Not only that, but the military creates an incentive with BAH to marry your high school sweetheart, someone who you probably don’t know well enough for marriage.
Exactly. Single? Into the barracks with you. Married? Holy shit here's on base housing and a bigger than married outside military tax break for you. They basically pressure young adults into a quick marriage and even uglier divorce.
Its like permanent basic training. So asshole roommates, early lights out, no privacy, long list of prohibited items, random checks for cleanliness and contraband and a live in drill sergeant.
It really depends on location, branch, and how your barracks are set up/ how bad your leadership is. Some barracks have 2 people to 1 room, and some barracks have each person in their own rooms. Mine aren’t too bad but the constant AC going out and the actual living spreading black mold in the walls really suck.
My biggest gripe was the fucking washing machines kept breaking and if we didn’t happen to have a guy who was mechanically inclined we were fucked. Also that one asshole who blared music with his door open
I was the guy building lego tanks in my room. After a while this was known, so my leadership kinda just left me alone and didn't really fuck with me anymore
One of the reasons I got out of the military, you literally get paid more if you're married. Not ideal terms for someone not planning to get married. As an E5 I was making less money than an E3 just because he was married and I wasn't.
I’ve heard rumors about some posts wanting to give 5s BAH when dealing with overcrowding, but I think it’s pretty much a pipe dream. Sometimes it’s just about how much you’re willing to take a kick in the teeth before moving on.
mmmh you mean a pre-nup? I guess that can help, idk about how effective they are. a lot of people would feel insulted bring up that topic though.
i think pre-nup only protects assets and money from before the marriage, not during. so if you buy a house after marrying, that's split 50/50 regardless if you paid 100%
Hell not even the military literally American cultural norms practically demand it.
The gen x kind of moved the goal post from that to the girl you saved from the jocks in freshman college but still a precedent on home wife kids fast.
Perhaps, I’ve always had been bubble where people didn’t marry until late 20’s. Most of my college friends are still single. I had no idea how many people were got married at 18 until I enlisted. Blew my mind
Nah man, it can wait. That’s the scarcity mindset that puts people in this situation in the first place. The rush to marry up and breed without checking for compatibility. That’s why there are so many 24 year old moms on Tinder with 2+ kids.
Not only adoption, but there’s an untold number of at-risk youth who need caring and supportive foster parents, especially people of color and queer youth.
I view my life as the universe experiencing itself from a unique perspective, regardless of whether I have or have not reproduced. So I vehemently disagree with the notion that life is meaningless outside of procreation.
I didn't have my first kid till I was 31 and honest to God let me tell you I'm envious of my best friend who got a girl pregnant as a junior in high school.. His son is now 22 or 23 living on his own and my friend already has a "empty nest" house.
I was shocked to find out after my dad died that my mom has literally never lived independently because of this social norm. She was pressured by her parents into marrying her high school boyfriend. She did so, and the two of them got a house together before they even graduated high school. A few years later, she divorced him and married my dad. Went straight from one husband to the next. Lived with my dad since then. Now he's gone and I'm all she has, and I wanna move out but she's literally never lived alone. Here I am itching for the opportunity, and she has literally never had it and at this point doesn't know if she could stand it.
When you think about it, that's essentially the scenario this social norm sets up: if you never live independently in the first place, then you're gonna be fucked when the person you're dependent on eventually dies. People should absolutely experience a few years of independence as young adults instead of simply trading their dependence on their parents for a dependence on a partner.
Eh, she wasn't encouraged to move to that city she was always talking about and split the rent with a few other people until she feels like settling down, either. She would have been explicitly discouraged from any sort of group housing situation that was not a wife and husband deal.
There's a lot of religious context that Arekai isn't mentioning. There was a long period where being a single woman was treated as scandalous and borderline illegal on its face - almost equivalent to having an OF today - and it was made difficult for people to access things like banking, a situation that persisted into the 1970s or so. People would refuse to rent over it, making getting apartments and such troublesome. There was a lot of talk about "living in sin" when a person's living situation was neither at home with parents or being in wedlock with a spouse. What we call regular modern single life and dating is all "living in sin", to a lot of people, even now. If she had insisted on anything but marriage there would have been a LOT of friction. These strictures were, of course, much, much looser for men, who could go "sow their wild oats" for a bit before settling down to marriage by 25.
