Pabst, I have an ex-boyfriend who served as a Marine in Afghanistan. He loved it. He got injured and was honorably discharged and that made him sad.

He also doesn't sleep more than 3-4 hours/night due to screaming nightmares the last time I checked. Not to mention, of course, the physical health sacrifices that he made. Not to mention, of course, that once a war is over everyone who's "really good at war" has nothing to do. Nothing they are good at that applies into the world of peace.

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Got another ex, he's the one I've mentioned around here who thinks that the problem with women is that society doesn't judge them harshly enough for getting minimum wage jobs. He's the one who told me that if equality between men and women were achieved, we would see a rise in sociopaths because men have to have sex or else they'll go insane. (And apparently if men and women were equal, that means men and women would have less sex. Like, don't even ask me where he gets this from.) This guy told me that 80-90% of the women in the military that he saw coasted, cried, and did whatever they could to get out of everything they were doing. I asked him to really think about that and think of concrete women that did this, and then the other women who actually lived up and made it, and if it really was that divided. He came back to me and said no, it wasn't. I pointed out that we don't notice when people are doing their jobs, we notice when people aren't doing these jobs.

This guy has PTSD. This guy may have been nutso before he went into the army - but that's something to think about too.

companionship and camaraderie with your fellow soldiers

Who are your fellow soliders going to be, pabst? Do you think that you are going to be surrounded by educated, erudite, philosophical soldiers? Do you not think that a job whose responsibilities include potentially killing people might not attract people who may be interested in killing people? You're going to be surrounded by fighters. People who don't consider themselves fighters, and then others who do: people who do MMA, BJJ, who like physical combat.

Have you ever been in a fight Pabst?

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That guy? The second one? He knows he has PTSD. When I started seeing him he was smoking an astronomical amount of pot every day. I'm not talking bowls or bongs or joints or blunts I'm talking hash oil and dabs and enough weed to knock me on the back for hours. He doesn't drink anymore because when he drank, it turned into problems. Fights at bars. He can't hold down a relationship for anything. He still texts me telling me things that he thinks I want to hear - like that he's cleaned his room or that he decided, he doesn't want kids - because he wants to be in a relationship so much he's willing to sacrifice what I would consider to be kind of basic parts about himself (the kids thing, anyway).

He tells me he likes me because I'm not like other women, because I never say "I can't do that, I'm a girl," etc. He is seriously probably the most sexist person I've consciously ever known.

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So take a second, honey, and think about who those fellow soldiers are likely to be. I do not think they are likely to be private school educated New York city boys who get into bars by wearing suits at 5pm weekdays.