(I am not a veteran. I merely know a few. All of the following is based on anecdotes.)
There is a small, but not insignificant, number of people who aggressively pursue naive young people in the military for monetary advantage. These range from predatory lenders to semi-professional spouses. The military employee becomes their golden ticket to enjoying the benefits of the military without taking on any of the risks.
If you can stay married for 20 years to a military person on active duty, you can retain a lot of the MWR and federal benefits that you were able to enjoy during that entire 20 years, even if you get divorced. If the military person dies, you and your children get survivor benefits. You might also be able to use their GI bill benefit while they are busy working.
So some people will marry someone in the military, then cheat on that person at every available opportunity, and spend as much of their reliable paycheck as possible, while enjoying military family benefits. For that sort of person, a war-zone deployment is like a vacation, with the added possibility of winning the widow(er) lottery.
If their young sucker of a spouse returns with PTSD or a brain injury, that has the potential to screw up their lifestyle, particularly if a discharge seems likely. The best play would likely be emotional abuse to encourage suicide. I have known enough people with military backgrounds to know that many of them had unfaithful or benefits-mercenary spouses. One even remarried to a non-American and intentionally kept her away from the on-base culture, because he could no longer trust anyone who was too familiar with the system. More than one explicitly mentioned that they intentionally avoided marriage for at least the first five years of their service, to weed out anyone trying to become a 20/20/20 spouse.
So even if that high school sweetheart doesn't last, at least they might have loved their partner for a while before they came home changed and wore down their endurance. A benefits-mercenary spouse may actually be angry that their partner survived their injuries.
I am not certain exactly how prevalent this behavior is, as there may be some selection bias in play. Maybe ex-military folks just particularly like to brood over their failed marriages, calculate illusory motives, and then complain about their evil exes to anyone who will listen.
I'm not sure why you were downvoted, but this is one of the life dangers that servicemen face. Worse yet, the military unwittingly subsidizes this kind of thing--lots of servicemen will marry just about anyone to get out of the barracks and to collect the extra housing allowance.
Speaking from personal experience, people aged 18-25 don't always make the wisest decisions, with due consideration for the potential consequences. The military may actually be doing it wittingly. A spouse that only receives continuing benefits if their partner remains in the service will probably be in the military's corner whenever re-enlistment comes up.
Interestingly enough, despite the topic of ex-spouses lagging slightly behind football, barracks stories, barbecue-related food, and generalized complaining about the government among the vets that I have known, not a single one of them has ever been in a position to do anything about it, regardless of their rank or tenure. It seems to be an unintended consequence of a much larger problem, one that is politically untouchable.
I think it is entirely unsolvable as long as any cultural continuity exists within the institution, much like the problem of corruption in some law enforcement units. Too many people have too much at stake in the status quo.
Another unintended consequence that may lead to suicide is that the provision of veterans' medical benefits has become much more expensive, particularly with respect to head injuries. So injured veterans that should be receiving medical discharges for service-related injuries (along with those promised lifetime treatment benefits) are being discharged for other reasons, and their service records falsified. PTSD patients may be denied benefits under the rationale that their PTSD symptoms are actually from a previously concealed psychological condition. If the vet has a brain injury, but no pieces obviously missing, they may be informally classified as malingerers, to be treated accordingly.
It is often left to the person with a severe concussion to navigate a tangled web of bureaucracy on their own, to prove that they are not faking their injury--a task that could probably only be successfully negotiated by someone who was actually faking it. That's somewhat of a catch-22.
So when the organization that formerly saw to your every need suddenly decides to turn on you in your moment of weakness, I can see how that might generate a few bad thoughts--perhaps even suicidal impulses.
There is a small, but not insignificant, number of people who aggressively pursue naive young people in the military for monetary advantage. These range from predatory lenders to semi-professional spouses. The military employee becomes their golden ticket to enjoying the benefits of the military without taking on any of the risks.
If you can stay married for 20 years to a military person on active duty, you can retain a lot of the MWR and federal benefits that you were able to enjoy during that entire 20 years, even if you get divorced. If the military person dies, you and your children get survivor benefits. You might also be able to use their GI bill benefit while they are busy working.
So some people will marry someone in the military, then cheat on that person at every available opportunity, and spend as much of their reliable paycheck as possible, while enjoying military family benefits. For that sort of person, a war-zone deployment is like a vacation, with the added possibility of winning the widow(er) lottery.
If their young sucker of a spouse returns with PTSD or a brain injury, that has the potential to screw up their lifestyle, particularly if a discharge seems likely. The best play would likely be emotional abuse to encourage suicide. I have known enough people with military backgrounds to know that many of them had unfaithful or benefits-mercenary spouses. One even remarried to a non-American and intentionally kept her away from the on-base culture, because he could no longer trust anyone who was too familiar with the system. More than one explicitly mentioned that they intentionally avoided marriage for at least the first five years of their service, to weed out anyone trying to become a 20/20/20 spouse.
So even if that high school sweetheart doesn't last, at least they might have loved their partner for a while before they came home changed and wore down their endurance. A benefits-mercenary spouse may actually be angry that their partner survived their injuries.
I am not certain exactly how prevalent this behavior is, as there may be some selection bias in play. Maybe ex-military folks just particularly like to brood over their failed marriages, calculate illusory motives, and then complain about their evil exes to anyone who will listen.