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Marriage, Mission & Mindset: Dr. David & Kristen Walton on Strengthening Military Relationships Through Service & Support

• Deny Caballero • Season 7 • Episode 358

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What does it take to build a lasting relationship while serving at the highest levels of the military?

In this powerful and heart-centered episode of Security Halt!, host Deny Caballero sits down with Dr. David & Kristen Walton, a dynamic husband-and-wife team, to talk about the realities of military marriage—and how couples can not only survive, but thrive through the pressures of service, transition, and family life.

Together, they open up about:

  • The power of communication, compromise, and shared purpose in a military marriage
  • How writing a book together became a blueprint for navigating challenges as a team
  • Lessons learned from Special Forces life, deployments, and shifting roles at home
  • Practical advice for couples transitioning from the military to civilian world
  • How to create a family culture rooted in faith, support, structure, and intentional love

This episode is essential listening for military families, veteran couples, and anyone striving to build a resilient, purpose-driven relationship while navigating the demands of service.

 

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 📲 Don’t forget to like, share, follow, and subscribe to support veteran families and elevate conversations that strengthen relationships.

 

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Request Help: https://specialforcesfoundation.org/get-support/

 

 

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SPEAKER_00:

Dr. David Walton. Welcome back to Security Have Podcast. And today you're joined by your better half. So please introduce yourself, ma'am.

SPEAKER_01:

No.

SPEAKER_02:

You said introduce yourself. Me?

SPEAKER_01:

I thought you said man. Hi. I'm Dave's wife. I'm Kristen. Sorry. I thought he said I thought you wanted him. Okay. Sorry about that.

SPEAKER_02:

Truly my better half. But listen, so Danny, I've I've done, I've probably done a dozen podcasts or so promoting all my books. And she always sits on the other side of the room and glares at me and tells me like, sit up and don't do this and and look this way and all that stuff. And it's never, it's she's never been on this side of the camera. So so I'm excited. I literally have no idea how this is going to go. This could be a complete, she could have an aneurysm fall over, complete panic attack. We have no idea how tiny it's going to go.

SPEAKER_01:

It's fine.

SPEAKER_00:

No, this is perfect. Uh, your latest book coming out, it's uh coming out, right? It's out.

SPEAKER_02:

It came out uh about a week ago. It's called The Family Business. Here's the only uh copy we have right here. Nice. It's the continuation of our uh of my uh my work in uh selection preps. Two a little over two and a half years ago. Um, I wrote a book called Ruck Upper Shut Up. It's a guide for uh special forces assessment selection. It's literally just designed to describe the candidates. Here's what you can expect when you go to selection, not give away any of the secrets. And Kristen, who happens to be uh, she has a an English major with a minor in business writing, and also has a German heritage background. So she's like a like a grammar Nazi. Like she is all in on that stuff. And she she served as my editor. Uh so she's been with me through the writing process all along, and we published a couple other books after that. Um, but that first book came out and it was intended for candidates to tell them about selection. But the unintended consequence was that we had but sorry, we have two dogs in the room, too.

SPEAKER_01:

Sorry.

SPEAKER_02:

We had there we go. So the unintended consequence of publishing uh Rock Up or Shut Up was we got a bunch of questions from um from others that weren't candidates, family, girlfriends, spouses, buddies, whatever. And they were asking us all these other questions that we didn't intend to answer, that I certainly didn't intend to answer. Like I wanted to write about selection, rucking and foot care and land nav and team week and all that stuff. And we got all these questions from from these family members saying, How do I support my my spouse? My boyfriend wants to go, or my husband wants to go to selection, but we heard it's gonna be, you know, it's it's guaranteed divorce, uh, we're not gonna know our kids and all of that business. So like I started, I'm just doing what any normal person would do. I'd start answering those questions, you know, in in emails and DMs and whatnot. And after a couple of years of that, I was like, gosh, I'm answering like the same questions again and again and again. Like, like, why isn't there a resource out there? So I looked on the internet and I did what any smart person did. I went to Google and I said, you know, uh, you know, resources for family. And you get like like family readiness group stuff and army one source, and it's all kind of generic, um, you know, not soft specific. And so, you know, SFs are unique things. So I said, um, listen, I've got all these all these questions and I got all these answers. I keep answering the same questions. I turned to Kristen and I said, Hey, you want to write a book with me?

SPEAKER_01:

And that was like I said, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_02:

Her first response is absolutely not. And I said, Come on, baby, it can't it can't just be me. It can't be just be my opinion, because quite frankly, like I was absent for much of our film life. You you you live the life. Uh, we did the math when I retired, and and I was gone for 14 of my 20 years. I was not at home, either deployed or at school or on training or someplace not here at home. So, like, I'm not an expert on on on like how to raise our family. She's the expert, like she was there the whole time. So I said, You you you you have to you have to write the book. And she said, Well, I can't write it myself. I said, So here's what we'll do. I'll raise the topic. I'll give, you know, he said, he said, she said, I'll tell the reader, here's what I think about the topic. That's my opinion. And then you'd give your take. You you'd tell your your your take on the topic. And like it worked out really well. The book is really good. It's like, hey, I'm like, I'm telling you about all the stuff that I think is important, and then I'm going to hyper detail about all the nursery, and then she she takes a stab at it, and she's like, none of that's important. Here's what's important. Boom, boom, boom, breaks it down. And like it was a really revealing sort of like therapeutic process for us. So I don't know, do you feel that way?

SPEAKER_01:

I mean, it honestly he asked me, and it took about a year, I think, about a year for me to be like, okay, you know, all right, I'll I'll we'll put something together and see how it works. I like the the problem I saw going into it was like Dave and I have are very different, or like just very, very, very different human beings who have very different takes on just about everything. And I have zero to add about Ranger School or the pipeline, or you know, and he has little to add about child rearing, you know, at a certain point. So I I was really reticent about it. And then and I just kind of said to him, you know, if we write this book, this is highly personal. Like I don't I don't want to just skim the surface here. If we're gonna write this book, we're gonna do it. We're gonna do it, we're gonna give up all the all the goods. All the goods. So so it was, it is a really it was really personal, and I just had to it took a it really took about a year for me to get comfortable with being like, okay, we're gonna tell everybody everything.

SPEAKER_00:

So Danny, that's like the perfect spot. That's a perfect spot to kind of interject and kind of take us, not not give away everything, but take us through the early years, take us through, like I said, um when we were talking, like the GWAT era Green Beret never told the young guys coming in that, like, hey, family's important. It was get in, bunker down, learn how to do your job, and we're getting out that door. Yep.