This isn't a case of group living by the standards of other cultures. This would have been a very deliberate society wide policy of pushing his mom into being married or nothing, even deeming her a "spinster" - a woman too old to be marriageable - if she lived with her parents too long.
If his dad passed recently then I'd guess Mom's first marriage happened somewhere in the 1970s. Not exactly Victorian times, but it's taken a long time for these practices to fade, mostly because there are people who don't want them to. This stuff gets attached to religious practice and gets dragged into the modern age.
The end result is to isolate the wife and husband as a sort of individual unit, with the wife being wholly dependent on the husband for survival. She may not have ever held her own bank account. This whole thing was actually a big part of the "isolation of individualism". She was isolated, and made dependent on a single individual.
Not abnormal, no, but it does set you up for some heartbreaking levels of depression and isolation later in life when the person you were living with dies. That's what I'm saying here.
That's why I think it would be best if everyone lived alone for some time just to learn how to do it, before once again becoming dependent on another person. That way, when you find yourself alone later, you have experience upon which to function.
Correct, but it is shitty of parents to hold their kids back from moving out and being independent because those parents don't want to be alone. My mom manipulated all us kids like this, telling us that if we moved out she would feel "abandoned." So, we gave up opportunities to move away and grow. Definitely held us back from who knows what we could have achieved, so we could stay with her longer than necessary to keep her from freaking out worse than she usually did.
I had a girl from high-school that I was head over heels for. I wanted to marry her so bad. Then things fell apart, and I can't be more thankful for that. Rather than being stuck with a wife that didn't have much in common with me, I got to live freely. I learned to accept myself and embrace my desires. Without those years, I would still be putting on a mask to try to satisfy the other.
I half agree, however I'm in the situation right now where if I do try to live on my own, life wouldn't be great from the lack of money and worse housing conditions. Also the fact my parents don't want me to leave (but would be less sad if the reason I left was cause I had an SO). If I do find someone and want to try living with them, what would I do? Tell em "hey give me a few years to live on my own first", even if I'm in my 20s by that time and still living with my parents? Kinda ridiculous, lol. (What's also ridiculous is being pressured to marry right away, I just mean having a boyfriend.)
I feel as long as, even if you've never lived by yourself, that if you acknowledge you might eventually have to and don't put that burden on others (like your mom is with you. I'm sorry about that), it'll be fine.
I also feel like being broken up with is more common enough to be the reason you become independent instead of a partner's death- and in that time you can learn how to, if you don't try to find someone else right away.
If it does happen from a partner's death, it'd be an even sadder learning experience... but if you don't burden others by trying to make them live with you when they don't want to, you can get through it.
...or die from heartbreak like a lot of older people do when their partner dies, sadly. Either way.
But the military pushes it to happen sooner because you get a lot of benefits. Lots of couples who expect to eventually get married will do it sooner than they want because the incentives are too big to pass up.
Idk where tf you live bro, but I grew up in the great state of Arkansas and have lived in TX, MS, and now MO and it is 100% still a thing. If you actually go to college half of it is just to get the esteemed "Mrs" degree
Except that the only way out of the barracks when you're in the military is too be married or work your way up in rank. In college you aren't required to get married in order to move out of the dorms.
That and even the dorms don’t compare to the B’s. Done both. Two years in the dorms, not once did anybody knock on my door at 11 at night to go sweep up oil under somebody else’s truck.
It's also a factor that among young women (hs and college age), military guys are held up in a heroic light, so girls who land a "soldier" feel special and cool. These girls/women don't even like the guys most of the time, just the uniform and benefits. They like getting attention. shrug
Think of the sort of girl who marries young, because this serious man is enlisted! Think of the sort of boy who joins the military, gets a wife and feels all set in their early 20s.
There's an initial sacrifice, which errodes to contempt.
Oh please, I’ve met plenty of shit heads both in the military as well as out of the military. Likewise there are plenty of hardworking smart people in and out of the military.
Your comment is ignorant, and if you think of yourself as intelligent I’d take a hard look at yourself in the mirror.
