You are sooo mean! You must hate women! It wasn’t my fault!
Matt Walsh has a new post* up pointing out the problem of Christians focusing on gay marriage while ignoring divorce. One of the commenters demonstrated why it is so difficult to hold divorcing women accountable. As I’ve mentioned before, when men call other men out on their sins, they tend to feel brave doing so, and men generally will acknowledge their failure. When men call women out they feel like they are being a bully, and even worse when you call a woman out you are off for a day at the (hamster) races.
Even though Matt specifically excluded divorce in cases of serial adultery and abuse (and Matt is absurdly inclusive in his definition of adultery), commenter Kristin called Matt out for the sin of making her feel bad about her divorce.
Matt, I know marriage is sacred. And I think your post was alright. But the thing is I am a pretty hard-core, love one another person and it was unsafe for me and harmful for my kids or me to stay married to that particular man who ‘surprise’ was a completely different man than who he presented himself to be when we wed. This is so devastating to me, especially because in my beliefs, marriage is more than ’til death do us part’. The thing is, I agree that divorces hurt marriage more than gay marriage hurts marriage but I’m kind of a bit crushed by your post. I thought in times past that you sounded like one of the really good christian guys but man, this was pretty darn harsh on people who’ve been divorced.
Note that while she hints that her husband was abusive, she doesn’t actually make the charge. This is especially telling, since after establishing her victimized woman cred she goes on the offensive, explaining to Matt that one shouldn’t ever judge the reason someone divorced (emphasis mine):
Maybe the answer is that divorce is more complicated than you give it credit. I do think that it is a tragedy for people to easily give up on marriages but I also know that I would never again judge, especially as harshly as you have, the reasons why people are divorced. You did write about the abhorring spread of porn recently, did you not? I’m surprised you didn’t even mention that in the above post. Just saying.
A lot of people are trying their best to do the best they can with what they know. And maybe not everybody has as good of an ‘image’ as you do, being ‘married until you die’ and being so sure of that. But don’t be so hard on people. It’s not even remotely Christlike. And yes, I’m stating that as a fact.
What is fascinating about this tactic is not only how common it is, but how often the woman using it goes entirely unchallenged. Everyone gets so caught up in protecting the woman suffering the fate of feeling bad that they don’t notice the bait and switch. She starts by complaining that she was unfairly lumped in with those other kinds of divorcées, and then shifts to defending the very divorcées she doesn’t want to be associated with. Which is it? She isn’t like those other divorcees? Or you can’t judge anyone who divorces?
She closes by holding out the possibility that she might find it in her heart to forgive Matt for the sin of making her feel bad:
That being said, I think I can forgive the hopeless feeling you seemed to impose on me. I think if you only knew more, you’d have written a much different post. Big picture, I agree with you, but overall that post did not appear to be written out of love.
Whenever I see this tactic I always think of this scene from The Blues Brothers:
*H/T Free Northerner
Hamster pic from Love hamster. Checkered flag from Ewan ar Born. I combined the last two to create the hamster 500 pic. You are free to use this new picture so long as you are in compliance with the original two image licenses.
Interestingly enough, Leif Erikson actually re-tweeted the article:
I actually stopped reading Matt’s blog a few months ago after he backpedaled on his post defending the fit mom, Maria something or other. I was really disappointed that he let those women make him retract what was a good post and a solid argument.
I wonder how long it will take for him to back pedal on this one. I’m almost certain that he will. Can’t have those divorcees feeling bad, now can we?
@Dalrock
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/“Women_are_wonderful”_effect
The infuriating thing about her comment is that Matt clearly stated that a physical abuser was someone whom a woman should divorce from. And she still thinks that he’s attacking her.
“As I’ve mentioned before, when men call other men out on their sins, they tend to feel brave doing so, and men generally will acknowledge their failure. When men call women out they feel like they are being a bully, and even worse when you call a woman out you are off for a day at the (hamster) races.”
Dalrock, do you think that this is because men are better able to handle criticism and discernment than women?
As for Matt’s porn is adultery post, I flatly stated in my comments that it was just as bad for women to deny men sex. I think the wheels spinning caused a hurricane.
I rather liked her throwing pornography in there as well. And then of course there was this:
Its like she has never actually read the Bible at all, isn’t it?
Come on. It’s not like words mean anything.
I love the way Christian women always seem to know exactly what Jesus’ view is – and amazingly that view is always exactly the view they wish him to hold. Does religion work like that for men too?
Re: Women are wonderful. Rudman and Goodwin suggest that if women want for more men to be positively biased towards women, more women have to give more men more sex. I’ll give two thumbs up.
But this is what it always comes down to: ignore the big picture to be “loving” to the individual exception, and then over time the exception becomes the rule. That’s what destroys a democracy: the small widows-and-orphans fund becomes SSI/Medicare/Medicaid/a dozen other programs costing billions; a one-time outlay to help farmers starving due to drought becomes a massive system of subsidies; a police action to protect freedom-loving rebels in some other country turns into decades of war; and so on.
The same thing has happened with Christianity: for the sake of not making any one person (woman) be harmed, we’ve mostly discarded the big picture of marital permanence and the scriptural hierarchy of the family. And then the definition of “harm” has gradually been ratcheted down from “beaten on a regular basis” to “made to feel unhaaaaappy.”
This kind of stuff is extremely educational and certainly helps you pick up on the red flags when talking to a churchian girl.
That being said, I think I can forgive the hopeless feeling you seemed to impose on me. I think if you only knew more, you’d have written a much different post. Big picture, I agree with you, but overall that post did not appear to be written out of love.
Awww, such a speshul little snowflake….
The funny thing about this “What would Jesus do?” and “why are you so mean” vibes is that Jesus called out divorce and adultery probably more than any sexual sin in the Bible, frequently using it as a sign of the decadence of the Romans, as well as the corrupt Jewish leadership of Judea. He was hardly ambivalent on the subject,
And Pharisees came up and in order to test him asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” 3 He answered them, “What did Moses command you?” 4 They said, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of divorce, and to put her away.” 5 But Jesus said to them, “For your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment. 6 But from the beginning of creation, ‘God made them male and female.’ 7 ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, 8 and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. 9 What therefore God has joined together, let not man put asunder.” 10 And in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. 11 And he said to them, “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another, commits adultery against her; 12 and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.”
