This is the first of a two part series on interviewing a perspective wife. This first part will focus on if you should marry at all. The second part will cover the actual “interview”. As you likely already know, Marriage 2.0 comes with great risk for men. This is undeniably true. However:
- The risk associated with marrying has always been great. Even when the legal risks were much smaller, the risks to your future happiness and your children’s wellbeing have always been there. Marrying the wrong woman has never been something easily overcome. Even Henry the 8th had a great deal of red tape to deal with.
- The risks for men post feminism aren’t restricted to married men. If you want to avoid these risks entirely you will have to take drastic measures. The Spearhead has a new post on just this topic which sheds some light on this.
More importantly, not all marriages are loveless, sexless hells on earth. There is a selection bias on internet forums. Guys who have been screwed are much more likely to want to tell their story than those who are happy. I’ve been married for a decade and a half and am deeply in love/bonded with my beautiful wonderful wife. We have grown so close over the years that friends and relatives often accuse us of being the same person. On top of this we have two beautiful children who are the apples of my eye. So if you are a beta guy contemplating marriage, my advice would be give it serious consideration.
At this point some readers are undoubtedly thinking: Sure. I felt the same way until my loving wife of 20 years left in a caravan that included the gardeners, the pool boy, and our milkman. I get it; one can never fully assess risks which might show up in the future. Another will likely point out that he felt the same way until he realized that according to the laws of genetics, his four kids really shouldn’t have Afros. I get that too.
So if you are a typical beta guy, you have to carefully weigh your choices. If after reading the spearhead post on Male Self Defense 101 your reaction is lets take another look at that map, part two of this series should be of interest to you.
Before you do marry, it is probably a good idea to learn something about relationship game. Some good resources are Married Man Sex Life, and Citizen Renegade (especially the post by Dave from Hawaii). You don’t have to be a kung fu master at pickup, but understanding the basic psychology of seduction should be very helpful.
Answers to pre submitted questions from regular readers:
Q: I’m so alpha that every time I walk past a convent the nuns hack into my iPhone to send me lewd pictures of themselves. Why should I marry?
A: I don’t think you should. Have fun!
Q: I’m so alpha all of my LTRs will cluck like a chicken in one of four languages if I give the correct hand signal. Should I marry?
A: No.
Feel free to post your thoughts on when/if a man should marry under marriage 2.0 below. Posts starting with “any man who marries today is stupid” are entirely acceptable, as are posts specifically calling me stupid for being a happily married chump! Also, feel free to post your feats of greater alphaness for mere mortal beta’s to weep over.
No matter how alpha, the beta in us always wants to one-itis ourselves and settle down.
And young-uns’ ‘d be nice, too.
And I’m waiting for the Potential Wife List of Questions, Dal.
Gorbachev,
I can’t imagine anything I could possibly teach you, but hopefully part II will at least be interesting for you!
BTW, did you get your iPhone patched?
We can always learn.
And I’m iphoneless. It’s in a Canadian lake somewhere. I now have three days of continued workcation (now actual vacation) during which I am blessedly free of cellphones.
The Canadian countryside is, btw, pretty spectacular. Nice country up here. If the winter wasn’t so cold, I’d consider buying a little cottage up here and working remotely. I wonder if I’d get tax benefits.
Dalrock,
Not to be a complete pedant (well, okay, maybe a little… ) its prospective.
On the point, tho, I’m really interested on what you have to say and compare it to my experiences. I’m on my 3rd marriage. #1 went south because both of us were young and dumb. married a little over a year. Second one went south because my wife had unresolved childhood abuse issues, and while I was away on deployment and she was in therapy she went off the rails. Third one seems like its working. 6 years this month, and I am 10 years older than her. Out daughter looks just like my daughter from my 2d marriage, and we have another sprout on the way. The things I’ve learned the hard way about selection I’ve tried to pass along to younger friends and co-workers.
Regards,
Pol
Pol,
Thank you for your service! And thanks for catching the boneheaded spelling of Prospective.
I hope you and Gorbachev will share your insights in the comment section of Part II.
Pingback: Interviewing a Prospective Wife Part II: Interview Questions | Dalrock
“not all marriages are loveless, sexless hells on earth. There is a selection bias on internet forums. Guys who have been screwed are much more likely to want to tell their story than those who are happy.”
Thank you for saying this. I find the view of marriage promulgated on some corners of the net that shall remain nameless as to be one that really reeks of sour grapes. I’d wager that the folks with the happiest marriages aren’t even aware that those corners of the net exist.
I have a friend who married a mid-30s woman in 2008. He and he wife attended our other friend’s wedding last year and sat at the same table. Without prompting, his wife told me and another male mutual friend that all women need to go through their “slut phase” before they get married so that they know what they want. She also mentioned that by her late 20s she had only been with two guys and one of her female friends encouraged her to sleep around. She also said that she had one year where she slept with 8 guys, as though this was a good thing for her.
I think my friend may have made a mistake by marrying her, because he definitely wasn’t the player type. She also waited until after their marriage ceremony to tell her husband that she had $8,000 in credit card debt.
The most disturbing thing is that she sees nothing wrong with having gone through her “slut phase” and almost seems proud that she slept around.
A bit late here, but Kurt, I’ve been told that too by a female friend too (although the word she used was promiscuous). At least I had the sense to look at her like “WTF?” and not take it like a doctor’s prescription. You go ahead and be a slut on your own, grrrl!
