As others have mentioned, military life involves the entire family, not just the one in the service. I am an Air Force brat, my father was in for my entire childhood. There were many positives about growing up as a military child, but it would be dishonest to say that it was all roses. For much of my adult life I felt that every few years I had to move, I would just start itching for a change, always looking for that "right" place. Only now am I enjoying the consistency of living in one place for years. We have lived in this area for 6 years and have no intent to ever leave. Making friends here and feeling a comfort that can only happen when you live in one place for awhile is a luxury. It feels strange, and it's taken until I'm 37 to really see what I missed. My husband has lifelong friends, ones that he's known since he was born. I always approached friendship as temporary. We would make friends in school, but we always knew that with short notice one of us was eventually going to have to move. In a way it made me outgoing out of necessity, but allowing myself to emotionally invest in friends is still hard. When I was 12, we moved from CA to MI. While it was a wonderful experience for me, and gave me my love of nature, that move in particular was extremely painful for my mother. We had lived in CA just long enough that she became comfortable making good friends, and had a job that she loved. It was the first time in her adult life that she had allowed herself to become close to people. When we moved to MI it took her quite awhile to find employment as there were so many other military wives looking for jobs in that small town, which added financial stress into the picture. She told me many years later that the trauma of that move put her into a deep depression and she was suicidal for a bit. My mother came through it, but only in the past few years (30 years later) has she made some really close friends again. It scarred her and made her emotionally distant to new people. The reason that she has reached that milestone is because they are now retired and settled into where they know they are going to stay. My mother lived through a horrendous childhood to become an emotionally stable adult, she is a very strong person, but it was still very rough on her.
Your husband needs to know not to look to the military to "give him direction" or to fix him. In order to have a positive experience in the military all of you have to already be on the ball and level headed. The divorce rate for military employees is really high, it's a rough way of life for many. There are those who it suits perfectly, but your family seems to be one that could suffer from it. You seem to be a person that thrives on consistency and your husband seems to lack follow through and direction.
Knowing your own family's limitations doesn't make you less of a patriot, it just makes you human.
Good luck reasoning with him about it, hopefully he will get distracted from it soon.
