Women are utterly incapable of loving a man in the way that a man expects to be loved.
–Iron Rule of Tomassi #6
Rollo Tomassi’s writing on how women love has generated a good deal of controversy in the manosphere. You can see Sunshine Mary’s thoughts here, and Elusive Wapiti’s thoughts here. Until now I’ve held off on weighing in on this to give the issue more consideration.
Depending on how you read Rollo’s thoughts above on women and love, he is either entirely right or mostly right. One thing which is often lost in the discussion is that Rollo’s primary target in the quote above is not women, but men. Rollo reinforces this with his very next sentence in Women in love:
In its simplicity this speaks volumes about about the condition of Men.
Rollo is discussing the mis-set and unrealistic expectations of men. This isn’t a problem of a deficiency inherent to women, but a problem of men’s unrealistic expectations. So far I’m quite confident that Rollo and I are in full alignment. One of Rollo’s core areas of focus is disabusing men of their foolish expectations regarding women and romantic love; and here Rollo is right as well. Romantic love is truly wonderful in the appropriate context, but we have elevated it beyond all sanity. Modern men now expect women to experience romantic love (desire) for them in an unconditional, selfless form. This is profoundly foolish, because this is not the nature of romantic love/desire. As Rollo regularly reminds us, you can’t negotiate desire.
Again, so far I’m certain that Rollo and I remain in alignment. Where Rollo and I might part ways is dependent on how he means the following:
…on some rudimentary psychological level we ought to realized that a woman’s love is contingent upon our capacity to maintain that love in spite of a woman’s hypergamy. By order of degrees, hypergamy will define who a woman loves and who she will not, depending upon her own opportunities and capacity to attract it.
To the extent that Rollo is talking only about romantic love, the statement immediately above is in fact correct. Not only is it correct for women, but with some slight changes the same basic statement is correct for men. Romantic love (desire, passion) is to a large degree involuntary, and in its feral (modern) form is inherently fickle. This is a nearly universal misconception of our era, and if you don’t truly understand this you would do well to allow Rollo to thoroughly disabuse you of foolish modern notions of romantic love.
Where Rollo would be mistaken is if he is applying this statement to both romantic and other forms of love. If Rollo is saying that women aren’t capable of loving their husbands beyond their immediate feeling of sexual desire/infatuation, he is wrong.
Sadly this is far more rare than it should be in our present culture, but women loving their husbands on more than a pure opportunistic (romantic) level is still something you can observe. The easiest way to observe this is with older couples, where the wife is fiercely protective of her husband especially in an area where he has a weakness. This is different than a woman being infatuated with a man and being in fundamental denial of the man’s faults; in this case the wife will be both aware of the weakness and fiercely protective of her husband in this regard. While this is tragically not the norm, I see this with some regularity. One example which comes immediately to mind is a woman I spoke with a few months back who was talking about her husband’s recent diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis. They are in the process of building their dream home, and she switched effortlessly from describing how capable her husband is as a designer and builder to her concerns for his health and the need to build the new home to accommodate the possibility of him becoming confined to a wheelchair. Very often when when women speak of a husband’s infirmity there is at least a tinge of disgust or contempt in their tone, but in this case there was nothing but love and protectiveness.
If you haven’t witnessed this and wish to see it for yourself, pay attention when groups of middle aged and older wives are talking amongst themselves. Out of a group of say 10 wives, 8 or 9 of them are likely to be busy discussing the long list of faults they perceive in their husbands. However, look for the one or two who either remain silent or (occasionally) redirect the other women into a discussion of the positive aspects of their husbands. It will take more time, but if you pay attention to the 1 or 2 women not complaining about their husbands you will find that at least some of these women display the kind of fierce protectiveness of their husbands which I describe. If you or anyone else puts down their husband (even subtly), especially in an area where he has some real weakness, you will see a white hot flash of protective anger directed at the person who put her husband down. These same women take great pleasure in small and large acts of kindness aimed at bringing joy and comfort to their husbands. While the average wife sighs in self perceived victimhood while cooking or cleaning for her husband (or children), the loving wife (and mother) does these things with a distinct joy at the opportunity to serve and care for the ones they love.
While the love I’m describing is often (quite pleasantly) mingled with feelings of romantic love, this is more accurately described as familial love. In addition to their feelings of romantic love, these women love their husbands the way a woman should love her parents or her children. To these women marriage isn’t a mercenary vehicle to extract resources from men or a formal certification of her feelings of romantic love; to these women marriage is a declaration that her husband is her man, for better or for worse. Just as a woman who loves her father will be fiercely protective of him especially when his manly strength is failing, a wife who loves her husband as family will retain loving and protective feelings for him even in cases where his lack of strength is at odds with her hypergamy.
The truth is that both men and women are fallen, and both have to be taught love and loyalty over selfishness. We accept this for men, but have developed profoundly foolish notions regarding women. In fact, our culture is gripped by a mass paranoia that a spirit of love, loyalty, and selflessness is a disease all women must be protected from with eternal vigilance. Ironically this sense of paranoia is so prevalent, few can spot it for anything but “normal”.
Modern women are warned constantly that acts of service and caring for others are traps they must avoid at all costs, lest they be tricked into a spirit of love and selflessness and “lose themselves”. The very idea of cooking, cleaning, and caring for her husband and family are repulsive and terrifying to the modern woman. If unable to avoid an act of service altogether, modern women are taught to diligently fortify their hearts with a spirit of resentment while doing the act to prevent a spirit of love and selflessness from entering. This sense of determined miserliness extends even to the modern woman’s marital bed. Should even a slight sense of selflessness somehow slip though, modern women are constantly reminded to “be true to themselves” and stamp out any thoughts of love, loyalty, and doing for others before they grow into something terrifying. A woman who is even suspected of serving others is urgently prescribed a treatment of “pampering themselves” to reorient their frame of mind back to selfishness. Selfishness in fact has been elevated into the primary female virtue, replacing God as the female moral compass. Even ostensibly traditional modern Christians have weighed in here by inventing an entirely new sin for wives to be on constant lookout for, that of servility.
Clearly women can love selflessly, as witnessed by our modern paranoia that they might actually do so.
My disagreement with many men in the manosphere has been that women are fundamentally incapable of loving and caring for their men in any non-opportunistic way. But saying this basically relieves women of any moral obligation to do so – after all, if we are incapable of it, then it shouldn’t be expected of us. But that is wrong. We most certainly are capable of being trained to do this.
I have done it myself:
Training women to love their men: what to do when he is injured or ill.
And my mother-in-law is doing it now and will likely be doing it for the rest of my father-in-law’s life:
God sets the lonely in families.
Neither of us hit the highway nor showed contempt/disgust for our men when they became seriously ill.
Unfortunately, as you say, women are being trained to do the opposite.
And the feminist brainwashing actually works. That’s the scary part.
I disagree with this strongly. Please explain exactly what game is if not a way to negotiate/influence/change/create desire. There is a problem with Rollo’s logic here. He can either say that desire is non-negotiable or he can say that game works, but it is irrational to say that both positions are true.
In my opinion, passion and desire are now seen as some kind of magical voodoo. What crap. If it were nonnegotiable, then how could passion be rekindled once it had died? Yet the MMSL forum is full of people describing exactly this.
Desire and passion are most certain negotiable and able to be changed and influenced. The thing that is often that case is that one or both parties are unwilling to do that which is required. I have a whole post on this in the works based on some conversations I’ve had with one of my readers by email, but I’ve been hesitant to post it.
It all comes down to training. Women can be trained by their relatives to be kind, caring, loyal and submissive to their husbands. The raw material exists in most, if not all women, for that kind of character. For some women far less work is required to bring out the best of their femininity, and it is perhaps because of them why so many feminists are so ardent about indoctrinating women to not be feminine.
Yes, women can love a man beyond “immediate feeling of sexual desire/infatuation”.
The problem is the lack of sexual attraction in the first instance.
“Desire and passion are most certain negotiable and able to be changed and influenced. The thing that is often that case is that one or both parties are unwilling to do that which is required.”
NO NO NO.
Desire and passion grow directly out of biological attraction. That cannot be negotiated, and it cannot be created where it doesn’t exist. Attraction and desire either are, or they are not. Game does not “create” attraction. Game only facilitates what’s already there, or prevents what’s there from being hindered or thwarted. Game does not “create” chemistry or attraction where none exists.
@ SSM
Rollo is correct SSM. You cannot negotiate desire. Your inclusion of other words into a general description of negotiate dilutes, even corrupts, its meaning. To influence someone is not the same as to negotiate with them. Negotiation involves reason and rational discourse. It involves a back and forth over who gives what, and who receives what. Attraction (a better word than desire here) cannot be generated this way. I cannot go up to a woman and tell her:
Hey, I’m a decent looking guy in his late twenties/early thirties who is in good shape and has a bright future ahead of him. You should totally be attracted to me because I will end up as a great husband.
Sorry, but attraction doesn’t work that way. Attraction is inherently irrational.
Yes, one can use Game to create, to maintain and to restore attraction. But it doesn’t so through the rational part of a woman’s mind. It relies upon manipulation of subconscious and unconscious impulses.
@ SSM
You can’t “negotiate” desire is correct. Negotiate being the key word. This works both ways.
Men and women cannot be “persuaded by words” (aka negotiated with) to be more attractive to each other by addressing it directly. To negotiate a relationship is to say… “You should love me or be attracted to me because I do X, Y, Z for you” or “Everything Ive done in this relationship is for you.”
Game is totally different from negotation because you are not expecting anything back with game.
Wha-? *incredulous face*
Not expecting anything?! Um, men sure as heck are expecting something back when they use game on women. They are expecting to generate sexual attraction and desire in the woman. So, are you all saying that game doesn’t work, then?
~but a problem of men’s unrealistic expectations.~
John Eldredge points out this is largely b/c men take their wounds to the woman…exactly the opposite of what needs to be done.
I think he’s very much right.
I know some people in the manosphere don’t like Eldredge, but if he wasn’t early red pill, he most certainly was proto red pill.
You would really like for that to be the case, wouldn’t you?
@ SSM
What Deep Strength was saying (I think) is that negotiation involves a straightforward, guaranteed exchange. Game doesn’t entail that, you are not guaranteed to succeed with Game. Perhaps you increase attraction, perhaps you don’t. It is a difference between expectation and hope.
I had a feeling this was coming up again.
Before it gets too deep here I would suggest that anyone taking issue with my assertions carefully read my series of posts on love to get a full understanding – there’s only 5:
http://therationalmale.com/category/love/
I don’t necessarily disagree with you Dal, however at some stage of attraction a woman must pass through Romantic love to mature into Familial love, all while satisfying her pretext of hypergamous qualifications.
There are always going to be examples of the Christopher / Dana Reeves story of selfless devotion and love in spite of circumstance. I don’t doubt that they both loved each other deeply, but to arrive at that point Dana’s hypergamy had to be settled by Christopher, and Christopher had to come to terms with Dana’s conditions for loving him to begin with.
I think the title of this post is misleading. It’s not which gender loves best, or more sincerely or more deeply – it’s that they approach love from different perspectives. If a couple come to a mutually, familial love it’s come as the result of maturing past these individual perspectives. Women’s hypergamy is resolved and men’s idealisms are replaced with a realistic understanding of how he can be loved by a woman.
Yes, donalgraeme got what I was going for.
You cannot reason attraction, desire and passion into existence. And you cannot create it out of whole cloth where it doesn’t exist or never existed.
Game, however, holds that one can manipulate, change, revive, and rekindle attraction, desire and passion. The previous existence of attraction/passion/desire is a necessary condition precedent.
SSM, you want the opposite to be the case. You want attraction to be create-able from whole cloth where it doesn’t exist. Why exactly you wish for it to be so, I don’t know. I prefer to see the world as it is.
Believe you me, I wish you were correct. I really do.
But you’re not.
@ SSM
Sorry, but you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what game is.
If we’re talking about “PUA culture” then game is about using various techniques, lines, etc to garner attraction. This seems to be what you are referring to which is not exactly incorrect but not how most of the ‘sphere refers to game.
However, since I know you also read most of the ‘sphere then you know that the way that “game” is referred to in most of the ‘sphere is about self improvement to develop frame. That is if I were to talk about in Christian terms is to develop what the Bible would say is masculinity — a man who is charasmatic and not ashamed of what he believes in. A confident masculine man who can operate in any situation who is unapologetic yet still loving, joyous, peaceful, kind, humble, etc.
This is the type of “game” to which I refer. And Biblical masculinity is not about “expecting anything from anyone” EVEN THOUGH it will be attractive to women.
Uhm, game does not work unless there is an attraction. If women are not attracted to you in the first place, game won’t help a bit.
Yes, but the one thing I want to add is that no one does this perfectly. A loving wife and mother on occasion lets her sin nature get the better of her and fails, but what we ideally want to see is that she generally has joy and the willingness to protect and serve her loved ones.
So just because we might see a woman fail at this sometimes doesn’t mean that she is incapable of it and shouldn’t be trained to do it. She is capable of it, even if she doesn’t do it perfectly.
I have known a few women who left their men in times of trouble; the most egregious case was a woman who divorced her husband after he had stroke that he suffered while they were having sex. I didn’t know her personally, but her husband was a patient of mine when I worked in an aphasia rehab clinic. But women in general aren’t all quite this evil; I saw so many wives being good caregivers for their post-stroke husbands – far more than the reverse.
“at some stage of attraction a woman must pass through Romantic love to mature into Familial love, all while satisfying her pretext of hypergamous qualifications.”
Precisely.
Before a woman ever gets to the stage of taking care of her weakened husband, she first has to see his strength. She first be attracted to him. She first has to be head over heels for him. She first has to be convinced that he has satisfied her hypergamy.
Attraction comes first. Then desire. Then, and only then, can she truly give him familial love.
You can ‘game’ a woman into sleeping with you for a ONS, you cannot ‘game’ them into a life long relationship… that requires a great deal of attraction on her part. She will grow incredibly tired, incredibly quickly if you’re not attractive to her.
@SSM
” ‘you can’t negotiate desire. ‘
I disagree with this strongly. Please explain exactly what game is if not a way to negotiate/influence/change/create desire. ”
I think you’re misunderstanding his point. Game is a way of upping your level of attractiveness, so as to produce involuntary attraction, much like losing weight or getting in shape. He is simply saying that a person (in this case a woman) can’t just voluntarily make herself desire her husband when she does not. If she has high enough character, she will remain loyal to him and may continue to love him in other ways, but she can’t through sheer force of will or good character cause herself to desire him. Nor can he cause her to desire him by giving her things, or being nicer, etc. “Negotiating” for something implies that the person is voluntarily giving it to you in exchange for something. But neither she nor he can voluntarily give desire in exchange for anything.
Rollo said, “Desire cannot be negotiated.” Game is the negotiation of desire. Maybe there has to be a spark there or maybe not, but if desire can be influence for negotiated at all – even a little – then Rollo’s statement is false.
Nota bene:
I know about a million people will now click on and read the essay of mine to which Dalrock linked, but most people will not read the 800 comments in the thread, so let me say this:
I stand by my ideas in that essay, but in hindsight I acknowledge that I went a bit heavy on the bitch-sauce, and I apologized to both Rollo and Deti in the thread. Please try to read the ideas while forgiving the obvious sass.
Negotiation denotes that one party is saying:” If I give you this, will you give me X?” whilst the other party either accepts or rejects or offers another negotiation that they feel is inherently better for them. Desire cannot be negotiated by either party, it is either there or not there. However, there are things another party can do to ‘up’ their attraction levels and possibly create desire where none existed before.
Who loves best?
I think this is better a localized question (localized all the way down to the married level), than a global one that defines the genders. The way I look it, the one who loves the best is the one who best understands what their spouse NEEDS the most and makes sure that he or she gets what they need FOR their spouse FIRST. That is the one who loves the best.
For men (in what they need from wives) this is usually pretty easy:
Those are typically what men need the most from their wives. And if she loves him the best then she makes sure he gets these two things from her, first and foremost. These two things tend to change only slightly as men get older (and our health deteriorates.) Bu largely, men (I think) are easy for wives to understand. We are simple people.
Wives are not quite as easy for men to understand since what they need from their husbands has (IMHO) changed quite a bit over the last few decades. What makes this even harder is wives (quite often) don’t know what they need from their husbands (or these needs are ever changing) so how could they properly communicate that to us? They can’t.
So (IMHO) I think it is easier for women to love best because it is easier for wives to figure out what their husbands need than it is for men to know what their wives need (from moment to moment.) That said, this question is still localized because so many marriages nowadays are no longer Biblical and are far more conveluted.
My assertion is that physical attraction is not a binary value, but a sliding scale. If you haven’t had sex for five years, your standards just might be different than if the last time you had sex was five hours ago. Also, people wear their attitudes and behaviors on their sleeves so to speak. The exact same person will be more or less attractive based on how they stand and how they feel about themselves etc.
What place then game? Game is like detailing a car you are trying to sell. A good detail job can’t fix a dented fender, a broken window, or a blown engine, but it shows off the potential to best effect.
Another opinionated opinion.
@deti & donal: “Desire and passion grow directly out of biological attraction. That cannot be negotiated, and it cannot be created where it doesn’t exist. Attraction and desire either are, or they are not.”
… izzzzz … the right answer! You naughty boys. Stop looking at the solutions in the back of the book
@ SSM
You’re still fishing. This works both ways for men and women. Not just men.
Think if every woman who said…. “he’ll love me more if only I did this” or “he’ll take me back if only I did that.”
You know these statements are demonstratable false. Women are trying to rationalization hamster his attraction for her.
Attraction is not negotiable. You cannot persuade (negotiate or whatever word you want to use) someone to be more attracted to you.
What exactly do you imagine this biological attraction to be?
How do you explain the fact that the average rock star is homely and would have been rejected by women if it weren’t for the unbelievable power he has by virtue of being seen as a bad-boy rebel?
This biological thing isn’t magic. Women are attracted to power above anything else. You don’t have to have enormous amounts of power but you better have enough to make her want to submit to it. That is the fundamental thing that generates sexual attraction in a woman. This mystical “it’s all biological” thing is a bunch of old-wives-tale type superstition. It’s all used as an excuse for sin by people who want not to be judged for sinful behavior.
@SSM:
“Game is the negotiation of desire. Maybe there has to be a spark there or maybe not, but if desire can be influence for negotiated at all – even a little – then Rollo’s statement is false.”
NO NO NO.
You’re still not getting it.
Game is NOT a “negotiation of desire”. And “influence” is not the same as “negotiation”. “Influence” is push here, pull there, and manipulate. “Negotiation” is dealmaking. There has to be a spark there, some desire. It CANNOT be created through the acts of a man or woman where it doesn’t exist. If desire manifests itself, it’s because the man has done something to call her attention to her attraction to or desire for him; not because he “created” it.
And “attraction” means biological attraction. It means “I want to have sex with him”. It does NOT mean “I think he’d be a good husband” or “He’d be a good father to my kids” or “he has a good job” or even “I like him” or “I love him”. Attraction means sexual attraction, means “I want him to f*ck me.”
Explain SSM. Are you saying that women are not attracted to men who are tall, handsome and athletic but instead attracted to the power that such men hold?
Always find your posts illuminating. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and much joy and love to you and yours. God bless us everyone.
Really? Can I gain 50 pounds then? Can my husband just start saying “yes, dear” to all my demands? If not, why not? If attraction isn’t negotiable/changeable/influenceable, then it shouldn’t be a problem if I go hit the Christmas cookies, right?
Attraction is negotiable and influenceable. You might not be attracted to a fat girl, but if she lost a bunch of weight, you would quite possibly become attracted to her.
So, I ask, what exactly what is this magical attraction substance that you are all describing, anyway?
@ SSM
Let me repeat myself again: NO. Game is not a negotiation. There is no reasoned bargaining or deal-making involved. Game (at least “micro-Game”, not “macro-Game” which involves overall changes to a Man’s “frame”) entails manipulating women through activating various attraction triggers. To recap:
Negotiation: A rational process
Game: An irrational process
You can sure influence desire and attraction. I guess that”s what push-up bras and lingerie is for? However, that’s not negotiation, you merely changed or worked out hard enough that you now influence the attraction triggers of a person who would not have been attracted to you before.
SSM:
Yes, you’re correct. Power is a very big part of attraction, but biology plays a big part as well.
The homely rock star would still get women; he just wouldn’t get as many if he weren’t famous.
If power were all there is to it, I should be able to use a good job in which I wield a lot of power and influence to “generate” and “create” attraction where it doesn’t exist. At all.
But I cannot do that. Most men cannot do that.
Come on, SSM. Give it up. Attraction cannot be created out of whole cloth where it never existed. The best that can be done is that a spark can be nurtured so it can grow into a flame.
Saying “attraction” can be “generated” or created is like saying I can make a fire with accelerant, kindling, and a flint, but no rock. Nope. Cannot be done. You need the rock, or the flint won’t work; and if the flint won’t work, there’s no spark. With no spark you can’t ignite the accelerant, and if the accelerant won’t ignite, neither will the kindling.
And “attraction” means biological attraction. It means “I want to have sex with him”. It does NOT mean “I think he’d be a good husband” or “He’d be a good father to my kids” or “he has a good job” or even “I like him” or “I love him”. Attraction means sexual attraction, means “I want him to f*ck me.”
I know what it means, deti. You are playing a semantics game with me with your hair-splitting over negotiation and influence; you know what I’m driving at, I believe..
What exactly is this biological attraction comprised of?
We are chemicals and nerves. That is what we are (in the physical realm; let us leave out the spiritual realm for the moment). We most certainly can influence which chemicals are released in someone’s brain by our behavior. Consider Donal Graeme’s LAMPS. The only one on that list that can’t be changed much is looks; all the rest of those are changeable. And why would any man bother to change them? To attract a woman.
And I think we are getting led down a path of disagreement over a word or phrase.
Game, eh? Not so much artifice, as .. ignoring the people who tell you to “just be Yourself” in a social setting (the same folk who told you wearing the hand-knitted tank-top your grandma made is “just fine” for a date. Like your month-old haircut).
Game is a radical retro unlearning of all the utterly life-wrecking, dysfunctional crap we’ve been force-fed as “Doing the Right Thing” since, I dunno ..1970? (Like Anonsevenone, “I was that soldier, sir” .. but … I think 8oxer’s cool. So there).
For the love of all that is sacred SSM, please stop using the word negotiate in lieu of influence or manipulate. They do not mean the same thing.
SSM,
Negotiation is not the same as influencable or changable.
Attraction is certainly changable and influencable as we have discussed before.
But it is not negotiable. You’re still off track.
ne·go·ti·a·tion
1. discussion aimed at reaching an agreement.
Nope.
in·flu·ence
1. the capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behavior of someone or something, or the effect itself.
Yes.
change·a·ble
2. able to change or be changed.
Yes.
No.
What you are saying is that you just have to sit on your rump and open your hand and wish for a rock to magically appear in it, and if it doesn’t, then Oh well I guess the fire just wasn’t meant to be. Think I’ll just sit here an freeze.
I am saying most men can get up and go find a rock. Rocks aren’t some magical substance that just exist with us or don’t.
SSM:
Biological attraction: Cafeteria Guy/Paper Hat Guy.
Biological attraction plus attraction to LAMPS: Your relationship with HHG. Also, Mystery/Roissy/PUA Game.
No biological attraction, plus attraction to LAMPS: Some forms of PUA Game.
No biological attraction , no LAMPS: Most marriages in the manosphere, most failed marriages described at your blog.
Clear?
Lol, ‘man up and find a rock!’
I’m sorry, I couldn’t help myself.
Oh, and it is a Rock Star’s STATUS which makes him attractive, not necessarily his (Masculine) POWER. Of course, a Rock Star who also has a lot of Power is essentially the ultimate “Alpha” male. Looks don’t really mean jack at that point.
I mention this because Macro-Game involves a man changing his LAMPS attributes, whereas Micro-Game relies mostly on increasing or emphasizing a man’s Power attribute/vector.
OK, I am fine with dropping the word “negotiation”. Talking about desire is useless; I agree you can’t talk someone into being attracted to you. That is VERY DIFFERENT than saying attraction either exists or it doesn’t. You CAN generate attraction. I disagree very, very much with Deti on this point.
SSM:
Can we at least agree that you have to have romantic love (i.e. attraction/desire/passion) FIRST, BEFORE she can get to familial love?
I’ve lived long enough to no flat out that women are simply not attracted to me, at all. Not in the slightest. I truly believe game will not help one such as me. If there were a girl who actually felt attraction for me, I would be able to use game to perhaps keep her attracted. However, without that desire for me in the beginning, game is dead in the water as far as women are concerned.
I don’t care if you find a rock or not. Do or do not, as you please. Only don’t bitch because the rock doesn’t come to you.
If the mountain won’t come to Muhammad then Muhammad must go to the mountain.
In other words, nothing happens if you do nothing.
You CAN generate attraction. I disagree very, very much with Deti on this point.
How, SSM? How can a man “create” or “generate” attraction where it doesn’t exist?
No, deti dear, I’m afraid we cannot even agree on that much. Because duty means doing something because it is right. Familial love and serving one’s family is a woman’s duty. Romantic love *should be* irrelevant to that. I know in the modern world that it is often not, but that doesn’t mean that you “have to” have it. You don’t “have to” even if this is what most modern, self-centered, selfish women want.
SSM:
You’re simply wrong on this point. Attraction simply cannot be created or generated where it doesn’t exist.
If it could be “created” or “generated”, the manosphere wouldn’t exist.
All that can be done is that the spark can be nurtured so it becomes a flame. But you have to have all the ingredients before the spark will be there.
SSM, why would a woman sign on for a duty to a man she isn’t attracted to?
deti’s point is quite simple, a woman wouldn’t get married to you unless she is attracted to you. And she only has a duty to you once she is married.
SSM,
Mary, Aaron Clarey/Captain Capitalism is short. Very short. Right off the bat, almost all women are not going to want to f-ck him because he’s short. There is NOTHING he can do about that (no rocks he can find) that will make him grow tall. He’s short. For all his days on this planet, he will be short and women will not give him the time of day no matter what he does to change his behavior.
That is FH’s point. He’s screwed from birth (as are so many single men here at Dalrock’s.)
I am absolutely convinced that it has to do with a power differential. You and I have discussed that at length by email, as you know. That is why game works; it gives him power and dominance over the woman. That is also why a woman can influence her own attraction to her man by submitting to him regardless of whether or not he does anything differently. That is WHY I preach submission up, down, and sideways on my blog – it isn’t just right (though it is) and moral (though it is). It’s also what causes yummy f-ck me chemicals to be released in her brain.
You guys make this all way too hard. It’s easy. Why are you making it so difficult and mysterious?
Will you or will you not be answering my question? What is this mysterious attraction comprised of?
SSM:
In the modern era, “duty” love is insufficient to keep most marriages together, because there are no external forces to keep her there. In fact she is encouraged to shirk that duty. “You go grrrrl” and all that. Today, the only thing that keeps her in the marriage is attraction/desire/passion; and that cannot be created out of whole cloth.
If she’s doing her duty to her family, or to God, that’s one thing, and it’s very, very admirable. But that is not attraction/desire/passion.
Sunshine Mary, changeable, influential is not the same as negotiable.
If you really want to see what Rollo is saying, instead of commenting on what you think he is saying, go read his posts where he talks about non-negotiable desire.
Do we not see this in real life? There was the reddit post a week or two back about a husband who found that his wife who did not do certain sexual acts with him, yet did it with many other men in the past. When he brought it up and how he felt his marriage shatter, the wife tried to fix it by saying “Oh we can do those things too! I can change in the bedroom!” Yet it did not work to alleviate his anger/sadness. Why?
Because she was negotiating desire. The husband knew it was not genuine desire. She was changing because she was caught, she would never have done so, if he hadn’t found proof that his wife was doing these things.
Or take the bumbling man who says or does something that angers his wife. Most American husbands try to placate the wife, buy her flowers, jewelry, try to alleviate her angry instead of sticking to his guns (assuming he is correct). Yet for some reason this makes the wife ANGRIER. She knows that the flowers or jewelry or whatever other placating action the husband did was not spontaneous or out of true desire. He was trying to negotiate a better demeanor out of his wife. The heartiste dubbed skittles man shows a more genuine desire than this husband.
“ Will you or will you not be answering my question? What is this mysterious attraction comprised of?”