Pingback: Are men morally obligated to marry? | Dalrock
Pingback: Rotating Polyandry and NAWALT | Dalrock
Pingback: She felt unloved. | Dalrock
“Too sexy, too laid back, too independent… Why some women just AREN’T wife material”:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2063997/Too-sexy-laid-independent–Why-women-just-ARENT-wife-material.html
Pingback: Don’t Get Married, Part 4: Alternatives To Marriage For The Modern Man
RL, it is painfully obvious that a woman wrote that article! I think it is funny that women describe their behavior as “independent.” In my own personal experience, the most independent women tend to be the most selfish and self-centered which is incredibly unattractive to the vast majority of men.
The author also argues that Cameron Diaz isn’t married because she is too “sexy”! Is she joking? Cameron Diaz looks like a grizzled hag, and that combined with her penchant for going for guys out of her league explain why she isn’t married. She also claims that “men go for [Diaz] in droves” – if that is true, the men are probably excited about being with a famous, wealthy woman whom they would never marry. They also show a photo of her with her much younger ex, Justin Timberlake – he was clearly out of her league, but the author just doesn’t get it.
The author also confuses “sexy” with “slutty.” I think that most men don’t mind their woman showing off her body so long as she doesn’t look like a tramp.
Pingback: Power, Responsibility, and where I Stand « stagedreality
Pingback: Mentu’s Theory of Gender Displacement « The University of Man
Pingback: What, Me Worry? | Dalrock
Pingback: “29/31″: A Time-Travel Video About The Wall | The Badger Hut
Pingback: Marriage as Restaurant | The Wild Man Project
Pingback: Mentu’s Theory of Gender Displacement « stagedreality
Pingback: Avoiding a poor wife. | Dark Brightness
Pingback: Looking for The One- Link Compilation | Donal Graeme
Pingback: A Light in the Darkness | Donal Graeme
Pingback: Leave her better than how you found her | Reflections on Christianity and the manosphere
Pingback: Can This Man Be Saved? | The Society of Phineas
Pingback: A detailed timeline and how to guide on the process of finding a wife | Reflections on Christianity and the manosphere
Pingback: Should Mormon Men get Married? | Mormon Red Pill
Good morning Dalrock. I wanted to drop this right here for your consideration and for perhaps the purposes of inspiring you to perhaps revisit this subject for young men including practical wisdom on how to carry this out.
Our daughter (22) has a good girlfriend that we have known since the two of them met in a 10th grade class together. In other words, we’ve gotten to know her pretty well. She is a Vietnamese, Christian young woman with a gentle nature, very quiet, and highly family oriented. She has abandoned her college ambitions several times in response to her family needing her to direct her energies toward assisting in family businesses, sick relatives, etc. She just wants to meet one Christian, Vietnamese young man to settle down with. She is not fat (far, far from it) and is cute enough. Like our daughter, she has never had a boyfriend.
Her parents are divorced. Whether or not her mother was a good wife, I do not know. I do know that when her father left their family (it was his idea), he left wife, kids, all, left the country, took up with another woman, and never. looked. back. This tells me that whatever was going on, it wasn’t all about a bad wife kicking husband out of the house.
So…she meets this guy via her sister’s husband and the first date is to a local attraction where they got free tickets. In other words, he didn’t spend a lot of money on her. As the date unfolds, she finds herself basically going through an interrogation of sorts. He is asking all kinds of questions about why her parents aren’t together and her thoughts on it and just all kinds of wierd stuff for a first date. The kinds of stuff that this girl would surely be uncomfortable getting into on the first date, and she was understandably reserved at the interrogation.
The date went on and got better, they seemed to hit it off, and she expected that she would hear from him again. She didn’t. She tried to reach out to him, but got a tepid response. The only thing she can figure is that she failed his interview. An interview she was ill-prepared for and frankly, not at peace with getting into on the first date.
As I heard about it I was struck with the notion that it sound eerily as if he had been online collecting information on how to vet for a wife. That’s all well and good, but perhaps some of these guys need a crash course in how to get the answers they seek without a harsh interrogation which will only serve to cause a woman to clam up or lie.
For instance, given this guy’s connection to the BIL, there were a lot of details he could have gotten about her parents’ split over time, and without putting her on the spot on the first date. My husband had asked plenty of people about me and my family history and I was none the wiser for quite some time.
Additionally, any discreet young woman is not going to want to divulge the details of her family’s baggage to a guy until she is fairly certain the thing is going somewhere. Maybe in addition to questions to ask a prospective wife, you might offer some avenues to get answers in a less combative way.
She may have dodged a bullet, or they may both have lost out to his understandable zeal for caution which was unfortunately coupled with a lack of skill and charisma.
I am encouraged by Elspeths desire to engage in this topic this way, and I will follow this to see where it goes.
Most women who criticize the manosphere on this topic just dismiss all of it as “creepy.”
These are actually good questions, and I want to hear what the guys around here come up with.
One of the things I hope to work on is some solid guidance for men in this area, especially for young men. No one can make a perfect path, but many things can be seen ahead of time.
I am more interested in vetting an older potential wife myself, but that is due to my circumstances. Our society and especially Christians need solid input on vetting and being proper spouses.
I met my wife on a blind date through a Christian dating service (prior to the internet).
She pulled a written list of questions out of her purse and started asking them, starting at the top of the page.
I didn’t mind: after all, I operated highly complex weapons systems that required me to use checklists all the time… although I thought it was a little odd for a first date. If anything, it strikes me as being efficient.
We’re coming up on three decades of marriage, so I guess my answers were okay. Then again, I’ve always been a good test-taker.
“As the date unfolds, she finds herself basically going through an interrogation of sorts. He is asking all kinds of questions about why her parents aren’t together and her thoughts on it and just all kinds of wierd stuff for a first date. The kinds of stuff that this girl would surely be uncomfortable getting into on the first date, and she was understandably reserved at the interrogation.”
