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An ex-marine who holds down a job afterwards will do very well in the dating market; all the ones I know do very well, even in cases where their base demographics are unattractive (short; Asian). It seems kind of overkill, though, and there are easier ways to do well enough without having to deal with the tradeoffs and shittiness of military life.
Yeah. Peacetime military service has made most of the guys that chose it better off for having done it. War is a different kettle of fish; I haven't spoken to a single combat veteran who says his experience has been an unalloyed good. It's anything from "mixed bag" to "drank himself to death at 43 because of the things he saw and did in Iraq". They were more attractive, though.
What do you think about the role of life-and-death danger in making men more attractive? I think that it is the combat, not simply having been in the military, that's doing the work here...a Marine that's never been to war doesn't get the benefit that the guy that's survived combat gets.
It helps reduce neuroticism; if you manage to learn grace under literal fire, most other things roll off your shoulders. You're not going to be terrified at the idea of buying a woman a drink or being turned down.
Though, even vets who never saw combat get significant benefits. There's a baseline level of physical fitness most have, and they also learn structure in their daily lives and the capability to deal with banal peacetime military shit. Many men never achieve even that, and so even those bare minimum things put you solidly in the "above average" category.
TRIAL by wager of WILDERNESS.
I have been thinking about something: in ages past, men went to war to prove themselves. They still do, today, and the survivors I have seen return more attractive, although they pay an immense price, and that is only counting those that return more or less in one piece. Now, war is more destructive than it once was, and we don't think highly of war in general, for good reason.
Therefore: I have been training for this for the past year or so. I plan to have myself dumped into the Alaskan wilderness in late February, 50 miles from the nearest road or civilization. I'll walk out, and if I make it out alive, I'll have been hardened by my experience. I'll have stared my own death in the goddamn face, braving temperatures of 40 below 0 just to walk out alive.
Do you think that this will make my ugly, autistic ass any more attractive? I've heard it said that you have never lived until you have almost died, and that tough, masculine men are attractive AF. This seems like something that would harden someone...either permanently, as a rock-solid corpse, or permanently, as a wilderness-hardened man.
TL;DR Is dumping myself in the middle of the woods in Alaska in winter gonna make me more attractive, if I survive?
I'm a 5'6" 165lb autistic ugly medical student, for what it's worth. 28, virgin, been on a couple of dates. I'd do better if I was OK with morbidly obese women.
Some people think that this is an idiotic idea. It probably is. People do not do this for a reason; I believe that the reason is because it is expensive; if a thousand unattractive autists tried this you'd have too many dead ones for this to make sense on a societal level. However, I do suspect that it is helpful for those that survive, and with less risk of being a fucked-up crippled guy. Either you walk out of the wilderness more or less whole, or not at all. And there would not be nearly as much of the moral-injury shit a lot of vets drink themselves to death over...there is a lot of very deep shame that a lot of veterans carry about the things they did and didn't do. I've seen them die (of alcohol-induced liver failure) and heard their stories.
TL;DR does life-and-death danger make dudes that survive it more attractive?
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