It’s comprised of what you felt with Paper Hat Guy.
It’s comprised of what you feel with HHG.
It’s TINGLES.
@ SSM
All right, I hate to be that guy, but I’m going to pull out the dictionary.
negotiate
1 a : to deal with (some matter or affair that requires ability for its successful handling) : manage
b : to arrange for or bring about through conference, discussion, and compromise “negotiate a treaty”
SSM, your point that “what is game if not negotiating desire?” lines up with definition 1(a). But Rollo’s point, and the others agreeing with him, uses “negotiate” in the sense of definition 1(b). Furthermore, game operates in a dialogue between two people, but Rollo’s point operates in a dialogue between a person and his emotions. And how much less effective is negotiation one step removed, talking a person into talking his emotions into existence! Sure, a person can choose to ignore his emotions or lack thereof and act in contrary fashion to them, and thereby foster new tastes and emotions; in that sense, desire can be 1(a) negotiated. Do I understand that correctly as your view? I agree with it. But note that the subsequently fostered emotions are still involuntary as to when and how they arise. So I also agree that a person cannot talk himself into or out of desire, and that desire is an involuntary reaction. Maybe you are concerned that some might use this acknowledgement of the involuntary nature of a reaction to condone that reaction (or lack thereof) as the only possible action? I also realize this is a facet of the disagreement around here about whether desire requires an initial spark or not.
SSM, I don’t exactly get your composure towards this issue, which is quite antagonistic today. Can you please explain why this is so? As far as I see it, Dalrock’s point is that men have an unfair expectation of how women can love them, his point isn’t that women cannot love.
You’ve heard my story about the morbidly obese, bald man at my church, right? The one who, without meaning to or doing anything on purpose, just naturally has so much game that when I speak to this repulsively ugly man, I find myself unconsciously twirling strands of my hair around my finger and licking my lips? And have I mentioned that I have observed numerous women respond to him in exactly the same way?
Looks are nice. Women will look at hot-looking men and say, “Yes he is hot.” (Have I mentioned Aaron Hernandez recently? Ahem.). But looks are FAR less important than the power differential. The fat, bald man at my church has an ability to make women want to submit to him because he just has this aura of dominance and power about him. His wife is nearly ten years younger than he is and is thin and hot.
Oh no, the dreaded “What is Game?” topic. Wave it off! Wave if off! Haha
(I haven’t laughed at a running exchange this much in a while. Not that anyone doesn’t have points, but I knew what was coming the instant everyone started posting.)
I actually hadn’t heard that story. However, it would take me seeing it to believe it.
I like knowing women who will crawl under live machine gun fire for their fallen husband. Even though will probably never know this feeling myself.
“That is why game works; it gives him power and dominance over the woman.”
If that were the case, then Roissy should have gotten laid EVERY time he ran power and dominance over a woman. He doesn’t. He doesn’t always succeed. No player does.
If that were the case, that all a guy has to do is show power and authority, then EVERY woman exposed to that power and influence would be attracted to him.
If that were the case, then EVERY secretary would be boffing her boss. If that were the case, then EVERY nurse would be screwing the doctor she works for.
If that were the case, then EVERY man who ramps up his LAMPS would save his marriage because she’d be oh so attracted to her husband.
It isn’t. And it doesn’t.
So there’s more to it than that, isn’t there?
Thanks for your wisdom, Dalrock. The answer to the title question of your post is something that I’ve been worrying about for some time now.
As a red-piller, I’d already accepted the basic axioms:
1) You can’t negotiate desire.
2) Female sexual desire is inherently amoral and “hypergamous”.
3) Modern society is oriented towards the satisfaction of female wants and needs.
What wasn’t clear to me is what possibilities for harmonious coexistence were left to open to husband and wife in light of these axioms. I’d hoped that what you said was possible (“familial” love), but that’s not something that you can find out theoretically. You just need to live a lot of life and see a lot of pairings to get a sense of whether familial harmony is possible, and, if it is possible, whether it’s worth the heavy costs associated with it. I’m 29 and single. I have only dated women who feel that service is a trap. It *literally* churns their stomachs, as if they were sinning. And, in truth, I once felt the same way – the idea of a woman serving me felt sinful.
One of the problems with the manosphere is that it mostly comprises young and divorced men. Men like me, basically. In order for us to escape the gravitational ambit of a blue pill world, we have to rhetorically travel far, far away. So, these men have valuable contributions and I respect them, but your writings have a mellower patina of wisdom, and are, in a sense, a window into a living relic: a harmonious relationship in the ancient, forgotten world called “patriarchy”.
Now, reading this, I feel swollen up with joy, at the glorious possibility that I could live simply and harmoniously with a good woman without any fundamental alterations to my nature or to hers. I believe it’s true, and it gives me hope.
OK, no fair bringing up Paper Hat Guy. That was something weird that I don’t understand and can’t explain, but I think he had what Heartiste calls Serial Killer game. Which is really just about power, right? Power to bang you and then strangle you is pretty sexy to women, I guess, lol.
Criminey, we are way off topic. Back to how women love.
People, guess what I’m doing tonight. Nothing hot and sexy, I assure you. I will be spending all night sitting beside my father-in-law. He keeps trying to get out of bed and the rehab facility said we need to keep a family member with him at night so he doesn’t fall. Why am I doing this? Duty. Because I love my husband and therefore I do my duty to his family. And as you can see, I am even more annoying and bitchy than the average woman, so it’s clearly not because I am somehow special and morally-superior. It’s simply that I purposed in my heart to obey God and serve my family. All women are capable of doing this.
SSM,
Bald never hurt Bruce Willis’s attractiveness. The real question is, is this morbidly obese man tall or short? If he is short and you are still twirling strands of your hair, now that impresses me.
Which come from…the Magic Tingle tree? Or where?
I believe your father’s health issues are getting you a bit uptight. I will say a prayer tonight and instead of arguing, simply wish him, your family and you for a brighter new year.
LOL, why do you think those stereotypes EXIST??? Because women scr-w their bosses so often. Bosses are some of women’s preferred people to cheat with. I posted stats about this on my blog awhile back, I think in the thread on why women prefer to work for male bosses.
You know, what IBB? You are right. I am actually fairly upset at the moment and not in a nice way, and I think it is because Dalrock’s essay kicked me right in a sore spot. An open wound, actually. I am watching my mother-in-law barely leave my FIL’s side and watching her be so tender and good to him, and I am having all kinds of emotions about the whole thing in light of what men in the manosphere say about women but also in light of how faithless and selfish so many modern women behave and I am probably all over the map in my thoughts and responses because of that. I will step away now.
“Why am I doing this? Duty. Because I love my husband and therefore I do my duty to his family. *** It’s simply that I purposed in my heart to obey God and serve my family. All women are capable of doing this.”
You love your husband because you were FIRST attracted to him, FIRST desired him, and FIRST had (and have) passion for him. Those things came FIRST. THEN, and ONLY then, were you able to purpose in your heart to serve him.
Now, there are some women who can do this without being attracted. But it is duty, and only duty. It is NOT attraction and it WILL NOT “create” or “generate” attraction. Never. Not in a million years will it ever cause attraction to be created where it does not exist.
Affection, yes.
Affinity, yes.
Common interests, yes.
A life together, yes.
Love, possibly. Plausibly.
But NOT sexual attraction. NOT desire. NOT passion.
Sorry, my last comment is in response to FH, not IBB.
I waited to reply until I had seen a post from Rollo as a reply to Dalrock’s OP.
Why are we even talking about whether a middle-aged to older woman loves a man or not? The doting nature of older women has never been hidden or distorted. That is a blue-pill truth not even worth discussing.
As a very young man, many years ago, it became obvious that older blue-pillers would use the doting and motherly nature of grandmothers (40+ old women biologically changing into grandmothers) as proof to young men that young, hot women 16-26 would also love men in the same manner and even in the manner that men love the young women.
That is the core of the blue-pill lie, in my opinion.
Young men often burn with the fire of 1,000 suns with romantic passion for a young, fertile woman. Men don’t make crazy romantic gestures to older women, generally, in the same manner that they do for younger women. Even though we know that the Feminine Imperative pushes the narrative that men should be as romantic to older women 30+ as they are to younger women. And, as we know, the red-pill truth is that women 16-26 feel very little for men except attraction to high LAMPS and Game.
So, who cares if older women become doting grandmothers with time. So what?
Do you have any idea how outrageously offensive that is?
I’m done here.
You know SSM, it might be heartbreaking to see your father suffer but take solace in the fact that he has such a woman and family who care for him; and I mean, actually care. Take it as an example to use as a story of love and compassion, not one to get anxious over.
Desire can’t be negotatied.
I approach to see if any desire is there.
If it is…things move on smoothly mostly because she helps me. If it isn’t…she will make things difficult for me to see her again.
What’s so difficult about that? All guys here know you can’t bat 1.000 with women…even alphas have struck out.
Well deti you struck a nerve.
Which means you told the truth.
SSM:
Yes, it’s your duty to God that enables you to familial love. But your romantic attraction and passion for HHG keeps you with him, and is what enabled you to love him in the first place.
Women can do this for a man without romantic love. But it’s not attraction, and it won’t ever be attraction.
Why ever has “first comes love, then comes marriage, then come baby in the baby carriage” popped into my head?
Desire is an equation solved at a point in time with specific inputs. Change the inputs and you *MAY* change the result. The problem is that for most people, most of the time, their ability to change the inputs is small and the result doesn’t change, but some times, some people can make large changes to the inputs and change the result.
@lgrobins
http://simulacral-legendarium.blogspot.ca/2013/10/visualizing-history-of-love.html
I posted that too
http://unmaskingfeminism.wordpress.com/2012/08/02/how-marriage-has-evolved/
Good luck though trying to get people to make their marriage decisions through a pre 17th century lens.
Apparently its more interesting to argue what the word negotiate means.
First, I do want to point out how silly the discussion has been. Correct me if I’m getting any of this wrong, but to my eyes the general context went something like this:
Rollo: Women are incapable of idealistic love; women are only capable of opportunistic love.
SSM: Women ARE capable of love! For example, sometimes men love opportunistically.
Okay well.. that was silly. First of all, Rollo never asserted that women are not capable of love, only that women’s love is exclusively opportunistic. (The implication being that it is *extremely* opportunistic, waxing and waning as the moon does.)
Second, demonstrating an example of a man loving opportunistically would not disprove the assertion that women only love opportunistically. At best, you may have presented the possibility that both sexes’ love is opportunistic. That is not a very interesting assertion though, as it is obviously true. The issue here is that the concept of opportunistic love is not a binary. Its not “you’re opportunistic, or you’re not.” The real questions for each sex are (1) how far does a lover have to stray from the ideal before love fades and (2) how quickly will that love fade?
Since (1) and (2) imply gradient answers, everyone is free to interpret them however they want and proceed to argue past one another until the end of time, never reaching any consensus or understanding. I won’t try to answer those questions, but I will point out what I perceive to be a huge blind spot in the men of this conversation. You complain about women blindly falling for jerkboys all the time. What is that, if not idealistic love? For that matter, I’m sure every man here has had at least one girl have a hopeless crush on them at some point in their lives. But she was ugly or plain, and you never noticed her. You’ve no doubt completely forgotten about any such girls, because they mean literally nothing to you.
You cannot reason attraction, desire and passion into existence. And you cannot create it out of whole cloth where it doesn’t exist or never existed.
But isn’t it possible to love some one that you aren’t necessarily physically attracted to (an act of the will) and then out of love for them you look for and start finding things that are attractive about them.
Or is it the case then that you were attracted to something about the person to begin with (personality or ?) which allows you to find something physically attractive later?
Above I am thinking about arranged marriages and marriages were one or more partner settled.
Actually on second look, I don’t get the first part of the graphic…it implies that you marry and then love occurs. However, the note at the bottom says love is a divine madness always found outside of marriage.
s/b – one or both partners settled.
Fixed.
I see SSM is using expletives in their full form so I’ll try to be tactful; the Dana Reeves story is one of a triumphant love and dedication to her paralyzed husband, but she had to want to fuck and marry superman before any of that could take place.
The difference between Game and Negotiation is simple; negotiation results in obligation. If I pay a hooker to have sex with me, I’ve negotiated a price for her obligated compliance to do so. Similarly a wife can learn to deliver ‘duty sex’ to a husband she’s repulsed by, but obligated to do so. However neither can be made to want to have sex as prompted by obligation. Desire never results from an obligation to perform an act of desire.
Game, seduction, influence (in any arena, not just intersexual) can only work with willing participants. As I’ve posted before, women want men who Just Get It:
http://therationalmale.com/2012/08/22/just-get-it/
You can argue that learning Game, or self-improvement that results in a higher SMV is a form of negotiation to become more acceptable for a woman’s attraction and intimacy – and a lot of MGTOWs would agree – but no amount of self-betterment will obligate a woman to have a desire she doesn’t feel.
Roissy covered this:
http://heartiste.wordpress.com/2010/05/27/the-unbearable-triteness-of-hating/
Women want men to get it on their own; this is what Game (and red pill awareness) provides for him – a way to lead a woman to what they both desire.
Just in time for Christmas, yet another “the wage gap exists because we said so” piece: http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/12/27/millennial_women_aren_t_aggressive_enough_actually_they_re_killing_it.html
How I see desire transitioning to love…
Men looking for a Women: Looks open the door…personality keeps them in the house.
Women looking for a Men: It’s personality for both…looks are secondary
{Looks are nice. Women will look at hot-looking men and say, “Yes he is hot.” (Have I mentioned Aaron Hernandez recently? Ahem.).}
Did you find him hot before or after you found out he killed two people? Women thought John Holmes was creepy until the Aurora tragedy, after which he was suddenly deemed attractive. Same goes for the Dzhokhar kid. If you dont like what evo psych has to say about female attraction, then youre really not going to like what has been said about women and hybristophilia, as it is tame in comparison.
Great… we have Game, and Dread Game, and Married Game, and Short-term Game, and Long-term Game, and @$$hole Game, and a few I’m forgetting… and now we have Micro Game and Macro Game, too.
It seems to me that the man-o-sphere has as many definitions for “game” as feminists have for “feminism.”
How about just reading the Apostle Paul? He seems to have captured it well enough in Titus 2:6. The word he used is “sophroneo.” For those who want to look it up in Strong’s Concordance – the reference number is 4993.
A Godly man who possesses sophroneo is so far beyond mere “game: (in whatever form), that the idea of using it is comical, while the idea of needing it is utterly absurd.
For the Godly man, sophroneo is to “game” as combat is to “Call of Duty.”
@Dalrock what else do you expect?
Who funds academic papers?
Who funds the people that peer review the nonsense?
Do you think they would be allowed to publish academic papers that tell the truth?
No. Not on the topics in your realm of discussion.
Your posts, for the most part, imply that you are a ‘Christian’ so it should not be far fetched that this is a spiritual world.
Open your eyes to the entities that are in charge of what gets published.
Open your eyes to the entities that are communicating by inhabiting flesh suits like Stanton.
Open your eyes to the purpose of whatever is funding ‘Aunt Giggles’ (named coined by Rollo)
In another post this month you mentioned James Taranto. Like it is with Stanton, he agrees with you on some points, then other points he’s way off. You have chosen to ignore what’s really in charge of the people that are funded to write some truth. Writing some truth earns your trust. Welcome to the Culture Creation Industry. They agree with you sometimes, so they must be ok, right?
You’re super intelligent. Stop assuming that Stanton has flawed assumptions. Stanton has a deal to do one thing: Destroy most of what you value in this life. By stating that he has flawed assumptions, you deny that he is carrying out the plan of his master. Exactly who is their master?
“But isn’t it possible to love some one that you aren’t necessarily physically attracted to (an act of the will)”
Yes. Of course. But that’s not attraction.
“ and then out of love for them you look for and start finding things that are attractive about them.”
Not really. The “finding things that are attractive” is projection and hamsterizing, in my view. It’s mostly a woman trying to talk herself into being attracted. It’s not genuine, in my experience.
Most women who blog in and around the manosphere are strongly sexually attracted to their husbands, and have been so from the outset of their relationships. It’s my contention that most women are NOT strongly sexually attracted to their husbands. If they were, the manosphere would not exist because it would have no reason for existing. If attraction could be created from whole cloth, or “created” or “generated” where it does not exist, then men would just do the prescribed things to “generate” attraction, and all would be well.
But in my experience, attraction (real, visceral sexual attraction, not “I love him” or “I like him” or “He’d be a good husband to me/father to my kids”) just is. It’s an amalgamation of things that cannot be fully explained or understood.
The reason that attraction, desire and passion are so important is that these are the only things that keep a woman with a man, and at the same time keep her content. Duty and a sense of obligation will keep her with him, but she’ll be at best – AT BEST – minimally satisfied. Even if she’s content, or even happy, that’s not the same thing as attraction. Not the same at all.
Explain SSM. Are you saying that women are not attracted to men who are tall, handsome and athletic but instead attracted to the power that such men hold?
Sometimes I wonder. There seems to be a lot of good looking respectable guys that get skipped over by girls for various reasons.
As a guy who is over 6 feet tall, weighs 200, 10% body fat, and decent looking I can tell you this….
None of that mattered to women.
It wasn’t until I learned about all the flaws my personality had, changed it, tested the changes, and verified…that I started to get anywhere with them. Now all that stuff I just mentioned above is a bonus.
SSM, at Zippy’s place he did a post about the PUA success rate. Seems that it is still about ten percent (typical for most guys, game or not) compared to approaches. The biggest difference I see in the PUA version of game, is that they stress to get over rejection. Approach, approach, approach. One in ten times, your Game has a good chance of working on some female.
Men and women love differently and if that’s by Design (as I tend to believe) then is either one “best”?
Probably because they are deficient in other aspects of the LAMPS set. A man could be good looking and athletic, and have a great job, but if he acts like a wimp around women then he will be unattractive to them. Period. Masculine Power is the most important component of LAMPS, a man can have everything else there at high levels, but a low sense of Power will destroy most of his chances with the ladies.
And if “biological attraction” is the same as “physical attraction” is the same as “tingles”, why muddy the waters with yet another term to bat about?
Lyn,
Simple enough.
The power in the relationship is held by the one who cares the least.
That is why Game (to me) is disgusting in marriage.
Im really curious why sunshinemary is so hung up on this. She is being just as antagonistic as feminists. Its as if shes personally invested in her outlook on game, and cannot accept the reality of it. Do you believe you CHOSE to be attracted to your husband, rather than it just being the natural course? Maybe you believe that robs women of agency and morally affronts you? There were numerous men you found attractive, yet you married him, so that is not the case and you shouldnt construe it that way.
When its said that attraction is not a choice/desire is not negotiated/etc., it is exactly as said. Women are going to find wealthy, high status, and dominant men attractive, regardless of their looks(that applies to the bald fat guy youre talking about above). Same goes for men. Men are going to find Victoria Secrets and Playboy models attractive, regardless of their personalities. Its just biology.
SSM, this is admirable and noble, loving and compassionate, and it’s an example of your conviction, but you refer to it as ‘Duty’.
Wouldn’t it be better to genuinely want to do all this rather than need to ‘purpose’ it in yourself? I You’ll come back with how you do want to, but your first impulse was to make doing your ‘duty’ an obligated effort (‘purposing’ it in yourself). You have to make an effort to want to do it.
Would it be better to have a genuine desire to love God, or to love God due to obligation or fear of damnation?
Earl also covered it. It was my changing my personality that turned around how women interacted with me more than anything else. Losing weight and getting in shape was only icing on the cake.
And also why it’s absolutely necessary in a healthy marriage.
You know things have gotten bad when doing your duty is seen as a negative amongst the more conservative set.
It is only necessary now. In the past it wasn’t. But I am overstepping myself here, that post isn’t going to be uploaded until tonight.
@innocentbystanderboston:
“Bald never hurt Bruce Willis’s attractiveness. The real question is, is this morbidly obese man tall or short? If he is short and you are still twirling strands of your hair, now that impresses me.”
One of my acquaintances, a fairly hot gal for a 50ish woman, is married to a pudgy, balding, short man with glasses that frequently slip down his nose. He’s alpha through and through, probably due to the sheer force of his intellect. I’m happily married, but I feel the attraction. I also know better than to act on it.
So yeah, short, bald, pudgy (admittedly not morbidly obese). If he’s got it, looks don’t really matter.
Rollo,
I get you confused with all the other guys here.
#1) are you married? I am.
#2) If you aren’t, not sure you have any right to say if this is necessary in a health marriage. Do you really want to be married to someone whom you care less for than she does you?
#3) if you are married, do you use game?
#4) if so, you think this is healthy? I do not.
“The power in the relationship is held by the one who cares the least.”
And what line of propaganda have women been fed since birth…they don’t need a man, they don’t need to care about men, it’s all about them. Blahblahblah.
Men on the other hand are told to get in touch with their feminine side and talk about their feelings.
What are the results?
It seems not caring as much from a man springs forth the caring ability in women. They are the more emotional being after all.
Here’s what I would say.
The power in the relationship is held by the one that acts the most and cares the least.
You know things have gotten bad when doing your duty is seen as a negative amongst the more conservative set.
That is why I have concluded that today’s conservative is just yesterdays liberal (progressive or whatever). And I’m not just speaking politically. Even among Christians this is painfully obvious. Especially the newly converted. That is why we that belong to Christ must cling to Christ and His unchanging word.
Sally,
You could stop right there. Intellect! When you have an IQ over 125, yeah, you can use that to be attractive to the opposite sex (men and women) I’ve seen it. I’ve felt it. And I’m sure that gives pudgy, balding, short man with glasses confidence.
Confidence goes a long way doesn’t it? Guys here (feministhater, and a few others) don’t have that. They are NOT going to get it because they don’t have much to feel confident about. They don’t have that sheer force of intellect that this pudgy, balding, short man with glasses does, now do they?
SSM (who married the Human Hand Grenade, alpha man with confidence) doesn’t get this. I think maybe you do.
Lol, looks don’t really matter, you guys make me laugh.
Yep, I’m stupid too. No ‘sheer force of intellect’ for me.
@ Elspeth:
“You know things have gotten bad when doing your duty is seen as a negative amongst the more conservative set.”
That’s a complete misrepresentation of what has been said, and you know it.
No one here said that a woman “doing her duty” to a husband or her family or her marriage is a “negative”. All I said is that duty is not attraction, it doesn’t create attraction, and it’s not akin to or tantamount to attraction.
Can someone help me square these two statements:
1. You don’t have to have enormous amounts of power but you better have enough to make her want to submit to it. That is the fundamental thing that generates sexual attraction in a woman.
2. That is also why a woman can influence her own attraction to her man by submitting to him regardless of whether or not he does anything differently.
The first makes it sound like power or some form of dominance is something men need to have first to get women to submit. The second makes it sound like women can submit to a “blah” man, someone who isn’t powerful and/or working to improve himself.
“As a very young man, many years ago, it became obvious that older blue-pillers would use the doting and motherly nature of grandmothers (40+ old women biologically changing into grandmothers) as proof to young men that young, hot women 16-26 would also love men in the same manner and even in the manner that men love the young women.”
This starts to touch on the truth. Women use the “coin” they have at the time. Which is on some level why women tend to think desire can be negotiated, because they think of things as a transaction. A young women uses her looks to get what she wants from men. An older woman uses “love” to keep what she has (the fact that it is only one in ten, and I think Dalrock is being generous, is not a selling point).
This is part of the reason women hate betas, because betas engage in the same behavior women use to win the love of a man and they recognize it is manipulation, negotiating desire.
Again, I am left with that women are capable of acting this way only when it is in their interests to do so.
Deti, ever spent anytime in India? Or know some conservative Indians?
DeNihilist:
I haven’t. I don’t. Your point is?
You’re right. Confidence is key.
Looks matter, feministhater. But innocentbystander is right, confidence matters more.
Why do you call yourself stupid, feministhater? That ain’t gonna help.
Admittedly, i’m so far removed from game that it looks like an anthropological study of indigenous tribes of Papua New Guinea.
Maybe all this is a good thing in disguise. With women and society nowadays filtering through men who are either unattractive, not confident or stupid. In a way, it could be seen as an absolute positive.
It was a direct response to IBB’s quote.
@ LGR
They cannot be reconciled; they are mutually exclusive. However, I’m not sure that #1 is entirely accurate. At least, it is not how I view Power and how it relates to attraction.
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IBB,
Rollo is married and has a daughter and so logically the rest of your questions should be answered for you based on his statements.
Since it is inherent for a woman’s hypergamy to want to be with a man that is better than her, it is logical by extension that for a marriage to be healthy the man has to care less for her than she does for him. If the situation is reversed, the relationship will not survive in today’s environment and would not be as happy.
As for whether a person that has not been married can comment on marriage or not. One does not need to be a gorilla, to understand gorilla behavior. (and hell the catholic church lets unmarried men preach on the topic all the time . . . although considering their advice that might work against me)
Probably not. But every man has something that he likes about himself and can use it to his advantage, don’t you think?
Nope, I don’t. Some people are born better off being dead. It’s a simple fact of life.
Sally,
You think fh has time for bullsh-t? He does not. He has more important things to do than to lie to himself.
You think fh thinks that women around him think that he is a rocket scientist or a medical doctor? If he was, he would have confidence and he wouldn’t be complaining about the women he didn’t have because he would already have them. That is not his world. He lives in the world of reality. In that world, you can’t LIE about your intelligence.
For a man to be confident, he needs to have something to be confident about. This could be height, looks, intelligence, physical strength, atheltic ability, wisdom, accumulated wealth, earning power, something, ANYTHING that separates himself from the others. That is part of how we as men keep score. If you don’t have anything about you that is different from the others (something that gives you edge) what do you have to be confident about? You have to identify that one thing first. FH has not done that yet.
My two pennies:
#1) are you married? I am.
Yes
#2) If you aren’t, not sure you have any right to say if this is necessary in a health marriage. Do you really want to be married to someone whom you care less for than she does you?
Does anyone want to be married to some one who cares less for you than you do them?
Neither prospect seems desirable, but it is what it is.
I would stipulate that it is better for the one who is less likely to nuke the marriage to care less then the one who most likely would.
#3) if you are married, do you use game?
What I do might be called game, but I was doing it before I had even heard of game. I maintain a masculine frame and demand respect. I expect her to submit. It helps that her mother and father brought her up that way and concur.
#4) if so, you think this is healthy? I do not.
Yes I think so, but for multiple reasons. My marriage has only improved since I stopped treating her as an ‘equal’ (whatever that is) and stopped supplicating her ’emotional needs’. I believe the masculine frame I maintain comes directly from God’s teaching and we pray and read the Bible every night. In addition to this I am convinced that God is real and actively involved in our lives. We are both learning to serve Him in our God given roles.
#1) are you married? I am.
Yes, 17.5 years
#2) If you aren’t, not sure you have any right to say if this is necessary in a health marriage. Do you really want to be married to someone whom you care less for than she does you?
Yes, it’s called the Cardinal Rule of Relationships,..
http://therationalmale.com/2011/08/19/the-cardinal-rule-of-relationships/
because Frame determines the health of any long term relationship:
http://therationalmale.com/2011/10/12/frame/
#3) if you are married, do you use game?
Yes, in fact internalized Game is even more necessary in marriage than when single since you have more at stake. Higher risks mean less margin for error:
http://therationalmale.com/2012/08/22/just-get-it/
#4) if so, you think this is healthy? I do not.
Yes. You do not because you’re trapped in an equalist mindset:
http://therationalmale.com/2011/09/21/positive-masculinity-vs-equalism/
Now, tell me how empty, shallow and superficial I am, or how I must’ve been burned in the past or I’m just compensating for a small dick.
Innocentbystander, it appears you are correct. Pardon me for being mystified by this lack of confidence. The Patient Husband tells me every day how awesome he is, and I in turn, tell him how awesome he is.
Actually, when I think about it, some of the absolute worst advice I have heard given about marriage comes from married guys,
Such gems as : “if the woman ain’t happy, nobody is happy.”
“You got to put the woman first . . .”
“I made a deal with my wife, I make all the major decisions and she makes all the minor ones . . . I haven’t had to make a major decision yet.”
I could go on.
Now some of the best marriage advice I heard was from a single man:
“Don’t do it”
Quite frankly, the problems with getting marriage advice from married men is the male sense of loyalty to their spouse that they don’t want to say something bad about the situation which makes them inherently dishonest in their answers. Second, men suffer from cognitive dissonance, “I’m in this shitty situation, I must really love the witch” and finally, I think their are enough miserable married men that just want the rest of the men to suffer the way they do.
