Pilots DO have happy marriages

This morning my husband drew my attention to this thread on the Professional Pilot's Rumour Network, Pprune, entitled "When did you realise your marriage was over". When he first told me about it, I rather cheekily replied: "Is the answer - when I first started sleeping with cabin crew?" To which my husband replied: "Sometimes the woman leaves too, you know..." So, feeling suitable chastened, I started to read.

What I found was a true lesson in not tarring everyone with the same brush. I have always rather dogmatically pointed out on this blog that all pilots are individuals, not some strange amorphous mass named "my pilot", and that therefore they all make individual choices, to cheat or not to cheat, to flirt or not to flirt. I sometimes feel like a lone voice in the wilderness, being shouted down by others who believe that there are such things as "pilot personalities", and amongst these traits are the tendancy to be selfish, flirtatious, a little cold, unable to resist temptation when placed in their path. I disagree wholeheartedly, and I found the thread very enlightening.

Although of course by a law of averages there were men on there who had cheated (like the guy who said his marriage had ended the minute his wife decided to read his email!) there were also tales of pilots coming home to find their wife had already moved out and taken the kids, and also, strikingly, many testaments to long and happy marriages. This comment from a pilot from the Netherlands really stood out:

Our marriage has never been over. Maybe because we are very different, because we never get bored of each other, because we share entirely different interests, the one is always trying to convince the other of how good his/her matters are. One is a believer, the other is an atheist, with radically different political convictions, as well.We have even developed our own language (only the cats can understand).We genuinely still love each other, like it was in the beginning it is now.

I think the very fact that so many pilots have taken the time to write about their successful marriages should warm the hearts of anyone in a relationship with a pilot. I might also add that on our compound here in the Gulf I see so many long, successful partnerships. It's been a brilliant way of realising that stereotypes are for the breaking.