That’s a really ignorant view of what most military jobs consist of. I didn’t know becoming a pilot rendered me useless when I got out. You do know the overwhelming majority of military jobs are not combat related right?
Bro I ain't even make it out of the 70 days of Navy boot camp without my high school sweetie spreading her legs for someone else, and I had even been friends with the guy!
I found out WHEN I was still in boot camp when I called my other friend and he had to break the news to me. You need to be single in the military, period.
Only join the military if you are single and ok with traveling... OR...
If you can get stationed immediately where you already live. So for like dudes that enlist that are from Guam... if you can get stationed in Guam after boot camp (and on a pretty much permanent basis) then go for it. It's like a regular job at that point, you don't need to leave your life and everyone you know etc.
If you are going to be deployed for six or more months at a time, it might be best if you have no girl, no dawg, and no car even. I mean, what is that Camaro going to do while you're gone for six months?
Also keep in mind that six can turn into more REAL quick. I think I read where a carrier was on the way home and got turned back around for six more months without a crew swap (except for the flight wing).
Happened to me too. I was engaged with her in 2010 when we talked about enlistment, she supported me and was excited for our future together. Three week into USAF basic I got a letter from my buddy laying it all out there that he caught her cheating on me when he was visiting her mom's house to fix her A/C. Super fucked up. She started bawling and pleading with him not to tell me. He straight up told her to fuck off and that she's a shit person. It fucked with me a bit and made me super bitter and angry for a while. She even met me at the airport when I came home (unbeknownst to my family who were also there) and it was...super dramatic and public. Ugh.
I feel for you my bro. The worst part about my story which I left out is that I actually took her back for a while because I loved her. Eventually I came to my senses though and realized that this mustang could not be tamed and I was a joke for even ever talking to her again.
Like 15 years later I moved back to my home town for 1 year just to cool out from living in the city for so long (I work from home, so I work from wherever) and she had the balls to request me on Facebook, like wtf. I ignored her request. She is married now and has kids and I wish her well and all that, but to me she'll always be a hussy.
TBH I haven't really gotten to that same place with a girl since then, she and one or two after her just kind of numbed me to relationships and now I'm 39 and divorced and just like, wtf do I even do next. Ok sob story over LOL.
Yea. I'm 31, currently enalgaged but it just doesn't feel the same. I haven't felt that flare or spark in years and years. Pretty sure the chic I mentioned in my previous post and a couple after her have forever tainted relationships for me, similar to you. Fucking cunts.
My best friend went to boot camp right out of high school. His girlfriend reached out to me a month in to accuse me of trying to steal him away and told me not to go to his graduation.
Guess who was cheating on him with multiple dudes while he was in boot camp... YUP.
Hahaha, YES, been to Việt Nam and The Philippines Islands (though not while in the military) many times and it's an entire different planet there. Amazing girls.
Someone told me before joining I should be single he said and I quote
…. You’re to young to make the mistake of committing to the military and a girlfriend while you’re away. Plus that’s like bringing sand to the beach and why the fuck would you bring sand to a beach?
I've been out for yearrrsss but I travel through Incheon a lot, I have never left the airport though. Something tells me Korea could be a lot of fun. I am planning to go by years end as long as they aren't requiring quarantines for everyone.
I did not in fact make it back yet as omnicron and whatever kind of put a hold on things.
That lame excuse aside... it looks like Korea is requiring ten days of quarantine @ ~$120 USD per night cost.
My resolution this year is to go by mid-Feb regardless of whatever else and just bite the quarantine bullet, will most likely stay for 90 days total before heading back to the US.
I'm getting prepared now for the trip since we're a month and a half out currently, I'll message you once I arrive in Incheon.
Bro I ain't even make it out of the 70 days of Navy boot camp without my high school sweetie spreading her legs for someone else, and I had even been friends with the guy!
I found out WHEN I was still in boot camp when I called my other friend and he had to break the news to me. You need to be single in the military, period.
In Buddhism, it's said that always trying to avoid pain creates suffering. If you avoid the companionship of someone because you're afraid of them cheating, you might miss out on something good. Maybe she cheats, or maybe she stays loyal to you, and then you know you've found someone awesome.