And yes, yes, there are happy marriages out their. Unmasking feminist calls them the “1%”
Some parts of confidence are God given such as height or looks….however you mostly aren’t given confidence, you have to do things to earn it.
Like I said…I’m much taller than most men and even so I had very little confidence. My success rate wasn’t all that great until I got my personality in order, achieve things by doing, and earned confidence.
You can either complain about the lemons got in life…or make lemonade.
If you get no lemons, you cannot make lemonade. Why can’t you just accept that some people are not meant to be able to succeed at what is considered normal by your standards?
Ras,
It doesn’t have to be one way OR the other. There is at least a THIRD option: you put the marriage first and both parties give 100%. In that sense, caring for the other is not a measured value that is lesser or greater, it is simply binary, all-in or all-out.
The problem here is evident for the man, how could he know if she is a woman that would put a marriage ahead of her own personal comforts and haaaaaaaappiness before he married her? How can he know that he is marrying a SSM or Elspeth (which is what we want) vs a Jenny Erikson (which is what we do not want?) I do not have an answer for that question (yet.) I got lucky. So many men do not. And because so many laws are stacked against men, they don’t want to take the chance.
I can’t say I blame them.
Given that men abandon spouses with cancer 6x more often than women do, I’d say it’s quite obvious that women are the ones who have the more sacrificial love described here. It is primarily men who are driven by self-interest.
IBB,
The third option is probably where the lucky 1% fall, for the other 99% Rollo’s advice is well taken.
If you are in the 1% I am both happy for you and envious for in all my long days I have not seen it.
And while there are ways to ferret out which way a woman is likely to be SSM vs. Jenny, you can’t know for certain. In the old days where the women didn’t have the escape route more of them went all in, but not these days (more, not all)
I think I saw this one in Oprah’s book club last month.
“Why can’t you just accept that some people are not meant to be able to succeed at what is considered normal by your standards?”
I accept that some men were born to move mountains around and some to rot away in jail.
Only two choices earl? Hm. So if you cannot move mountains, a physical impossibility, you belong in jail?
And SSM has a response up, someone really got under her hackles.
http://sunshinemaryandthedragon.wordpress.com/
She’s upset about her father, there doesn’t need to be more read in than that.
Okay earl, what about retarded children and people, orphans, the completely physically disabled, the borderline retarded, the wounded war vets, the clinically insane, those suffering from autism, etc, etc..?
“you put the marriage first and both parties give 100%.”
I know a close friend, a Catholic man, finalizing his (second) divorce right now because he tried this…
” So if you cannot move mountains, a physical impossibility, you belong in jail?”
It’s a metaphor about the state of a person’s mind.
Some men have the mindset to go about and make things happen despite their flaws…others see their flaws as the reason to not go out and make things happen.
Because women scr-w their bosses so often.
One more reason for husbands to be the bosses of their wives.
“I know a close friend, a Catholic man, finalizing his (second) divorce right now because he tried this…”
He should have learned the first time.
What are we meant to go ‘make happen’. This is the entire crux of the issue here. Confidence is a good that is nurtured while a person is young so that they grow up with skills and tools and the ability to get things done. Unless you are taught to be confident, or have directly outward appearances that allow you to grow your confidence because people like to be around you, you have no functioning reason to be ‘confident’.
Who are the most confident people? Those with stable loving families who are attractive and smart. Those who don’t have these things will not be confident.
“Okay earl, what about retarded children and people, orphans, the completely physically disabled, the borderline retarded, the wounded war vets, the clinically insane, those suffering from autism, etc, etc..?”
I have an uncle with mild Down’s Syndrome who has been a farmer all his life. He is outgoing, a hard worker, and from what I’ve been told is pretty financially wealthy. Granted he needs help from his brother with a more accute mind but that never stopped him from living and enjoying life.
Is he married, does he have a lovely and loyal wife and children?
@ R A G
“He should have learned the first time.”
Sadly, he is not very open to my hints of the red pill. It is difficult to be his friend, but that is OK as I value his Virtues.
To touch on the title of the post: we’ve been talking about how men expect an unrealistic type of love from women, but is there a similar problem in the other direction? Do we have a problem with women wanting a type of love from their husbands that their husbands don’t (or can’t) provide?
I suppose the standard example would be the man who provides well for his family — doing the things he sees as important — but doesn’t spend time talking to her or romancing her. But that complaint has been around forever and seems like part of the normal give and take of marriage, while the thing with men expecting gushing storybook romance seems more recent.
So what happened that men started growing up seeing women, not as Eve, but as perfect princesses? It’s so backwards, because even in medieval times when it wasn’t unusual for entire groups of knights to devote themselves to the Virgin Mary or some other virgin saint, it seems like they had a more realistic picture of “woman” than we do in our age of abortion and tramp stamps. How are we so naive?
Well feministhater…do you have a passion or mission in life? Do you have something you are willing to do more than anything else? Is there anything you would fight for?
If the answer to all three questions is ‘no’…then start praying. God is where you go to make things happen. Why not ask somebody who knows better about what you should do than anybody else in the world?
That’s all I can say…take it or leave it.
Perhaps in the age of abortion and tramp stamps, the ideal of the romantic love from women is needed to get men to see past the tramp stamps and abortion; otherwise men would be immediately faced with the problem that their lives are based on lies and deceit and don’t mean anything to anyone.
Re: high intellect. It’s a mixed bag, and by itself is not worth much in most circumstances. I’m “that guy” – I.Q. four StDevs above the norm… always the smartest guy in the room… the guy people come to for advice (that they usually don’t take). But until my early 20’s I was invisible to women: that guy you know who couldn’t get a date in a cat-house with a pocketful of Benjamins. Then I got some sophroneo – not “game,” and things changed. I still don’t have “game” – I’ve never had much use for the counterfeit since I found the original item.
Now I’m not a great looker. For one thing, I’m a little short (about 25th percentile). I also have a few obvious quirks (and a few less-obvious ones) that I won’t elaborate on here. All of that worked against me. If you do an internet search for “How many sex partners does the average man have?” you’ll get answers that vary between five and ten.
I was thinking about this the other day, and it occurred to me that I’ve had about a dozen slam-dunk chances to bed different women in my life. Mind you, I don’t pursue such opportunities. In fact, I was an out-of-the-closet celibate until I got married, and I don’t flirt with women now. So not only was I not pursuing premarital or extramarital sex, I have actively avoided it all my life. But there it is… a dozen potential easy lays that came my way (and I walked away from), without even trying – and certainly without “gaming” anyone. More opportunities than the average man gets even while trying. How many lovers could I have had had I actively pursued pre- and extra-marital sex? Since I had a dozen chances while actively avoiding them… you do the math.
So other than sophroneo, what caused that? Is it looks? No: I’m no Quasimodo, but I’m no “leading man” either. Intellect? Not much use: mainly indirectly to the extent that it improves my confidence. Wealth? By the grace of God I do okay, but I’m not particularly wealthy. Is it “game”? Certainly not. Maybe… juuuuuust maybe, it’s that sophroneo stuff… that masculine quality found in the Bible.
I guess women respond to that. To bring this back to the point of the thread: one might even say that they love it. Hmmm… it’s almost like they were designed that way.
Earl, the problem I have is that I pray daily but get no response as of yet. I’ve said that numerous times before. I don’t have a two-way radio with God. If he needed me to do something, some mission, I’m sure he would have told me by now.
@Rollo
“I think I saw this one in Oprah’s book club last month.”
Two things.
If you are not able to be idealistic about what a marriage should be (I’m saying SHOULD BE, not how it IS), then I don’t think you’ll ever understand what a marriage’s point is.
Second, while I generally do disagree with what Boston has to say, in this case he’s right. A marriage only works when both the man and the woman sacrifice themselves and give 100% to their spouse. The problem in modern times is that men (more often than women) still do this and women are trained to look out for themselves first and the children second (because the children guarantee them more prizes later). When both spouses are working on the marriage and put their spouse before EVERYTHING else, a marriage is a happy, loving union. When one party doesn’t do that, the marriage becomes a living hell.
@lgrobins
What a coincidence. Have you read the same book, too?
“Earl, the problem I have is that I pray daily but get no response as of yet. I’ve said that numerous times before. I don’t have a two-way radio with God. If he needed me to do something, some mission, I’m sure he would have told me by now.”
God’s time frame isn’t the same as your time frame.
But daily prayer is something to be proud of…how many people do you think commit to doing that daily? I do it myself and I can tell you even some of my Catholic friends are amazed I’m able to find time to do it. I thought it was something we were supposed to do.
Maybe a religious life is your path…who knows?
“the thing with men expecting gushing storybook romance seems more recent.”
Not really. The thing with men isn’t so much “gushing story book romance”. It’s that a man wants his woman to want sex with him. He wants her to have sex with him willingly and enthusiastically, not out of duty and obligation. A man wants his woman to be HIS slut, and ONLY his slut; not previously Tom’s, Dick’s and Harry’s slut.
feminist hater:
you have my email from before. But I don’t think I have yours.
Shoot me an email.
deti
Thank you Matt. I really thought that this one was a total no-brainer.
I dated ALOT before I found my wife. I don’t know (for sure) if this always works (there are no guarantees) but in all my dating, I discovered that some of my girlfriends required certain amount of additional effort on my part to keep the relationship going (that effort being behavior that was above and beyond my level of living comfortably.) For my wife, there was no additional effort necessary. We were pretty much on the same page (as to what each expected of the other) from day one. I didn’t have to alter my behavior in anyway.
The real question here is for the frivorced guys. It is not for me or Dalrock or any of the others that are happily married. Its the miserable divorced ones. I am genuinely crurious here. For the guys who were frivorced, did any of you have to exert any additional effort on your part to keep the relationship with your ex-wives going when you were dating? I’m going to guess that most of you (maybe all of you) did.
Lyn87, I’m in that same ballpark, and I agree: intelligence itself is no aphrodisiac (for men or women, incidentally). On the other hand, I don’t think it’s actually unattractive either, but it does tend to correlate with traits that can reduce a man’s attractiveness, like being less likely than most to have prison tattoos. For most people, I think intelligence is a desirable trait: something we find attractive in people to whom we’re already attracted for other reasons.
Game, for the most part, is a way for men who weren’t born oozing masculine qualities, or who were trained out of them while young, to learn what those qualities are and how to display them — and ideally to internalize them so that you truly are masculine and not faking it, though you have to start somewhere. If you’ve had lots of women throwing themselves at you despite never consciously trying to game them, that just means you’re one of the lucky ones for whom it comes naturally.
It came naturally to me in my blue-pill days in one circumstance — when I was drunk enough to be myself around women and not care how they reacted. I had success on those occasions, but I blamed that on their inebriation instead of my own. It wasn’t until I learned about game that I understood the difference was in me, not in them.
I know a close friend, a Catholic man, finalizing his (second) divorce right now because he tried this…
What’s he doing taking advice from the CAF crowd?
Mary, Aaron Clarey/Captain Capitalism is short. Very short. Right off the bat, almost all women are not going to want to f-ck him because he’s short.
How short is he? 5’2′?
As someone who is 5’7″, it can work, although a significant percentage of women are right out, and you have to accept that, but a significant percentage are not out. You need to emphasize the rest of the package. If you’re under 5’6″, then I think that’s monastery territory. It’s like being a 400 lb woman, but you can’t do anything about it. I have no idea how short he is, though, but I do know that guys around my height often make way too much of an excuse of it.
For the guys who were frivorced, did any of you have to exert any additional effort on your part to keep the relationship with your ex-wives going when you were dating? I’m going to guess that most of you (maybe all of you) did.
Yes, of course. I know better now, of course, as well.
“I think I saw this one in Oprah’s book club last month.”
The Oprah Book Club crowd is primarily emotionally incontinent people who redirect all input to their “heart” rather than their “mind.” They are the kinds of people who use “happiness” as an organizing principle.
I would also say in my blue pill times the most successes I had with women were those times I didn’t care for them at first. It was when I started warming up to them that the wheels fell off.
If I came right out of the gate acting all needy…no chance at all. It fizzled out any desire she may have had.
All game does is put natural things that should happen into sentence form. And tells you what unnatural things you do that mess up your chances.
No one here said that a woman “doing her duty” to a husband or her family or her marriage is a “negative”. All I said is that duty is not attraction, it doesn’t create attraction, and it’s not akin to or tantamount to attraction.
They are completely different and both can work towards the same goal. I think a sense of duty is a very worthy attribute.
SSM: >>So, I ask, what exactly what is this magical attraction substance that you are all describing, anyway?
It is called pheromones and has been well known for some decades.
Regarding height distributions, a Google image search turns up a lot: https://www.google.ca/search?q=height+distribution+us+gender&tbm=isch
Agreed, but I’m talking about what Rollo’s talking about: the idea a lot of men seem to have that “love” from a woman will be some overpowering, unconditional force, including sex but also including everything else we want (and are offering). So they think to themselves: if I could just get her to really love me — fill up her Love Tank, convince her she means everything to me, whatever — then we’d have it made. A woman in love certainly wouldn’t be mercenary about it or fall out of love for no good reason; women are basically good after all.
Our grandfathers and their grandfathers didn’t think that. They knew women were flighty creatures who couldn’t be counted on to feel the same way from one day to the next without good training and guidance. They knew that a girl needed to go from her father’s leadership to her husband’s if she was to be a good wife and mother. Whether they could put it into words or not, I think they knew that women don’t love the same way men do because women don’t think the same way men do. And somehow they knew this without all the real-life examples that we can look around and see today, and yet most men today don’t know it. It’s bizarre.
Back in my younger days I had a friend named Mark. Mark was about 5 and a half feet tall, or about 165cm if you prefer that. In other words, I was ten full inches taller than he was. We would go out together, meet a group of loose women, and somewhere in the first five minutes of us gaming these sluts, the best looking one would suddenly become very interested in him, leaving me with the choice of the fat girl or the one with really bad acne. This happened, in JennyEriksonspeak: Every. Single. Time.
Even back then I knew what it was. Mark dressed well, had no fear of speaking to women, and was funny as heck. It was hard for me to get upset at him for upstaging me, even.
So, I don’t think it’s quite as bad as being a 400 lb woman. I think it is perhaps like being a woman with b-cup breasts, rather than d-cup breasts. You have to make up for it in other ways, but a brother who has game, dresses well, and can pull off the cocky-funny vibe when he is flirting can overcome this.
you put the marriage first and both parties give 100%
When both spouses are working on the marriage and put their spouse before EVERYTHING else, a marriage is a happy, loving union. When one party doesn’t do that, the marriage becomes a living hell.
I think the problem here is that many people apply female fantasy when placing their spouse before everything else. The men supplicate their wives emotions and the women don’t respect or submit to their husbands when doing this. As a result both are frustrated because real life is different then what is commonly proclaimed throughout society.
This got lost in moderation:
#1) are you married? I am.
Yes, 17.5 years
#2) If you aren’t, not sure you have any right to say if this is necessary in a health marriage. Do you really want to be married to someone whom you care less for than she does you?
Yes, it’s called the Cardinal Rule of Relationships,..
therationalmale.com/2011/08/19/the-cardinal-rule-of-relationships/
because Frame determines the health of any long term relationship:
therationalmale.com/2011/10/12/frame/
#3) if you are married, do you use game?
Yes, in fact internalized Game is even more necessary in marriage than when single since you have more at stake. Higher risks mean less margin for error:
therationalmale.com/2012/08/22/just-get-it/
#4) if so, you think this is healthy? I do not.
Yes. You do not because you’re trapped in an equalist mindset:
therationalmale.com/2011/09/21/positive-masculinity-vs-equalism/
Now, tell me how empty, shallow and superficial I am, or how I must’ve been burned in the past or I’m just compensating for a small dick.
Cail,
I’ve never been one of those guys who oozes masculinity. Ever. And I’ve never used “game.” I’ve seen guys who have women throwing themselves at them, and I’ve always been amazed at it. That has NEVER been me. I recall once when I was still a Lieutenant and a group of us went to a club in a nearby college town. One of the guys in my group was one of those “perfect physical specimens” – and I sat in awe as one beautiful girl after another approached him. I wondered what that felt like… it was completely beyond my comprehension.
Was I smarter than him? Yep.. At four StDevs above the mean, that’s normal for me. In that respect I’m a little like Sheldon on “Big Bang Theory” – I was testing at an adult level of cognition when I was eight years old. But how does one signal intelligence without coming across as a pompous ass? The problem is that the one thing I do better than anyone I know is something that I’m forced to conceal to a degree. A guy who’s four StDevs above average height (close to seven feet tall) can’t hide the fact (nor would he be expected to even if he could) but a guy like me with an I.Q. four StDevs above the mean cannot be perceived to intellectually “tower” over people without coming across as a jerk.
So extremely high I.Q. doesn’t help much (at least directly), since there’s no way to demonstrate it (except over a long period of time) without turning people off. Plus I’m fairly short and more than a little quirky. Yet I’ve still had more chances to bed attractive women while staunchly celibate before marriage and staunchly faithful within marriage than most men who were trying. Not that I could ever rack up a notch count like the other Lieutenant in my group that night… but still.
I say it’s sophroneo. Take a look at JDG’s post at December 27, 2013 at 4:28 pm. I would argue that the attribute he is describing is sophroneo – not “game.” Not only does it work to attract women, but it’s important within marriage as well.
Dear IBB:
I think a lot of the difficulty people have with game is encoded in the definition. Many people rate it, on the ethical scale, around the same place they rate multi-level marketing or used car sales.
When you boil it down, game is just a way to teach shy kids how to flirt better. There are some things that are part of “game” that I wouldn’t do, just like there are certain types of flirting (being overly aggressive, groping, wearing a fuzzy hat, etc.) that are beyond the bounds of good taste, but game is a very broad church.
What do you learn at château heartiste, roosh v, or rational male? You’re just learning how to communicate better, so that your significant other can understand your position more comprehensively. That’s all it is. Using body language and humor is no less valid a means of communicating to your wife than getting up and giving her a lecture on how you love her. In fact, it’s better in most cases.
Just my view…
This is because the behavior you exhibited at the time (and I assume you continue to exhibit) was enough to satisfy her hypergamy in accord with what she perceived her SMV should merit. I would agree, a healthy relationship is effortless:
http://therationalmale.com/2011/09/13/rewriting-the-rules/
The effortlessness you’re experiencing (and the resulting healthy relationship) is due less to either of you consciously giving 100% to each other and more to the unspoken acknowledgement of your SMV balance that’s manifested in your behavior.
A little late to the discussion. Based on the article It looks like Dalrock has showed that at best 2 out of 10 wives actually gives a damn about her husband. From there it is easy to say and know women in general have no capacity to love. If you have a woman that does care about you consider yourself lucky for it is not normal. I sure hope this article puts the nail in the coffin of the conversations on finding a good wife. (doesn’t exist) Every day you find more reason for MGTOW and I truly believe you are a family man just as nearly all of the men participating on your blog. Reality of western society hates family men nearly as much as a male child molester.
“That is why Game (to me) is disgusting in marriage”
IBB you are right on that one. Too bad that is the way it is for us that married on the blue pill. As red pill man I would use a surrogate for a child And have booty call bitches all over the D/FW area and not care one bit knowing a woman that is a booty call is only deserving of being booty call.
@greyghost,
From Women in Love:
http://therationalmale.com/2011/12/27/women-in-love/
For Christsake I wish people could understand that I’ve never stated that women are incapable of Love, they simply have a different concept and perception of it than men idealize they should have for them.
There is no loving ‘best’, there is just loving different, and neither is the ideal for either gender.
IBB …you put the marriage first and both parties give 100%.
Rollo Responds I think I saw this one in Oprah’s book club last month.
PRICELESS! Thanks for the idea. I’ll earn a fortune from the book “You Put the Marriage First and Both Parties Give 100%”
I’ll post that on the top outsource site (run by my friend Gary Swart). The only problem is that I’ll have to limit the applicants to those from the U S and UK with a lifetime of programming from the culture creation industry.
The book will be a massive success because it will be picked up by the entities that are doing their best to speed up the master plans. They’ll guarantee the book will be as big as the “Fifty Shades” trilogy, a machine that I witnessed first hand from the inside. Pages with web presence like this one will enhance the book sales as each comment causes the narrative to expand. People that operate with reason and logic will spew HATE on the book. That will be GREAT!
In Hollywood, ‘christians’ are our most important consumer. We’ve successfully made you feel you got to us with the scripted DNA, or Duck Dynasty narrative. And you might have seen that the article entitled “Amazon Cracks Down On America’s Latest Sex Fantasy” in Business Insider. It makes ‘christians’ feel that complaints about content are working, but it also causes the same audience to become obsessed with reading the content.
Lovely.
The entities have a ‘spared no expense’ (John Hammond line from the book ‘Jurassic Park’) mind. They will gladly provide unlimited funding and make the book “You Put the Marriage First and Both Parties Give 100%” the most important topic in the U S. It fits perfectly with the intentions of the plans of their master. Thanks again for the title!
I guess I’m too slow to grasp your point. Do you wish to claim that men ought NOT to expect their own wives to live up to the 1 or 2 women out of 10 who seem to be actually capable of loving adult men? Is a husband literally expected to forgive his wife for being irrationally contemptuous of him?
The sad truth is that 8 or 9 of 10 women will fall out of love with their husbands after a short honeymoon period, no matter what he does or doesn’t do. It is biological, and can be cured chemically, not behaviorally. Although the wives all insist if he would just “man up” then her attitude would change, nothing could be further from the truth: her attitude CAN be changed, but by her not by him.
@SSM
Women are not trainable. Women are either ok gals, or lousy women.
@ Greyghost
80/20 “rule.”
If you’re not part of the 20 before marriage you might want to watch your back if you’re getting married.
Heck, even guys from the 20 can be brow beaten into betatude if a wife nags enough.
Deti seems most correct, and SSM seems completely deceived as to the extent of her being manipulable.
@Rollo,
It is my continual observation that MOST men experience overweening romantic love towards the one girl who shows him a little affection. We’re talking about infatuation, limerence, “in love”. In contrast, women experience overweening motherly love towards their children and stray cats. Most women experience a vestigial flicker of romantic love occasionally, which is one reason that women CAN fall back into love even though they fall out of love so easily. Men almost never fall back in love, although it is usually difficult for a man to fall out of love.
Re: high intelligence. It’s not a mixed bag for sex, and it’s not limited to extremes. The higher the intelligence in a man, the fewer (hetero) sexual partners he will have, and less sex per partner, although he wants as much or more than men of lower interlligence. In contrast, the higher the intellience in a woman. the fewer partners she wants and the less sex per partner.
The outsourced project posting work will, of course, be ghost writing the book “You Put the Marriage First and Both Parties Give 100%.” In my experience, I’ve found that thousands of people will apply to write such a book, and many of them will write it for free! Just think of the opportunity they’ll FEEL they have even as a ghost writer. They can FINALLY create the fantasy in marriage. It’s their altruistic contribution to society! They’ve been taught that their feelings must be correct.
MOST of the comments in this thread would not exist if everyone had read “The Rational Male” (book) by Rollo Tomassi. The man is a living example of a marriage that actually works well. His book is the best marriage resource on the planet. But, you’re right, spending less than $10 on a book is just unwise. Learning real truth is just overrated these days. Enjoy the entertaining programming provided to you by the little screen you hold in your hand, the one on the wall and through whatever you see and hear in the world of programming designed just for you.
Even our puppy knows every word of Rollo Tomassi’s book “The Rational Male” … @IBB, the answer to your comments exists in the second half of this video clip (Rollo’s words)
Re: power. Even women who worked for him were not attracted to Bll Gates.
Women are not trainable. Women are either ok gals, or lousy women.
I would argue that the focus should be on training daughters before they become adult women.
An anecdote is not much data, but it is what I have to offer. My mother is a good woman, who was a good mother and wife. She was all that my father could ask for when he had his final illness before passing away. I tended him beside her and know that she didn’t shrink away from dad when he was a prisoner inside his body, having less control than a baby. She still remembered the handsome virile serviceman who wooed and won her, the man who could literally squat a thousand pounds and curl over 200.
However… years earlier when my wife and a daughter both had cancer, there was very little concern and less help coming from across the street. It was my problem, not something she needed to deal with, and I did so. After my wife passed away, she did what she could to comfort me, but not before.
I claim no high ground here, it was my privilege to take care of my own. It did provide some food for thought, though. Compassion in mass quantities is rare, it seems, people who have that are well on their way to sainthood. My mother is a good woman, but could not muster the compassion to care for a daughter-in-law or even a granddaughter in need. Now she is failing, and one of her daughters is far away, while the other one is only after what she can get, so I again must do what I can.
Re: high intelligence. It’s not a mixed bag for sex, and it’s not limited to extremes. The higher the intelligence in a man, the fewer (hetero) sexual partners he will have, and less sex per partner, although he wants as much or more than men of lower interlligence. In contrast, the higher the intellience in a woman. the fewer partners she wants and the less sex per partner.
I would say that for men this varies based on everything else he has going on. If he is built, ripped, tall, good looking, has charm/game and is also highly intelligent, his intelligence isn’t going to hold him back.
The real problem is that most people especially men who are highly intelligent often tend to neglect other aspects of themselves — either because they are not interested in them, or they are not encouraged to develop them, or they erroneously feel that they do not need to — so they end up lopsided, and unattractive relative to their potential.
“I would argue that the focus should be on training daughters before they become adult women.”
There may be a narrow window in a woman’s teen years where she can be molded into the ideal wife. It is during that time in which the framework is set as to who she will be in marriage. Just like a child’s formative first 5 years. If the woman doesn’t have a father or an involved father and if she gets her sex education from friends, the net, and pop culture, then all may be lost.
Just as challenging as it is for an adult to learn a foreign language, now that their brain isn’t as moldable, it may be just as hard to teach a woman who is entrenched in feminism and modern culture to be the wife men need and crave. She can try to learn submission, but it can be just as frustrating as learning that foreign language. Over time she may learn bits an pieces to make her at least exude qualities that make her marriageable, conversational, but only the most dedicated stick with it long enough to become fluent.
@Marcus
No on the book.
@ Feministhater:
I hope this doesn’t sound “churchian”, but it is accurate: Jesus Christ knows what we all feel and think 100% of the time. He knows your pain. There is a spiritual gift called longsuffering. The term is self-defined. I believe if you continue in your Christian faith, you will earn Heavenly rewards for your longsuffering. You are a mature man, so you are fully aware that this world is very unfair and harsh. I’ve been through quite a bit as well; some my fault and much not. We have to hang in there. For me I have my son, which translates that “opting out” is not an option. If I did not have my son then my life would have so much less meaning as I have given up on married life. If you don’t have another person such as a child, then perhaps you can find an opportunity to be of service to another. Although it is clearly not your fault for not having a family, you might be able to find a situation where you can be a “light” for another. I hope this makes sense and doesn’t sound idiotic.
We have so much to look forward to in Christ. The other side of eternity will be full of love and devoid of humiliation and cruelty from others.
@JDG
Correct. Girls are trainable. Adult women are a lost cause.
Deti -” DeNihilist: I haven’t. I don’t. Your point is?”
Arranged marriage is still very common among the Indians, especially conservative ones. I know some. And yes, some of them have discovered love through duty.
@Novaseeker,
No, all other things being equal, male intelligence is a net negative in terms of his getting sex from women. Naturally anyone can google “intelligent men get less sex”, but here a few links anyway.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201108/sex-intelligent-intercourse
It’s true for unmarried singles at all ages.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10706169?dopt=Abstract
It’s true for married men also.
http://www.halfsigma.com/2006/07/sex_drive_decre.html
It’s not due to lower sex drive in the males.
http://www.halfsigma.com/2006/07/smartest_men_mo.html
It’s basically 100% due to women treating intelligent men worse sexually.
Rollo
I personally posted one night on the spearhead the conclusion that woman don’t have the capacity to love. I fully understand your comments and Ideas. I just believe it is only in the small end off the spectrum of women that fit your article. (not normal) Women do gina tingle and with the ever changing focus of their hypergamy that tingle could come from any and everywhere. The virtue men today see in women is most likely a social status check and nothing more. To see what feminism has done and can go take a look and study of the black women as seen in video form from Tommy Sotomayor. This guy has no experience in the manosphere but on his own has seen the beastie. Extremely cras by Dalrock standards but a strong tool to see where this is going. It can and will get much worse. See Detroit with out and outside source to feed from.