That’s the key right there. This is one isolated instance where the “all this Red Pill stuff sounds so cold and bland and devoid of feeling and emotion” and “Red Pill attracts men on the spectrum” have a bit of a point. The man obviously lacks finesse, discretion and discernment. He’s got worse problems than just worrying about whether his date is going to blow up his life.
First, this is all inappropriate stuff for a first date. And I don’t think Dalrock’s ever suggested that any man should take any kind of approach like this. It’s the same as a woman giving a guy the third degree over his medical history, criminal history, work history and his current annual salary, showing she’d hired a PI to investigate him before the date ever even happened.
I actually had something like this happen once when in law school – an undergrad girl I had dated a couple times told me there wouldn’t be a third date until I produced the written results of a negative HIV test. There was no third date. Even in my bluest of blue pill days I knew I wasn’t going to pursue that further, even though it was at the end of the AIDS scare.
Before meeting Mrs. deti, a lot of women spent a lot of time on first and second dates grilling me about my work as a lawyer, my job, what I did in my job, where i went to school, where I traveled, and what kind of car I drove. One girl made a point of looking at the credit card I was using to pay a bill and the denominations of bills I had in my wallet. Such that even Blue Pill me could tell I was being vetted for Beta Cucks viability.
Second, what men like this need to do is learn interactions with all different kinds of people, talking, listening, observing facial and body language, noting what are appropriate subjects for conversation and what are not, and observing the natural ebb and flow of social interactions. Both men and women are rapidly losing this skill, or never developing it very well in the first place.
Third, the way men find out things like this is to know the slut tells, to listen for verbal cues in her speech, looking for visual and facial cues, and to work things like this into normal conversation. Verbal and facial cues like clamming up about certain subjects, getting overly defensive, being overly open and willing to disclose, and dropping obvious cues that she’s a feminist (“it’s a man’s world” and lamenting the alleged “double standard” for men and women regarding societal and sexual treatment) go a long, long way toward informing a man about the things this Vietnamese girl’s date was ham-fistedly trying to find out.
Elspeth, I might suggest you read Dalrock’s later posts in this series.
https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2010/07/10/interviewing-a-prospective-wife-part-ii/
Here is some language speaking directly to the issues raised in your comment:
“I’m not really serious about the term interview. If you pull out a clipboard and start interrogating your (potential) future wife, bad things are likely to happen. I’m assuming you have enough experience in relationships to know how to manage a conversation and work these questions in appropriately. I’m also assuming you will have the basic sense to know when to raise these questions and not to overload on the topic at any given time. But the concept of interview is still helpful I think. The time in the relationship that I referenced in the beginning of this post is a critical window of opportunity. She is pressuring you to propose to her. You won’t get another opportunity like this. Ever.”
“Below are the specific questions that you want the answers to, organized by category. Ideally many (most?) of these you will already know the answer to. For those issues you have already discussed, you don’t need to bring them up again but this should serve as a mental checklist.”
@ Lyn87:
“She pulled a written list of questions out of her purse and started asking them, starting at the top of the page.
“I didn’t mind: after all, I operated highly complex weapons systems that required me to use checklists all the time… although I thought it was a little odd for a first date. If anything, it strikes me as being efficient.”
You’re a better man than I. I would not have responded well to that at all. Even as a Blue Piller I would have interrupted her and said something like “what’s with all the questions on a written list?”
Mychael and I went on 3 dates, and then she went out of town for a previous commitment for about a week.
We spoke on the phone every day that week, and she recalls now that she felt like she was being interviewed. I had been through the divorce machine and she knew this.
She says she didn’t mind. She also says she was “twitterpatted” over me, so this probably helped her overlook the third degree.
“She also says she was “twitterpatted” over me, so this probably helped her overlook the third degree.”
That’s also an important key. If she’s not sexually attracted, RUN away. There isn’t nearly enough emphasis on the man making sure her sexual attraction for him is present immediately, that it exists spontaneously and without negotiation, and that it is pervasive and persistent.
thedeti,
Really cute girls can get away with anything.
She was coming off four-years of “going steady” with a textbook beta, although I didn’t know anything about him at the time (high school romance… not that serious in retrospect). When I queried her about her odd behavior she said that she hadn’t “dated” in so long that she didn’t really know how.
Like I said: it struck me as odd, but efficient, and certainly not a deal-breaker.
Simultaneously autistic and cute: a story to tell the next generation.
I feel kinda sorry for Elspeth’s young friend, but such things happen in this world. It’s probably better not to waste time on things that won’t pan out, so in the end, she should be grateful at that boy for not stringing her along.
It should be assumed this was going to happen, but it is interesting to get an actual field report of it happening. Our male question asker clearly isn’t too smooth, such that the Woman actually realized she was being interviewed. Definitely sounds a little too much Spectrum, but I have a hard time faulting the guy for being serious.
Though that she contacted HIM does say that at least he had something going. Curious what he was actually after.
LG, Deti. Good points. In my case, the “third degree” was playful, and the IOIs were pretty obvious so I could get away with it. It was actually a fun part of the process.
If you aren’t having fun, you’re probably doing it wrong.
Funny, he gives her the third degree and she wants to continue the dating. Seems something he did must have been right. Perhaps he got an answer he wasn’t happy about and actually acted aloof till the end of the date in order not to cause trouble and leave without bad feelings. In his approach to end the date in such a way he probably caused her to be more attracted to him than she would have been had he not done what he did and acted like a good boy.
The person who should be conducting the interview is not the girl but the girl’s father.
