Military life puts young marriages to a constant testBy 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.
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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.
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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."