She probably wasn’t physically abused, or she would have said so. She probably claimed “emotional abuse,” which can mean anything from constant yelling to occasionally looking at her funny, and referenced the fact that her husband looked at porn once a while — probably after the sex dwindled to once every month or two.
I’m sure she thought her reasons for divorcing were absolutely critical for the well-being of her and their children and that Jesus would totally understand. Every one of her emotions surely was lined up in agreement with that course of action. But that’s why we have “big picture” rules in the first place: to stop the person who’s acting recklessly and make her look at whether her reasons really qualify under the rules. Otherwise we’re just giving every woman a get-out-of-marriage-free card, and under Reason it says, “Check One: A) adultery, B) something else really bad.”
I love the way Christian women always seem to know exactly what Jesus’ view is – and amazingly that view is always exactly the view they wish him to hold. Does religion work like that for men too?
Winning comment.
But, don’t you realize that Jesus said “behold, I say unto you, looking at a skin mag is the equivalent of mass rape”? You wouldn’t want her to stay with a convicted rapist, would you?
@Cail Corishev re: ” B) something else really bad.” Does a woman actually believe her own feelings as much as she acts like it, or does she know (somewhere deep where it’s too hard to tell) that her *feeling* that her husband’s request for a sandwich is tantamount to abuse is irrelevant to it being abuse? Related question, do women suffer from a sigmoidal amplification calibration problem with feelings? In other words, Is women’s ability to discern tiny feelings the result of way over-amplifying everything, e.g. thus making her jealousy of her sister’s new purse the EXACT same strength of feeling as if her husband were adulterous?
@Cail:
You should probably print out and frame that comment. You pretty much summed up the entire topic. Well done.
How many times has Rollo explained Solipsism?
http://therationalmale.com/2011/09/29/duplicity/
@MarcusD Interestingly enough, Leif Erikson actually re-tweeted the article:
Leif Erikson’s ‘wife’ is funded by the same entities that fund Matt Walsh. It makes perfect sense. It’s the same machine that funds most churches, but don’t take my word for it. Research it.
Mr Roach: “But Jesus said to them, “For your hardness of heart he wrote you this commandment.”
Hardness of heart is still the major problem with men and women. Good call.
Porn is not a reason to divorce a husband. Yes, it is lust and Jesus equated lust to adultery, but he also equated lying to murder and we don’t send people to prison for life for just any type of lie. Too many Christian women whip out the “he looked at boobies on the Internet” excuse to justify their sin of divorce. I also don’t believe that emotional or even most physical abuse are reasons to divorce. My grandmother suffered physical abuse for years and she eventually had him (justifiably) hauled away, but she never divorced him and she had no intention of remarrying because it was a sin to do so. Yes, marriage is that serious a bond, once you’re in the Bible gives almost no cause to exit save death, and when you do divorce you’re not allowed to remarry except under certain circumstances (i.e. your wife left you against your own will or vice versa). Christian churches don’t teach this anymore because it would offend 50%+ of the payers… ahem… I mean churchgoers. The Church has fallen to democracy the same way society has. Politicians can’t do what’s right for Western nations because they might lose that corporate check or piss off a voting bloc, and churches won’t do what’s right because they might cut off their funding. Both the pastors and politicians in America pander to their audience rather than do the right thing.
When is Bill Burr going to start chiming in here?
** Dusts off Q36B Space Hamsterlator*
“Matt, I know marriage is sacred. And I think your post was alright. But the thing is I am a pretty hard-core, love one another person and it was unsafe for me and harmful for my kids or me to stay married to that particular man who ‘surprise’ was a completely different man than who he presented himself to be when we wed.”
HAMSTERLATION: Marriage is sacred except when I decide it’s not. I agree with your posts, except where I don’t agree and where it made me feel bad. Gosh darn it, I couldn’t figure out what kind of hot douchebag I was marrying. His name was F—kbuddy Rockbanddrummer but I still got blindsided. My bad. He CHAAAANGED!
“ This is so devastating to me, especially because in my beliefs, marriage is more than ’til death do us part’. The thing is, I agree that divorces hurt marriage more than gay marriage hurts marriage but I’m kind of a bit crushed by your post. I thought in times past that you sounded like one of the really good christian guys but man, this was pretty darn harsh on people who’ve been divorced.”
HAMSTERLATION: I believe marriage is forever, except when it’s not. You’re completely 100% correct in your factual assessment of the situation, but that still hurts me. You made me feel bad. Yoooouuu caaaaan’t juuuuuudddge meee.
“Maybe the answer is that divorce is more complicated than you give it credit. I do think that it is a tragedy for people to easily give up on marriages but I also know that I would never again judge, especially as harshly as you have, the reasons why people are divorced. You did write about the abhorring spread of porn recently, did you not? I’m surprised you didn’t even mention that in the above post. Just saying.”
HAMSTERLATION: Hey man, you don’t know what I been through. Divorce is bad, but judging is worse. I’ll never, ever judge anyone else for anything ever again; and no one else should either. You are still making me feel bad, and that makes you a bad person, Matt. Well, maybe not a bad person, but you did a very bad thing. ‘Cause you made me feel bad. And Pr0n is bad, mmmmmkay? Four out of five pastors agree that teh Pr0n is adultery, grows hair on your palms, makes you blind, and causes the trains not to run on time.”
“A lot of people are trying their best to do the best they can with what they know. And maybe not everybody has as good of an ‘image’ as you do, being ‘married until you die’ and being so sure of that. But don’t be so hard on people. It’s not even remotely Christlike. And yes, I’m stating that as a fact.”
HAMSTERLATION: I still feel really, really bad. Cause you made me feel really, really bad. And you and your commenters aren’t doing anything to make me feel better. You haughty SOB, up there on your high horse! We can’t all be as puuuurrrrrfect as yoooouuu, Matt, with your perfect little marriage going into perfect little eternity. You’re a big meanie, you are. And you’re not a real Christian, ‘cause Christians make people feel good and stuff.
