Planes fly overhead, cars turn every which way, and people flood the sidewalks looking for the right terminal. Kristi Batey, 20, and her fiancé Jon Eckel, 19, arrive at the airport first thing in the morning for his 6 a.m. flight on August 14th, 2010, the date Kristi has been dreading for months now. After Jon checks in, Kristi and some of Jon’s family pass through security with him since he is a United States Marine, more specifically an anti-tank missleman, or “gunman.” Time slips out of their fingers as they hold onto each other closely, savoring every last minute they have left. Exhaustion from staying up all night paired with fear of the future begin to overwhelm them, and they can’t fight the tears any longer. People begin lining up to board the plane. They sit, they cry, they wait, gripping every last second. Jon waits with his fiancé until everyone has boarded the plane but him. He must go, he has no choice.
Kristi Batey and Jon Eckel
Kristi and Jon went to the same high school. They held the same after-school job making pizzas at a little Italian shop called Mancino’s Pizza & Grinders. They hit it off instantly, and pretty soon they were more than just co-workers. Two years have passed since the days of making pizza together, and now they find themselves engaged but separated by hundreds of miles. The distance will keep them apart for eight long months.
“It frustrates me when people tell me they miss their boyfriend and it has only been a week. They have no idea, they don’t understand what I go through,” says Kristi.
Jon and Kristi have dealt with the distance before, surviving three months while he trained at boot camp. Then the military placed him in Jacksonville, North Carolina, which is within driving range from where Kristi lives in Ohio. She drove once a month on average to see him, and when the military granted Jon leave he made the effort to see her as well. But the distance is different this time around. Jon left for his first deployment in Afghanistan.
“It’s really hard when I go to bed at night. I’m fine during the day when I’m busy, but they are eight and a half hours ahead of us. So while I’m going to bed at night I’m wondering what he’s doing, if he’s getting shot at,” says Kristi, fighting the tears. “He’s not allowed to tell me the things he sees. They’re very limited on what they can tell you. When he writes me letters, he just tells me the basic things like how he patrols, sits on watch, and talks to the town people. When I write him back it’s mostly about what I’ve been up to, I mean what else can I say?”
Letters, their main form of communication, sometimes take weeks to send and receive. Kristi says she has only heard his voice a couple times in the past month, and when he does call it only makes it harder. She grows numb not hearing his voice for so long that when he finally calls, all the emotions rush back and she has to start coping all over again.
The amount of stress thrown at relationships in the military is arguably far greater than in typical civilian relationships. Negative stereotypes commonly latch on to people pursuing relationships in the military, whether it’s that people in the military marry too young or that they all cheat because of the distance. Whether these stereotypes have any truth behind them depends on the couple. There are those who make it, and there are those who don’t. According to the Centers for Disease Control, America’s divorce rate as of 2005 was at 43%. It seems that marriage is a gamble these days whether you’re in the military or not, but the stress of long distance that comes with military marriages certainly doesn’t help the already high divorce rate.
At 20 years old, United States Marine Scott Arnold finds his marriage nearing closer and closer to divorce. “I do wish I would have waited to get married, but I don’t think it’s a mistake that I married so young or so early in the relationship,” says Scott. “Everything just felt right after boot camp. She wrote me every day and helped me get through the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life.”
Scott is two years deep into his six-year term as a mortar man for the Marines, which he simplifies as “shooting rockets at people.” His wife is also in the military, but in a different branch. She works as a corpsman, or field nurse, for the Navy. Neither have deployed yet, but their individual schooling results in a distance that pushes their marriage to its limits. Within one year and four months of their marriage, they’ve only spent about half of that time together.
“I found out my wife cheated on me. I’m lucky that I even found out because usually in the military the distance keeps it hidden,” says Scott. He explains that especially on deployments, there are a lot of opportunities for the soldiers to cheat. At the same time, from his experience, the wives waiting at home cheat just as often. After just four weeks of training in California, he knew of five marines who discovered their spouses had cheated on them.
When men deploy overseas, they not only fight the war on terrorism, but also must fight the urge to cheat. Prostitutes, or women just looking for an easy way out, purposely prowl around the barracks, where the military men stay. They have every intention to persuade vulnerable, sex-deprived soldiers to sleep with them. “They just want money from us, and a lot of single guys or guys who can’t resist will give into the temptation. I know someone who gave his watch to some man in Japan in exchange for a threesome with his two sisters,” says Scott.
Japan and Thailand are infamous for sex-craving women throwing themselves at American troops. Scott has already heard of a place in Japan referred to as, “the thirteen floors of whores,” where soldiers pay thirty dollars in exchange for sex with a lot of women. Not to mention, a lot of soldiers hang out at strip clubs, bars, and malls on the weekends where they tend to receive special treatment from all sorts of women, especially those with a fetish for men in uniform. Women, particularly those in need of money, don’t care if they get pregnant because not only would the military support the baby, but they offer all sorts of benefits from housing allowances to health insurance.