Personal observation followed by a question for all the gamers here. After I fell out of love with my wife this past spring due to having to go Dread on her, overt interest from women (younger women; I’m 63) has increased dramatically. Can any man be in love and not be beta?
BTW I just got your book Rational Male from Amazon yesterday.
Re: married love. I have been married for almost 34 of my 63 years (married twice, no other sexual experience). It has always seemed to me that one of the deepest ways that most men exhibit their married love to their wives is to refrain from killing them during the 24 or 25 days out of the month that almost all wives act so disparaging to their husbands. Yet here is SSM, again, saying that she believes wives would prefer that their husbands cease refraining from beating their wives for her contempt of him. Does anyone believe her?
jf12
Being “in Love” I found is a beta thing. Those days are over for me. It is just a matter of can she get your dick hard and is her behavior good enough for her to have a husband. That is most likely why it is wrong to lead your wife but rather follow God and her place is to follow you. Getting all beta and in love with your wife is and easy way to drive her into rebellion. Just a way of looking at it. Don’t love her but honor the marriage.
Donal appears to be saying that BECAUSE women ceased submitting to ordinary guys, that Game became necessary to help women submit to ordinary guys. However this seems to assume that adult women are trainable, but in fact it is much much much easier for a man who alphas-up to get a new woman instead of getting his old woman to act right.
@greyghost
I recently discovered that my being oxytocin sensitive greatly amplified my feeling unattractive to other women when I was in love. There are scientific references if wanted. Now that I’m no longer in love and it is ONLY my promise keeping me, there is the double and triple and quadruple whammy of other women expressing interest and my greatly missing the “in love” feeling.
I believe you are correct that men’s error, and SSM’s error, is thinking that men ought to lead rather than that women ought to follow.
@Rollo or Dalrock, somebody please. I keep seeing a cognitive disconnect about married shit testing. When the sexual relationship is functioning correctly i.e. when it is relatively effortless because she is submitting because she is attracted, then she is NOT shit testing, not in the slightest.
@jf12
The sad truth is that 8 or 9 of 10 women will fall out of love with their husbands after a short honeymoon period, no matter what he does or doesn’t do.
I’ve read that the neurochemicals responsible for maintaining relationships basically “run out” after four or so years.
Given some of the discussion on this and a previous thread, I’m reminded of:
That is why maintaining gina tingle is stupid and a poor use of game. Far better to influence social status to control hypergamy. In this feral feminist society we have the only check on females is the fact they don’t want to be seen as that kind of girl. (what ever that is ) Other checks as the effects of reality have been mitigated as much as possible with misandry and feminism. Welfare, abortion, criminal pussy pass, family law, affirmative action, obamacare, exemption from various civic duties (draft) etc. etc. Dread game is reality awareness for dummies (frivorcing mothers) The best wife game is to never insulate her from reality.
Related to my assertion above, some of the earlier research:
Fisher (1992) studied divorce rates in different cultures and reported a substantial increase in divorce rates in the fourth year of marriage. Based on these data, she developed her “four-year itch” theory, stating that human adult pair-bonds are formed for approximately four years, the period in which the offspring is most vulnerable. After these four years, adult pair-bonds can be resolved, allowing both parents to form attachments with other individuals. Thus, Fisher (1992) suggests that the human mating system is one of serial monogamy, not life-long attachments. In fact, it much resembles the mating systems found in several serial monogamous animals that form pair-bonds for one breeding season only. The only difference is that the duration for the offspring to become independent is much longer for humans than for lower mammals. In support of Fisher’s theory, she also found that the four years time window could be extended to about seven years if the couple has more than one child, demanding longer cooperation of the parents in the care for the second child.
Romantic love is part of the adult attachment system, which is believed to be evolved from an evolutionary much older attachment system; mother–infant attachment. Attachment bonds between mother and infant are most likely formed around the time of birth. These bonds keep mother and infant together for as long as the infant cannot function independently. Thus, adult attachment and mother–infant attachment share a functional purpose; both systems evolved to keep two individuals together for a certain period of their lives (Zeki, 2007). Furthermore, the brain circuits involved in both attachment systems are largely similar, and oxytocin and vasopressin are the major hormonal players in both attachment systems.
[…]
The phase of passional love usually lasts several years before evolving into companionate love. This phase is characterized by a decrease in passion, whereas intimacy and commitment remain high (Garcia, 1998). Actually, the love relationship in this phase is quite similar to friendships. Again, oxytocin and vasopressin are thought to be the dominant hormones, reinstating and maintaining pair-bonds between the couple (Starka, 2007).
Not all relationships eventually evolve into companionate love. Many relationships end during earlier phases. The earlier described “4 years itch” (Fisher, 1992) coincides with the end of the passional love phase, indicating that the transition from passional love to companionate love is a particularly fragile period in a relationship. When intimacy is low, commitment may be all that is left after passion has declined, a kind of love that is referred to as “empty love” (Sternberg, 2007). Many couples will break up in this situation, contributing to the “four years itch” effect, but if commitment to the relationship is strong enough the couple might stay together. On the other hand, some couples claim to be still passionately in love with each other after 20 years of marriage, indicating that some relationships may never evolve into companionate love, but instead remain in earlier phases. It is yet unclear what factors cause a relationship to follow a particular course.
De Boer, A., E. M. Van Buel, and G. J. Ter Horst. “Love is more than just a kiss: a neurobiological perspective on love and affection.” Neuroscience 201 (2012): 114-124.
(Fisher also conducted a study in 2004, which re-affirms all that is relevant to the above excerpt.)
—-
Another:
Arueti, Maayan, et al. “When Two Become One: The Role of Oxytocin in Interpersonal Coordination and Cooperation.” (2013).
Also thought I’d link this article before I forgot:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2529393/Unemployed-mother-two-borrows-1-700-EIGHT-payday-loan-companies-buy-hundreds-Christmas-presents-children-says-pay-back.html
Dr. Laura said over many years on her radio show that if a woman treats her husband if she loves him, she will love him. I tend to suspect that is true. Women who treat their husbands as fi they hate them definitely do hate them.
Another excerpt that is related to the discussion at hand:
Males who demonstrated Agape, self-less caring love, and Mania, obsessive and jealous, love styles had greater levels of emotional distress following a relationship break up than females (Hammock & Richardson, 2011).
Sailor, Joanni L. “A Phenomenological Study of Falling Out of Romantic Love.” The Qualitative Report 18.37 (2013): 1-22.
For some, “game” is nothing more than ridding themselves of terminal niceguy beta disease.
Also, we should never be ashamed of wanted to bed attractive women.
We must control that to meet whatever social or religious imperatives we serve, but men need to stop feeling ashamed of their natural state.
jf12 says:
“Can any man be in love and not be beta?”
Nope, the trick is trying to keep enough alpha traits but it makes you beta and women sense this. This is why Roissy recommends always having a side woman, then you don’t become dependant.
Anonymous age 71 says:
Dr. Laura said over many years on her radio show that if a woman treats her husband if she loves him, she will love him. I tend to suspect that is true. Women who treat their husbands as fi they hate them definitely do hate them.
This is basic NLP, people confrom their perception of themselves based on their actions. This is why “role playing” is one of the ways PUA game women. Get them to role play that you are ex’s that are still in love and they will start to preceive that as real.
And yes women are trainable, Shakespeare noted that in the taming of the shrew. But its a double bind in today’s society. The only men that women would accept that kind of control from, are the very men that don’t need to do it.
@MarcusD
Yes, you are correct. Except the serial monogamy thingie based on the four year itch thingie is based on effects of females’ biology, not males’ biology, and the clock starts as soon as the couple move in together (or spend most nights sleeping together). Remember, the waning of desire after just a few years does NOT apply to men: after several years almost all men still want sex approximately as frequently as in the beginning, whereas almost all women insist upon unilaterally decreasing the frequency by approximately a factor of four.
I’m going to bring sophroneo in again because it’s Biblical and because it is THE answer. A man who possesses sophroneo will not exhibit “manic love.” The essence of sophroneo is self-mastery: the opposite of mania. As for agape love – we are commanded to exhibit that to all, and it certainly applies to our wives. So a husband who demonstrates agape love for his wife will be more distraught after a break-up than a guy who doesn’t? Thank you, Captain Obvious! But I’m willing to bet that a Godly man who exhibits sophroneo – rather than mania – in choosing a wife, and then maintains his sophroneo as God tells us to do – is unlikely to see his marriage end in a courtroom anyway. No “game” required. Conversely, if a man chooses a wife based on mania – usually lust – he’s rolling loaded dice in his marriage, anyway, and is setting himself up for an uphill battle that he will likely lose.
Re: getting a woman to act as if she is in love. Yes, it would work; that’s the way women are. But, as Ras al Ghul pointed out, the problem for most men is that they cannot get their woman to do ANYTHING. If he could get her to act submissive for him, then he doesn’t need her to act because she alerady will be submitting, by the very act of, er, acting.
BTW it doesn’t work for men. A man acting like he is in love does not make him feel more in love. What makes him feel more in love is when SHE acts like it.
@women. How does it make you feel to know that you despise men who are in love with you, and that any alpha man never can be in love with you?
Is “sophroneo” a daughter or an synonym of σωφροσύνη ??
Rollo,
Why would I do that?
jf12:
I don’t see women automatically hating men who love them; rather, they find dudes who kiss their ass and grovel to be distasteful… Just like men would find someone grovelling distasteful.
Imagine if some chick was constantly intruding into your space, wanting you to bend your life around her, bringing you gifts, telling you she loved you and would die for you, etc. It’d probably get really annoying to you, yeah? You would think she was a loser, perhaps nuts, and you’d probably pop off and tell her to get a life or a hobby.
If you truly love a woman, then you can show it by letting her “win” your affections. You don’t need to be a jerk, just don’t make her the only interest you have in life.
Best, Boxer
Okay, first of all, there are both different types and different levels of love.
Love born of eros, love born of duty, love born of family are all valid forms of love, and any one of them does not minimize or invalidate the other. And all of those types can be grown into, and can be experienced at different levels of intensity; i.e., they can wax & wane.
Second of all, how are we defining ‘best?’ Is there some type of objective criteria to determine the bar for loving?
Third of all, to address the continually touchy subject of attraction & desire and negotiation and game and WHATEVER.
What’s clear to me is that it seems to set both genders off when they have to face the attraction triggers. People want so-called “unconditional love,” but that is not the nature of sexual relationships. If you want the vagina wet, it takes confidence, power, dominance, status; it doesn’t happen regardless of conditions. If you want the dick hard and the wallet open, it doesn’t activate for fat, old, bitchy or carousel worn; it doesn’t happen regardless of conditions. Men want sex, women want status & resources, and the INITIAL RELATIONSHIP is going to be based on that trade. And things will grow from that or not. So if we are indeed Red Pillers, we just all need to collectively GET OVER IT.
Lastly, people only stay in relationships based on whether or not they’re getting something out of it. We easily understand that when it comes to jobs, or purchases at the store, but we get enraged when we have to face it at home. In my view, this is exactly why there are different types of love to begin with. They have to kick in at different points in the relationship to maintain it over time. We definitely spend time in the Manosphere talking about the horrors of Frivorce, but it’s not like there aren’t plenty of men that have cheated on their wives just because they could, often with devastating results.
People want to be wanted. But they don’t like the things that would make somebody want them, that’s always the problem. You will not be loved without condition. You will not be loved from the same place in the human heart over the entire course of the relationship. Sometimes your spouse will love you because you’re hot; sometimes they’ll love you out of duty or obligation. Sometimes they’ll love you out of commitment to their religious beliefs; sometimes they’ll love you because they frankly don’t have any better options.
This is just the way life is.
The only things we can actually work to change are:
-The level of education about these truths(more people unplugged)
-The laws regarding marriage, divorce, child support & custody, to move them more towards equity and justice.
The latest in the Erikson Saga:
@Tremorden feel for you man. I hope you can forget those who aren’t worthy, while putting the energy into loving your kids. Much love and respect.
@IBB…intellect is attractive
My IQ is 144+ (limited by testing range)
I don’t generate attraction. I try to convince people of the rightness of my ideas. (out if respect??? Idk) This is viewed as if i’m seeking validation from them. I was taught that it was “loving” to respect the opinions of others. It’s a hard habit to break.
Also the SSM negotiation thing. Would a used car salesman call his tactics “negotiation”? I think he would, even though his tactics are a statistical science. I’m not sure what i’m getting at with that, but heh
The Greek word Paul used was σωφρονέω (sophroneo using our alphabet). In his letter to Titus, the Apostle Paul tells his young protege Titus how to counsel various groups of people. The list for young men contains only one item: σωφρονέω – he tells Titus to teach young men to exhibit sophroneo, which is translated variously as: to be of sound mind, to be in one’s right mind, to exercise self control, to put a moderate estimate upon one’s self, think of one’s self soberly, to curb one’s passions.
A little σωφρονέ goes a long way in selecting who to spend time with, especially with regard to women. It is the opposite of the mania MarcusD referred to earlier. The word μανία (mania using our alphabet) also appears in the New Testament, and it means to be out of one’s mind.
We all know guys who married in mania rather than self-possession, and lived to pay the price. The most common mania guys indulge in when selecting women is lust. It is a poor method of choosing.
A man who practices sophroneo will choose a wife based on a cool mind and calm spirit rather than hot passion or tempestuous sex. He will have a “frame” that exudes masculine self-mastery – the very thing that “game” seeks to counterfeit. But unlike “game,” sophroneo is a core attribute of the Godly man and husband. He will be comfortable in his own skin as a core aspect of his personality, and his wife will respond with respect and love – because he chose a woman who would do so.
That is not to say that a Godly woman whose husband possesses sophroneo as a core personality trait loses her free will and becomes incapable of wrecking things, but it is highly unlikely.
Dear Lyn:
Interesting. I asked because I’d never heard the word sophroneo before. Your description was familiar and it’s an obvious possible cognate.
Sophrosune was the daimona of moderation. In the Pandora foundation myth, she was one of the few good things left over at the opening of the great box… The virtue became important with the peripatetics, as Aristotle used it to illustrate the idea of the golden mean. Both the stoics and the epicureans claimed it was the foundation of their schools (possibly the only thing they would have agreed upon, lol).
I suppose it’s a good idea, in any tradition, to know and respect one’s limitations, and seek out the thoughtful, balanced life, avoiding the extremes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophrosyne
Best, Boxer
Marcus,
the Erikson Saga is sad indeed. From what we know, this is entirely Jenny’s fault. Lief may well be a beta guy who settled for sloppy seconds (or thirds, or fourths, or…) after hearing one too many sermons about the righteousness of marrying a “born-again virgin,” but he certainly didn’t deserve what Jenny is doing to him and his children.
I can’t imagine my wife even contemplating that sort of crap for an instant (but then again I married a unicorn), but if Mrs. Lyn87 pulled the kind of crap Jenny Erikson did, I would have a very hard time reconciling with her. I’m assuming, of course, that Jenny has committed adultery. If she has not, that changes things, of course.
If I were in his shoes and she grew up and wanted to come back (as long as there had been no adultery), I would definitely need God to soften my heart. Why? Because I would put her on the shortest of short leashes as a condition of taking her back. No blogging, for starters, and she would have to excise the word “No” from her vocabulary when speaking to me. It would be hard to express the kind of love that God unconditionally commands husbands to give to their wives to such a woman.
But then again, Lief probably married in mania rather than sophroneo. A man in possession of his mind and passions might well have walked away from Jenny long before the relationship became serious enough to contemplate marriage. There were certainly a lot of red flags waving.
LFM,
I don’t doubt for one second that your IQ is 144. Very impressive.
But if what you say is true that you try to convince people of the rightness of your ideas, that may not be a very intelligent thing to do. Someone with an IQ of 144, should probably rethink that. That might be the reason you don’t generate attraction.
JMO.
Boxer,
Back at ya’ – we’re on the same page. Sophrosune sounds like my kind of gal. And since she was a Greek goddess, I’m sure she was depicted as being pretty hot. 😉
True Story
I had some business challenges. I am pretty broke living off of selling hard assets.
Wife leaves because I almost lost and was rebuilding business. She uses porn as the excuse but it was my temporary failure. I was struggling emotionally and financially. Had a plan to fix everything in 24 months with her help. Instead she left me.
Met new woman (GF for short) 4 months later. Still messed up and struggling financially and emotionally. Gave new girl my sole commitment, I know it was wrong, but I was fucked up. After a year I am getting better in my head and heart. GF wanted me to make a new plan that would involve building business up to old level which I would have to work 14+ hrs/day so she could retire and ride her horses all day. I wanted simple life of gardening building race cars and just chilling for a couple of years while I put myself back together. I also suffer health problems from military service. I could pay my bills working 4 hours per day like this. Not a bad deal. Because I wouldn’t bust my ass and probably die earlier than later she left. Using my desire for a simple life as the excuse to end relationship. I would say that Rollos empathy essay would be the correct reference for this one. My struggles killed her attraction for me. That was expected under the circumstances, but she no longer had the youth or beauty to be choosy and dictate terms. I offered her a good deal that was win/win for both of us but it seemed that her desire became negotiated at some point which I think I figured out.
I loved and was totally committed to my wife but she left at the one time I really needed her. Although I kept my emotions under firm control with the GF, I would have committed to her also if she was helpful and pleasant and if she could prove her loyalty. In the end her pleasantries were fake and she was not helpful but selfish and certainly disloyal. Also she was old and pretty used up so my commitment to her was always limited as it should have been, but not to the point of using her.
The point is that with both women their love was very conditional. With both women I expressed I needed their help, not a lot but a little help to get things going again and most of that help in the form of moral support and a little time. But instead of my wife helping a little she finds herself struggling financially even more. As for the GF, she is probably banging my replacement as is her habit of doing things. Both women showed me the true face of hypergamy and the feminine imperative. I think Rollos essay is 100% correct on one point only, women only love opportunistically. Men are the only gender to love honestly, that where he gets it wrong. Although details may differ, my story is common that’s the sad part.
It sucks the wife is gone, but the GF ending the relationship is a relief in many ways because it proved to me the true nature of women in general and I will rebuild my life myself with no woman’s help. I will once again be totally independent as I was before I married. I have come to the conclusion that when a woman says she loves you, she only loves what you can do for her and how she may feel at any given moment. She will never love a man for him being a man.
CAF, again (and somewhat on topic): http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=847934
Lyn87 s
the Erikson Saga is sad indeed. From what we know, this is entirely Jenny’s fault. Lief may well be a beta guy who settled for sloppy seconds (or thirds, or fourths, or…) after hearing one too many sermons about the righteousness of marrying a “born-again virgin,” but he certainly didn’t deserve what Jenny is doing to him and his children.
Jenny E. is the epitome of the born again virgin. This is how they think. It is best to avoid these types of churched women.
As for reconciling with her. No freaking way. Leif needs a red pill and needs to replace her. I say this as a man in a similar situation. It is Gods jobs to forgive not mine. A woman like Jenny or my ex are incapable of the kind of humility required to become good repentant wives. Its better to find a new one. Did not RM write something about taking out the trash?
@jf12
Except the serial monogamy thingie based on the four year itch thingie is based on effects of females’ biology, not males’ biology, and the clock starts as soon as the couple move in together (or spend most nights sleeping together).
I’d have to investigate further, but from what I’ve read it centers around the female need for a provider while the offspring are vulnerable.
@Lyn87
The quote also mentions the fact that women are not nearly as distraught at a breakup while displaying agape love, which I found interesting, considering the current discussion. That said, I haven’t really read through the arguments presented, and I have no real position to side with.
Also, obvious things can be tricky.
@Boxer “It’d probably get really annoying to you, yeah?” No, exact opposite. The few times my women have been madly in love with me, I knew that’s the way I wanted them to stay. I consider it insane to be any other way.
Re: Biblical husbandly love. Husbands aren’t supposed to just be calm cool and collected. He is supposed to love his wife sacrificially, giving himself to her as the Lord did for the Church, and be benevolent, and seek to please her, loving her as his own body. Marriage is prescribed as a remedy for concupiscence, to relieve the burning inability to keep eros contained.
@MarcusD Re: offspring. Yes, prior to Fisher, especially (and thanks for the references!), most folks “knew” that the reason that almost all couples’ honeymoon period was so short, just a couple years (or four …) was due to the arrival of children. It was only after the sexual revolution that it became clear that women fell out of love on schedule *regardless* of whether there were children or not, and the same thing happens to lesbians except even faster (twice as many women involved, after all) in lesbian bed death: instead of dropping from daily or twice daily to a couple or so times per week over the course of the couple years honeymoon period like for young hetero couples, for young lesbians it tends to drops off from daily to a couple or so times monthly for actual genital involvement.
“Husbands aren’t supposed to just be calm cool and collected.”
Are you married, chief? You have got to be cool, calm and collected.
As for the verses you are referencing indirectly, the man’s love is shown by washing his woman in the word – basically correcting her, and holding her to a standard.
There is a real sacrifice in that kind of love for it may mean forgoing sex that night because she is upset you were unwilling to put up with her slackness and corrected her (or you can bow down to your desire, as so many men do, and begin groveling).
I disagree with Rollo is that women are incapable of agape. That isn’t biblical.
But the bible is clear that agape from your wife is a bonus.
Respect always, subordination, homemaking…there you go.
@jf12
the same thing happens to lesbians except even faster (twice as many women involved, after all)
Come to think of it, that might be one of the missing explanations for the fact that the highest rate of intimate partner violence (IPV) is amongst lesbian couples (e.g.: Koller, Jürgen. ““The ecological fallacy”(Dutton 1994) revised.” Journal of Aggression, Conflict and Peace Research 5.3 (2013): 156-166.). Other studies conclude that lesbian IPV rates are equal to other demographics, but in general “sexual minorities” have higher rates of IPV, and lesbians tend to have higher rates than gays (depends on the study, of course).
Anyhow, yes, bed death is worth mentioning in this context as a means of isolating origins (though hetero- vs. homosexual might complicate things).
Re: married. Yes, quite married. More Bible marriage love words: Fervent. Jealous.
Jenny E. is the epitome of the born again virgin.
Worth mentioning, for those unfamiliar with it, are Social Pathologist’s posts about the correlation between sexual partner count and divorce percentage.
http://socialpathology.blogspot.ca/2010/09/sexual-partner-divorce-risk.html
…and more (part of series – they’ll all be from around the same time period).
Love is a verb/action
Female employment and big daddy governments prevent men from loving their wives.Meaning,these factors prevent men from undertaking these acts of love
Ask Patti Stanger: ‘Millionaire Matchmaker’ Never Found Her Own Match, Now Regrets It, Regrets Skipping Motherhood http://wp.me/P3P5mL-dq
That’s a complete misrepresentation of what has been said, and you know it.
No one here said that a woman “doing her duty” to a husband or her family or her marriage is a “negative”. All I said is that duty is not attraction, it doesn’t create attraction, and it’s not akin to or tantamount to attraction.
I wasn’t responding to your comments, Deti. I was actually motivated by something Rollo said.
I agree with whomever mentioned that girls have to be trained to be proper wives. I told my own daughters (after reading Proverbs 14:1 to them): “A woman doesn’t just wake up one day foolish.”
It was a common statement they heard from me when I corrected them as they grew up. More importantly is modeling it for them. I am very thankful for the example of devotion to my father that my stepmother set.
That said, I do believe a woman can through the power of Scriptures and prayer, retrain herself to think properly.
If I was in Leif’s shoes…I’d forgive her. But I wouldn’t take her back.
The forgiveness is more for his heart and sanity than anything. Not taking her back is to show to her that her actions have consequences.
“I disagree with Rollo is that women are incapable of agape.”
I would say the combination of male and female love is what agape love is. So neither one is better than the other…but they become the best when put together correctly.
If you seperate the two…you can’t really ever have agape love.
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I believe in what Ihave witnessed, demonstrable and repeatable obersvations. I have not seen most of what people say women are capable of.
I think soft hearted men witness extreme outliers and want to think all women are capable of such things. Folks like the delusions that keep them feeling warm and happy.
It sounds like what everyone is talking about here is not love but empathy, which women seem to lack, generally speaking.
I wrote about this a while back:
http://web.archive.org/web/20121113110216/http://curmudgeonloner.wordpress.com/2011/09/20/pleasing-your-man/
Ton,
What you are witnessing is the result of Original Sin, and the fact that most people reject Christ. To deny that anyone is capable of acting honorably is to deny the power of God to change lives. I’ll agree with you that most people don’t act honorably. I will go even farther and say that they cannot do so over the long haul as long as they reject Christ. (That’s why atheists are incapable of morality – they reject the only possible source of transcendent moral law.) But anyone can turn to Christ and be transformed – to deny that possibility is to deny the Gospel.
“Few there be that find it.” When our society rejects the core principles of Christianity and also gives women the power to profit from the destruction of their marriages, we see what happens. But to suppose that women are actually incapable of acting altruistically over a lifetime is just crazy – I know plenty of women who have done so for decades. That’s not to say that any of them are perfect (nobody is), but there are enough of them to state unequivocally that such women are not extreme outliers.
In the absence of religious guardrails on our lives, we’re left with inferior methods of constraining bad behavior: law, custom, and incentives. All three are now aligned against marriage, but that itself is due to the fact that we’ve removed Christian morality as the guiding principle of society. To turn this around (which I won’t live to see), we’ll have to restore Christian morality to its former centrality. That means that players will be every bit as constrained as sluts, by the way: PUA’s and feminists are two sides of the same coin.
Like I wrote in my first post to this thread – I’ve had about a dozen slam-dunk opportunities to bed different women while being actively celibate (before marriage) and completely faithful (since marriage) – and I’m not a “natural” with women. Yet I did not do so, as I was obeying Biblical mandates to refrain from fornication and adultery. If that makes me an “extreme outlier” (and I suppose that it does in one sense) it is because I chose to be one – not that other men are incapable of doing the same. Same thing for women: any women can chose to be honorable. The fact that many don’t is not proof of incapability – but rather evidence that “Bad people gonna’ be bad” when they reject Christ – which most people do.
So basically you are saying maybe 30 women in a nation of 300 million are saved. Seems like incredibly poor odds to be actual reality
Nothing of the sort. I’ve known far more than 30 myself just in my little corners of the country. Considering that the average American adult knows about 600 people, there must be literally millions of American women who have not and will never turn their backs on their husbands when things go bad for them.
Are the odds good? No. Have the guardrails of religion, law, custom, and incentives been weakened or removed? Yes. Does that mean that the chance of finding a good woman is the same as winning the PowerBall Lottery? No.
“A confident masculine man who can operate in any situation who is unapologetic yet still loving, joyous, peaceful, kind, humble, etc.”
Being an “Alpha” (sic) is being the best you can be. The Greeks understood this 2500 years ago: arete (being good at what you do and liking it) leading to eudaimonia (well-being, flourishing, feeling alive). Of course, it’s in the Bible, too. And all of it is ultimately based on Eros – love, desire for growth, desire for union, creativity. Eros is a Greek word. We generally just call it Love.
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I think the words ‘unconditional love’ represent an oxymoron. All love is qualified. That goes for man and woman alike. One event, one action, one state-of-being at one time, they may be enough to inspire a love that won’t die simply with some other event, action, or state-of-being at some other time. That doesn’t make the love ‘unconditional’. It makes the love ‘stoic’, or gives it ‘perseverance’, or gives it a long memory.
As to whether a woman can love in the same capacity as a man does… who knows. I haven’t met a woman that loves in the same fashion I do, I’ve met women that lusted after me the same why I lusted after them, I’m sure every man has, but that’s not the whole thing. In the afterwards reflection of most of my past relationships though, the women I’ve dated so far are most concerned with what I could do for them, they just enjoyed the ride I took them on, whatever company they had for the ride wasn’t all that critical. It may go back to actual differences between the sexes, maybe women tend towards being passengers and maybe men tend towards being drivers. But then again, I’ve met friend’s and coworker’s wives who at least appear to have that love for their partner rather than just the ride, so it’s not impossible for women to love the same way men do, it’s just a seemingly rare thing in the current historical and social context.
