Men, we point the finger at women all the time in the manosphere, but now it is time to point it back at ourselves. I don’t want to name names, but some of you have been tricking women into loveless marriages and forcing them to experience the pain of divorcing you later. Here is one such example from a woman so distraught with the aftermath of this she was forced to seek advice from Salon (H/T Zed and Brendan):
I am 34 years old and have been married for about four and a half years. We’ve been together almost 10 years, my longest relationship. My husband is intelligent, handsome, funny and patient. One of my problems is that I don’t love him anymore. Well, I love him, but more like a close friend and not as a husband. He truly is a wonderful person and everyone thinks he is great. And he is great, mostly. I think it’s unfair for me to stay married to him when I don’t completely love him because he would make an awesome husband for some lucky gal.
Sure, he pretends to be nice and perfect and all, but that is just a front. I know his type. He uses that to trap women! Our poor victim continues:
The real trouble started this summer. I realized, after a series of illnesses and deaths in the family, that life was just too darn short to spend in a marriage I didn’t want to be in. A side problem to my realization that I didn’t want to be married anymore was the realization that I actually am in love with someone else. He’s my best friend and has been for half my life. He knows that I love him, and has said he loves me too. He also knows that my marriage is ending.
Not only did he trick her into marriage, but he stopped her from marrying the love of her life. How did the manipulative SOB ever pull such a thing off? Here’s how:
Allow me to back up a little. Before I got married, I had a mini-crisis. Everyone I knew was getting married or already had families. I was the last single person in my groups of friends. My husband and I had been dating for several years at that point, so it never failed that everyone (and I mean everyone) would ask when it was our turn. I have to admit, I fell for it. What was wrong with me that I wasn’t married? I had these feelings despite the fact I never even wanted to be married! I was in love with my best friend at this point, too, but things were complicated, so I decided to marry my husband because he was stable, loving and wanted me. But with the benefit of hindsight, I know now that I was reacting to my insecurities and not out of a desire to spend the rest of my life with my husband.
Typical. He played on her insecurities, and ultimately forced her to take half of his stuff!
I have discussed with my husband the fact that I am feeling trapped, and that we might not make it. He was devastated, and asked me if I would work on our marriage. The problem is that I do not want to work on it. I just want out. To compound the issue, I slept with my best friend. To compound it even further, I haven’t heard from my best friend in two weeks, despite attempts to contact him. The truth? I love my husband as a friend, and my friend as the one great love of my life. One wants me, the other (it seems) does not.
First he traps her in marriage, and then he wants to make her “work on it”. Now she is forced to cheat on him just to be haaaapy.
Don’t be this guy.
Here is another guy you don’t want to be. I won’t link to the source but it is a comment on a Christian blog discussing divorce. The reality is these kinds of guys aren’t hard to find at all. I’ve even known a guy like this. Here is the poor woman’s story:
We were a Christian couple who divorced. We went through some marital counseling and one-on-one counseling. I prayed for a year that God would change my heart and help me love and respect my husband. I should also have prayed that my husband would love and respect me. He simply wasn’t willing. No matter how much we talked about us, he just yes’d me to death and go on as usual. Finally God made it clear to me that He was permitting me to divorce. My stepchildren were wounded by my leaving, especially since their own mother had left them when they were younger. Except for the pain I caused them, I have never regretted the divorce. The truth is that my husband didn’t love the real me. I would rather be alone all my life than ever face that sense of failure and rejection ever again. And the worst of it was that it really was all my fault. I would never have married him if it hadn’t been for the fact that we had pre-marital sex. I’d suffered sexual abuse as a child and when I became born-again, I’d felt clean for the first time. Then one day we were alone (first mistake) and I wanted to test him (major, major mistake). I wanted so badly for him to be that romantic hero of the Harlequin novels who loved and respected his woman so much he would never have sex with her before marriage. I wanted him to stop himself, but of course, he didn’t. So I did the only thing I could think of to clean up my own mess and that was to marry him. Even as I prepared for marriage, I knew I didn’t really love him, but I ignored it and made myself go through with it. What a fool. The response of our church was horrible. Within 2 weeks I had become a sermon illustration and my pastor had instructed the staff to stay away from me. So much of what happened was my fault, but I was so embarrassed that I couldn’t admit it. I developed horrible anxiety and panic attacks as well as depression with thoughts of suicide. I had become such a disappointment to everyone – my husband, my stepchildren, my pastor, my church, even those I’d thought were my friends. It took me 9 years and a move across country to forgive everyone involved.
Don’t be that guy either!
I mentioned I knew a guy like this. His plan was pure genius. He knew a woman who worked with my wife and me, and she came over to hang out with him after she broke up with her loser boyfriend. They became “friends with benefits”, and she got pregnant. All of a sudden it struck this woman that wait, I’m a devout Catholic! So of course she had to marry him, even though she didn’t love him. Then a few years later, she divorced him and took their young son because she didn’t love him any more.
Don’t be any of these guys.
Men assume that when a woman tells him she loves him and she wants to marry that this somehow means she loves him and wants to be married. Don’t be so simple. It could mean that you are somehow secretly forcing her to take your kids and half of your stuff. So stay on the lookout for this.
Well played, sir.
By the way, these women are crazy. (Is that too harsh?) Classic examples of playing out old relationship problems with new people.
I love the way the Hamster keeps pushing the “my best friend” button. It’s OK that I cheated on my husband, because I did it with My Best Friend! It’s OK that I’m devastating a number of people’s lives, because it means I’m Going To Be With My best Friend! (Hey, my “best friend” banged me and hasn’t called in two weeks, but whatever…)
The other lesson here is husbands must have game. Somehow this woman’s husband got put in the LJBF box, and he is doomed, regardless of his qualities as a beta provider. If the guy had game this might not have happened.
Oh c’mon guys, we all know that these women had good reasons for doing this. Women rarely if ever divorce frivolously, right? 😉
LOL nice writing.
The rationalization these women demonstrate to justify what is essentially infidelity, lying and selfishness is astounding.
Men, screen these women! Before you commit to anything beyond dating.
The first story just made me angry. Did anyone else note that the “best friend” went AWOL after their intimate encounter? Stupid woman!
I recognize that second comment, Dalrock. It is just as stunning with a second reading. Unbelievable.
Lovekraft mentioned screening potential wives. My first thought was, “How do you do that with any level of certainty?” On second thought, I realized that there is one thing that may help. The first is whether or not the wife’s parents are still married. If they are, pay close attention to the dynamic between the parents.
Being an antiquated Christian and all that, I believe a husband should be the head of his house. Not a bully, but unquestionably the leader. Contrary to what mnay women have been led to believe, it is possible for a married to be a loving, supportive, team using the traditional Christian model. It really is!
If your potential father-in-law is being led around by the nose, chances are you can expect to be treated the same. Of course, each successive generation feels divorce is more acceptable so while mother-in-law may have had the character that compelled her to stay, daughter will feel justified to leave if she falls out of love, or more accurately, loves her husband more as a friend than a husband.
Another good piece of writing, Dalrock.
This sad story is only an example of the end of marriage. Back then, marriage was something who was for best or for worse, until death do the people part. There were ups and downs but it was a commitment that people honored.
Now it is only a temporary arrangement subject to the fleeting feelings of the fickle human heart. Something to be wasted and discarded when one feels like it (I’m bored, I’m not in love anymore, I have slept with other man).
In other words, marriage is only glorified cohabitation. This is why marriage is more and more irrelevant in our society and will disappear. It means nothing anymore.
I couldn’t finish reading this. What an ungrateful fool that first one especially is (I only really skimmed the second). Once married, it’s time to stop harbouring fantasies about “the one that got away” or whatever – put it away; it’s not real. If you’re single, have at it, but if you’re already spoken for, honour that and stop being a stupid wanker.
Ugh! This kind of thing really pisses me off. I have no idea really what their lives are like, so I try not to judge them, but really, if the guy is as great as they describe…. Love is not a feewing that comes and goes like sunny days, it’s a choice. Unless one partner does something specific that hurt the other so much it makes it impossible to carry on, this is just ridiculous.
Having been the recipient of an “I just don’t want to be married any more/ I don’t like being married/ I just want to be free and single,” I feel for this guy.
As a believer, the line that made me cringe was:
“Finally God made it clear to me that He was permitting me to divorce.”
God = the ultimate rationalization hamster. Coming soon to a church near you.
It is in a man’s best interest to avoid marriage, cohabitation and kids with most women. Pump n dump is where it’s at.
“The first is whether or not the wife’s parents are still married. If they are, pay close attention to the dynamic between the parents.”
Great points Terry. Another would be to scope out the friends your potential mate hangs with and this goes for both genders. I read once on a wesite devoted to infidelity reconcilliation where a man who thought his relationship was pretty good was stunned when his wife cheated on him and then left for the other man.
The thing was that he noticed that out of the four newer friends that she had been getting closer too, three of them had also cheated and left their husbands. Birds of a feather right?
A friend of mine is having this problem, only he’s deploying overseas and she wants to nuke him with the divorce bomb and keep the kids.
I’m recently engaged, but I’m going to need a way to explain my concerns in this department with my intended. Going into a marriage “fat, dumb and happy” and expecting automatic success does not appeal to me intellectually.
For some people that is true, Thag. Unfortunately, the emphasis on “RO-mance” has replaced a mature understanding of “to love” with “to feel the ‘gina tingle.”
To me, the most disturbing aspect of a whole lot of what I see being written these days is that it gives the impression that “being a good husband” just isn’t worth very much to women these days. A man seems to need Game even in marriage, and lives with the sword of Damocles hanging over his head if he goes off his Game.
I usually find the comments to articles like this much more disturbing than the articles themselves. If all these supposed “NAWALTS” really were “not like that”, I would expect them to be ripping into selfish women like this, telling her how stupid she was for frivolously divorcing a man she describes as a “great husband.” Instead, the majority of comments always seem to be of the “you go, grrl” variety.
This is why I think grerp’s bit about the “schadenfreude” of the manosphere missed the point. How many chances to “choose” to throw away decent husbands should women get? I agree with the religious folks that the answer should be “one.” The marriage market is not like the rest of consumer culture where you can unplug a refrigerator full of food, let it rot, and then instead of cleaning it up just go out and get a new one.
Despite what women who write or read trash like “Eat, Pray, Love” think, they can’t always be “Man-Mart shoppers” waiting for the blue light special on the successful corporate executive type, who is really a bad boy under his gray flannel suit.
Over the years I have known literally hundreds of divorced women whining about the fact that they cannot attract male attention like they used to. At first, I used to play the Herb role they were trying to hand me and felt sorry for them that their picker was broken and that they “picked the wrong man to be married to.” But, eventually I learned to recognize the rationalization hamster at work when I saw it, and started saying “well, you already threw away one perfectly good husband. What makes you think you deserve another?”
The bottom line is that there is not an endless supply of perfectly good husbands for women like this to use up and throw away like used tissues. Once a guy has this happen to him, or sees it happen to some of his friends, admonishments like “you’re just bitter, let go of the past, get over it, and give another woman the chance to do the same thing to you” fall on deaf ears.
They basically say “This is your rationalization hamster on drugs. Any questions?”
Heh. Nice work.
That second snippet was horrible. She tested him by teasing him…seeing if he’d resist the urge to merge like the male characters in those emo-porn novels women like to read…and when he succumbed to his sex drive as well, she married him. Then the rationalization hamster took over, and now we’re left with this:
“It took me 9 years and a move across country to forgive everyone involved”
She divorces him and she’s angry at everyone in the church who rebukes her for it?! (Good on the church for drawing a line somewhere). I suppose the indignation helps her sleep better at night.
You know, God’s at fault here, for telling her that it was okay for her to ignore His written Word and divorce her husband. After all, it’s His ultimate desire that his children by haaaapy.
/s
“I wanted so badly for him to be that romantic hero of the Harlequin novels who loved and respected his woman so much he would never have sex with her before marriage. ”
Emotional pornography is extremely dangerous to dating and relationships. While many women tell me over and over that they don’t believe in all those romance novels and Lifetime movies, I think that practically all women actually expect their dating/relationship lives to be EXACTLY like a romance novel, romantic comedy, or Lifetime movie.
Is Game is the kryptonite to emotional pornography?
zed, while the “‘gina tingle” is nice, it’s obviously not enough on its own. I have to admit though, without it, things are pretty much doomed unless both partners have a pretty low sex drive.
I have to wonder how much of an effect interfering substances like the pill have on all this. A woman on the pill is more likely to be attracted to someone similar (more familial) to herself as it mimics pregnancy and therefore the urge for protective people, but off it and in her natural state, she will be more attracted to genetically dissimilar (better for breeding) men. So if she meets someone while flitting about on the pill, then at some point after marriage goes off it, she may find her husband less attractive than she did when she was on the pill and start sniffing out other males with whom to breed.
If this all sounds too much like we’re a bunch of unconscious monkeys, what can I say? Maybe this is what we get for violating Natural Law. Too smart for our own good.
Also, I think a lot of women will underestimate the pull of her own sexual drive or minimise the importance of sex in a relationship, thinking it ‘shouldn’t’ be so important. Of course, part of this might be a result of premarital sex in the first place, so it gets hard to tell who genuinely loves you and who just wants you around for the free sex once you’ve had a few of these extended one night stands that pass for relationships these days. (Does this make sense? Sometimes I make sense to myself and I’m not sure if it’s very clear to everyone else, lol). It’s all got rather complicated.
[D: You make sense to me.]
“I usually find the comments to articles like this much more disturbing than the articles themselves. If all these supposed “NAWALTS” really were “not like that”, I would expect them to be ripping into selfish women like this, telling her how stupid she was for frivolously divorcing a man she describes as a “great husband.” Instead, the majority of comments always seem to be of the “you go, grrl” variety.”
I’m with you 100% on this and I have to say that it really rubs me the wrong way. So while some may not call them out on their bad behavior, what’s really irksome is when commenters try to rationalize or justify said behavior, actively defending it.
It’s gotta make you wonder just what else are these people willing to justify and defend.
The other lesson here is husbands must have game.
In contrast, it seems to reinforce the idea that women are only attracted to alphas, and that betas simply shouldn’t marry unless they’re willing to play retarded games to keep their female satisfied. If you can’t marry as a beta, then you shouldn’t marry at all.
Being an antiquated Christian and all that, I believe a husband should be the head of his house.
Until he does something wrong and she plays the blame game. It’s a trap for any man to accept that much responsibility while his wife ends up having the right to claim victim status.
It is obviously enough to break up a marriage over. What more does it need to be?
You have a point, zed, but it’s surely not enough to build a solid marriage on either. Hmm…
@ David Alexander,
Until he does something wrong and she plays the blame game. It’s a trap for any man to accept that much responsibility while his wife ends up having the right to claim victim status.
I think you misunderstood my point. Or maybe you didn’t. I get that you are down on marriage, and that you interpret what I believe to mean that men being the head means that men take the blame if something goes wrong. But there’s something that is missed every time I read or hear that men don’t want to bear all that responsibility or take all the blame if soemthing goes wrong. It assumes male headship means lone ranger decision making and lonely stressful days of deciding what happens to the family coupled with anxiety if it all goes south.
