Grab your riding gear (kit?) and your best tracking dogs, we are in for a hamster hunt. Being a gracious host, we won’t just be chasing one hamster, but two!
Talley-ho!
That cloud of dust you see was kicked up by the hamsters of two women Christian bloggers. They’re darting around, rationalizing how Christian women can marry men they don’t really love and everything will turn out just fine (for the women).
Haley kicked off the excitement with her latest in a long series of posts arguing the benefits of marrying a man she isn’t in love with or attracted to. This latest post is titled Companionship vs Sexual Attraction. In it she quotes Hana, another Christian blogger who will be competing alongside Haley in this hamster double. Hana’s hamster has turned out an impressive piece of rationalization, titled “Nothing but Heaven itself is Better than a Friend… Haley opens her post with two quotes from Hana:
“…close friendship, where two people share common interests, a compatible sense of humour, and similar intelligence, etc. When a man and a woman are close friends in this way, the importance of sexual attraction seems to fade. Sexual attraction is still present…Still, sexual attraction becomes less important when a man and a woman are truly close friends.”
She then made an even more provocative statement:
“As long as you’re somewhat attracted to him or her, why not marry your best friend?”
Why not? Because you will make him miserable, and are very likely to commit the sin of divorce. By advising women to do this, she is putting them at great risk for the sin of divorce, and even worse further threatening the institution of marriage while it teeters on the brink. Alte informs me that good rhetoric includes both anecdote and data. I’ve already done that (also here), so I won’t bother rehashing it here.
Back to Haley’s post. She notes that this advice is very different from my advice, as well as Badger’s.
This seems like a pretty far cry from Dalrock’s and Badger’s insistence that a woman feel “head over heels” for any potential spouse, but in my opinion, it seems like a good recipe for a stable, enduring marriage.
she continues:
If women are able to grow in attraction to a mate and will feel more attracted and more attached to him once they have sex, and the woman at least meets a man’s minimum physical attractiveness requirements, and there is a preexisting emotional/intellectual bond and the two enjoy each other’s company, then that sounds like pretty solid grounds for marrying (assuming there are no red flags in other areas).
Never mind that we don’t see women becoming more attracted to men after marriage. If they did, Athol Kay’s book and blog wouldn’t be such big hits.
God willing, you’re both going to be old and achy a lot longer than you’re going to be young and hot, so it’s worth investing in someone who will still be fun when your collagen production has reached its nadir and you can’t see each other clearly up close without bifocals anyway (not that you would necessarily want to, due to the wrinkles).
I’ve only been with my wife for 18 years, so I hope Haley will look past my lack of experience in the matter. But as a mere youngster, all I can say is my marriage is nothing like what marriage is when she closes her eyes and imagines it. I haven’t checked my collagen production, but I can still see my wife just fine without bifocals; she’s still hot. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that Athol would say the same thing about his wife too (that is if it weren’t bad game form to do so).
Next Haley offers an anecdote. It turns out that there is a man who Haley thinks would under different circumstances be a good marriage match for her because he doesn’t repulse her:
Speaking anecdotally, I had a friend who fit this description. We attended the same church and got along swimmingly. It was very easy for us to have lengthy conversations, and our senses of humor meshed well. We weren’t superclose friends, but I could tell that we were on the same wavelength. After knowing him for a couple of years, I started to think that if he hadn’t been married with kids, he was someone I probably could have married. I didn’t feel “head over heels” for him. I didn’t even have a crush on him. I wasn’t physically attracted to him (but whatever my minimum standard of physical attractiveness was, he met that, because I wasn’t repulsed by him). He was just someone I got along with really, really well.
Nowhere does she consider what she would have done to this poor man had she had the opportunity to marry him. She would have stolen his best chance at happiness, not to mention his current wife’s chance at happiness. And don’t worry, if Haley ever does stoop to marry a man worthy of the high praise of not being repulsive, she won’t make the mistake of giving him a big head by telling him how non repulsive he is. She assured us of this in her previous post, Why women are afraid to pump up men’s egos. Feel free to read the whole post, but I would say you can boil it down to: The men she is attracted to she resents for being successful, and the men who aren’t successful she resents for not being attractive.
And women think to themselves, “I’m working a full-time job and still living respectably, but I’m supposed to tell this guy how wonderful he is and bring him his slippers?!?”
Yup, that is the kind of love and adoration married-guy-who-didn’t-ask-anyway missed out on by marrying a woman who actually loved him.
But so far in this hunt I have been neglecting half of its quarry. My deepest apologies to Hana, I haven’t forgotten you. Hana appeals to the fear of lost opportunity to choose when rationalizing why it is ok for Christian women to trick men into loveless, sexless marriages:
If the person you’re dating walked out of your life tomorrow, how much would you miss him? If you’d miss him for a little while and then fill the void with other friends, maybe he’s not “the one.” If you’d miss him deeply and for a longer period of time, though, then maybe you have a friend worth committing to for the rest of your life.
Yes! Because marriage is only about what you, as the woman, want! Hana bolsters her argument further in the comments section of Haley’s post by offering an anecdote. While she evidently hasn’t actually witnessed a case where a woman married a man she didn’t love and it all turned out well, she once knew a guy who after being the victim of a frivolous divorce still managed to be happy after marrying a woman who didn’t divorce him:
Here’s a little anecdote: I know someone who, if not an alpha, is as close to an alpha as I’ve ever seen. He married a very beautiful girl who, several years later, left him…for his sister’s husband. She wasn’t a Christian when they met; she claimed to have become one, but obviously the conversion was only surface-deep.
Not long after they divorced, he married a Christian woman who is demonstrably less attractive than his first wife, though not unattractive. He seems very happy and, judging from his behaviour, attracted to his second wife. But I bet that if you had put the two women side-by-side when he was younger, he would have gone for the woman who was more attractive (his first wife).
The point I’m making is that you don’t have to compromise attraction completely – you just have to factor in other things (in this case, character), because they are what keep your relationship strong for the long haul.
Since we know God made man and woman exactly the same, if the marriage worked just fine for a man, it should work just fine for women, right?
Take over for me fellow hunters, I’m exhausted.
Note: Hana has written a response to this post: Head-over-Heels
Yeah, I was pretty put off by the post on why women are afraid to pump up men’s egos. I was pretty stunned that a Christian would think that way, to tell you the truth.
The whole thing was enough to make me see quite clearly why so many men are deciding that marriage isn’t the best life choice. Haven’t read the latest post yet, so I’ll reserve further comment.
This should be an interesting thread, Dalrock.
Marry a friend you won’t be tempted to leave because it’ll hurt him and you to much while you’re getting recreationally schtupped/bred by alpha dick on the side. Uh-huh.
Why not marry a friend you’d like to schtupp/breed with in the first place? (My grandparents’ secret for longevity, BTW.)
“Why not marry a friend you’d like to schtupp/breed with in the first place? (My grandparents’ secret for longevity, BTW.)”
There aren’t enough men that women find attractive for every woman to have a mate.
Dalrock, you are right, but your model leads to polygamy. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
[D: It doesn’t have to lead to polygamy. Under our current system it will lead to spinsterhood and MGTOW for the portion of women who lack the capacity (and humility) to reciprocate love and attraction. The alternative is even more divorce, and the eventual death of the institution of marriage.]
Dalrock: Thank you. I can’t believe it. They got me trying to reason with the hamster.
Disengaging now.
Marrying the friend might work in a society where divorce is rare, where women are virgins before marriage, and where there is little pre-marital contact between the sexes. With the latter two conditions, even a fairly average man will have some sexual appeal to the opposite sex. The more mixing of the sexes, the higher the threshold for attraction. IMO, the complete sexual integration of society, leavened with feminism, is responsible for the modern entitlement complex of women. Male attention is abundant. What isn’t scarce isn’t valued. It is ignored, spurned, and demeaned. Social networks, sexual liberation and the diminished prevalence of exclusive lengthy relationships are amplifying the male attention given to women.
That “ego pump” article was pretty disgusting. It’s classic projection: “I would be repulsed by a guy who worships me, so, ipso facto, worshiping a man is repulsive.” In truth, men reward such fealty. She seems like classic alpha refuse – she can’t get an alpha to commit, and holds betas in contempt.
Speaking of which, Athol Kay describes the husband and wife as akin to a Captain and First mate. I submit that the model of Lord and Vassal is a viable, if more polar, model of relationships. And one I would prefer.
Okay, I’ve read both Haley’s and Hana’s posts. I think Hana was more genuine than Haley. I’ll take a page from their book and offer an anecdote.
My husband and I were “friends” before we started dating. At least that’s what we told ourselves. The truth is that I was on his radar screen and he was on mine; the stars just hadn’t aligned quite right yet. I was definitely head over heels when we married. I still am as anyone who’s read my blog without throwing up can see.
I think this is kind of what Hana was getting at. At least I hope it was. Her post felt more benign than Haley’s.
Terry:
My husband and I were “friends” before we started dating. At least that’s what we told ourselves. The truth is that I was on his radar screen and he was on mine”
Exactly.
@Terry
My husband and I were “friends” before we started dating. At least that’s what we told ourselves. The truth is that I was on his radar screen and he was on mine; the stars just hadn’t aligned quite right yet. I was definitely head over heels when we married. I still am as anyone who’s read my blog without throwing up can see.
I think this is kind of what Hana was getting at. At least I hope it was. Her post felt more benign than Haley’s.