“That being said, I think I can forgive the hopeless feeling you seemed to impose on me. I think if you only knew more, you’d have written a much different post. Big picture, I agree with you, but overall that post did not appear to be written out of love.”
HAMSTERLATION: Hey, I still feel pretty bad, but now that I’ve corrected you, I feel better. (that’s the kind of thing that happens to me when I let other people dictate how I feel.) You’re just an ignorant, sexiss, raciss, chauviniss, pig of a MAAAYUNNN. Agreed on the whole “divorce is bad, mmmmmkay?” thing, but hey, you need to show more love, man. ‘Cause God is love. And that’s good.
**Holsters hamsterlator
I never let these go when I see them in reply to my comments. If nothing else to point out that, yes I did in fact mean what I said, and that whether or not she is a special snowflake exception is entirely irrelevant.
For now it’s a close race between Cail and Deti, but I think at the moment Deti is winning all the internets.
@Dalrock
Great Post!
I went to “Matt’s Blog”………my opinion! Any guy that has been married 4 times…and divorced 4 times?….either has fatefully bad taste in women or…is a real TOOL to live with.In fact,I would be embarrassed to tell anyone that I have been married and divorced 4 times?…..wouldn’t you? My suggestion to any man(that has been married 4 times…..and divorced 4 times) would be….”Maybe you should turn GAY…..you obviously have no luck with women….maybe you will have better luck with men”….Call me crazy!
@Deti
“”** Dusts off Q36B Space Hamsterlator*””
I am glad that you got that off the shelf……myself,and a few other posters were wondering why it was collecting dust!!!…Good Job!
Interesting. I’m divorced, but somehow it never occurred to me that that post should hurt me personally. (Well, OK, I didn’t actually read the post. Just an excerpt. Walsh bores me.) Maybe that’s because I repented, not of my marriage, which was pretty awful, but of my divorce. I sinned when I left that young man. By the time I knew it, I couldn’t do anything to change it, but there was no excuse for it. (I mean, every “Christian” I knew said I had good reason but, no. I didn’t.) God is merciful. Sounds like some other divorced people need to think about repentance, too, instead of making excuses.
[D: Welcome Cindy.]
In a word, yes. Women are true to their emotions. When a woman’s emotions change, her view of reality changes. That’s why she needs leadership, from a father, a husband, or a religious order; and why she needs training from older, wiser women on staying grounded. Submission in marriage isn’t about pleasing the husband; it’s about giving the wife guidance so she doesn’t make crazy decisions when her emotions are out of whack. For exhibit A, see any woman who’s spent a decade or more living alone and making her own decisions.
To be fair and clear, men do sometimes follow their emotions (mostly in pursuit of women), and men do have the ability to rationalize, and men do sometimes make really stupid, impulsive decisions. But it doesn’t seem to be part of our internal makeup to the point where it’s unconscious. When I make a bad decision and rationalize it, I do know I’m doing it, and there’s a struggle that goes on. If I stop and buy a bag of Doritos after work, knowing I shouldn’t, I may rationalize it by saying I’m too tired to cook, or this will be the last time until I lose weight, or whatever. But I won’t be able actually to convince myself that I should buy them or that they’ll be good for me.
I’ve had multiple women look me in the eye and tell me something with complete conviction that directly contradicted something they’d told me only a few days earlier — because their emotions about it changed, so the truth about it changed for them. I’ve never seen a man do that without at least some hedging. For a man to do it with total conviction, I think he’d have to be a psychopath. For women, it seems to be a skill they’re built with and have to be trained and guided away from.
Re: “For a man to do it with total conviction, I think he’d have to be a psychopath.” Yes, by having his emotional amplifier tuned down to near zero so he doesn’t have to suffer through the vacuous nonsense of his internal voice. So psychopaths operate at a level where all emotions are about the same, output sounds like quiet noise regardless of input. Women seem to employ the completely opposite strategy, of amplifying everything too much so it comes out all the same, sounding like clipped keening noise regardless of input.
Feminine Imperative = Holy Spirit, male approved and Christian Kosher®.
WWJD? Anything she says he would because she’s “lightyears closer to God” like the good pastor said she was.
Deti is the man; I’m honored to be mentioned in the same sentence. Thanks.
You’re crazy.
E.g.
Recent research shows that women experience nonconscious shifts across different phases of the monthly ovulatory cycle. For example, women at peak fertility (near ovulation) are attracted to different kinds of men and show increased desire to attend social gatherings. Building on the evolutionary logic behind such effects, we examined how, why, and when hormonal fluctuations associated with ovulation influenced women’s product choices. In three experiments, we show that at peak fertility women nonconsciously choose products that enhance appearance (e.g., choosing sexy rather than more conservative clothing). This hormonally regulated effect appears to be driven by a desire to outdo attractive rival women. Consequently, minimizing the salience of attractive women who are potential rivals suppresses the ovulatory effect on product choice. This research provides some of the first evidence of how, why, and when consumer behavior is influenced by hormonal factors.
Durante, Kristina M., et al. “Ovulation, female competition, and product choice: Hormonal influences on consumer behavior.” Journal of Consumer Research 37.6 (2011): 921-934.
—
Why do some women pursue relationships with men who are attractive, dominant, and charming but who do not want to be in relationships—the prototypical sexy cad? Previous research shows that women have an increased desire for such men when they are ovulating, but it is unclear why ovulating women would think it is wise to pursue men who may be unfaithful and could desert them. Using both college-age and community-based samples, in 3 studies we show that ovulating women perceive charismatic and physically attractive men, but not reliable and nice men, as more committed partners and more devoted future fathers. Ovulating women perceive that sexy cads would be good fathers to their own children but not to the children of other women. This ovulatory-induced perceptual shift is driven by women who experienced early onset of puberty. Taken together, the current research identifies a novel proximate reason why ovulating women pursue relationships with sexy cads, complementing existing research that identifies the ultimate, evolutionary reasons for this behavior.
