There are certain things people seem to stereotype for military families, and one of those things is infidelity in a military marriage.
It is plastered all over television shows and movies, but this isn’t something that just civilians deem as probable in military life due to lengthy separations. It is something that has been stereotyped by military families themselves.
If you are a part of any military spouse Facebook page, you will see frequent posts of military spouses asking for help, advice, and suggestions because they found out their service member was cheating on them.
There will be a wide-range of advice from “you need to see a counselor,” to “LEAVE HIM, HE AIN’T WORTH IT, HONEY.”
On the other side, military spouses are also stereotyped into the category of “cheating spouse” when their service members are deployed or gone for long periods of time. From an unknowing glance, it may seem like military life “causes” people to cheat. It puts people in circumstances (lonely nights, fights during separation, feelings of worthlessness and helplessness, long separations) that basically invites cheating to happen.
Or maybe it has nothing to do with the military lifestyle, and cheaters are just sh…crappy people.
Is Cheating More Prominent in the Military?
In short, no. Military service members and their spouses are just like every other person out there- some are good and some are bad (that’s not to say if you cheat that you are “bad” but being in the military doesn’t automatically make you a cheater either- you make that choice on your own). Although our marriages look different to those of our civilian counterparts, military families do not experience a higher rate of infidelity than those in civilian families, which is estimated to be about 1/3 of the population. Which means about 2/3 of military families are not plagued by this issue. It just seems like it’s more prominent because our population is much smaller than that of civilians.
Who Cheats More: The Spouse or the Service Member?
There is often a divide when it comes to the debate of who falls into infidelity more in a military marriage- the spouse or the service member. Spouses will argue that it’s the service member- they will have opportunities to cheat with other service members during trainings, deployments, or long nights at work where the military spouse is expected not to ask any questions because “that’s the nature of the job.”
Service members, on the other hand, argue that it’s the spouses that cheat. They say that they have the opportunity to do so when their spouse is deployed or gone for long periods of time.
There is no conclusive data on who falls into infidelity and cheating when comparing the military service member or the spouse. There are plenty of stories on both sides, which leads to one basic conclusion- it doesn’t matter if you’re the spouse or the service member. Cheating happens because someone makes the poor choice to do so.
