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Everett Lopez’s 11-year journey as a male military spouse has included stereotypes, insufficient support and isolation.
Everett Lopez is an exception within the exception.
He’s a male military spouse, whose ranks account for just 7 percent of all military spouses. Beyond that, he’s a male military spouse with a private sector career, an even rarer combination.
While he’s proud of his wife and of his role, his 11-year journey as a military spouse has been marked at times by stereotypes, insufficient support and isolation.
I got the chance to interview Everett, who is active at Military Spouse Central, about his experiences as a military husband. After hearing his story, it became clear that military and civilian readers alike can perhaps gain a new perspective about what it means to be a military spouse.
Everett has been a military husband for 11 years and has experienced the best and worst of marrying into the military. Everett, his wife and 3-year-old daughter currently live in Jacksonville, Fla., where his wife is in a Medical Enlisted Commissioning Program.
Many military spouses will tell you the most important thing to do when joining the military is to find a friend or a community to get involved with. Unfortunately for many male military spouses, these communities are either exclusively for women or generally uncomfortable with having a military husband added to the mix.
Because military husband groups are very rare, Everett has tried to reach out and connect to the military spouse community in general.
While stationed in North Carolina, Everett ran into some problems joining up with a group of Marine wives who felt unsure about his intentions.
In addition to institutionalized ideas about military husbands, Everett faces many negative stereotypes as a man working in childcare. Starting out as a high school marching band instructor back in Southern California, he moved to childcare when his wife PCSed to Gaeta, Italy, with the Navy. He has worked at child development centers on bases everywhere from Italy to California during four different moves.
Despite the difficulties in finding open communities, Everett hasn’t given up and looks for new groups all the time. When I asked how he goes about looking for groups, he said it’s as easy as searching keywords like male military spouse, your base and branch and seeing what comes up. Everett has also taken an active role in trying to form a group in Jacksonville.
Although attempts to form groups often fall through, the hope is to emulate one of the most successful military dad’s groups Everett has come across, MANning The Homefront. Everett is currently in talks with the group to start a Jacksonville branch. The group is based at Fort Riley, Ks. and gets together from time to time to play paintball, have barbecues or just hang out. Groups like this make finding friends easier, which is important for male military spouses who can be excluded from support groups.
Although Everett has experienced more than his fair share of hardships marrying into the military, the best part about talking with him is his great attitude. Through the setbacks and stigmas he continues to look for new ways to connect.
As always, our military spouse and family Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest communities are open to everyone. We encourage military husbands, wives, parents, children, friends and loved ones to join in with their questions, answers, advice and support.
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4 Comments
I’ve known Everett for MANY Years. He is one of the sweetest, kindest, most heartfelt person I’ve ever had to pleasure to know. If it can be done by him (no matter what he’s working on) it will be done.
Here,here to you my friend. And to all the other Military Spouses out there.
God Bless you all.
I have known Everett for over 20 years & he is a terrific person overall!! I too am a military spouse and can only hope that other spouses will see this and think about how they would feel if it were them & open their lives to include another person regardless of gender…
As someone who’s made almost no friends in the last decade (I’m a female), I can tell you, it’s not always related to your gender. At least you’re making the effort to seek friendships Everett. Kudos to you for that.
I just became part of the 7% a couple years ago when I retired from the US Army. This is definitely the hardest thing I’ve had to do. I have always respected and supported the military spouse, especially the males who are spouses but actually being a military spouse has its challenges! We are stationed also in a remote location so the challenge of being connected to the larger arena of spouses is near impossible.