However, any leader worth anything knows to utilize the assets at his disposal. This means that while the buck stops with a husband, if he’s a good leader he would never make any major life decisions without drawing on his wife’s strengths and intelligence.
Further, I believe a man whose wife believes her submission and his leadership is an act of obedience to God has a much better chance of having a happy marriage than a man whose wife is consumed with her personal rights and equality, even if it does give the illusion that he is shouldering less
blameresponsibility.I don’t know where the whole “victim status” thing comes in, frankly. I don’t see how a woman can claim victim status when she went into a marriage eyes wide open nad understands what it means to be a partner in a marriage relationship.
Of course if all women understood that, Dalrock wouldn’t have had anything to post about would he? Okay David, I’ll concede thatyou kind of have a partial point there as it relates to many women.
Dalrock,
The bottom line is that women have no legal punishment when they cheat or give up on the marriage to go chase someone else.
They still generally get the kids, they still generally get half your stuff (and some of your retirement savings depending on your state), they still generally get awarded child support (even if you were granted joint custody, in many states, like mine, you still pay her child support).
Women are “vouched for” by the state legally, fiscally, and physically. A man can be homeless after a divorce sleeping in a tent in the bushes at a local park and the state doesn’t care, but the state will provide women’s shelters, child support payments, alimoney, social services, HUD or Section 8 housing vouchers, medicaid, and who-knows-what-else for women after a divorce.
There is no real imminent risk for females seeking a divorce so they can try and “catch an alpha”.
Therefore our situation is this: She is constantly able to attempt to land a bigger fish during the marriage with no reprecussions. Some men shouldn’t be so happy that their wifey is hitting the gym after work four nights a week. It might be in preparation for someone else. This happened to one old boy I know. He put her through school (psychology degree), she gets a job with the state, and then ends up “in love” with a older man who lived down her street. She always stayed in shape, working out, while going to class…………………but it was for someone else. The older man’s (mid 40’s, but quite handsome) wife had a bout with cancer (she survived), so the younger woman actually broke up two marriages. Its been harmful to their two kids. She kept that swimsuit body alright…………….but not for her husband. Me and a couple of the other guys think she basically always planned to do this to S___, (her husband’s first name begins with the consonant, S,) while he was putting her through school. She just didn’t act like she was in love with him.
If the laws were absolutely reversed, and men could constantly try to “trade up” on their wives with no reprecussions, men would truly start to behave like cads. Evil laws get latently evil people to become actively evil people. Liberals like to pass evil laws.
There really is so much here to work with, but once again I agree with nothingbutthetruth: my favorite part was the “God made it clear…”
How exactly did God make it clear to you, hon?
I followed the link in the first example and found this comment:
“she has to decide what love means, and whether she loves the husband, the friend, or anyone else. If she does love her husband, she is going to have to work on the marriage if she wants it to survive and flourish. If there is a solid basis, or love still there, if I were in her shoes I would try to save it. But I do think in these cases that we are all individuals so it is hard to know what another person will feel able to do.”
No, she does not have to decide “what love means.” She has to decide if she’s going to throw over the love of a good man, betraying vows she made, for a guy she’s wanted all these years but never had a shot at. I guess she doesn’t have to decide. She’s decided.
Hamsters, hamsters everywhere!
Terry, please don’t pay Dave Alex any attention. He only wants to justify his decision not to grow up, which I think is his right, but I also think he should simply remove himself and actually do that which he constantly talks about, which is for the most part, nothing with his life. He is wasting time and energy online discussing his myriad reasons as to why its worthless for him to get married or even try to get a girlfriend. No one can or will change his mind, and I for one am perfectly cool with that. He should just have the commonsense to give up this multi year pity party and get on with the business of doing nothing for the rest of his life and leave the people who actually are interested in the things you and Dalrock and others talk about alone.
That’s all I’m saying.
O.
@ Zammo wrote:
“While many women tell me over and over that they don’t believe in all those romance novels and Lifetime movies, I think that practically all women actually expect their dating/relationship lives to be EXACTLY like a romance novel, romantic comedy, or Lifetime movie.”
We were warned that we should be careful about what we bring into our minds, for it shapes our thoughts…and later becomes action. Women’s emo porn consumption warps their reality and affects their conduct just as men’s porn consumption does.
@ Thag wrote:
“Also, I think a lot of women will underestimate the pull of her own sexual drive or minimise the importance of sex in a relationship, thinking it ‘shouldn’t’ be so important.”
Yes, yes, and yes. Similarly, I think men underestimate just how much damage they do to their own credibility in their wife’s eyes when he is indecisive or seeks validation from her. In short, when he lets her run all over him.
@ Terry wrote:
“I don’t know where the whole “victim status” thing comes in, frankly.”
If I may offer a personal anecdote, the whole victim status comes in the moment she decides to cashier her husband/boyfriend for money and needs to justify her decision to the State. She receives more income via alimony, chilimony, and custody the bigger of a victim she can make herself out to be (i.e., unemployed, DV victim, husband is angry/abusive/batterer/bad man/absent/etc).
“whose wife believes her submission and his leadership is an act of obedience to God has a much better chance of having a happy marriage”
This is the key piece, I reckon, for fellows looking to narrow the odds that they’ll be the subject of a female-initiated husbandectomy or parendectomy. If a woman is not accountable to an authority larger than her own id–i.e., she has a valid Faith in an almighty God–then a man really rolls the dice when he allows her to hitch her wagon to him. He truly is then dependent upon Game and other techniques to keep the oxytocin chemicals flowing in her brain.
“She receives more income via alimony, chilimony, and custody the bigger of a victim she can make herself out to be (i.e., unemployed, DV victim, husband is angry/abusive/batterer/bad man/absent/etc).”
Forgot to add “rapist”. That rounds out the victim-status combo plate that was trotted out against me by my PEW. It worked for her, quite well, and she got paid.
“This is why I think grerp’s bit about the “schadenfreude” of the manosphere missed the point. How many chances to “choose” to throw away decent husbands should women get? I agree with the religious folks that the answer should be “one.” The marriage market is not like the rest of consumer culture where you can unplug a refrigerator full of food, let it rot, and then instead of cleaning it up just go out and get a new one.”
I’m unclear about where I said I thought women should get more than one shot to toss away a husband, zed. Being a religious folk, I’d also agree with having just the one shot.
I did say that the current SMP allows for years – sometimes decades – of dating, and this has not proven to be a good thing for men, male/female relationships, or, ultimately, women.
One of my favorite books on this subject is “The Predatory Female”. (It’s a very short, humorous book. Worthy of a read folks.) That was an entire cast of PF’s there, and notice all of them successfully produced an interior dialogue that allowed them to feel what they were doing was OK… even God’s Will! I will never marry, and I’m glad I never did.
Dalrock, you’ve asked several people what they think of the questions you have produced to ask a potential bride. My concern has always been, that women, with no malice of intent, or crookedness, would simply answer the questions perfectly to my satisfaction… and then change a couple years later, and explain later that we ‘grew apart’. (Translation: She changed her mind.)
The Predatory Female is an unconcious chameleon, who will mimic the behaviors needed to land the prize, and then shift to more natural colors once the disguise is no longer needed. And this is totally unconcious behavior for most of them.
I noticed in almost every story you posted, the male was totally shocked. This was not the woman he married. It bodes ill for successfully having any sort of ‘pre-marital quiz’ to see if you have marriage material. Probably your best hope would be find the guy she screwed over the most in her past, and have a little talk with him.
You have got to be the most prolific blogger on the subject I’ve read. Thanks for the read, and Well Done!
Obsidian, How are you doing?
Apparently you have more insight into David Alexander than I since my readings in the manosphere are fairly limited. I agree with you that ultimately, every man has to choose for himself whether or not commitment is worth his time and trouble. And I fully respect DA’s right to decide that marriage isn’t worth the gamble. I tend to believe stable families benefit all of us, so I will defend marriage to the end.
Of course, David Alexander did have a point when he said that a man who has to jump through hoops and play “game” forever to keep his wife interested probably shouldn’t get married. That’s just too much.
I’ve never got the whole Alpha vs. Beta thing. Of course I understand that very wealthy or very powerful men are in high demand. But most men are not very wealthy or very powerful, and I’ve seen some real losers in my day who’ve had several women on a string, not to mention father children from several different women, some educated and intelligent women at that. Bad boys I guess you’d call them, but whatever they were they didn’t have much going for them that would justify the devotion they get from women.
From where I sit, this whole thing isn’t as complicated as it is made to appear online. A man should be a man, and not change things about himself that he is perfectly happy with unless he has a personal or moral reason for doing so. He should not allow his decisions to be dictated by the whims of his wife/significant other, and not be manipulated by tears and emotional histrionics when his mind is made up about something.
I learned all of these lessons the hard way, but I have a lot more respect for my husband than many women that I know. Additionally, I have had to learn to present a reasoned and well thought out argument when I reach a different conclusion from him on a matter. My emotions alone are just not gonna cut it, and there is something very attractive about a man who is strong and decisive.
Why do these qualities have to be relegated to a select group of men, most often the ones who are immoral and foolish (bad boys)?
Somebody help me understand this one. It leaves me stumped every time I read this whole alpha/beta thing. My dad, my husband, my father in law, and all his brothers are men who are not particularly wealthy or powerful, but they have the respect of their women. Not to mention, we’ve all learned to be more cerebral and less emotional when we approach them with a different persepctive.
There’s actual scientific evidence for this Chameleon Syndrome, by the way. A Linguistic study, covered on NPR, found that women pick up accents, and mannerisms much more quickly than men. They have a natural ability to blend in with a new culture, or a new man they want to aquire.
I wrote my dad’s dad when I meant my father-in-law. Forgive the typo. Feel free to fix that for me, Dalrock, 🙂 .
The first case is more common than you think, unfortunately. The bad part is that once a woman LJBFs her husband, there is pretty much no way back from that. He’s been “friendzoned” by his own wife, and she almost never will be able to see him in a sexual/romantic way again.
Also another red flag for men from story one: be very wary of women with orbiting male “best friends”. It’s not a common thing, and very little good can come of that in the context of a marriage.
@Terrybreathinggrace: “Alpha” has nothing to do with wealth or power. I could be a wealthy and powerful Beta. Alpha means ‘Dominant’. This is an animal-level reaction, and you can see it if you look for it. People look to an Alpha to make the decisions, be the leaders, and dominate. Betas follow Alphas. The Alpha wolf isn’t the richest wolf in the pack, and he may not be the most powerful. But he’s always the ‘Top Dog’.
Simply by calling the reaction of men by the term “schadenfreude.” I think you underestimate the polarization of the sexes which has happened over the past 3-4 decades, and the relative lack of concern on the part of women about the whole thing as long as things were swinging their way.
From the male perspective, it seems more similar to seeing someone with a loaded gun pointed at their foot, finger on the trigger, and saying “bad idea.” When they go ahead and pull the trigger no matter what you say, it is a bit difficult to feel very sorry for them.
Take the woman in the first of Dalrock’s links. If she ends up 45 and alone, laments about there being “no good men left” will fall on deaf ears. That is not rejoicing in her misfortune, but more along the lines of “well, what the hell did you expect? That there would always be a better husband than the one you already had waiting in the wings – despite the fact that every other woman in the world wants the same men you want?”
“Finally God made it clear to me that He was permitting me to divorce.”
This is only a small step removed from the nuts who claim He told them to shoot a bunch of people. I hope someone else sees this but me.
@ Oak: Thanks for the explanantion. I think I understood this on some level. When I think about it, I suppose I was blessed to be raised by a strong, confident father (Alpha?). Every couple of years people come to his door asking him to run for mayor of his little town. He is opinion is highly respected. It’s not surprising that I married a man with similar qualities.
Still, I am at a loss as to why the average man shouldn’t be able to at least exude the dominance and confidence required to lead his own wife and family. Should it be so hard?
Of course, self-doubt has been elevated to one of the highest virtues of our society. How dare anyone claim to know the truth? I realize that this “virtue” is being instilled into children at younger and younger ages, particularly in the schools, and boys are being affected by it. My father says when he was a young man (he’s 80) it was fairly well accepted by men and women alike that a man was the head of his house. Times have changed considerably. Unfortunately, as men have accomodated what women claimed to want, women have not changed and still clamor for the dominant men.
What a mess!
Sad stories.
The gal in the first case is just nuts. I think the “best friend” has more than made his intentions clear. This is what what I mean when I harp on the notion that Americans want to be free for the unbridled “pursuit of happiness,” even when it makes no freakin’ sense. Where was her bestie when she was getting married to her husband? Obviously, he didn’t jump and marry her then. Why should she want him now? She was able then to move on and find someone else who was “good enough.” Since no one ever gets a perfect spouse, “good enough” is really the best you can do.
Thag said, “Love is not a feewing that comes and goes like sunny days, it’s a choice.” I’ve said it before, and I’ll co-sign it now. I think I appalled Hope a while back with my INTJ lack of feminity, but, even though I have strong feelings and fantasies myself, I just don’t understand people who feel compelled to live by theirs. Every once in a while, you gotta run those tingles and chubs through your head to see if they work IRL.
The second woman, I feel bad for. I have to give her a bit of pass for having been twice victimized before she victimized her husband. The sexual assault damaged her and made her “feel dirty.” Her church made her feel clean again but at the price of 1)feeding into the romantic fantasy that a “good” man would be “strong” enough to resist what she freely offered and 2) making it morally untenable for her to move on and cut her losses instead of trying to “right a wrong” by marrying.
I’m a religious person myself, but this notion of “church will fix your brokenness,” coupled with a lack of compassion and forgiveness for mistakes does more harm than good.
Yup. The ‘Clamor for dominent men’ (I like that) is instinctual. To ignore it, you’re ignoring a few hundred thousand years of natural selection. To make the strongest babies, you have to attract and retain the most dominant male. If you find a more dominant, powerful male, the old mate is cast off so new, even stronger offspring can be developed. We are a product of that system, and it takes something pretty powerful… like religion… to overcome it.
Terry:Being an antiquated Christian and all that, I believe a husband should be the head of his house.
DA: Until he does something wrong and she plays the blame game. It’s a trap for any man to accept that much responsibility while his wife ends up having the right to claim victim status.
J: I think that when a person asks another to “submit” or let them be “head of the household,” they do take on complete responsibility. I personally think it’s harder to play the blame game when decisions are made jointly because both parties are responsible.
“Finally God made it clear to me that He was permitting me to divorce.”
DBA: This is only a small step removed from the nuts who claim He told them to shoot a bunch of people. I hope someone else sees this but me.
I see it, and I would have said it except that you said it first. As I said above, I am a religious person, but in the hands of the weak, dumb or deluded, religion can do a lot of harm.
J, I agree about the second one. I have a bit more sympathy for that, even though I also agree with DBA as you do. This is the trouble with “modern churches” that kind of end up like Oprah’s church (Unitarians, for example). Too much room for subjective and creative interpretation of God’s word. It gets to where some people would be better off without religion.
my INTJ lack of feminity
You are a robot!
No offense intended, but the Unitarians are hardly the first or worst manipulators of the bible. It was written thousands of years ago for pedogogical purpose of teaching medeterranian jews how to live their lives. There were hundreds of gospels, some written hundreds of years AD, and most people are reading a version of the holy text that was re-written in the middle ages. I can’t think of a single religion that doesn’t EXTENSIVELY subjectively and creatively interpret the ‘holy word’. That’s why the catholics and protestants still can’t get along, even though they read the same book.
Religion really died with the written word. When the oral tradition could change with the times, it was a fluid way of teaching people how to live. Now we have to look at a text, written by cultures who haven’t existed in thousands of years, and have arguments over what they meant. It’s the basis of almost every world conflict.
I’ve addressed this submission issue, J:
However, any leader worth anything knows to utilize the assets at his disposal. This means that while the buck stops with a husband, if he’s a good leader he would never make any major life decisions without drawing on his wife’s strengths and intelligence. And I’ve addressed it on my blog, too, if you’re interested:
Does Biblical Marriage = Military-Style Chain of Command?
I read a book recently by a Christian author who did a survey of 1,100 men of various religious persuasions and around 85% of them said that 1) they would prefer to have respect and admiration more than love if there was a choice, and 2) even if their wives made more than enough money to provide for the family, they would still feel a burden to provide for the family. So whether we admit that the men are leading or not, they still feel the burden of it. The book is called For Women Only by Shaunti Feldman, if you’re interested in all of her other findings.
My point is that men are hard-wired to be leaders, and women as evidenced by behavior, and hard-wired to desire a leader. This doesn’t mean that decisions aren’t made jointly, or that the husband is a tyrannical dictator. It really rankles me that people automatically jump to that conclusion.
@J, I was not “appalled” by the INT* mode, more implying that you were different from most women and therefore more able to be cool-headed, and this is a good thing. I was not nearly as “cool” myself and made many mistakes in my past, although thankfully I had enough logical brain cells in me to recover in my mid-20s.
“Still, I am at a loss as to why the average man shouldn’t be able to at least exude the dominance and confidence required to lead his own wife and family. Should it be so hard?”
When you watch children’s television shows after reading on the manosphere it will really open your eyes. Just one example, I watch a show with my stepson once in a while, called Fairly Odd Parents. I love the show because it’s so random and we both laugh at the regular inanity the show has. However, upon second look there are some very disturbing traits this show has;
The main charachter’s father is an absolute moron who pretty much follows his wife to boy band concerts and even competed in a beauty pagent.
Timmy Turner’s fairy God parents are a married fairy couple, with the female being the brains, and the male having elevator music running through his head…and I’m not joking about that either.
That’s just one example and there are many more if one decides to actually seek them out. Consider the beta jewellry commercial Dalrock just posted, we see stuff like this all the time, it doesn’t alarm us for a good reason.
We see that behavior as normal.
Fathers are now taken out of their children’s lives at alarming rates, and there are very few male role models for young men to emulate anymore. Your father was strong because your grandfather was strong, he was taught how to be this way by an extremely good example but now, even if a father is present in a child’s life, chances are he will get shamed into submission for trying to be good role model.
Pop culture is all about men being more like women so it’s unpopular for men to be the heads of their households, that is deemed a mysoginistic throwback and the already weakened men of this generation couldn’t mount a suitable ‘defense’ even if they wanted to.
I’ll be absolutely honest Terry, this is something that I learned just recently in my own marriage. That between my wife and I, someone had to have an idea what we where trying to accomplish in our lives and where it was that we actually wanted to go. Someone had to make sure that the both of us stayed on the straight and narrow in terms of those goals and I began to realize that this fell on my shoulders.
What you said about being the head doesn’t mean that I simply shout at my wife or override her plans as if I own her, simply that we make plans for the future and gently remind her that what may seem like a huge emergency now will actually derail our plans in the future.
As for Oak’s definition of an Alpha, I completely agree. To me, while a Beta could lead women if trained, an Alpha leads women AND other men with no training whatsoever. Even as a man I can tell an Alpha as soon as he walks into the room and the one thing that I would dare say, is that there are very few truly confident Alpha-like fathers who lead their children and their families. The results of this can be seen all around us.
I just threw up a little.
There are always relatively few true alphas. What has happened is not a disappearance of alphas, they are still around. What has happened is that the betas have become feminized by the culture. It used to be that betas also had good masculine leadership skills in terms of family life, while not being societal alphas (by definition not too many of those). Today, however, we are training boys to not be masculine and to not be leaders because they are boys — they are supposed to defer to women, emulate women’s emotionality and “openness” and so on, throw off the “mask of masculinity” and become “good partners” for women. And as a result of that, most of them have been made unattractive sexually to the average woman.
There’s plenty of blame to go around, in terms of the educational system, the entertainment and pop cultures and so on. But the fact remains that there are many, many forces out there that are dead-set adamant about making boys this way, including folks like Mike Kimmel and William Pollack. The only boys who are getting through the system without being screwed up by it are either (1) so naturally alpha that they are basically immune to being reprogrammed like this or (2) have good, strong masculine role models that also cause them to resist the programming. As for the balance of the boys, by the time they reach HS, it’s already too late for the most part, and the programming damage is done.
I agree with David Alexander, Terry and Brendan.
If you get “friendzoned” (a.k.a. “betaized”) in a relationship, it is the kiss of death.
All my relationships have followed a pattern. I start being aloof and with good game. The woman is crazy about me and would do anything to have me, but I am not very interested or I play hard to get. When the time goes by, I start loving the woman because she is so good with me. Things happen and you cannot be alpha all the time. So the woman starts seeing your real you. So she treats me worse and worse until
a) she dumps me (my most significant ex did that and I have never been the same afterwards).
b) I end up fed up with punishing her after every one of her big shit tests. And I dump her.
Obviously, I cannot be an alpha every moment: although physically attractive and with good economical and social status, I am a natural born beta and playing alpha for an introvert like me is exhausting. I work and I have a lot of pressure and, sooner or later, the woman is going to see me down and test me. I can play alpha for a while.
For my last relationship, I chose a young girl, with low self-esteem, not very intelligent, brought up with a traditional lifestyle, in a conservative family, who was involved in church (I live in a Thirld-World country so women are more conservative here). She was not pretty, but she was sweet, low-maintenance and easy to deal with. I imagined that she was not going to need an alpha so much. Although I was not that attracted to her, I thought I could have a relationship with her without being forced to be an alpha every time.
My mistake. I was aloof and hard to get for a long time. But the time I started expressing affection, she shit tested me. I punished her by withdrawing my affection and she was well behaved some time. Then another shit test and another punishment. After some time of good behavior, I introduced her to my friends (which I have always refused) and she delivered a MASSIVE shit test in front of my friends. Something to be ashamed of. Maybe the biggest shit test of my whole life. I dumped her mercilessly and she was heartbroken: she lose about 20 pounds. Now, she is looking for me, texting me, emailing me, telling she wants to be my friend.
Well, this is only the last relationship. But, as I said, all of them follow the same pattern. I only mentioned her because she is such a traditional woman, so I thought it would be different with her. (With my ex I didn’t punish her after every shit test, so she dumped me six months before the wedding and she never looked back)
Seriously, women, what happens with you? Why are you so insane? I would like to find a woman to love and to be loved, to have kids, to be myself and to let her be herself, to have a life of sharing things. I am very independent and I have been happy alone for years but it feels good to have somebody with you.
I don’t want to play retarded games because women are a bunch of retarded people who love to shit and destroy the thing they want the most (relationships). I regret not being born gay. At least, gays have to deal with sane people.
Enough material here for an entire conference. I could probably make a post out of each sentence. Excellent job, Dalrock. I think this is my favorite so far.
I agree that love is a choice, not a feeling.
I frequently quote this passage from John Macarthur, so sorry if you have seen it before:
“You say, “You don’t know my husband! I don’t love my husband. My husband is not loveable. He has turned me off. I don’t love him anymore. I don’t care for him anymore.” My response to you is, “That is disobedience!” That is disobedience to the clear Word of God, “You are to love your husband.” Listen, that doesn’t mean that you are going to feel the rockets and hear the bells and whistles. I read Newsweek magazine two weeks ago, and in their edition they said that goes in about two years, because of chemical changes. Isn’t that amazing! Marriage isn’t all rockets, and bells, and whistles–it’s a contented commitment with an occasional rocket, and maybe a bell and a whistle now and then. It goes beyond that, it goes beyond that to a devotedness, to a level of friendship that runs deep and satisfying. And I will tell you how it works: if you don’t love you husband then you need to train yourself to love your husband, and the way you train yourself to love your husband is to continue to serve and serve, and do every good thing and every kind thing, and every gracious thing, and every magnanimous thing, and you will make such a massive investment in him, you will say, “I have got too much in this guy not to love him!””
That is how it works. The thing is these women are blind to the investment they have in their husband. Marriage is an investment and not a purchase, but some women continue to see it as purchase that can be donated to Goodwill as they see fit, as shown by this statement, “he would make an awesome husband for some lucky gal.” In other words, he’s a great piece of clothing that I had good times in, but it’s time for someone less fortunate to have him. Someone will get good use out of him, it’s time to update my wardrobe. Some even but their men up for consignment when they don’t want them and rack in the money for the deal.
DA’s personal issues aside, the reason why “male headship” gets assumed to be about about men taking blame fore everything is because that what Christian leaders are saying. Here is what Douglas Wilson had to say on the matter:
This is similar to the attitudes held by the law, culture, society, etc. If a man is going to be held responsible for anything his wife does no matter what from shoplifting, to adultery, to murder, etc., then why should any man get married? Even if this was limited to the Christian Church, why get married in the Christian Church if all that is going to happen is that the man will be blamed for all of his wife’s sins? This is obviously an impossible standard so it’s no surprise men would reject it.
It is certainly true that until very recently popular culture used to reflect the assumption that men ruled their homes. This was only thirty or forty years ago, and some of the expressions of this idea in ads and sitcoms were startlingly blunt by modern standards.
The original sitcom joke was that the husband was an ineffective head of house. We laughed at him because he was ineffectual at his proper role as head. But the joke is now pointless because very few people will now admit that this is the ideal. The joke has grown incredibly stale.
The only cases I can think of in which the man is shown as head of house in American TV programs in recent years are Little House on the Prairie (which is more recent than I had realised) and Big Love, of all things. Even ostensibly conservative shows like “Seventh Heaven” and “The Cosby Show” took good care to put Dad in his place. TV and film in my country, Australia, is a bit better in this regard.
The frustrating thing as a husband is that many people still expect you to be responsible. A man has responsibility still, but much less power.
My wife generally treats me as the head of the house, but she doesn’t verbalise it much. She asks permission to spend money on trifles, and to do things sometimes, some of which I find quite odd. “Can I have a pet parrot?” That kind of thing. I think women still subconsciously expect to be led, at least in many cases. But nobody dares to say this in public any more.
I have found that “game” does work quite well. We went on a country drive yesterday, and I gamed her a bit, fairly gently. Told her when she would be sharing the driving, and so on. She called to me in a shop to come to her, in front of shop assistants. Once I would have come to her, feeling wimpy. This time I just ignored her for a while.
I think this is becoming second nature. One can almost feel the frame shift, as control moves from the woman to the man. Sometimes one can let the control move back to one’s wife. But it becomes your choice. You are not, as a husband, being buffeted about by your wife’s whims and moods.
The important thing is to lead a woman subtly. Ranting and demanding doesn’t work. It just makes a husband look silly and weak. But a woman will follow if you show a bit of “alpha”. It doesn’t have to be a lot, or all the time. Just enough to keep her interested in you as her man.
Someone mentioned introverts. I am an introvert. An introverted man needs to play to his strengths. Be cool, remote, taciturn, even cold sometimes. It comes naturally. Ignoring the woman when she is being nutty is natural for an introvert. “Negs” are natural for an introvert. Women appreciate a man who can fence well verbally. Verbal put-downs can be funny and effective.
Also, I don’t accept that extraverted, lead-the-troops masculinity is necessarily best in leading a woman. A LOT of women can see through that kind of machismo, and are adept at subverting it. I have known a few blowhard husbands and fathers, and their women often have little real respect for them.
I’m glad you caught that, Laura. The first thought that popped into my mind when I read that was a mental picture of her dropping him off at the “Husband Recycling Center.” The problem lies in social proofing – how many women would shop at the “Used Husband Store”, and how many would be happy even if they got a GREAT deal on a “used husband”?
There are two levels of thinking going on with this comment. First, it makes clear that she really does think of him as an object – like a used piece of clothing. Second, her rationalization hamster isn’t driving in Dalrock’s RH-500, it is in a funny car at the drag strip and has just shot the nitrous oxide. She’s actually doing her husband a “favor” by setting him free to find a woman who “really loves him” (her ‘gina tingles for him) as well as passing along a “great husband” to some other “lucky gal.”
If all that came about, I wonder how many years it would be before she started wishing that she was that “lucky gal” again.
Well, David, I am an “affectionate” introvert, haha. It is hard for me to be aloof with the people I love: not only my woman, but my friends and my family. I guess I am a loser, haha.
I can play game an average day with no problem. The problem are the bad days: when you are exhausted by the soul-grinding job, when I receive news of the illness of my mother… Or the problem is when you are not aware. Maybe the woman comes to me when I have been focusing reading or surfing the Internet and delivers a (tiny) shit test …
Women test all the time. You cannot be alert all the time You can’t hide from yourself. I have years of playing game and it doesn’t come natural to me. I know your comments David and I know that Game has been effective with your wife. The same as Hawaian Libertarian. But you are older guys and your women are from other generation, with other set of values. Maybe they don’t need so much game…
A woman can be loved even if she wears casual clothes when she is home. She can’t be “dressed for success”, all the time. A man should not have to be “in a dominant mode” all the time to be loved. It gets tiring and there is so much in live to do.
oneoftheguys
I can be affectionate, but I am not naturally very warm.
Maybe it is a generational thing, and my wife IS from an older generation. She puts me at the head of the table, but I sometimes wonder if that is not just something she saw her Mum do with her Dad. But then when we were on our road trip yesterday, and it was “Can I buy this?”, “Can we have McDonald’s?”. I don’t expect her to do this. She just asks.
Yes, I used to think that because I am an introvert, I could not be an “alpha” as they say these days. But my wife has dropped hints that I was pretty obnoxious as a younger husband, and I did some pretty horrible things to her looking back. More cold than cruel. I don’t seem to have much empathy for women and I have never been the kind to supplicate. She sat on my lap when I asked her to marry me. I would never get on one knee to a woman.
So, yeah, maybe I have a lot of arrogance and am a natural alpha. Or maybe it is just generational – the messages on TV and in magazines when I was growing up were often about the dominance and mastery of the man (but maybe I just noticed them because they appealed to me). But I think a lot of men are really alphas who have bought into the crap the culture gives you.
Another thing that helps is I find my wife fascinating, and I like to study her and what works with her and what doesn’t. I think she is worth the effort. And I hate feeling henpecked. So I badly want to have a workable relationship with her and enjoy her.