SPEAKER_02:

And we're deploying tomorrow. You gotta like, let's go. We gotta pack your bag and go. So I'm I'm a pre-GWAT guy. We we joined in in '93. I was on a team deployed on 9-11. So I'm like pre-mid and post-GWAT. So, and it was just like you said, get your team, focus on the team, do your job, and get after it.

SPEAKER_01:

And sorry, sorry.

SPEAKER_02:

See what I got to deal with?

SPEAKER_01:

Sorry.

SPEAKER_02:

So, like, you're right, like the there was no focus on the family. Like, pre pre-GWAT, there were no family readiness groups. She was the family readiness group. Like you're like the commander's spouse and the sergeant major spouse, they were the FRG leaders, and that was it. So it was like, and I don't know about you, but like I didn't have a battalion commander who was on his first marriage until I was a major. Right? So, like, how is that guy gonna model good uh marriages and and lead that way? Like, it was the joke. The joke coming up was to be an SF guy, to be a real SF guy, to truly be qualified. You had to have a Harley, you had to have a divorce, and you had to have the SF ring, that big old hunky ring. And I was like, oh my God, that's miserable. And so, like, I just thought there's gotta be another way. And and let's to be clear, uh like we're not holding ourselves up as like the the example, the paragon of like, here's what, here's what you should do. We're saying is here's what you could do. Like, here is we we so we've been married, we just celebrated our second anniversary, and we dated we dated for four years before we got married. We so we we grew up for a long time. Yeah, she tried to convince me I wasn't having it. So, like, like it just wasn't the norm. And in the GWAT, the focus was the mission. Like, you got to get downrange, you gotta do the job, and marriages suffered. We we know that the so this um the Global Soft Foundation published a study uh, I think in 2021, and it was something like like uh eight times the the divorce rate for soft guys than it was for the conventional guys. Eight times. We are eight times more likely to be divorced. Man, that's shocking. It's like we recruit, select, and and train and retain the the world's most uh skilled warriors. Like these are we're badasses, but like we can't hold marriages together. Like it's it's it can't be a skills issue. So what is it? Is it a is it a narrative issue or is it is it just we have it we set the model? I I don't know.

SPEAKER_01:

But let's let's be clear that I mean it's not that Dave and I didn't come close, you know, a couple times where we had these, you know, not really, really, like no higher no divorce lawyers were hired, but you know, a couple bumps in the road where you know our marriage is not perfect.

SPEAKER_02:

It would it would have been easy, it would have been very easy to say, you know what, we're done. Let's just it's the norm, let's just follow what the norm says, right? And and in the night's still young, so we don't know. But but but like yeah, so like like we're we're completely normal. There are there are thousands of couples that were at the same crossroads that we got to many times, right? And we just said it's you know, like there has to be a better way. And I don't know if it was intentional, but we're just like, like, listen, we've already invested way too much in each other.

SPEAKER_01:

Like, I or like, or honestly, like we're not getting along, but he's deploying for three months, so like, okay, I can do it another three months, he won't even be home. Yeah, you know, like and like we can kind of sort through it that way because we I mean, from the time Dave started on his ODA or whatever, um, I mean, we had two very small children. We had two children 14 months apart. So I was busy and like if he was just not likable at the moment, I was like, okay, let's let me look at the rotational schedule here.

SPEAKER_02:

He's got a Jason coming up. Anyways, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Like he's leaving, so it'll be fine. We'll figure it out when he gets home or or it'll pass, whatever it was.

SPEAKER_02:

So yeah, what when I when I called home, so when I went to selection in 97, when when I called home to tell on a payphone, that dates me, I called home to tell her I got selected is when she announced that that we were pregnant with our first with our son, our oldest son. And uh, so like that's like you talking about so so in my mind, like being a Green Beret was completely tied to also being a dad. Like it was like because that those moments were forever tied together. And then my our daughter was was born while I was in the Q course in language school in the Q course. So like the kids and and the family was just completely intrinsic to being a Green Beret. So so in my mind, they were always the sort of the same thing. So when we hit those crossroads, those challenges, don't don't smirk.

SPEAKER_01:

No, I'm not.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm not that the they were always sort of the same thing to me. So when we hit those crossroads, I was like, abandoning my family also in a way feels like abandoning my my beret. And that's just not you know, that's not who we are. So they were always sort of uh sort of linked to me. And again, she she's a hundred percent right. And if you're a GWAT guy, you knew like you were home for six months, gone for six months, home for six months, gone for six months. Like you were, and then when you were home, like you weren't really home because you're doing train up and and and pre-deployment, all stuff. So, like really, she only had to endur me for a couple weeks at a time, and then I'm like headed out the door for another, you know, another whatever. And by the way, I was gonna be getting tax-free and and per diem and all that business. So, like, it was almost better when you were when you were deployed.

SPEAKER_01:

No, that's not true.

SPEAKER_00:

I said almost, but but you know, the one thing that uh a lot of guys don't key on and we don't value is the things that make you a great husband, a good father are going to positively impact your abilities on the team. And that is that something you guys tap into on the books.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, uh we we do. I I don't know if I don't know if you uh I I I talk about it a little bit. To me, it's a duty. So I I talked about this in Ruckover Shut Up. Yeah, being a Green Beret is a duty. If you're one of the few guys on the planet that has the ability and the capability to become a Green Beret, you have a duty to try it. 77% of the American population isn't eligible for military service. Of the 23% that is eligible, less than half are eligible to become a Green Beret, are just eligible. And then you go to selection, you whittle it down, you're like you're talking like an infinitesimally small amount of guys. So it's a duty you have to, you have to, you have to to become a Green Beret. Same way as being a good fan, a good father, like you have a duty to your family. Like if you're gonna, if you're gonna marry the right person, I think I did, we'll see. If you're gonna marry the right person, like you're gonna go through that process, the vetting process, and and like you have a duty to then commit to that process. Like you have to, if you say you're gonna be the leader of your family, you have to lead your family. If you say you're gonna be the leader of your ODA, you gotta lead your ODA. Like leading your ODA isn't just something that you do, like you have to work at that. Like it's hard. You got a good special training, you get counseling from your peers and your team sergeant and and and all that stuff. Like, why wouldn't you then do that in your marriage? Why would you expect that to be any different?

