What U.S. Military Groups Have the Highest Divorce Rates?

Most articles promise a clean ranking: “Top 10 jobs with the highest divorce rates.” The problem? There is no single, authoritative U.S. dataset that tracks divorce rates cleanly by profession, unit, or subgroup.

What does exist are patterns and when you understand those patterns, the conversation becomes far more meaningful than any viral list.

At Lotus River Wellness (LRW), we work with military spouses, caregivers, and high-stress households every day. The reality we see doesn’t fit into tidy percentages but it does reveal who is most at risk, and more importantly, why.

Why “Highest Divorce Rates” Is the Wrong Starting Point

Divorce data in the U.S. is fragmented. Most national statistics track:

• Age

• Education level

• Income

• Number of marriages

• Children

They do not consistently track:

• Operational tempo

• Exposure to trauma

• Repeated separations

• Caregiving load

• Identity loss or transition stress

So when articles claim a specific group has “the highest divorce rate,” those numbers are usually:

i. Pulled from limited surveys

ii. Based on outdated census snapshots

iii. Aggregated without context

What matters more is shared risk factors, not titles.

Military & Special Operations Families

This includes active duty, veterans, and especially high-tempo communities like Special Operations.

Key stressors include:

• Repeated deployments

• Long family separations

• Reintegration strain

• Identity shifts during transition

• Spouses carrying prolonged solo-parenting and emotional labor

Many marriages survive years of service and then struggle after the uniform comes off, when structure disappears and support systems fade.

First Responders (Law Enforcement, Firefighters, EMTs)

These roles mirror many military stressors:

i. Exposure to trauma

ii. Irregular schedules

iii. Emotional compartmentalization

Spouses often report feeling emotionally shut out, not because of lack of love, but because survival coping becomes the norm.

Healthcare Workers

Especially during and after crisis periods.

Contributing factors include:

• Long shifts

• Compassion fatigue

• Emotional overload

• Caregiver burnout

• Limited recovery time

When one partner is constantly in crisis-response mode, relationships quietly erode without intentional support.

Long-Haul Transportation & Travel-Heavy Professions

Extended time away from home increases:

i. Emotional distance

ii. Role imbalance

iii. Parallel lives rather than shared ones

Divorce risk rises not because of infidelity alone but because connection becomes logistically difficult to sustain.

Caregivers & High-Responsibility Support Roles

This includes spouses caring for:

i. Injured service members

ii. Disabled partners

iii. Chronically ill family members

Caregiving without education, boundaries, and community support often leads to:

• Identity loss

• Resentment

• Exhaustion

• Emotional isolation

These marriages don’t fail suddenly, they unravel slowly.

The Common Thread Isn’t the Job. It’s the System

Across every high-risk group, the same issues appear:

• Chronic stress without decompression

• Unequal emotional labor

• Lack of spouse-specific education

• Identity erosion

• Absence of long-term relational support

This is why LRW does not frame the issue as “resilience.” Endurance without support is not strength, it’s erosion.

What Actually Lowers Divorce Risk

From LRW’s lived experience and program outcomes, marriages and families fare better when spouses have access to:

i. Education that normalizes the impact of stress and trauma

ii. Nervous system regulation tools

iii. Identity and career pathways of their own

Whether someone remains married, separates, or rebuilds independently, long-term wellness depends on supporting the whole family system.

There is no single list that definitively ranks U.S. groups by divorce rate and chasing that list misses the point.

The groups most impacted by divorce are those asked to operate under chronic stress, prolonged separation, and invisible emotional labor often without adequate support for the partner holding the home front together.

That is exactly the gap Lotus River Wellness exists to fill.