I was feeling pleased with myself recently because my name has just appeared in a discussion in a book I found in the public library. Actually this has happened twice recently. And I thought, stop being so arrogant and pleased with yourself. Then I thought, but if I were not arrogant and pleased with myself, I would never have tried to solve the relevant scientific problems in the first place. Arrogance works, in life and with women. Is it inborn or learned? I don’t know. But I do think Americans have a ridiculously inflated view of womankind, and that doesn’t help the poor American male.
@zed –
Simply by calling the reaction of men by the term “schadenfreude.” I think you underestimate the polarization of the sexes which has happened over the past 3-4 decades, and the relative lack of concern on the part of women about the whole thing as long as things were swinging their way.
I’m sure I do underestimate it; I’m married and have been married for 12 years and the people I know are in reasonably stable relationships too as far as I can tell. I am far, far from the front lines. Much of my info comes from paying attention to what people are saying here and elsewhere. I was completely unaware of what has been happening in family court, with VAWA, etc., until I stumbled across The Spearhead earlier this year. And until it was pointed out, I missed the misandry too. I was born in 1971; the “girls are oppressed” meme was pretty well built in the system by the time I hit middle school.
Take the woman in the first of Dalrock’s links. If she ends up 45 and alone, laments about there being “no good men left” will fall on deaf ears. That is not rejoicing in her misfortune, but more along the lines of “well, what the hell did you expect?
This woman is going to get her and soon. She’ll have tossed a good thing for the chance at cad love and it won’t work out. It will be her fault; she will have fully earned her unhappiness. I feel terrible for her husband. And in her case, you are right. Anyone observing with open eyes will think, “What did you expect? You were cruel and fickle and betrayed a good man’s love.” She provided all the details of her bad decision making and character.
But many, many times I’ve seen this sort of extrapolation happen in this corner of the web based on only minimal information – like a picture or a description, “the divorced mother of two.” That’s conjecture. Cause and effect can not be stated because it’s not there. Social trends are there, yes, but not solid information about the specific person who is being lambasted. With relish. This might not be schadenfreude, but it’s not the grim satisfaction of seeing a tyrant fall either.
oneoftheguys
Also, don’t expect the “meek and mild” types to be easy to handle. I made that mistake. Remember, Petruchio tamed a SHREW. He chose her because she was worth taming and was the kind of woman who would make a good, loyal wife with a lot of spirit, who could be useful to him. Shakespeare contrasted her with the ostensibly milder, but actually disobedient and stubborn wives of other men.
I had a fiancee who was universally regarded as ladylike, sweet and mild. She was actually constantly bitchy about people in her private conversation, and goddam stubborn to boot. She did eventually break down after I accidentally pushed her submissive buttons (all women have them). But that was not a healthy relationship.
In contrast, the girl I married is and was loud and outgoing, like a friendly puppy. She is sometimes a handful, but she is worth the effort because she is hardworking and loyal. She complains a lot, but she would do almost anything for me.
@Hope
I know you wern’t really appalled; I just couldn’t resist messing with you.
more implying that you were different from most women
I wonder if I really am. There are times I feel that I’m lot more intense than most people, even most women. i tend to lead with my head because my heart is pretty vulnerable.
T: I’ve addressed this submission issue, J:
J: I saw it but was giving a different slant.
T: However, any leader worth anything knows to utilize the assets at his disposal. This means that while the buck stops with a husband, if he’s a good leader he would never make any major life decisions without drawing on his wife’s strengths and intelligence.
J: I don’t think we are so far apart. You see yourself as a highly respected second-in-command, not a submissive slave. I see myself as an equal partner. I will defer to my husband when I think he knows more about something than I do. For example, he works in finance; I defer to him about money issues. He defers to me on the kids’ education and health care as I have worked in those fields. However, we spent three hours the other night discussing our health insurance options because he knows moenhy and I know what the family’s medical needs are. We try to work as a team. I’m sure you and your husband do to.
T: And I’ve addressed it on my blog, too, if you’re interested:
J: I took a look. Interesting and well written, though I feel a bit differently.
T: So whether we admit that the men are leading or not, they still feel the burden of it.
J: That’s true in my house too. That’s why we share the burden when possible.
My point to DA was that with authority comes responsibility. If a guy wants to exert complete authority, then he shouldn’t be surprised if he gets blamed when things go wrong. He’s setting himself as the decision-maker. Of course the buck stops with him.
I think my husband is willing to share authority in part because it does diffuse blame. To return to my insurance example, we picked a coverage option together. If it turns out to the wrong thing for us, I can’t blame him. We’ll have screwed up together.
T: The book is called For Women Only by Shaunti Feldman, if you’re interested in all of her other findings.
J: I goggled the book. Looks interesting.
Amazon calls the author Feldshan, but a lot of sites call her Feldman. The name cracks me up because Shaunti sounds like the Sanskrit chant “Shantih, shantih” and Feldman sounds Jewish. Is there a Hinju chant that goes, ” Oy, mani padme, oy”?
T: This doesn’t mean that decisions aren’t made jointly, or that the husband is a tyrannical dictator. It really rankles me that people automatically jump to that conclusion.
J: Sorry if it came off that way.
“how many women would shop at the “Used Husband Store”
None, especially since you can rarely get them to by used clothing, yet all the while they expect men to accept used (divorced) wives quite frequently. What they want is fresh alpha and fresh clothing.
In contrast, the girl I married is and was loud and outgoing, like a friendly puppy.
My husband has compared me to a border collie.
A man should not have to be “in a dominant mode” all the time to be loved. It gets tiring and there is so much in live to do.
My husband is a fairly dominant, though not domineering, guy. However, he is a human being who gets tired, sick, sad, etc. and I fully accept that. If a guy can’t show some vulnerability to the woman who supposedly loves him, that’s a sad thing.
I am an INTJ too, BTW. There is a funny and fairly accurate article on us here:
http://intjcentral.com/manual4
That was pretty funny. I am INTJ as well, but feel weird about it because I am a woman and that’s, like, not supposed to happen in nature.
grerp
Yes, I thought it was quite insightful. I used to be an INTP, but then I got a more responsible job and that seems to have upped my “J”.
As for INTJ women, the description of a typical INTJ does sound a bit masculine, but I am sure there is a feminine variety.
If it turns out to the wrong thing for us, I can’t blame him. We’ll have screwed up together.
The problem is that the same rationalization monster that lets women come up with crazy excuses for divorce will create the same Jedi mind tricks that allow her to escape blame and direct all her anger and contempt toward me by saying it was “my fault”. I hate being wrong, and the last thing I want is for somebody to repeatedly nag me about it.
FWIW, I can certain understand why people defend marriage as a two parent household is the best solution for raising children, but the problem is that the burden it places leads to what may be ultimately an unworkable solution in our modern society. So yes, women may be forced to stay with men that don’t make them tingle, but the greater crime is the high responsibility and burden placed on men in marriage. Ultimately, it’s hard to defend such an institution despite its benefits when the costs are too high for one of the entities engaged in the arrangement.
so on, throw off the “mask of masculinity”
I’m biased, but I’m rather happy with my level of masculinity. When I look at the alphas, I don’t see anything that I’d personally find to be worth emulating, but one could argue that I’m simply not naturally masculine.
I am an INTJ too, BTW.
In contrast, I’m INFP. 🙂
Great, another blog full of INTJs! (I’m INFJ, so a close and rare cousin I guess).
DA, yes, maybe women will blame you anyway. So you might as well make the decision! There is only the most tenuous of relationships between what a woman says and what she really feels. My wife found some of my blog material recently, including some very “chauvinistic” stuff. She was ranting about it in the morning. By the evening, she was serving me dinner happily and seemed very pleased with me indeed.
Women are as near random as can be imagined, DA. A man should please himself at least.
And I think you have a false image of alphas, DA.
On INTJs, the description sounds like the Internet is almost made for us. Not surprising that we are all over blogs.
So you might as well make the decision!
But I don’t want the blame, so I’ll simply engage in the decision without the encumberance of a wife to nag me about it. 🙂
By the evening, she was serving me dinner happily and seemed very pleased with me indeed.
Her tingles overpower her thinking.
And I think you have a false image of alphas, DA.
All the adult alphas I knew were crude unsophisticated men that beat on their wives and were harsh unloving fathers to their children. The alphas in my school were no better, so it’s little wonder why I don’t have much in the way of admiration for these men.
DA, this is how feminists destroyed traditional masculinity, by making damn sure that manliness got associated with abusiveness. So, as soon as a man stands up to a woman, he feels that he is on his way to being a wifebeater. It’s nonsense of course, but it is good rhetoric for feminists.
Modern American Women have fully embraced the disobedience that began in the garden of Eden.
Like the first woman, they each fall in love with the voice of the seducer, and will do whatever satan wants them to do.
They refuse to submit to their husbands, and instead, like little children, throw emotional and sexual tantrums (Karen Owen) and chase after high-level alphas, which are the only thing that they can identify that may rein in their chaos.
The modern woman craves dominance not out of want, but out of need. She is out of control, senses it, and desperately wants to be brought back to sanity.
Sadly, until men refuse to white-knight and throw other men under the bus, it will only get worse. Best procedure is to avoid most women entirely, live well, and wait for their inevitable implosion.
A lot of these female commenters making sense seem to be INTJ or similar. Wonder what Helen Smith and Susan Walsh are. Women are statistically predominantly E and S.
Most people are E, not I. So naturally most women are also E. But women are typically less E than men.
When a couple comes for marriage counseling, my operating assumption is always that the man is completely responsible for the all the problems.
A husband would have to be pretty stupid (or oblivious) to sign up for counseling with that person. Yeah, I really want an authority figure to gang up with my wife and tell me why I’m always wrong and everything is my fault. Screw that! Not to mention that any respect your wife had for you would instantly vanish the moment you let the “counselor” drag you through the “completely responsible” wringer. Some outsider trying to tell me how to run my marriage is going to get a punch in the snoot, not a respectful hearing…
Tarl, absolutely agree. Anybody, man or woman, interfering in my family is going to be told to piss off.
@ Pro-Male Anti-Feminist Tech:
When a couple comes for marriage counseling, my operating assumption is always that the man is completely responsible for the all the problems.
That’s horrifying, and I mean that! What kind of marriage counelor does that? Far too many, I’d guess. I agree with Tarl that a husband would have to be pretty stupid (or oblivious) to sign up for counseling with that person. Further, that guy needs to get out of the counseling business altogether.
@J: I don’t think we’re as far apart as it seems, although I am fully persuaded that I am to submit to my husband’s authority, and he is just as persuaded that he has no business demanding that I do so.
Anecdote: We were in church this past Sunday and the subject was marriage. Our church is in the middle of an all out push to curb divorces, so obedience to the Scriptures concerning marriage comes up at least every few weeks of late. This past Sunday the submission topic was raised without the rest of the passage being emphasized as strongly. Personally, I’m fine with that because Chrisitan women seem to have blacked those Scriptures out of their Bibles from where I sit. But we had 5 daughters who were in attendance (3 teens) and when we got home my husband, whose first priority is to help them make good choices, told them point blank:
The message today was good. When you get married you are supposed to submit to your husband. But if any guy you get serious about feels the need to demand submission or talks too much about submission, and says almost nothing about what kind of leadership you’ll be submitting to, run the other way. He should command respect as a man anyway rather than having to demand respect. Weak men do that.
My point is that I am not, nor am I expected to be, a submissive slave and I’m glad you could see that. It is our belief that wifely submission diminishes a woman in any way. Quite the contrary, in fact.
Oh, I’m ISTJ, since we’re revealing our personality types.
Well, if we are making a survey, I am an INTP
how many women would shop at the “Used Husband Store”?
“None, especially since you can rarely get them to by used clothing, yet all the while they expect men to accept used (divorced) wives quite frequently. What they want is fresh alpha and fresh clothing.”
Oh, they do. They really do. There are no enough fresh alphas for everyone. Women with a low market value have to choose between these “used husbands” and being alone.
This is why you hear all these tales of a woman dumping her dutiful beta husband only to end up with a gamma loser. It is not that she does not want an alpha, it is that she can’t get an alpha so she has to compromise.
In these tales, the husband is doing quite well with women younger than his ex. So this is another proof that used husbands have market value (although lower than brand new alphas).
That’s horrifying, and I mean that! What kind of marriage counelor does that? Far too many, I’d guess. I agree with Tarl that a husband would have to be pretty stupid (or oblivious) to sign up for counseling with that person. Further, that guy needs to get out of the counseling business altogether.
It’s highly problematic, I agree, but it’s often the de facto “default position” of many, many marriage counselors. There are numerous reasons for this.
For many specifically “Christian” counselors, there is the idea that because the man is the “head”, the buck stops with him, and that therefore he is ultimately responsible for everything in the marriage — even for his wife’s behaviors, because she is his “subordinate” whom he is supposed to be “leading and correcting”, and if she is “acting out” that’s because he hasn’t been leading properly. So ultimately the idea is that if you “fix up” the husband so that he is leading properly, any untoward behaviors by the wife will magically cease, and all will be well in Mudville once again.
For secular counselors, for the most part they are influenced very heavily by feminist ideas about marriage and relationships, and tend to see almost all marital problems as stemming from (1) husband’s failure to communicate emotional intimacy properly, (2) husband being uncomfortable with shifting sex role expectations and his wife’s empowerment or (3) male abusive tendencies (defined broadly to include “failure to communicate” or “watching sports center too much” and so on). Basically according to this view, women are “relationship naturals”, while men are, at the very best, semi-retarded relationshpi dunderheads who only very rarely will get relating right unless relentlessly corrected by women. The secular counselors are also approaching things from a pragmatic perspective. They know that women are the ones who end marriages, and are the deciders when it comes to divorce. So generally if there is any chance of avoiding divorce, it’s going to come down to whether the man changes in a way that convinces his wife to elect not to divorce him. Changing the wife is beyond question — she’s the decider, she isn’t g0oing to change anything other than her mind, and whether she does that depends on the male display she is getting. So from this practical perspective, many secular counselors think that you get more bang for your buck trying to change the guy — in terms of trying to keep the relationship going longer — than trying to do anything with respect to the women. In fact, many women will simply walk away from a counselor who tries to question their own behavior in the marriage.
On the latter point, that was my experience. Our counselor was atypical and basically made it clear that the counseling sessions were not going to be the 2-against-1 gang-ups that many times they can be, and which many wives specifically want (i.e., they want an “expert” authority figure backing up their criticisms of their husband, thereby validating them, and providing leverage to either force the husband to toe the line or providing validation and support for a decision to divorce). After a while, my ex simply lost interest, because she wasn’t “getting” from the counseling the validation she wanted — so the point was missing. She was completely disinterested in examining her own behaviors in any serious way and was even somewhat offended at the suggestion — counseling is about placing *male* behaviors under the microscope, full stop.
