Found this item of interest today- Military divorce rate holding steady. I was surprised by that- and evidently some other folks were too.

Mentioned in the article is that the statistics are not taking into account breakups that occur after the servicemember has departed the military. I’m betting that the Army policy of 15-month deployments with not even a year in between them is shattering far more marriages than are accounted for. I say “not even a year”, because that’s the reality of it- they might be getting a bit more than the 9 months we got between my old unit’s first two tours in Iraq, but I’d be surprised if it was even close to the “Fifteen there, fifteen home” that they supposedly aim for.

The support for the spouse left behind is, in my experience, crap. I base that on the year that my Lazybones was gone (the contact for his platoon moved out of state and forgot about telling the other spouses, bright girl) and from the accounts I heard from fellow soldiers following the first tour, whose wives were positively disgusted with how the Family Readiness Group was run. Currently, I’m noting that the group here is great at forwarding me a lot of crap- mostly attachments that I don’t even look at- and kindly plasters all the email addresses on the list into the “To” field- why they can’t figure out what “Bcc” is is beyond me. The same goes for certain members of my family, but that is a whole other post.

ANYWAY.

The deployment schedule is horrible, and it’s kicking the crap out of the families of people who do one of the toughest jobs there is for crappy pay and dubious “benefits”.

I wonder if they have any statistics on how many of the divorces took place between two military members (current or former service). On the one hand, it’s a hell of a lot easier to cope with it when you know what it’s like. On the other hand, knowing the ridiculous amounts of cheating that went on during deployment, it can be even more stressful. Not for me in particular (L’bones knows my opinions of what should happen to those who cheat, and he values having his testicles attached to his body), but really it was so outrageous, one can’t help but be a little disturbed. That is also a whole other post though.