SPEAKER_01:

Is am I I mean it but I agree with that, but I mean being a leader in your family is very different when you're talking about someone who's gone for 14 out of 20 years. So, I mean, that was something that I think Dave had to swallow his pride a lot of the time and say, Okay, I can't. Like, I I I'm out of control here. I'm gone. We have two kids, you know, we have a I have a house to take care of that I was the leader of for a lot of things. Like, and we talk in the book about like we long ago established our lanes, the lanes of our marriage, you know, things that he's responsible for and things that I'm responsible for. And of course those shift as time goes on, you know, like the things that I have to do and the things that he has to do, and they and we've been a little bit flexible with them, but for the most part they're pretty much the same. I mean, we don't we don't do a lot of parenting these days, but you know, our because our children are grown, but we still do a lot of parenting. I think we do more parenting now. Different parenting.

SPEAKER_00:

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SPEAKER_01:

But uh that we established those lanes actually before kind of before we were married, in a kind of a class that we took, and then we sort of it just sort of happens organically what he does, what I do. And when he's gone, the things that I do are much more. And then when he comes home, well, you can't be the disciplinarian. I'm sorry, like you can't come back in and be the disciplinarian. It's my job now, and it's gonna be my job forever. Which I mean, I think that's kind of hard for uh any man to swallow is like, hey, or like, okay, I'm in charge of the money. You know, like you can't come in and we can't switch, I can't hand you the checkbook every three weeks, and you try to pretend we did that once. We did it once, and he paid school tuition twice and he paid the mortgage twice, and we were broke, we were solid broke for like two months.

SPEAKER_02:

Keep in mind I'm a doctor, I'm not a complete idiot.

SPEAKER_01:

But it went so horribly wrong, and I and he it took him a while, like six weeks, to come and tell me, like, hey, I can't do this, like I I don't know how to do this. So I just think the lanes in our marriage and they tend to be, even though, like, yes, I am in charge of the money and the and the discipline, those sound non-traditionally female, the rest of them prop pretty much follow along the the traditional roles.

SPEAKER_00:

Well, it it's important to highlight that because it's that is by and large what a lot of our guys experience. And it's important to understand, like, we high achievers seek high achievers. You our guys look for individuals that are just as hungry and and just as talented as they are, and we have to be able to trust our spouse. Um household, same thing. Wife manages the money, not only for you know, like for my business as well, because let me tell you, the best bookkeeper is obviously the one at home that uh manages the rest of the money. So 100%. Security Hot Media has another employee, but it's it's amazing to finally be able to view your wife and see the skill sets that they bring to the table and be like, look, you're you're my teammate in this. I gotta trust you. There's a little bit of that hesitation because you you want to hang on to that. Well, I I've always controlled it in my life. Why do I want to give it over? It's like, you're not single anymore. You're you're part of a family unit. Trust your other member.

SPEAKER_02:

It it's a lot of a lot of it, then, is that it's the same way you are in a team. Like, you can't be all things on the team. Like, I can't be the echo. Clearly, I can't be the echo and the bravo, right? I struggled getting online tonight. So I I can't do both. Like I can't be the mom and the dad. I can't be the the fun dad and the disciplinary mom. I like I can't do both. And so early on in that in the in the courting process, you have to sort of figure out do am I picking the right teammate? That's what they are. It's not just a lover, it's also a teammate. Oh, that's so gross. But but but like that's what you're doing, and that's what we did. And then so then later on in our marriage, when like when we were when we were like into the high op tempo and had kids and and had all this stuff going on, like I had to humble myself. I had to say to myself, okay, you either picked the right one or you didn't. If you did, hand over the reins. And it was very humbling to say to myself that that I'm not in charge all the time. And and you can't treat your family like you treat your ODA. I can lead my ODA a specific way. They're men, they respond to that. My kids are not my teammates. My kids are my kids. I have to treat them like kids. Like they respond differently to stimuli. So there was a real growing pain with that. And luckily, I had a wife that was willing to let me fail enough without ruining the kids in the marriage that we could then come back and sort of like she sort of allowed allowed me to lead in that special way that that the family had to be led. And again, not traditional. We are very traditional. She's a traditional girl, I'm a traditional guy, like dump trucks and dirt clods and and dolls and and and babies. Like, so you but but you can't do that all the time because when dad's gone, mom's got to do all all the other diaper duties and dirt clod and dump truck duty. So, like a lot of it was figuring out like what was the appropriate level when. And and it goes back to picking the right teammates. So we we cover that like ad nauseum in the book. We talk a lot about our courting process, about like the the formal process we went through.

SPEAKER_01:

But we didn't know it was a formal process. No, then we didn't know.

SPEAKER_02:

Then we didn't know.

SPEAKER_01:

And and when we came to all these decisions, like some of them, some of the decisions that we came to were after the end of like a a blowout argument that lasted into the night. You know, I mean, we don't go to bed angry, we just go. I mean, no, no, no, no. We don't stay up, we go to bed angry. Like we're up till 3 a.m. And it, I mean, some of these were long knocked down, not really knocked down drag out, but some of these were fights that we had to have, and we had them and luckily learned from them.

SPEAKER_02:

I think, you know, it sometimes it takes a couple fights for him to the the other the other thing that you have that I had to learn was that, like you said, hyper competitive. I I I love to win, but more than anything, I hate to lose. That's been a defining characteristic of my whole life, and that's for every Green Beret. You hate to lose. You if you were a quitter, you wouldn't become a Green Beret. But um, so you hate to lose. But when you're in a fight with your wife, like what does winning look like? If I win the argument, yeah, like I won the battle, but I lost the work because I still gotta win, I gotta still gotta live with her. And like the next morning, like it's so rude.

SPEAKER_01:

It's so rude.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm required by law to live with you. You're not so so like like what does winning look like? Like, is it really a victory if if I if I defeated her? I don't want to defeat her. I want to I want to raise her up. So like like when I when I finally came to that realization, like it changed. I I had to learn how to fight. I had to learn how to be an effective fighter and realize where was compromised. And something that uh that I heard uh just recently and it really resonated with me was we always talk about work-life balance. You gotta find a work-life balance. And I just think you will never, in soft as a green berry, you will never find a work-life balance. Work will always win. What you have to find is harmony. Like you have to you have to find a spouse that's willing to support a lifestyle that is a little bit different. It is, it is not always family-centric. Sometimes it has to be mission-centric. So you have to find that that harmony. And I think we found that harmony. Took us quite a few years, we had a lot of blowout fights, um, but we found it. Still do.

SPEAKER_00:

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SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Although we don't fight late into the night because we just get tired. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

It's got to be over by like 8 p.m.

