"The Depression"

“The Depression”

During the up-tempo of Combat deployments, marriage rates in the Marine Corps have unsurprisingly spiked, typically corresponding to deployment cycles. Getting married to a Marine provides you with a whole new life in ways unfamiliar to most civilian brides: quit job, leave family, marry Marine you haven’t seen in 6 months or who plans on leaving in the next month, move to a new city, have no friends... After the excitement of getting engaged, planning the big day, moving to a new place to start a new life in your new role as a wife – that’s when “the depression” sets in.

Like most of the cycles the military teaches you about – “the depression” is normal and should be fleeting. The best antidote is to except the new intimidating role of Marine Wife and get involved: contact your KV, take a LINKS course, become a member of the KVN, go to seminars on base, take advantage of tuition advantages on base, and most importantly – come back with at least one person’s e-mail from each of these events. A lot of friends and taking advantage of the many support programs available is the key to surviving the Marine Corps, and if you can believe it, you may just find yourself out of the depression and actually liking it.