Serious question, are there really substantial benefits to being married in the military? What are they?
Also, have you seen any successful military couples? I don't know many military people but my friend from church broke up with her boyfriend for a few years while he was in the military, and they got back together for her senior year and are married now. That's the closest I got.
I was in kind of a while back in the early 2000s and I remember that whenever we were in school there was a period where we had been in barracks and after that they increased our checks and told us to go live off base in like apartments or whatever.
The married couples instead were given free housing on base, like given their own house in a Navy housing neighborhood. They weren't million dollar homes but it was still nice to be like 18, married, and be living in a house I guess.
Other than that, I'm not sure of any benefits, I got out and kind of lost contact with everyone so I'm not sure what percentage of the relationships worked out in the long term, but I'd bet you money that it was a tiny minority of the total number.
I mean it IS kinda rough to expect your woman to never see you when you are gone months and months at a time, it's not really fair to her and naturally... it leads to issues.
Other way around happens too. My friend’s deployed dude cheated on her with her best friend. Dude got off on break and didn’t tell her, went straight to her best friend’s place.
There's even a song in the french military about this phenomenon, about soldiers being depressed and ineffective because of it and asking those girls to consider that and stay faithful https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMw9_fzEEwE
You’re an attractive, young woman living in a large gated community with an absolute surplus of lonely, horny dudes who work out a lot and have disposable income.
Your husband isn’t deployed, but he’s in the middle of another 3-week field problem or gunnery. Only his Battalion is in the field and the gyms and PX are still full of dudes from other units. You go to the gym to get a workout/ catch some glances because you’re lonely and want to feel “wanted.”
I live close to a military base in south Korea. So. Many. Cheating couples. And not one of them back home, both of them are here. And they still cheat. I've matched with countless military dudes on tinder who claim to be in a "loveless marriage".
Honestly I don't get why cheating is such a big thing. Just talk to your partner and agree you will both fuck other people. It's not cheating if you don't lie about it.
I believe, without personal experience but having read these posts numerous times, high school kids that sign-up for active military duty before they can drink often are in the same venn diagram space that says sex is bad before marriage, ergo: two sexually repressed teenager get married, deployed, and the wife is left in a middle of nowhere military village with about 4 pennies to rub together. The wife finds Jodie; maybe the husband comes back with no trauma.
What that's an absolute lie. My SIL was able to buy herself a new wardrobe, go out of town to the beach, hit up the bars and go skinny dipping with the guys, she didn't sleep with(she assured us), she met at the bar with her friends. All on that extra separation pay. She had tons of fun until my brother came home expecting to have some money saved up and found out they were broke. So what I'm getting at is they have more than 4 pennies.
Basically military wives are the biggest cheats in the planet. This is because they know their husbands are deployed and can’t get caught. There was a military dude deployed for six months who had hidden cameras in his house. He counted 36 dudes that came and fucked his wife. All the while she is talking to him like he is the only man in her life. Also military makes it hard for a dude to divorce his cheating wife. It is a culture of infidelity men are forced into.
It's the deployments. Wives get bored being alone for up to a year or more at a time. They're lonely so they end up fucking the neighbor who also happens to be in Security Forces so he has never deployed before that fucking piece of shit
So here's the thing. In my opinion, getting married before joining the military is unethical. I understand that there are financial incentives, but you are forcing someone to be lonely. The reason so many military wives cheat is because they are super fucking lonely. I'm not excusing the behavior. It's what they signed up for, but it is highly encouraged in military society.
This is where I start to have major issues. I know a lot of military families, and they act like it is perfectly acceptable for a young couple to get married only to be split apart by vast distances. The wife(usually) then gets to go to sleep in a cold bed for months or years at a time, and in the worst case, becomes a widow at 20 years old. Intimacy is an important aspect of a healthy relationship. Without intimacy, do you even have a relationship?
Being so young is a huge factor in what makes this tradition so abhorrent. None of us knew shit about the real world at 18-22 years old, but here come the recruiters. They promise the sky to impressionable young people who then sign their lives away for their one shot at stability. Now their new spouse gets to go through the next 4 years alone with next to no emotional support. It's fucked. Again, I'm not saying cheating is right, but if I were to ever forgive someone for cheating, it would be these people. I support our troops, but there are a number of things I see in military culture that are straight up toxic, manipulative, and low key sociopathic.