Durante, Kristina M., et al. “Ovulation leads women to perceive sexy cads as good dads.” Journal of personality and social psychology 103.2 (2012): 292.
@ Cail:
“I’m sure she thought her reasons for divorcing were absolutely critical for the well-being of her and their children and that Jesus would totally understand. Every one of her emotions surely was lined up in agreement with that course of action. *** Otherwise we’re just giving every woman a get-out-of-marriage-free card, and under Reason it says, “Check One: A) adultery, B) something else really bad.”
Absolutely. This is critical to understand for the modern Christian man. If she is Churchian, she will come up with a rationalization for whatever she does; and her personal Jesus will bless it, whatever it is. Because, you see, the Churchian’s “holy spirit” is a sanctified hamster.
I can think of two examples. One is a woman who divorced her husband of 17 years because she was unhappy, she had to work, her husband was unhappy, and she just didn’t want to be married to him anymore. Sure, he made his mistakes, but she had no grounds for divorce. Her holy hamster blessed it, though, saying that she had a “right to be happy” and that she needed out of her marriage “for the sake of her mental health”.
The second was a preacher’s daughter married for about 10 years to an atheist who didn’t want kids. She was coming up on The Wall and at 35, had an affair with a divorced man who had 5 kids of his own. She promptly got pregnant by her paramour. Her holy hamster blessed it, saying that “it was meant to be” and that she needed to have a kid and this was her last chance and she “deserved to be happy”.
@Cail
“”You’re crazy.””
L*……Thank-You!……..just an observation!
@ Cail:
“She probably wasn’t physically abused, or she would have said so.”
EXACTLY right.
About two years ago, I witnessed a close male relative go through a divorce.
If I didn’t have every confidence that he is an honest guy, I would have told him “you are making this stuff up, no one is that %$#@ moonbat insane.”
Here’s a quick run down of the facts:
She was arrested for physically assaulting him with a piece of broken lumber.
She often called him at work because she couldn’t handle the kids, she admitted to kicking her son down to the ground.
She actually took photos of bruises on the children, and he caught her doing this once. This was a couple years before divorce.
And too much else to list.
He had some idea of how bad the courts are for men, so he never did anything but hold his arms up to his face when she was assaulting him (numerous occasions.)
The papers he was served with (so fast after she got arrested, your head would spin) listed in the Petition for Divorce:
Grounds: Cruelty, Abusiveness. (These were HER charges against him.)
This was filed by a “woman” (girl) who was a “Christian” who he met on a “Christian dating site.”
As I said before, the only reason I came to believe he was being totally honest with me was that he forwarded me virtually every text message and email between them (some of which were so mind-bogglingly deranged that I still go back and read some of them in disbelief.)
Some of the happenings in court were:
An incident where he saved his eldest child’s life from choking… became an abuse accusation.
He was locked out of his house after spanking his own child… and she called police, who laughed and said “she can’t just kick you out of your own house, man.”
And the list goes on and on… for miles.
So Cail is exactly right, but I’d go one further, and say that there’s plenty of wives who do mental gymnastics of mind-boggling complexity, and actually convince themselves that the abuser is in fact the abused.
(Post Script: Who do you think got custody? Child support? Think hard fellas.)
@Cail
I am crazy?………Read “Thinkn Man’s” post!….at least twice!…..I am no proponent of gay marriage….L*….
@Thinki’Man
Bill Burr recently got married. An interesting turn of events from his earlier show, perhaps the most memorable one being his Epidemic of Gold Digging Whores act.
Many women want to maintain the option for divorce, abortion, child support, VAWA and many other things, just in case she ever needs them and in spite of any inherent unfairness towards men. That thought of “but what if?” sticks in their minds and the fear of it happening to them gets the hamster revved up to either not be able to see the unfairness or to simply not care.
I have a family member who has been married and divorced four times. She is a particularly religious Protestant and a member of a Baptist church. I suspect that my family member’s reasoning is one that many Christian women use to justify multiple marriages and divorces: those weren’t true marriages because the husbands didn’t hold up their part of the bargain (to love his wife as Christ loves the Church). She has expressed embarrassment and shame over the mistakes she made in marrying the men in the first place, but the idea that there was something inherently sinful in remarriage after the first divorce didn’t seem to occur to her.
I will never forget her expression when I told her that although I am not Catholic, I agree with the teachings of the Church on marriage–that it is a covenant, not just a contract, and a sacrament. I told her that it had been a bit gut-wrenching the day I logically concluded that I could not ever remarry, even if my husband divorced me, while my husband still lived, and that I could not in good faith divorce him, only separate if he became violent or destructive to the children. This is not an easy conclusion for anyone to come to, let alone a woman raised by divorced and remarried parents and surrounded by divorced and remarried family members and friends. I am completely inundated with divorce. It is everywhere. And the idea that I should remain faithful to my husband even if he may cheat on me or leave me is a very tough pill to swallow.
But swallow it I must because it is the only way I can remain true to my vows that were made not only before God but TO Him. But if I cannot even so much as convince a religious Christian who is also a close relative of this, I do not see much hope in convincing others.
Yikes, some of the comments on Matt’s post are pretty astonishing:
So…as long as they agonized a bit, it’s understandable that people would frivorce their spouse? And we aren’t showing them empathy if we call it what it is – frivolous? Huh.
Welp, on that note, we’re off to church.
And let’s not forget the old reliable…
“that post did not appear to be written out of love”
Tone argument, better known as “concern troll.”
This is why I have such a difficult time arguing for hard stances with most modern Christians. To present the case for how we ought to live, you have to take a lot of harsh stances that the constant barrage of cultural marxism from the idiot-box, public education, and now other idiots in society has said are tantamount to rape. There’s no nice way to tell a liar that he or she is deluded, or at least no way without causing insult. When you’re Hosea, nothing is going to come out pleasant to Israel’s ears.
Christ’s teachings (reinforced and elucidated in the Epistles) are especially offensive (and have grown more-so in today’s society) and not in the, “Jesus totally was a socialist, maaaaaan,” way of thinking about it.
“Women should not have any position of formal church leadership.”