I don’t think it is wrong for women to give a man a reasonable chance to see if she will fall head over heels in love with him. But if Hana was suggesting this, she forgot to mention that women shouldn’t marry if that feeling doesn’t develop. She comes across to me as quite flippant. Her anecdote only reinforced that. At the very least she is extremely careless in the way that she gives out advice on a very serious topic. I hope she isn’t as frivolous in her own marriage as she is when doling out marriage advice.
Only 10% of all males are acceptable to 100% of all females. Asking a woman to marry within her SMV is not possible, until she hits the wall at 40. Why even fight it?
Just go your own way. Not having a family isn’t all that bad.
I used to comment more on Haley’s Halo, back when she was gleefully poking fun at over-earnest and clueless Christian bloggers, with their sunday-school version of the Bible, and no game knowledge. Now she’s 100% hamster, and not fun-rationalizing hamster, but defensive-bitter hamster.
I think the root problem with both posts is their inability to comprehend true devotion. This might sound white-knight-ish, but I think both Dalrock and Athol speak from an experience that I have only recently become acquainted with – the unconditional trust and love from a woman. When “real” men (as defined by the alpha/beta mix Athol describes) talk about their women being “too good” for them, it’s not pedestalization. They understand that their women have their weakness and vice. They are marveling that their women can be so kind and devoted to them, despite knowing what scumbags they are. When Dalrock talks about “head over heels”, that is what he means. And if you’ve experienced it, you can’t imagine setting for anything less.
Now let’s turn to Haley and company. It must be galling, to see an endless parade of younger women falling deliriously in love, getting the ring, the white dress, the house, and then the kids. These women are maddeningly happy, talking about their shiny new families, with their complain/bragging: “Oh, my husband would never let me do that…he’s scared something would happen to me!” “My silly husband put salt rather than sugar in the cookies!” And what’s worse is these women achieved their happiness in the most traitorous way – by making their men happy, and placing them first.
So what is dear Haley to do? She protects herself by thinking, I am better than these women. I’m smarter, more self-aware, less sycophantic, more mature. I’m above these silly antics of these young pretty things. I write blogs analyzing and tearing apart their behavior, and the silly, hypocritical, contradictory men who enjoy it. And along the way, she kills her ability to fall in love, because she despises it so much.
So now, the best she can hope for is companionship with a non-repulsive.
“I think this is kind of what Hana was getting at. At least I hope it was. Her post felt more benign than Haley’s.”
Her post was obviously more benign, she was not getting at what you suggest. She says she was talking about a situation where a man and woman start out as friends who aren’t attracted to each other but then become attracted to each other over time. That’s nothing like your example (since you were both attracted to each other from the get go), and I suspect it’s exceedingly rare.
What might work is a situation where the woman was always attracted to the guy, and he was lukewarm at first and had his eye on other women (which, for a guy means, she much passed his boner test but not as much some of the others). Because of the fact that men have a wide attraction net, he can end up being very happy ultimately committing to her if she treats him well, they are compatible and, most importantly, she really enjoys having sex with him on regular basis. This is partly because the vast majority of men can be pretty happy bangin’ the slightly less attractive woman if she’s otherwise a great partner. Women, on the other hand, will be sexually unfulfilled if they are stuck with a guy they found less attractive.
It’s also partly because men are somewhat less prone to emotional ups and downs and society is far less apt to indulge whatever ups and downs they may have.
She comes across to me as quite flippant. Her anecdote only reinforced that. At the very least she is extremely careless in the way that she gives out advice on a very serious topic. I hope she isn’t as frivolous in her own marriage as she is when doling out marriage advice.
You may be right. I think I had a more visceral reaction to Haley’s post because I’ve read more of her cynical musings than I have of Hana whom I’d never heard of until I read your post. That’s why I gave her the benefit of the doubt.
I get the exact same from Haley as Josh describes above. She seems to have lost the ability to believe in true love. I think that’s kind of sad.
I’m really glad you see that, Terry, because it has proven to be extremely difficult to explain it to people who don’t. The post-feminist poisoned attitudes which are very common among women these days – even supposedly “good Christian girls” – can be quite subtle, but they go clear down to bedrock.
How in the world did being kind, supportive, and cooperative get distorted and polarized into “pumping up his ego”? Women have been so brainwashed into seeing men as evil and out to get them that many of them seem to have a compulsive need to oppose, resist, and tear down any man on any issue lest he drag her back into the kitchen by her hair and keep her “chained to the stove, barefoot and pregnant.” This reflexive – and probably largely unconscious – opposition turns a great many women into the psychological/emotional enemies of men. Someone who spends a great deal of energy opposing anything I am trying to do, and does her best to prevent it, cannot be seen as anything other than an enemy and a threat. People who help or support us in accomplishing our goals are seen as allies, and people who do everything they can to thwart us in accomplishing our goals simply cannot be seen as anything other than a destructive force to be avoided if possible, and overcome if avoidance isn’t possible.
No amount of badgering by pro-marriage or socially conservative people is going to change this very basic, simple, human dynamic.
Your comment about devotion in response to Haley’s post was a little hard to follow (I think you left out a word or two), but I think what you meant was very close to the truth – a woman’s willingness to be devoted to her husband is at the very least 50% of what he needs emotionally to commit and devote himself to her. Demonstration of complete unwillingness to do this on the part of a woman will immediately and irrevocably move her into the “ineligible” category in most men’s minds.
There are actually quite a few single Christian female bloggers who lament constantly about their lack of romantic success. Reading them is both sad and annoying because their toxic attitudes toward men are as obvious as the noses on their faces and by themselves could easily explain the lack of success in the dating arena that these women are experiencing.
Oh she wouldn’t be the only one who has lost the ability to believe in true love.
The problem here is one of risk, primarily.
Under the current culture of “hedonic marriage”, basically unless both are quite fulfilled in the marriage, chances are one of them is going to walk. That’s just how marriage is these days — for Christians too, by the way, regardless of theology. So the question becomes one of risk management, in terms of trying to reduce the risk that things will be unfulfilling enough to encourage someone to walk.
It’s a very difficult equation to solve, unfortunately, given how female attraction works. On the one hand, Dalrock is quite right in asserting that for a woman to marry someone to whom she feels only so/so attraction is taking a risk — or, more appropriately, foisting a risk on the *other* person against his will. Now, she may grow more attracted to him during the marriage, or she may not. But she already is starting at a lower baseline of attraction than she has already for other men — the issue being that these men are unavailable for some reason or other (out of the league, attached to others, etc.). This means that if she doesn’t really grow in her attraction during the marriage, that risk of her so-so attraction coming back to bite her husband is substantial. So on that score, I agree with Dalrock.
The problem arises, however, because women are just not “head over heels” attracted to most men. There just aren’t enough “head over heels” generating men around for all the women. We can argue whether this is 10%, 15%, 20% or 25%, but if we’re being honest, it isn’t much more than that. The rest of us are so-so at the very best. So if a woman is to exclude men with whom she is not “head over heels” in love with, there’s a good chance she won’t marry, period.
In prior eras, this happened less (probably, we don’t know, really) because the male pool was much smaller. That, coupled with parental involvement in mate selection, community disapproval of serial monogamy and pre-marital sex, and harsher social mores and legal rules around relationships and so on created a different environment in which female mate selection played itself out – in effect, it was restricted in many ways to a smaller group of available, parentally and socially approved, men. Now, we don’t know how many of these women in prior eras were happy in their marriages — some may have been discontent, but then again, expectations were also quite different in these eras. Now, the male pool is huge, and people are encouraged to optimize, to engage in pre-marital sex to judge the sexual chemistry as early as possible in a relationship (so as not to waste time developing a relationship if that is sub-par compared to other partners one has had), and so on. So in the current era, with our current expectations for marriage (which are more or less the same for Christians as they are for everyone else, when it comes down to brass-tacks, rather than pie in the sky stuff), the reality is that most women won’t find “head over heels” men to marry them, and many will be dissatisfied by marrying other men to whom they are so-so attracted. It’s just the way the cookie crumbles here.
For that reason, I think Dalrock’s idea reduces the risks of divorce (especially for men) at the expense of lowering the marriage rate. Haley’s approach raises the marriage rate somewhat at the expense of increasing the divorce risk for men significantly in our cultural context. It’s an insoluble equation, and one, I think, that men and women will evaluate differently, because the risks are different for each of them, and tend to play *against* each other here.
I would like to cite something (I do not know who the author is): “Real leaders give people what they need, not what they want”. This is ruling prinicple for well functioning group, pack and even civilization.
I am afraid you are offering people what they want (see Tim’s comment). It is nice but not going to work.
Hana appeals to the fear of lost opportunity to choose when rationalizing why it is ok for Christian women to trick men into loveless, sexless marriages
I think I may have to post a background post to my discussions of “the one”. My true viewpoint isn’t what you’re suggesting at all (that it’s better to marry than lose an opportunity) – I believe almost the opposite, actually.
I guess the difference between my intentions and people’s interpretations speaks to how differently men and women view relationships (and how much time I spend reading “the manosphere” compared to other people).
My husband and I were “friends” before we started dating. At least that’s what we told ourselves. The truth is that I was on his radar screen and he was on mine; the stars just hadn’t aligned quite right yet. I was definitely head over heels when we married.