The trouble with the direct interview question is that it will not always produce the information you seek either because the question is too narrowly focused or because the interviewee is at the least economical with the truth.
Last week I received an unrequested E-mail from a woman I have never met concerning a man of whom I knew: She saw herself as having been pumped and dumped. She complained that although she had agreed to have sex with the man and that within an hour or two of their meeting she had only agreed to do so were he able to affirm that he was not married but single. Naturally he claimed that he was single. He wasn’t. Some questions are simply inappropriate and although that question is merely a fitness test of the anti-slut variety it does not alter the fact that the woman even as she takes the moral high ground is a slut.
Not to be mean but that’s kind of the point. If the girl is prepared for such an interview, she has prepared herself to lie and con her way through it. Either be honest and upfront or leave.
@Elspeth
I’m not sure to what extent the man was put off by the fact that your daughter’s friend had divorced parents, but somewhere else on the internet a month or so ago, someone mentioned that while in the past, the fact that the parents were divorced was a big risk factor for the children when they grew up and married, the relationship between parental divorce and the later success/failure of the marriages of the adult children is far weaker now. The person who mentioned this did not give a link for the underlying study as far as I can recall. It seems logical though. A lot of divorces in the “old days” only took place when conditions were intolerable (alcoholism, serial adultery, etc.) whereas divorces since the 80s have often been for little or no reason. So, as alcoholism, mental illness, etc., often run in families, divorce probably ran in families as well. Maybe you could ask your brother-in-law why the young man cut and run if the girl is still interested in him.
You mention that the girl hasn’t had a boyfriend before and wants to marry a Christian Vietnamese man. Is the Vietnamese Christian community extremely small in your neck of the woods, or is she just very shy or very picky?
From the point of view of someone who is on Team Woman, I will say that for a woman to answer endless personal questions immediately upon meeting a man is uncomfortable. I remember that in my youth, young men would ask me all sorts of questions just because we were on the same city bus, and they seemed to have no idea that asking where I went to school, where I worked, and where I lived was simply too much information to give to a stranger, especially when other people on the bus could also hear the answers. I must say that Lyn87 was a good sport — his wife must be VERY PRETTY!
@Dalrock
This is an old post, so maybe you are beyond caring, but:
“one can never fully asses risks which might show up in the future.” Assess is missing an “s”.
[D: Ha! Good catch. Fixed. Thanks.]
@ Original Laura:
Young Vietnamese people (Asians in general really) in this neck of the woods tend to be pretty neutral on religion. There is a vibrant Vietnamese “community” here, but that’s a different thing from saying there are large numbers of young, marriageable, and devout Vietnamese men.
You mention that the girl hasn’t had a boyfriend before and wants to marry a Christian Vietnamese man. Is the Vietnamese Christian community extremely small in your neck of the woods, or is she just very shy or very picky?
From what can surmise of her after 7 years of acquaintance, no. She isn’t picky. She is however suffering a distinct disadvantage for not being as ambitious and college/career oriented as other young Vietnamese women her age. Not that she doesn’t want to accomplish anything in the wider world, but she has placed family obligations first. The young Asian men who are going to medical school, law school (or even pharmacy school) aren’t particularly interested in a 22 year old woman who isn’t on the cusp of graduating college with a real plan for what she is going to be “when she grows up”.
I sound like a broken record by now, but away from the trad leaning Internet, men (even good Christian ones) aren’t particularly wowed by young women who show no signs of ambition or accomplishment. This is true even if they plan on having her be a SAHM when kids come.
I think she’s gotten over it and accepted that it isn’t going to happen with this guy..The date was a couple of months ago but due to crazy schedules, we just recently were able to connect with her in person instead of just she and my daughter via cell communications.
As for the interview process, the reality is that a person (whether male or female trying to figure these things out) needs to have some sense of the proper way to get information without conducting an overt interrogation. Our daughter is the type who would have to resist that temptation, frankly. Thank heavens she has a socially savvy mother and a charming -yet investigative- father to keep her from indulging that tendency. Of course, that tendency is the very thing that would have her more than ready for such an inquisition. And it doesn’t mean she’s being dishonest or duplicitous. She -just like some of the men out there- have just thought a lot about this.
Frankly, there is something to be said for not thinking your way into a box so small that no one else can get in it with you. There is no such thing as a risk-free life.
Dear Elspeth:
I’m a little younger than many on this blog, and for my generation (and those yet younger) it’s often less about ambition than about lifetime alimony.
Long before I found Dalrock or Spearhead, I knew, as every dude my age did, that if you marry a stay-at-home mother, you will be on the hook for beaucoup bucks when she decides to cash out and move on.
Boxer
@Boxer
I was thinking the same thing, although I was thinking more purely of divorce risk. Young middle class men (at least where I grew up) were drilled to avoid marrying a woman while she was still young, and to avoid marrying a woman without a degree. The message was that such a man was a pig who deserved the divorce rape coming his way. The example that comes to mind is the MD who marries a young pretty nurse or (gasp) receptionist. In the past this was quite normal. But by the 80s this carried a huge stigma for the man, and everyone who heard of such a marriage had a knee jerk reaction of disdain for him; he was a letch who deserved what everyone knew was coming. It was a combination of real risk mixed with an opportunistic feminist message woven into the social culture, and it was a very effective message.
This doesn’t mean the message feminists and the family courts have carefully taught middle class men for decades can’t be overcome; I married my wife even though she was only 20 and no where near graduating college. But the dire warning the family courts took such great pains to send was certainly in the back of my mind.
The other problem I suspect Elspeth’s friend has is she probably isn’t in a position to mix with UMC men (Vietnamese not) the way she would if she were sharing their career track. Also, (and this is anecdotal with an admittedly small sample to draw upon) my sense is that Asian mothers are much more likely to steer their sons to women with markers of career success than non Asian mothers.