Are you saying you know 30 decent wives? If so I’ll call you a lair
This Rollo Tomassi post should be at the TOP of every blog: http://therationalmale.com/2011/10/26/whats-your-problem/ Read it with this music in the background: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47IWrXe-Eq0 The music fits perfectly with the content of “The Rational Male” post, and his book is filled with equally effective truths.
Regarding MANLY LOVE, men wrote,
HOMER’S ODYSSEY
DANTE’S INFERNO
THE GOSPELS
and teh GREAT BOOKS FOR MEN.
Regarding WOMENLY LOVE, women wrote Twilight and the Vagina Monologues.
This is why the central banker communists/Boxers empowered women, so as to destroy classical, Christian love and redefine the world based on butt and gina tingzlzlzlzozozo.
Now the amazng thing is how many “Christians” ignore the GREAT BOOKS FOR MEN and seek to redefine Christianity based on butt and gina tingzzlzlzo rather than the LAW OF MOSES AND JESUS.
lzozozozz
Call me anything you like – it doesn’t change anything. I have known far more than 30 decent wives. I’m in my early 50’s and have spent most of my life around military officers and theologically conservative Christians, so YMMV.
But when I hear guys say that they don’t know any decent women, it sounds more like either 1) projection or 2) an impossibly high standard, than an unbiased appraisal.
24 years in the army if you are trying to say army wives are quality you are a lair.
And that right there is the issue: Rollo is pointing out that for many men, the extent and type of the conditions on a woman’s love come as a big surprise to many men who have been taught to think of women as morally and spiritually superior to men, especially in the area of marriage and relationships. They recognize that their own love has conditions; as a practical matter, if your wife gains 400 pounds and stops taking showers, you’re going to find it very hard to keep loving her. But they don’t realize that women work the same way, or that some of the conditions required to gain and keep a woman’s love can seem pretty mercenary from a man’s point of view. That’s why they continue to be confused and misled, even though it’s happened millions of times now, when a woman divorces a man because they “grew apart.” They don’t believe a woman could break her vows and bust up a family without excellent reasons, until it happens to them — and even then some don’t get it.
Look at this Leif guy: he’s probably still trying to figure out what he did wrong to drive his wife away. Because that’s easier than going through the paradigm shift that it takes to realize he didn’t have to do anything wrong — she just stopped wanting to be his, for reasons entirely of her own, and at that point her vows began to mean just the opposite of what they originally meant.
“she could retire and ride her horses all day”
Monkeywerks, she was obviously crazy and you’re lucky to be rid of her. Any woman with horses is crazy (I know that from experience).
Marcus,
The female 4 year itch serves two purposes for the woman. The time period is enough to get the kid to some semblance of ability, second it is genetically advantageous to the survival of the offspring to have children from different fathers. It actually increases survivability chances.
Which is why female cheating exists and will always exist and why I expect the average length of marriage to drop to about 4 years as soon as all the lifers start dying off. (that is until legal marriage is all but dead in this country which I think is approaching quicker than the stats imply).
As for Lief, the guy was dumped and is currently suffering oneitis. In about 2-4 months he will have processed through it, and his mind will change. As soon as it does and he starts doing better, and seeing someone else, Jenny will try to suck him back in, you watch.
Eh, poor Leif, he wants God to soften both their hearts so that they may reconcile. Yep Leif, that sure will happen but only after she has slept with all the men she wants to now and then needs to settle again, with you. Either that, or you could pray for God to harden your heart against her rebelliousness so that you can get on with your life and live. Having a hardened heart towards her will likely be far more effective towards being ‘reconciled’, without her being fucked around with.
You throw that word around a lot – are you sure you know what it means?
For one thing, I specified military officers, which is a small subset of the military. In addition to tending toward political and moral conservatism, military officers have college degrees, and field-grade officers (of which I was one), often have advanced degrees (which I also have). Also, all officers have at least a Secret clearance, and many have Top Secret clearances (which I also have). Keeping a Top Secret clearance for a couple of decades involves passing several in-depth background checks which tend to weed out people with the sorts of vices that also contribute to marital breakdown (heavy drinking, illegal drug use, gambling addiction, etc).
Statistically speaking, couples with college degrees have a significantly lower divorce rate than the general population. That is probably linked to the fact that such couples tend to be in the UMC, and live their lives in accordance with UMC values.
I also said that I’ve spent my life around theologically-conservative Christians, who also have higher rates of marital success than either the general population (about 50%) or churchians (about 38%).
Spending my life among military officers and theologically-conservative Christians means that I have known a lot more than 30 good wives in my life. But speaking of numbers: the average adult American knows about 600 people at any one time. That cohort changes over time, so it’s probably accurate to say that we’ll know a few thousand people over the course of our lives. Half of them will be women. If you’re saying that 30 women out of about 1500 is an absurdly high number, I’ll counter by saying that your standards (at least for women) are absurdly high.
@Elspeth
The only real way that a woman can “retrain herself to think properly”, in this context, is to force her own self to submit to the headship of her husband, or pastor in lieu of. But generally what she needs retraining in specifically is this: the fact that she refuses to submit to a man. In fact, having been around a while, I have observed that some of the most self-willed and obstinate women are those who have determined to go their own solitary way, especially in prayer and Bible study, because they do not feel they need to follow a man.
Yea your talking out your 4th point of contact
I doubt there are 30 faithful army wives.
#2) army officers are by and larger pretty damn liberal, unless you think romney is conservative. Field grade officers are chosen for their politics ie liberalism.
There aren’t that many men with TS’ s let alone that many type of Christians around the military. I use to get a polygraph every 2 years. I know the world you are trying to describe very well.
Most divorces are women walking away, none of those vices you listed involved. Another point your off base on.
I don’t know what your end game is, I do know your talking out your ass.
If you say that military officers are more liberal than the general population, or that field grade officers are chosen for being liberal, I’m going to start doubting that you were actually in the Army. I spent 12 years as a company-grade officer (in two service branches) and another nine years as a field-grade officer (Army), and I can count the number of truly liberal colleagues I’ve had on the fingers of one hand. The lower you go in the rank structure, the higher the rate of liberalism and anti-social behavior, but that’s because military life weeds out people who believe nonsense and do stupid things, so they don’t usually stick around long enough to make high rank. They either wise up or get out. And no – I do not think that Romney is conservative.
I’m not sure why you’re so averse to statistics, but you’re simply wrong. But…whatever… Believe what you want.
When the sexual relationship is functioning correctly i.e. when it is relatively effortless because she is submitting because she is attracted, then she is NOT shit testing, not in the slightest.
She will do it. They all do. No matter how well the marriage is functioning, no matter how attracted to you she is, no matter how much she loves you, she will test you.
Yea you’re full of it. There was no shortage of Obama voters in the field grades. It’s those same field grades that drive the liberal agenda in the military and not the Jr officers/ enlisted.
What you described is the exact opposite of reality. Officers are chosen for their political reliability. Same for senior nco’s, but to a lesser extent.
Your bull$hit might sell with the uniformed, but as a third generation army retiree…..Yea I know better
@women. How does it make you feel to know that you despise men who are in love with you, and that any alpha man never can be in love with you?
Look around you. If they’re actions are any indication of what they feel, many of them feel just fine with the first part and don’t believe the second part.
I have to finish reading the comments, and maybe this was addressed, but I am *highly* doubtful that most women ever perceive a man in purely SMV terms. Even in hookup culture, sex is often used as a way of trying to snag a boyfriend–meaning that the man is a commitment target before she decides to sleep with him. I think this is where the ‘sphere attempts to describe how women think in the way that men think. More often than not, women will see a man as a combo SMV-MMV, which may be behind SSM’s point to a certain extent.
Ahh … love.
Bill Gates married down. An aggressive ultraconfident hands-on micromanaging hyper genius who made grown men tremble and wet their pants in fear of his displeasure and losing millions in a day, he made his first billion on the force of his willpower alone and personally changed the working lives and home lives of much of the human race, but he couldn’t keep a female secretary because (AWALT) inevitably she would laugh at his raging complaints when she deliberately messed up his coffee just to see what he would do. He could hardly buy a date; women despised him. Eventually Melinda French sacrificed herself for the good of humankind and married him. But then again her claim to career “fame” had been her vast failure in marketing Microsoft Bob, despite Bill’s paternal but secretive interest in trying to make her feel successful. She “teases” Bill constantly, even in public nowadays, putting him down for the amusement of others. She never makes Bill sandwiches.
Marissa Mayer married up. After languishing for years as a figurehead at Google, where her early claim to fame was the old classic sparse interface, especially the font choice, and after years of dating some of the world’s smartest and richest and best-looking men (not all at once), she married Zachary Bogue, a very tall (6’4″) and big (240 lbs) dude, extremely handsome (albeit with a simpering smile) and constantly surrounded by other women. Although trained and licensed as a finance lawyer, his family money bought him investment banking positions, and with considerable luck and skill in getting rich women to invest with him, he made many millions long before he met Marissa. He is also an art collector and professional appraiser, getting paid for setting prices for others, and while a bachelor he spent a couple of years learnng gourmet cooking from a half-dozen chefs. He makes Marissa really really really good sandwiches.
Re: Biblical husbandly love. Husbands aren’t supposed to just be calm cool and collected. He is supposed to love his wife sacrificially, giving himself to her as the Lord did for the Church, and be benevolent, and seek to please her, loving her as his own body. Marriage is prescribed as a remedy for concupiscence, to relieve the burning inability to keep eros contained.
This isn’t quite right. The scriptures command husbands to love their wives as Christ loves the church and gave Himself up FOR her, not to her. Yes that will entail sacrifices. And we aren’t commanded to please our wives. Paul warns that we will WANT to please our wives and so be divided in our interests.
If you seperate the two…you can’t really ever have agape love.
I have always understood agape love to be unconditional love. Why would there need to be both sexes to have unconditional love?
@JDG
Yes, “She will do it. They all do.” but. Women do not actually shit test a man WHEN she is currently attracted and is wanting to communicate her attraction. Even I, shit tested by every woman I’ve ever met, am/was “only” tested by my wife(s) 24 days out of the month. The mere fact that all women do sometimes stifle their shit testing, i.e. when they want their man, means that women are in control of it and therefore it isn’t actually inevitable. My mother adored my father and showed it, all the time (although he was usually gone away working).
It is possible that some women believe that their alpha boyfriend, a man currently with other girlfriends too, can be in love with her, but he never bothers even pretending and he *doesn’t* shower her with romance or attention, so I don’t believe that’s what women actually believe.
Generally, people don’t have much difficulty in making decisions of right vs. wrong. That’s easy and it’s what most people have a tendency to want to distill every moral challenge they ever confront down to.
But it’s decisions of right vs. right and wrong vs. wrong (but necessary) that people struggle with and desperately want to force-fit into a black vs. white binary decision instead of shades of grey where they choose between being fucked or more fucked or between achieving something good or achieving something really great.
I think God puts more emphasis on those decisions than an easy solution. Absolutists like to think integrity is doing what’s right when no one else is looking, but if it’s an easy call is it really integrity?
Yeah, that’s funny. How much BS gets peddled and gets through. She can’t find her own match, yet she evidently gets countless others to buy in that she can do it for them. Bout like a financial manager who doesn’t have two pennies to rub together. If he was any good, he’d do it for himself and be rich…butttt…
jf12 says: December 28, 2013 at 12:51 am
Re: Biblical husbandly love. Husbands aren’t supposed to just be calm cool and collected. He is supposed to love his wife sacrificially, giving himself to her as the Lord did for the Church, and be benevolent, and seek to please her, loving her as his own body.
Ummm….no. Christ did what His people could not do, so He did for us what we could not. Hid sought our good, not to “please” us, as a number of His teachings on various subjects clearly attest, often to the opposition and resistance of His audience.
Re: “Paul warns that we will WANT to please our wives.” Yes, that is how men are. There is no escape for the majority of men whose lot is to be married (Matt 19:11, 1 Cor 7:2).
I know plenty of women who have done so for decades. That’s not to say that any of them are perfect (nobody is), but there are enough of them to state unequivocally that such women are not extreme outliers.
I agree with most of what you say, but I don’t share your optimism regarding western females. Most of the faithful women I know are older. With each new generation I see fewer women I can put in this category.
Ton,
There’s no point in arguing – my experience is much different than what you are describing. Unlike you, I will not ascribe our disagreement to bad faith on your part, though.
Believe whatever you want.
Yes! There was this guy I met at a dinner with some mutual acquaintances. He had to have been maybe 4’10”. I a, 5’9″. I have never (ever) met a man with more confidence and charm. He was very flirtatious and, to my own surprise, I was honestly eating it up.
“I have always understood agape love to be unconditional love. Why would there need to be both sexes to have unconditional love?”
Agape love is from God…and God created everything on this planet male and female.
I suppose the only way to understand that heavenly love is when the two sexes come together and work in harmony.
No argument from me. Most of the good women I know are older as well. No doubt some of that is because I’m older, so most of the women I’ve known in my life are not currently in their 20’s. But that begs the question: if many women of older generations were good wives, we cannot say that women are incapable of being good wives just because most of the younger ones are not.
Something changed in the last 50 years, and it’s not human nature. Circumstances have changed so that today’s women – many of whom would have made acceptable wives under different circumstances – no longer see fit to make those choices and those sacrifices.
Today’s women do not lack the ability to be good wives – they lack proper incentives, training, and consequences.
Over at SSM, where I’m still evidently banned, she has moderated her position, again, from her earlier assertion that a man deciding to be dominant causes his wife to become submissive. She has now conceded that it is more important for the wife to submit, not least because her doing so will cause her attitude to change.
In other words, after copping a ‘tude about men needing to man up, in the face of overwhelming opposition from men she has deigned to decide, again, that the men were right all along.
@ANorthernObserver: Romans 15:1-3. Who was He pleasing?
“In other words, after copping a ‘tude about men needing to man up, in the face of overwhelming opposition from men she has deigned to decide, again, that the men were right all along.”
Well if she is pisses all you men off, whoever will read her blog. Its suppose to be a blog to help women, for women, but men seem to be the majority of the readers. Just saying….
jf12:
From http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans+15%3A1-3&version=ESV
There are different meanings of “please” here. In verse 1 and 3 – Christ’s “not please myself” is in the form of “not doing what I want, but completely submitting to the authority of another” because Christ was in perfect submission to the Father’s will. As he said in the garden – “Not My will, but Thine be done.”
Verse 2 has to be taken as doing things for / to one’s neighbor for said neighbor’s good. This has to include things the neighbor may not be “pleased” with – such as being called out for their bad behavior, however they (should) be “pleased” when the eventual fruits of said correction results in a better outcome in the future.
The definition I took from your post was more along the lines of “people pleasing”, which is an entirely beta behavior. If that was in error, I’ll be pleased in being corrected. 🙂
Re: please. It’s the same exact word, with the same exact meaning, four times in three consecutive verses for emphasis. And same word as in 1 Cor 7:33. The only meaning is in promoting/satisfying the interests/desires of another.
“Let us deal with this biological attraction crap.
Apparently NO ONE will be defining for me what they mean by this. That in and of itself is telling. “It’s magic voodoo, Sunshine Mary…you don’t need to understand, you only need to believe.” Whatever.”
I can’t get over this statement because isn’t a belief in God magical?! We don’t need to understand who God is, why He does what He does, we only need to believe. There is nothing wrong with something being magical or not understood and attraction is just one of those things. What makes on thing tick for one person and not for another–who know and so what. Feminists will surely be poking fun at this discussion because they don’t lower their selves for anybody, yet they are still very attracted to their mate. What gives them attraction isn’t the same as for those who find attraction in the Dominant/submissive dynamic.
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=zkfkJCyqCBc&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DzkfkJCyqCBc
Billy Joel was divorced from his wife (the subject if the song) seven years after writing this song
Lyn87
Today’s women do not lack the ability to be good wives – they lack proper incentives, training, and consequences.
Hmm. I’m guessing that you have not spent much time with people under 30 lately.
Consider some of the college aged women that one can find on any campus. They have an N north of 20 – that’s 20 different men mounting them – about 5 different piercings in various body parts visible to the public and probably some not visible, along with a tat or two. They are deeply immersed into modern social media.
Explain how these sluts can be turned around.
AR,
I’m guessing you’ve never seen what God can do in a repentant person’s life. ANYONE can be turned around. To deny that is to deny the sufficiency of the blood of Christ and the working of the Holy Spirit. I’ll stand by that against feminists, PUA’s, or anyone else all day long.
I had a break in my military service for a few years and taught high school. Most of my students are still under 30. Granted, it was a Christian school, so my sample is not representative. Some turned out bad, and some turned out well. I only occasionally correspond with one of them, so I can’t give a progress report on the group. But you misunderstand me if you think I’m saying that large numbers of 20-something sluts are going to turn around – in fact I said the opposite up-thread. What I did say, and will continue to say, is that Christ can turn lives around. Most of these women do not want their lives turned around, so few will do so. But that’s not because it’s not possible – it is because they see no reason to do so. Change the culture to reflect Christian values, and the next generation of girls will become better women than we have now.
They’re not really different from PUA’s – these sluts. A PUA is no more righteous than a slut, and both are disobeying the same Divine commands and both are equally on the road to Hell and equally in need of salvation. I don’t see very many people in the man-o-sphere (even the Christian end of it), heaping the same level of scorn on Heartiste and Roosh V as they do on sorority skanks, although they are the same.
lgrobins writes in reference to SSM
Well if she is pisses all you men off, whoever will read her blog. Its suppose to be a blog to help women, for women, but men seem to be the majority of the readers.
Don’t confuse “commenter” with “reader”. In the old USENET days it was generally thought that for low traffic newsgroups the ratio of readers to writers was 100:1, i.e. for every person posting a comment on a thread there were 100 readers who never commented.
Some men obviously comment on SSM’s blog when she writes something that they know is wrong. Others just like to hang out there in a social kind of way. I find it amusing when women assure men “all you have to do is ….” because whatever follows is going to be something that works if and only if attraction already exists.
Game works. But there has to be more to an LTR or a marriage than “man games woman”, specifically something along the lines of “woman respects man”. Or at least “woman keeps her contempt for man to herself”…
At some point, she has to put some skin in the game. She has to want them to get along. If she’s not at that point, if she’s stuck in “putting up with him for the sake of [whatever]” then all he can do is manage her. Dampen down fitness testing, minimize drama, remove himself from the scene if need be to keep his own anger under control. She has to want the relationship to thrive.
She has to do her part. “Submit” is a verb, in that context. SSM gets this most of the time, some others…not so much.
Lyn87
I’m guessing you’ve never seen what God can do in a repentant person’s life.
You assume repentance a priori. Why? Is it because women are more moral, or what?
I repeat: you are clearly not around 20-something women. Some of them are quite proud to be sluts.
Lyn87, you are contradicting yourself. First you claim:
Today’s women do not lack the ability to be good wives – they lack proper incentives, training, and consequences.
Then you admit:
Most of these women do not want their lives turned around, so few will do so. But that’s not because it’s not possible – it is because they see no reason to do so. Change the culture to reflect Christian values, and the next generation of girls will become better women than we have now.
Pick one side and stick with it. It seems to me you don’t really understand just how damaged some women are, and you are one step away from insisting that men should manUP and marry the born-again-virgin sluts, because they had an altar call and cried real tears and stuff.
That dog won’t hunt, not anymore, and for sure not here.
“Bill Gates married down”
Gates was interested in the six-foot-tall beautiful sister of my ex-girlfriend. She found Gates creepy, almost disgusting.
No, he didn’t marry down. He married up.
Bob Wallace, interesting observation. People still routinely confuse money / situational Alpha with actual SMP / MMP status. An Omega is an Omega no matter how much money he has.
AR,
If you’re going to keep knocking down straw-men I’m going to keep telling you you’re wrong. YOU were the one who made an incorrect a priori claim: that a former high school teacher had not spent much time with under-30 women. My claim was not a priori: it was based on your presumption that people cannot turn around, which rules out the power of God in changing lives. My response was that a guy who thinks people cannot be turned around must never have witnessed it – or you would know better than to posit it. You made an incorrect a priori assumption – I made a logical inference.
As for “You assume repentance a priori” – that is the exact opposite of what I wrote so I’m not sure why you’re arguing against it. I don’t know how many different ways I can say this to make you understand that I mean it – 1) NARROW IS THE WAY, AND FEW THERE BE WHO FIND IT. 2) Most of them will not repent. 3) Nobody ever claimed otherwise – least of all me. Do you need me to get my thesaurus, or do you finally understand that I don’t think most 20-something women are good wives or likely to become good wives? I maintain that individuals can turn their lives around – with God’s help. Don’t you, or is your God not as powerful as the hamster? But even when they do, I have never maintained that “born-again virgins” are marriageable. I have always maintained that they are not; even with real repentance. They can be Divinely forgiven, but I still recommend against marriage to them.
As for picking a side and sticking with it, my positions do not contradict each other. The straw-men in your arguments do, but nothing I wrote does. The two statements you quoted do not contradict each other AT ALL. In the first I said that most young women have the ability to be good wives but choose not to because of incentives and lack of training. In the second quote I said that if their training and incentives changed the next generation of girls would grow up to be better wives. There is no contradiction there.
As for “you are one step away from insisting that men should manUP and marry the born-again-virgin sluts, because they had an altar call and cried real tears and stuff” – that is so absurd that I cannot fathom how you could possibly believe it. I have NEVER said anything even remotely close to that. Quite the contrary, in fact – on many occasions, on this blog and others.
Anonymous Reader says:
December 28, 2013 at 2:22 pm
I think Lyn87 is saying that it’s not impossible for women as a group to be good wives with the proper training and societal restrictions. Regarding today’s women I believe he is saying that nothing is impossible with God.
Though it’s not my place to speak for him I don’t think he is advocating that anyone marry an N>20 (or even an N=2) woman who actually does turn around. I don’t see where he is contradicting himself or disagreeing with you.
Lyn87 you wrote this:
Today’s women do not lack the ability to be good wives – they lack proper incentives, training, and consequences.
Now you write this:
In the first I said that most young women have the ability to be good wives but choose not to because of incentives and lack of training.
The word “most” is not in the first sentence. The word “all” was obviously implied. “All” means “every single one”, and disproving such a generalization requires only one example that does not fit. I provided that example. Now you are changing your claim from “all” to “most, rather than admit that your first claim was disproven you move the goal posts. Did you expect me to not notice?
You don’t normally write in this manner. Please stop.
AR,
Clearly I was speaking in generalities, and there’s no way a reasonable reader would think I meant it any other way, especially after making similar statements with caveats earlier in this very thread, and even in that post. In fact, in the 11-line post you are criticizing for being absolutist, I used the word “most” three times and “many” twice. That’s five qualifiers that show that I was not attempting to say that my point applied to every woman.
In fact, the quote where you said I was making an absolutist statement was just after the part where I wrote this: But that begs the question: if many women of older generations were good wives, we cannot say that women are incapable of being good wives just because most of the younger ones are not. (Emphasis added).
So, no – “All” was in no way implied. You inferred it despite the context.
I was specifically writing about general trends among young women, yet you cherry-picked one sentence where I did not reiterate that thought a sixth time, and pretended that I was speaking in absolutes. If you didn’t understand that it’s because you didn’t want to.
@ JDG, thanks. you are correct. I find it frustrating that, even in some Christian corners of the man-o-sphere, some guys think that Western women are so far gone that not even God can save them. I am not accusing AR of being one of those guys – but there are some who would like that to be so.
I think what Lyn is saying is (1) there are indeed few women who are godly today, (2) you need to exercise sobriety in choosing a wife who is godly rather than one who is hot and (3) even the sluts of today can be turned around by repentance.
This all seems unobjectionable to me. I think point (2) is a key point, but it seems to rankle among many.
Re: situational alpha. Gates was extremely dominant, extremely confident, extremely aggressive, extremely strong personality. It wasn’t situational. But because he looked dorky, women thought he was creepy. Personality doesn’t matter nearly as much as many men hope it and as all women wish it would.
Dear Novaseeker, et. al.:
It’s somewhat astounding to read this argument, appearing as it does on a board full of dudes interested in Christianity. In any event, it brought to mind this earlier missive, by WF Price…
http://www.the-spearhead.com/2013/03/31/happy-easter-2/
The fact that most people (men and women alike) are content to wallow in their own mediocrity, wasting their lives chasing banal pleasures, doesn’t mean that is a foregone conclusion for everyone.
People don’t change overnight, of course; but with discipline one can be a little bit stronger, smarter, and less slutty tomorrow, than s/he is today. Rinse, repeat, and keep working, until you are a new person.
Regards, Boxer
“Something changed in the last 50 years, and it’s not human nature. Circumstances have changed so that today’s women – many of whom would have made acceptable wives under different circumstances – no longer see fit to make those choices and those sacrifices”.
That looks pretty good Lyn87 only thing to add is women don’t make sacrifices they just do what it takes. kind of like stitching their eye brows to get pulled out or spending 150 bucks every couple months to get her hair done, or get an abortion. Women don’t sacrifice for anything. As I have said before women will behave with loving virtue with the same stuff a cuckold has using her husband to make the payments on the car she drives to her boyfriends house while he is at work. Which ever they thinks is what they want. Dirty little secret what they want is influencable to the point of determining what makes gina tingle which is the true guide to women’s virtue..
Re: wanting to want. The universal admonition of all experienced men is this: do not believe women, at all. The excuse for not loving their husbands that the vast majority of women proffer i(either all the time, or most of the time) s that they simply don’t want to, but they say they would if they could really they would, they say that although they know the “want to” is lacking, they would want to want if only they could. But do not believe them. They enjoy the power of not having desire. For example this woman
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/phyllis-berger/aging-gracefully_b_4462458.html
pretends to complain about a lack of hotness, even as she admits that she thinks she knows what would work to make her feel hot and therefore have a lot more sex with her husband, but she refuses to do it. I contend that the REASON she refuses to do it is because her husband would benefit, this depriving her of the power of “No”.
The Disposable Male
Psychology of White Knights, Manginas and Male Feminists
MGTOW – Dangerous Waters
Out of Wedlock Births in the UK Soon the Majority
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/10172627/Most-children-will-be-born-out-of-wedlock-by-2016.html
Disillusioned with Feminism
Grinding America Down (Hi Def)
The big one. The only one that really matters:
http://vimeo.com/63749370
Of course you can Influence attraction, it’s complete nonsense to say you can’t, but both sides of the argument have a point.
A short, ugly guy who would never have got a second look from that tall, beautiful blond can marry her if is famous, powerful, masculine. She chooses to look past his physical short comings.
Can this same man get every tall, beautiful blond now that he is famous, powerful and masculine? Of course not, some women will be unable or unwilling to look past these physical short comings.
So there is certainly an element of God not allowing certain pairings, which many of you fail to consider.
The power of feminism is strong though and most of you can’t even understand how an arranged marriage could possibly work. Simply being a man and a woman is in many cases all it takes for attraction. That same woman or man who find each other repulsive in New York would be having sex everyday while stranded on a deserted island. Attraction is a complex beast, of that there is no question.
I get Lyn87’s point. Fewer such good women today than in past generations. That much is true.
Repentance is possible for anyone before God. That said, sinners are still very subject to the temporal consequences of their sins. In the case of sluts, that might be any one or more of STD’s, medical consequences of abortion(s), children without fathers, inability to bond sexually, reluctance of better men to marry them, cats in old age, etc. Deti had an excellent checklist for vetting whether a woman with a sexual history is truly repentant of her previous lifestyle, definitely worth reading. Looking over the checklist, it’s not an easy path and hence the truly repentant former slut is rare who actually follows that path. But rare is not zero, just that the way is very narrow for them.
@Lyn87, I never heard of the word sophraneo before you mentioned it upthread. Material on it is rather sparse per Google. Care to expand on this or direct us to blog posts that get into detail?
Wow. A long post written by a dude who obviously does not know what love is, as his musings about his own marriage and life indicate, peppered by comments from emotionally stunted men, all incapable of love, but damning women for what they themselves are so obviously unable to do.
Projection, thy name is Dalrock & Co., a hub for male sociopaths and emotional retards, hell-bent on controlling what they cannot understand but still desire most in life.
It seems that with your views on women and relationships you guys would find more hospitable environs in Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan. It is stunning to read such rubbish in the 21c USA. I’d say you are a hoot, but your medieval ideas are actually dangerous. May whatever gods you believe in keep you away from the sane and reasonable people of this or any society.