That’s sort of what I was getting at…maybe not quite, but close. I wasn’t suggesting women should marry men they aren’t attracted to.
Okay, I’m going off to write the background post. I don’t think it will be what anyone is expecting…the reaction should be interesting…:)
If someone enters into a marriage being fully honest about their feelings (or lack there-of) then I would think it is ultimately up to the other person on whether he/she wants to marry without romantic love being a factor. I have more of a problem with the deception of pretending to have romantic love when you don’t than I do with a persons willingness to settle.
Dalrock is assuming that Haley would be deceptive but I don’t see why this should be assumed. She might well find a man who would rather have the specific qualities Haley possesses and accept the lessened attraction. So long as the man enters the relationship with eyes wide open then Haley is not using trickery to get a man to marry her.
I know a few men who were more interested in finding a woman who would be a suitable mother to their children and were willing to sacrifice mutual romantic love for those qualities.
Paige: “If someone enters into a marriage being fully honest about their feelings…”
By your experience, do you think it is likely a woman who felt meager attraction toward a man would be fully honest about this?
A woman of virtue would be very very careful to not mislead a man to have higher expectations than she can provide for.
Paige, I have a hard time imagining any person, male or female, saying to their potential spouse:
“You’ll make a great companion and I look forward to a lifelong friendship with you as a co-parent, but you don’t make my knees weak or anything like that.”
Maybe she might be so honest, but I doubt it. And it shouldn’t take long for a man who hears such a speech to know he’s probably signing up for a sexless marriage.
You dodged the question, Paige. Would a virtuous woman dodge the question?
terry: “he’s probably signing up for a sexless marriage.”
That “sexless marriage” is not a ludicrous oxymoron is at least half the problem. Man wants, man takes.
No I didn’t.
I imagine the conversation going more like this:
“I don’t want to enter a relationship under false assumptions or too high expectations for either one of us so I want us to be brutally honest about why we want to get married and what we believe we can provide each other. I don’t have a strong attraction and I can’t provide hot sex every night though I expect x times a week/month…general vanilla stuff… my reasons for getting married are that I respect you as a person and I believe that if we pooled our resources and skills we could make a comfortable life to bring children into.”
Paige, believe me, I totally get that you can imagine the conversation. Based on your experiences of the world we live in and life in general, what is the likelihood of a woman (even a virtuous one) actually committing those words to voice?
“my reasons for getting married are that I respect you as a person”
To which the proper answer is: “My reason for getting married is that I’m going to fuck you until the bed collapses into a pile of splinters.”
17 awesome points to anyone who knows what I’m plagiarizing.
Haley seems like the type who would be willing to have a conversation such as the above. She seems extremely pragmatic and if she ever married a man I imagine he would be similar.
I imagine a lot of women are deceptive though…and that is pretty heinous imo.
“extremely pragmatic”
These are not words I would ever associate with Halo. Your mileage has obviously varied.
@Eumaios
Waterhouse in Cryptonomicon?
+17 awesome points to Interested.
And by the way, the more I read Stephenson, the more I’m convinced he’s a reactionary Christian. N.B. the focus on fertility, sterility, and contraception in the Cryptonomicon/Baroque novels.
@Terry
Maybe she might be so honest, but I doubt it. And it shouldn’t take long for a man who hears such a speech to know he’s probably signing up for a sexless marriage.
In addition to the question of honesty, I would challenge if Christians have the right to redefine marriage in such a way (sexless, etc) even if both agree upfront.
I don’t think you need to have high attraction for your spouse to have sex on a mutually-approved schedule. It probably won’t be nightly super-hot kinky sex but not everyone needs that to be satisfied. For some a couple times a week is plenty.
@Brendan
The problem arises, however, because women are just not “head over heels” attracted to most men. There just aren’t enough “head over heels” generating men around for all the women. We can argue whether this is 10%, 15%, 20% or 25%, but if we’re being honest, it isn’t much more than that. The rest of us are so-so at the very best. So if a woman is to exclude men with whom she is not “head over heels” in love with, there’s a good chance she won’t marry, period.
I disagree with your estimation of the percentage of men women could possibly find attractive. The need for so much alpha strikes me as a relatively new and even then limited phenomenon. Hawaiian Libertarian’s recent post on the definition of hypergamy addresses this:
The problem isn’t that women are wired to only find a very small subset of men attractive, the problem is that many have an irrationally high view of themselves. Haley’s recent post about how the vast majority of men are beneath her sums the problem up quite nicely.
But even if the world worked as you suggested, and only say 20% of women could ever hope to find a husband they are attracted to. This wouldn’t change my answer. In our current legal and social structure (including evangelicals) it is flat out immoral (and evil) for a woman to marry a man she isn’t attracted to because the likelihood of catastrophic failure is simply too high. As I have said before, I hold a common street whore in higher regard than a woman who marries a man she doesn’t really love and then inevitably divorces because “she doesn’t love him any more”.
For that reason, I think Dalrock’s idea reduces the risks of divorce (especially for men) at the expense of lowering the marriage rate. Haley’s approach raises the marriage rate somewhat at the expense of increasing the divorce risk for men significantly in our cultural context. It’s an insoluble equation, and one, I think, that men and women will evaluate differently, because the risks are different for each of them, and tend to play *against* each other here.
You are right that I would choose reducing the number of marriages vs pump more bad marriages (and eventual divorces) into the system. But this isn’t about mens needs vs women’s needs, and I think most of the women here get this. This is about right or wrong, good or evil. Marriage is fundamentally about providing children a stable home with the benefit of two parents. Sending another crop of kids through the meat grinder to enable a woman to avoid confronting her own inflated sense of self isn’t about picking team woman vs team man. It is about picking team frivolous woman vs innocent children (and innocent husband).
Paige: “I don’t want to enter a relationship under false assumptions or too high expectations for either one of us so I want us to be brutally honest about why we want to get married and what we believe we can provide each other. I don’t have a strong attraction and I can’t provide hot sex every night though I expect x times a week/month…general vanilla stuff… my reasons for getting married are that I respect you as a person and I believe that if we pooled our resources and skills we could make a comfortable life to bring children into.”
Paige, I commend your honesty. I just cannot fathom any woman actually saying this to a man and expecting him to agree to it.
If my wife had said that to me after I proposed to her (or at anytime during our relationship or engagement), I think I would have twisted my face into a prune, laughed out loud, and dumped her forthwith.
If any woman I was dating said to me that she did not have a strong attraction to me, I would get up, leave, and never call her again.
Paige, your approach (and Haley’s and Hana’s by extension) reduces love and male-female relations to sterile business arrangements. I might as well include in the marriage contract a statement that the wife (hereafter referred to as the party of the second part) shall have sex with the husband (hereafter referred to as the party of the first part) at least two times per week but no more than 15 times per week.
Did anyone notice what was missing from Paige’s soliloquy?
The words “I love you.”
“I respect you as a person”?!? I should marry a woman because she “respect[s] me as a person”? You can’t be serious. My coworkers respect me as a person. My pastor, doctor and lawyer respect me as a person. I’m not going to share a house, a bank account and a bed with them, though.
And she “doesn’t have a strong attraction” to me. So what she is really saying is that she does not love me, she doesn’t really care about me. She just wants to use me and my bank account.
This is insantiy. No man, not even a beta with two brain cells, would agree to anything like this.
Paige’s solilioquy is the slient speech and vibe that many women are giving off. That is why they are still single and can’t find men.
Did anyone else notice what is in Paige’s soliloquy?
I … I….I… I.. my…. I can’t…. I…. I expect…. my reasons…. I I
What about what the man wants?
Eumaios: GOLDEN. That is exactly why any man gets married. Sex and love, love and sex. That’s it.
Are there really men out there who want children that badly that they would put up with these kinds of demeaning relationships? Wouldn’t a blow-up doll offer more satisfaction?
No comment on Paige’s comment from me (I’m going to mull it over)
However
““I respect you as a person”?!? I should marry a woman because she “respect[s] me as a person”? You can’t be serious.”
Some relationship experts (men and women) say that men want respect more than love from their woman. And that this is something women don’t understand & are going wrong (which is why they feel a need to say it it). I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it in comments in the manosphere but I can’t think off the top of my head who said it.
Dalrock: Excellent stuff. I love your mix of pathos and logic.
[D: Thanks!]
Lily:
Agree that relationship experts say this. But respectfully, you’re missing the point — deliberately, I think.
A man does not want to hear words of respect from his woman. He certainly does not want to hear it as part of a propositiion that he and she get together to pool resources and pump out babies. One envisions the parties meeting with their lawyers and passing offers and counteroffers across a conference table until all the terms have been hammered out.
No, that won’t do.
He wants to see it played out in their lives together. It is not enough for her to say she respects him. She must demonstrate and live her respect, every day, in thought, word and deed.
@lily
“Some relationship experts (men and women) say that men want respect more than love from their woman. And that this is something women don’t understand & are going wrong (which is why they feel a need to say it it).”
I think they are talking about a different meaning of respect. Paige’s version seems more translated to “You seem a very decent person with lots of integrity, and I think you would make caring committed parent.” That’s not what they are talking about.
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@detinennui32
Fair enough and I agree. I only commented on your previous post as it also ended with ‘Sex and love, love and sex. That’s it.’
I would challenge if Christians have the right to redefine marriage in such a way (sexless, etc) even if both agree upfront.