I disagree. Too many decent earning Christian men -actually even secular men- bring their wives home as soon as the babies come if they can afford it. It is about what education and pre- motherhood employment are a proxy for.
I shall take my exit. Just wanted to drop that cautionary anecdote there for Dalrock.
It’s the proxy-tells. The sad reality is that if a Woman doesn’t show a lot of “ambition”, it’s pretty much screaming “future Whale for ball & chain”, but that’s also a tad shaded to the general American White middle classes. (Since we’re talking in over-arcing themes.)
Though one thing I should have realized sooner, the issue is her parent’s divorce. If you’re dealing with a small community, especially one as small at the Vietnamese in the USA, there’s a big Status aspect to this discussion. I don’t know the contours of how Status from Vietnam translated over to the States, but there’s going to be a weird intermixing. You can’t fault a guy that would be taking on the massive risks inherent in Marriage in the States for a Man, while also having to spend the rest of your parents’ lives hearing about marrying a low-status girl.
I said in my last comment I was taking my leave, but I do have one more thing to add before I really do take my leave:
I appreciate the revelation (or should I say confirmation) this high IQ, devout young woman’s lack of completed education and faithless father marks her as “low status”. No one -not even the “red pill” sphere- has avoided being infected with the shallow and negative effects of modernity.
@Elspeth:
What “is” is. I know northern Asian cultures much better than southern Asian cultures, but Status is going to be a huge thing for her prospective Husband’s family. Should it be? Honestly, no, but it’s going to be.
The young Woman you know is going to need to find a way to expand her connection base. Not Vietnamese Christian Man is going to be quite the same way, but that’s not a huge supply you’re looking to tap into. But I do hope the Lord blesses her in that way.
@Dalrock I think I just deleted my own previous comment that I tried to post, but my elder daughter just got married (early 30s) and she said that most men do NOT want to date a woman who has spent more time in school than he has. If you combine the experience of Elspeth’s friend with the experience of my daughter, then you arrive at the conclusion that a bachelor’s degree is now required for women who want to marry a successful man, while a master’s degree may be too much, and a JD, MD, or Phd is a huge negative.
Boxer, Dalrock and LG:
I hadn’t thought of it quite this way (i.e. uneducated unambitious woman wanting to be SAHM = huge risks, gold digger, future divorce rape). But the more I consider it the more I think that might have been what this young woman’s date was thinking.
Marriage is a positively enormous, practically insurmountable, unjustifiable risk. The risks almost always outweigh the benefits. If you could take 48 year old me and time travel me back to age 25, there is no way I would marry. I’d avoid it because I’d have no real way to reduce the risks and no way to control or contain the damage if divorce happened.
And the risks are even worse now, 20-odd years later. They were carefully concealed and glossed over then (oh, you’re Christian believers. That’s not going to happen to YOU. She came from a good family. So did you. You’re smart. She’s hard working. Divorce only happens to stupid people, popular people, celebrities, drunks and cheaters. Not you. No problems!!).
@thedeti:
Now that I think about it more, it may also be that her date was from a very ambitious Vietnamese family and was unable to envision any set of family circumstances that would have caused his parents to ask him to take a semester or two off from school. He may have wondered if the girl’s mother (as daddy is out of the picture) is going to be excessively needy for the rest of her life, always expecting the daughter and the daughter’s eventual husband to devote excessive amounts of time and money to bailing her out time after time, “emergency” after “emergency.” Obligations to the parents are taken very seriously in Asian culture from what I understand, and a divorced mom who appears to be sacrificing her daughter’s education so that her own needs can be met may be a huge red flag from an UMC Vietnamese-American point of view.
I appreciate the revelation (or should I say confirmation) this high IQ, devout young woman’s lack of completed education and faithless father marks her as “low status”. No one -not even the “red pill” sphere- has avoided being infected with the shallow and negative effects of modernity.
Status being a part of the mate-hunt is not an effect of modernity. Women want to marry up in status, and that instinct for hypergamy can be seen even in Eve at the beginning.
Men have reason to pay attention to status of a potential wife. In a way, men too are looking to marry up, but using a different status scale than women do. Beautiful looks, good character, good family, home econ skills, feminine charms – those are the markers of a high “status” wife.
I do feel for the Young Woman’s situation, as the reality of the current society is massive destructive on everyone, but certain things simply “are” and Status, Class & Race are among those. Plus, those things crop up even before whether he liked her all that much. Maybe he wasn’t clicking with her, on top of the rest. (We’ll leave aside if the pre-existing issues might instinctively prevent the “clicking” part. I’m honestly not sure on that one.)
Marriage is a pretty insane Risk for a Man in the current environment, so one should expect Men to optimize for the risk they understanding.
@Looking Glass & @ Sir Hamster
I remember reading an article in the early to mid 70s written by a Presbyterian minister. This would have been just at the start of the trend for white girls/women to keep their out-of-wedlock offspring rather than put them up for adoption. He said that the girl’s parents were often very sympathetic to the girl’s desire to keep the baby despite the circumstances, as it was also painful for the prospective grandparents to contemplate giving up what was more often that not their very first grandchild. He said that the prospective grandparents often realized that the girl was ruining her marriage chances by hanging on to the child, but they NEVER seemed to consider the status hit that the girl’s younger sisters were going to take when everyone in town found out that Big Sister was raising a baby alone.
In the Vietnamese girl’s case, she is being judged for what her father did, even though having had her father run off may well have Red Pilled her. Life is never fair.