“But duuuuude, you’re coming from a pretty haaaaaateful position, maaaaan. Not very Christ-like.”
“Christ forbade divorce flatly except in cases of infidelity.”
“But, duuuuude, pornography is totally being unfaithful! Any woman whose husband looks at porn can get divorced.
We’ve reached the point where a “christian” woman (and her phalanx of white knights) could read scripture posted as a blog (with the numbers taken out) and accuse it of not being written out of love.
@lady N/Natassia
Contagiousness of divorce, etc:
http://simulacral-legendarium.blogspot.ca/2013/07/re-httpdalrock.html
http://simulacral-legendarium.blogspot.ca/2013/07/divorce-outcomes-men-and-women.html
http://simulacral-legendarium.blogspot.ca/2013/08/career-or-marriage-or-both.html
http://simulacral-legendarium.blogspot.ca/2013/10/genetic-mediation-of-divorce-risk.html
Sunshine Mary! I figured you’d write something like this. You’re such a cruel person! Don’t you have any compassion?
Sure, these people make their kids bastards and ruin the lives of all the people who trusted them to keep their committments, but it’s like, a really hard thing to do! Quit blaming the true victim here! You need to be nicer, I swear. I pity you!
@lady N/Natassia
Contagiousness of divorce, etc:
http://simulacral-legendarium.blogspot.ca/2013/07/re-httpdalrock.html
http://simulacral-legendarium.blogspot.ca/2013/07/divorce-outcomes-men-and-women.html
@lady N/Natassia
Two more:
http://simulacral-legendarium.blogspot.ca/2013/08/career-or-marriage-or-both.html
http://simulacral-legendarium.blogspot.ca/2013/10/genetic-mediation-of-divorce-risk.html
And, who could forget:
Re: sacramentalism. Marriage is indeed a sacrament of sorts, but is mutually conferred upon each other. The couple are the priests, the sacrificial lambs (har har), and to a large extent also the gods of the vows. The vows are made to each other. God is basically a witness.
“ while I am not at all a fan of divorce, to trivialize people’s motivations for divorce to the level that you have is not empathetic. You are correct in saying that these people get up there and swear on their souls “’til death do us part” but your mistake is acting like they throw it away on whim. Most people agonize and suffer over the breaking of their vows and the tearing apart of their families I still think that for the most part they should stick it out, but I know for most people going through a divorce is as difficult as dealing with a death.”
HAMSTERLATION: People have to get divorced for all kinds of reasons – like leaving the cap off the toothpaste, snoring; he spends too much time in his workshop, he made me stick to a budget; and that weird smell when he takes off his shoes. But you’re not being nice. Some of these people got divorced, but it’s cool ‘cause they felt really, really bad about it. I mean, they did it anyway, but they counted the costs. And it’s really important that they felt bad about “having” to get divorced. Bad. Really, really bad. And it was hard. And difficult. But not as hard or difficult as staying married. But still difficult. And they felt bad.
Really, horribly bad.
Re: “Any woman whose husband looks at porn can get divorced.” You do not give women enough credit for imagination. Any woman who *feels* her husband probably looked at porn, can get divorced. Cf Erickson, Jenny, 2014.
Thinkn’Man, I have a similar story (I suppose most of us do). The short, short version: a friend got divorced, mother gave him custody so she could move to the big city and ride the carousel unencumbered for a while. She came to a party he had (they stayed “friends,” ya know — his second mistake), and got drunk and high and attacked him. She was arrested, and the cops documented the defensive marks on him and the lack of marks on her. She decided to take back custody to punish him. His lawyer told him he had it made, that her arrest would win it for him and he’d get full custody. He paid the lawyer handsomely, and came out of the courtroom with the usual fortnightly visitation.
Mark, if you want to suggest he stay unmarried, that’s fine, but to say he should “go gay” is crazy. Maybe you were joking; I couldn’t tell from your bizarre writing style. But in today’s anything-goes atmosphere, I’m tired of the suggestion that men should just try buggering each other as a side option. Homosexuality (the urge) is a mental illness, and the lifestyle is a brutal, empty, soul-destroying one. We shouldn’t fall into the trap of treating it lightly the way sitcoms do.
The second was a preacher’s daughter married for about 10 years to an atheist who didn’t want kids. She was coming up on The Wall and at 35, had an affair with a divorced man who had 5 kids of his own. She promptly got pregnant by her paramour. Her holy hamster blessed it, saying that “it was meant to be” and that she needed to have a kid and this was her last chance and she “deserved to be happy”.
No surprise here. I’ve yet to meet a preacher’s offspring that doesn’t go out of their way to actively repudiate everything their father stood for. My only question in this case would be: was her daddy a churchian CEO who fed his little snowflake’s hamster by quoting OOC Bible verses to justify her actions?
Well, to be fair, I think most of them agonize a lot before pulling the frivorce trigger, not just a bit. But yes, ultimately, there’s some amount of emotional “agony” that will allow them to think, “Maybe my husband hasn’t committed adultery, but my agony is just as bad as if I’d been cheated on, so I’m just as justified in divorcing him as if he had cheated.” Or, “Maybe he hasn’t cheated by having sex with another woman, but he’s ‘cheated’ just as much by violating his vow to love me.” Or whatever. Once the emotions are consistently running in that direction, the rationalization is easy.
“…by violating his vow to love me.”
Bingo. Because marriage today is all about “how are you making me feel right now?”
This is why the push for gay marriage is so successful.
“I should be able to marry whoever I loooooooooove!” (Nevermind that emotions change, wax and wane, and marriage has never been about Eros anyway….although it certainly does help.)
@deti
‘Cause God is love. And that’s good.’
Lets put this bullshit to rest:
A key difference in understanding the meaning of agape is to recognize that our culture is centered on the individual, whereas ancient Biblical society (and 70% of societies today) are group-centered. What is good for the group is what is paramount. Hence when the NT speaks of agape it refers to the “value of group attachment and group bonding” [Malina and Neyrey, Portraits of Paul, 196]. Agape is not an exchange on a personal level and “will have little to do with feelings of affection, sentiments of fondness, and warm, glowing affinity.” It is a gift that puts the group first.