You’re right again, Dalrock. I think the Bible is crystal clea that sex is a part of marriage: an integral part and a part to be enjoyed not suffered through.
I guess an arrangement as Paige described can work, but it doesn’t sound very romantic (or fun). And yes Paige, I know there’s more to marriage than romance and fun, by why wilingly forgo it?
And wouldn’t most spouses enjoy intimacy more if they know their mate is into it and into being with them?
lily: when you reduce it down to its essentials, a man gets married so that he can have live with, and have regular legitimate, socially and church-sanctioned sex with, the woman he loves. There really are no other reasons a man gets married.
@Lily
Some relationship experts (men and women) say that men want respect more than love from their woman. And that this is something women don’t understand & are going wrong (which is why they feel a need to say it it). I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it in comments in the manosphere but I can’t think off the top of my head who said it.
I think the objection here is the recognition that she doesn’t really respect him. Saying the words isn’t the same as feeling it. If she did feel it, she wouldn’t be unable to be attracted to him (see quote from Hawaiian Libertarian above).
Paige’s speech would make for an honest business arrangement, true. I could see two people agreeing to marry out of mutual respect and having a functional relationship. Most marriages throughout history have been arranged ones, with varying degrees of input from the couple in question – none of those were born out of romantic love, but out of pragmatism.
So, for the purposes of this post only, I’ll buy that the “Not attracted, but respect you” speech is not a deal-breaker.
What I don’t have is even the slightest shred of faith that any person would live up to whatever quasi-formal agreement they made. Wife-to-be says she isn’t attracted, but will still offer sex (just not “nightly super-hot kinky sex”) twice a week. We’ll assume I’m even willing to be in a sexual relationship where the woman spends most nights disinterestedly waiting for me to finish. What’s to stop her changing her mind two weeks into the marriage? Or two minutes? Of course, if I renege on a promise to provide a certain lifestyle, or to help her conceive children, we all know what’d happen to me.
The only thing I can rely on to convince a woman to provide me with the relationship I want is her attraction to me – or, if she’s like a handful of the women I’ve ever met, her own sense of duty and morals (these are, sadly, only a fraction of the total). She has plenty of options to see that I live up to my end of the deal. But that’s just the way you’re forced to think if you accept the premise that any relationship can be a business arrangement.
Screw that arrangement and “respect me as a person” nonsense. I know what I want from a relationship, and am willing to bust my ass to be worthy of it (and that includes modifying my own behavior to have the right mix of alpha-beta), but I’m not going to let it be a transaction or a decision of convenience. It ain’t a decision I’d make because it makes sense at our ages or in our circumstances, it’d be one because I’ve found someone I can start a real family with.
Believe it or not, I’m actually having this exact same debate with a woman on another blog. She’s is asserting that the butterflies and strong attraction can come laterand need not be present at the wedding. She has also mentioned arranged marriages and accused me of saying all the arranged marriages through the ages were invalid because they lacked romance. People who raise that issue omit a big elephant in the room. I hope you don’t mind Dalrock if I repeat here what I said to her is response to the notion that a marriage can be fulfilling without the “head over heels” effect, using arranged marriages as the proof of this:
In most of those arranged marriages (particularly in times past), you’re dealing with people without a sexual history. That doesn’t characterize the West. Comparing arranged marriages of women who have never been with any other man to women who marry in the west with a string of lovers behind them is an apples to oranges comparison.
When your husband is the only person whom has ever aroused sexual feelings in you and is the only persons whose touched you’ve experienced intimately, it’s very easy for the butterflies to come later. Most Eastern arranged marriages don’t resemble what you’re talkimng about in any way, shape or form. Sheltered women with their virtue intact are much more likely to form a strong sexual attachment to their husband because they’ve never formed one with anybody else. As to this point you raised:
If a woman believes butterflies are necessary then she won’t be happy without them.
Not true. When the butterflies fade (and they sometimes do) it is possible to be happy if they were there at some point. And it also doesn’t take much for them to come back up. At least that’s been my experience.
The problem isn’t that women are wired to only find a very small subset of men attractive, the problem is that many have an irrationally high view of themselves.
I think that’s basically stating the problem in a different way. In today’s society, this is how things are. It’s how hypergamy is working *today, which is what is most relevant here. I think the idea that women can recalibrate their attractions by recalibrating their own self-image is very unlikely.
[D: Replace can with will in your last sentence and I would agree.]
This really brings up a bigger issue: I’ve argued here that few, if any, contemporary American women marry for reasons of love. What these two Christian bloggers are suggesting doesn’t seem to be the least bit out of the mainstream of modern relationships.
Women consider men as inferiors. A relationship like that can’t be based on love or anything other than the self-serving interests of the women involved.
Note: Hana has posted a reply to this post titled Head-over-Heels.
John:
You’re right LOL. The only blow-up dolls that are really involved in all this are female egos.
Bob:
Paige’s posts have me pretty much convinced that she’s a hard-core man-hater, although she preaches NAWALT. I don’t think she realizes that hating men is typical of most women; so she says it more bluntly than others do.
Far be it from me to defend Paige, but I married into a family of hard-core man haters, and I’m not getting that vibe. She’s vacuous, dishonest, and she has a head full of hamster butter, but not a hater of men. At least not of the kind I know.
Great stuff. I chimed in last at Haley’s with her “Ladies you can do better than this” pictrure. I was a little aghast. One of them I agreed, but the other looked like most dads out with kids on a weekend. I give her credit for putting herself out there, but any reasonably attractive, non obese woman who is not a whore should not have much trouble finding the same.
I think the idea that women can recalibrate their attractions by recalibrating their own self-image is very unlikely.
[D: Replace can with will in your last sentence and I would agree.]
I guess I think it depends on age. At some point, your own attractional vectors get baked in, regardless of how *you* might change. I think that the likelihood of a woman being able to change her attraction once she’s 25 and beyond is not high. In theory, maybe, but with a lot of effort. At some point it becomes more set.
Nor am I. In fact, contrary to the reactions of many of the men responding to this thread, I think her commentary shows a lot of common sense. Personally, I think the use of the word “love” is terribly distorted these days. What most people term love would have been called through most of history by terms like “lust” or “infatuation.” I like what this blogger had say about the subject –
http://bajanpoet.wordpress.com/2008/11/25/love-a-choice-not-a-feeling/
If I actually open my eyes and look around me, every day I see couples who have obviously been married many years and whose bond is equally obviously not based on the short term and fleeting passions characteristic of youth – but rather on a deep appreciation of someone who has been there for them when they needed it year after year. There is a delightful little movie set in Wyoming Territory around the turn of the 20th century called “Heartland” which shows how two people who improve the quality of each other’s lives and improve each other’s survival potential can develop bonds deeper and more enduring than most marriages today.
The old concept of marriage – what many today are calling “Marriage 1.0” – set the bar for marital satisfaction at a level which was possible for the majority of people to achieve. If the man was a “good provide” and the woman a “good homemaker” both parties recognized that they had done as well or better in choosing a mate as the majority of people. The glass didn’t even need to be half full for most people to be able to find reasons to be happy about their lives – just as long as it wasn’t completely empty. It is only in the era when people seem to feel entitled to “have it all” that the glass must be >90% full, or life is awful in their perceptions.
Love is a choice, and happiness is a choice. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, and no matter how much many people appear to have to other observing them, the more one has the more demons that often seem to come with having all that. Lindsey Lohan is a perfect example.
With all the purported Christians who hang out here, I would expect the concept of “count your blessings” to have surfaced somewhere in the discussion. There is a great deal to be said for someone who is kind, loyal, and trustworthy.
If the man was a “good provider”
“The problem isn’t that women are wired to only find a very small subset of men attractive, the problem is that many have an irrationally high view of themselves.”
Notwithstanding how very true that is: since, as Hawaiian Libertarian pointed out, hypergamy means a woman must look up to a man in some way, to consider him higher status than herself, the pool of men to whom a woman can look up is vastly smaller today than it was in yesteryear. This is because, notwithstanding attraction to rockstar cads, the other type of higher status is the more conventional one: one who merits respect based on other, not-exclusively-sexual-charisma characteristics.
In the past, when most women did not work outside the home, or worked in a few specific professions (secretary, nurse, teacher), just about any decent man of good character, of the same socioeconomic class, could potentially be one she could look up to, because she wasn’t working herself, or if working, wasn’t earning a great deal of money, and it was no doubt easier for a man to find women who would look up to him.
Now that just about all women are working outside the home, the bar has been raised; a woman won’t be attracted in the least to a non-badboy, non-rockstar, non-cad, normal guy who isn’t making at least the same, if not more, money than her, so that alone complicates matters for men – and women; it makes it more difficult for both sexes to partner up.
Women are spoiled nowadays. No other way to say it.
zed said: “If I actually open my eyes and look around me, every day I see couples who have obviously been married many years and whose bond is equally obviously not based on the short term and fleeting passions characteristic of youth – but rather on a deep appreciation of someone who has been there for them when they needed it year after year. … The old concept of marriage – what many today are calling “Marriage 1.0″ – set the bar for marital satisfaction at a level which was possible for the majority of people to achieve. … Love is a choice, and happiness is a choice. … With all the purported Christians who hang out here, I would expect the concept of “count your blessings” to have surfaced somewhere in the discussion. There is a great deal to be said for someone who is kind, loyal, and trustworthy.”
