Military life puts young marriages to a constant test

[unhappycamper]

Military life puts young marriages to a constant test
By Jennifer H. Svan, Stars and Stripes
Pacific edition, Sunday, October 14, 2007


When Capt. Angela Batts shipped off to an air base in Qatar this summer, it marked the first time in nine years she was apart from her husband, Clif, due to a deployment.

~snip~

No one gets a free pass — including the spouses left behind to hold the home together. Marriages are being tested, often strained. Sometimes they break.

The military, recognizing that extended deployments can stress marriages, is stepping up efforts to help couples avoid going to war with each other.

~snip~

Anecdotal evidence suggests “a lot more marriages are in trouble, especially among the high deployers,” she said. NMFA staffers hear from spouses that their husbands or wives are “ ‘never home or they’re not home long enough this repeated deployment to a war zone was not what we signed up for,’ ” Raezer said.

“I’m over-simplifying a little bit here,” she added, “but what you hear often is if the servicemember won’t leave the service, then the spouse feels the need to leave.”

Relationship expert John Van Epp, author of “How To Avoid Marrying a Jerk,” said the outcome of the Rand study surprised him “in light of what I was hearing other people and other couples say ... and my own common sense. It didn’t seem to tap into the reality of how deployments, especially multiple deployments, affect couples.”


Rest of article at: http://stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=49468



uhc comment: The Rand Corporation is on the job & all is well. It appears reality "didn’t jibe with popular belief."

[Sadie4629]

1. Curious about something . . .

I wonder if anyone knows if this was a problem during/after WWII.

My dad was in the Army and in Europe for four long years. Finally, he came home after being wounded (24 hours after crossing into Germany) and spending months in a VA hospital.

He came home to a much different world. His father had died while he was gone, and his mother had sold their farm. My mother's dad had sold their family farm and moved to a different state, so my mom (who had married my dad five months before Pearl Harbor was attacked) moved in with her oldest sister and was working for a large company.

I think she must have changed a lot during my dad's absence. She had gone from a farm girl working at a "dime store" to an independent woman with a job she loved.

Dad came back with an injury, no job, no home, to a woman he must have felt he no longer knew.

My mom used to tell that he was unable to make decisions after he got back. If there was no gas in the car he would ask her if he should put more gas in. Said it was because he was used to taking orders for EVERYTHING! By that time, my mom was supervising "girls" at her office, and I think she probably had no problem with giving orders, so it seemed to work out.

Whatever differences they found in each other, they overcame and were happily married over 50 years when my dad finally passed away.

I just wonder if they were the exception.

[fenriswolf]

2. mostly what most of my ffriends were worried about

were their spouses shacking up with "jodi" i do know a couple of them were told that their wives were pregnant, this is after we had been their for about 7 months....and their wives were only a couple months pregnant. Know a couple of people who got divorced and just in general alot of strained marriages.

[NYVet]

3. And on the civilian side you have the same type of stress on relationships

for oil workers who are on drilling rigs in the gulf for months at a time, truck drivers who are gone for weeks at a time, and other jobs that require long absences from family.