“My turn.”

The words echo through the frustrated minds of military spouses every day.

It’s not out of resentment or self-pity.

Rather it is out frustration that they are effectively being frozen out of their own careers because of a disjointed patchwork of state-to-state occupational licensing laws.

Every state has its own laws requiring people in certain professions to secure the government’s approval before they can work in their chosen occupations.

The problem for military families is that they move around so much, typically every two to three years. As a result, spouses in licensed professions either have to give up their careers or go through the long, cumbersome, and bureaucratic process of getting relicensed every time they move.

By the time they get through the paperwork, complete the testing, get their license, and find a new job in the new state, new orders will likely come through that they will have to move again and start the process all over.

At some point, they begin to ask when it will be their turn to put their careers first. Some talk about it. Some don’t.

“I thought about it every day,” said Debbi Chapman, an open-heart intensive care unit nurse who eventually gave up her profession because it became unworkable to maintain her license as she moved from state to state. “Did I voice it? No. But I’m sure there are many spouses out there that are not as accepting as I was.

“It’s like, which career is more important?” said Chapman, whose husband recently retired as an Army sergeant and bomb disposal expert. “My career is very important to the patients I work with. But his job is important to the country and to what he believes in and what he feels. We agree on that. He did a job that not many other people could do or would do. So it was important that he was highly trained. My job is important. I’m highly trained, but so is he, and in the grand scheme of things he was protecting the greater good.”

Chapman is one of more than a dozen military spouses interviewed by the Goldwater Institute who struggle to work in various professions that require a state license because of the frequent moves and short-term deployments that come with military life. All described similar frustrations in trying to navigate the licensing laws of the various states, even those states that claim to have laws and policies friendly to military spouses.

Most said they’ve thought about when it would be their turn to pursue their careers, though for the most part they say they’ve kept those thoughts to themselves.

“It’s a huge stressor on relationships for military families,” said Elizabeth Jamison, a lawyer who has had the discussion about whose career comes first with her husband, a Navy commander and pilot. “I love my husband’s heart for service and I love that he wants to serve his country, and I want to support him in that. But sometimes it does feel like that means I have to completely sacrifice my own career aspirations.”