War Changes People

An excellent article appeared this week on the Parent Map website. In War Changes People, author Linda Morgan discusses in detail the psychological toll faced by today’s military families.After eight years of war, more than 200,000 military marriages have failed — 27,000 last year alone. When a spouse goes off to war, 20 percent of marriages fall apart within two years. Apparently it just isn’t possible for many couples to handle the stress of the two worlds they face--deployment and its many difficulties for both spouses, and the return of a changed partner, which can be even worse.

“We’ve seen the news stories,” Morgan writes.  “A soldier returns from Iraq or Afghanistan. He surprises his son at school, or his wife at work. Joy ensues. Everyone is deliriously happy and seems to disappear into some gentle, glowing sunset, destined to live blissfully ever after. Reality is much more complicated.” 

A case in point is her profile of Jill Morgenthaler, now a consultant with the Department of Homeland Security.  It’s a success story--she and her family held together. Most do. But deployment and homecomings were harder than she imagined, even after a thirty-year military career.  As a reservist, she was deployed twice, once to Bosnia and, in 2004, to Iraq.

That year in Iraq was among the war’s most dangerous, she says, but typically, she mostly worried about her family while they mostly worried about her.   “He had the job, the kids, the carpooling and the care,” she says. “It hurt his work; he couldn’t stay late at the office.” By comparison, she felt her job wa

s easy.

When she came home, she “had a very short fuse and no patience for bureaucracy or unimportant things,” and loud, booming sounds give her flashbacks.  Many returning servicemembers have this problem with many things the rest of us take for granted--not being able to see around corners, going into dark enclosed spaces, hearing loud noises.  “I’m fine on July 4,” Morganthaler says, “but when people set off fireworks ahead of time, my whole body goes stiff. I have to resist the impulse to dive under the table.”

Though Morgenthaler’s children were proud of her (“My son thought he had the coolest mom in ninth grade”), their resentment of her absences bubbled up frequently when  things she had missed while she was gone were the subject of discussion. She also had marital problems. “I felt like I was living with a stranger,” she says. “When you’re separated more than six months, the fabric of the family starts to break.”

The lives of the other 98 percent of us are so different, it may be hard to understand who someone would choose such a difficult and dangerous way of life.  “I’ve helped make lives better,” Morgenthaler says. How does she feel about the fact that her 18-year-old daughter is considering a military career? “I’d love that,” she says.