Strengths and military marriages

January 9, 2009 By Claire
Posted in Life in the Military, Spouse and Family

Love seems the swiftest, but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married a quarter of a century.
-Mark Twain: Notebook, 1894

Note: The information below has a few references hyper-linked. Most of it is stuff I have pulled out of my head where unicorns, finished laundry and obedient children reside. Therefore, please take it as opinion. I am too tired to write a paper that is worthy of publication in the APA Journal. However, the opinions below are based on a lot of experience. Take it with one grain of salt and a good shake of pepper.

Marriage is worth saving! We hear it all the time, and it’s a point worth driving home because it’s true. Marriage provides society with couples who have vowed to care for one another, and included in that is a tacit vow to care for any children they may have together. Marriage is especially important to the military. According to research, marriage and family life makes for better soldiers who have a longer retention rate (for male soldiers not female).

As many times as we hear marriage is worth saving, we also hear how marriage is failing. Often, the statement is worded as if “marriage” (the institution itself) is what failed rather than the two dynamic, thinking, living beings who actually created the marriage in the first place.

There are times when changing the structure of a sentence or substituting one word for the other is merely a game of semantics. There are times, as well, when the change in words and structure is actually a change that is dynamic. A Strengths based approach in matters such as divorce takes the focus of our energy off of one continuum and places it on affecting change on another. Let me explain it a little more…

In 1946 years ago the World Health Organization (WHO) put forth in their preamble a statement that has caused a positive change within the medical community concerning the paradigm of viewing health and disease. The medical community’s shift has also caused a shift in the thinking of theorists in the social and behavioral sciences as well.

The shift made was a simple declaration that matters of health and matters of disease are on two completely separate continua rather than coexisting on the same continuum at the polar opposite of each other. In simple English this means that the absence of disease does not equate “health.” Prior to this the assumption was that disease prevention made for healthy patients.

Essentially what was learned (and it is still not used enough in a lot of approaches for various reasons) is that we can not promote functioning in families by trying to prevent dysfunction. We can not strengthen marriages either by only knowing what causes divorce.

The absence of divorce does not equal strong and healthy marriages. We are inundated with data and information on what a couple headed for divorce looks like. Couples often go to therapists hoping that they can “fix” what is broken, or “recharge” that which is not lively any longer. They do this in hopes of “preventing” a divorce.

The truth of the matter is adults often do not change drastically enough when trying to fix their deficits. How can you build up something that you simply do not have? You may be able to learn a new skill through counseling, but in reality marriages that make it through the tough times often do so because of the strengths that the individuals posses — and there may be some “gestalt” that happens between the combined strengths too.

When I was reading up on divorce and the military, I knew that I would want to find strengths based information. In all of the years I spent in the field I was very lucky to work with programs that implemented this theory into practice. The last position I held before self-employment was working as an associate with one of the key figures behind the strengths/asset based approach in human services (particularly with children who have mental/behavioral/physical diagnoses).

It works. It’s more of an evidence based approach because you can truly measure what you are affecting. I never trust prevention measures because it defies logic. How can you truly claim to have prevented an occurrence when it, obviously, never occurred? What is measured is the decrease of occurrences because you can not measure what does not exist! Why not measure instead the skills and assets that do exist and are observable? So, let’s stop chasing the elusive and start building on the tangible.

Military families posses a lot of strengths that are found lacking in struggling families. Sometimes these strengths are what draws a family to military life, and for others these strengths are gained through a trial by fire. Either way, families who stay in the military and stay together will more than likely possess strengths like: “flexibility and a strong sense of community” and also, adaptability, appreciation for one another, faith, community ties, accountability, and resources such as medical insurance, mental health services, financial counseling/ services, etc.

One of the leading researchers in marriage and divorce, John Gottman, also says we know more about what causes divorce than we do about what makes for strong marriages. He further asserted that we focus on solving problems in marriage, when in reality happy couples rarely do:

emphasis mine (link to source):

Most popular interventions, he continued, rest on the premise that marital happiness depends on the way couples solve problems and resolve conflicts through good communication. “Wrong,” he declared. In his firsthand observations of couples, they never do solve their problems. Happy couples have problems, and they tend to have exactly the same problems several years later. In the lab they seem as if they’ve just changed their hairstyles and clothes and come back into the same conversation. What distinguishes them from unhappy couples is that they develop a “dialogue” about their perpetual problems, trying to effect what change they can with humor and affection while at the same time accepting their partners as they are.

I found the quote above very interesting in light of all of the therapeutic models that push “active listening” and problem resolution. The older I get and the longer I am in this world as a wife, mother, military community participant, social worker, writer, and all of the other hats I wear, the more convinced I am that we have extremely unrealistic expectations of life in our culture. The one thing that contrasts this more than anything is the difference between military and civilian life. I do think that military families have these expectations tempered because of the demands put on them. Expectations are maybe a little more realistic, and maybe that is another strength we have to build on.

In larger society we are often fed this prosperity message that if marriage is not full of passion, romance, financial prosperity and health then it must be leading towards divorce. You have to wonder if there is a little pygmalion effect since we are told by the “professionals” that marital discord and marital struggles are bad. The truth of the matter is they are normal. I would even dare say that if we learn through the struggles how to navigate the rough waters, we even greatly benefit from them in the long run.

Learning, growing, living and loving through adversity is certainly no stranger to military families! As best put in the motto of the United States Merchant Marine Academy: Acta Non Verba (actions, not words)

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