Married to the Military: Make Love Last through Tough Times

According to Pentagon statistics, the divorce rate in the armed forces increased once again in 2009, with an estimated 27,312 divorces among roughly 765,000 married members of the active-duty Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps during the budget year that ended Sept. 30, 2009. That’s a divorce rate of about 3.6 percent for fiscal year 2009, compared with 3.4 percent a year earlier, according to figures from the Defense Manpower Data Center.
           
With multiple deployments, long work hours and frequent moves, couples married to the military face added communications and relationship challenges. With the promise of spring right around the corner, now is the perfect time for military couples to reconnect and celebrate their relationship and the love that brought them together.
           
Whether you want to rediscover that first spark, or simply enjoy some much-needed quality time together, Marine Corps Family Team Building offers three straight-from-the-heart classes to get you started:
           
Strengthening Your Love Connection: In this program, couples take the SELF personality profile, learn about each other’s personality type and gain an understanding of how their personality type affects their marital relationship. After learning about each other’s personality types, participants learn to use the gained information to enhance communication and improve their relationship. 
           
Matters of the Heart - A Class for Couples: This two-part workshop is aimed at helping couples improve the communication and trust in their marriage. Topics include keeping the fun in marriage, melding money personalities, establishing trust and fair fighting techniques. 
           
LINKS for Couples: Lifestyle Insights, Networking, Knowledge and Skills is a great way to build personal and family readiness while learning about the Marine Corps lifestyle, resources, and services in a fun environment. The topics include Marine Corps history and traditions, navigating the base and its resources, pay issues and budgeting tips, moving, separations and deployment, getting along and career progression.

More to Love

In addition to Family Team Building classes, base chaplains offer several classes specifically for couples:

           
CREDO: Couples attend a two-night/three-day free retreat in which they learn practical and effective communication skills to enhance their marital relationship. Activities are couple based, and group sharing is very minimal.

           
Before “I Do” Marriage Foundation Workshop: This is a two-day workshop for couples planning to marry or those married for a short period. The workshop covers a wide variety of topics and focuses on how each of these matters affects the marriage and the couple. Topics include: communication, finances, expectations and roles, values and spirituality, personality, drugs and alcohol, resources, family, friends, in-laws and more.

           
Marriage Enrichment Workshop (Using the PREP Approach): This two-day workshop provides an educational experience for couples that will enable them to enhance their communication and problem solving skills, prevention of marital distress, and the skills associated with effective marital functioning.

Getting Together
For more information on the above programs, phone Family Team Building aboard MCAS Cherry Point at 252-466-4637; Family Team Building aboard MCB Camp Lejeune at 910-451-0176, or Family Team Building aboard MCAS New River at 910-449-5343. For additional information on the CREDO retreat, phone 910-450-1688 for Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune or Marine Corps Air Stations Cherry Point or New River.

A special thanks to Kasey Timberlake, military spouse and LifeSkills Trainer for Marine Corps Family Team Building at MCAS Cherry Point, for providing the program information in this article. You can email Kasey at timberlakekb@usmc-mccs.org.  

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