My Big Fat Honorable Discharge Divorce

By Noah Smith
Best Defense Council of the Former Enlisted

I sat on this story for some time and let the dust settle. I’m sharing this today because I want to reach out to other soldiers who have suffered an “honorable discharge divorce” and are wondering what to do with their feelings around the new year like I was, last year, when it became clear I wouldn’t be ringing in the new year with anyone, let alone my wife. I hope, if nothing else, this helps someone, and if you’re alone and freshly separated, then shoot me an email.

In 2015, I left the military, got married, and then got divorced. Think of it as my post-military transition.

It began in June 2015 when I decided that, after eight years of honorable service and a couple of combat deployments, and a life filled with honorable service, it was time to move on. A couple of months later, I got married. At the time, it seemed the natural next step.

We met when I returned home from a deployment to Iraq. It was 2013 and I had just turned 27. I was frustrated, lonely, and looking for a way out of my situation. I felt like the bureaucracy of the Army was holding me back from mastering myself.

I remember a date we had in the beginning. An Ethiopian restaurant, shut down now, Meskerem in Adams Morgan, Washington, D.C. I wrote in Arabic, as I do, that I think I’m going to marry this women. It’s scary I can make a decision so early and follow through. Folks like me have to know when it’s right before they do I what I did.

She was a published author and ran a nonprofit that benefited military children. Having joined when I was young, that was all very impressive to me. She was beautiful and it made sense. Her family welcomed me and gave me confidence to leave the military. I should have left on my own.

We dated and endured two more deployments. In those, we were able to stay in a kind of “honeymoon” phase, but, to be frank — I was miserable. I felt like I had everything riding on it. It was so much pressure. I was so conflicted. I hated being with her at times. I hated that I thought I needed her. I don’t need anyone.

A big moment was a trip between the two deployments to Europe. I spent over ten grand and had a terrible time. Everything was a fight: We’re just different.

One night, in Honfleur, after a night of drinking she made me promise her that I’d leave her. She said she could never leave me and that I had to let her go — that I wasn’t good for her. I did promise her that night. I wrestle with that today.

One time, on a separate occasion — at a leadership retreat we went to in Wisconsin — I made a go at ending things. I asked for the ring back. I couldn’t handle this relationship anymore in my mind. I reminded myself of my promise. I promised her in France and I meant it. But I couldn’t bear the look on her face when she took it off and handed it to me — the image haunts me today. How am I supposed to hurt someone I love?

I feel pathetic having kept with it. But I didn’t give up.

Somehow, we stayed together, got engaged, and made it to the wedding. I knew this wasn’t right. Why? Bottom line: Because we were drifting so far apart nothing worked, not that it ever did. I think she really started to resent me. She didn’t need to get married either. By the end I don’t think she had much to hold on to.

At one point, with emotions running high, she said to me, “you’re losing everything.” As if I didn’t notice.

Yet, and even so, with the divorce, I feel like I’ve gained everything back. By getting married when I did, I did not do what I wanted to do.

I still love her. We just aren’t meant to be together. It didn’t work. She remains one of my favorite people. But she was not the right person to be my wife, at least at this point in my life, given who I was.

She was honest when we married, honest during the marriage, and honest when we split. When I look in the mirror, I see the person who screwed it up. I was a coward on our wedding day. I sensed somewhere in my heart I wasn’t ready for this step, but thought I should go through with it. In retrospect, when I was leaving the military, I was in a state of chaos. On my wedding day, I was even worse. I kept thinking to myself, “I do not want do this again.” Looking back, what I think I was trying to tell myself that I was promising myself never again to say “yes” when I meant “hell no — I shouldn’t take this step, because I can’t be in this marriage.”

I cannot imagine her pain in having our marriage blow up after just a few months. I saw courage in the military, but I saw it in her as well. It’s facing things you don’t want to see and know with certainty will hurt, badly.

I am not asking for sympathy. I made the bad decision of saying yes when I meant to say no. I am hardly the first guy to go through this. In fact, I have heard there may be a pattern of getting out of the military, quickly getting married and quickly getting divorced. Call it an “honorable discharge divorce.”

I sent this story to a friend of mine when I originally wrote it and he replied, “that’s my story, too.” I saw a young Ranger at a D.C. dog park and we spoke for sometime, he had the same story and was now studying to be a nuclear physicist.

Deploying to another culture and environment at wartime and deploying to the civilian world, ripping yourself from the military life, must have some psychological effects in common. I honestly do not feel like I was met with understanding by my own fiancée at the time. God knows Uncle Sam didn’t give a f*ck.

It might be that those of us with these honorable discharge divorces still had a crucial life lesson to learn. Every aspect of your life isn’t service — and you have to service yourself too. Because no one is going to take care of you. More so, there’s no replacement that some other person can grant you to supplant the adventure, meaning, and lifestyle I enjoyed as a Green Beret. That’s my journey — not hers — not anyone else’s.

I’ve found nothing motivates like failure. I’ve turned thirty and I’ve never felt younger. To me, life is renewed with infinite possibilities. Experiences to explore and knowledge to seek.

The surprise here is that I’d do it all over again. Yes, we both got hurt. But I come away from this wreck of a marriage having learned, deeply, that I need to listen to my heart. If I had followed that one step, things would have been different.

Deploying was my life, I loved it. It’s tough getting out. You can’t do that for some idea of a life that doesn’t exist. And you can’t ask someone to do it either.

The brutal life lesson, one I desperately needed: Do not make concessions and do not accept anything you don’t want. You aren’t going to help someone else if you can’t help yourself.

There’s a silver lining in a mushroom cloud. I’d list my accomplishments of the past year, here, but it doesn’t matter. Except to say I’ve gone from no furniture, no real idea about work, still transitioning, to 60. And I feel insatiable optimism about the future, knowing, fully, it could all be reset again. And that’s okay. Whatever you’re suffering right now, maybe it’ll be okay, too.

Noah Smith, a former Green Beret, is a business consultant in Washington. He holds the Special Operations chair in the Best Defense Council of the Former Enlisted. He can be reached via email at 2contactnoah@gmail.com, or visit his blog at inthenoah.com.

Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons