Posted on May 23, 2016
Military divorces are slightly higher than the average population. Why do you think this is so?
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Posted 8 y ago
Responses: 45
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All of the above, but I think an issue that isn't listed on here as well. The military does not really provide an opportunity for you to live with your significant other before making the big jump into marriage. It doesn't have to do as much with age, but maybe the quickness in which people get married. They get married because they are joining, PCSing, deploying, want to live together, and they will try to work out the details later. They are not afforded the time necessary to spend with their spouse getting to know them and often change without growing together due to different experiences and time apart.
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MSgt Jeff Bailey
True, but i'd say irrelevant. It's not the military's "job" to give you the opportunity to develop a relationship...that's our OWN jobs. WE choose to join knowing there will be separations. WE choose to marry (or not) as a way to mitigate some of the forced separations. My son has now joined the military and hopefully will not become a statistic himself. He and his longtime sweetheart are about to be married. Hoping that their going together for the better part of 8 yrs will have given them the "time" to get to know if they are right for each other.
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SSG Bethany Viglietta
MSgt Jeff Bailey - Actually it's totally relevant to the question at hand. They asked why we think military has a slightly higher rate of divorce than our civilian counterparts. No one said the military has to "give the opportunity", but I can assure you, that it is one of the reasons the divorce rate is higher among military members over our civilian counterparts.
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MSgt Jeff Bailey
SSG Bethany Viglietta - Seems to me what you describe is called the courting process. How we all chose to engage and "court" prospective spouses is entirely up to us. When we "choose" to enter the military, we know there well be long periods of forced separation. We then "choose" to marry to avoid the separation, or "choose" to deal with a long distance relationship, or "choose" to call it quits temporarily or permanently. This is my point, the choice is always up to us. Joining the service is hard on relationships to be sure, but joining itself is our choice, so we bring this on ourselves.
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MSgt John McGowan
SSG You are correct. I do believe the military cost me one marriage and about cost another. When I returned from a 41 month tour in Hawaii (tough duty) my wife expected sometwhere closer than where we actually ended up. I thought that would be it and I even went so far to tell her to stay home rather than go with me. You can't do a whole lot when you are picked by your job. You go where they send you. Wife do not always understand the systm the military uses to make assignments. Sometimes I don't either.
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LCpl Tad Cunningham
I disagree. I got married young. Still going, grandfather got married at 19 as a Marine. Still married. I think it's a lot of these young Marines and young soldiers marry the first female they can. They marry for their perception of love. Not actual love. You aren't shown love while being lower enlisted, and you're normally pretty far from your family, so you look for love wherever you can. You think you've found it, you get married, then you and your spouse both quickly realize that you don't actually love each other.
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MSG (Join to see)
some times you come home different, and all the understanding, and couselling cant help it, you grow apart until one says no more, my wife was the dream i've always had, young and vibrant, it was love at first sight for me, told a co worker thats the woman i'm going to marry, 1 yr latter we dated, 1 yr latter married 2004 , it was up and down but we made it work 2008 depolyed to iraq, was ambushed iraq may 2009, started my downward spiral, then end of july 2009 my eldest daughter killed in mva, i was 49 she was 35, pstsd, anger, and alcohol, she couldnt do it 2013 letf, good for her, i'm better now and we are frinds
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I definitely say all of it. Not being in a combat MOS I have never seen Combat but I can attest to Lack of Family Support and how hard Deployments are on a marriage. I know for a fact that if I were deployed half as much as some of the infantry guys I know, there is a good chance my wife would have left me. It is hard on her and our kids me being gone. If its not school, its the field, if its not the field, its deployment. I know some people are going to say that I have no room to talk and being that I am currently on my first deployment, I have not been out of country much, but my sons are already asking for me to get a new job. My wife is struggling to maintain a home with 4 boys there. I think it would have been easier if we had time to acclamate to the area and had time for us to make friends and get to know people. However, when you move 20 hours away from family and your spouse leaves 2 weeks after moving into your house, that can't be easy on any relationship let alone the kids that just had to move away from their friends, school, and family.
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