I'm conflicted about where my loyalty lies I have a wife and two children but
I recently took a job within federal law enforcement and based on my prior
tactical experience I'll be given the opportunity to attend a two-weeks
selection for a position as an operator on a full-time tactical team that will
most certainly pull me away from my family my heart is in the right place I
know this level of sacrifice is needed in order to keep evil at bay however I
believe every father feels that obligation to be at home to raise the
children and I'm learning that balancing Duty responsibility loyalty commitment
to family to country is hard and maybe impossible all right so oh yeah and he
goes on to say that I know you have made this decision yourself yep and I would
say to this dude actually you are the only person that can make this decision
and you're right I did make that decision I did 20 years and I at the end
of 20 years decided to prioritize my family over the military and over my own
desires too because believe me the selfish thing is to keep getting but
also what's important I was not good at balancing right I've I ranked and
prioritized the teams above my family the whole time I was in and not everyone
does that some people are much better at balancing I did and that's how they do
30 in 32 years and 34 years and 27 years they figure out how to balance that
better than I did and so it sounds like you're even raising this question
indicates to me that you probably have a decent chance of being able to be a
better at balancing that I do so there's that the other thing I would say is you
say that the being an operator of full time tactical team will most certainly
pull me away from my family I would research that a little bit you know
because sometimes when you get to a little higher level you have more
flexibility and you might might actually have time to spend with your family
might be a little bit different maybe you're on call whereas normally you
wouldn't be on call but now all of a sudden
on call but your while you're on call you're at least you know you're you
might be doing you might have more family time I don't know I can tell you
that you know sometimes depending on the way you look at it you know if you look
at the Special Operations community versus the conventional community and it
just depends on the units depends on a lot of things but sometimes you know the
conventional force is going up you know 16 month deployment to Iraq and that's a
long time some Special Operations units going on four month deployments and then
come home now they now they might do more of those over their career but
again that's something you need to you need to find out the facts you need to
talk to someone that's on that team and say hey listen here's what's going on I
got two sons they wrestle and they do jujitsu and I'd like to go to those
tournaments what's our schedule like how is it gonna be you know and then you
kind of you can make a better assessment I wouldn't just assume that the tactical
team has a busier schedule I could be wrong I could be completely wrong what
what you're probably the assumption you're making which is a decent
assumption is that when you're part of a part of an elite tactical team you're
gonna have to input more time it's gonna it's gonna it's gonna mean more to you
and you're gonna be like okay I need to train more I'm gonna tell you should
train more no matter what position you're in right you need to be training
as much as you can you need to be staying sharp so I would do some
research on that and then I would also consider this men have been leaving
their families so they could go and fight evil since the beginning of time
whether it was they were going out to fight the Lions or whether they were
going out to fight some we're going to invade other countries or gonna find
treasure or whatever whatever they were doing people have been doing it even
World War two guys left and there's no guarantee that they were coming home
they left for two three four years those that's the way it works doesn't your
boys are not going to be they're not their lives aren't going to be ruined if
you're not there at every ball game and I'll tell you there's actually if you do
that your sons will learn the meaning of duty and sacrifice more than a normal
kid would so so pay attention to that too
again all that being said this is something that only you can make the
call on because you're you can analyze the details of the situation and you
know what if your wife works or your wife works or dead wife doesn't work
that makes a big deal if your wife works and you're gone all the time that's a
problem now who's raising your kids so you've
got to pay attention to that if you if you both work but you both work normal
jobs now you're home you're don't you're you know you're there enough so just
weigh these things out but I would I would get the details
and then make a decision and you know what no matter what decision you make
it's the right decision how's that that's pretty simple you're if you make
a decision and you can't go on the tactical team cool if you don't cool
you're still doing federal law enforcement awesome keeping me keeping
the monsters at bay yeah the thing that helped me a lot that you explained early
on is to tell them why you tell people why you're doing what you're doing you
know the team and in this case the family or whatever and in this specific
case probably your wife yeah so if you're feeling that because I did it I
did that the feeling of like oh I feel like I'm not being as loyal to my family
because I'm like focusing on work your kind of thing so I'll get that from time
to time you know especially if I'm like super focused and it's like dang I
didn't think about my kids or family all day today you know I'll have that little
fun whatever I did yeah and I used to go like four months thinking about my
family in such a horrible well it's a sliding scale so you know um but I do
know that the more I communicate with my wife and be like hey I have to go here
and I'm this is what I'm gonna I'm gonna really try to focus on this you know
this week you know so here our video this week yeah I'll be so I might not be
here for this in this and you know like I might miss this but you know and just
lay it all out why you're doing it you know how you always say and a lot of the
times your loyalty will be demonstrating demonstrated with that you know like
it's like hey I'm doing my job it's the time requirement so a
little bit more or whatever like I want you to know like what can I can we do
anything can we adjust anything to make it better for everybody or whatever
you're on a percent right and and actually to take that one step further
including your wife into the decision-making process where you're
like hey listen on this if I do this job it's gonna be more but it's gonna be
super rewarding to me and sometimes that's enough you know you tell your
wife this is gonna be super rewarding for me because I'm gonna be able to go
and kill bad guys which is or protect innocent people which is what I want to
do that's what I signed up for and I'm gonna be able to do it in a in a more
complete way and there's a chance your wife says you know what I know that's
what you're born to do go do it or she might say listen you've done that
already you know let's focus on the family and
you be cool yeah those are both good decisions yeah we're in a win-win
situation here yeah that's the bottom line I do