I think the best example is actually from my divorce. A friend basically called me "stupid" for "trusting" my ex to pay me my support payments while on the phone and I basically politely hung up on her.

She was probably just worried sick about me because the stats for civilian Americans is abysmal. I think it's something like one third of men don't pay at all and one third only make partial payments, which routinely leaves women and their children in a real pickle. It can take months or years to get legal remedy, garnish his wages and get back payments -- if you get them at all.

But it doesn't work that way in the military. If he had stiffed me, I would have written his commanding officer and his wages would have been garnished post haste, much more quickly than what you typically see in the civilian world.

My friend apparently thought I was some naive little ninny who just didn't understand the cold, cruel world because I had such a sheltered existence as a homemaker. And that wasn't it at all. The rules were just different for me and I was in no danger of being left out in the cold like she was likely imagining was about to happen to me given how common that is in the civilian version of America.

A similar trick is used by some landlords. No rent? Call the CO. Makes military tenants very reliable.

That street runs both ways. When asshole landlords were raising rent every three months on soldiers and their families, the general on the base threatened to build more housing and move everyone on base, gutting the local rental market.

The landlords quit their shit and cut a deal.

Sounds fair TBH.

I'm obviously not Doreen, but I was a military brat and military myself and can relate some of what I saw. First off, there's a sense of impermanence to everything. Your best friend is often someone you will only know for ~3 years of your life. You have to meet people and become friendly with them quickly or you will have no social contacts outside your family.

If you were a military spouse, you may have had a job, but rarely a career. You move at the whim of your spouse's job (every few years) to places you don't control. You generally don't get to pick your neighbors or even your friends - you just adapt to the situation that constantly changes.

Spouses of military members that go on unaccompanied tours have it even worse. They are at home alone, often for months at a time. My anecdotal observations of Navy spouses, for example, was that cheating was a standard practice - not because the marriage was necessarily bad, but because they were so lonely. This is based on limited exposure (I was Air Force, both as a brat and active duty), so may not be as universally true as I observed.

This can all sound horrible, but it really wasn't. Just different. Different enough that sometimes it is hard to explain.

The incentive structure in the military is completely different from normal American society. Imagine a parallel, "socialist" society that exists inside the U.S.A. That's the military in a nutshell.

It has its own government-run housing authority, its own government-run medical system, you don't always know where you will end up on your next tour, you may not be allowed to quit and leave the military when you would normally expect to under some circumstances, etc.

> a parallel, "socialist" society that exists inside the U.S.A. That's the military in a nutshell.

Perfect description, which I find hilarious. It's the best large-scale example of socialism that actually works. But the Right won't admit it and the Left thinks it's hell.