My Ex couldn’t see that. (Met and married her while she was on chemotherapy for breast cancer. Had to encourage her “What if you live?” to see more than six months months down the road, of course.) She’s now finding out about the “fulfillment” of being pumped-and-dumped and I don’t want her back.
The graceful zed: ‘With all the purported Christians who hang out here, I would expect the concept of “count your blessings” to have surfaced somewhere in the discussion.’
I suspect that those who follow that injunction also follow the one about casting pearls.
Dalrock has hit on a key issue here. Haley seems to have a hard-on for the idea of “being married” as a state of life – the social proof of having a man “choose her” and congregation approval – but wants to be able to redefine marriage so that society will morally accept the way she chooses her mate. The tone of her blog is flip, dismissive and gossipy, and has gotten more so lately, so I’m worried she’s beyond returning to a balanced state.
Dr Laura used to take calls on this very issues, and every single time shut the caller up with the same line. A woman would call in thinking about getting married to some guy who was “great, makes good money, loves me, but I don’t really LOOOVE him.” (I would consider such a woman less than a whore, happy to take his resources but under no obligation to service him in return – and without a core attraction, she’d be unable to service him for years on end anyway.)
Dr L replied “how would you feel if a man married you without really loving you?” (She might have put something in there about the guy seeing her as a good roll in the hay, housekeeper or whatnot.) Without exception the caller would be dumbfounded and silent for a few seconds. I’d love to hear Haley explain how she would feel in that situation.
“You seem a very decent person with lots of integrity, and I think you would make caring committed parent.”
This is another very dangerous mode of thinking. I think it came up in the Halo thread, and women love to trot out the pearl-clutching “do you guys just think about sex? What about a woman who could be a mother to your children??” The fact is that children are only a part of marriage – the marriage is between the husband and the wife. As far as I’m aware, scriptures say little about children in marriage except that a couple should accept them.
Guys who prioritize motherhood skills over wifely virtues are liable to end up as the lowest member of the family unit, ignored in favor of the previous children who give the wife her true self-worth. I posted on this issue:
http://badgerhut.wordpress.com/2011/03/26/marriage-is-part-of-parenting/
The upshot of this is that it is incredibly heartening (and sexy to boot) to hear or meet a woman who says she’s proud to be her man’s wife. They shoot to the top of Ladder 1 for me and many men, too bad they are by definition off the market.
Terry,
That link of yours just made me connect this discussion to Lori Gottlieb, it’s all the same discussion. Being married is so important that women should just marry whatever guy wants to who wouldn’t embarrass her at parties, because it’s of top importance that women can check “I’m married” off the bucket list. Women who think this way are devaluing marriage before they even get to the altar.
My brain is exploding as I try to figure out how a church, an ostensible house of God, sells women on the virtue of marriage in such a way that they feel perfectly justified redefining its terms in pursuit of the imprimatur of matrimony.
Great post and discussion here. I would just like to add two points. The first is that if a woman marries a man she is not deeply sexually attracted to, sex will initially be novel, then meh, then annoying, then dreaded, and finally completely repulsive. She will despise him, and feel bitter about not having had her “happily ever after.” This is completely unfair to her husband. A woman who isn’t in love should not marry.
On the other hand, there are cultures where arranged marriages have thrived for centuries. Many marriages are miserable, but others blossom into mutual respect and romantic love. When choice is limited, attraction triggers shift (think of the desert island fantasy, or the movie Swept Away). However, I don’t think this can be transplanted to American culture. We value choice too much.
A recent one of Athol Kay’s threads has received commentary from a woman who is having multiple sexual liaisons behind her husband’s back and blogging about it. She insists family life is great and all the rest of it. She just gets her sticking somewhere else.
I don’t think I am exaggerating to say that this is what happens when women are encouraged to marry men they simply “aren’t repulsed by.” Eventually the hamster takes over so she can “get what she needs.”
http://www.marriedmansexlife.com/2011/06/girls-night-out-final-gno-post-for.html#comments
On the other hand, there are cultures where arranged marriages have thrived for centuries. Many marriages are miserable, but others blossom into mutual respect and romantic love. When choice is limited, attraction triggers shift (think of the desert island fantasy, or the movie Swept Away). However, I don’t think this can be transplanted to American culture. We value choice too much.
As was pointed out earlier, in those cultures where marriages are arranged, the women tend to be virgins with basically zero sexual experience at the time of marriage. You know the biology; oxytocin, vasopressin, etc. and so surely you are aware that the possibility of bonding in such a marriage is high for the obvious reason. The difference between a virginal woman from an upper class family in India who have taken great pains to keep her that way, and far too many American carousel riders should be glaringly obvious.
Such a system cannot be transplanted to the US because you women would reject it, since it would keep you from spending a few years riding Alphas before “settling” for a beta.
I’m also irked by this “God as Santa Claus” attitude that “God wills me to have a husband.”
“Eumaios: GOLDEN. That is exactly why any man gets married. Sex and love, love and sex. That’s it.”
And, that is exacty the reason that I married, and I am a woman.
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That woman on Athol’s blog literally nauseated me. I just became completely physically ill just glancing at a couple entries on her blog and her smarmy, disgusting comments justifying her unrepentance on athol’s blog. Ughughugh.
Be advised… those hamsters bite! 😉
Badger, that post by Kat on Athol’s blog really set me off, and I’m afraid I had to let my coonhound (sorry, Dalrock, I don’t have a convenient beagle) off the leash there.
http://www.marriedmansexlife.com/2011/06/girls-night-out-final-gno-post-for.html?showComment=1307540790660#c508473816431912639
Okay, I was a virgin who married my best friend! We were friends for about a year and a half before we started dating; we were each going out with other people. And once we realized that we were really quite attracted to each other, we started dating, and the attraction took off from there. But it wasn’t present at the start. It really blossomed out of a friendship.
And after counseling couples for many years now, what I’ve found is that the couples who have the stronger friendship are absolutely stronger than those who got married based primarily on attraction. It doesn’t matter how much you’re attracted to somebody; that wears off. But genuine goodwill, where you have fun doing stuff together, doesn’t wear off in the same way. It’s the friendship that keeps the goodwill in the marriage, and it’s the sex that makes the marriage fun. Both are necesssary.
So what I always tell couples when they’re dating is work on the friendship. If you have absolutely nothing to do together other than make out, your marriage will be rocky. But if you enjoy doing stuff together, you’ll thrive.
I’m not saying that you should marry if there’s no attraction; that is a recipe for disaster (virgin or no virgin). But I just wanted to point out that friendship is an awfully important part of marriage, and needs to be present before you’re married. So I’m not disagreeing with you; I just think that perhaps we SHOULD be stressing friendship as a solid building block of marriage.
After all, a woman could just as easily marry a man that she’s hot for, and then five years later complain that they don’t fit well together, that he never does anything around the house, that all he does is play video games, and try to change him then (all things that you complain about), and yet the problem wasn’t that she wasn’t attracted to him; it was that she married someone she had nothing in common with, and now wants to change him.
So basing a marriage mostly on attraction can lead to the same dysfunction in marriage that you often complain about. I think you need both. I’m not sure which is most important, but they both need to be there or the marriage will falter.
[D: I agree that friendship is extremely important for marriage. I’ve touched on this here and here. But this is very different than deciding to marry your best friend (without falling head over heels) or deciding a guy is a good candidate for marriage because he “doesn’t repulse you”. More importantly, women seem to have a much harder time finding men they are attracted to than men they can be friends with.]
The interesting thing about her is that she knows her behavior would not be approved — she says she hides it from (almost all) of her real life friends as well, because they won’t approve. Of course there’s the one friend who supports her, and my guess is that they act as each others’ “cover story” to facilitate cheating on their respective husbands. Kind of like a cheating conspiracy. But she hides it from everyone else.
Life Rule 101: When you feel the need to hide a behavior other than a confidential conversation, you pretty much know that the behavior is very likely to be problematic. She knows what she is doing is problematic, but she doesn’t care because she enjoys it too much, and she doesn’t have the strength to own up to her own marital difficulties and either accept them, change them, or move on — rather than living a continual lie.
@Lily
“Some relationship experts (men and women) say that men want respect more than love from their woman. ”
Separating love and respect in this way is an example of a “category mistake”. In an intimate relationship, it is not possible for a man to enjoy the love of a woman who does not respect him. Period. She may lust after him, be drawn to him, even need him obsessively, but if she fails to respect him, she can not love him. Self aware men understand that no matter how “loving” a woman may seem, if she holds you in disregard she does not love you, and she and her feelings cannot be relied on. She may hide from this for a while, but eventually she will acknowledge that she does not love him. Men want respect as an affirmation that the love proclaimed by their woman is genuine and lasting.
A woman can respect a man without love, the converse is not true. The expertise of a “relationship expert” who even entertains a question framed in this way should be deeply questioned.
I read some of Kat’s blog. She says she has a happy, great marriage.
But notice one of the blog posts called “I’m Not Your Wife” in which one of the bloggers says something like don’t neglect me or take me for granted. I get that at home.
Unbelievable.
Haven’t read the cheating wife blog, likely won’t, it is quite possible I would not learn anything there. Because I’ve seen married women cheat before, with my own eyes. I’ve been flirted with by women I know to be married, and not casual flirting either — I made a point to never be alone with those women ever after that, too. I didn’t understand it at the time, years later i read Roissy’s site and certain lights went on in my head.
As Mozart wrote in one of his operas, Cosi fan Tutti. All women aren’t like that, but all of them have the potential to be like that. I’m sure the first time she cheated it was the most difficult, and the next time it was easier, and so forth. It is probably too late to salvage her marriage.
One final note: this woman may think she’s got it all covered, thanks to her friend and various alibis. From seeing both men and women cheating on their wives / husbands respectively, I can state that in the long run, she’s living in a house of cards. It could well be that the act of commenting on Athol’s blog will eventually lead to her exposure, but if not that, then something else will do it. No cover story is perfect, and sooner or later someone’s going to blow the whistle on her. What happens then depends on how her husband thinks. She may be unpleasantly surprised at how “passionate” a man becomes when he finds out his wife has been cheating on him massively for years.
It is possible that she will lose custody of the children in the ensuing divorce, for example.
Screenshots of her blog would be useful, as examples of just exactly what WALT can look like. There’s the only reason for looking at the blog as far as I’m concerned.
don’t neglect me or take me for granted. I get that at home.
Which in itself is okay — most women don’t like feeling neglected by their husbands. The problem with Kat is that she is acting out on that wrongly, instead of either trying to fix that, if possible, or deal with it, if possible, or leave, if necessary — all honest responses to the issue — rather than cheating and deceiving.
@Brendan
My guess is that he’s sufficiently beta that he has no idea that there is anything wrong, or that she was ever upset. And since complaining on her part risks upsetting the apple cart, she has framed herself as the perfect but passionless wife, who will be totally shocked when her husband finds the blog and realizes he’s been graciously putting up with her crap for years for nothing.
I real Haleys article and I at first belived it to be a parody since she ignores so many obvious 1000lb gorillas.
First, she states how privledged men are in the business world. I’ll give her that. But she seems completely ignorant of the fact that when these “privledged men” marry, they are expected to transfer a large portion of that wealth to thier wives. Even in dual income marriages, a man is expected to spend a large portion of his disposable income on gifts for his wife. Many engagement rings were bought and marriages were paid for with money orginally saved up to buy bass boats and motorcycles.
The sex part was even more laughable. OK, men do get thier egos pumped up by sex with many women, but when a man marries, HE AGREES TO GIVE ALL THAT UP. So Haley and co. can stick it to man who constantly makes sacrafices for the woman he loves, while the married man’s single “player” buddies just laugh at how stupid he was for getting married.
This would be like an American soldier rescuing a Jew from a concentration camp in World War II, then after be rescued, the Jew kills the American because he just another eveil Gentile like the guys who imprisioned him.
I hope Haley loves cats.
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I seem to have a recurring problem here where I say something and then various things that I don’t say are assumed.
Seems to me there are 2 different debates and I only responded to one. The first debate is whether Haley was advocating deceiving a man into believing romantic love exists where it doesn’t. I said that unless she herself has said such I wouldn’t assume it. If she is honest about her feelings, intentions, and expectations then she isn’t doing anything objectively wrong in being willing to settle.
The second debate is whether it is wise for any man or woman to settle for less than head-over-heels love. This debate I haven’t actually responded to. I think it probably works for some personality types more than others but I am willing to bet that the vast majority of people would be greatly dissatisfied after awhile.
The recurring problem that keeps bringing me to the defense of Haley and myself is the character attacks that tend to go hand-in-hand with reasonable disagreement. It is perfectly reasonable to disagree with Haley but to assume she would settle and then become a cheatin-lyin-whore or go EPL is taking it too far.
And this isn’t a TeamVagina thing. I don’t defend all women all the time over every decision. You won’t find me defending that disgusting woman on Athols blog. I just think the debate should be based on what is actually said and not what isn’t said.
As far as me being a man-hater. Non-sense. I love men… I just think they should be seen and not heard. (kidding).
@wayfinder
Or perhaps he Is also cheating on her?
Mountain Man
First, she states how privledged men are in the business world. I’ll give her that.
I won’t. It’s another example of the Apex fallacy. In the real world, average men are routinely shoved aside in order to make sure that enough women have jobs at mid level positions, to satisfy Affirmative Action. If she looked around her, and even better down through the glass floor that most women in business stand upon, she would see a whole lot of grey figures, mysterious figures — ordinary men, who earn less than she and her fellow sisters of privilege do, because said men have the wrong thing between their legs.
In fact, Haley’s entire article is an example of the Apex fallacy.
Then there is the misreading of private man. What private man said was men want women who make them feel good about themselves. Haley chose to read that as “inflating egoes”. There’s modern women in summary: they equate being pleasant to be around, i.e. polite, clean, not shrill, not sharp tongued, not in competition with the man in their life, etc. with “inflating his ego”. Basic politeness, humane decency somehow is equated with abject submission and bootlicking.
And yet they can’t seem to figure out why no man wants to marry them…
I had a serious college boyfriend with whom I was “head over heels.” Zero problems with chemistry! But I was deeply conflicted about the relationship, because I did not feel emotionally or spiritually connected to him. He didn’t feel like a soulmate at all.
[D: Head over heels is necessary, but not sufficient for marriage. But given the amount of trouble some women experience finding head over heels, it shouldn’t be discarded lightly as so many older women advise young women.]
Yes–it was unrealistic of me to think I could find that same level of chemistry, with someone who felt like an emotional soulmate and who was also willing to commit to me. However, from my perspective now, as a married mother, I think the emotional connection is more important than the sexual chemistry. College boyfriend guy also cheated on me–that was traumatic enough in college, can’t imagine it happening now.
Thanks for the link lve Dalrock.
For the record, I still find Jennifer hot… actually very hot. Objectively I know she’s not 22 anymore, and I can objectively see her stretchmarks from having the kids, but when I’m with her I just have such wanting for her. Her scent is amazing.
I believe Jennifer has an automatic mental photoshopping of me a fair bit too.
But then that’s because we have a very high sexual impulse for each other. Something that was there from the start.
Which is the whole thing that Haley is missing.
Badger:
I don’t think it has as much to do with religion as you assume. These women want to dominate weak, dysfunctional jerks; and are using any excuse they can glomb onto to justify it. The Christian-theme justifications are just another shallow veneer for what their real motives are.
I already said this on Athol’s blog but I want to add it here too.
I propose the manosphere to create the Hamster of the Month award and we should give it monthly to female bloggers like Kat (and the ones in Dalrock blog that want women to marry men that don’t repulse them) and yearly a Golden Hamster award for the one that tops them all.
Really this level of hamsterization must be rewarded and kept for new generations to recognize it before doing something stupid like marry them.
Stephenie Rowling
I don’t think “Kat” is a hamster case, she’s more like a full-on sociopath with her talk of a “great marriage” while getting plugged on the side left and right. There’s infidelity, and then there is straight-up recreational sex. But it’s not just that, her husband is a “wonderful man” but it’s clear she seeks to be “fulfilled” as well as filled – ILYBINILWY all the way.
Interestingly, she has the exact same thought process that Haley does, compartmentalizing the thrill and sex out of the marital box.
“She may be unpleasantly surprised at how “passionate” a man becomes when he finds out his wife has been cheating on him massively for years.”
Actually, I think part of her wants to get caught, because it might get her husband empassioned about her once again. And she gets off on the blogging exhibitionism and the illicit “naughtiness” of it all, so risk is part of the thrill; getting caught might be hot for her.
I doubt “Kat” is going to stop sport-f**ing for any other reason than she gets bored or her drive goes down. She’s long since stopped respecting her husband sexually. I doubt she fears his reaction. At some point she just gave up caring. There must have been marital disputes about sex. How do you marry someone with that kind of a sex drive and not think there will be trouble? Cheaters always think they won’t get caught, but I doubt she views her husband as any kind of a threat. She talks openly about texting lovers while sitting next to him. It’s inconceivable there haven’t been a plethora of signs and warnings. Maybe some people have figured it out but won’t tell, because they pity him too much if he can’t (or refuses to) put the pieces together himself. Or maybe he knows and doesn’t want to bring it up.
Wouldn’t be the first case I’d heard where everybody but the husband knew the wife was skanking it up around town. No matter what the truth is, their marriage is majorly F’d up.
My only question is – recalling Haley – why she got married to a guy whose intrinsic passion didn’t line up with hers.
“she’s more like a full-on sociopath ”
Serial f*cker instead of serial killer? Could be.
“her talk of a “great marriage”
Really based on a big freaking lie, not even my cheating friend would think her marriage is great. I think the husband probably knows but is too beta to do anything or is banging someone else on the side so he doesn’t care for anymore.
@ Susan Walsh: “the movie Swept Away”, I nearly gagged at the reference, then remembered the Madonna version was a remake!
About Kat: it wouldn’t be that hard to figure out who it is an expose her, but I have more sympathy for the kids. They’ve been raised by a pathological liar and a man who can’t see every Red Flag available. They know at an extrinsic level (children are emotionally smarter than adults in this way, as its what they learn first) their mother is doing something not right, but have no way to process it. They’ve also been raised in a house of lies. The children (2 sons) have no prayer for a solid relationship. Also, it took me reading 2 of her posts to catch that she’d been having EA’s within 2 years of the marriage. The “husband” made a horrible marriage decision, his “wife” just didn’t feel the need to divorce him, rather to keep using his money. Sad all around.
