Military marriage
The lifestyle of a service member in our armed forces is a very unique lifestyle. This military lifestyle puts pressure on spouses and children that can never truly be measured. The military lifestyle is a lifestyle that is always full of change. These changes include the change of duty station every three years. Currently, there is also the constant cycle of 15 month deployments. Which by themselves impose permanent physical, psychological and emotional changes on the lifestyle of the servicemember. All of these outside influences have been studied by the Dept of Defense. Each of these studies reinforces the facts that deployments do have a direct, long-term effect on servicemembers lives and raises the divorce rate of servicemembers. Reality is, when George Bush asked this country to begin a war on terror, George Bush should have declared war on the marriages of the service members that make up our armed forces.
In the two years prior to 2001, rate of divorce in the active military changed abruptly. Throughout the services and across rank and gender, the change was the same: After peaking in 1999, rates of dissolution fell sharply to a five year low in 2000. Since the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom in 2001, change in rates of divorce has been more gradual. In the Army, Air Force, and Marines, rates of divorce have increased steadily since 2001. In the Navy, rates of divorce increased sharply in the first couple of years following the Start of OIF and OEF. Unquestionably, rates of divorce have increased since the onset of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, lending support to the view that the breakup of military families as collateral damage from the non-stop deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.
The rates for the Army give a snapshot of what are believed to be a military wide trend. Army officials reported 10,447 divorces among active duty personnel in 2004, a number that’s...