SPEAKER_02:

Daylight saving times comes into play, and we are like best friends. So, so like we had to learn how to fight. So you had to learn how to be a couple. All young couples when they court have to do that. Then we had to learn how to fight, had to learn how to fight proper. And then I had I had to learn how to be a different kind of a man. No less of a man. I'm still big, burly, barrel-chested, freedom fighting, steely-eyed green beret. But like when I'm in home, like I'm not that guy. Like now I'm dad, I have I have a different role, I'm not in charge. She sets the schedule, she she manages the checkbook. And like until you come to that realization, like you're just not going to be successful. And I think Well, wait a minute.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay. But like Dave and I differ on this. Other couples will come to different realizations for them. I mean, Dave is very black and white. You know, it's either it's either our way or the highway, kind of, you know, and it's that's just Dave. But other couples will come up with different versions of their own happy traits. You know, happy, happy, happy mediums, their lonely, whatever they're they're hard. They're normal. But it doesn't have to be what we do. That's true. It does not.

SPEAKER_02:

The point of that is not that that our way is the way. Like I said when I started, our way is not the way. Our way is a way, but you have to have a good, strong, open communication. You have to be willing to sort of to humble yourself to the process, and you have to be willing to accept that sometimes you're just wrong. And that's that's really hard for for guys like us to hear that you can be wrong. Like you can be wrong about some stuff, and just realize and be like, and then like, and once I did that, God, Danny, I'll tell you, the the the moments when you come to that realization that like it's okay to be wrong on certain things, like your life gets way better, brother. Like, it is like you start getting along with your wife, like you start paying only one mortgage a month, like it it'd be just become bliss. And like, because I think like most green berries, I'm super hard-headed. It took me a long time to come to that realization. But I picked the right person to allow me to sort of fail those times and sort of fail forward. And in the end, like like here we are. So, so yeah, I'm not saying that our way is the way, it's a way, but you got to have the the only way reason that that any way works is that you pick the right partner.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. It's absolutely true. That's something that a lot of the guys in this, you know, in the last 10, 15, certainly the last five years for the advent and rise of online and and engagement and apps, like having a hard time because they're looking for comfort and immediate satisfaction from an app and you know, frivolous dating. I wish more individuals were mentored in all aspects of life, especially within Soft, to be like, hey, pump the brakes, look for somebody outside of the bar scene, look for somebody outside of the party line. Because who you find and who you choose to marry can lead you down a path of great success or down a path of pain and agony and divorce. And oftentimes what I saw within myself and my own teammates, you know, we didn't choose the right person right off the bat. That's something that we need to talk about, being able to find somebody that is of the high caliber, the high standards, and you're meeting them in the right place, the right setting. And that's a very difficult thing right now because there's secrets, there's sharkies, there's a whole endless list of places where you can meet the wrong person. And it seems like a great idea, but how do you tell a young man that uh, you know, take time to take a knee, pause, maybe go back to church, meet somebody at church. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

So I I it's not my quote, but we started the book with this. I I can't remember where I heard it, probably online. But the the most important decision that you will make in your entire life is who you marry. Like that there is just nothing that that I could that outweighs that. And I think this is a living testament to that. It's you know, 32 years plus four, 36 years. And and like because we went through that process early on, we were we dated before the internet was even a thing.

SPEAKER_01:

So that wasn't we dated before cell phones were even like that. That's true.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh, might be so so like we had a we had a more a more traditional dating experience. I think it's still possible though. I think you have to sort of lay out what's important to you. Like, like, what are the things that are sort of non-negotiables? Do you want kids? Are you willing to have a less extravagant lifestyle because one of the parents is gonna stay home? You can have a stay-at-home mom. Like that's that's tough to do. Like, you you look at a society, and that's not success. Success is two new cars in the driveway and and lots of presents and new phones every time a new iPhone drops. Like, but like if if you want a stay-at-home mom and you want kids raised by by your by parents and not the government, like you you're gonna have to make some sacrifices. And we didn't know we like we didn't say that at the time that we were dating, but like I I knew one of the things that attracted me most to Kristen um when when we first started dating was I knew, I had no idea how I knew it, but I knew that she was gonna be a great mom. I just knew it.

SPEAKER_01:

And that always Okay, but at the time, like when we met, he was gonna be a park ranger, not getting married, no kids.

SPEAKER_02:

So I mean that's partially true.

SPEAKER_01:

That is completely true.

SPEAKER_02:

Uh I yeah, I was I was not I like when we first met, the army wasn't even on my radar, like it wasn't a thing, it was a class in college. But but but like I quickly realized, like, okay, like there's a future, like there's something here. There's there's more to this than just dating. And and and as soon as I joined the army, uh, as soon as I got into ROTC, like I was all in, like it just spoke to my soul. So like I was deep in that, and then I was like, okay, well, the the natural progression of this is the now to have a family, to have a wife of a family. And like we just always knew, like when I asked her to marry me, we've been dating four years, like it wasn't a surprise to anybody. Like, we both knew it was sort of like like this is the this is like the next step, right?

SPEAKER_01:

And then what else do you do?

SPEAKER_02:

What else do you do?

SPEAKER_01:

I did as well.

SPEAKER_02:

And so, like, and then we'll you know, we got uh went on active duty, and like it just like everything was just like that's what you do. You this like the next thing that we're gonna do is what one just does.

SPEAKER_01:

With a plan. We planned everything.

SPEAKER_02:

We did have a we did have a plan. And we had so early on we had a plan. I don't I won't say we got mentored, but my my one of my first battalion commanders was a had a messy first marriage. And when when I when he was my battalion commander, he was uh in on his second marriage, and his his second wife, um, we still communicate with him to this day. They were like, okay, do like they were both from from bad marriages, and they said, okay, let's let's help you, let's get a plan. And we had to sit down with like an old school piece of graph paper and lay out our entire career. We had to lay out like, like, here's what I'm gonna do in my career, here's what, you know, here's what units I'm gonna go to, here's what schools I'm gonna get, here's what commands I'm gonna take, you know, all aspirational, lay it all out there.

SPEAKER_01:

But mine too.

SPEAKER_02:

And then we also had to lay out like, here is what she's gonna be doing. At the same time you're doing that, here's what she's gonna be doing, and here's when you're gonna have kids, and here's where the kids will be at that time. And like it really, like in that, that was like a like a week-long exercise that we had to go to.