As to the Hamster-Slaying, there’s definitely a lot going around. We’re really trying to settle and work out the interactions between “needs”, “wants”, “societal needs”, “societal wants” and Biology. This means everyone is talking from different directions. I do think Haley kind of lost it with the post. Hana seems to be trying for something, but Haley must have had a horrible date or something. The post came, it felt, just one step shy of straight up man-bashing. I’ve read some of Haley’s other stuff, so it seemed really out of character.
David Brooks pointed out a few years back that the rise of “massive weddings” came about shortly after No Fault Divorce did. He theorized that since Marriage used to be something you knew you’d take in stride, there wasn’t any massive desire to go nuts on a wedding. But, as the value of marriage was waning, the desire to invest heavily in the 1 part of the marriage that wasn’t a risk grew. You can argue a few different ways around this, but there’s a natural tendency to view relationships as a level of status, at least for women. This, I think, is the big crux of the SMV issue. They want the “marriage”, they want the “guy that excites” them and they want the trappings of being in the relationship. They need to be self-reflective about what each of those are, and that they’ve built up expectations that aren’t necessarily capable of working together. It’s not an easy place to be at, but true self-reflection is generally helpful. I wonder if the “red pill” for women is really that the idea they have for marriage is all wrong?
@ Paige: A lot of that is the “other side” dynamic that we all fall into. They have all of the physical trappings, but they take on the risks inherent with not having anyone there for you. It works so long as there is no serious medical issues. Then, they’re about 20 years off before the regret would really set in. As my mother is a Boomer, I’ve interacted with some of the women from that era that didn’t end up with kids. Now, there’s some selection bias due to they’re religious, now, but there’s always a pain in their eyes with little kids around. I think it’s the grandkids that really do it, not having kids directly. Which makes a little sense (kids = work; grandkids = fun!), but there is costs for all choices we make. It’s a matter of living with those choices.
Badger – ”I doubt “Kat” is going to stop sport-f**ing for any other reason than she gets bored or her drive goes down. She’s long since stopped respecting her husband sexually. I doubt she fears his reaction. At some point she just gave up caring. There must have been marital disputes about sex. How do you marry someone with that kind of a sex drive and not think there will be trouble? Cheaters always think they won’t get caught, but I doubt she views her husband as any kind of a threat.”
I’m fairly certain you are correct about this. I’ve seen a couple of sad examples which would lend credence.
Many years ago, the woman who had befriended my wife, and invited us to join her church, ended up propositioning me.
Turns out, that not only was I not the only one, as she was caught-out a short time later in an affair with another man (rumor had it that it was but one of many); but it seems that she and two other women in that church had formed a defacto “Cheating Wives Club” in order to enable and facilitate each others infidelities.
But, as to what happened when her husband found out about the (one) affair, that’s what really sickened me. He stood before the church congregation and apologized to his cheating wife for not having been the husband that she wanted (“needed” was probably the term he used, but that’s just BS). Fortunately, I wasn’t there to witness that pathetic example of low-beta groveling, as I (and I’m not exaggerating) probably would have hurled right there on the spot (I was literally nauseous when I heard about what had happened).
I would bet that if and when this Kat skanks husband finds out about her “other life”, he will also play the pathetic beta chump and seek to reconcile with her, taking the blame upon himself in true Churchian fashion.
The second example I would site is that of another bragging/blogging cheating skank wife who called herself Wayward Wife (Roissy used her as an example of how to spot a slut, and the now sadly departing Bredan/Novaseeker discussed her at length as well). She seemed to have had an initial MO similar to that of Kat, but, her husband found out early on. He confronted her, and begged her to stop; however, her epiphany was not that she was doing something wrong and harming her family in the process, but rather that as a non-employed mother of two, with a husband who’d long supported her and as paying for everything, she had him by the balls.
Instead of doing the right thing, she instead bullied her poor beta husband into accepting her alternate lifestyle less she divorce him and take him to the cleaners (and, although not specifically stated, more than likely shut him out of his children’s lives).
Her back-story seems so much like Kat’s that I suspect that Kat’s husband would likely find himself in the same lose-lose situation should he discover her true skank nature.
See what happens when you stop stoning adulteresses?
See what happens when you stop stoning adulteresses?
And parading men who accept their wives’ adultery through the public square riding a mule backwards so they can have public ridicule heaped upon them –
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skimmington
@Badger
“How do you marry someone with that kind of a sex drive and not think there will be trouble?”
A better question is “how can you marry someone whose sex drive is very different from your own and not think there will be trouble?”
It’s referred to as a “drive” for a reason. While most people’s sex drive falls into broadly compatible levels, this is not a certainty. We tend to think of sexual drives that fall at the edges of the bell curve as abnormal because they are uncommon. Barring low drives, stemming from medical abnormality, these edges are just as “normal” as any other place on the curve. Intellect and will allow someone to control how the deal with their various drives, but they don’t allow one to fulfill them.
To be clear – this comment makes no excuse for Kat’s behavior. She is an unrepentant selfish liar steeped in self denial and delusion. She is unfit for an adult relationship. I hope that her husband finds out what he is married to in time to find someone who actually loves him and is worthy of his love.
My point is that anyone who commits to a life long intimate monogamous relationship is well served to find out that their sex drives, desires, and tastes are compatible. This is no different than ensuring that you share compatible views on child rearing, religion, financials, work habits, household chores, and the many other aspects of sharing lives.
zed, I was completely ignorant of that practice. Thanks.
Brendan—
I’ve read around Kat’s blog some and though I realize it’s anathema to say around here (andeven more at Athol’s, though similar), I’ve actually warmed to her considerably.
Yes she’s cheating. Full stop. She has been for years, more than 10 years in fact.
However none of the bad things that very often make female cheating much worse than male cheating are things that’s she’s done or experienced. Though out her cheating she has sex with her husband whenever he wants it, in any way that he does, and in fact wants it with him more than she gets. She has a very high libido. No only that she has enthusiastic sex with him. She makes herself start into that even when she’s not felling it as much at first, and then gets into it. She clearly prioritizes her family. She’s not ever wanted to divorce him in all her cheating years and says she never will. She claims to genuinely love him and seems to. She does crave rougher and more male dominant type sex outside her marriage with some light BDSM it seems.
Her cheating seems like the most benign, discreet sorts of alpha male cheating to me, rather than what happens with most female cheating or consensual extramarital sex.
See this for her notion of how to treat a husband sexually, to hold onto him:
http://shackledkat.blogspot.com/2011/03/10-tips-for-wives-to-keep-your-husband.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ProwlingwithKat+%28Prowling+with+Kat%29&utm_content=Google+Reader
She really isn’t the completely selfish person people supposed at Athol’s.
I could imagine having a two way open relationship with someone like her, actually.
Looking Glass–
She said she makes more money at Athol’s.
Kat’s issue was that she opened commenting at my blog by complaining that some of my readers were distrusting and unjustifably angry at women… then she announced that she was repeatedly cheating on her husband. Considering the number of manosphere readers that have been on the wrong end of female cheating, it’s little surprise she pulled aggro.
If she’s been cheating for 10 years, her husband probably knows anyway. If he doesn’t know, it’s because he doesn’t want to know most likely.
It’s not really possible to take anything she says about her husband seriously. Cheaters invariably rewrite the entire relationship history and frame themselves as being justifed in the cheating.
I found that woman to be utterly deplorable and infuriating, and said so many times including at her blog. She was utter selfishness personified, and was totally using her husband, who she had no respect for, and no or almost no sex with.
She’s also a poster girl for how unfair no fault in monetary settlement either American divorce 2.0 law is to men.
So I guess the contrast I’m making is that while all female cheating is bad at least for the lying but often for far more, some is much worse than others. Wayward Wife is someone I’d like to murder. (Not that I would of course.) Kat, to the extent she’s telling something close to the truth, is someone I could imagine (if younger) I might consider an open relationship with, with mutual vetos.
Well, I’ve put in my two cents on the men’s ego post.
http://forgetfulmuse.blogspot.com/2011/06/fisking-haley.html
[D: Outstanding post Thag.]
Doug1 – if Kat had a formally open relationship, it would all be fine I agree. She’s generally acting like a responsible swinger/poly, in terms of how she handles things with her lovers. Except she’s dishonest about her actions to her husband. (Though I expect he knows anyway and is just silent about it all.)
Doug1, Kat complains about how humilated she feels being rejected regularly and frequently by her husband, and has also complained about being taken for granted while bragging about contacting lovers while sitting next to her husband. I pity her, but I pity her husband and children much, much more.
The woman does indeed have a steroidally powered hamster.
“Doug1, Kat complains about how humilated she feels being rejected regularly and frequently by her husband . . .”
That probably puts her in the company of about 50 million men in the U.S. But nobody cuts them any slack if they cheat on their wives.
Doug1
I don’t dare read her blog but it looks like there is plenty of contradiction in her. She is already a pathological liar and incapable of understanding anyone but her in her responses on Athol’s. How do you know she is not lying about her affairs and what happens is that she has a fetish for married men and plans to snag one but she hasn’t found any takers yet? Or that she doesn’t neglects her house to pursue lovers I meant twisting in front of her husband hardly shows wiseness and restrain. And again I always say if your sex drives overcomes your vows. DIVORCE DIVORCE DIVORCE. There is plenty of people that will not need the kind of sex she needs that could stay with her husband and she could find a nice cockhold enthusiast hubby to share her fantasies openly. If she cannot get that, she is not being fair to the man she married and you know very well I don’t believe in justification for cheating in any gender so this is not me being catty, YMMV.
