A Relevant Curiosity

Here's a question/proposed scenario for ya'll if anyone has experience or knows the answer to this: how does the military cope with couples (married or not) who are both in the service? I know The Army is known for having a good family support system, does this apply to a sort of compromise (stationed within a few hundred miles of each other, etc?) if there is a "dual officer" married couple? How do other branches approach this? What if each spouse is commissioned into a different branch? I'm sure this has happened before lol.

The selection/assignment process isn't entirely robotic. As a 1/c cadet, we were told you could "co-locate" with your future spouse, and that you had to at least give VERY similar dream sheets. In the end, it was the person with less "say" in his/her future unit that determined where the other, more competitive partner would be stationed.

My classmates often found themselves are very close units, maybe one on land and one on a ship.

It's certianly do-able. It's a little harder when it's across different services and at some point someone loses out because they choose a position that might be less helpful for promotions, but better for relationships.

There's also the "geo-bachelor" option, working away from your family. Sometimes that happens with more senior officers who don't want to uproot their families.

The joint-spouse paperwork for dual-military couples tries to match each into the same geographic location as much as jobs allow. But, if each spouses' job puts them far away from the other, unless they cross-train, they will have to live further apart.

Only 10% of married military members are in dual military relationships as a perspective. For officers, that ranges from 6% of USMC marriages to 15% of USAF marriages. *USCG not included in the DoD statistics.

It all depends. I know a good number of classmates married to each other, and it seems to work best when it's same service/same community (i.e., two Marines, two SWOs, etc.) Time in the training command also apparently "doesn't count," so because you're at TBS or in flight school months/years doesn't mean that your spouse gets to be stationed near you.

Sometimes it just doesn't work out in a way convenient for anyone: I know of at least two or three women whose husbands/fiances are stationed at least several hours away or on the opposite coast. My college roommate is stationed at MCAS Cherry Point with her husband at NS Norfolk, for example. They live in the middle and each commute 1.5+ hours a day to work.
For USMC-to-Navy or USMC/USMC relationships that aren't marriages you can try and game it and both go west coast (Pendleton/San Diego is doable), but I know a girl who tried to do that and ended up at Yuma with her fiance at Pendleton.

The program is called MACP, Married Army Couples Program. What it does is flag you as being married to another soldier in whatever magical system personnel uses to assign people (I've always suspected it was a dartboard). You need to talk to your branch manager (as does your spouse with his/hers).

Enrollment consists of filling out a 4187 that has your And your spouse's information on it along with submitting out a copy of your marriage license. The goal is that if for some reason you can't be stationed in the exact same place, that you're at most fifty miles from each other. I have no clue what the numbers actually look like with respect to how that actually pans out.

mbitr said:

The program is called MACP, Married Army Couples Program. What it does is flag you as being married to another soldier in whatever magical system personnel uses to assign people (I've always suspected it was a dartboard). You need to talk to your branch manager (as does your spouse with his/hers).

Click to expand...

I believe that upgraded personnel system is going to be brought online in 2018.