If the girl has merit and he is thinking she could be the one, then I’ve come to believe that you cut to the chase of the proposed marriage vows; what will be said. Certainly not usually early on in the introduction process but fairly soon, before the emotions get going, only to find the vows won’t later come in words or in actions.
He needs to say fairly early on: “I will be vowing to love you as Christ loved the church, for as long as we both shall live …and here’s what I believe that looks like.”
Then he says to her “You will need to vow to me that you will “Respect me, submit to me, and obey me in everything, for as long as we both shall live. And here’s what I believe that looks like. Then, if they both see that as their goal, they can further the dating/courtship into more detailed talk and observation. Then into formal engagement and into even more talk, planning, and observation.
PS: a man should never get down on his knees and say will you marry me? That is not only a position of worship to her but the definition of marriage is so screwed up today it really has little meaning. When he is formally ready to propose, a man should [something like this] be standing before her, confidently grasping both her hands, connecting her eyes and simply and clearly saying “will you agree to vow to respect, submit, and obey me in everything, as long as we both shall live?” Then agree to his proposed upcoming vow.
Elspeth:
I wouldn’t say this Vietnamese girl lacking a father figure and a completed degree marks her as low status. Rather, it marks her as “high risk”.
I appreciate the revelation (or should I say confirmation) this high IQ, devout young woman’s lack of completed education and faithless father marks her as “low status”. No one -not even the “red pill” sphere- has avoided being infected with the shallow and negative effects of modernity.
It probably marks her as low status in the eyes of the guy’s parents, who are probably relatively well-off, middle class, conservative, snobbish Catholic Vietnamese immigrants, who probably have reservations about having a potential daughter-in-law with no lucrative career (which is obviously a sign of low status among middle class suburbanites in a society where female economic independence and credentialism are expected) and divorced parents (which is obviously also a red flag, because it potentially signals psychological baggage, daddy issues and suboptimal upbringing).
All this has absolutely nothing to do with the red pill, the Manosphere or modernity, Elspeth. This guy is obviously an average, sheltered Asian beta with low social skills, who is being pressured into marriage by his parents, who expect him to find some nice and presentable wife from an intact, well-off Vietnamese-American family of good reputation. He’s probably interested in her anyway, but is concerned about potential disapproval from his parents, so he tried to vet this girl in his own clumsy way, because he was looking for potential good signs that’d make the girl more presentable, and because the people in their mutual social circle weren’t exactly willing to give him accurate, potentially unpleasant details about the girl’s past and her father.
Regarding the Vietnamese girl from the broken home:
None of that is to say that any of this is her fault. Some men really are jerks. My maternal grandfather was such a man, although my grandmother was no picnic to live with, either. He left a contentious wife and three young daughters in poverty and made a new life for himself 1200 miles away. It certainly didn’t do my mother (or her sisters) much good, and she struggled with it well into adulthood. The simple truth is that he was a weak man who made bad decisions and ran away to avoid the consequences. I think that’s what those verses about “the sins if the fathers” are really about. God specifically does NOT hold children responsible for their parent’s sins, as He specifies here:
But as we all now, the temporal consequences of sins and bad decisions don’t go away just because the person repents of them. A slut who repents is still a high-risk wife because her oxytocin receptors may be burned out, or she may have an incurable STD, or she may have bastard children in tow.
Likewise the child of divorce (such as the Vietnamese girl in question) may be “damaged goods” through no fault of her own. People are judged for things that they can’t control all the time. I’m a little under average height, and I can assure everyone that women “measure” guys like me and find us wanting every day – short men are judged FAR more harshly than the daughters of divorced parents. Nobody shames or even criticizes women for that, although height is completely outside anyone’s control.
It’s not “fair”… but there it is. And if it’s acceptable to not be attracted to someone because of an immutable physical characteristic (and I agree that it is), it is surely acceptable to be leery of a girl who grew up in a family situation that has a good chance of making her a high-risk wife. If wives didn’t have the permission and support of the courts, the culture, and the church to destroy their husbands, it might be a different matter, but that’s the world we live in, and as Dalrock has noted, even a wife who has no intention of exercising that power still possesses it.
How times change – and yet stay the same. My father used to tell of a young woman in his home town who was illegitimate and he said no one would take her seriously as a marital prospect, poor girl and of course no one was prepared to marry her mother, either. I knew plenty of women who married as teenagers but in those days, few women (let alone men – we are not so advanced as America – leaving school at fifteen placed one in the top fifth or so of the country!) had degrees and frankly those women that did have a degree thus demonstrated that they were not likely to be marriage material having chosen a masculine form of life and probably had done so because they were less attractive than average. Being a SAHM was a mark of the fact that ones husband was middle-class and not an indication that one was a potential liability. Women became Shorthand Typists or Nurses to get close to desirable men and were not seen as gold-diggers but as capable and reliable. Only Cads and Bounders divorced (too expensive in legal fees as well as socially damaging); women were pure and stoic and married for love – at least that is what I was told by the greatest generation. Men married the first female who was pleasant for that was all that was needed for a second or subsequent date and dating a teenager was not seen as latent paedophilia but as Xmas-come-early by parents fearful and relieved that their daughter was not dating Deti’s friends the pot-smoking Fuckbuddy Rockdrummer or ton-up merchant Harley MacBadboy.
Frankly, there is something to be said for not thinking your way into a box so small that no one else can get in it with you. There is no such thing as a risk-free life.
Neither Wilcucks or Geraghty could have said it better.