These benefits are another stereotypical explanation for why people in the military marry young. Lacie Freer, a 27-year-old full-time nursing student, says she often hears about couples getting married in order to receive the benefits offered by the military. Other than housing allowance and health insurance, those married in the military get numerous discounts at stores, not to mention the opportunity to travel that they might not have otherwise had.
However, that’s just icing on the cake for Lacie and her husband George, an air crewman for the United States Navy. Before
Lacie and George Freer
he joined the Navy, they met through a “chance encounter” at a bar. They fell in love, and married after a year and a half of dating. She supports him and remains by his side through it all. The benefits are just a bonus to their love.
With four years left on the job, he has yet to leave for deployment, which will happen at the end of this year. Lacie looks to the future with complete confidence, saying that they both believe the good outweighs the bad. “We have been apart from each other for months at a time, and it’s difficult at times, but it’s worth it,” says Lacie. “We’re both aware that his ultimate sacrifice would be his life; however, he wants to do this, so I want him to do what makes him happy. That’s what you do when you love someone.”
As with any marriage, trust and communication are key, but take particular priority within the military. Depending on the branch of military, the length of deployments vary significantly. In the Air Force, deployments last three months, but in the Army they can last over a year. During these deployments, the distance not only keeps your marriage apart on holidays, but during other life-changing moments as well; such as weddings, funerals, and child births. Lacie points out that sometimes your friend, rather than your husband, must hold your hand during labor.
Ten years into their marriage, Edward and Shelley Melnick both served in the United States Army, which is how they met. After just three months of dating, Edward proposed. Sometimes when you know it’s right, you just know.
During the beginning years of their marriage, they dealt with a lot of distance. The longest time spent apart was 13 months during Edward’s deployment to Iraq, as well as six months in Kosovo. They survived this distance with ease, never having to deal with infidelity. “It just depends on the person. The majority of married people deployed have a family at home waiting for them. My wife and I have never had to deal with infidelity,” says Edward.
While some couples may rush into marriage for the wrong reasons, Edward believes that’s not the norm even though it may be the stereotype. In his opinion, people in the military tend to marry younger simply because they are, for their age, at a more secure point in their lives.
“The military gives a sense of job security, but also results in a period of loneliness after leaving your family and friends from your home town. Civilians at the same age tend to be more concentrated on working on their career, while military people already have a secure job.”
Even though distance seems to be the reason most couples in the military separate, it can actually build the relationship into something stronger as it did for the Freers and the Melnicks. Kristi and Jon, the newly engaged couple enduring their first deployment, hope to follow in the happily married couples’ footsteps. Right now, Kristi feels the distance actually bringing them closer rather than tearing them apart. “We’re separated by so many miles and yet we’re closer than most couples I know that see each other every day,” says Kristi.
Even though each branch has its distance, couples in the Army deal with it the most and it’s no surprise that divorce rates are statistically higher in this branch. According to an article published in 2007 in Soldiers Magazine, the Army chief of chaplains released data indicating 8, 367 couples in the Army divorced in 2005, a number higher than any other branch. When the Defense Department made a shocking announcement in 2005 that divorce within the Army doubled between 2001 and 2004, The Pentagon funded a research program through Rand’s National Defense Research Institute to analyze these patterns of divorce and get to the root cause of it.
So what did the study find? Not much. While divorce rates rose 3 percent in all branches of the military in 2005, it also rose that much in 1996 when there wasn’t the stress of war or long deployments. Furthermore, researchers found that those who had deployed longer were actually less likely to divorce. These findings were unexpected and the sudden spike in divorce at the beginning of the millennium remains unexplained. Regardless, the military has launched new initiatives to help couples cope with the distance.
One of the Army’s programs that struggling couples can take advantage of is called Strong Bonds. Developed from years of research, this program places you in small groups where you’ll participate in activities that renew bonds and enhance communication. Couples get the chance to escape and take a weekend retreat allowing them to strengthen their relationship or marriage. These fully-funded retreats are located just about everywhere from New Mexico, North Carolina, to Hawaii. According to the Strong Bonds website, over 160,000 members have participated this year, and more programs have evolved as a result of its success since its birth in 1997.
So are these stereotypes about people pursuing relationships in the military true? Do the majority just marry young because they want money? In Kristi and Jon’s case, that’s certainly not the case. Does the distance cause infidelity in every relationship in the military? While that has affected the Arnolds, it wasn’t the case for the Melnicks or the Freers. It depends on the relationship, it depends on the couple. Either way, the common struggles with communication and trust that every couple faces are amplified in the military. Distance, after all, may be the true test of love. It can either destroy your relationship or raise it to a whole new level.
“There is a great thing that happens though, when you are away from someone you love. It’s appreciation,” says Laci. “I get those butterflies in my stomach when I haven’t seen him in a while and it makes everything okay and new all over again, and again.”