Shell screed…. yadda yadda yadda yadda
Please find another script to read – this one isn’t the least bit interesting
Shell – please explain your standpoint on the authors views more clearly. To many, you’ll seem to be attacking the writer with projection. Shaming us with, “…emotionally stunted men, all incapable of love, but damning women for what they themselves are so obviously unable to do.” won’t work. You might as well break out the white feather to explain the weakness of your position. An emotional plea to get men to man up through shaming them wont work with this crowd. Please present a coherent breakdown of why you believe what you’ve written. Thanks.
Shell just posted that we are some really sharp men speaking the truth. And Dalrock if you were single she would be on your jock.
The power of feminism is strong though and most of you can’t even understand how an arranged marriage could possibly work. Simply being a man and a woman is in many cases all it takes for attraction. That same woman or man who find each other repulsive in New York would be having sex everyday while stranded on a deserted island. Attraction is a complex beast, of that there is no question.
Wisdom Prevails
very smart observation. That observation is where the solution to this madness lies. A good drill would be to find 1-3 things that would changed the course of western history and not have to be a costly government program.
Shell says:
December 28, 2013 at 8:13 pm
Insult disagreeing person – check
Claim that the disagreeing person doesn’t understand and is controlling – check
Claim disagreeing person’s views are antiquated and therefore rubbish – check
Claim disagreeing person’s views are dangerous – check
Claim that disagreeing person should be kept away from society – check
Did I miss anything? Where have I seen this pattern before?
“Did I miss anything? Where have I seen this pattern before?”
Narcissistic sociopaths projecting their shortcomings upon others? Just a guess.
I forgot to use my favorite auto response for the drive by:
Get back in the kitchen and make me a sammich! Better yet make us all a sammich!
I hope Shell is a female – sounds like female – I’d feel weird telling a guy to make a sammich.
I just realized that feminism really is quite a shell game.
Anyone know why CA stopped reporting divorce statistics to the CDC? I hear that many states have stopped reporting these stats. Anyone know why? (snicker…snicker) I wonder if this will become a trend? (snicker…snicker)
So we all seem to be in broad agreement that a woman refuses to love a man the way he wants to be loved (i.e. she adoring him), AND she doesn’t ever ever ever respond properly to being loved by him the way he wants to love her (i.e. he adoring her). So, are we supposed to pretend there’s some equality of blame here, for the lousiness of almost all relationships?
Now…now…JDG. Shell could be a part of the LGBT community. If that’s the case, then we must exercise extreme caution on the whole sammich thing. They’re pretty thin skinned. You know how intolerant those folks can be on domestic issues. Tolerance is a one way thing from their point of view. If it’s not their way, it’s the highway (i.e., false domestic violence/rape/abuse claims). Where have I heard that before? Oh yeah – it’s written into law now. Silly me forgot.
“So we all seem to be in broad agreement that a woman refuses to love a man the way he wants to be loved (i.e. she adoring him)”
Women don’t need men. The Marines just dropped the standard for women to complete all of three chin ups. It was too hard on them girls. 57% of women failed. <1% of males failed. You go girl!
They only love you when they have something to gain materially from your love. If someone else comes along that can give more and better, you are toast. Men are disposable and live at women's convenience. You are only as good as what you can provide to them. Anything short of that and you are not worthy of their presence. In a woman's mind, you're the court jester.
Anyone know why CA stopped reporting divorce statistics to the CDC?
I was going to say because their’s are higher than everyone esle, but now that you mentioned others are dropping out I’m not sure.
“I was going to say because theirs are higher than everyone else’s, but now that you mentioned others are dropping out I’m not sure.”
I’m thinking that divorce rates will start being reported in the same manner as unemployment rates (which might already be happening). You know…don’t count the folks that remarried. Don’t count the folks that gave up looking. Too funny. Ah…the fungible nature of statistics. Ya gotta love that.
R.A.,
The Greek word σωφρονέω (sōphroneō) appears about a half-dozen times in the New Testament. It has various nuances, but it generally has to do with self-composure and a sound mind. To a degree, it may be thought of as the opposite of the Greek word μανία (mania), which means to be out of one’s mind. But the connotation is more than mere sanity, but of having thoroughly mastered oneself from the inside out: thoughts, passions, emotions, habits, and the physical self under the firm control of the individual.
In the book of Titus, Chapter 2, Paul advises Titus (who was a young pastor) on how to deal with various groups of people in his congregation. There were older and younger men, and older and younger women. Paul gave Titus a list of things to stress with each group. All the groups got some form of instruction to be of sound mind. Young women got the longest list, but the list for young men contained only a single item: sophroneo.
A young man who exhibits a well-developed sophroneo is one who will signal confidence, as well as stability and maturity. Such a man is no wimp – and he is prepared to lead, and lead well. It demonstrates that the man has both what young women find attractive in a man (confidence and leadership) and what they need in a husband (stability and maturity). It is to possess the confidence of an “alpha” without the falsity of the PUA, along with the stability of a “beta” without the simpering and pandering.
It is possible to pervert the good things of God into vices. Fornication is a sinful perversion of matrimonial sex, for example. Gluttony is a perversion of hunger, for another. The list goes on – Dante Alighieri was much better at this than I am.
I would posit that “game” is a perversion of the Godly attribute of sophroneo. The most effective lies are 99% true, and “game” is a pretty convincing counterfeit of sophroneo. Does “game” occasionally work? Sure it does. “Game” works, to a limited extent, because women respond to sophroneo, and “game” mimics some aspects of sophroneo. That’s fine for guys who want to pick up bar skanks with no regard for their eternal destination, but for a Christian man, “game” is just silly. Why would a man who has access to the real thing (sophroneo) resort to a cheap knock-off (“game”)?
Well, does reporting divorce statistics cost money? California is almost bankrupt if I recall correctly.
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=848058
Responses assume OP is female, despite OP referring to spouse as a “she.” Why? Physical abuse. Yet the same people decry sexism (and sexist assumptions).
“California is almost bankrupt if I recall correctly.’
That is the old story. This is the new one. The link should read 5.6 billion.
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/morning_call/2013/11/california-56-billion-budget-surplus.html
I will wade in here, late, but hopefully I have something to add to the discussion. This is a subject that I know about from personal experience, as well as observing other women in similar circumstances to mine. So let me tell you a bit of my story. I am specifically responding to Deti and others who think that romantic love must proceed before a woman will remain devoted to her weakened husband.
I have never had romantic feelings for my husband. There was no falling in love period before we decided to get married. He asked me to marry him in a letter. We spoke over the phone a few times (he lived in a distant state), and I agreed to it. We were both socially conservative and I wanted a large family where I stayed at home and homeschooled the kids. This is also what he wanted, so I went for it. I never liked the dating scene and didn’t want to deal with it any more.
I agreed to marry him before I even met him. There were no tingles, no attraction, no romance. I went live near him and we spent a few weeks together before we got married. He was on the short side and slightly built. As far as sexual attraction goes, I would say it was neutral for me. He did not repulse me, but he didn’t make me tingle either.
Our wedding night wasn’t horrible, but it wasn’t that great. As I said, neutral. I could work up a desire for him but it wasn’t there naturally. Immediately, our young marriage hit rocky shoals, because that’s just life. I immediately got pregnant and had difficult pregnancies which did nothing to help our sex life. He lost his job. We moved several times, across the country and in three different states. We ended up living with my parents. This did nothing to raise his sexual attractiveness to me. Hypergamy? What hypergamy?
Flash forward fifteen years or so. I had finally had it. I wanted to be the good Christian wife, and be submissive to my husband. But there was nothing to submit to. He didn’t lead. He drifted. It was like being on a ship, but with no captain to guide it. And the waters are full of icebergs, rocky shoals, submerged reefs, and vast stretches of the doldrums. It was terrifying to have my now large family on a ship with no one to navigate these waters.
He was passive, hesitant, didn’t lead as a father should, couldn’t discipline the children, and still couldn’t support his family. I was forced to make every decision, to consider our options with no input from him. I would wait for his input, request his input, but never got it.
I can attest that a passive man who doesn’t lead will invite the fury of his woman. I was angry, furious, confused and resentful. He was, in addition to his passivity, also cold and difficult to reach. When I had tragic losses all I asked for was for him to hold me. He couldn’t do it. He could not comfort me. He also had a host of strange behavior, that I tried at first to pass off as eccentric. In short, he failed me in every way imaginable.
Finally, when I could take it no more, I considered divorce. I just wanted to be free of the emotional turmoil and unrelenting disappointment and resentment I felt towards him. But I did not consider divorce for long. I asked myself, what would it be like, to be free of him? And then I got a vision. There was my husband, sad, small and alone, in a dingy flat above a Laundromat, eating a bowl of ramen noodles. I knew that’s what divorce would do to him. And I couldn’t do it. I could not deprive this man of his family.
For all his faults, and they were legion, I knew all he wanted was a loving home for him and his children. I could not take that away from him. To do so would be bad, evil, disgusting, horrible and nasty. Marriage is fundamentally about trust. You make yourself vulnerable to the other person. You trust that they will stick by you, even if you are imperfect. I could not violate that trust, even if he didn’t live up to expectations. To violate that trust is evil. It is akin to murder.
So I dismissed the idea of divorce. Instead, I accepted my situation. I was forced, unwillingly, to be the leader of my family. I could not understand why. I did not want it, I was dragged to it, kicking and screaming (often quite literally). He didn’t ask me to be the leader, he just didn’t lead. So I looked for a career and went back to school and started working.
Once I accepted my situation, my attitude improved. I was less angry, less depressed, and more at peace. Not entirely, and this took a long time, but I felt noticeably better. It was only a few months after this that the full understanding of my situation came about. My husband’s brother was diagnosed with probably Huntington’s Disease. My husband was eventually diagnosed as well.
This explained so much. Huntington’s is a neurodegenerative disease that affects all aspects of a person’s life: motor, cognitive and psychiatric. I would say all of our problems stemmed from the early symptoms of the disease. One of the hallmarks is loss of executive function. A man cannot lead a family without executive function. Poor executive function means no ability to make decisions, to initiate activities, to plan even in the short term.
So what kept me loyal to him? A previous romantic attraction, that I could hold to? No. That was true of my SIL with her husband, but not for me. Hypergamy? My husband was not ever powerful, and never made much money. We were poor and dependent of family support through much of our marriage. I often felt embarrassed by his behavior.
I don’t get much out of my marriage. For all intents and purposes I am like a single mother, and I often wish I had romance in my life. I have never had romantic love, and doubt that I will ever experience it in my life.
Perhaps I am devoted to a higher cause: my family. I have devotion to him, and fondness for him. I recognize now what a struggle it was for him and that he is not at fault for his ‘failings.’ But it is not based on ‘tingles’, attraction, previous romantic feelings or any other such thing. I took vows to love and honor him, in good times and bad and in sickness and in health. So be it.
Now Dalrock, you don’t know me, so feel free to edit my overly long post. I am not in the habit of baring my personal life on the internet, but as it pertains to your post, I thought I had something to add. In short: romantic love or sexual attraction are not necessary prerequisites to devotion to a weakened and ailing husband.
[D: Welcome Augustina.]
Dear MarcusD and Lyn87:
(Lyn87) I hope you don’t mind me copying this excellent little exegesis for future reference. Thanks again for going into detail. In answer to your earlier question, I don’t really see σωφροσύνη as a hot chick. I envision her more like a mid 40s version of my grandmother, who strongly reminds me not to slack off when I’m doing squats. She also appears out of nowhere to remind me that I have writing to do, when my rascally friends invite me to go out carousing. She’s not much fun, but her advice is generally pretty good.
(MarcusD) One of the most depressing turns of the historical narrative is what has been happening with the Catholic church. Crazy pedo priest scandals, feminist nonsense with outspoken covens of lesbian nuns, and the like.
That’s a horribly sad story that’s up on the forum. I do wonder why the poor fellow felt the need to marry and reproduce a dozen times with a crazy wife, but I suppose the damage is done.
As an aside: I registered at Catholic Answers, a few weeks ago, after I followed one of your links. I left one very mild message, and was almost immediately (as in, within 5 minutes) deleted and banned for life, for “spam”.
IIRC I questioned why people didn’t just call it a “divorce”, in a thread where a bunch of biddies were *you go girl*ing someone who wanted to file for an annulment. It suggests that either they looked at the referrer and know this blog, or they just don’t like people who question the predominant narrative.
Now I would like to add a bit, based on my previous post. This deals with sexual attraction within marriage. It is not entirely dependent on ‘game’ or what the husband does or does not do.
In my case, my husband is so disabled that sex has not been a part of our lives for years. Yet my sexual desire ebbs and flows, waxes and wanes and comes and goes. It is entirely unrelated to my husband. There are times when I am full of desire, and times when I have no desire at all. Sometimes I can’t stop the sexual thoughts, and other times, I have no sexual thoughts or desires at all.
Generally speaking, a woman’s sexual desire is inconstant. It doesn’t always match up with how attractive her husband is. With something as complex as sex, you can’t come up with simple explanations. There are many reasons a woman may no longer feel sexual desire for her husband.
For instance, in early pregnancy, I had no desire at all. I was as cold as ice. But a few weeks later, in mid pregnancy, and I was hot to trot and rarin’ to go. Did my husband change? No. My body did. Hormones play a huge role and they change tremendously in pregnancy. So do things like ill health, fatigue, and stress.
This is important to understand. There are those who want to attribute to ‘game’ every aspect of a man and woman’s relationship. But game does not explain everything. Yes, it is true that if a man becomes slovenly or passive then his wife will find him less sexually desirable. True also, if a wife lets herself go and becomes nasty and bitchy, then her husband will find her less desirable.
But just as true, hormonal changes, ill health and stress can all reduce a woman’s sexual interest, and it has nothing to do with the man. He can still be Mr. Studly McStud, and if her hormones aren’t in the right order or if she is suffering form massive migraines, then there won’t be much, if any, sexual desire on her part.
If sex is a problem in your marriage, you cannot fix that problem if you don’t understand it. You won’t understand it if you are liable to reduce every problem to ‘game.’ You must be open to other explanations.
It suggests that either they looked at the referrer and know this blog, or they just don’t like people who question the predominant narrative.
The forum software they use is incapable of connecting referrers (it’s quite an old version). Visitor tracking is indeed possible for newer versions and with more admins, but they are short-staffed and continually looking for funds. (BTW: despite the fact that you were banned, you will still receive emails from CAF asking for donations.)
In general they obey a mob rule – if enough people report a person, that person will get banned. Have you been banned before? If you have, they will indeed be able to see that (same IP), and will promptly ban your new account. If your IP is a proxy, they will also ban it (in my experience). (I guess there aren’t many Catholics in the Occupied Palestinian Territories for that kind of IP to be believable :).)
The mods on CAF tend to be fairly aggressive with people they don’t like. The irony is that if you complain, the person answering the “admin abuse” email is the admin who banned you in the first place. “Judge, jury, and executioner.”
CAF is basically a hive mind.
Augustina
Outstanding. His leadership and head ship was to be a family. Your submission or following was to be a part of that family. In that you were an outstanding helper. . That was the foundation, it was tested and it turned out to be stronger than any worldly pleasures. Extremely rare for a woman these days. Arranged marriages were a tool used to create an environment that was founded on honoring principles larger than pleasure with “pleasure” actually coming from achieving the goals of the union.
@Augustina…
Props to you. All women are capable of that.
I find it sad that the world makes it far to glamourous for women to access their rebellious side. That’s why a lot of men here think like they think.
It’s not that these men are wrong…in fact I’m beginning to think the sphere is just case studies on what goes on in the head of a rebellious woman and how to spot and deal with them. But perhaps they should take a look at what happens when a woman willfully submits and see what goes on in her head.
Augustina is to be commended for sticking to her vows. I will say that in my experience there is *usually* only one reason why a man so completely gives up: learned helplessness. *Usually* (I’m ameliorating what I consider to be correct, i.e. *usually* instead of *almost always*, to be nice, to give the benefit of the doubt) he learned early and often that nothing he said or did made any difference, i.e. any outcomes for him were not dependent on “what the husband does or does not do” i.e. “it has nothing to do with the man”.
It could be different in this particular case.
Biblically, authority over an adult human comes through submission, NOT from exercising authority, NOT from exercising dominion, NOT from exercising lordship, NOT from exerting headship, NOT from exerting power, NOT from exerting leadership. In the Gospels the centurion at Capernaum (“I am not worthy”) first explained the nature of authority and Jesus commended his explanation. The discussion of power in Rom 13:1-5 should illuminate: it is certainly possible (even likely!) that people resist the power of God. Clearly there is NO defiiciency in God’s power: the ENTIRE fault is in those who refuse to submit.
@Augustina —
Thanks for sharing that.
I know of another situation where someone lost their spouse to Huntington’s and now it appears that at least one of the two children also has the disease. It’s a very difficult thing to deal with, and it does create behavioral/personality issues that are one of the main manifestations of it. What you are doing is very difficult, and is admirable — many people wouldn’t do it, to be honest.
@ jf12
Luke 22: 24-27
A dispute also arose among them, as to which of them was to be regarded as the greatest. And he said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you. Rather, let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves. For who is the greater, one who reclines at table or one who serves? Is it not the one who reclines at table? But I am among you as the one who serves.
Great line in the OP:
Clearly women can love selflessly, as witnessed by our modern paranoia that they might actually do so.
@Boxer
feminist nonsense with outspoken covens of lesbian nuns
It’s not just nuns, either. I’ve run across plenty of feminist Catholic (“Catholic”) bloggers in the past who seemingly like the brand power of Catholicism more than the teachings (much more, in fact). They will be “running the show” soon. I can only wonder what they will turn the Church into if they think chivalry is sexist and modesty is some sort of slavery.
(Aside: seeing as how many of those bloggers are arts grads, my goal is to get more women into a math/logic field in order to undermine feminism.)
(Aside: if you could measure snark, my bet would be that there would be a negative correlation between snark and observance of the Catholic faith (amongst Catholics), especially in women.)
Lyn87 says:
December 28, 2013 at 11:07 pm
I concur with Boxer, great exegesis. I’m kind of neutral in the game wars. I just do what I believe is laid out in the scriptures for a man to do (combined with what was revealed to me in prayer – also aligned with scripture). You are stipulating that game is a distortion of sōphroneō. I admit I don’t know enough about game to know where these distortions occur. Do you think it possible that game and sōphroneō are the same thing with some men employing it for wicked ends? I’m thinking like a tool intended for one thing but gets used for something else entirely.
Augustina:
My hat is off to you. Truly commendable and a great example for other women who are struggling.
Earl:
All women are capable of that.
I’m not sure that I agree. I think tests are to determine if someone is capable of something or not, and most women these days are failing these kinds of tests. Maybe when they were children the potential was there, but after the molding is done it remains to be seen whether or not they are capable. Or did I misunderstand you?
“Maybe when they were children the potential was there, but after the molding is done it remains to be seen whether or not they are capable.”
While molding, how you are raised, and what you experience all do play factors on a person’s capability…your gender and what is required of it doesn’t change. Those things are ingrained in the subconcious. It takes a lot of effort to overcome the natural programming.
Case in point…why do must ball busting feminists love it when they get into some BDSM. That is one of the few times they allow themselves to submit.
Thanks JDG, My position – if correct – is that Satan counterfeits the good things that God has given us to trip us up: “A little leaven leaveneth the whole loaf.” Women are designed to respond to sophroneo, and it is incumbent on a man to possess and cultivate it (with or without women: it is a good attribute in its own right). But because women respond to it, it can be used to attract women for ungodly purposes as well. “Game” works to a limited degree (mainly on skanks – smart women and Spirit-led women just laugh at guys who try it) by amplifying those aspects of sophroneo that generate attraction the quickest.
“Game” front-loads and exaggerates the “alpha” aspects of sophroneo to overawe weak-minded and weak-willed women. Whether married or single, a Christian man ought to possess sophroneo, because we are told to in the Bible. If married, such a man will not need to “game” his wife. If a Christian man needs to “game” his Christian wife, one or both of them are doing something wrong.
Let me clarify something i just wrote:
Satan counterfeits the good things that God has given us to trip us up
I just realized that someone might read that and think that I was saying that God gives us gifts to try to trip us up. It is Satan that tries to trip us up. Perhaps a better way structure the sentence would be:
In order to try to trip us up, Satan counterfeits the good things God has given to us.
First, thanks for bringing a glimpse of reason and humanity to this discussion, Augustina. The cookie cutter approach to marriage, with rigidly defined gender roles, is bound to create lots of unnecessary frustrations and suffering, especially when confronted with real life challenges, rather than abstract or imaginary ones, where people’s life stories and characters do not easily adhere to pre-fabricated, easy-to-use patterns. In that vein, hormonal changes, ill health and stress – including that brought on by Huntington’s – can all reduce a man’s sexual interest as well.
Second, to TCTF, who asked: “Please present a coherent breakdown of why you believe what you’ve written.”
I’ve perused this blog for a while and it is rather apparent to me that its author as well as regular commenters struggle mightily with the notion of love as well as their concepts of gender roles and their own identities. While the first – love – is something we all strive to understand and learn better in our lives, the second – preoccupation with gender identity – seems to be a uniquely American neurosis. My initial comment was harsh, I admit, but truthful.
American men are strangely obsessed with what it means to be masculine and have adopted many unhelpful ideas to deal with this obsession, including that of female submission as a necessary affirmation of their masculinity.
To someone who is not American-born and has been in a decades-long successful, sexually vibrant marriage based on equality (note: equality is not sameness) and respect, with the one and only husband (also not American-born and not “alpha”), these ideas: of female submission, game, alpha-beta distinctions, etc., seem to be wobbly and unhelpful crutches designed to help American men (and some women) deal with their neurotic insecurities that come from a desire to control something which we cannot control or fully understand – life and love.
I don’t mean that last sentence to be a dig; it is obvious to me, however, that using such rigid crutches for life, along with gross (and grossly ridiculous, projection-based generalizations – i.e., women don’t know how to love, etc.) stems from an inability to open up to life and love and embrace their messy complexities, which in turn will – as they must – reveal and challenge our own.
While molding, how you are raised, and what you experience all do play factors on a person’s capability…your gender and what is required of it doesn’t change. Those things are ingrained in the subconcious. It takes a lot of effort to overcome the natural programming.
I see what you mean now, and I agree. I was writing in the context of how God created us and alluding to the fact that as a society we are incorrectly raising our daughters.
@Augustina
Thank you. I’ve asked God to bless you and your family. Even if i never have a family, I’m glad that our people are not extinct yet. I look forward to worshipping our Lord together in heaven
@ Augustina
Thank you for taking the time to write that. Those who are hellbent on sin will disregard it, but those who want to do right will be encouraged and strengthened by your example. May God bless you, your husband, and your children.
Slightly related: http://www.upworthy.com/theres-something-absolutely-wrong-with-what-we-do-to-boys-before-they-grow-into-men?c=ufb2
Thank you all for your kind words and your prayers. Please don’t feel sorry for me or think that I suffer. I am truly blessed. As for those who believe there are no young women of today who would make Godly submissive wives, have heart. I have daughters. Also, I am plugged into the network of traditionalist Christian large family homeschoolers. I have seen over and over as many of these young women marry young, and develop into Godly young wives and mothers. Our type may be few and far between, but we are not completely extinct.
Also, I am not alone in my devotion to my husband. I have a friend, a few years younger than me, whose husband is suffering health problems. He always was the nice enough schlub type. Not a go getter, not a great provider. There were many difficulties for them over the 20 + years I have known them. Yet she stayed. And she never ‘shit tested’ him, whatever that means. I used to confide in her my problems. She was and is a great listener and a gentle soul. She never ever brought up the idea of divorce or encouraged bitterness. With friends like these, it is hard to go wrong.
Her husband’s health problems include a loss of testosterone production. Due to a pituitary tumor he doesn’t produce it and even if he takes supplements, his body converts it into something else. You can imagine the effect that has. Loss of energy, libido, a higher pitched voice and so on. Lowers his desirability, I’m sure. But he is her husband, the father of her children. So it was and is and so it shall stay. My friend doesn’t complain, she simply carrys on.
Your prayers are greatly appreciated. I must add that I found Lyn87’s posts very enlightening. You write well and make good logical points. And I appreciate your blog, Dalrock, even though I just found it.
Everyone has their secret enclave of Godly young women to marry, yet the Godly young men cannot find them….. something doesn’t add up. Reckon some folks over estimate the value of people they know and like?
Shell
My initial comment was harsh, I admit, but truthful.
No it was not at all truthful. It was just your opinion. When you imply that the Almighty’s designs are antiquated, one must wonder from what authority do base your conclusions.
s/b – from what authority do you base your conclusions.
An example marital shit test I named The Restaurant Catch-22:
Him: Hi Honey I’m home! Is that dinner I smell?
Her: No, that was some drive-thru I brought home for a late lunch. By the way I didn’t go to the grocery store again today, so we’ll have to go out to eat again. I’m sorry, I know I said I was going to do better, but there it is.
Him: Ok. Well, I’ve been at work all day and I exercised at lunch so I’d like to eat sooner than later. Let’s go to Restaurant A, I like it and they serve large portions.
Her: No, we ate there last week. But I don’t care where we go, except A. Just pick somewhere, while I get ready.
Him (later at door, whistling): We’re going to Restaurant B. I found a coupon for 50% off in the newspaper while you were getting ready! Isn’t that great?
Her (whining): No, the last two times we ate at B I got kind of sick, even though you didn’t, and I don’t think it was a coincidence. I won’t go to B, not tonight, because I’m already not feeling very well anyway. So, not B, but pick somewhere we can both enjoy, please, and keep in mind I’m not very hungry.
Him: We sure want you to feel good tonight, heh heh. So, C it is then! A little expensive, but you’re worth it, heh heh. Maybe we can get that dessert you like, and share it, or bring it home for a midnight snack in bed, heh heh.
Her (in car now, en route): No, I’m not really dressed for C. I’m dressed for more like A, since that’s what you said you wanted at first. There’s a lot of restaurants like A. Just pick one.
Him: Ok, then I pick D. Remember they have the two buffet choices, the mega bar for me and the little bar for you.
Her: No. D is halfway across town and I might be getting a little carsick already. I’m sure there’s others. Can’t you just pick one good one?
Him (finally beginning to commence to start to show some annoyance): I’ve already picked four good ones. Clearly you must have something in mind, so tell me where you want to go.
Her (with real anger): No! I already told you! I don’t care! I’m not hungry! You pick something! Why do I always have to tell you where I want to go?
Him (rationally): You are doing it again, the way you always do, the way you said you would try to stop doing. You are irrationally trying to annoy me as though you find arguing to be a meaningful interaction. I hate it, and obviously you don’t like it either. So stop it. Either pick somewhere right now, or I will.
Her (fuming): No. I already told you I don’t want to pick.
Him (abruptly pulling into E): Fine. Here we are at E. (getting out of car) You can come in or stay in the car. I’ve picked here.
Her: No! This is a bad neighborhood. I’m not going in there, and I can’t stay in the car either, it’s not safe! If you’re going to be in a bad mood, and put us all in danger, then you’d better take me home instead.
Him (sighing, and geting back in): Sigh. I’ll just drive-thru somewhere. Sigh.
Her (later at home): Why did you make me eat fast food twice today? How come we never go anywhere? Why don’t you like my company any more? What is wrong with you? Why do you just sit and sigh? Why don’t you talk to me? Etc etc etc etc.
Augustina
I loved your story. That you actually imagined your husbands circumstances post divorce and took that into account is something I have never, not once, heard any women say. I would have said, unequivocally, that women considering divorce have zero capacity for empathizing with men. Now, I know there is at least one exception.
I wish you blessings
To the question of women having the capacity, ability, whatever, to love selflessly, it all reads very tidy when its presented as it is here. But then you write about game, and hypergamy, and how game checks hypergamy, it does not all roll out in an orderly way. The two topics if parallel, zero intersection, agree or disagree with either, stay consistent logically. But when taken together they seem mutually exclusive.
You cannot say women can do X unconditionally/selflessly, then elsewhere say to men, if you want X from your wife you must do Y,
Shell,
Yes I get it. You got your daily dose of feminist empowerment at the expense of the men here. Instead of being proud of your accomplishments, you can feel superior to these men of accomplishment by insinuating that they have some sort of mental or emotional problem.
These “American men” who are preoccupied with gender roles must have “issues” right?
Good. Because we are in possession of something that God Almighty has also. I am not ashamed of having the same “issues” that God possesses. I boast of my “foolishness”, because it is the wisdom of God.