@Opus is using foreign lingo again!
ton-up
ADJECTIVE
fond of riding motorcycles at high speeds, especially recklessly
used to describe a motorcycle traveling at or capable of traveling at over 100 miles per hour
a speed in excess of 100 miles per hour, or a motorcyclist who frequently rides at these speeds
@Deti
It is possible (I think likely) that this really is about status, especially in the culture involved. But what if it is? Either way the man does appear to have treated her very poorly. Status, just like height, IQ, earnings potential, race, etc. is not an indicator of one’s righteousness or value as a person. But all of these things do tend to influence one’s attractiveness for marriage. Him filtering for status is no more a problem than her sorting for race and earnings potential, or even height.
“It’s not “fair”… but there it is. And if it’s acceptable to not be attracted to someone because of an immutable physical characteristic (and I agree that it is), it is surely acceptable to be leery of a girl who grew up in a family situation that has a good chance of making her a high-risk wife.”
Well said, Lyn.
This gets glossed over all the time.
All hell breaks loose when a man wants certain things and rejects women who don’t have those things. Women reject men all the time for being bald or overweight or short. But yet somehow a man is bad and evil for judging a woman as “high risk” (NOT “low status”) because of her parents’ divorce and her unwillingness to finish college.
Elspeth, the man has a right to want whatever he wants; just as women have asserted (and gotten) the right not only to want, but get, whatever they want.
@ Dalrock:
“It is possible (I think likely) that this really is about status, especially in the culture involved.”
I suppose so. I don’t profess to be knowledgeable on Asian cultures.
“But what if it is? Either way the man does appear to have treated her very poorly.”
Yes he did, and quite ham-fistedly. He needed to use much more discretion in discovering what he wanted to know. Of course, maybe in his culture this is how it’s done. At the very least he could have let her know he was not interested, instead of leaving her hanging and then basically blowing her off.
It wasn’t my intention to comment further but I feel the need to clarify something. My original comment did not include a judgment that the young man was wrong for declining to pursue the relationship. I am fully on board with the fact that people have every right to decide what they can and cannot live with in a mate and what they are and are not attracted to. I exercised that right, and I don’t begrudge this guy -nor anyone else- the right to do it either.
My original comment was about one thing, and one thing only: The way in which this guy behaved as he was trying to ascertain whether or not this was a woman he could move forward with in a relationship.
As these things tend to do in blog comboxes, things went far afield and somehow it seems to be assumed that I was demanding that this guy pursue this particular girl. For all I know, she may have decided as time went on that she didn’t want him either. None of this stuff was the point.
My purpose for commenting was to offer the possibility for this blog’s host to consider if there is a way for men to be guided in how to do these things in a civil and respectful way, appropriate to the level of relationship they are pursuing, like not conducting an official interrogation on the first date.
It costs NOTHING to behave like a gentleman (or a lady). That was the sum total of my argument. I never meant to get into this other stuff.
Dear Dalrock & Elspeth:
This is really interesting, because I never remember hearing such things said explicitly. By the time my generation rolled around, marriage was just seen as temporary, and one had to plan for contingencies like an eventual divorce. There may be another thing at play, though, that I didn’t originally think about.
When I was a kid, it was assumed that one would first complete a stint at Mormon missionary service, then immediately marry a local girl when he got home. The best girls (as judged by the standards of the community) were those who were already matriculated in the states at BYU or Ricks (another Mormon college of somewhat lesser status than BYU).
The ideal Mormon woman of my age-range was expected to graduate a couple of years before her man, then go to work and help him finance graduate school. This also provided a foothold across the border, and opened up more options for him to tap into the American market.
It may be a cultural difference on my end too; but that was the ideal, and marrying a high school graduate was seen as foolish both in the short and long terms. Heaven forbid a woman might just look upon being a competent homemaker as a worthy goal for her life.
Much of the fun of comments sections are the inane arguments. If you don’t take it personally, you can learn a great deal in the subtext.
Best,
Boxer
@Elspeth
Most people get what you are driving at, and it’s a worthwhile thing to remember and emphasize. There was wide agreement that the young man didn’t show much in the way of “slicks” in how he handled his end.
“Doesn’t really cost anything to be nice to people”, as one of my best friends often says. It probably takes some people longer than others to figure this out, and many never do; so a good point to bring forward regularly.
You know post commentaries wander around some. It’s where a lot of great value-added turns up. And things are freely aired out here because it’s one of the few places they can be. But I don’t think your key observation was lost in the process. In fact, you cycled back to it nicely.
@Boxer
During the 80s, my sister said, when discussing the divorce of a couple that she knew, that the wife had deserved to be dumped, because she married a medical student and supported him all through medical school by working in an office. In my sister’s eyes, the wife was a gold digger who didn’t have enough legitimate ambition to have a career of her own. Yet many of our parents’ contemporaries were very similar couples, and those couples ended up with life-long marriages.
It is astonishing how fast society shifted. In 1975, middle-class girls were still supporting their husbands as they went through graduate school, but by 1980 it was considered risky & stupid to devote a chunk of your life to the career of a spouse. To this day, some women are still helping their husbands complete their education, but they are told repeatedly that they are fools. It’s hard enough to trust a spouse these days — having complete strangers who haven’t even met your spouse tell you that you are doomed isn’t going to help.
@Elspeth
This wasn’t in your first comment, but in a follow up one:
And then in another comment you reinforced this with:
I think there is something else unspoken that is probably another source of frustration here. Your original comment presumed (if I read it correctly) that the young man was not just being a jerk (which I think everyone or nearly everyone here agrees with), but that his lack of social skills were preventing him from being able to move forward with a young woman he would be delighted to marry. My own read is that he is being a jerk not because he lacks social skills (which he may in fact lack), but because he is acting out of an attitude of abundance. He was looking for a reason to “next” her, asking her harsh questions and then sitting back to judge the performance. This is sadly common in dating, but we seldom hear of young men doing this to young women.
