<H4>Military divorces: Blame Army pay incentives, dysfunctional family-of-origin stories of soldiers, not just the war itself</H4>

The L.A. Times recently posted a great in-depth story about the toll Iraq and Afghanistan deployments take on military marriages.

While the article pulls at the heartstrings and such stress- and separation-induced divorces are indeed a tragedy, let’s note a few things:

Spc. Jason Garcia, 23, believed that his on-again, off-again relationship with the mother of his then-2-year-old son was on again; he had given her his ATM card as a gesture of commitment.

Hell, if you were non-military and here at home, that’s not the smartest thing in the world. Don’t blame an overseas deployment for that.

Soldiers tend to enlist young and marry young: 1 percent of civilians under 20 is married, compared with about 14 percent of military members in the same age group, said Shelley M. MacDermid, co-director of the Military Family Research Institute at Purdue University.
“These early young marriages are not a great recipe for marital longevity,” MacDermid said. “Research on divorce shows that. Add to that the anxiety associated with a dangerous job, and it doesn't bode well.”

We could blame the Army for not providing more premarital counseling. But the real Army blame is, in essence, playing soldiers more to get married:

Whether by accident or design, the Army encourages its soldiers to marry. The best housing goes to families, leaving single soldiers to share the barracks. Wages are higher for active-duty soldiers with dependents, and higher still for those sent overseas, when the pay is tax-free. Hazardous-duty and family-separation supplements can amount to several hundred dollars a month.

No shit? If I got a bonus of 10 percent of my salary to get married, I might be looking harder, too. Or if I knew a quickie boyfriend or girlfriend got that much bonus, plus another 10 percent or whatever, tax-free, for going overseas, I might even turn into a gold digger pretty fast.

And the Army, rather than providing counseling, is enabling these unprepared marriages.

“Some think they’re going to see the world, and they end up here,” said Justice of the Peace Garland K. Potvin, who has performed hundreds of Army marriages. With $30 and a military waiver of the legal waiting period, that can be accomplished in about half an hour.

So, I can act on the decision of a lifetime in half an hour and get a 10 percent bonus to do it. Shit.

Meanwhile, it appears many Army marrieds or their spouses don’t have the best understanding of marriage as an emotional commitment and a chance for development.

Kristina Cox lasted all of two months in Killeen after her husband left for duty. She packed up and went back to her mother in Oklahoma to have her baby. She declined to be interviewed, but her divorce attorney, Arthur South, described their 12-year marriage as another casualty of the war.
“She’s finding out that she doesn't need him,” said South, who has handled his share of military divorces. "That’s what happens. The gals get married, they are kind of young, and all of a sudden the husband is gone for months. They find out they can write checks, mow the lawn.

There are a lot of situations, marriage and otherwise, where you find you don’t need people at one time, and you do again later. But, that overlooks the ultimate issue, that a modern marriage is supposed to be about wanting someone, not just needing them. But, as the article details, in many cases, multigeneration dysfunctional living and thinking is rolling down the line.

Finally, if you have ever been to Fort Hood, you know that it epitomizes the stereotypical military town in spades. If you haven’t been there, and don’t know that, I’m telling you now. The story makes that clear, and one could easily infer that, sooner or later, a fair amount of these marriages would have imploded or exploded in a peacetime Army. As the JP stats hint, the rise in quickie marriages, funded by Army enticements, is largely to blame for the rise in divorce rates from Army peacetime levels.

So, let’s be realistic. Let’s blame the Army’s lack of more marital and premarital counseling being in place in peacetime. Let’s question the pay bumps for getting married. Let’s note that the Times left out information on the increase in marriage rates.

Above all, let’s remember that individual people are making individual decisions for which they must ultimately be responsible.