# Impact of life-threatening military incidents during deployments abroad on the relationships between military personnel and their families

## TL;DR

Life-threatening military incidents during deployments are linked to greater deterioration in military personnel's relationships with their partners and children.

## Contribution

This study is among the first to investigate how life-threatening military incidents during deployments affect family relationships.

## Key findings

- Military personnel who experienced life-threatening incidents had more frequent relationship breakups.
- Partner relationships deteriorated significantly after deployment, especially for those who faced critical incidents.
- Relationships with children also worsened more in the group that experienced life-threatening events.

## Abstract

The influence of deployments on family relationships has hardly been investigated. Following a recently proposed new research strategy, military personnel with and without deployment-related life-threatening military incidents during deployment were compared. The hypothesis was that partner and family relationships of military personnel who experienced such an event would deteriorate more.

This study included N = 255 military personnel who had a romantic partner (n = 78 of them had children) when deployed to Afghanistan. Of these, n = 68 military personnel experienced a deployment-related critical event during the deployment, n = 187 did not. Partnership quality was assessed using a semi-structured pre- and post-deployment interview.

The partner relationships of military personnel who experienced a deployment-related life-threatening military incident during deployment broke up significantly more often. The partner relationships of all military personnel deteriorated significantly, with greater deterioration after deployment in the group who faced such incidents. These results were independent of age, rank or number of previous deployments. In addition, there was a significant deterioration in the relationships between all military personnel and their children with greater deterioration after deployment in the group who faced such incidents.

Life-threatening military incidents during a deployment abroad appear to have a considerable influence on the quality and stability of the partner and family relationships of military personnel. These findings can be used to inform the development of specific pre- and post-deployment measures and training.