An Officer and a Gentleman

This is about a secondary character in the film, Sid, not the main character Zack.

Zack learns Sid is expected to marry his late brother Tommy's fiancée. Meanwhile, Lynette tells Sid she may be pregnant.

After a severe anxiety attack during a high-altitude simulation in a pressure chamber, Sid quits the program. He proposes to Lynette, revealing that he never wanted a military career and was assuming his brother's role to please his parents. Upon learning Sid dropped out, Lynnette says the pregnancy was a false alarm. Sid wants them to marry and move to Oklahoma, where he will resume his old JC Penney job and work his way up. Lynnette rejects Sid, wanting to marry a naval aviator and live overseas. A brokenhearted Sid leaves; Zack and Paula arrive soon after, looking for him. Zack accuses Lynette of faking pregnancy, which she denies.

Zack and Paula find Sid at a motel where he has hanged himself. 

A few clips:

She's pregnant

Okie from muskogee

Swallowing the ring (not the actual scene unfortunately, a "did you know...?")

I'm SIXTY years old and got married at nineteen. I was in my early forties when my long, drawn out divorce was finalized at long last after more than two years and I'm only VERY RECENTLY figuring out that I'm Lynette, only minus the faked pregnancy, and my ex-husband is Sid, only minus the dropping out and committing suicide.

I thought I was IN LOVE big time. I thought I did everything RIGHT and knew him well and had feelings and we were on the same page.

I married him because he said his only dream was a military career and I wanted out of my hometown and military wife was a role I understood. He then let the Air Force jerk him around for a YEAR pretending they would ship him and then I was unfaithful with my ex-boyfriend who worshiped the ground I walked on while being an insulting prick and THEN -- MAGICALLY -- the future ex walked across the goddamned hall and talked to an Army recruiter, they promptly got him the waiver he needed and he shipped in short order.

So I don't have ANY idea why he married me. I'm left wondering if he really wanted a military career or just what and thinking my sister was probably more right than I really believed: If he hadn't married ME, he would have been a gamer delivering newspapers and living with his mom forever like one of our friends.

At some lunch, some retired General told a joke about going home to visit family and his wife's ex-boyfriend gasses up their car and he starts needling her about "You could be married to him instead of me." Until she finally says "If I had married him, he would be General and you would be pumping gas."

I liked the joke but didn't take it seriously as a possibility and I still don't know what to think about MY LIFE because I absolutely wasn't trying to trap a military guy into marrying me or looking for a soldier to marry or whatever.

I was sure I LOVED this MAN and we would MAKE life work and the reality is I apparently MADE his career and the marriage ended and his military career ended about the same time.

The marriage worked as long as he had a military career. His military career worked as long as he was with ME.

And I have no idea what he REALLY wanted in life and what the real deal was. He also wanted to be a college professor after retiring from the military and that never happened. He wanted to retire to a particular state and when he failed to get sent there, retired at the last duty station they assigned him.

We got divorced and I did the stereotypical for a woman thing and went home to family with my kids and got a job and then traveled in spite of being dirt poor, meanwhile all his big plans -- he's Da Man! -- evaporated once the little wifey running things for him was gone.

Don't get me wrong: I'm a dirt poor homeless skank whose life would need to crawl up three levels to merely be in the toilet. I'm not saying I'm hot stuff. I can't figure out how to make MY LIFE work.

But "He's a hard-charging, ambitious bad ass!" and "I'm a helpless damsel in distress." was the narrative he wanted me to believe while we were married and that's not looking believable in the slightest at this point. Not that I ever bought that, but it seemed plausible that maybe he really believed it and I no longer think even THAT is plausible.

What does this have to do with YOU? 

If you are AMAB and married to a woman, you need to figure out if she really wanted YOU or if she really wanted something she THOUGHT you could give her.

Lynette didn't want Sid. She wanted to marry an officer and a gentleman, not an Okie from Muskogee. 

She didn't care about Sid at all.

The online questions from married AMAB individuals I see boil down to "I DESPERATELY need this woman to actually love ME during my darkest hour and I'm terrified she will leave me instead."

And that's a COMPLETELY valid concern.

Because I genuinely, truly in my heart of hearts BELIEVED for four decades I married for love and we had a special personal bond. And the reality is I needed a surgical extraction from my messed up situation that should have been inescapable and I got that, but I am realizing I never actually knew the man I married.

I thought the man I married was a guy whose entire identity was "I'm a bad ass soldier and it's all I ever wanted!" and now I'm thinking if I had married someone else, "he would be General and you would be pumping gas."

And I didn't know that about myself because I don't think I'm that conniving.