SPEAKER_01:

Like, to be to be fair, like I did also have a career. I didn't have just have children. I wasn't just a stay-home. I did for a while, I was a stay-at-home mom, but I had a career before and after children. So that was yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

I mean, so and that was all on the graph, it was all laid out, and like it sort of made us realize like, oh, like it's not just the army because not just the mission, to your point. It's not just the mission, like it's all this other stuff. Like, if she wants to continue to have her career, like you can't just go balls to walls on everything. Like, you they you have to be able to back off, and then she's gotta take the lead. And then well, by the way, when the kids are in high school, do you want your kids to go to the high school all four years at the same school? Well, then you can't be jumping around doing all the high-speed army stuff. Like, you got to make some sacrifices. So, like it was early on, it was sort of planted in my mind, like, there's gonna be some sacrifices. So, so expect that. I think I think that was the the biggest part of that was like expect some sacrifices. And then, like, when we when we retired, I actually still have that graph paper. When I retired 20 odd years later, I I was going through my I love me box with all my, you know, all my all your stuff, and I had that graph paper, and it was like we'd followed it pretty closely. Like we had done just about everything we said we were gonna do on about the same timeline, and she had done everything that that we that she wanted to do, and like it was like wow, like we did it. So it it wasn't like we had a checklist like now we'll do this. It was sort of like we set got sat down early on and said, be realistic, understand our sacrifices, have a have a plan. That was the big thing, like have a plan. You don't have to necessarily stick to the plan, but have a plan. And then like when when these like major life things came up, like the big decisions, like do you take do you take this job or that job? Like it was all sort of laid out. We all just sort of executed the plan.

SPEAKER_01:

Sort of, yeah. I mean we had a plan and it we stuck with it for the most part. I mean, but then there like then like the the G what's it called G WA? The G WA. Yeah. I mean that wasn't on the plan. That wasn't that wasn't on the plan and that deployment time wasn't on there and and really like Having two babies as close as we did was not part of the plan. That was a surprise. So, like we had a few bumps in the road, like, oh my God, what are we gonna do? But it just sort of it worked out.

SPEAKER_02:

We we had the same end state. Like that was the thing. Like we had the same vision and goals. Not to be all all you know uh uh motivational speaker, but we had the same vision and goals. Like we knew what we wanted to do like now. We pictured in our minds that we'd be sitting on this leather sofa talking about our book, right?

SPEAKER_01:

It's oh leather, but yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

But we we knew like we wanted to retire together.

SPEAKER_01:

Not the book, not the book, not the book.

SPEAKER_02:

That was never never planned. But we knew we wanted to retire together and like we wanted to have kids and we wanted to be grandparents and we wanted to provide a stable, secure home life. We would always host Christmas, you know, in a in a in the grand scheme of things. And so like that's what we do now. Like we host Christmas. We have 13 Christmas trees in this house on Christmas, like we go all out. There's at least 11.

SPEAKER_01:

There's not that many. It's not true.

SPEAKER_02:

So, like, like like we're here. We didn't we didn't follow the path we thought we were gonna have to to get her, but we ended up at the right destination because we chose that destination together. I chose her because she had the same destination that I did. I think.

SPEAKER_01:

I guess. I mean it was an evolution of you know, just stuff.

SPEAKER_00:

Stuff. Yeah, just stuff. We just no big deal. I love that. You know, we we talk about the importance of having the right partner going through the career and being there with you through the deployments, J sets, the schools, the injuries. But the one of the biggest things that we will all go through in the military, one of the biggest final things is that final transition. And that's when our partner at home, our detachment commander at home, has to come in. And oftentimes that's when they shine and become that MVP because we don't know that we're going into the most challenging portion of our lives. And I think our spouses inherently know that, okay, we're gonna we're gonna be going through some changes. I have to be ready to flex and I have to be ready to support this big oath because I think he's gonna have a hard time. How did you guys navigate transition as a couple?

SPEAKER_02:

I I would say so. One of the things that surprised me when I got when I start was that when I started getting lots of questions from retiring team guys spouses, like my husband's getting ready to retire, he's got 10 years on a team, like like he is struggling. Like, what what what can he do? And I was like, what is going on? Like, how are these dudes, these are these are like badasses, like how are they struggling this way? And and it really made me made me think the the what it reminds me of, Denny, is that it does not matter what you do in the army. It does not matter what schools you got, what awards you got, what deployments you went on, any of your accolades, eventually you're gonna get out. Hopefully you'll retire. Eventually you're gonna get out. So you have to decide when you get out, are you gonna get out and have a family with a home? Are you gonna have some people that you pay child support to that have a house that you pay for that you don't live in? Like you gotta you gotta make that decision. So I don't know that we had a plan for retirement, but but it was it was looming large. I I was probably at 17 years in. I was I was working at JSOC and I got orders to go to SWIC, and I was like, okay, that's gonna be my sunset tour. And and I I was an ops guy my whole life. I thought I was gonna do operations and I retire, be a contractor, and do that same stuff. And uh and I got into a different line of work. I got into education. That's when I went off and got my doctorate and all that. And so, like, I don't know that we had a plan, but like, like I if you look at our original graph paper, she was supposed to be the doctor. I was supposed to be a general. She was supposed to be the doctor, and I was gonna be a general.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah, we're thinking about it. But I was a teacher, like I'm an elementary school teacher, yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

She'd been in education her whole life. So, so like I got into education and I'm dumb, um, and uh like barely graduated any of my schools.

SPEAKER_01:

True.

SPEAKER_02:

But we like so that became the path, and like it just sort of fell in place, and it was like the the the opportunities arose because um because I was I had an open mind. Like at that point at 17 years in, I had sort of learned um I learned a little bit more about myself. I had a little bit more self-awareness, uh, which is I I think something that that inherently, in order to be a green bearer, you have to have a high level of self-awareness, high level of empathy, high emotional intelligence. Um, we don't give ourselves that credit, but like that, we literally select for that. So you you have that inherently, you just have to be able to listen to yourself. And so those last three years, I did a lot of listening to myself and I did a lot of listening to her. Like she was like she was like telling me, like, okay, what's the plan? What's the plan? Because we'd always always had a plan. And um, so we didn't necessarily have like like this is the specific thing I'm gonna do, but we knew that there had to be a plan and I had to start like working towards you. Can't wait till you're at 19 years and six months. Like you got to start that process like a couple years out. And um, so we started that process, and I got into education, and it just sort of like it was a really good, really good transition for me. But the one thing that that stuck with me was that like when I made that decision, there was endless possibilities. Anything I wanted to be. Because because I was a Green Beret, and Green Berets can do anything. Like, you could literally, Denny, if you wanted to, you could start a podcast. Like you could literally do anything you wanted to. Like, you could get a doctorate and write a book, you could start a company. So I have a good friend of mine, Dwayne's a Green Beret officer, you know, G Watt, all the awards and all the business. He got out and went to dental school. He's a dentist now. Like, who'd have thought of that? I got another buddy that makes custom bicycle parts. Like, that's not a Green Beret thing. Like, you don't have to do Green Beret stuff. You can do anything you want because you are a Green Beret. You are the most adaptable, resilient human on the planet. Like, do whatever you want, but have a plan. And I and I think that that's kind of what we did, right?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I mean, I like I knew he was gonna get out probably it was probably year 16, and he had gone on a a long tw mission somewhere. I don't know where he was. Iraq. He came home and he just was not he was worn out. I was tired. I was tired. And it was I think it was like a rough deployment, like a like a like not nice, yeah. And um, I kind of knew then, like I'd never had to say you're getting out at 20. I just sort of like took that lead and I was like, boy, yeah, you're probably gonna have more. You know, if we stay in, you're gonna have more. And you know, kids are edging on high school here, you know. Like, I don't really want to go anywhere and take them out of high school. So if you go, you might have to go by yourself. And it wasn't a deterrent, but it was honest. Like, I wouldn't probably move with him if he were gonna continue to in. And we just made some decisions. I mean, honestly, Dave makes the made the decisions, you know, and and I sort of it it worked out for me as well.