We had internet trouble for days (that’s what moving from one side of town to the other in NZ does to ya!), and so now I can finally read this.
This sort of argument is seriously *not new*. There were two “stellar” bits of dating advice from my mother (who, btw, has only had one partner and is still married to my father, lo these many years later –it’s gotta be over 30 now).
First: go on a date with any guy who asks you out;
Second: if you are a lesbian (lots of people still think I am), then marry a good man and live a decent life (lesbianism is bad! — I don’t personally think this, but I am pretty sure my parents do).
Now, the first bit always just seemed like a grand waste of time. I mean, I would know pretty much right off if I was attracted to a guy, but having had no other dating advice from a long-married woman, I figured I might as well take it. And I did. Usually, within the first 20 minutes of a date, I would know whether or not I liked him. I would come home, tell my mother I didn’t like him, and she would encourage me to . . . Date him again.
WTF? I finally stopped doing that. I mean, by the third date he wanted to kiss me and if I couldn’t stand being around him for 20 minutes, why would I want his skin and saliva on me? Ew.
Anyhoot, when I started dating my way, which was only going out with guys to whom I was attracted and only going on second dates with guys who continued to hold my interest (which was two and I married one of those), I got rather adept at telling guys “no, but thanks.” The line was “You deserve to be with someone who is truly attracted to you and will love you and want to build a life with you.” It’s the darn truth.
And I deserve it, too. I was continually seeking a partner where I could be myself, where we held similar values, outlook, and so on, and where we could build a life together.
My marriage is far from perfect, but I love my husband — and I love our family and our life. I feel like if we can iron out some of these new wrinkles and figure out how to better dance with each other through the dynamics, we’ll be going awesomely.
It is so wrong to use people.
I am wondering if anyone has bothered to think that with what Paige has said, would work well in an arranged marriage. Many other cultures that are highly patriarchal, traditional, and anti-feminist (therefore holding onto core traditional principles and values) see marriage this way. The Amish, Muslims, Southeast Asians, and even Eastern Europeans view marriage more as a partnership, like a business arrangement, rather than that of a love pairing. Love is considered fickle because romantic love fades, hence why mutual respect is given higher priority. In fact, energy is given to the building of the marriage and family unit because those two things are the foundation of a healthy and strong society. Love comes AFTER the formation of the relationship. Many couples are able to fall “head over heels” in love, whether we believe it or not. I know from a Westernized perspective, it can be very difficult to understand. However, with this model of marriage, there are clearer expectations from a husband and from a wife. I would say that many couples from this marriage model, and from these cultures, have better expectations when it comes to relationships. Attraction can still develop and often does, and couples develop less of the “business” and more of the “partners” approach to their relationship.
Does that mean you should marry your “best friend”? Not necessarily. First of all, what a best friend is can be a subjective experience, as many spouses after marriage consider their husband/ or wife to be their best friend, and other people consider a close same-sex friend to be a best friend. I find the “marry your best friend” line of thought to be an off-shoot of the whole “I Kissed Dating Goodbye” trend that permeated much of mainstream Christian circles a few years back, more so Protestant ones than Catholic and Orthodox.
I daresay though, many people from the cultures that place less emphasis on love in a marriage would find the “head over heels” version of marriage a recipe for divorce and disaster. After all, there NEEDS to be something more than just feeling “head over heels”– and if there isn’t, what will hold the marriage together? How will a couple withstand the trials and joys of life?
It’s all well and good to talk about societal structures in which arranged marriage works, but it may have escaped your notice that we don’t live in one of those. Plus it’s easy to romanticise those cultures, but they aren’t for the soft, and as a whole we are soft. How do you propose changing the entire structure of society so that we can all live like the Amish? Good luck with that. Again, it seems like an easy answer where there are no easy answers, and as it stands, we are way too soft for that kind of a life, so we need to work with what is.
Oh, forgot to mention as well that a lot of arranged marriages are miserable; they’re just not allowed to divorce on pain of death if they do (if you’re a woman and Islamic that is).
@Thag Jones:
You are projecting there– while we may romanticize those cultures, we also romanticize our own cultural expectations as well. Neither one is going to be “correct” to the other, yet the facts must be noted. We also don’t live in a culture that expects women to eschew feminist propaganda, nor do we live in a culture that expects men and women to abide by traditional roles. These are also facts.
I personally am confused about the fact that Christian teaching points out that it’s imperative in a marriage for a wife to respect her husband (obedience and submission) and demonstrate this respect through her words and actions; the instruction for husbands are to love their wives. How else should “wives, submit to your husbands” happen, if not without respect? Perhaps these commands were given to us because it is known that it’s extremely difficult for a woman to give a man respect and submit to his authority. I am not going to make an argument that a woman’s respect for a man is the same as her love for a man, or it supports the argument that marrying your “best friend,” where there is little to no attraction is a wise idea. Oftentimes, people lose respect for their “best friend,” and don’t seek to put the effort to build it again– which is dangerous in a marriage.
Athol mentioned “high sexual impulse,” which may be present early on in a marriage but may dissipate over time. Paige also mentioned that the “head over heels in love” may work for some personality types but not for others, yet that doesn’t mean that this kind of love does not exist along a continuum. What may be considered “high sexual impulse” for some could be more along the center of the continuum, and for others along the end.
It would also be a good thing to note that courtship was the prevailing method of forming permanent relationships. These were chaperoned, had family-involvement, and placed development of a possible future marriage first before self-serving inclinations. I am sure “head over heels” love had a place there, though its approach may have been very different, and much of that was expressed closer to the marriage date or after marriage. Anyone read Alte’s blog lately? And yes, courtship in this modern age CAN be possible.
Projecting? Not really, but you go on thinking that. Most of what you said after that might sound clever to the not very clever, but it’s mostly nonsensical drivel.
Sorry, you’re not really addressing what was said. Go back and read the previous comments, and you will see I am not the only one who has mentioned what I have.
“Projecting? Not really, but you go on thinking that. Most of what you said after that might sound clever to the not very clever, but it’s mostly nonsensical drivel.”
Indeed!
Michael Jackson wasn’t the only one to dangle a baby off a balcony. What’s your point?
while we may romanticize those cultures, we also romanticize our own cultural expectations as well
I really should congratulate you on one of the dumbest responses to anything I’ve said in this neck of the Interwebs. Seriously, have you not seen me around by now? When have I ever romanticised this culture? Ridiculous. All I said was that we have to work with what is rather than romanticising backwards cultures such as those who practice Sharia law (as you mentioned Muslims, you evidently meant those who practice arranged marriage and forbid divorce, not the westernised variety that act pretty much as we do).
Even the Amish – you don’t follow the rules you’re excommunicated and shunned – not exactly an easy path for anyone but hey, at least you still have your life and all your limbs when you leave, unlike under Sharia. It’s a lot easier to romanticise the Amish than it is to romanticise a culture you’re knee deep in, as it happens, and I seriously doubt 99% of us would last 2 days on an Amish farm – because we’re too soft. Of all the people I know, I think my dad could do it. Everyone else would be crying for they mama titty after a day.
Courtship may be possible, but time is running out for someone like Haley. She and her ageing single sisters DO need to start working with what is, rather than the fantasy world they seem to inhabit, if they would rather have a husband and kids than an apartment full of cats.
Also, who the hell is going to go for a load of cheesy courtship with a 30-year-old? Keep hope alive! Enjoy your cats!
Kathy, you are simply agreeing because I referenced you on Paige’s blog and have chosen to take a defensive approach.
Thag, nowhere did I say we needed to adopt the *actual* cultures of The Muslims or Amish, I used them for reference. Is it so difficult to imagine that conceptual elements of how other cultures approach marriage could actually be a useful tool within our culture? Same goes for courtship. Clearly those cultures must be doing *something* right when it comes to marriage and forming marriages.
I don’t think anything that I have to say from here will make sense to you anyway, considering how you’ve chosen to respond. If it’s not nonsensical drivel, it might as well be jabbering soliloquy. I have already stated what I was thinking in relation to this topic. No thanks, I have no need for cats and I AM married.
RWT cats I was talking about Haley and her ilk. I thought that was pretty obvious. Speaking of defensive…
WRT, not RWT… :-B
Lol, Thag..I won’t even bother dignifying Lia’s inane and purile comment with a response.
Been around these parts too long to bother engaging with supercilious twits who get all precious when their views are challenged with a cogent argument.. (such as the one you made here)
That should have read Puerile not purile 😉
The problem is, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t have some kind of wishy washy version of the Amish and have it work. You can’t have all the freedom (if you can call it that) of the western world and then have marriage somehow separate from it. It’s all buggered beyond repair at this point so the best thing is to do what you can in your corner and let everyone else go looting for enormous TVs.
Angry meowing lol. 🙂
I didn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition!
The thread has been colonized by Commonwealers and their motherland brand of comedy.
See, Thag’s easy pleased..Which is more than one can say for some women around the interwebs 😉
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You got exhausted, Dalrock, because you tried understanding The Hamster.
No one can understand The Hamster, especially not the Hamster-sub(missive) herself. I put this down to a temporary lapse on your part.
I understand: You did it for us.
There should be a medal for a man willing to wade into the toxic swamp, but alas, we live in a marginal matriarchy.