With that in mind, what of the passage which tells us to “Love your enemies”? How is this reconciled with places where Jesus calls the Pharisees names, or Peter “Satan”? How is it reconciled with where Paul wishes emasculation on his Galatian opponents (Gal. 5) and shames the Galatians with his rhetoric? How is it reconciled with even confronting others with sin and error, for that matter?
Given the definition of “group attachment” above, it may be best to understand agape as a parallel to another known concept of today — not love, but tough love. For the sake of popular culture awareness I will allude to perhaps the most famous example of such “tough love” known today — the New Jersey high school principal Joe Clark (whose story was told in the movie Lean on Me) who cleaned out his high school and made it a safe place for those who wanted to learn.
Clark was no soft sentimentalist. He kicked those out of school who disrupted the learning of others. He used physical compulsion to do it as needed. He used a bullhorn to get people’s attention.
Is this agape? Yes, it is. It is the Biblical form of agape in which Clark valued what was best for his students as a whole versus what the individual wanted.
Read more at:
http://www.tektonics.org/whatis/whatlove.php
Feeriker:
No, her dad was a fire and brimstone style Lutheran/Missouri Synod preacher. He was a kind, devout man who lived out what he believed and preached.
As I think about it, I heard lots of stories about the ladies in our church who had affairs, got divorced, were baby mamas, etc. And every story I heard from both dad, mom and everyone else around their age about the situations was about how the man/husband/baby daddy was completely, totally at fault; and the woman/wife/mama was just doing what women do.
–Divorced woman with two school age kids a few years younger than I. Conventional wisdom: She was a good woman who married a bad, abusive layabout man. It wasn’t her fault. He changed after the wedding. Put on the glasses: She married a douchebag alpha for the tingles when she was 19. Before the wedding he was a drunk who punched her a couple of times. He was just “misunderstood”. It’ll be OK.
–Baby Mama with two kids in tow, nice girl comes to church. Conventional wisdom: Nice girl made some mistakes, she’s learned from it, she’s ready to meet a nice man. Glasses: Former party girl slut screwed up not once, but twice; is desperate for a nice guy beta sugar daddy for her kids. She’ll blow him a couple of times and the ring will be forthcoming.
–The 35 year old preggers cheater. Conventional wisdom: Her husband frauded her into the marriage. He didn’t want children but didn’t tell her until afterwards. He is cruel and inhuman, and is denying motherhood to her. Glasses: The guy has been a workaholic since he was 12. He never said he didn’t want kids but never said he wanted them either. He and she didn’t really discuss it before getting married. He was always exactly what he advertised himself to be: a loner workaholic who wasn’t too interested in anyone but himself. She married him anyway.
@lady N/Natassia
and marriage has never been about Eros anyway
I shall redirect your attention to the Social Pathologist: http://socialpathology.blogspot.ca/
@Lady N
“She is a particularly religious Protestant and a member of a Baptist church.”
If her reaction to the word of God on divorce means hardening her heart then you certainly can know that she is not saved. If it involves tearing her clothes in repentance after being confronted on her sin she is saved.
And about the cheater:
I was instructed that what she did was wrong wrong wrong. But it was totally understandable, even excusable, because motherhood, and because for the children. And he lied (by omission). Lying is bad, but motherhood is good. And we can’t judge. Because we don’t know what she’s been through. Because love. And God is love. And love is good. And we have to be nice. And judging isn’t nice.
Isn’t this fairly typical female justification for errors in judgement, just put to a Biblical perspective?
“I’m special, I’m not like those people who should be judged.”
followed by…
“Standards shouldn’t exist, because life is hard.”
1) If standards don’t exist, you can’t be judged by a non-existant standard, and hence no one is special.
2) If you are special, then standards do exist and in order to claim exceptionalism you would need to be judged special by those who hold to a standard.
Jeremy:
From a biblical standpoint, it’s less about being special and relaxing standards, than it is about love and judgment.
The churchian always pulls out “God is love” and “judge not lest ye be judged” whenever these “hard cases make bad law” situations comes up. We must love. We’re called as Christians to love. God’s love is unconditional; and so we must love him/her/them unconditionally. Surround them in love and prayer. Give her some food from the food pantry. Throw a baby shower for her unborn bastard. A shack-up shower for her and her live in boyfriend.
And no harsh consequences. Because that would be judging, and we can’t do that. Because judge not. You can’t talk about her sin because you’re a sinner too. If you do it makes you a hypocrite. Just don’t talk about it in public. We don’t want to alienate anyone or make them feel bad. Don’tcha know ¼ of this congregation is divorced; another ¼ is having affairs, and the remaining half all were fornicators?
Reading through the comments over there was disheartening. It was enough to make me want to apologize to the world for being a Christian. However, I know that Christ is the standard. Being a Christian means following/imitating Christ. So many take His name yet have no problem with standing for things that are diametrically opposed to His teachings.
I gave up the ‘conservative’ label because it stood for nothing really. I cannot give up the Christian label because Christ is what being Christian is all about.
Romans 3:
3 What if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? 4 By no means! Let God be true though every one were a liar, as it is written,
“That you may be justified in your words,
and prevail when you are judged.”
“If her reaction to the word of God on divorce means hardening her heart then you certainly can know that she is not saved. If it involves tearing her clothes in repentance after being confronted on her sin she is saved.”
When hearing it put that way…Oh God.
Marcus, I am not anti-Eros, nor do I think Eros should not be a part of a healthy marriage. But that isn’t what the institution of marriage was all about, in the sense that we should marry whoever we felt Eros for.
Isn’t that what everyone is complaining about here? The stupid woman who married the RockBandSuperStar because he gave her tingles and then “realized” after the marriage what a total douchebag he was?
Seems to me that Wisdom is more important, and true Selfless Love. Eros is important (you need to be attracted to your spouse), but that’s not what the foundation of marriage is.
@lady N
Yes. The fundamental problem is that we have inverted the order. Instead of marriage being the moral place to pursue sex and romantic love (the biblical frame), romantic love has come to be seen as the moral place to pursue sex and marriage. Because of this, when the tingles fade she no longer feels morally bound to remain married, and can even make the case to herself that it would be immoral to remain married to a man she no longer feels romantic love for.
