2011

When the average, non-military American thinks about the United States‟ conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, he or she generally associates the stressors and casualties of the wars with the active-duty service members. Rarely the spouses of those soldiers are taken into account when it comes to documenting the costs of military wartime service. There are almost 1.4 million Active Duty service members and 750,320 are married, which is more than half. As well as Active Duty service members, the military has Selected Reserve members, and of the nearly 900,000 Selected Military Reserve population, 426,296 are married as well. For the duration of this paper, the term military spouse is defined as a non-military female spouse due to the majority of spouses being female as well as the majority of the research completed on this topic also denotes military spouse as female. The effects of war are everlasting for military spouses.