On Dating A Military: A Cultural Approach

It makes sense for a military not wanting to have a serious relationship, or even a relationship at all. With the possibility of deployment and transfer at any time, one would render it impossible to fully commit-only with the possibility to end it at any given moment. Vulnerable to emotional attachment and openly accesible to the option of long distance relationship, one would rather choose not to have any relationship at all. On the other side, you learn to have friends for life. That is why they prefer to have friends with benefit.

A lot of infidelity cases in military also makes it harder to have a relationship. The peer pressure is high, and added to the above mentioned reasoning-the probability of not having a relationship becomes higher.

The military teaches you to be independent and self-sufficient. Albeit the team work, you learn not to easily trust and open yourself to other person. You detach yourself from attachment, be it physical or emotional, both for reason of dependency and fear to be vulnerable.

Military teaches you to be practical and flexible-with the possibility of changes at any time, they would only make short-term plan, although a long-term plan is feasible in their mind. A short term plan would usually not include a relationship. Practicality does not include drama and talks about relationship. Practicality does not include long term relationship and the fuss of writing or calling people. In the world where a relationship demands equal affection and devotion, this just wouldn't seem to work out.

Being in a military which is male dominated, a patriarchal view of life is also formed. Some view that a proper women is a devoted house wife. In rare cases can one find a military marry a career woman. Why? Because it will be hard for the woman to keep up her career with all the transfer and the problem with settling in is already hard enough to deal with- not to mention if you have kids.

In the world of secrecy that is identical to military, one learns not to talk much. And how would one begin to have feeling if one does not open up. The culture of not to talk to much makes it difficult to open up and engage in a communication-which leads to a difficulty of having a relationship.

There are also some military who views marriage (not relationship) as a salvation- and rush themselves to marriage. Why? Because only if you are married should the option of being transferred with your wife occurs. On the contrary, a marriage based on a rushed consideration is a weak marriage. Again, marriage starts with relationship- so you have two options, not to have a relationship at all-or have a relationship with a view to get married.

Once one enters the military, there is a shift in the type of women. With the view of military as protector and savior, one would not want a dominant woman to have a relationship with. But, then again, she has to be strong and dependent enough to be left alone. The line between dependency and dominancy is bleak and weak. In general, for every man there are 2 types of women: girlfriend material and wife material. It is way easier to find a girlfriend material, because to find a wife material needs the test of devotion, attention and time. This quite hard material to find becomes even harder if one's identity as a military is being added.

Added together, this would create a military man that does not commit enough time, devotion and affection. With the notion of equality in a relationship, even with the military cultural background, would one be strong enough to face all of the above mentioned attributes is the question.