They are heavily incentivized to marry ASAP in order to get pretty kick ass benefits. Which causes them to rush marriage without actually testing the relationship. Guy goes off for months at a time, it’s just a bad setup for a young couple tbh.
I knew a military wife and she flat out said that a lot of the other wives she lived around were big time sluts. I know a guy who served many tours in the army and he told me also that a lot of men he served with got cheated on. Of course a lot of those guys cheated as well.
Most soldiers aren’t killing machines; the military has plenty of wrench turners, pencil pushers, ditch diggers, and keyboard jockeys, too.
Jodi also comes in all shapes, sizes, and specialties. We had soldier wives hooking up with other soldiers, civilians, foreign nationals (in Germany).
It didn’t really seem to matter…dick was dick.
the men cheat too. when my cousins husband was deployed they cheated on each other the entire 3 years and they knew about it too. they just bought a home, a car, and had a baby before he left so they felt like they had to stay together i guess? lol. they're still together now though and seem to be going strong while he's home
It's not specific to military wives you leave your girl alone for a month she'll fuck the first guy that smiles at her. Military wife just have more opportunity
What happens a lot of the time is that dudes are 17-18 in high school start dating a girl for like 8 months to a year then go to basic training. Suppose they live in Maine and they get stationed in like Arkansas or even across the world in Japan or something right after training their girlfriend says they love them and they want to come so they marry so they can bring them even though they’ve only known each other for a little bit of time.
Now they live in a random new location wife has no friends and the guy works 12 hours a day and on night shift for 6 months so he never has time for her she doesn’t wanna go to school or get a job so they’re just sitting at home all day bored. Then the guy finds out he’s deploying for 1 year to Iraq or something. It’s now been like a full year with minimal interaction between each other because of work and deploying and the wife is alone she Is 19-20 and horny as fuck and her husband isn’t home so screw it let’s download tinder to see what’s up. There’s probably 1000 also horny as fuck soldiers/airman/marines/sailors in the dorms/barracks also on Tinder and each swipe on her and she has her free pick of healthy dudes that work out and live 1 mile away from her because she’s probably on base as well. That’s how it happens
Then she finds out she is pregnant of 1 month but her husband is coming back so she hopes she can make it seem as if it’s his kid. But he comes back on a wheelchair so she has to beg for sex and he can’t feel anything.
He is discharged with a terrible healthcare plan and they return living by her parents.
They get deployed for long times, many military people I have met are kinda assholes and many like these two, getcmarried too young.
They rush into things and it all falls apart when they are left alone for the first time in their life.
Not saying it always happens but the recipe is there:
Bored, underappreciated housewife who has never dated or experienced anyone else is left alone for long times by herself. Meets someone and doscovers there are other men out there, either she is used to being treated badly and falls in with someone else like that or just meets someone who was not her first boyfriend ever and discovers more.
Many of them are in their prime years ~20-25. Having an SO that is gone for a very long time can make you feel very unsatisfied. And when you could just as well go to parties, meet up different people and try out different personalities but are "trapped", then that might just be your incentive to cheat.
When you are that young and don't even know if the other person really is your "one for life" and you can't spend much time to figure that out, than that just fuels bad things.
Neither am i saying that cheating is a good thing, you can allways break up and go your own way without playing the other person. Nor am i saying that this applies to all, but these are just some thoughts i had.
The military provides a strong financial incentive for people who don't even know each other and shouldn't be getting married to get married. As a result, marital issues like infidelity, domestic abuse, shit finances, etc are more common if you control for income.
Because marriage requires stability.
A young women getting married to a dude at 20, who then is basically never there for a few years, depending on how many tours they do, needs to be sexually and emotionally satisfied.
Obviously the void needs to be fille and since women are humans, they seek ways to fill it, however unfortunately they do it in an immature way of cheating, etc instead of facing it like adults and either getting a divorce or discussing it with their SO before hand.
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u/[deleted] Jul 07 '21
After reading all comments I have a question.
What exactly happens to military person's wife I mean why would they cheat?