So, for men, be aware that when your wife asks for counseling, typically she’s looking for ammunition and validation. You can sidestep that by vetting counselors very carefully on the front end and trying to find one of the few who are not thoroughly feminist-indoctrinated. Also keep in mind that, for different reasons, Christian counselors are often equally bad, if not worse, when it comes to the end result. In the cases of most “typical” counselors, there is no point for a man to attend as they are simply gang-up sessions designed to help and support your angry wife.
As for Myers-Briggs, I am an ISTJ. The internet is full of “Is” it seems.
@Thag
You are a robot!
I am! But unfortunately not one programmed to nod subserviently like the Japanese robot featured a while ago on Roissy’s blog that half of the guys said they would prefer to a real woman. LOL. If they can perfect hot robo-babes, I predict that the Asperger’s gene will be eliminated in one generation.
J, lol. I saw that. Deary me, some of those guys do have issues. I don’t really blame them and maybe we’re all better off if they get sex-bots and take themselves off the market. They do offer some interesting insights though. An INTP I know thinks he would like one of those too and yes, he has issues! I think he’d never leave his room if he had a robo-babe.
I’m starting to wonder, I suppose all the E’s are showing off on facebook rather than commenting on blogs, eh? No wonder I hate facebook.
As a writer, I am somewhat obsessed with the meaning of words and especially the multiple, unspoken connotations within that meaning.
When anyone speaks of one person “submitting” to another, regardless of context, the unspoken connotations of “submission” and “submissive” create a tremendously negative implication.
The word “submit” has been politicized into uselessness because of the “all women are strong and independent” meme. Stating that a wife should “submit” to her husband is a pointless endeavor.
When commenting on marriage and committed relationships, those in the manosphere must select better words and phrases and never explicitly state “submit”.
Zammo, I hear you. How about abide by/in? Adhere to? I wish “submit” didn’t have such negative connotations – it’s not an inherently negative word. It’s a bit like “introvert” being viewed as a disorder, which is how some people see it. “You should be more social and get out more! It’s not healthy to spend so much time alone!” It also has the dom/sub connotations that miss the point a bit too, lol.
We modern women tend to have a bad attitude toward the idea of submission so I’m not sure using another term will make much difference. Maybe, maybe not. Can’t hurt to try.
T: I don’t think we’re as far apart as it seems,
J: We aren’t; we are just hung up on the word submit.
T: although I am fully persuaded that I am to submit to my husband’s authority, and he is just as persuaded that he has no business demanding that I do so.
J: Then I think “submission” works for you because you found the right guy to “submit” to. Were he a jerk, you’d be in big trouble, although I suspect that you would not have married a jerk. “Submitting” to jerk could in fact be dangerous, but you realized that and it influenced your choice of spouse.
This is where your husband is a genius: “But if any guy you get serious about feels the need to demand submission or talks too much about submission, and says almost nothing about what kind of leadership you’ll be submitting to, run the other way. He should command respect as a man anyway rather than having to demand respect. Weak men do that.”
He’s right. I have never deferred to my husband on the grounds that he’s my husband, Scripture demands it, daddy know best or whatever. I will often listen to my husband because:
1) he is a smart guy and a strong man in the sense your husband is talking about
2), he usually knows what he is talking about,
3) intentions are good and he has integrity
4) he listens to me
OTOH, I will never hand over my autonomy to him because he is a fallible human being, not an infallible demi-god as many men who demand submission think they are. And, if I did hand over my autonomy to him. and he did screw up, you better believe I’d blame him, mostly for his overweening hubris in pretending to know what’s best for another adult. That blame would kill our marriage. He knows that, so he doesn’t make that demand.
Terry, I strongly suspect that we are married to men of similar character. I think you like the word “submit” because it is scriptural and therefore has a moral connotation. I don’t like that it has a slavish connotation, and don’t feel the attachment to it you do because I realize that the Bible wasn’t written in 21st century English and that translators generally have an axe to grind. I don’t like that the word “submit” is used to justify a demand for respect from the often unrespectable. IMHO, Scripture does not demand a woman respect a man just because he is her husband. Respect is something people earn by being worthy of it.
@Thag and Zammo
How weird! We all most have been posting simulataneously about connotation. When I posted my last comment, yours appeared as well.
Great minds think alike!
Moral of the story: if any woman anytime calls you “a nice guy”/”intelligent”/”funny”, you are doing something terribly wrong.
oneoftheguys,
“Seriously, women, what happens with you? Why are you so insane? I would like to find a woman to love and to be loved, to have kids, to be myself and to let her be herself, to have a life of sharing things. I am very independent and I have been happy alone for years but it feels good to have somebody with you.
I don’t want to play retarded games because women are a bunch of retarded people who love to shit and destroy the thing they want the most (relationships).”
There’s no reason to get worked up about this. Women have not evolved to feel love or empathy towards men. Women have not evolved to “be themselves” or live in a long monogamous relationship. They are fundamentally herd creatures who slavishly rejoice in submission and worship power and dominance. They despise any sign of weakness with a passion. When they are left uncontrolled, they destroy others and ultimately themselves. They obviously have great caring potential, but that is directed towards small children, not men. Women don’t “love” men in the way men love women.
If you want to sire and raise children, then you should obviously find a woman for that. That they’re good for. But if you expect a woman to be your soulmate, to NOT shit-test you, to “be herself” – in other words: to just leave you alone – then you are in for a rude awakening.
Question; does anyone think that game is a new thing or was it something which has been taught from father to son generations past simply through example?
Women have not evolved to feel love or empathy towards men. Women have not evolved to “be themselves” or live in a long monogamous relationship.
Hollenhund, really? With the exception of Hope, who is a relative newlywed, most of the women on this blog have been faithfully married for over a decade or two. Most of the married men on the blog also have 15-25 year marriages with faithful women. Just because you haven’t done it doesn’t mean it can’t be done.
@Thag
I suppose all the E’s are showing off on facebook rather than commenting on blogs, eh?
Most of them, though Susan Walsh claims to be an E. I’m sure that’s where ability to be so understanding of the bitterest of men and the nastiest of players comes from.
No wonder I hate facebook
Ah, Facebook, the internet’s toilet wall…
Question; does anyone think that game is a new thing or was it something which has been taught from father to son generations past simply through example?
Too many social differences between now and then, really, in terms of sex relations for the comparison to really be made effectively. The entire marketplace for mating and so on has changed radically, together with sex roles and the way boys and girls are educated, the role of fathers (often absent), the pop culture and so on. All of these changes have resulted in a relative lack of masculinity in many men as compared with the past. “Game” is new in the sense that it is a reaction to the revised marketplace rules, an adaptation by the men who otherwise are on the short end of the stick in the current market. But as to whether some of the behaviors one could describe as “long term game” or something like that perpetuated themselves previously by example or otherwise is hard to say — the whole scenario was so different, and so many factors are at play, really.
I’ve been busy with work and spending my remaining time with the family. For a while there it was “hurry up and wait”, but the last day it has been very busy and looks to continue for some time. As I’ve done in similar situations before, I’ve focused my blog time on allowing moderated comments to go through and writing/editing new posts a bit. I’ll be rolling a new post out on the need to game your wife (raised in the comments here) later today or tomorrow.
Thanks to everyone for the positive feedback on this post and the fascinating discussion. I clearly should stay out of the discussion more often!
Steffen: Welcome to the blog. I’m very sorry to hear about your friend. Her doing it while he is serving overseas makes it all the more despicable. As to your being engaged and not wanting to make the same mistakes, I would say you are absolutely thinking the right way. I would suggest part two of my Interviewing a Prospective Wife post, as well as the post on women’s expectations in marriage. Both are included in the Finding a Spouse section. You might find some of the other posts in that section valuable as well. My short answer would be to bring it up in conversation without offering a judgment, and see if it provokes one from her. I just read this crazy letter from a woman divorcing her husband because she never loved him. Isn’t that bizarre? (show her the original Salon page) Then see what her inclination is. Ideally it will be disgust that the woman would marry a man she didn’t love, as well as cheat on and divorce a man without cause simply because she isn’t happy. If she is protective of the woman’s actions it would be a major red flag to me. I have another example of what we told our daughter in the interview post you can use as well.
Good luck!
Someone mentioned introverts.
Me.
I am an introvert.
Me and the hubs too. I am INTP; he is INTJ.
An introverted man needs to play to his strengths. Be cool, remote, taciturn, even cold sometimes. It comes naturally. Ignoring the woman when she is being nutty is natural for an introvert. “Negs” are natural for an introvert. Women appreciate a man who can fence well verbally. Verbal put-downs can be funny and effective.
My DH and sons are like this. So for that matter am I. It can be too much of a good thing. 😉 When we were engaged, an older woman told me that within five years the things that attracted me most to my husband would also be the things that frustrated me most. Twenty some years ago, I was attracted to his “cool;” now it is the #1 cause of arguments. Both the kids and I find him aloof and uncaring at times, and to be fair, I’m likely to react in kind as are the kids. (One is an INTJ who is currently enmenshed in locking horns with his dad; the other is an INTP like me. As individuals and as a family, we can each be a real piece of work.)
One thing I’ve learned from the manosphere is that as an INTJ, my husband has some natural “sigma” game going. As a result, I now know how NOT to fall for his BS. I’m less frustrated. I call him on it. He just laughs like he’s been busted, but he also realizes now how uncaring he comes off as and makes a real effort now to be more affectionate–which is all I really want.
A LOT of women can see through that kind of machismo, and are adept at subverting it. I have known a few blowhard husbands and fathers, and their women often have little real respect for them.
Indeed. I can not tell you how much I hate men like that. There are no words for it–and I’m not one to run ot of words!
“Game” is new in the sense that it is a reaction to the revised marketplace rules, an adaptation by the men who otherwise are on the short end of the stick in the current market.
The codification of “Game” or of “The Rules” on the female side is new. The tactics are really age old. My father, who would be about 95 if he were alive, had game.
On the topic of Meyers Briggs, I’m an INTP. Very strong (nearly pegging the needle NT) on the first three, and right on the line between J and P. I tested as a J because I took the test at work as a Project Manager. But I think naturally I’m really more of a P. On the introvert question, it typically isn’t obvious to people I know. I guess I have figured out how to handle it. I don’t mind leading a group, and do so quite often at work. I just don’t crave going out and meeting an endless supply of strangers or talking about the weather. 🙂
Yeah there are a lot of stereotypes about introverts which are mostly not true — as in introverts aren’t leaders. That’s nonsense, as there have been quite a few leaders in business and politics alike who are introverted. The main difference, from my perspective, between introverts and extroverts is what stresses them psychologically — introverts are stressed by social interaction, especially in group settings, whereas extroverts are stressed by solitude. We have an entire therapy culture that to a large degree pathologizes introversion, but it’s really just as manageable as any other personality trait if you pick your battles and manage your psychological energy properly.
I suppose all the E’s are showing off on facebook rather than commenting on blogs, eh?
The extroverts are the ones out there seeking and engaging in face to face contact. It energizes them, whereas it drains introverts.
I don’t have any kind of social dysfunction. I can lead groups, teach, talk, even be entertaining in social situations, but then I want to come home and be quiet for awhile. The larger the gathering, the longer I need that quiet time to be. I took the test a year or so ago and was weaker on that third letter and may have scored as an INFJ. INTJ was what I scored when I took the longer, more comprehensive test.
The difference between extroverts and introverts is that E’s get their energy from social interaction and I’s get theirs from solitude.
This is a classic on introverts:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2003/03/caring-for-your-introvert/2696/
J: If it turns out to the wrong thing for us, I can’t blame him. We’ll have screwed up together.
DA: The problem is that the same rationalization monster that lets women come up with crazy excuses for divorce will create the same Jedi mind tricks that allow her to escape blame and direct all her anger and contempt toward me by saying it was “my fault”. I hate being wrong, and the last thing I want is for somebody to repeatedly nag me about it.
J: I sense that I’m about to drawn into one of those infamous DA self-pity parties.;-)
David, I’m just going to say this once. After that, when you need to go fishing for validation, you’re on your own. You strike me as a bright, articulate guy and that, in and of itself, is very attractive to some women. Your constant sad-sacking is not. Most of us have a particular demographic we appeal to. Figure out yours and go for it. And quit undermining yourself.
grerp, I mean those ones who post pictures of themselves in bars every weekend, lol. Tiresome.
My husband and I are both INFJ, with him being less introverted and less feeling. It’s one of the most harmonious combinations from what I understand. He is also the “natural leader” type, so it has worked out well.
Also, E and I are both approximately 50% of the population. It’s the S type that is quite a bit more common, about 70% to the N’s 30%. So no, the world is not ruled by extroverts, but more by people who prefer sensations and the physical senses.
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oneoftheguys’ post rings a close bell to me. Not particularly a social butterfly myself, though perhaps with both alpha and beta characteristics, I’m more inclined to follow introverted pursuits.
So, apparently we have to game our girls to get into relationships. If we get married, we have to game our wives? The thought of having to neg a potential wife every day for 20 years isn’t particularly appealing. And as oneoftheguys says, game can actually be exhausting for some types. Those without natural game can forget it easily on a down day (which we surely all get), and then, “game” over.
[D: I just published a post on this exact topic.]
If you want to sire and raise children, then you should obviously find a woman for that. That they’re good for. But if you expect a woman to be your soulmate, to NOT shit-test you, to “be herself” – in other words: to just leave you alone – then you are in for a rude awakening.
Admittedly, society has left the past two to three generations of men and women looking for what one would call a soul mate, but I suspect that for most people, such a creature doesn’t exist. Ultimately, if what you said is true, then men are left with a dillemma where in order to have children, they have to be able to deal with what one could argue amounts to be a mentally disturbed person on a long-term and thankless & non-rewarding basis.
Yes, NYDude, having to game your wife for forty years doesn’t seem an exciting prospect to me. I know there are guys that enjoy playing game for decades but I am not one of these. Or some guys make game their second nature. I have tried it for years but I have failed.
Marriage vows are going to be redefined as “for better or for worse until the lack of gina tingle do us part”. Then comes the alimony, child support, etc..
Although separation can be the less of two evils. My parents didn’t divorce: they are very Catholic. My father is a born natural beta, like me, but, unlike me, he has no concept about game and dominance. He thinks that appeasing women and being a good dependable husband is the way to go. My mother has made his life miserable for forty-one years. No “miserable”, but “MISERABLE” in capitals. It is incredible the amount of shit my father has received from my mother and no sentence written in a blog can do justice about that.
And this was in a country before feminism, in a right-wing conservative Catholic family …
Oh, they do. They really do. There are no enough fresh alphas for everyone. Women with a low market value have to choose between these “used husbands” and being alone.
I’m left wondering if modern class distinctions along with female middle class careers have created a weird situation where some women hold out for alpha males due to no longer having the need to marry to avoid starving. In turn, I wonder if men are no longer willing to drop down into prole and lower class to marry women that are beneath them in status, but come with too much baggage that may create a bit of a social faux pas.
Zammo, you are sowing despair.
Terry:
“He should command respect as a man anyway rather than having to demand respect. Weak men do that.”