SPEAKER_02:

But um But there were there, and so I may have made the decision, but we had many conversations about it. Like we talked about it a lot, and we sort of made certain that our vision and our goals stayed aligned. Like, okay, you know, 20 years ago we decided this. Like, are we still there? Is that are we still?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, like no one wants a miserable green beret at home. Like, there was no way. Like, once he made that decision, he was like, Okay, I'm gonna go back to school. I'm like, okay, great. Like, I knew that I really couldn't tell him what to do. Like, there's no way I could be like, Dave, you know, let's go sell insurance or let's go do some this or that. But like I knew he had to make that the decision himself. It was not gonna come for me. It was not gonna anything, you know, it just wasn't gonna come for me. And I had to sort of trust him at more than sort of. I had to trust him to make the good decision for our family. Like, we're not gonna get divorced after 20 years, are we? Like, you know, we've been married, we've been together like 24 years at that point. Like, we're not gonna let this fall apart now. Are we like you're gonna make some decision, you're gonna be happy with it, and you're gonna be busy, right? So when he was looking for jobs, I was like, okay, so a little, is there a little deployment maybe?

SPEAKER_02:

How much TDY you got on that job?

SPEAKER_01:

Like maybe a couple, maybe a week, uh, you know, a week or two here and there. And so that's kind of how it worked out. But you know, no one wants a miserable green beret at home because I can't imagine that they're very fun to be around.

SPEAKER_00:

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unknown:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So we that's the importance of having a solid teammate at home that's about something have the discussions with you and be like, hey, look, like here's some options, here's some ideas. Like, nothing's worse than trying to navigate everything by yourself. You have a teammate at home, bring him into the discussion, be able to talk and and engage and share. Because they want to know what that opportunity at Bragg looks like. They want to know, like, hey, maybe we can tough it out and go to friggin' JRTC. Maybe we could do that. You want to try it? Like, friggin', let's go.

SPEAKER_01:

That's what I want him to do. I I really did want him to go to like be be an ROTC instructor and something like that.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, he said JROTC. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01:

I don't know what that was.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it's not but the the point of that though is that is that your spouse, your teammate, has to both support you and challenge you. Like yeah, she was just not willing to accept that I was just gonna retire and sit on the porch and drink beers all day and collect collect retirement checks.

SPEAKER_01:

Like, like he wouldn't be happy doing that. If that's what he wanted to do, sure, go right ahead. Dave would be absolutely horribly miserable if that's what he did. Like he's in constant motion. There's no way that would have worked for him. So he made the good decision for himself, you know?

SPEAKER_02:

And then and then st starting the business, writing the books and starting the land nav business and and Tia Voodoo, like that was all an extension of like go do something, like do something. Like you've got all this energy, you got all these ideas, like put it into something. And uh, and that's like really like like well, that's what I did. I was like, okay, I'm just gonna get all these dumb ideas out of my head, put them on, put them on paper, and let's publish them.

SPEAKER_01:

It was like over COVID, and it we were stuck. It was the three of us. Our daughter was home from school, and God, he just kept telling these stories over and over to me. And like, I know the stories. Please don't tell me the stories again. Like, and finally, it's uh I know we got into a fight because at one point he said, You know, I'm thinking about getting a guitar. I was like, What the hell? I'm gonna learn to play guitar. I'm like, you're not playing guitar. He can't sing, he can't sing, he has no rhythm. He I was like, You're not playing the damn guitar. I said, Why don't you just write all these stories down? Just write a book, Dave. Just I don't care what it's about. Like, I just needed him to be busy, you know? So that's how it's hold on.

SPEAKER_02:

She tells that story as though she's some like benevolent spouse. We had a rule, Denny, that I was not allowed to tell war stories in the house.

SPEAKER_01:

Because I know them all. Like, there's he tells them they're all literally.

SPEAKER_02:

Now we're stuck at home at COVID, and I'm not allowed to tell the war stories. And she was like, and I was I was going crazy. So she's literally like, You have to do something. You can't, you're certainly not gonna learn learn guitar. I couldn't carry a tune in a bucket.

SPEAKER_01:

Awful.

SPEAKER_02:

And so she's like, You gotta do something, write those stories down. I wrote them down, and she as I like read them, like I think she saw them with a new eye now. Now she saw them as like a teacher. She saw them as like, hey, these are really good. And when I remember the day that I'd written them down and I'd sent one to her, and I said, What do you think about this? And she said, These are actually really good. Like you're you're a decent writer, and these are good stories. Um, like you you have something here. And I was like, and that's when I knew I said, Man, if I convinced my wife, who thinks I'm who thinks I'm functionally illiterate, if I can convince her that I can do and write this, like I might have something here. So I wrote them all down and they had a bunch of war stories, and that's all they were. Like, nobody wants to read your war stories. I'm not a Navy SEAL, I'm not publishing a war story book, but I had this special uh knowledge, intimate knowledge about SFAS. I said, let me write about SFAS and then throw these war stories in. Like, that's how we're here now. And now I now we've got five books out and more on the way. And like it's just like it just became because I picked the right partner and she knew what I needed, even if I didn't know it myself. And it just sort of became so I don't know that we had like a plan for retirement. We had a plan for a plan, we had a concept of a plan for for what we were gonna be as retirees, and the retirement is an extension of that. Sure. Is that fair? Sure.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, man, guys, I can't let you go without getting your top 10 tips of advice to not just the Green Beret, but also for the spouse. So if you guys can come up with your top 10 pro tips for navigating this life for the spouse and for the Green Beret, what would they be?

