NatGeo

I think it would be hard enough to have a good marriage with a regular girl. Falling for a female pilot is like falling for a female celebrity in my opinion.

If you are a gambler, then I say go for it. I would rather take a 30% chance, than a .03% chance.

Snuffaluffagus

Just don't let her find out about your FA girlfriends!

DangleDunlops

You can’t get divorced if you don’t get married.

Translation: don’t.

rickair7777

I'm not speaking with a bias, never been divorced or married to crew but I have seen a lot, and almost all of it ended badly.

The success stories I know of all came about after both were established where they wanted to be (or were at least OK with it). No kids involved.

The one crew couple with kids that I thought was successful has been at it over ten years, but they bid opposite schedules (same position/equipment so can cover each other). Sadly that relationship is now fraying at the ages, don't think divorce due to kids but it's not monogamous any more... and one them isn't happy about that.

Odds are not good, frankly pilot lifestyle is so extreme by "normal" standards that you really benefit from a yin and yang, with each spouse taking a slightly different role. A female pilot is less likely to be a counter-balance to you.

busdriver12

0.03% chance? If I got my math right, that's 3 out of 10,000.

You know what they say....there's lies, damn lies, and statistics.
Of course, they also say that 57% of people make up their own statistics

Off the top of my head I can come up with 11 dual pilot long married couples. Most with kids and they all seem pretty happy.

Maybe it's because at FedEx we don't have flight attendants to mess around with. Or maybe it's because we're too tired to cheat, anyways.

TiredSoul

It can work.
I know a couple that fly for the same Major, just different fleets.
No kids though.
Don’t rush into things.
Be “engaged” for a couple of years and see how it works out.

Slaphappy

I agree, in this day and age there is no reason to get married. There is nothing stopping you from enjoying the benefits of marriage without getting married. You're just entrapping your finances.

prfly

This is from someone who married and divorced another pilot myself. I agree with the post, that it has nothing to do with occupation. If its going to work it will work, if its not, its not. Or somewhere along those lines is what they said. I wholeheartedly agree.

My advice: You already said, "shes the one".
So go for it, but make an agreement with her:
1) do not have any kids until you are certain that this is a good lifestyle fit for one another
2) trust is key, if there is even a hint of mistrust, it wont work
3) make an agreement to never lie to one another and if you do, trust is broken for good and it wont work...especially when you are both pilots.
4) Make a notebook and each of you refer to it weekly/monthly, every Anniversary (iow...often)
Explain in detail what life will be like start to finish, career, children, QOL, base/commute beginning goals, ending goals, retirement years, who will take care of the children...a trusted family member you both love or a Nanny? What type of education you want your children to have. Consider home schooling to maximize time spent with your children in their educational years and not being reduced to being a part-time mom and dad while others raise your children.
Try to work for the same airline, same base
The key is to refer to the notebook often so that neither strays or forgets from the goals and agreements made.
Go for it or you will regret it!!! Because, even if you married another person....quite possibly upon your first major argument (with the non Pilot wife), you will wonder what it would have been like with your first choice.
BESIDES...
No one understands a pilots lifestyle better than another pilot.
5) Dont forget to make household chore agreements too. I swear, thats like the death of most marriages. The wife gets ticked when she works too but does all the other ******* ie. the cooking, cleaning, mothering (a gazillion things that entails), running the HH etc.
6)On a daily or weekly basis...ask what you can do to help relieve some of the burden women seem to automatically take on. Otherwise resentment builds and erupts monthly from nowhere (or so you think).
Never ever use the word "crazy" or you will see crazy come out. Sadly, God punished women with roller coaster emotions (aka hormones) that even women themselves don't understand.
Also I heard this once:
"crazy is the term guys use when they cant understand their girl".
Journal THIS man! This ain't no joke. BEEN THERE, done that.
Best of luck to you and yours

rickair7777

Careful with this. In this day and age there's an expectation that the dude does half of her work. That's probably fine if you're a new-age bearded man-bunned metrosexual who doesn't know which end of the hammer goes on the nail.

But in my efforts to alleviate some of my girl's angst related to running the house while I was gone I ended up trying to doing "my" half of the house work. But OBTW, it was just "assumed" somehow that all of my traditional responsibilities somehow just "happened"... maintaining cars, house repairs, house upgrades, yard work, heavy lifting for her gardening hobby, pest control, dropping off kids, picking up kids, volunteering at school, etc.

Got to the point where I never had any time off and that became a problem. Best solution is to make enough money to farm out the stuff she doesn't care about, so you can have viability doing things she does care about.

Hiring a maid didn't work... she'd spend all day sunday cleaning up for the maid who was coming on monday.



That kind of makes sense. If you can recognize hormones when you see them coming, and have a technique to de-escalate, that will go a looooong ways towards a stable relationship. It would be nice if we could get them to warn us when hormones are imminent, but for some reason they seem to prefer to blow up first and apologize later.

Std Deviation

I recently jumpseated in an AA A321 from LGA to DFW. I sensed something “different” about the crew. About 20 minutes into the flight I asked some bidding / fleet questions. I got a lot of “we” answers. Finally the FO points at the CA and says, “we’re married.”

Fun couple. Great conversation.