And you speak of “love” as if you understand love. But my Lord is the author of love. And all the Law and Prophets, which you reject, are the articulation of the greatest Law, which is love of God and man.
So instead of condemning us, you are condemning yourself. Your hated has no place here, because this is a place of love where God is worshiped.
Shell is just talking shit. No body in a truly happy sexual relationship finds a men blog. She would have never even heard of Dalrock if she had her act together. She is playing S&M games so somebody here will spank her with an argument.
Liberty, Family, and Masculinity says:
December 29, 2013 at 4:02 pm
Well said.
Ton
All these great women to marry and no twitter introduction for Lief Erickson. I don’t need one so none you guys send a golden flower to greyghost.
LOL , howzit going brother?
I wonder how all the military standards have been relaxed sense all the field grades are such upright bastions of traditionalism??? But be those damn 01 & enlisted men…. expect it the officers that make those.decisions/ create policy….
Late to the party here.
FH asked SSM, why would a woman sign on for a duty to a man she isn’t attracted to?
Raw hypergamy (think Anna Nicole Smith, only better executed and less obvious). It doesn’t usually succeed over the long term, though. Extremely rare is the woman whose hypergamous avarice is stronger than the revulsion she feels for the husband to whom she is not attracted and that gives her the inner strength to maintain a permanent facade of attraction.
I read that exchange on the military officers. You don’t get promoted if you aren’t liberal and if you do slip through better follow the party line or else. Doing well. Got the wife graduated from school. And she held my ar-15 and looked through the re dot sight. She is one of those I hate guns types. but I can tell she is glad her husband doesn’t.
@Shell
seems to be a uniquely American neurosis
It is worth looking at the state of American families to see why that might be the case.
By the way, were you ever a commenter on CAF?
But yes, American men have seemingly changed… http://flyoverculturedotcom.files.wordpress.com/2013/12/pajama-boy-the-american-male.png
Good to hear brother, God bless you and yours
Greg, this blog was referenced by a friend who is struggling with marital problems and hopes he’ll find a solution here, so I came to see what it is that he could learn. I hope he finds what he’s looking for.
LFM, I may not possess that “something that God Almighty has also” (?), but I have 30+ years of good marriage that’s getting better with time, and that has surmounted many existential challenges including a few very similar to those described by Augustina (raising kids with health problems, our own serious health crises, and loss of faith in our chances to survive on both sides at different times during our life together) to support my view of marriage (which, by the way, is based on unconditional love and forgiveness).
Marcus, I don’t know what CAF is and was never there.
Yes, it is worth looking at the state of American families, most definitely. But American families are comprised of women *and* men, both of whom are struggling terribly, not in the least because of the inhumane conditions of the American society. Part of that inhumanity involves pitting men and women against each other in an endless competition for ever-dwindling resources and making them enemies rather friends and lovers. Unfortunately, I see a lot of what many of you advocate here – those crutches I mentioned earlier (female submission, game, etc.) – as part of this unhelpful process of increasing competition between men and women rather than dismantling it. As I see it, there is no room – or need – in a loving marriage for “game” or rigid role expectations, both of which dehumanize it and diminish love between spouses rather than increase it. If, for example, Augustina, who subscribes to the wifely submission model were to stick to it no matter what, her marriage would fall apart, as her husband was unable and unwilling to lead in the prescribed fashion. Instead, she took charge – after growing into this decision through painful experiences – relieving her husband of the responsibility which was impossible for him to fulfill. By doing so, she saved her family and both she and her husband became happier and more at peace. There are many families like hers all around us, by the way. Insisting that they adhere to some rigid ideas of how things should be, no matter their particular characters and circumstances, is a way toward marital disaster, in my opinion.
I firmly believe that love, compassion, and forgiveness – and not game or rigid gender roles – are the key to successful marriage. You don’t have to take my word for it, of course, but I have my marriage to prove it and that’s enough, for me.
P.S. Grey, not Greg – sorry.
You guys crack me up.
That’s right we are some goddamn entertaining MOFO’s
I have my marriage to prove it and that’s enough, for me.
So, sample size of 1?
—-
Anyhow, the reason I asked about CAF is because sound/write just like someone who also a commenter there.
You are a woman, no?
Augustina, I know it’s easy for me to say, but as far as ‘neutral’ did you ever explore his fantasies or share yours? Marriage seems like the best place for such explorations to take place, especially if you are at ‘neutral’. It seems like if you want to get to be tingly for your spouse, you should start searching the parts you don’t know. You might stumble on something that doesn’t make you feel ‘neutral’.
So much in Augustina’s moving post.
Not many people can see the distinction between the types different types of love; conflating, love, lust and affection, yet the problem of love is at the core of our modern malaise.
Clearly, Augustina’s husband did not give her the “tingles” and yet she’s stuck with him through thick and thin, and despite his obvious faults. Indeed, his lack of alpha qualities put a strain on their marriage. Rollo? It wasn’t self interest there, it was concern for her husband.
A point of theological reflection. Does a husband’s failure to cultivate alpha qualities (executive function) put the marriage in danger of divorce? For a different post perhaps?
Secondly, the type of love that Augustina expressed for her husband is not the stuff that you can get from Game. That love, which goes by the theological name of Caritas, is something a person gives, independently of the quality of the other. It’s a supernatural gift from God. In looking for a wife, I’d advise my boys to look for a girl who posses this quality pretty much above all else. Sluts, hot sex and “wuv” come and go, but Caritas stays. Caritas loves you when you are unlovable and gameless.
Rollo Says that a woman can never love a man like he would want her to, but Augustina’s example(and lots of other women I know) proves him wrong. The love/caritas of a good woman is one of God’s gits to man. My wife does not give me everything I want, but it’s not because she doesn’t want to, it’s because she knows that its the wrong thing for me. It’s taken me many years to realise this and that’s why she’s a keeper. She’s looking after me.
That’s the paradox of a happy Christian marriage. The Christian wife, in order to be happy, has to know that her husband has real options but won’t exercise that ability because because her loves her. On the other hand, a good Christian wife can be miserable in a marriage yet still stick to her husband because she possesses Caritas.
God’s peace, Augustina.
I see a lot of what many of you advocate here – those crutches I mentioned earlier (female submission, game, etc.) – as part of this unhelpful process of increasing competition between men and women rather than dismantling it.
You have that exactly backwards. It was the process of dismantling the Biblical family model (what you allude to as crutches) that has generated much of the ‘competition’ between men and women. However, I don’t think anyone can honestly call it competition when it’s really just trading one protector/provider for another (husband for government).
Augustina’s example IS one of submission. And the love, compassion, and forgiveness you lay claim to wouldn’t even be a human concept were it not for us being made in the image of the creator who’s very nature is love, compassion, and forgiveness. This same creator is the one who gave us these roles that you so much despise.
Lyn87 thanks for the interesting information on sophroneo.
Augustina, may the Lord bless you and your household for your devotion to your husband.
@ Augustina:
“Generally speaking, a woman’s sexual desire is inconstant. It doesn’t always match up with how attractive her husband is. With something as complex as sex, you can’t come up with simple explanations. There are many reasons a woman may no longer feel sexual desire for her husband.”
To me it seems it almost always DOES match up with how attractive a woman’s husband is perceived to be. This is why hard attraction is a key ingredient to a more sexually successful marriage. Hormones/feelings/pregnancy illness/physical ailments be damned – if a woman DESIRES her husband, she’s going to want him consistently. And it follows that marriages that are sexually united have a better chance of being pleasurable and successful in every area. (My reasoning being that a sated man is a happy man, and a physically connected woman is a bonded woman.)
So marriages where the woman is sexually attracted to her husband are marriages that are enjoyed rather than just endured. Make any sense?! Does in my little brain 🙂
Read as many of Deti’s comments as you can find for comprehensive logical explanation of this idea.
@Wisdom Prevails:
“The power of feminism is strong though and most of you can’t even understand how an arranged marriage could possibly work. Simply being a man and a woman is in many cases all it takes for attraction. That same woman or man who find each other repulsive in New York would be having sex everyday while stranded on a deserted island. Attraction is a complex beast, of that there is no question.”
This is my belief also. Without literally being stranded on an island, I think women could eliminate much of what they compare their own man to. Magazines, books, advertisements, tv shows, movies, facebook, twitter etc and ladies lunches all do little more than creating envy and a false sense of entitlement.
Who’s going to come up shining in comparison to some fictional perfect specimen created in imagination?!
I’m just about out of these conversations as I’ve done some hard thinking about the added value of my contributions. Pretty sure anything on track I might say is already said better by the men, so I’ll stick with mostly reading.
But there’s one thing that’s very intriguing to me to get to the bottom of – I’m in agreement with jf12’s comment here:
https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2013/12/27/who-loves-best/#comment-103459
about submission TO authority being the key or downfall. It makes sense, it lines up with the word of God in the way jf12 explains… and yet there seems to be another school of thought around here that such a concept is somehow upside down leading… in that a female is considered still in charge if it is her that begins to submit before her man begins to lead.
To me it seems the man doesn’t need to DO anything. He just IS the captain of the ship.
A woman may have married a dynamic captain, or an apathetic one… obviously these two ships are going to move at a very different pace. So what? In what part of the bible does it say that the aim of marriage is to get that ship moving anywhere anyway regardless of who takes the wheel? Pretty sure nowhere, and I think the best marriages are the ones where the woman knows that her man’s in charge of where they go, even if that’s nowhere, and that her job is to make it a sweet and joyful ride 🙂
Of course if she can figure out that her man has power over her due to his being male, that goes a long way in reassigning attraction levels which would make it easier for the woman to be sweeter and more joyful anyway!
Seems to be a cycle no matter which way you look at it – either sweet or sour. And it would seem that women are the ones strongly influencing the flavour.
Blessings to you all in Yeshua,
Hannah
SlumLord
I like your comment “Caritas” is a word I need to research. Simulated caritas would be an UMC woman not wishing to be seen as a baby momma or a slut. So behaves as necessary. The woman in question has it naturally. What would be an interesting display of leadership is how to develop that tendency as a cultural norm. I have a 13 year old daughter and it would be interesting to find a way to make Caritas a normal part of her being. Not something she has to do for personal gain. Women with that live with so much joy and adoring respect well past the 15-30 sexual privilege years.
Hannah, I agree with your post. Yes yes. I believe we should be teaching the young how to BE attractive. But because parents are afraid their teenagers will get laid, we do the opposite which causes more problems. It seems the young simply have to rebel from the way they were raised to just get a mate.
@Augustina
A big thank you for the exposure of your personal and intimate thoughts to us.
I often wondered why some charming alpha’s I know struck out some (very few) times to get sex from eligible women. And I guess sometimes it can be simply explained as ‘Timing’.
Unfortunately u are 1 in a million. Most women would have divorced a long time ago. All the info-mercials, even some TED-talks are mostly focused on HAPPINESS and DUTY is rarely if ever mentioned.
Part of the sermon tonight at church tonight (a Sunday night service is usually three hours or more) touched on a relevant portion of Scripture in which love isn’t reciprocated properly. But note that Paul here admits gaming the Corinthian church!
2 Cor 12:15-16 And I will very gladly spend and be spent for you; though the more abundantly I love you, the less I be loved. But be it so, I did not burden you: nevertheless, being crafty, I caught you with guile.
And flipping back through I found some other examples of Paul gaming, for instance doing compliance testing (2 Cor 2:9). This seems to me to put renewed Biblical validation of game, but presumably some here are already familiar with Biblical examples. Is there a list somewhere, or should we start one?
jf12 – what translation are you using? I ask because the English Standard looks considerably different from what you posted:
2 Cor
15 I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls. If I love you more, am I to be loved less? 16 But granting that I myself did not burden you, I was crafty, you say, and got the better of you by deceit. 17 Did I take advantage of you through any of those whom I sent to you? 18 I urged Titus to go, and sent the brother with him. Did Titus take advantage of you? Did we not act in the same spirit? Did we not take the same steps?
The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2001). (2 Co 12:15–18).
Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.
Re: male attractiveness and “having sex everyday while stranded on a deserted island”. It doesn’t last. The reason is not due to hypergamy, or relative SMV, or anything. MOST long term relationships had sex daily (or so) at the beginning. MOST long term relationships decay after a short honeymoon period into a couple times per week for younger couples and then way down to a couple times per month for older couples (dividing line 50ish i.e. menopause). It doesn’t matter about the man for MOST couples: if they do not follow this pattern it is because the woman is different.
Re: version KJV of couse. It doesn’t look considerably different to me. Same as NABRE:
2 Cor 12:15-16 I will most gladly spend and be utterly spent for your sakes. If I love you more, am I to be loved less? But granted that I myself did not burden you, yet I was crafty and got the better of you by deceit.
What different meaning are you seeing?
@Hannah, thanks. Recall Peter specifically instructed wives to be submissive even to ungodly husbands (1 Pet 3:1-6). No wife ever has any Biblical justification for not being submissive, no matter how undominant or lousy leader the husband is.
@GreyGhost:
Caritas is a word from classical Latin, that was borrowed into English hundreds of years ago as “charity”. In French it survives as “cher” (beloved).
In Latin it denoted intrinsic value. To feel caritas is to recognize something as valuable. I believe it was used in Ovid’s *art of love* but am too lazy to check. In any event, it was originally defined far more broadly.
Interesing little tidbit, If you’re into Heideggerian phenomenology, it’s the telos of dasein (though in most English translations, the word “care” is used, rather than “charity” — a sister descendant of the original root).
Best, Boxer
just remember….the stronger the man you are, the less margin of error she is gonna give you. for a man at the top, a cold lasting more than a day or two will net you a very angry and frustrated woman. ask me how i know.
a truly kind woman and a seemingly very beta male…….that could very well work. but i suggest it’s SMV matching and an enhanced ability to think long term, not love.
i posit that biomechanics still rule.
Shell, i bet your guy is a real dreamboat. yuck.
While I think everything (or nearly everything) mentioned upthread regarding a firm basis for mate preferences is correct (e.g. neurochemicals), I still think people are forgetting things like associative mating along sociosexual orientation.
“ask me how i know.”
I’m guessing this scenerio has happened to you.
Perhaps the woman was just looking for a reason to be angry…it’s not like the pursuit of happiness is tops on their list.
JF12 What different meaning are you seeing?
The translations you’ve posted quote Paul as saying he got the better of the readers by deceit. The ESV version I posted state Paul was accused of getting the better of the readers by deceit.
https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2013/12/27/who-loves-best/#comment-103224
Cail,
I don’t know a lot of men who at least outwardly profess the expectations you intimate. It might be the circles I run in and/or my own biases given the wringer I’ve been through over the last three years, but the ratio of women who are dissatisfied (and openly complain about it) with their dutiful if unromantic husbands to men who voice any kind of displeasure with their wives for being insufficiently princess-like.
What am I missing?
https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2013/12/27/who-loves-best/#comment-103229
Spot on.
True sacramental marriage absolutely requires both parties to give 100% at all times in recognition of the fact that at any given point in time, or perhaps for the duration of the marriage, one of those parties can not or will not hold up his or her share.
To tie in what deti said upthread, by definition the man in today’s marriage environment will have to give more than 50% by virtue of the horrendously lopsided jurisprudence in US domestic relations courts.
innocentbystanderboston says:
December 27, 2013 at 5:29 pm
I can honestly say that I did not have to work really hard prior to marriage to keep my now ex-wife interested in the relationship, but I suspect that may have been due at least in part to the idea that I married her late (she was 32; I was 25), and she really wanted to be a mother and needed a breadwinner around. It became apparent to me very early on that she was openly hostile to the idea that the husband-wife relationship should be the primary, bedrock element of the family.
Perhaps my situation does not qualify as a frivorce according to some; no physicality, infidelity, substance abuse or failure to provide on my part but I will admit to having a very sharp tongue. A man can only take so much.
innocentbystanderboston says:
December 27, 2013 at 11:36 pm
Probably very good advice for LFM. I suspect that there is practically no way a person with an IQ of 144+ could possibly explain a point of view to anyone other than those at the top end of the next standard deviation down, who by definition are also exceedingly intelligent. It is the equivalent of LeBron James trying to ‘teach’ the average person how to play basketball at the NBA level; it’s absolutely pointless as his proficiency depends upon essentially 100% nature.
Intelligence per se, as others have postulated above, is not an attractant. It can to some extent enhance other positive qualities but only nominally.
MarcusD says:
December 29, 2013 at 1:51 am
Hivemind indeed. I gave up posting at CAF a couple of months ago. I never got banned, but I did get sick of the feminist, modernist view of Catholic marriage propagated there (nebulous definition of abuse – divorce – liberal annulment – remarriage). It is an echo chamber.
If you think that a man cannot create attraction/desire where absolutely none existed before, you aren’t running around with a hot enough pre-selection wingman.
My wingman is about 5’8″, long legs, D cups, long blond hair, and VERY pretty blue eyes. She’s a solid 8. She’d be an 8.5 if she’d drop 10 or 15 pounds. She’s 24.
She has created (by her mere presence) attraction/desire in two different women, who had none for me before. One I got the bang, and one rejected me. (I have reason to believe the second one didn’t think I was obtainable, but I may not be correct on that).
From my experience, I say game (ESPECIALLY pre-selection), can most certainly create attraction/desire that was not there before.
However, that having been said, attraction/desire most certainly CANNOT be negotiated. I cannot think of a conversation more likely to make her drier than the Sahara than “Ok, woman, if I do ‘X’, will that make you sexually attracted to me?”
@Tilikum
Why would you do this to a woman who is already carrying a heavy load?
Edit: I originally was thinking of Augustina, not Shell when I read this, but I see that I was clearly mistaken. Still, this impulse to disparage women’s husbands isn’t one of kindness, no matter how much this is claimed. Either the man being disparaged isn’t really that bad, and you are sowing discord in a good man’s home, or the man really is quite difficult to be married to, in which case you are increasing the burden of an already heavily burdened wife. I’d have to re read the thread to see which this is with Shell, but neither answer is good.
@Shell
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of game in marriage. Bonald had the same concern, which I addressed here.
I’d have to re read the thread to see which this is with Shell, but neither answer is good.
I’d surmise the woman’s husband is to be pitied, as “egalitarian” and “equal” marriages are code-word for “she wears the pants” and “he’s been beaten completely into submission” (and doubtless has been suffering under his wife’s contempt for years).
I say this in part because her statement that “female submission as a necessary affirmation of their masculinity” indicates complete contempt for masculinity, masculine traits, as well as femininity and feminine traits.
Furthermor Shell’s statement:
The cookie cutter approach to marriage, with rigidly defined gender roles, is bound to create lots of unnecessary frustrations and suffering, especially when confronted with real life challenges, rather than abstract or imaginary ones,
displays a remarkable level of ignorance of the pain and suffering blue-pillers have suffered from trying to implement her “egalitarian” model, as well as the numerous red-pillers whose real-life “messy” experiences validate a number of concepts that Shell so haughtily disparages.
@A Northern Observer,
this word-discussion touches on many interests and directions, and I hope it continues. Clearly Paul is against malicious deceit etc. But the theme of this whole section is Paul stooping to pretend to be foolish in order to better convince the Corinthians, and it cannot be missed that he keeps reminding them that appearances can be deceiving. Note the ideas leading up to the verse (12:16) under discussion (ESV)
10:1 I, Paul, myself entreat you, by the meekness and gentleness of Christ—I who am humble when face to face with you, but bold toward you when I am away!—
9-10 I do not want to appear to be frightening you with my letters. For they say, “His letters are weighty and strong, but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech of no account.”
11:1 I wish you would bear with me in a little foolishness. Do bear with me!
8 I robbed other churches by accepting support from them in order to serve you.
16-17 I repeat, let no one think me foolish. But even if you do, accept me as a fool, so that I too may boast a little. What I am saying with this boastful confidence, I say not as the Lord would but as a fool.
12:11 I have been a fool! You forced me to it, for I ought to have been commended by you. For I was not at all inferior to these super-apostles, even though I am nothing.
13 For in what were you less favored than the rest of the churches, except that I myself did not burden you? Forgive me this wrong!
Especially, take note of Paul’s complaint in verse 11: the Corinthians did not value him as highly as they ought to. And note that Paul says that the Corinthian’s complaint is that he did not let them pay him! This is the *opposite* of the way you seem to be reading ESV verse 16, in which you say Paul was being accused of taking from them.
Re: more compliance testing by Paul.
2 Cor 8:8 I speak not by commandment, but by occasion of the forwardness of others, and to prove the sincerity of your love.
Again, this is Paul explicitly saying he was compliance testing. I would bet a more experienced game reader could find dozens of narrative examples of the apostles gaming people.
Re: verse 16. Perhaps we can agree that Paul is saying he foresaw that some would accuse him of deceiving by trying to get money (e.g.) by *appearing* not to get money, and therefore he refused to be a burden even though that’s what they wanted, in order for him to be able to claim to be right all along. In other words even in that interpretation, he outfoxed the foxes anyway, inevitably.
@A Northern Observer
You might call a rebellious wife a third category, although it is generally the case in the first category I offered. Either way, disparaging the husband of a rebellious wife only encourages more rebellion. As you say, she already holds him in contempt. Encouraging her in her contempt isn’t loving to anyone involved.
jf12 – glad to oblige on the word study. 🙂
The quote you posted for 2 Cor 12:15-16 was:
And I will very gladly spend and be spent for you; though the more abundantly I love you, the less I be loved. But be it so, I did not burden you: nevertheless, being crafty, I caught you with guile.
(https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2013/12/27/who-loves-best/#comment-103507)
The ESV version I have says:
But granting that I myself did not burden you, I was crafty, you say, and got the better of you by deceit.
Both versions infer that Paul’s refusal to accept payment was considered trickery. The difference between them is who’se asserting it was trickery. The version you posted omits the “you say” so it reads that Paul was telling his readers “I tricked you.” The ESV version I have says Paul’s readers accused him of tricking them by refusing payment.
Therein lies the difference.
re: v16 – as I understand such things, it was common practice at the time for travelling “prophets” to make money by their preaching, so much so that it was expected behavior.
Given this environment, Paul’s refusal to accept compensation would raise suspicions – “what’s he really up to?” This in turn could easily lead us to Paul’s readers accusing Paul of some form of trickery because he’s not acting the usual, expected manner, and “of course”, nobody does that unless they have an agenda. 🙂
Re: verse 16. Yes, but “you say” was inserted for clarity by the ESV translators, because it’s not in the original text. It’s not the case that “you say” is omitted in other versions since by definition something that wasn’t there can’t be omitted. But I think we are in agreement.
I think Paul was fulfilling Jesus’ commandment in Matt 10:16 Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.
This raises a question. Paul said he deliberately appeared to be foolish for a purpose i.e. as part of his mission. Clearly, very often it is necessary for a man to act beta as part of his husbandly mission. Apart from Christian game, though, what part does acting beta play in game?
Hmm….. checking my various translations, they have a number of different ways of translating it. Consulting a “word study” I have for that passage, it relates this:
16. With guile. Alluding to a charge that he availed himself of the collection for the poor to secure money for himself. He uses his adversaries’ words.
Vincent, M. R. (1887). Word studies in the New Testament (Vol. 3, p. 357). New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
Hmm….this interpretation is completely new to me.
Apart from Christian game, though, what part does acting beta play in game?
I’d surmise that there are times to be the comfortable beta, and there are times to be the dominant alpha. Know when to be which – and for how long – is the real trick. Overdoing the comfortable beta winds up with a discontented partner. Being a perma-alpha means never letting your guard down.
Know when to be which – and for how long – is the real trick. Overdoing the comfortable beta winds up with a discontented partner. Being a perma-alpha means never letting your guard down.
Based on my observations and personal experience, I’d say if you’re having to worry about balancing Alpha/Beta in the first place, err on the side of overdoing the alpha.
“Know when to be which – and for how long – is the real trick. Overdoing the comfortable beta winds up with a discontented partner. Being a perma-alpha means never letting your guard down.”
More supplicating to entertain women. If you have to do anything other than be who you are, you are wasting effort on something that isn’t worth it.
If you have to do anything other than be who you are
Been taking relationship advice from women much?
Flaming with people like @Shell is almost always pointless. They aren’t here to learn anything, or teach anything, nor are they here to debate the issues or argue in good faith. They’re just here to read themselves typing.
Masochists and feminists like conflict because they’re essentially dead inside. The conflict and angst makes them feel “alive”. Spending time on them merely honors the unworthy.
“But if what you say is true that you try to convince people of the rightness of your ideas, that may not be a very intelligent thing to do. Someone with an IQ of 144, should probably rethink that. That might be the reason you don’t generate attraction.”
Now we’re re-framing intelligence to mean emotional intelligence. Sounds like something a female would say complete with condescending tone.
Face it, real intelligence is not that attractive to females.
The hyper intelligent kids in school are untouchables, it doesn’t get much better after that unless he uses it to get his hands on some big ole bags of money.
One problem with being intelligent is that most females are dumb, it’s not fun talking to 99% of them.
Game is learning how to hide your intelligence, an example would be Heartiste’s text game.
Sending short, incoherent messages with no capitalization.
@hurting
nebulous definition of abuse
Well, it’s one of “I’ll decide when I see it.” Basically, there’s no definition given. That’s standard for bills in government – define the terms to your liking later – just get the opponent to accept the entire thing now.
I’ve also seen people argue (on CAF, no less) that marriage is inherently abusive to women. I can only imagine the outcomes that could lead to.
There’s one thread that I’ve read that basically summarizes (in terms of behaviours) all that I find annoying about CAF – I’ll repost the link here or on my blog in the next while.
I can see this not working out: http://www.zazzle.com/feminist_dad_rules_for_dating_my_daughter_t_shirt-235661164379045776
All this chest thumping about IQ reminds me of the man who had his childhood test framed and mounted in his office, in order to mock the bright-but-lazy underachievers who sat on the other side of his desk. That man was Dr. Richard Feynman, winner of the Nobel Prize, and his IQ was said to be 98, by those dudes and dudettes who had to retake his courses after failing them.
Even the most intelligent women aren’t fun to talk to. I work with some females who are far more intelligent than I am, and in all the ways that matter to everyday experience, I still consider them idiots. They consider me an idiot too, as they should. Men and women see the world in conceptually different ways, and have different priorities.
Note that this is neither bad nor good. It just is. God and/or Nature made us to have babies together and couple up to survive in hostile environments; not to be pals or BFFs. My opinion is that we have been born with different strengths for that purpose.
One problem with being intelligent is that most females are dumb
Hmmm…?
IQ: in terms of IQ distribution, males are more likely to be really smart or really dumb, as compared to women. Women are more likely to be average (around 100).
Schooling: More women attend university than men.
Learning: This might be the difference. While I can’t call my own anecdotes generalizable, women I’ve met generally have an airhead-like way about them – whether it’s real or a facade, I don’t know. If they don’t do that, nearly all of the rest try way too hard to demonstrate the extent of their schooling. Either way, these personality flaws are the fault of The Patriarchy (TM).
There is no chest thumping so calm down.
I’m not talking about ability to pass a test, I’m talking about ability or interest to holding an intelligent conversation outside of childish topics and small talk.
Lot’s of people think college enrollment is proof of intelligence when it is only proof that you can follow directions and memorize by rote like a monkey.
I know plenty of women with master’s degrees and they do not remember much about what they studied or want to talk about it because…they are dumb. They want a guy to “make them laugh” because they are semi-retarded..
If you think your degree or the job you have is proof of intelligence you’re probably dumb. Plenty of geniuses are underachievers. Women judge intelligence by credentials, morons often make that mistake.
The average woman does not have the ability to hold an opinion on any serious issue and back up what she says with anything resembling logic. Try talking to a female about politics and listen to the nonsense that comes out.
Furthermore she would hate to do so and get frustrated and lose attraction for the man who made her feel that way.
Plenty of men fall into this category but I don’t care since I don’t want to screw them.
Game is the art of taking a nerd (polite, intelligent, well behaved man) and having him mimic the traits of a dull, borderline sociopath so females will not ignore him when he talks.
If you don’t believe me, read heartiste.
Marcus, that T shirt should have UBBER Beta and my daughter is a future cat lady on the front.
That would most likely be true, yes.
That said, letting young people (men and women) set “their” “rules” seems rather silly -their ability for unsound judgment is practically infamous.