SPEAKER_01:

I will tell you, this is gonna make him sound really good. And I generally don't like to do that because it because his head, like out he'll have trouble getting out of the room because his head will explode. In our marriage, Dave's never said no to me. Whatever I he makes it happen. That's not, I mean, that's I don't buy Gucci purses and I don't, you know, like I'm not talking about monet even even that kind of stuff. Like, Dave, you know, when we were young, I was like, Dave, we really need to buy a couch. Like, we don't have a couch. I need to and it wasn't like okay, yes, you know, uh, let's go get a couch. It was like, okay, let's let's figure that out. So Dave is always like when we graduated from college, like no one was hiring a 22-year-old writing major. I mean, you know, so I I was like, I need to figure something out. I said, Dave, I want to go back to school. I need a different degree, I want to be a teacher. And he said, Okay, let's figure it out. We'll figure it out. If that's what you want to do, we'll figure it out. And when it came time, like we knew when we wanted to have children, we had kind of like set out the timeline, okay, we need to be at least this rank, making this much money because I wanted to stay home. And I said, Dave, I want to be a stay-at-home mom. And he said, Okay, we'll figure it out. Or, okay, it's time to have kids. And this was the guy who didn't want any children. Now he was like, Okay, we're gonna have kids, and it's the best thing, best decision.

SPEAKER_02:

But but but what that is though is that's an extension of the Greenberry self, is that we figure stuff out. We are yes men, like you we deal with the unknown all the time. The commander turns to you, he's you're standing at the at the at the edge of the valley, and he's looking over the valley, and you pick a stand and he says, figure it out. And you're like, figure what out, and he says, Yes, and you're like, Okay, like I did like I gotta figure it out. I'm a yes man, that's what I'm gonna do. I don't say no to missions, and that's that was that's just sort of who like I am a green beret, you are a green beret because you are a yes man, because you always find a way to yes, so that was just an extension of who I was.

SPEAKER_01:

So but I mean it is admirable that you know, like that you know, it could have been something as little as like, I want a new living room suit, and it might not be nut yes today, but he would be like, all right, well, we'll figure out a way to get a new living room suit. And if I said, I really want to finish my degree, I want to, I want another whole degree. Okay, we're gonna do it. Or, hey, Dave, it's it's two weeks before school starts. I want you to come into my classroom and I want you to remake everything. Like, I want shelves here, I want this wall painted, I want he would do it, you know. I mean, so and or even for our children, hey dad, I want I want to go to college, hey dad, I want to join the army, hey dad, you know, Dave never says no, absolutely not, like because it doesn't because not not a whole lot of that stuff would benefit him, but just the fact that we knew that Dave always, my children, our children, sorry, our children and I always knew that he would support us 100%.

SPEAKER_02:

The paternity test is pending.

SPEAKER_01:

God, they're just like him. There's no just like him. But I would say, I would say just his willingness to he was always supportive of no matter what I wanted to do, whether that was going back to school, whether that was, you know, okay, I'm at this school, I want to go to take the kids to this school, or or like big decisions for our children. We write about in the book like we made some hard decisions for our kids and to make sure that they had the life that we wanted for them and that was expensive. And I said, Okay, Dave, you know, we're putting them in this school. And he said, We'll figure it out. Okay.

SPEAKER_02:

Figure it out. But she she has to reciprocate that. She was also a yes man because like I knew I had to say yes to getting a new a new living room suit because I wanted to go back to ranger school, right? So, like, if she's gonna like sit at home with the kids with me, if she's gonna shave my head another time so I can go to ranger school, like she's gonna make a bunch of sacrifices. My sacrifice is I'm gonna shut up and figure out a way to get a new living room suit. So, like, it's a it's totally a it's a it's a partnership. So you got to be a yes man. Both of you have to be yes men. Marriage is never a 50-50, it's a hundred a hundred. Each of you are always giving a hundred percent. So, so like that's the with that.

SPEAKER_01:

I don't agree with that. Don't always give a hundred percent because he how is he gonna give a hundred percent when he's gone? You know he's gone.

SPEAKER_02:

That's why when I'm home, I give a hundred and ten percent. I'm always making it up.

SPEAKER_01:

It's not true.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm not a math major, but I think that maths out. Like, so you you have to you have to find a way to yes. So that's the one, you gotta find a way to yes. You gotta pick a good partner. The most important decision you'll ever make is who you marry. Um we went through a long dated for a long time. We dated for a long time. Like intentionally.

SPEAKER_01:

But no, not intentionally. We were in college, like like my parents would have lost their minds if I said I'm getting married my sophomore year. Like, we dated because you just didn't get married before.

SPEAKER_02:

But we dated with the intent of marrying. I always knew I knew, Denny, I swear to God, I remembered the day I saw her and I was smitten from the word go. I knew from the moment I saw her, I'm gonna marry her.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay, but he went and visited every other freshman girl's dorm or room.

SPEAKER_02:

I had to be certain. I had to be certain. I'm a thorough man. But but I I I knew from the get-go, and so like in my mind, I was always like, I'm gonna marry her, and we're gonna grow old together, and and we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna do amazing things. So we dated intentionally, we dated for a long time. We vetted each other very, very carefully.

SPEAKER_01:

We dated intentionally after a while, like after the first couple years. That's we weren't that serious.

SPEAKER_02:

See, we we disagree on so many things.

SPEAKER_01:

We do.

SPEAKER_02:

I'm I'm convinced I know what outfit she was wearing the day, uh, the day I first saw her. She says she never owned a dress like that. Brother, I could I could draw to a police sketch artist uh to with to a T right now. But so so so uh be a yes man, be intentional with with who you're gonna date. Don't get married if you're not certain that's who you want to. Don't get married out of convenience. Don't get married because you want to get out of the business. Like get married because like you know that's the one that that you're gonna pick. And and pick the right one. Like, like, so for me to pick the right person, I also have to know who I am. So you have to be no, you have to know yourself a little bit. So you gotta be honest with yourself. Like, so so you have to you have to do some soul searching. Um, and then I I think so have a plan, uh date intentionally, stay in your lane, stay in your lane, gotta have your lanes, and that comes with having a plan. Um, stay stay in your lane to this day. We we we sat down when we were uh when we were engaged and and took classes, and one of the exercises that we did was you had to decide what household chores each of you was gonna do.

SPEAKER_01:

We decided lots of things, lots of things.

