Army dwell time holding at three years for most soldiers

I've never seen 36 months of dwell time in my 10 year career. The closest I've ever been is 34 months.

It's been 3 years for over a decade.....the GOAL that is. That way the units could go thru the red, amber, green cycles to prepare to deploy again. It used to be minimum dwell time (without a GO waiver) was 12 months. With a GO waiver......there is NO minimum; well, there didn't used to be. What a NIGHTMARE that used to be!! Commanders (bn & bde level) would always want to get the waiver (someone with less than a year dwell). Corps Commander would want strength data......who's in theater that we could move? Take some other unit? PCSing out with >12 months dwell that we could defer? PCSing in that we could divert with >12 months dwell? It was a pain but that's why I loved our CC......it was only after exhausting ALL options that he would waive the 12 month dwell requirement. There were VERY FEW instances where I couldn't find someone else.....wasn't popular with the commanders because most of the time they wanted "their guy!" If I had an alternative, I never had a problem telling them.

well, I understand dwell time. But, the units schedule all these exercises and such and you really don't get that time to reset. In my opinion. And when you re-deploy, they usually don't want to take new personnel. They want persons with the most experience. I understand that. But, when you work these people for such a long period of time and say: Well, just take 2 weeks off and your family will be fine...
I personally have deployed 3 times. Once my unit deployed for 4 months and re-deployed to leave a skeleton crew back for the other 8 months. They kind of had fun for the rest of the time we were still in country. We saw all the activities they were involved in and they were having fun. We re-deployed home and took 30 days leave. Then they were like hey!! Lets get all these exercises and field problems going! Those who returned asked about taking it a little easy so we could mentally "reset". The response we received was.. "Didn't you just get off leave??". #the struggle is real