Your husband’s commentary was very sensible and true. I find I get good compliance from my wife when I lead her gently but confidently. Ranting and demanding is the wrong approach and won’t work. A woman follows a man out of respect. She chooses to do so. And she submits to his love. Not gooey, romantic “love” but real husbandly love.
On counsellors, my sister’s marriage failed. My mother told me that “even the counsellor had agreed that [my sister’s husband] was being unreasonable”. I didn’t say anything, but I did think … sure.
Dalrock:
“On the topic of Meyers Briggs, I’m an INTP. Very strong (nearly pegging the needle NT) on the first three, and right on the line between J and P. I tested as a J because I took the test at work as a Project Manager. But I think naturally I’m really more of a P. On the introvert question, it typically isn’t obvious to people I know. I guess I have figured out how to handle it. I don’t mind leading a group, and do so quite often at work. I just don’t crave going out and meeting an endless supply of strangers or talking about the weather. ”
This describes me almost exactly. I was an INTP until I became a boss at work and became INTJ.
J, it is not that INTJ men don’t have feelings. We do. We just like to hide them.
As somebody noted above, many men were deeply unhappy and stressed in marriage well before feminism. The men of my father’s generation, here in Australia, mostly seemed stressed to me. The women more relaxed.
J, you sound a bit like my wife. I think we would get on well in real life, although we seem to clash on these blogs.
DA, women are indeed kind of nuts a lot of the time. But it makes my wife interesting. The trick is not to take it too seriously.
On “game” in an LTR, most men had enough game to get married. They just need not to lose it completely. They need to recover the thrill of first knowing the woman, and her knowing you. Get out of the rut.
J, again. Nobody suggests that male headship implies that the man is infallible. Nor that all men are always worthy of respect as husbands. I am quite sure I act like an idiot fairly often. The traditional understanding is that the husband deserves respect because of his position. He may not fill it well, but it is still his position. Also, yes, he may well make mistakes in his decisions. But traditionally, his decisions were final, because somebody has to make the final decision. If the husband thinks the couple should live in England, and the wife thinks it should be France – what do they do? Traditionally, they live in England. Today, they may simply separate.
I don’t spend a lot of time issuing directives, except sometimes to game my wife. Mostly, I just set a tone. And I listen to my wife on financial matters, since that is not something I am good at. But I think she tends to follow me on religious and ethical questions, for example.
@David
J, it is not that INTJ men don’t have feelings. We do. We just like to hide them.
Yeah, I know. My DH is a still waters run deep sort of guy.
J, you sound a bit like my wife. I think we would get on well in real life, although we seem to clash on these blogs.
I’m sure we would. In fact, I think everyone on these blogs would get along better if the tone were less polemic.
You remind me a bit of my husband as well.
Nobody suggests that male headship implies that the man is infallible. Nor that all men are always worthy of respect as husbands.
I’m not sure that’s true.
I am quite sure I act like an idiot fairly often.
Oh, that probably is true….Nah, just kidding!
The traditional understanding is that the husband deserves respect because of his position. He may not fill it well, but it is still his position.
Well, there’s the problem. In a free and democratic society, we tend to respect people for their competence, not their position. As we moved towards a less authoritarian society, that shift in attitude affected everyone in a position of power, not just husbands. People no longer respect judges or priests or parents simply because of their role; how well they fill it has become paramount. Even in terms of my own children, I can’t say they they respect my husband and I simply because we are their parents. The sort of parents we are really impacts their level of respect. (We have an authoritative, as opposed to authoritarian, style.)) They respect us because they think we know what we are doing, have principles and live by them, not simple because we are their parents. In this day and age, if you exert authority, you also have to take responsibility or be prepared for mutiny.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that every man is a bad leader or that men shouldn’t have any authority. I’m just saying that the days of unquestioned male authority are over. And I think that’s good; no one, male or female, should have unquestioned authority.
Men who deserve respect will still get respect from women who are themselves respectible. The sluts and players will have to figure something else out.
OTOH, I can say I’m sorry to see the end of the sort of male authority that caused my aunt’s priest to tell her to respect and not divorce a man who got drunk and beat up her and the kids. It was her Christian duty to submit…..and my father’s to throw him down a flight of stairs.
Also, yes, he may well make mistakes in his decisions.
We all inevitably make mistakes. There’s a difference between a screw up or two and bad or weak character. I’d hate to see someone berate a spouse over a screw up, but disrespecting someone with poor character…. having the husband role isn’t an exemption from that.
But traditionally, his decisions were final, because somebody has to make the final decision….they may simply separate
In our home, we really try to make the big decisions together. We’ve never had anything we couldn’t work out to the point it would separate us.
I think my wife has obeyed me on major matters a few times. I don’t think she has been real happy about it, but I think she has. Sometimes there really are major decisions to be made, and people are not all going to be happy. For example, I have asked her to work part-time a couple of times when I thought our youngest child was at risk – he was becoming unwell. And once when I felt the strain of two full-time working parents was becoming too much for us all. That kind of thing.
Of course authority has its limits. But I still believe in authority. Maybe Australians are a bit less individualistic than Americans. Also, Catholics have a well worked out theory of authority. I am not sure of your religion, J, but that may be a factor as well.
;”””””””””The bottom line is that there is not an endless supply of perfectly good husbands for women like this to use up and throw away like used tissues. Once a guy has this happen to him, or sees it happen to some of his friends, admonishments like “you’re just bitter, let go of the past, get over it, and give another woman the chance to do the same thing to you” fall on deaf ears. ””””””””””
””””””’Lovekraft says:
November 18, 2010 at 5:49 am
The rationalization these women demonstrate to justify what is essentially infidelity, lying and selfishness is astounding.
Men, screen these women! Before you commit to anything beyond dating.
”””””’
””””””’Steffen says:
November 18, 2010 at 8:19 am
A friend of mine is having this problem, only he’s deploying overseas and she wants to nuke him with the divorce bomb and keep the kids.
I’m recently engaged, but I’m going to need a way to explain my concerns in this department with my intended. Going into a marriage “fat, dumb and happy” and expecting automatic success does not appeal to me intellectually.
”””””””’
Even with all the knowledge there is this dude that got engaged and thinks he is gonna have any say in what a woman does lol
””””I’m recently engaged, but I’m going to need a way to explain my concerns in this department with my intended.””’
Even when you win in marriage you still lose. lol
It is a bad deal all around for a man.
You realize that things change over time.
If she changes her mind it fucks you.
If you change your mind it fucks you.
Why are people still doing it?
””””””However, any leader worth anything knows to utilize the assets at his disposal. This means that while the buck stops with a husband, if he’s a good leader he would never make any major life decisions without drawing on his wife’s strengths and intelligence. ”””””
Well that is the problem.
Any leader other than in marriage has a means to enforce his leadership.
Boss at work can fire people that don’t do a good job.
Leaders in every area have means of exerting their leadership. There are penalties for not listening to leader.
In marriage there is no penalty for a woman not following the leadership of the man.
In fact there are rewards to the woman for not following the leadership of a man.
Now of course men and woman could probably do very well working as a team and it is catchy to think like that.
I myself always thought it would be so cool to have me and my woman working together to create something that lasts.
The only thing was when my first woman didn’t want to work there was nothing I could do about that lol
I couldn’t force her to do it.
So you can talk leader all day but it sure as shit does not apply to marriage in the present day.
You can lead until the woman decides you can’t and then it is whatever she wants to do.
””””””I’m recently engaged, but I’m going to need a way to explain my concerns in this department with my intended. Going into a marriage “fat, dumb and happy” and expecting automatic success does not appeal to me intellectually.””””””’
If you really just can’t help but go through with it.
You should be at point where talking about this sort of thing is normal.
This is also the perfect opportunity to have her ass go to work and save up enough money before you get married that the interest can cover the child support payments.
She should be willing to get a dowry together before you are legally committed to her.
“Hollenhund, really? With the exception of Hope, who is a relative newlywed, most of the women on this blog have been faithfully married for over a decade or two. Most of the married men on the blog also have 15-25 year marriages with faithful women. Just because you haven’t done it doesn’t mean it can’t be done.”
J,
I assume married women like you have grown up in a monogamous culture, and that is the mindset and culture you’ve internalized since you were little. You were probably conditioned to expect lifelong monogamy from your husband. Your hypergamy thus has largely been overriden. Young girls today are growing up in a very different environment.
The married men on this site aren’t describing relationships that oneoftheguys yearns for (one in which there is no need to be constantly prepared to pass shit tests, wives don’t need to be gamed and are “just themselves”).
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Awesome post!
David Alexander, if you are still present, two quick questions:
What is your age?
What were/are the ages of the women you refer to?
If you do not wish to give exact numbers, then just a range will suffice: “My age in this time period was 30-35, the women were 24-28” or something like that is ok as well.
I ask these questions because frankly, most people over a certain age have no clue what it is like for someone under a certain age nowadays. I’m around college men and women more than possibly anyone else on this site, and I see things that are hard to believe — but reality always trumps opinion (except for feminists, of course).
“It took me 9 years and a move across country to forgive everyone involved.”
Dear former family and church, I forgive you for not accommodating my selfish and destructive behavior.
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Bitches in the two examples sound like typical Canadian women to my ears. What’s funny these days is one can go out on any given night in Toronto and meet a multitude of embittered, angry drunk 30 and 40 something whores who’ve never been married and never will be. They’re easy to game for a pump and dump – they still reveal their hand that they want a man who’s successful, and will be a good provider. They are gold digging to the end – so I just pretend that I’m that, give them a good rogering and avoid them like the plague after that.
[D: Sounds a little like this.]
BTW, this reminds me of my friend. Good looking guy, makes good money, great father to his two children, bought his wife a nice beautiful home in a small town like a mansion. The overweight angry wife who used to be good looking, started messing around on facebook. She was in her mid 30s at the time and needed attention from other men I suppose. Starts screwing other guys, moved out, left him and the kids. She took a job as a waitress and found a bachelor apartment downtown.
Fast forward a couple years, he’s with young hot recent med school graduate who doesn’t yell at him and loves his kids.
Fat ex wife now realises she screwed up colossally, as she has been nothing more than a pump and dump to umpteen men. She tried to get back with ex husband thinking the young hottie would blow over after time. He told ex wifey to get lost, and paid her $45,000 to go away.
She promptly blew that money.
Now she lives in a shyt apartment, has lost her decent husband and also lost custody of her children……
She’s alone and going psycho. She even made a play for me, lol. Yeah, right.
Finally took a Meyers Briggs test. I’m right on the border of INTJ and INTP. I got INTJ, but I only scored a 1 in the J.
@D
My husband is Canadian. When we first met, he was in his early 20s and could be classified as a bit of a woman hater, more specific white women, and even more specific fat, white women. Many hours of him retelling stories regarding his friends and family members who’s girlfriends all (ALL!) cheated on them, rolled their trucks, got way too drunk, lied, tried to make plays for their friends, took half their stuff, took them to court, lied about rape/pregnancy, were controlling and gluttonous etc etc and I was kind of starting to hate them myself. My husband vowed he was never getting married and wanted to just be alone the rest of his life. Obviously not the case, but look at what happens! Bad behavior turns off good men so much that they just shy away from society. And this is from a man that never had problems with attracting women- even men that can have their pick are saying, thanks, but no thanks.
This is not good!!!
Canada seems in worse shape than the USA.
No INFJ’s besides me?
I’m an infj. But you could have been the only one. Our type is rare.
I’m INFJ. It’s only 1% of the population apparently, so it’s amazing there’s even three of us here!
It makes sense, similar people would cluster towards similar interests.
My husband and I are both INFJ, as is my mother-in-law (we get along spectacularly well).
I’m also INFJ.
Someone once tried to get me to take the Myers-Briggs test back in the 90’s. One of the first questions was something along the lines of “I would rather have a quiet night at home than attend a social function with lots of people – yes – no”. I couldn’t answer the question. Not enough data. Do I have to go to work the next day, or not? Quiet night at home alone, or with family? Social function with people from work, at a random keg party, at a frat booz-a-rama, with some of my friends, with a fraternal organization, or what?
Other questions in the test are the same: not enough data for a “yes-no” answer, and “maybe” is not an option. So which Myers-Briggs category am I in, eh?
r@ Anonymous Reader
For what it’s worth, here’s a personality test that has an “in between” option.
http://kisa.ca/personality/
It says I’m borderline ISTP/INTP. Not sure if I agree with that.
I got ISTP on that test. Every other test I’ve taken has said INFJ. Is it possible to change that much? It’s been a while since I took one of those tests, to be fair.
Having had a quick look at the ISTP profile, INFJ does sound more like me.
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Omnipitron..Something very similar happened to me. I re-united with an ex-girlfriend. Her best friend and her boyfriend got married. She wanted to get married too though we had discussed it before her friend got married. Her friend got married then divorced. Guess who wanted a divorce shortly afterwards?
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Probably off topic, but Dalrock you have GOT to see this:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,477485,00.html
I’m so rooting for this guy
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Hi Darlock, just discovered your blog. Thank you for the blog, and in particular, thank you for this post. I am too of the opinion that I should only marry the guy I truly am in love with. Anything other than that just doesn’t make sense to me at all. Why would I want to be married to a guy I don’t absolutely love. Which leads me to another question I’m currently mulling over. It would really help if you could shed some of your wisdom on this. I am in love with a guy, we dated, but he left citing as a reason that he didn’t want as much out of our relationship as I did. Now the problem is that for me falling in love like this is an extremely rare occurrence. I basically adore the guy. I would marry him in a heartbeat. Last time I felt this way about a guy was, I’m not kidding, 10 years ago. What should a girl do in this situation? Fight till the end? Hope that he’ll change his mind? Wait till I’m not in love with him anymore? Wait for another guy who I will fall in love with again? These may seem like stupid questions because all the “dating advice” columns and such say “hey girl, his loss, move on, you deserve a good man”, well, you know the drill. I agree, it would have been so nice to just forget the guy and move on, but instead what I’m thinking about is “I know moving on won’t happen to me for quite some time, should I try to “win the guy over” (so pathetic, I know)”. I also know that this kind of love, and the kind of feelings I had for him, and still do, were out of this world. It was in a way an almost religious experience for me (please don’t attribute this to gina tingles or rationalization hamster or something like that). What I’m trying to say is that this was what every person hopes to experience at least once in their lifetime. Well, I got mine, and I know he likes me too, just maybe not enough to be with me for the rest of his life. What should I do: Stick around (with an assumption of trying to “win him over”) or try to move on? I know there are no good answers to this, but what are you thoughts on this? I sound very ridiculous and naive, I’m sorry, I can’t help it. What’s the point of all this love thing? Can you talk about that, please? You seem wise and knowledgeable about these topics. Plus you seem to appreciate Christian values. I am just a young lost woman trying to understand the meaning of all of this, and trying to understand love and life and “the right thing to do”. Thank you.
@Young
The reason you feel so love in wth him is because of your social status gap, the higher a gap in status the more you fall head over heels for someone
The question you need to ask is your status enough to keep him & act accordingly
Im guessing you were too clingy & pushed for a relationship too soon?