@John South,
actually I believe your definition of game to be almost exact. The worst thing about it is that it works.
Last night I was in a church in Ciudad Mendoza in the state of Vera Cruz. A “niece” (daughter of my wife’s cousin) was having a 15th birthday celebration, consisting of Mass followed by a major party in a salon.
As the mass was going on, in walked a family. A teen-age girl had on a white sweatshirt. On the back it said in large letters: GOT GAME?
The Mexican youth don’t always understand the sweatshirts in English, so there is no way to know if she knew what it meant.
On the back it said in large letters: GOT GAME?
In that context “game” would be taken to mean “spirit” or “pluck” (or “full of fighting spirit”).
Anonymous age 71 I’m pretty sure GOT GAME? would seem to be asking if you have skills (well most likely skillz but yeah I’m too nerdy to run with that!)
From memory, a lot of ghetto type movies such as Ice Cube’s Friday from 95 mention game in this context. Example:
“Mrs. Jones: Craig, you know what your problem is? You have no game.
Craig Jones: What do you know about game? I got all the game.
Mrs. Jones: Now your father, he got game.
Mr. Jones: [coming out of the bathroom] Don’t nobody go in that bathroom for about 35, 45 minutes. [sniffs around] Someone open a window.
Craig Jones: You call that game??”
Ok that’s a revolting example, but there it is. It’s in a lot of rap and hip hop songs too fwiw….
Public Enemy flashbacks –
“It might feel good
It might sound a little somethin
but damn the game if it don’t mean nuttin
What is game? Who is game?
Where’s the game in life behind the game behind the game
I got game, she’s got game
We got game, they got game, he got game
It might feel good
It might sound a little somethin
but fuck the game if it ain’t sayin nuttin”
http://www.publicenemy.com/album/2/102/he-got-game.html
So, I came across this earlier:
23 THINGS TO DO INSTEAD OF GETTING ENGAGED BEFORE YOU’RE 23
http://wanderonwards.com/2013/12/30/23-things-to-do-instead-of-getting-engaged-before-youre-23/
Inside the mind…
Dalrock, I just skimmed the first 50-100 replies, but I think everyone is missing the Scripture in this case. Husbands wouldn’t be told to love their wives if that was easy for me. We don’t have to be told to do what is easy, we have to be told what is hard. It is far harder for a wife to respect her husband than it is for her to love him. Modern society may have thrown it for a loop in some cases, but I have not seen enough compelling evidence presented that all women cannot love.
I think this fits into the “are women free moral agents” argument that went on a long while back. I have forgotten the specifics, but I recall the same ones arguing that they are not, to one extent or another and that I was a because I said they were. (I may be mixing things since it has been a while.)
I believe your ultimate foundation is on God’s Word and it would be interesting to see that addressed in this context, though you may have already done so and I just missed it.
As to negotiation, game, etc. It is all the same thing, just to different degrees. Kind of like the maxim that war is just politics carried to the extreme. The early argument was a lot of semantic mumbo jumbo. We all try to get things to go our own way, to some extent. You can’t talk someone into loving you, but you can make it a whole lot easier. This seems to be one of those “you will never win” arguments since the claim can always be made that “the attraction was always there” if it ever shows up later.
I have seen and read enough believe that any emotion can be changed with serious effort and personal action. I could make myself attracted to someone if I decided to do so, as my emotions are ultimately under my control. It would be extremely difficult in some cases, but it is adjustable.
That is why the Scriptures tell us to rule our mind. The difficulty of doing so does not negate the goal to aim at doing so.
This bears more thought though. Unfortunately, these discussion often go way too fast for that.
@BradA,
The giant relationship problem is that there isn’t a symmetry of ease or effect between the genders. Let us suppose as you say that what is difficult for men is to love a wife that is disrespectful to him. In other words, her being respectful makes it easier for him to love. Now lets flip it. You say it is difficult for her to respect him. Does his love for her make it easier? NO! The singularly essential red pill truth is that the more love he shows for her, the less she will respect him. It is a rare unicorn woman indeed who responds any other way.
So what makes a woman show respect to a man? I’m here to tell you that his respectability doesn’t matter for that. Although Rollo and others posit her mercenary instinct as motive to most instances i.e. her operating under “what’s in it for me” rules, clearly women can choose to show respect to a man even if they don’t want to.
Donal has upped the game, so to speak, moving on from merely having difficulties being attractive to a woman to now having difficulties being adored by a woman.
http://donalgraeme.wordpress.com/2013/12/29/godly-masculinity-versus-game/
I am/was as worthy of adoration as any man, and you don’t need details. Suffice to say being adorable doesn’t get you adoration from women automatically, in the same way that being respectable doesn’t get you respect from women automatically. Women are broken; they do not function properly.
MarcusD et. al:
On the off chance you didn’t see it yet, Sunshine Mary and les dames de sa maison did a rather effective takedown of that nonsense here:
http://sunshinemaryandthedragon.wordpress.com/2013/12/30/possibly-the-worst-advice-for-young-women-in-the-whole-history-of-the-internet/
I tend to agree with the good ladies in her comments section. This sort of unwanted, never-asked-for “advice” is most likely self-reassuring for the author, who is no-doubt surrounded by peers who are settling down into marriages and LTRs. The prospective spinster hates nothing more viciously than the creep of time toward last call.
Regards, Boxer
Looking at the 23 skan………..correction ho……….correction har ……….correction girl I can imagine she will hit the wall of loss of looks earlier and much harder than normal. Buy cat food stock.
@Boxer
Thanks for the link – I hadn’t seen that post yet. I’m also in general agreement with the comments. There is definitely a case of self-reassurance at play in that list.
Buy cat food stock.
Already done. Also, got stock in tattoo removal companies (see: http://www.cnbc.com/id/25706658).
https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2013/12/27/who-loves-best/#comment-103547
Marcus,
The modern RCC in the USA has been corrupted by its overreliance on the helping professions (you would have thought they might have reconsidered given the horrible advice they received from the professionals re the sexual abuse problems). These professions are steeped in the Duluth model which definitely sees traditional patriarchical marriage as abuse per se under the charge of ‘control’. The helping professions are also amoral, that is to say, morally relativistic, putting them squarely at odds with the Christian concepts of absolute truth.
The approach for most dioceses in the US is to flood the airwaves with advice on how it’s OK to leave a civil marriage due to abuse. What is left out is that even a separation from the conjugal life short of civil divorce is supposed to require dispensation from the bishop or his designee per canon law; I was told flatly by my own bishop that ‘we don’t do that anymore’ with no further explanation. The leavers are then encouraged to seek an annulment (with some really fine print about how nothing’s guaranteed) that in all likelihhod they’ll receive under the auspices of defective consent. It is indeed chilling.
The last straw for me with CAF was a debate I had with an otherwise normally even-keeled fellow poster who alleged that indeed emotional abuse was very cut and dried but that somehow physical abuse could be open to interpretation.
As yet another fine example of women being broken , i.e. not functioning properly in loving relationships, SSM (since I can’t post there, I post here) recommends women giving oral without being asked.
http://sunshinemaryandthedragon.wordpress.com/2013/12/31/my-goals-for-2014-and-happy-new-years-wishes/
Which is fine advice as far as that goes. But she references the views of another site(s), in which the consensus is that for women, if he has to ask then he shall not receive. It’s not his fault. It’s almost never his fault.
She SHOULD give when asked, also. It’s her fault, and ONLY her fault, if she doesn’t.
Speaking of things that are not even wrong, I present the latest advance in feminism:
“Toward a Feminist Postcolonial Milk Studies”
“Because milk is produced by female mammals, a feminist perspective seems to offer a logical foundation for such inquiry. From the start, feminism has been a movement for justice: at its heart is the centrality of praxis, the necessary linkage of intellectual, political, and activist work. Feminist methodology puts the lives of the oppressed at the center of the research question and undertakes studies, gathers data, and interrogates material contexts with the primary aim of improving the lives and the material conditions of the oppressed. Using standard feminist methodology [standard feminist methodology?], twentieth-century vegan feminists and animal ecofeminists challenged animal suffering in its many manifestations (in scientific research, and specifically in the feminized beauty and cleaning products industries; in dairy, egg, and animal food production; in “pet” [note the scare quotes] keeping and breeding, zoos, rodeos, hunting, fur, and clothing) by developing a feminist theoretical perspective on the intersections of species, gender, race, class, sexuality, and nature. Motivated by an intellectual and experiential understanding of the mutually reinforcing interconnections among diverse forms of oppression, vegan feminists and ecofeminists positioned their own liberation and well-being as variously raced, classed, gendered, and sexual humans to be fundamentally interconnected to the well-being of other nondominant human and animal species, augmenting Patricia Hill Collins’s definition of intersectionality to include species as well.”
http://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2013/12/31/an-ecofeminist-does-milk/?singlepage=true
John South:
“The average woman does not have the ability to hold an opinion on any serious issue and back up what she says with anything resembling logic. Try talking to a female about politics and listen to the nonsense that comes out.”
Indeed. In contrast, the average man’s pronouncements on politics and all matters big and small are not only remarkably well-informed, logically tight, and well-thought out, but also profound in their wisdom.
Novaseeker
I think what Lyn is saying is (1) there are indeed few women who are godly today, (2) you need to exercise sobriety in choosing a wife who is godly rather than one who is hot and (3) even the sluts of today can be turned around by repentance.
I read in haste and therefore carelessly. I read Lyn87’s text not that long after a friend told me his wife of 15+ years had blown up their marriage, and she had custody of a child. I was, frankly, not a mood to reflect but a mood of anger. For these things I apologize to Lyn87 and readers.
But I have a few things to say, calmly.
First, I agree with point 1. With regard to point 2, there are a lot of women willing to pass themselves off as something they are not, especially in church. More in a moment.
In response to point 3, I say this: actions speak louder than words. Too many church going people are ready to take some tears and crying, maybe an altar call, or falling down during church “passionately”, yelling praise loudly, etc., etc. as all the evidence they need of a woman changing her life. On the topic, a friend of mine is a devout church going man, and part of the leadership of his church. He has a daughter who is promiscuous, has been for a while. It was obvious to me when she first came back from college, pre-red pill. But we are all supposed to pretend she is not, because she’s his daughter. Nothing has changed, so far as I can tell, because with The Glasses / red pill I can read her like a book; her clothing, her demeanor, the way she talks to men, it all is right out of Heartiste. But we must not say anything true. Because to her family, and to her church, she’s truly a born-again virgin and they are in the expectation that soon some man will put a ring on her finger. This is at a conservative church, one with no women preachers, that is proud of its Bible teaching, too, not some anonymous megachurch.
And so, back to point 2: everyone in this church is going to tell some young man what a good, religious girl she is. They won’t be lying, they will believe what they are saying, because she mouthed some words, shed some tears, and her father is part of the leadership. And so they are likely going to sell damaged goods as new, to some young man, and when the truth comes out, all will be so surprised. That won’t help him, he will have something counterfeit that was handed to him as “good as new”, and all the Bible quotes anyone cares to throw around won’t change the facts. Her actions are in direct contradiction to her words, but to point that out is unacceptable, her words must, must, must be considered totally sufficient.
This is not the first time I have seen this movie, either. So when churchgoing people begin ordering me to believe in reformed sluts, I now automatically wonder just whose slutty “born again virgin” daughter they are trying to marry off this time.
Actions speak louder than words. A truly reformed slut would not go around dropping IOI’s on men old enough to be her father, she would not drop IOI’s on any man. She would, in fact, likely be quite retiring about many things to do with men. Her actions would fit her words.
And so, because so many good, churchgoing folks do not really understand what 3 actually looks like, men must be even more careful about 2 – and they can’t accept the words of anyone else in the process. Not parents, not any other relations, not preachers, nor priests, nor anyone.
A young man should be able to trust those people. But he cannot. He needs the glasses, the red pill, so that he can see clearly whether the woman pushed forward is just another wide ditch or deep well, or someone that could actually be a helpmeet. And that makes me angry, as angry as seeing my longterm friend’s life torn apart by his “till death do us part” “better half” of 15+ years.
Who loves best? Probably beta men. Until they are fed into the divorce industry. Then they learn they have made a mistake…
I also wish to point out that modern women are not so much damaged by their environment as truly liberated. What we are seeing is the real, the true, feral nature of women when most (or even all) control / restriction / limitations are taken off of their sexuality. We are seeing the pure female nature – serially promiscuous, using men in a utilitarian way to gain children and resources; always ready to “trade up” in the never ending hypergamous pursuit of more Alpha, and of course also always ready to kill the offspring resulting from an inferior mating in a heartbeat.
One of the side effects of feminist liberation has been to pull aside the curtain and reveal the real female nature, and its Imperative, for those who can see. I suspect it will become even more obvious in the years to come.
Augustina is a truly remarkable women. I do not believe that most modern people are capable of that level of self sacrifice. Would that there were more like her.
Anonymous Reader, thank you for your kind words. But I must disagree with your post of 7:05 (while I agree with the previous comment). I do not think feminist liberation has shown the true nature of women. I believe it has corrupted women and damaged them.
All women are sinners, given to sins of the flesh and spirit. One look at history, or literature of the past several thousand years will show you that. The shrewish wife, the faithless wife, the harlot, and the cunning seductress are all archetypes because they have always existed.
But at the same time the desire to conform to social values is strong (in all people, including women). In other words most women, like most men, want to do what is seen as right, to live a good life. The desire for something above themselves is also there. All people will seek some higher purpose, some higher power. They may look in the wrong places, but the desire is there.
Women were not better 100 years ago. Social conventions were different. You may think I am making your point, but I am not. What we have done is not merely set women free to do as they wish. Our culture, or I should say, the culture of the God hating leftists, has called good evil, and evil good.
And they spend all of their efforts to brainwash people into going along with it. From birth to death, in all aspects of life, including the ‘church’, the message is clear: femininity is bad, motherhood is bad, men are bad. All the previous several thousand years of sex roles, across many different cultures, are bad.
They have to pound the message home, time and time again, to stamp out what women naturally want to do. This goes beyond women merely giving in to their naturally selfish side. The leftist progs are dragging women to do far worse.
Think about it, in less than a generation the following became acceptable:
Fornication
Abortion
Divorce
Homosexuality
And these things are not merely seen as necessary evils. They are actually touted as being positive goods.
There is no guidance at all from society. Not the laws, the culture (high or low), or even the church. Women are trained from day one to behave in the worst manner. If it was a woman’s natural state, it wouldn’t take that much training.
A woman is a sinful creature indeed, but a demonic spirit is on the loose and it has taken hold. God have mercy on us.
CAF, keeping it up:
Fear of marriage
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=848748
How do I talk to my boyfriend about porn??? (Hamsterlator in action)
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=848595
She thinks she has the most wonderful BF in the world
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=848598
The problem with those Roman “Catholics” is that the bishop of Rome is leading them away from good practice and belief.
A.J.P.
Re: “the desire for something above themselves” and “what women naturally want to do”. We have the archetype of Eve. This fits with the topic very well. Eve wanted something “better” than paradise, and Adam was a romantic fool.
Lyn87
Thanks for the note on sophroneo, I’ve rarely delved into the original Greek and you’ve certainly showed me that I’ll have to tackle Strongs Concordance.
Your experience absolutely parrelles with mine, the note on mania was a real eye opener.
The singularly essential red pill truth is that the more love he shows for her, the less she will respect him. It is a rare unicorn woman indeed who responds any other way.
I agree and disagree with this. The problem as I have witnessed is that the meaning of love has been redefined and corrupted.
When most people think of “showing love”, they mean stroking the feelings of the object they are “loving”. Make her feel special, don’t rock the boat, give her what she wants. That’s “love”. Except it’s not. It’s a half-truth, corrupted version of “love.”
Love is certainly patient, kind, humble and forbearing. It makes its object feel special as well, but that’s not all it does.
It also doesn’t seek its own. Most people who give the other person what they want (even to the person’s detriment) are trying to keep the peace, to save themselves from the hassle of the others expression of negative feelings. Love -true love- cares more about the recipient’s soul than their feelings. It wants to see the person grow and be better. And it doesn’t give way to fear. Husbanding encompasses all of this. Not just making her feeeel loved based on whatever she happens to need to feel loved today.
When all of this is a part of the love offering, the seeds of respect are planted and can grow.
@Johnycomelately,
Check out this Bible study tool:
http://www.scripture4all.org/
It is free!
@sunshinemary
Game is not negotiation unless we consider trench warfare a negotiating table. You are broadening the meaning of the word negotiate to the point it loses all meaning. Game is a method of involuntarily tweaking attraction triggers, it’s no different than finding someone’s ticklish spot and exploiting it. Certainly you wouldn’t consider exploitation of a ticklish spot a negotiation of humor?
If something must be trained, is it wrong to declare the untrained to be fundamentally incapable of performing? I am not a professional hockey player, though I have no doubt that if I quit my job and spent all my days on the ice for 5-10 years, I could become good at ice hockey. That doesn’t change the fact that before I train myself, I am “fundamentally incapable” of scoring a goal at a protected net. I have yet to learn the fundamentals of hockey, so I am incapable of demonstrating such fundamentals. For all intents and purposes it is not possible for me to impress anyone with my hockey skills.
Again, men have been taught to expect that women are in fact not only fundamentally capable of performing selfless love to men, but naturally behave in such a fashion. Your argument against Rollo’s continues to be one where personal affront is taken at all individual women being declared retards, when in fact his point is that women are simply not capable of providing what men have been deceived into thinking they naturally do. Your point about washing away moral responsibility by falsely declaring broad retardation is a sound argument, but ultimately a straw man. Sure, you can train anyone to do most anything, but this says nothing about what men can safely expect from their women. Can you imagine what would happen to the average man if he demanded his wife train herself to serve him, hide his weaknesses, and defend his honor in front of others? I would think many of them would literally be classified as mental abusers and legally stripped of their marriage.
Should wives do these things? Of course they should. That isn’t a question. Will they? Well, my friend SSM, the answer even here in Dalrock’s post is that 9 of 10 will not, even after having been married for a good long while. If 9 of 10 women cannot train themselves after many years of marriage to selflessly love their man, where is the grave inaccuracy in declaring such women incapable? The bar is low, Mary, so low that women actually compete with each other at how low they can set theirs. Just because you gracefully leap over that bar as if it were a splinter on the ground while so many women stumble and fall from it doesn’t change reality for men. Is it wrong to declare a population of people incapable of something when they so clearly demonstrate they cannot and will not do it?
There is a (perhaps unintentional, perhaps not) shaming from Rollo’s message, I acknowledge that now if I had not before. But frankly, Mary, the shoe fucking fits, it just fits.
@Elpeth,
I must disagree. What you say would be not be true even IF the love of a husband for a wife were supposed to be the same kind as any love of any adult for any other. But that is wrong; married love is supposed to be THE different human love, the special i.e. sexual love. And the more of this sexual love he shows for her, espcially during the many times when she doesn’t want it, the more she comes to see him as needing her and then she really disrespects him. The ONLY solution to this conundrum is for her to gain much more libido.
But let us examine what tends to happen when he neglects her physically, and treats her nonsexually, just like any other sister in Christ. Does this neglect of her lead her to respect him? No, it does not. In fact, she will think and call him impotent, weak, gay, you name it. He cannot win her respect by loving her, neither sexually nor nonsexually; she simply doesn’t work that way, because she is broken.
It’s amazing when you stop to consider, that although you may want to believe that what I’m saying is exaggeratedly negative about women, it seems to me that the more exaggeratedly negative I am about women, the closer to reality I come. I wish it were different. It’s not my fault.
OT – Found this:
“What you’re almost onto is this – women entering male spaces has pathologised them by bring sexual selection into a space previously free from that stress. ‘Sexual selection’ before the 60’s was mostly kept out of mainstream society – a woman and a man who would marry usually first met through family, not in a ‘public space’ setting where both sexes had free range. In any situation where sex outside marriage isn’t considered shameful and where men and women congregate together – you’re going to have this “Beta/Alpha” dichotomy emerge and it’s supremely dehumansing. This is why introverted males are no longer taking part in society, they’re dropping at every point – from highschool to college to the workplace, each has become more a ‘bisex’ space, these introverted males no longer have anywhere to be themselves, to be productive – without having their sexual status constantly rubbed in their faces. Because of all this, the “Alpha\Beta” dichotomy is CONSTANTLY on the minds of young men, and many men have developed pathologies and sexual pathologies as a result – so you have an increase in homosexuality, in transexuals, in ‘sissys’, ‘cuckfags’, etc. The only way this is going to be turned back is by re-establishment of patriarchy, of sexual monogamy, and sex-segregation (primarily through pushing women back into the home).”
What you say would be not be true even IF the love of a husband for a wife were supposed to be the same kind as any love of any adult for any other.
I’m intrigued. How so?
married love is supposed to be THE different human love, the special i.e. sexual love. And the more of this sexual love he shows for her, especially during the many times when she doesn’t want it, the more she comes to see him as needing her and then she really disrespects him.
I was totally expressing my thoughts from this perspective, that married love in indeed different from any other. The fact that my comment seemed to ignore that speaks to my inadequacy of expression, I suppose.
I disagree with you that a man’s desire for his wife is somehow a revelation of his need for her to be interpreted by her as weakness. That interpretation of neediness (or weakness)? That takes place outside the bedroom, follows them there, and infects their ability to connect sexually.
When a wife respects and looks up to her husband, his sexual desire for her is welcomed as it is the ultimate expression of her worth in the eyes of a man she admires and respect.
I cannot speak for all women and all marriages, but that’s my take.
Augustina
December 31, 2013 at 9:39 pm
That comment was dead on. I have said and will say it over and over again. Women’s behavior is normal it is guided by status with in the herd. A woman can and will love and respect a beta male if that is what she thinks will satisfy her hypergamy. (no logic or rationalization required just results) The PUA and game community tells you dumb ass churchians. A Christian man with game will change western history.
Interesting: https://www.edx.org/course/harvardx/harvardx-hds1544-1x-early-christianity-927
Of course it’ll likely be feminist and all, but still worth checking out.
Greyghost, A Christian man with game will change western history.
You are spot ON! We need a church of MANLY MEN. I have seen one back in the seventies. I got a plan to reproduce it on mass scale.
@Elspeth,
I agree that when a wife respects her husband then she welcomes his desire. But that’s the opposite of what we are discussing: his desire does NOT induce respect.
“Clearly women can love selflessly, as witnessed by our modern paranoia that they might actually do so.”
I hesitate to jump in after 400+ comments, but Dalrock really deserves congratulations for the last line of this piece. It’s about as close to a flawless one-sentence summary of the Christian manosphere critique of feminism as I’ve ever seen. Well done.
“If you think that a man cannot create attraction/desire where absolutely none existed before, you aren’t running around with a hot enough pre-selection wingman.
My wingman is about 5’8″, long legs, D cups, long blond hair, and VERY pretty blue eyes. She’s a solid 8. She’d be an 8.5 if she’d drop 10 or 15 pounds. She’s 24.” –Sir Chancelot
I’ve found, I’m sure everyone has found this to be the case… in part due to hypergamy isn’t it? Or is it due to female to female competition (kind of a different thing, though not entirely)?
The thing is, I’ve also found it to be the case than when I’m in ‘pursuit’ (for lack of a better word) of a woman, there is usually one or two other woman who suddenly start making it known they are available. So, maybe it isn’t conscious competition, maybe there’s something else that happens, though I really can’t come up with a credible place holder for what it is that happens when a man is with a woman, or about to be with another woman, that suddenly starts forming a line at the door.
“the message is clear: femininity is bad, motherhood is bad, men are bad”
I agree. Roles are reversed in this day & age. Men want to be women. Women want to be men. Also single men are a pariah at the park. If a women sits alone watching a kid’s baseball game, she’s enjoying a kid’s baseball game. If a single man sits in the park alone watching the same game, he’s gotta be a pedophile.
Since the early 90’s, something seriously has gotten wrong with social norms.
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“A Christian man with game will change western history.”
He did. His name is Jesus. Sophronia is His game.
For the imperfect men who follow Christ, introducing sexualised Game in church will cause many men to fall prey to Jezebel, Delilah, Potiphar’s wife and their BFF hypergamy. The traps and snares they’ll surely lay in the paths of men will make their walk with God a weekly dance with the devil. Church men will be tempted so often in so many more beguiling ways than their fallen state and imperfect faith can handle. A few mis-steps and they’ll be on the shortbus to Hell.
Game may work, but why teach church men how to dance with the serpent? Satan’s agents are mobilised when obtaining sex from Christian women becomes easy for men. When the music stops and the serpent strikes, the man with Game and the women terminally sick with Alpha love for them will find themselves all with fangs in their necks. At that point, their Heavenly future will look grim indeed.
A Heavenly future is the prize. Women are not. Christian men who struggle to attract women are as safe as God wants them to be.
Protect your sex for Godly work, men. If you must use Game, attract the one and only woman God prepares for you to marry and waste your skill on no other. Teach beleaguered men privately in brotherly Christian fashion but not in church.
Jacob, where do we find these “one and onlys”? Do you know where the secret stash is? I suspect it is a church urban legend.
I am tired of seeing churches full of teenaged pointdexters and baby mamas, almost no twenty something women, 40 year old male virgins and a growing crowd of cat ladies. These are churchs failing as communties with too many personal tragedies, churches that no one would want to join. These avoidable life tragedies are too numerous and tragic to be acceptable.
Even medieval monks would agree, Involuntary celibacy is NOT admirable. It is often a loss of Christian parents as well as personal tregedy.. By teaching the wrong lessons too many life tragedies are being caused.
@ galloper6
There are always women worth marrying. Church is often not the best place to find them since it’s in essence a hospital for the spiritually sick but if a young man is serious about marriage, I recommend a six-step process:
1. Be completely honest with God about your own spiritual ailments (this is an essential first step)
2. Ask God what you need to do to get better (then start doing it)
3. Find a humble church where there are a few quiet girls in the potential wife zone who pray (no divorcees or baby mamas)
4. Meet them all, looking intentionally for their good points (ask God if you can live with the bad)
5. Ask yourself honestly if you can husband the one you like most (women can be trained, but you must be willing to lead her)
6. Pursue her boldly and unashamedly (this is a lot easier than the feeling that precedes it).
I realise this is the sort of vanilla-flavoured advice given to every young man in church for the last gazillion years and grist for the mill in the Manosphere, but men do sometimes look at woman’s collective failings and say “they’re all the same – why should I bother with this one?”.
My advice is to bother with this one and do better for each other together. Just do it wisely, carefully and with God’s help.
Mr Stalk, hat tip to you for what you are saying and why (I have to assume why). Don’t waver, There is a dearth of this kind of thing in the manosphere. Granted, the sphere exists for legitimate reasons and that must be given a measure of deference. If folks could see that what you are saying is not at 180 degrees opposing them, and that to see it as hopelessly idealistic is to miss the point of EVERYTHING, that would be a good things
4. Meet them all, looking intentionally for their good points (ask God if you can live with the bad)
Bad points to watch out for:
– does not believe that Christ was born of a virgin, died for our sins, and rose again
– does not believe that all of the Bible is true
– bad or no relationship with her father
– does not submit to her parents
– does not agree that the husband has the final say in any decision
– won’t cook and clean
– talks down to you when she is angry
– cannot admit when she is wrong even when it is obvious
– won’t apologize
– exhibits poor self-control
– tries to control you
– easily swayed by social trends and or peers (likes her hair short/piercings/tatoos are red flags)
I guess what we over look depends on how much taming we want to do and how much risk we want add to the survival of our marriages. Me? I wanted as little risk and extra work as possible.
I may have given the wrong impression with my closing comment. I completely relied on God and prayerfully sought His guidance throughout the entire process that led up to finding my wife. A list very similar to the one above was also employed. Then before deciding to marry her, I sought the wisdom and guidance of several mature men of God.
At my age, I personally no longer have a personal stake in what we are discussing. But I am troubled to see the younger generations of men go through similar tradegies. And angry that they are correctible. However it means churches will need to change some practices and give up certain modern trueisms.
It is like the final years of the USSR when the system was failing but any rational reforms contradicted official dogma, or threated commisars with personal loss of power.
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I disagree with you about the old couple example. When I think of that example, I see a woman protecting her providers weak spot to ensure she keeps him around. The difference isn’t about love as protection, but love as sacrifice. In your example she’s not sacrificing anything and really protecting her opportunistic interests (because at her age, what will she do without him?).
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