Did any of you get married young while in the military? Did it work out as hoped?
This story is old and distinguished, having played out many times throughout my 23 year career. I think though, that although highlighted by the small community we associate with in the military, the story is all to common throughout our nation.
Young people get together and 'fall in love', get married - get pregnant or vice versa and then they finish growing up and realize they don't have anything in common with this person beyond a child. Sometimes it's easy to blame the outside stressors of life but in reality, they were just looking for a reason to escape a marriage they didn't TRULY want to be in. People no longer have the tenacity to deal with adversity, it's easier to just walk away and get another spouse.
 The truly sad part of these stories, and the part that always angered me the most, was the majority of the time their were children involved. When divorcing parents begin to use the children as tools to get what they want from the other, they should be taken out back to the wood shed and slapped until they get some common sense about them. Children should never be leverage in a dispute between adults.
 We have all heard the stories of others, the advice from family, friends, coworkers, parents, NCO's etc. but when your 18 years old you only hear it, you don't listen to it. We as humans unfortunately don't listen until we get older, live it and then realize that we should have listened and we start telling the same stories, words of advice to the next generation of 'wet behind the ears Soldiers/Sailors/Airman/Marines/Coasties' who hear it but don't listen just like we did.
 Oh and I didn't get married until I was 27 and my wife is two months younger than me. WE have had our ups and downs in this first 16+ years of marriage just like everyone else. Deployments, training/exercises, advance schools, PME course etc. We chose to work through our problems and move on with life. Is it because we were older? Or was it just because we truly wanted to be in the marriage with each other and the fact that we waited until later in life to marry affected that? By the way we dated 6 months, got engaged and then married after 8 months so we definitely did not know each other all that well when we got married either. We had never lived together and only lived in the same time zone for a month before getting married. I did however travel across the country a lot back then to visit her. :)
I am disappointed to hear that people want the extra dependent BAH pay to be taken away because our soldiers are making wrong decisions based on its existence. I'd rather us, as professional soldiers and leaders, educate military personnel on pros/cons of a marriage.Â
If my kids get into the cookie jar without permission I don't take the cookie jar away so they aren't tempted. I discipline and educate them to overcome the temptation of getting into the cookie jar without permission.Â
Rich