Im sure Dalrock has his own take …
My advice would be to do two things …
Post your question at Walshs Hookingupsmart.com, she will be able to give you an overview of what you did wrong, unfortunately she doesnt really have any good techniques for women, as shes too busy bashing pickup artists & MRAs
Also avoid listening to her feel good platitudes, they wont help your situation …
The second is post your question at Athol Kays site, marriedmansexlife.com, & he will tell you what to do next, hes the expert in game for women
You can form a relationship with him, but you have to find out what his expectations are … good luck
Post back in here if you want further help,or keep us updated, we would love to know how well you found a solution …
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@ Thag: You are right. women are trained to ignore the pull of their own sex drives and a re instructed to minimize the physical part of a relationship for other important traits in a man like dependability, faithfulness, stability, being a good provider and wanting to be a parent. Unfortunately, it takes 10 -20 years for the woman to grow up a throw off the shackles of her programming. You have to choose a husband that is compatible with your physical and intellectual needs, not just your emotional and social ones.
I have to question why all of these men are so out of touch with their other senses. Can’t you feel the disconnect with you in these women? Does the woman enjoy emotional closeness but tense up when you get physically affectionate with her? Does she enjoy hugs but puts you off when you want sex? Does she seem supportive, yet never discusses her fears with you? If the answer to these questions is yes, then she does love you, AS A FRIEND, not as a life-mate? Why would you marry a woman who is not interested in the physical part of marriage, or only complies out of wifely duty. Did you but into the myth that women’s sexuality is less intense than men’s? So did she! That’s why she married you and though it would work out even though she wasn’t really attracted to you.
Learn to follow your instincts and back off when a woman does not seem interested in you physically. Stop aggressively pursuing women that are not interested in you. Do you have any idea how many men have aggressively pursued me just this year that I am not interested in? I am not Anyone’s idea of a dream woman, but I have to keep shutting these guys down every time I see them. I’m not even young anymore,but some of the guys are. I had to shut one down at work today because I look younger than I am, but still to old for him!!! Sometimes it’s nice guys doing this to girls that they are crazy about. You really, really do like the guy as a person, maybe even love him because he is so good. For younger women, this is very confusing when the other guys around may not be as nice. Women will often marry the respectful guy, even if there is no spark because he as everything she ever wanted, all except the physical attractiveness. She then is TOLD that she is shallow and foolish to turn down a good man like that just because of her lack of physical response.
If you only knew:
I disagree with your premise. Perhaps this is your experience, but it’s not what happens most often. You have it exactly backwards, in fact.
Most young girls and women receive no training at all in male-female relationships. They are encouraged to do and say whatever they want when they want. Left to their own devices, they learn early on they can use sex for fun, for validation, for attention, for gifts, for entertainment, or whatever else they want. She can easily manipulate a man using sex. She doesn’t have to get married to get what she wants, so she doesn’t. She then becomes a slut.
What you describe kicks in when she is around 30 and has no marriage prospects on the horizon. She doubles down on the nice, lies about her partner count, and snags a beta provider whom she isn’t attracted to. She is unhappy, the husband is unhappy, the kids are unhappy.
You want to absolve yourself and women like you of responsibility for choices you make. You’re wrong to put the onus on men to simply not pursue women they find attractive. The burden is on women to determine whom they are attracted to and reject those they’re not attracted to. In fact, this happens all the time — women reject men they find physically or sexually unattractive every single day.
Women who aren’t attracted to men who pursue them have a responsibility to reject those men’s advances gently, kindly, responsibly and in a ladylike manner. She has a moral duty to herself and to the man to do this. You can’t foist that responsibility off on the man.
Women who aren’t attracted to men who pursue them have a responsibility to reject those men’s advances gently, kindly, responsibly and in a ladylike manner. She has a moral duty to herself and to the man to do this. You can’t foist that responsibility off on the man.
I agree 100% with Deti, and that’s saying something, LOL.
However Deti, a lot of women string nice guys along, thinking that if they spend enough time with the guy, their feeling will change. They want to want the guy precisely because they know they should want him. It’s not always malicious in intent.
I used to give a crap how my personal story sounded here but I stopped caring a while back and just started telling it because as bad as I think young women are now (and I do think most are despicable), sometimes they get a bad rap and have intentions assigned to them that are more a product of lifelong indoctrination more than anything they wish to inflict on nice men.
When I was single and moved away from my father’s supervision there was a very nice Christian young man who pursued me. I wanted to like him, in fact I did like him. But that was all. I just liked him. When my now husband (non-Christian, more confident, kind of edgy) came along, that was that. I wasn’t trying to hurt anyone. I couldn’t even figure out what a guy like my husband wanted with a girl like me. I was very naive about a lot of things to put it mildly, but he did want me. The rest, as they say, is history.
I think what we have here is a generation of young people both male and female, who have been fed a lifetime of lies and are suffering for it. Men suffer more when they’re younger, and the women suffer more as they age, but both have to deal with it.
The reason we can’t often see the damage done is because is we have created laws to incentivize female folly and protect young women from the full consequence of their bad behavior. But it doesn’t mean there are no consequences for women, as Dalrock has consistently provided evidence that the chickens do eventually come home to roost.
Speaking of selfish, it seems pretty damn selfish to expect your partner to stay in a relationship where they aren’t being fulfilled. It’s another one of those “you are selfish because you’re not giving me what I want” deals. Fuck that shit.
Speaking of selfish, it seems pretty damn selfish to expect your partner to stay in a relationship where they aren’t being fulfilled.
—————————–
And what does ‘being fulfilled’ mean exactly? Besides meaning anything you want it to mean which is the intended purpose. Did life not magically become an enchanted forest after marriage? You tend to get out of any relationship what you put into it and if you come only with demands and absurd expectations then you will likely leave with nothing, which is close to what you contributed.
… except that many women marry with exactly that combination of demands and absurb expectations of sunshine and unicorns.
When they leave, it is with most of his assets, ongoing child support, and church sympathy.
All facilitated by the state with its armed, beta enablers.
Women who make a promise of life-long fidelity shouldn’t expect any rewards for breaking that promise. That there are malicious people who don’t care about justice but only about goading people who complain of injustice doesn’t make it selfish to expect promises to be kept. If you don’t believe in making lifelong promises – don’t make them. And if you do make one, yes, it’s selfish not to keep it. Particularly when it means depriving your children of an intact family.
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I am a woman and came across this sight, it’s soo hilarious, my new comedy fix. Keep up the convo guys I’m lovin it! From happily married woman – I love my husband and will never be divorcing him….ever. P.s there are good women out there that will stand by you, the only test you need is the ‘pre-nup’ if she truly loves you she will believe that you will never get a divorce so the pre-nup shouldn’t mean anything to her, just a signature…male and female should have protection in marriage.
You sound a little resentful. Looks weak. Now, obviously, these women have problems. However, if you think this applies to just women, think again. Remeber, it takes two to tango. Sure, they’re crazy. Sure, they have really stupid notions about marriage and sure they’re trying to twist out of their own responsibility, but men are very often pretty bad too. I’ve heard the same complaints about marriage, how sexless it is (b/c it’s about the tingle in the wiener isn’t it or the chase). Then you have men who whine about women like these b/c they were too dull or desparate to see the signs. Frankly, I don’t feel sorry for men of this variety because they got what they deserved. They often think they’re entitled to something when the fact is that they too weren’t being tricked into anything. Be an adult. As one poster said, love is not a feeling. Love is an act and a choice. Don’t be Dagwood or the momma’s boy who salivates over women and looks for a mommy.
I read so many comments that say the first woman is an idiot, a fool and a that. I can say I understand the lesson to take from that story, because I’ve been there. I don’t have a best friend that I’m in love with, but I am married to a guy that tricked me and I’m still married to him because I don’t wanna hurt him. Simple as that. He loves me very much, he is an awesome guy, everybody loves him, my friends, my family… He would do anything for me. But i don’t love him anymore liked used to. When we got married I did, but things changed and I asked him to leave. I never said it was a break up but he would “force” me not to. I know people will say he couldn’t force me, but he is SO emotionally needy that he would be put me in a such guilt trip I couldn’t hurt him. After we were a few months on this break I lied to him I went out with guy, just to make him realize we should move on, and he cried for hours!!! Like three hours on the phone non-stop!!! So we ended up getting back together. I pray to God that I love him and desire him as a husband and not love him as a friend, but it hasn’t happen. Everyday he asks me if I really love him, and if I will not leave him. And I already told him not to be so needy and sticky, because that makes things worse, but he doesn’t understand. So anyways…. I understand what the author is saying. Please don’t be that guy!!!
Carol,
How do you mean your husband tricked you?
It sounds like you’re saying he loves you a lot, but you no longer love him. So I wonder if he is the one who might feel tricked…
Seriouslyserving,
You are right he really a loves me. But he doesn’t think about my happiness. It’s all about him. I understand when you love someone you wanna be with that person, but in my case I’ve told him already I am not happy anymore. Even now that we are back together I know he can tell. He is needy, and HE wants to be happy, so he emotionally manipulates me because he knows I love him too (I do, but not as a husband)and that I respect his feelings. I think there’s a limit, you know… You love someone so much but there should be a time when you should let that person go. I just can’t break up, because I love him and I don’t wanna hurt him, but he’s making me miserable.
The Bible does not call for a woman to love her husband, it calls for her to respect him.
Carol, when you married your husband, did you tell him you didn’t believe in commitment? What you are saying here is you don’t want to be married since you aren’t “in love”. But this raises the question of why marry in the first place. If the plan was to stick together so long as you were both feeling it, why bother with a wedding? Commitment doesn’t mean promising to do something so long as you want to do it. Doing what you want because you want to is the default state, and doesn’t need a ceremony.
Carol,
My wife sometimes falls into the trap of thinking I don’t care about her needs. She is wrong of course, but she really does think that at the time.
I would challenge you to really ponder how much you are guilty of thinking he doesn’t listen to you (as an example of this) because he doesn’t do what you want. I believe that is a key part for many women because they equate “being heard” with “doing what I want.” It is quite possible that you really are right, but my wife and I have found enough times that she was wrong and I made the better choice. She still had to fight the feelings of not feeling heard herself.
I will bet you would think the same yourself, especially since it is so prevalent in our culture.
Your husband may be totally uncaring, but it is more likely he cares a lot and you just fail to notice how he does care.
Carol, I should note that I am going on 27 years of marriage this summer.
Dalrock
Carol’s comment is the first time ever I have seen a woman comment or speak so frankly about the love thing in marriage. All she has to do is honor her commitment and all is good. Love to spend some time with her husband to get him some game to see if she can get her some gina tingle for honoring her marriage. He loves her and takes care of her the blue pill way and she is not as predicted responding positively to that and her own teaching has blinded her to what she is getting from her committed family man. Her story is text book of what is wrong with todays churches and the crap they are teaching young men and women.
MGTOW PS. you are doing the lords work here Dalrock
Dalrock, well put.
Carol, we don’t care that you don’t love your husband anymore. The only thing we care about (that your husband really cares about) is that you stay married and faithful to this man. Whether you love him or not, he needs to know that no matter what happens (no matter what) you aren’t going anywhere. Tell him that, that you will NEVER leave him.
That is called commitment. That is marriage. That is what you agreed to, what you contracted to with your husband and with God. Contract. I don’t care what you, the state, feminism, or Oprah thinks of your marriage.
@Carol
I thought the whole point of a commitment was precisely so that WHEN you stop feeling it, WHEN it stops meeting your needs, WHEN it is no longer convenient, WHEN you are not getting out of it what you are putting into it, or even WHEN the other person is not living up to their end of the bargain, there is a vow made before God and witnesses that supersedes every “yes, but”…
In sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, for better or worse, till death do us part. Perhaps your vows did not say that, but mine did. And I am not seeing anything in there about “feeling it.”
I am profoundly skeptical of today’s generation (and frankly my own baby boomer generation) that thinks they can improve on these vows by substituting their own, equalizing the sexes by making each party promise exactly the same thing instead of recognizing their different responsibilities under the marriage covenant. Regardless, even in the age of “we’re the same except for plumbing” I have yet to hear vows that go so far as to say “…until I stop feeling it.”
Those who have gone before us were wise enough to realize that my first sentence above should indeed read WHEN (not IF). And this was precisely why they (and God) knew a vow was required. Vows are unnecessary when one thinks they will be propelled only by positive feelings for the duration – or the naive assumption that if the feelings disappear, the vow is rendered null and void. A vow is there primarily to offer stability for the bad times – not the good.
It reminds me of some of the sound bites on the news from the mortgage crisis a few years ago, where homeowners said ridiculous things like “why should I keep making payments on a house that is worth less than what I borrowed?”
Uh, maybe because you made a promise and signed 35 pieces of paper to that effect.
A promise is a promise. Marriage even more so.
@Brad A
I think this is a universal truism with women: “If you really heard me, if you truly heard my heart, you’d agree with me – because I’m fundamentally reasonable and my heart does not lie.”
And this causes no end of problems in marriage. Men’s ears work just fine 99.999% of the time.
“If you really heard me, if you truly heard my heart, you’d agree with me – because I’m fundamentally reasonable and my heart does not lie.”
Hence the “follow your heart” meme that has superseded “Trust in the Lord” even among those who should know better.
Carol,
I would echo what everyone else has said about the importance of commitment. You made marriage vows, you need to stick to them.
But I would also add that you have greater chances of happiness if you stay and work at your marriage than if you leave and try to start again.
Your options are not simply “stay in an unhappy marriage” or “leave and have another chance at happiness”. There is a third option: “stay and work on creating a happy marriage”.
Put your own happiness on the back burner – it’s been your focus for too long. Make it your mission to find out what pleases your husband and do those things. I imagine he comes across as “needy” to you because he doesn’t feel secure in your commitment to him. Give him that reassurance verbally, physically, and practically each day that you will not leave him. (I don’t mean saying, “I will not leave you” each day – but you can express this sentiment in other words.)
@ Carol
Do you have children? If you do then you need to put their wellbeing before your own. They need married parents. If not, don’t have any until you get yourself together.
What exactly is your husband doing that makes you so unhappy? If he’s desperate to keep you around it seems that he would also be eager to do what it takes to make you happy. If he were happy with you being present but miserable then he wouldn’t be so clingy and insecure acting. Do you know what you want? Have you told him?
IMO this is a terrible place to get marriage advice. No offense meant to anyone who posts here regularly, but happily married types don’t seem to frequent this corner of the Internet. Go to your church or maybe to a longtime married couple. Or open your Bible and do what it says.
An added note: Your feelings can control how you see things Carol. You will not see the loving things he does for you if you filter them out because you feel unloved. The opposite is also true, you will feel more loved if you realize you are at a deep level.
Even schmucky guys often love their wives, especially if they are still there many years later. That should say something in and of itself!
Or open your Bible and do what it says.
I’m Guessing Michelle doesn’t know what the Bible says about marriage, otherwise she would know that the advice given in the comments above is from the Bible.