SPEAKER_02:

Well, one of the many things we decided was what household chores you're gonna do. And it asked you, like, who's gonna take out the trash? And we both said that's my job, and who's gonna do the dishes, and that's her job. And to this day, I take out the trash and she does the dishes. She sometimes takes out the trash, and I very occasionally do dishes, but like we stayed in our lanes, and we did that for every domain you can have in a good marriage.

SPEAKER_01:

We just got in a fight last night about the about his lane because the trash was overflowing again.

SPEAKER_02:

She bought cheap trash bags and they tear, it drives me insane. I'm like Jerry Seinfeld.

SPEAKER_01:

But he's like, you have to tell me when to take the trash out. And I was like, I'm not telling you when to take the trash out. You you manage the trash the way you want to manage it. If you want me to mound it up on top, then that's what's gonna happen. But don't like if you don't want to check the trash, I don't care. Just you know.

SPEAKER_02:

That's true. That's 100% true. We had literally had that discussion last night, and I was like, Yeah, she's right. I gotta shut up and take the trash out. Like, stop being lazy about it. And so you have to, so part of that then is knowing yourself. You have to humble yourself a little bit. Oftentimes, yes, you have to humble yourself, and that's really hard for Green Berets to do because we are by nature not very humble, which is weird because to be a Green Beret, you have to inherently be humble. You have to say to yourself, I'm gonna submit myself to this years-long process of doing somebody else's push-ups on somebody else's timeline, jumping whenever somebody says jump. Like you have to humble yourself to that. And then I think what happens is you get to you get out of the you get out of the pipeline, you get to a team, and all of a sudden you are you're the king of the world. And like, I think that changed a lot of guys. Some guys aren't prepared for that catastrophic success. I I have a woman who naturally humbles me. And so, like, like I was reminded that often. So stay humble, pick the right partner, stay in your lanes. What else?

SPEAKER_01:

Just get lucky, I think.

SPEAKER_02:

There and that's that's the other there is a tremendous amount of luck, just like in the cue course, you gotta get lucky, don't get injured.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I mean, and also like similar values, similar, like we had the same goals. Did we say that? Vision and goals, yeah. Yeah, I mean, uh just that you know, and it wasn't always like don't expect it to be easy because there's the vast majority of marriage is not easy. I mean, it you know, we went to bed angry a lot. Fighting in the younger years, in the younger years.

SPEAKER_02:

Fighting is not failure. Fighting is not failure. Like you're gonna fight, like it's natural. You're gonna have conflict, like you're gonna be in this job that forces you into conflict. Like, so like you're gonna have a bunch of fights. Like, you gotta learn how to fight fair, and you gotta understand that winning a fight looks different than winning a fist fight. Like winning a winning a firefight looks very different than winning a fight at home.

SPEAKER_01:

And it's compromise. I mean, we compromise on everything. You know, it's not all my it's certainly not all the way I want it, it's not all the way he wants it. We compromise for everything to the point where like, but then once you're together for like 36 years, you kind of want the same things anyway, you know? I mean that was that was a long process. I mean, that took like 20 years, you know. I mean, where you're like, okay, you know, and it's they it's true, like when like couples get older, they sort of like just they dress alike or they look alike. They I mean we don't look alike, but dress a lot.

SPEAKER_00:

I was gonna say, where's your beard?

SPEAKER_02:

She she she yells at me all the time because like we'll get ready to we'll get dressed to go go grocery shopping and like or wherever for lunch or wherever. She'll have an outfit on and I'll put something on, and we're like matchy matchy. It's like it's so obnoxious. She's like, go change. I'm like, all right.

SPEAKER_01:

We don't go out like that.

SPEAKER_02:

We don't go like that. So so so yeah, that and that's part of it. You got you gotta you gotta have a good pick. So I don't know if that's if that's top ten, but that's uh that's enough to get you started. We we list them we list them ad adphinium, ad nauseum in the book. It's called the family business. And where can we get the book right now? Amazon. Get it on Amazon. It's uh 300 pages of wisdom.

SPEAKER_01:

One of the things that we included in there, I mean, not only did we include our struggles, we included sort of a questionnaire that we took from a site that is similar to the one that we went through as you know, we were 22 and 23 when we got married. And it and we took this questionnaire and we kind of geared it towards young military families, you know, like young military people thinking to get thinking they're gonna get married or young married, you know, get like are newly married, or even if they're not, you could kind of go back. And it was just sort of, it's always been the basis for our marriage, the answers to these really simple questions. And when we when we look back on them, like our answers today are still fairly fairly reasonable, like it we still believe kind of the same things, but there were a lot of things in there that when we took this questionnaire, if you want to call it that, uh that we had to compromise on. We had to figure a lot of things.

SPEAKER_02:

Like we like we gotta talk this out now. It's like there's like 21 questions, and like we call it the compatibility workbook. Like answer these questions. It's not ours, it's not ours. But like it's in the book, and it's like you she answers the questions, you answer the questions, compare your notes. Those are that that's where you start the conversation, that's where you start that vetting process. So um, so that's in the book, and and and there's also practical stuff like pre-deployment checklists. Like before your husband leaves on a six-month deployment, like you should have all this paperwork, you should have the car check, you should have to know the maintenance plan is like oh, like it's it's like it's a little bit esoteric and a little touchy-feely, and then there's like insanely practical, like do these things. So I think it's a little bit of everything. I think people will will get a lot out of it. If nothing else, you'll see a different side of of uh of Tia Voodoo, and you'll see what's in the realm of possible. You can you can absolutely have a very successful career in special forces. You can do, I got to do all the schools, all the jobs, all the deployments, everything I ever wanted to do. And I'm still married to the same woman. I talk to both of my kids every day, like we're a totally as normal as you could get family. Like we made it. You can too.

SPEAKER_00:

Hell yeah. Guys, I can't thank you enough for being here today. To you guys listening, do me a favor, pause. Episode's over, anyways. I'll wait for you. Go to the episode description, hit those links, get your copy today, support my man, a great individual doing great things for the community, helping you get closer to your dream of earning that green beret, and figuring out how to maintain a family, because it is the family business. The same things that are going to make you a great husband, a great father at home, are gonna make you a better teammate. So choose the right person. Don't be scared of marriage, get married, have kids, have four, have five. And I'm telling you, chase that beret. Earn it. You're worth it. You can do it. I believe in you, and I know Dr. Walton believes in you as well. Guys, again, thank you so much for being here. Thank you all for tuning in. Thanks, Danny. Absolutely. And we'll see y'all next time. Till then, take care. SecureDob Podcast is proudly sponsored by Titan's Arms. Head up an episode description and check out Titan's Arms today.

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Deny Caballero

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