Either way, you are asking for help fixing the man (solving his problems), but the comments have been more around how to diagnose and solve her problems. I can see why that would be frustrating, but I don’t read it as the commenters being heartless towards this young woman. In fact, I see it as the exact opposite.
Elspeth,
I’ll agree with Boxer and Post Patrol: I don’t think anyone took your post to mean that you thought the guy was obligated to pursue the girl. I get the impression that you think he handled himself poorly on the date (maybe), and after the date (agreed)… but also that he made a mistake in not giving her more of a look-see (maybe again).
But since the idea that he owed her courtship is clearly not on the table, the discussion veered onto discussing what may not have been as obvious. The fact that the discussion went quickly afield is due to your being well-enough-known around here that nobody inferred a demand that you did not imply.
That’s a good thing.
Dear Original Laura:
Wow! I didn’t know this. The BA/BS holding wife is definitely still the model in Mormon families, probably just due to the dude starting school later because of his mission (Mormon boys are expected to donate a couple of years trying to get new recruits).
I think a Mormon girl who didn’t help her husband get through the last 2 years of his BA would be seen as unfit for marriage.
But, just as unfit, is the Mormon girl who is a high school graduate, who doesn’t go to BYU or community college. This may be because high school graduates are seen as jumping into competition for returned missionaries a couple of years older than they — which the girls who went off to BYU will now have to compete for. I don’t pretend to know how women think… even the women of my tribe. This is just speculation.
Boxer
Lyn87,
That approach (a checklist of questions) may be a bit blunt for me, but I suspect I would handle it like you. I would rather eliminate a bad connection quickly.
Deti,
I am interested in a concise list of such “tells” to look for. I have many from reading and participating here, but I have not needed to consider those as much in the past.
I do find it ironic that any single woman I am attracted to is almost guaranteed to have serious challenges since she would likely have had her pick of men if she did not. Some kind of hands-on practice would be good, but I have no idea how you would generate that.
Learning things is much better with a hands-on component. A video “game” of this could help, but it would take significant effort to produce. Such training would be very valuable to those who are more ham fisted.
How do you do that today, especially if Christian morals are high on my list?
I would disqualify a woman who wanted to make out on early dates and likely prior to marriage. (I am not sure stopping that would be as easy for me given that I have not needed to stop for quite some time.)
Suggestions here would be helpful.
Billy:
Too crass for Dalrock blog, but here you go… how to spot a ho’ in the wild:
https://v5k2c2.wordpress.com/2017/03/01/for-the-single-bros/
Strong language. Caveat visitor, etc.
Regards,
Boxer
Elspeth,
I know you said you left, but you may want to encourage the young lady to stir up any technical interest she has. Those areas have some good men mixed in and she might find a good one if she could be a part of user group or other affinity group meetings.
She may also have to adjust her expectations for a Vietnamese man. God can certainly bring people together and I have seen more merit in recent years for marrying someone similar in areas like this, but she may want to expand her pool a bit to make success more likely.
Also keep in mind that expanding beyond your original focus is good for this site, since it has a significant focus on helping men figure things out. It is probably unlikely, but perhaps the young man can read here and at least modify his future behavior.
Good points there Boxer. I already despise tattoos on a potential spouse. It really ruins a good looking woman, especially because what it implies.
Arguing is also what should have caused me to not be married in the first place. My wife argued with many/most of what I did from prior to our marriage. That is the biggest tell I should not have ignored and it is what I believe ultimately did my marriage in. I will not accept that in the future if I can at all help it. I would rather remain single than have the level of strife I have faced.
Pingback: How the interview felt | American Dad
I should clarify that the strife greatly intensified near the end of my marriage. It was an underlying factor the entire time, but I am a strong enough personality that I did not even see it at times. My grandparents argued all the time and were very loyal to each other. We definitely live in different times.
haha el’s post is like a primer in ignore what women say, watch the actions. the girl reached out to him. that’s all you need to know. that’s the action. but instead el talks talks talks about how he needs a “crash course” and needs to be “loss combative” and ends it by saying the guy lacked “skill and charisma.” haha sorry he didn’t like your girl, but you couldn’t be more wrong, el.
Interrogation (a lot of commenters here got it wrong saying yeah don’t be spectrum and stuff like that) shows that you are the prize. interrogating puts the guy straight in the evaluating her position and is amazing. girls will call it creepy and talk about ‘dodging a bullet’ only when the base attraction isn’t there. when it is there, they will respond just like the girl in the story did (hoping she passed the test and reaching out).
and, conversely, if a guy finds himself being interrogated, he is to flip the script or A&A or just answer nonsensically–anything cept let himself by evaluated as if the girl is his superior.
There’s a number of bad links in this article that link to articles that I really wanted to read.
As the Bible says, “Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the LORD, she shall be praised” (Proverbs 31:31).
Hi Dalrock. I hope reviving an old thread doesn’t violate comment policy.
I very much like the questions and considerations that you’ve put forth in order to help young men. However, I’m not sure how to go about actually finding marriageable candidates. I live in a very liberal city, so most young women around my age are either atheist or agnostic. At local churches (and for Christian women in general), I find that women are usually either taken or unattractive to me. Do Christian men have any option other than approaching, dating and “plating” dozens, if not hundreds of women? Or is compromising standards the way to go (i.e. be a bachelor)?
I’m willing to do what it takes, but things look grim from my point of view.
Any input would be helpful and appreciated. Thank you
Pingback: TRP25 – Perspective Makes A Difference | Anodyne Mendacity