"I completely resent that statement."
- Of course you do. You're on the opposite end of it.
"What about women in the service? Should men avoid women who have decided to serve?"
- yes, absolutely.
"I served in the army for just shy of ten years and pride myself on how i have treated my girlfriends. Not everyone needs someone at their beck and call ALL the time. I know MANY people who have been happily married for decades with one of the partners being in the service. There ARE people in this world who can subsist without the support of others, they are called strong people."
-- Not saying I need him here ALL the time, but I calculated what percentage of the time I'll have spent with him by next June. By next June I will have spent 3 years being his girlfriend, and I'll have actually been in his presence physically for 10.95% of that time. The term you used, "subsist" as in emotional subsistence, is therefore very accurate. 90% of our lives will be lived without eachother. All because he's in the army.
"Even when i was thousands of miles away in a place nobody else would want to be, I still knew that my girl loved me and I loved her. We both had lives that we wanted to live, lives that didn't require someone at your side at all times....we are strong people. It's unfortunate that you take the stance that you do. It is also quite selfish. "
- See, this is why relationships where one person is in the military are so unbalanced. Because the relationship benefits you, the one who leaves. Its comforting for you to know you have someone who loves you waiting for you to come back. But what does she gain? Unless her life also involved a career that took up 90% of her time, she was losing out. You were cheating her out of a more fulfilled and happy, love-filled life. You were keeping her for yourself. That is quite selfish.
"Some of us enjoy the excitement of travel, of new places, and serving our country proudly. There are thousands of YOUR fellow countrymen serving at this very moment, thousands of miles away from their families that they love and cherish, and you have the gall to call them emotionally masochistic for leaving their families behind?"
--No, I call them sadistic and selfish. Masochistic describes the women who consent to that type of arrangement. Look, there's nothing wrong with following your thirst for excitement and travel, or glory, or whatever else. But there IS something wrong with doing it at the expense of someone else's happiness.
Consider: the girl I was referring to gave up her dreams and ambitions to come live in Bumblefuck, NY with her new husband. Then her huband got her pregnant at the young age of 21. And now he's going to be deployed for a year. I find that to be disgusting. If he wanted a family, he should have waited until he was done having his adventures. Now his poor wife has to raise this baby by herself. And I don't think he has the right to call himself a father if he's never around. And I think he's being a horrible husband by doing that to her - making her give up her dreams to put her behind the stove and pop out a child so that he can have a family waiting for him when he comes back. Its selfish. She gave everything up for him, and he's giving his all to the army, instead of to her. Like I said, imbalanced. Its irresponsible and selfish of anyone who is not going to be able to fulfill his role as a father to start a family. And its wrong of him to make her give up her life to sit around and wait for him.
So, I find your views repulsive.