Dear John/Joanne Letters, have you had one?

I received one while on WestPac. I was engaged on Christmas of 99, and when I went to sea, and arrived at our first foreign port in Australia we received our first load of mail since we left Hawaii. In it was the most pleasant letter explaining that my now ex Fiancee could not take not knowing where in the world I was or if I was alive, dead, or injured. It was probably the easiest break up I ever had and I appreciated the honesty. I just figured it was better to find out she couldn't take a military lifestyle, then to get married, possibly start a family, and then find out after all that, that this wasn't the life for her. It did make the following several months a lot more interesting.

Received one at ROTC Advanced Camp. My squad rallied around me. I think my squad mates replied to her letter...unsure how that went. Best thing that ever happened though. If that was the "one" , she would not have made it through my first duty station, never mind the last 20 years.

I got one on my way to the Persian Gulf War. I was on the USS Guam, heading to the Gulf of Oman.

Whatever. It stung for a few seconds...

I have so much "FUN" in the Marine Corps, stateside *and* abroad, that I really could care less.

I dated a psycho shrink (in training) while I worked at Camp Pendleton. She and I got into a huge argument about infidelity and the military men who cheated on their wives, information she received from stereotypical prose.

Months later, she took an intern job at the Family Center and Camp Pendleton. One week later she apologized to me for the argument we had. Apparently all of the wives she spoke with had been cheating on their active duty husbands.

On my first boat ride, of the married Marines, there was a 75% divorce rate. One of our hydraulics techs was met by his wife at the hangar fly off in jody's car after spending his entire savings on "nose candy."

I knew two male Soldiers and a female Sailor who got Dear John/Jane letters while I was deployed with them in 2008-09. I've been lucky enough to never get a Dear John myself, but I've had a few cases of being cheated on while gone. When that happens you either commit fully to repair the relationship (rare, but more common with cheating on marriages than when dating) or cut your losses entirely. Trying to keep any other middle ground is almost always untenable.

The worst for me was when I went on Reserve Training (and in this case was almost unreachable) and came back to a girlfriend who vanished. From talking about marriage and contemplating moving in, to not even any of our mutual acquaintances being willing to tell me where she was because she told them not to. I found out the truth a few weeks later; turns out that while I was gone she got lonely and depressed, and without me around ended up calling up her ex. They shacked up, and she didn't want to deal with the inevitable confrontation that would happen when I got back.

Actually I wrote the Dear Joan letters. After I arrived in RVN I came to the conclusion that this was no place to continue any type of relationship. There were too many horrifying outcomes to expect another to understand or address. Surprisingly this led to quite large traffic in letters. I picked things up when I returned home.

in a word...yup

Like...a physical letter?

No. But have handled many a soldier who got one.

SSgt Larry Olson,
I never got Jodi'd, but if I did it would just be business as usual. Walk over to the MWR and make a POF account (Plenty of fish). Talk to a bunch of girls, and by the time your back in the states you can usually get one of them to wait for you at the hangar. (If you were actively putting in effort on POF).

Lol. My squad leader actually taught me how to use it and what to say (I was a 19 year old PFC)