twelvefootboy wrote: ↑Fri Nov 30, 2018 10:45 am
AFRET CMS wrote: ↑Thu Nov 29, 2018 1:44 pm
As a personal side note, my wife DID outrank me and I had to salute her every time she administered the oath at each of my reenlistment ceremonies. I was a Staff Sergeant (E-5) when I married her while she was a Captain (O-3). I retired as a Chief Master Sergeant (E-9), and she's a retired Lieutenant Colonel (O-5). Seventeen years married while on active duty; 24 years as married civilians since military retirement. We're still wondering if it will last.
Congrats on marrying up! My sister was a Captain but got Riffed after 12 years service (I think) and is still on the same job as a Civilian (with better pay) for 20+ years. She had married a tech sergeant and he stayed in for 20+ and also has kept the same job. The USAF was my sister's life, and she would have taken the lower pay forever. Unfortunately, she may have been derailed by the old policy against fraternization, which is a career killer. It was probably just too crowded during a forces downsizing, but the family thinks she was Major material even if she did burn my nose with a fireworks punk on my 10th birthday (lesson - don't give 2 year olds fireworks).
Knew many folks in "mixed marriages" during our time in the service; at least during our time in the '70s through the early '90s the only specific fraternization rule was "not in the same chain of command, disclose it to each individual's commander, and keep it professional on the job." Pilots were married to weather forecasters, avionics techs were married to civil engineers, lawyers married security personnel, and there were MANY "mixed marriages" in health care (we were one -- we met when we were assigned to the same aeromedical squadron doing in-flight patient care). The USAF philosophy was very different from some of the other services, in that it treated any "fraternization" the same way, whether it was officer/enlisted, senior officer/junior officer, or senior enlisted/junior enlisted. A sergeant dating a lieutenant, a master sergeant dating a staff sergeant, or a colonel dating a captain were subject to the same rules. In other services, relationships between the enlisted and officer corps were frowned upon, but relationships within the respective corps, even between junior and senior, were OK -- and they could cause just as many problems.
Depending on the time frame, it's likely your sister simply got caught in a numbers crunch. There have been several periods of downsizing when many highly qualified people were let go when the service would have preferred to retain them. And it sometimes varied by career field, depending on overages and shortages. There were periods when super-sharp people were being riffed from one career field while relatively mediocre people in another career field were receiving retention bonuses. But her service is appreciated and I hope she enjoyed her service as much as we did ours.