I don’t know where I said or implied that, but okay.
You did state that “marriage has never been about Eros anyway” – that sounds to be a total exclusion, though it seems you meant to say “marriage has never been completely about Eros anyway.”
I think the biggest reason that these women have a lot of male defenders is not only a man’s natural protective instinct, but is also from the confusion that is caused by women who end a relationship or marriage using a term I like to refer to as the ‘Shawcross.’
Have you ever experienced it? Where a woman cuts out your legs from underneath you, but then cries and acts as if she’s the one who’s been hurt by all this? A lot of men are confused by this, thinking that she is actually capable of feeling and is somewhat sensitive, when in reality it is only emotional cleansing for herself, so that she can hop into bed with the next guy almost immediately and not feel bad about it.
I feel if more men were aware of the shawcross technique there would less apologists.
Aquila says:
February 5, 2014 at 3:39 pm
Spot on!
Off-topic, but plenty of Hamster Racing… plus Dear Abby tells it like it is to a member of Team Woman when things are really bad (peek quick, it may be years ‘fore we such sh*t as this again).
“Woman On The Rebound Wants Back In Ex’s Court,” Dear Abby via Yahoo!, 5 Feb 2014
http://news.yahoo.com/woman-rebound-wants-back-ex-39-court-050009908.html
“After a two-year relationship ended, I got pregnant on the rebound. I called my ex and told him I was having a baby with another man because I wanted to hurt him. …” and now she wants Dear Abby to her get back with him. (Can’t make this up.)
When it comes to divorce: male failure is essential, female failure is circumstantial. [It’s the same when in pursuit of a wife/husband] Where men experience cause and effect, women tend to experience affect. Everything is contingent on her feelings.
She can be bowling with the inflated bumpers in the gutter and still feel cheated if she doesn’t get a strike every time. Though she still wants the high-five for her six. The coddling of women is so substantial and comprehensive that there really is no way to approach these things. The hamster needs a massive dose of warfarin. Until then. No marriage.
“Well, I prefer not to see it that way.”
…
“No, you prefer not to see.”
(I mean, every “Christian” I knew said I had good reason but, no. I didn’t.) God is merciful. Sounds like some other divorced people need to think about repentance, too, instead of making excuses.
Cindy your words are encouraging.
She probably wasn’t physically abused, or she would have said so.
Abuse means she didn’t like something he said, didn’t say, did, didn’t do, or the way one of the a fore mentioned was carried out.
Research has demonstrated that women’s behaviors toward men or sexual interest are different across the menstrual cycle. However, this effect was only found on verbal interest and the receptivity of women to a courtship solicitation had never been tested before. In a field experiment, 455 (200 with normal cycles and 255 pill-users) 18–25-year-old women were approached by 20-year-old male-confederates who solicited them for their phone number. A survey was administered to the women solicited 1 min later in order to obtain information about the number of days since the onset of their last menses. It was found that women in their fertile phase, but not pill-users, agreed more favorably to the request than women in their luteal phase or in their menstrual phase.
Gueguen, Nicolas. “The receptivity of women to courtship solicitation across the menstrual cycle: A field experiment.” Biological psychology 80.3 (2009): 321-324.
Tifferet, Sigal, et al. “Dog ownership increases attractiveness and attenuates perceptions of short-term mating strategy in cad-like men.” Journal of Evolutionary Psychology 11.3 (2013): 121-129.
http://www.akademiai.com/content/8q127t426x5k6434/
MarcusD: You are like an encyclopaedia, brother.
And now, some totally off-topic nonsense from our favourite radical feminist model of civilized womanhood, upholder of family values, and patron of proficient mothering, Jenny Erikson:
Not much more to say than that, really.
Boxer
@JDG
The emotional abuse especially is a great tool in the hands of evil women to bludgeon their men.
Cindy,
“Maybe that’s because I repented, not of my marriage, which was pretty awful, but of my divorce. I sinned when I left that young man. By the time I knew it, I couldn’t do anything to change it, but there was no excuse for it. (I mean, every “Christian” I knew said I had good reason but, no. I didn’t.) God is merciful. Sounds like some other divorced people need to think about repentance, too, instead of making excuses.”
This is the thread winner.
As part of a spiritual community that truly takes the Gospel to heart, calling out sin is no more offensive than letting someone know their fly is down or a doctor diagnosing disease. That’s why the news is good – it drains sin of its mystery, and thus its power to terrify.
It is only an insult to a person who believes they are without sin, and such a person has no ground to stand on in claiming to be a Christian. They’ve missed the entire point. This is why Churchians who tremble to mention the word sin or to say anything that might be construed as judgmental are so powerfully anti-evangelical.
I’ve posted this before… An angel comes to you and said that God has heard the prayers and you have one of two choices:
One: You may choose to have a nearly zero percent divorce rate but it would allow and apply to gay marriage too so some small percent of the marriages would be gay but there would be almost no divorce.
Two: You may choose to ban gay marriage is entirely but there would be a 75 percent or greater divorce rate .
Which do you choose?
“When men call women out they feel like they are being a bully”
This deserves its own post.
She’s the gift that keeps on giving, isn’t she? If the manosphere had tried to invent a woman to prove everything we say is true, we couldn’t have done so well.
She’s the gift that keeps on giving, isn’t she? If the manosphere had tried to invent a woman to prove everything we say is true, we couldn’t have done so well.
Not saying she is. Not saying she isn’t. But it’s worth remembering that “cyberwar psy-ops” do exist. Don’t take anyone on teh Interwebz at face value.
http://hawaiianlibertarian.blogspot.com/2012/05/cognitive-infiltration.html
“to stay married to that particular man who ‘surprise’ was a completely different man than who he presented himself to be when we wed.”
men rarely ever ‘change’.
it’s only when the tingles cease and the drug induced high subsides that she sees him as he always was instead of the idealized construct of a misunderstood teddy bear that she created in her mind. no different than a beta who says a woman changed after marriage, and that she turned into a cold, sexless, uncaring gold digger. she always was, you just didn’t filter properly and didn’t guard the gate to commitment because you were desperate, your mind saw her as your soulmate, your friends knew better. i know.. i was there once.
if he’s abusive*, he was always abusive.. you just ignored it because tingles. it’s not that he ‘changed’ after you wed, it’s because you didn’t guard your gate to sex and you filtered for a husband with your loose vagina and not with your head.
