldn’t have happened if I had stayed home.
I continue to go to squadron spouse events. It is a challenge, both practically (do I have childcare?) and emotionally (what if no one is interested in talking to me and I stand there silently alone?), but I remind myself it matters, that I need friends here. I don’t always find a Mandy, but there’s still value in meeting people. Sometimes it’s just an acquaintance to reach out to with questions about our spouse’s squadron or to chat with at holiday parties or the Marine Corps ball. But sometimes, it happens—the kismet of best-friendship-at-first-sight.
It is a strange thing, being an adult and still wondering, do you want to be my friend? But I remind myself it’s the question a lot of us are silently asking each other.
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