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.
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3 comments:
Thanks for posting :) It is good to hear happy stories from time to time. So many times I hear the other side and it causes more stress for me than it should. I'm super happy with my guy- not married yet, but together over 3 years and so far so good :)
No one wants to know abt a pilot who's devoted to his wife and dots on his children. One who took the trouble to keep in touch at all times with his family, one who constantly tries to make up for being away by helping out with housework and kids when he's home. The pilot who spends his time away looking for things he could get for his loved ones so that he could make them happy. This is way too boring.
Yes, I have met these happily married pilots as I have met the "scandalous" ones, it's just that the bad boys always gets more attention, just cos they appear more "interesting".
I have been married to a great guy for 11 years and he never gives me reason to doubt. I never take that for granted.
Regarding the guy who commented that it was "when he got home to find his wife packing her bags", I'm guessing that this was not the first symptom that their marriage had gone badly wrong!
I'm reading an amazing book on mindfulness right now, and it's trully amazing how tuned out of their own thoughts and feelings some people are; and he was either lying or had his head in the sand if that was the first sign that he knew his marriage was over.
As for pilot personalities. I personally do believe that there are pilot traits. Maybe 'personalities' is too strong a term; but they certainly use psychometric tests in aviation recruitment, and they are looking for a specific match against a certain percentage of their preferences.
Of course, no two pilots are the same, and in that way, perhaps 'personality' is the wrong word to use, and maybe 'mind set' or traits would be a better term. That isn't to say that these traits will bleed into the personal lives of all pilots, but it will for a lot. I know that a lot of pilots and pilot wives openly relate to 'the pilot personality' profile that was produced by ALPA.
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