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Army to lower divorce rates

THE PENTAGON — Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley today announced the results of an exhaustive study conducted by the RAND Corporation aimed at understanding and lowering the divorce rates of soldiers.

“Going in, our assumption was that long and frequent deployments were the root cause of the higher than average divorce rates of our soldiers,” Milley said. “It turns out, instead, there’s a very high correlation between the frequency of a spouse removing their clothes in exchange for money and the divorce rate.”

Milley continued, “We also saw a spike in divorces when the spouse regularly uses methamphetamine and stays away from home for days at a time. We are still looking into this other phenomena.”

Dr. Philip Lynch, RAND Director of Research, noted, “The findings surprisingly didn’t support our initial assumptions.”

Lynch says that RAND has supplied Army Training Command with a new program to educate single soldiers during boot camp and then to be renewed annually.

“We really want the soldiers to be alert for five major warning signs,” Milley said. “If they can just remember these, they’ll be fine.”

Lynch said the warning signs are, “First, your fiancee or spouse frequently returns home from work with large stacks of one-dollar bills.”

“Second, you may want to be cautious if your spouse or fiancee was nude when you met her,” he continued. “Third, your fiancee insists she is saving money for medical school when in fact she dropped out of high school or middle school.”

Lynch says that the last two are “a strident insistence” that you purchase at least two drinks prior to speaking to her and then ordering champagne themselves, and then immediately jumping to her feet and taking off her shirt when Def Leppard’s “Pour Some Sugar On Me” comes on the radio.

Milley concluded the briefing by noting that while the five warning signs apply mainly to soldiers interested in women, those interested in men need to be cautious, too.

“If he tells you he just needs some time to ‘get back on his feet’ and ‘I’ll be a great stepdad, now get naked,’ it may be time to seek other companionship,” Milley said.