Editing a divorce website for men, I am often faced with the variety of ways a marriage can end -- all of them as painful as the next. As anyone reading this can probably attest, the difficulties of keeping a marriage together when the partners are separated makes the 50/50 prospect of remaining intact even more grim. Military divorce is especially difficult because of the fact that great distances without the opportunity to simply drop everything and rush back to salvage the troubled relationship further compounds the everyday difficulties that non-military families must endure.
One of the common difficulties that the men who visit our site often speak of is one of feeling frustration because the divorce proceedings essentially strip them of the ability to have any control over the situation. By the time that one partner has served the other with divorce papers, the decision has already been made. And while for the partner who is still in the same town with the partner who wishes to divorce the feeling of still having some control over the situation might seem illusory, there is no doubting that a deployed partner is certainly in a position more clearly removed from control.
Recently, marriage expert and counselor Jon Benigas explained that the male method of coping can often lead down roads that are more destructive if not tempered with thorough consideration of the problems that have lead to the divorce. Benigas stated that it is precisely the effort to remain "in control" of the situation that often lead men to make mistakes that neither help them save the marriage nor put themselves in good positions during the subsequent divorce.
A recent Associated Press article confirms the sad fact that the trend of divorce for those in the armed forces has just increased from 3.5% to 3.7%, though spokesmen from the army call the numbers statistically small. These numbers may seem small, but it is important to remember that they reflect only "active-duty" military. The numbers catch up to national average after leaving the military.
For anyone going through the difficult situation of divorce statistics that point either way are usually of little if any consolation.
And, while it is true that this is the third-longest war that America has been engaged in and the longest since the Revolutionary War fought with an all-volunteer Army, the statistics have a hard time reflecting the emotional turmoil that a long separation causes a couple and the emotional fall-out that accompanies a divorce heaped upon the other massive adjustments that must be made when one or both partners must leave for deployment, serve and return.
The original article can be found here.
Rick Ortiz is the editor of www.DadsDivorce.com
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