In case Carol, her husband (hoping he makes it here), Michelle, or any one else who is unfamiliar with the teachings from the Bible on the subject of marriage, below are a few passages on the subject. Please pray before you read them and ask God to give you understanding. Gen 2:22-24, Prov 5:18-19, Prov 12:4, Prov 19:14, Prov 31:10, Eph 5:22-33, Matt 19:4-6, 1 Cor 7:1-16, 3:18-19, Heb 13:4-7, 1 Pet 3:1-7
Meant to convey “in case Carol et al. want to learn what the Bible says about marriage” at 1:09 am.
Re-reading the 1:09 am comment has convinced me to re-post the whole thing with corrections included.
In case Carol, her husband (hoping he makes it here), Michelle, or any one else who is unfamiliar with the teachings in the Bible about the subject of marriage wants to learn what the scriptures have to say, below are a few passages on the subject. Please pray before you read them and ask God to give you understanding. Gen 2:22-24, Prov 5:18-19, Prov 12:4, Prov 19:14, Prov 31:10, Eph 5:22-33, Matt 19:4-6, 1 Cor 7:1-16, Col 3:18-19, Heb 13:4-7, and 1 Pet 3:1-7.
Conflicting statements. If you do what the Bible says, then this isn’t a bad place to get marriage advice. Me thinks you don’t like being told what marriage is and what it is not. Happily married folks do not need to be told to keep their vows, only unhappily married people or persons need to be told such.
And you meant such offense. Go away!
As for Carol, she missed the whole point of this post. It is not to give women an out if they are unhappily married, it is to remind them to only accept the marriage proposal of a man they can submit to and if they didn’t do that and got married only to have children, status and a husband, then they still need to keep their vows for better or worse.
The title of the post is a play, it is not the men who are tricking women but the women who are tricking themselves..
Women submit to men who turn them on.
Folks, Carol is long gone, never to return, as are all of the other drive-by trollettes. You all should know better than to respond to their verbal vomitus with nutritious intellectual and spiritual gourmet cuisine. It’s wasteful and pointless.
@Julian O’Dea:
Which isn’t a very stable foundation for either family or larger society. Fortunately, we have this thing called the “Bible” which orders women to submit, regardless of how turned on they are.
The alternative is conscious eternal torment, which seems to be what most westerners are choosing right now.
Forrtunately, we have this thing called the “Bible” which orders women to submit, regardless of how turned on they are.
Unfortunately, the majority of the Western world’s women have made it very clear that they don’t believe in the Bible, all of their rhetoric to the contrary notwithstanding. This is why, in bygone eras when western civilization wasn’t suicidal and common sense truly was common, women were, for their own benefit and protection, under the strict control of men who did believe in and obeyed the Bible. Abandonment of this time-tested custom is to thank for the current state of affairs.
@feeriker
“For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” (Mat. 7:14)
Never before has the gospel of Jesus been preached so widely, and been so well understood. Yet few there be that choose to obey it.
We have a duty to continue to preach it to those who will listen, and to live it out, and to walk alongside those few who do choose to find it. I personally have been blessed to know quite a few women (mostly young) who have chosen to turn away from sin and instead choose the narrow, hard way.
As far as the rest of them… I hope God has mercy on their souls.
Women submit to men who turn them on.
Do they really? Not just sexually?
fh,
Many do believe they are doing that going in, but lose the “feelings” along the way. Modern society lets feelings rule and that is the flaw.
Many do believe they are doing that going in, but lose the “feelings” along the way.
Yes, but many others, including many who identify as Christian, take the wife’s part to obey her husband out of the wedding vows. It’shameful.
True.
Submission in the end is a choice. Not a feeling.
True.
Submission in the end is a choice. Not a feeling.
Unfortunately too many women make choices based on how they feel, hence all those bad choices.
For those who hate the idea of a woman in the kitchen making sammiches for her man, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:
For every female that men “liberate” from the “shackles” of patriarchy, another man is enslaved by an oppressive state on behalf of a “strong and independent” woman. Men bear the weight, the cost, much of the pain, and much of the shame of women’s autonomy, and children suffer too. Is a SAMMICH really too much to ask for?
@Michelle
Yes, they do. They’ve moved into apartments I chose, and paid for them, just so I could have a more convenient place for our liaisons / place to sleep afterwards closer to a client I had in their city.
They’ve prepared sumptuous meals for me, or even gone and bought my favourite takeout when they were a bit financially stretched and really shouldn’t have been spending $50 on me to do so.
They’ve looked up at me for advice about everything they were facing in life: career options, how to deal with a troublesome coworker, should I go into this graduate program or not?, my cat is sick – I don’t know if I should have it put down or try to save it. And on and on.
It’s pathetic and sad when a woman who is not your wife is busy submitting to you like a wife should.
@JDG
In the circles I run in, joking about a wife making sandwiches for her husband isn’t even funny, since it’s an assumption she’d be doing that anyway, and kind of shameful to suggest that a husband would need to be making sandwiches for himself.
Likewise we don’t joke about depriving infants or small children of food and water.
It’s pathetic and sad when a woman who is not your wife is busy submitting to you like a wife should.
What’s even more pathetic and sad is that should you wife up one of these women, the submission will most definitely stop the minute after the wedding ring goes on her finger. THAT you can bank on.
@feeriker
It is indeed pathetic and sad to think about the poor sap who will try to marry my ex, or all the resources would-be suitors have wasted getting her to go on dates, etc. (and from what I hear with no success even getting her into the bedroom).
Last I heard, she is dating a woman, and is refusing to have sex until they get married first “because I learned with you (J N) not to make that mistake again”.
It’s pathetic and sad when a woman who is not your wife is busy submitting to you like a wife should.
Not to mention hypocritical for those women to complain about wifely submission.
J N says:
June 29, 2015 at 12:36 pm
@JDG
In the circles I run in, joking about a wife making sandwiches for her husband isn’t even funny…</em?
John I wish I ran in your circles.
Last I heard, she is dating a woman, and is refusing to have sex until they get married…
I’m dismayed by how so many people do not know that you need a man AND a woman to have a marriage. A union between a woman and her dog is not marriage.
A union between a woman and a bridge is not marriage.
A union between a woman and herself is not marriage.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2928352/Woman-marries-emotional-wedding-ceremony-failing-meet-one-age-40.html
And finally, a union between a woman and another woman is not marriage.
Typo above should read:
@JDG
In the circles I run in, joking about a wife making sandwiches for her husband isn’t even funny…
John I wish I ran in your circles.
@Julian O’Dea Women submit to men who turn them on.
Does this hold true for believers? Do we submit to God when He behaves like Santa Claus? Or do we believe that women are like so many dogs responding to on of Pavlov’s bells? I buy that women have a sin nature, that has been well exposed. What I don’t buy is that the blood of Jesus Christ did not provide them a means to repent and be born into a NEW NATURE. Suggesting that women cannot change in Christ through repentance, baptism which brings the remission of sin is holding the Blood of Christ as worthless. That is a faithless proposition.
JN, women submitting instinctively to men they are turned on by, who are not their husbands, is indeed pathetic. Such women have the correct behaviour, just in the wrong context.
In a healthy society, the ordinary woman would respect almost any man, simply because he is a man, and feel happy and excited to be a submissive wife to a decent man. But we know what happened to that ethos.
Women have an instinct to submit to a man, and a desire to mother. The problem is that these days, many of them are masturbating to Christian Grey and cuddling soft toys.
As for the Christian context, “grace builds upon nature”. It is a lot easier to get a woman turned on and agreeing with Ephesians, than to get her to read Ephesians and get turned on.
It’s also a lot easier to build a mega-church with unrepentant sinners who aren’t ever charged to amend their ways. Then we have Jesus who says such unsexy things as “Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you will have no part in me”. *poof~Goodbye mega-church and all the fair weather easy believists.
What is plaguing our “churches” today again?
“Husbands need to know Game”
Well, no, they don’t. Once they are married, they need to get on with the responsibilities of running a family – their family.
It is women who need to “woman up”, by being responsible adults in that relationship and learn their responsibilities.
We need to be “Women’s Obligations Activists”, not “Men’s Rights Activists”
OT sort of. According to this, a man “tricked” his employee into a loveless series of romps in the hay. Then he fired her because he found her boyfriend in her bed (in an apartment he was paying for). Then he tricked her into suing him for millions of dollars. The moral of the story is an immoral woman can fornicate with her adulterous boss, and make a quick couple million. Who tricked who?
I have a blog for all this stuff, and I am tired of discussing some of these things, and nobody has to listen. But – part of being a husband is “knowing Game”. Call it what you like, it seems to help.
I have been married nearly 30 years, and we have faced the problems that come along, and my knowing “Game”, and learning about it in the Manosphere in recent years, has helped enormously.
All it is, is understanding how women really work.
I agree, knowing “Game” is important, akin to understanding feminism. We are warned to be as wise as serpents. Understanding women’s sin nature is essential to survival as a man today, “gamers” have exposed much in this regard and we do owe them.
“Game” is a tool. It can be used for good or ill.
And yes, “as wise as serpents”.
Women want you to think they understand men but men cannot understand women. But women make sense once you understand their basic motivations. A man cannot understand what it feels like to be a woman (or vice versa), but there are some basic weaknesses women have that can be exploited. If you know what you are doing, you can pull their strings.
And seriously, never listen to women who deny these facts.
https://davidcollard.wordpress.com/2010/11/15/women-policing-the-hierarchy/
We need to be “Women’s Obligations Activists”, not “Men’s Rights Activists”.
Indeed, althought I put the odds of success somewhere south of those so far seen in creating nuclear fusion – that is, as long as men are behind such activism. RP women might have marginally more success in convincing other members of the herd to grow up, “woman up,” get their act together, and start living in the real world.
FH,
See, we can agree on some things!
Definitely. I think I’ve come to understand your persistence to certain areas of the Bible a bit better over the past few months and respect you far more for it. Specifically marriage and trying to do God’s will rather than our own.
@Spike,
Ignore the fact that forcing women to be a certain way is not going to help, exactly how would you accomplish this?
What skills does a man need. Does he get to ignore being a lover to his wife and only focus on being a mule for her provision? Or the Lord of the castle ordering everyone else around? Neither is either appealing or appropriate to reality.
Life requires human interaction and someone needs to apply skills in that area as much as any other. Many are so disgusted with PUA game (as I am) that they completely reject the valid ideas it steals from.
“Think and Grow Rich” is a book and concept that is misused, but it has some great fundamental ideas. Not dong that will almost certainly keep you poor. The same is true of game in marriage. Not applying the things that make you attractive as a husband will be harmful to your marriage. You can never force any human to do anything, but you can make it easier for them to follow that path. Are you really arguing a husband should do what he can?
“You can never force any human to do anything, but you can make it easier for them to follow that path.”
Yes, you can’t make a woman comply with your wishes, especially not by pointing out Bible passages. But if you know what women find attractive in masculine behaviour, she is more likely to want to comply.
“Game” is not hard. It is certainly not as hard as the 24/7 supplication a lot of marital advice really implies.
BradA says:
June 30, 2015 at 10:48 am
BradA: I agree with you that forcing women to go a particular way isn’t going to help. They cannot be forced by individuals. They can be forced by circumstances.
When circumstances change, women will have to. In the Western world, things are changing, as this and other blogs attest. Western women demanding protection from Western men against foreign men in Sweden and Britain for example. This latter appeal has led to Western men, the objects of divorce rape, ridicule and stupid media jokes holding up a collective middle finger to the aforesaid women. Other examples are the Marriage Strike, MGTOW, Sexodus and so on. The more ominous situation is the decline of Western Culture, which men will survive quite well but women will not.
On a private level for married men, there are things he can do. Separate his bank accounts; make his own plans; separate out his wifes and his debts; understand that all she can do really is stamp her foot and yell. These may or may not constitute Game, but they help in making Peace in his household.
I suppose some could do that Spike, though I am not sure a scortched earth policy is a good idea in many marriages. It is more likely to cause problems than solve them in many marriages.
I am not sure it would help in many states either, since I think things are joint no matter whose name is on the account.
I would agree that a man who wants to be married should do far more to be careful than many realize and it is a huge risk even then.
BradA: thanks for your reply. My response is that a married man has existing obligations. It isn’t so much that he should go “scorched earth” as you put it, but that, if he is a Christian man, he should be willing to. He is willing todo this as an act of obedience to God.
Wife associating with feminists and lesbians? Tell her, Scripturally, why it’s wrong. She telling you to “man up”? If you’re working honestly wih your hands as St Paul exhorts us to, you’re doing right. No “man up” necessary. Threatening divorce? Show her Jenny Eriksons life entries – real life divorce stories, not divorce porn fiction. Stay on the moral high ground. She might rage. So what. Your identity is sewed up in Christ, not her. You serve Him, not her. Sure, you’re married to her, but you serve another.
You have to be willing to risk it all. Never plead, never beg. Always remain cool and in control. This comes from knowing you are on the high moral ground because of he constant use of Gods Word.
This has been my journey. I can say it works. The details will change with individuals, but it works because it comes from God.
Hope this helps.
Reblogged this on Philosophies of a Disenchanted Scholar and commented:
It’s impossible for women to fall out of love.
You can only fall out of lust.
The men are just as bad for marrying such bad prospects. It’s for better and for worst, this includes any sexual problems or crushes.
The woman in the first article is a fool. As I read the idea that a husband “have game” to keep his wife from wanting her best friend that hasn’t gotten back to her in the two weeks since she whored herself too him I realized that the whole Alpha Beta thing is stupid crap too. Think about it the Alpha plays the game, a woman’s game. Sounds more like the stooge to me. Men who don’t play the game are the ones in charge of their own lives. They’re smart enough not to be involved. Remember the same mind that emotionally reasons the logic of her actions is then pointing to the Alpha saying he’s the cool one in charge. No, it might look that way.
I saw a few mentions to women who like bad boys. Again another version of a man who plays their games. Here’s why bad boys are another BS claim. Real bad boys don’t want people to know their bad, do they stay out of jail, that’s for thugs & those who can’t be smart.
God gave you permission to divorce? How was this done? Email, letter, text, a phone call, a note … I see, you say God did this. But you say lots of things.
I feel.really alone I was tricked into a marriage without sex. He had a problem and he hid it well. On our wedding night the truth came out
I was devastated. . Gutted ..I feel trapped ..in a loveless marriage ….
That would be fraud. I am not in favor of misusing annulments, but this would be one case it would be valid, as it has been throughout history.
Comment from an agnostic: Why don’t Christian men just invent some sort of theology that says that current marriage, divorce, and family law in the US doesn’t agree with God’s law, or natural law, because no fault divorce is incompatible with marriage as a sacrament, and reject civil marriage entirely? That seems to follow the tenets of game insofar as it balanced the power out between husbands and wives. It would certainly help men maintain hand and frame within marriage, as a women who wanted out couldn’t take half the assets, and wouldn’t be due alimony. Also, so long as the husbands name was on the birth certificates of the kids, he should be able to get joint custody, and hence pretty reasonable child support payments (plus he should be able to afford a better lawyer than his wife).
Reblogged this on Free Matt Podcasts and commented:
Men must understand purpose and situational awareness. Coupled with game can help stave off disaster much like the examples contained in Dalrock’s following piece.
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