Ian Moore – Adjusting to civvy life after Naval career

Simon: That idea of being away in close company with people, and then coming back and sort of re-joining a different world, because you’ve had your own world inside the submarine when you’ve been away. How do you adjust to that, or do you …?

Ian: Very difficult, and this is one of the reasons why relationships break down, is that the worst thing you can actually do is you can bring the attitudes and what you actually do, off the submarine and bring it into your private life. When the two of those encroach all the time, then you’re on a loser, you’re on a sticky wicket, all the way through. It’s never going to work.

You have to learn to be able to cut off what you actually do within the Military, away from what you actually do in your so-called civilian life, and your family life, and how those two need to be kept separate.

The best relationships there are the ones that are the distance relationship. I knew a guy who was very, very happily married all the way through his Naval career. He had children, he had a home, and he had this home in Hull.

His wife only ever saw him 2 weeks every 3 months, because for those 3 months, he was Navy. For those 2 weeks when he went home, he was the family man, and that was it.

The family and the Navy didn’t exist basically, and tey worked like that for years, and he got really, really worried when he was coming to the end of his time, because he said, “How’s this going to work, how am I going to be able to …?” and he was really afraid of what was going to happen to his family life and his relationship now that he was going to be at home all the time.

And so was his wife (laughs).