*real violent physical abuse only. not the retarded definition used by feminists which includes reprimanding women, engaging in loud arguments, not agreeing with women automatically, holding women to standards, holding women responsible for actions, not acquiescing to all women’s desires, saying ‘no’ to women’s requests/ultimatums, not buying her flowers on Vday, etc… that’s not abuse, you’re just a whore reaching for excuses to frivorce your unattractive beta.
@Cail
“”Maybe you were joking””…………..Yes I was!
“”Homosexuality (the urge) is a mental illness, and the lifestyle is a brutal, empty, soul-destroying one””
Yes…I believe that it is.It is natural.
@Cail
Sorry….I meant to say…”It is not natural”.Look at the animal kingdom.It is not practiced there….only people!….and they believe that they are “Normal”???……No they are not! Here in Toronto we have a “Gay Pride Day” Parade(One of the largest in NA..I think San Fran. is bigger).It is something to see I assure you.I have never seen so many pathetic,sick,screwed up people in one place at one time in my life!
Return of CAF:
Why I am Staying Single
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=857519
—
Thank you 🙂
Dear Keoni & Cail:
I actually considered the possibility that Jenny Erikson was a sort of disinformation disseminator/agent provocateur, after Sam Botta pointed out the possibility on Twitter. My suspicions lasted about 30 seconds.
Jenny Erikson simply isn’t smart enough to be hired by some culture industry insider to spread memes. She’s also not good looking enough, not slim enough; and, her life is so depressingly idiotic that it’s impossible to believe that the PR pros would fabricate such a persona. She’s utterly mediocre in every way. Stealing a phrase from Hannah Arendt, she’s the embodiment of “the banality of evil”.
Of course, I could be wrong, but I’m of the opinion that she’s just another skank-ho single mom who divorced a good man to chase her whims, making her children bastards in the process. She’s somewhat unusual, in that she doesn’t have the good sense to not air all the details of her pathetic life on the internet, providing guys like us a wealth of what they call “teachable moments”. That’s about as far as her uniqueness goes, though.
Best, Boxer
No one should be surprised by Kristin’s remarks. I’m certainly not. She has no moral agency.
You can’t have a serious conversation about the sinfulness of divorce when the person you are discussing this with has a personal disclaimer of her own like this one…
…you could say that about almost all spouses.
Well Boxer, she does perfectly hit all of the stereotypes and memes the manosphere always discusses. Either she’s the perfect example of everything wrong with the West today because she’s followed the mass media script like a rat following the pied piper…
…or she’s a deliberate, calculating representative of the pied piper, helping to lead all the other rats astray.
Either she’s a deliberate change agent, or she is a useful idiot.
In either case, she’s serving the exact same purpose of helping influence other Christian women that divorce is “normal,” and “just happens” to even the God “loving” (as opposed to God Fearing) Christians, now isn’t she?
@ deti
“The second was a preacher’s daughter married for about 10 years to an atheist who didn’t want kids. She was coming up on The Wall and at 35, had an affair with a divorced man who had 5 kids of his own. She promptly got pregnant by her paramour. Her holy hamster blessed it, saying that “it was meant to be” and that she needed to have a kid and this was her last chance and she “deserved to be happy”.
Have had a situation like this the past few months. Backstory: woman in her late 30s has a child with a man who has 2 kids with an ex-girlfriend and 2 kids with his ex-wife.
The woman is complaining to her mother about the trouble of having a child with a man with kids, the man’s time and money being spread thin. When the mother told her that she should’ve thought about that before having a child with a man with 4 kids, the woman’s response was that she “was blessed with a child” and that “God wanted her to have a child”
This woman doesn’t go to church, read the bible and has never spoken about God before this.
I’m noticing more people like this who consider themselves Christians but don’t exactly live Christian lives. The talk up forgiveness and non judgement only when the light is shinned on them.
Dear Keoni:
She certainly is proving all the usual stereotypes we talk about, but in this, she’s not that much different than about ten million other idiots running around loose, except in her depressing ability to attention whore where we can all point and snigger.
I’m sort of a fan of occam’s razor. I think if there were a conspiracy to glamorize the process, the PR hacks running the show would get at least a semi-hot woman as their model, and provide her with some semblance of literary polish.
Jenny Erikson is objectively stupid, is incapable of writing well (she’s barely able to string a few sentences together), and is a flabby, sloppy, horsey looking chick. That’s not me trying to be mean to her, mind you. It’s just the way I see her.
If this is a conspiracy, they need to fire whoever is in charge of it.
Best, Boxer
Hi guys, first time poster, long time reader. Great site. A few thoughts on biblical marriage. Many believe that adultery is biblical grounds for divorce, but there is another way to interpret the exception clause [Matt. 5:32 & 19:9] that is so heralded these days, please consider:
Any study of the Hebrew marriage customs and laws reveals that the groom pays for the bride with a dowry paid to the brides father (Gen. 34:12, Exod. 22:17) . Many examples can be found in the Old Testament of this, e.g. David could not afford the dowry for a kings daughter (very expensive) (1Sam.18:25). No better example of this is than the groom Jesus paid for His bride, not with corruptible silver and gold but with His own blood, revealed as a dowry in this example. Terms and conditions.
No try before buy.
Payment upfront in full before marriage.
One exception only, if the girl is not a virgin the deal could be called off. Hence the reason why Jesus said “except it be for fornication”. IOW pre marital sex can break the deal, not post nuptial adultery. Wanna know more? Check out http://www.holymatrimony.org
@Boxer
There’s no court case involving the two of them. There’s a “Jennifer Erikson vs David Erikson” (filed in San Diego on 05/02/2013, also with reference to ‘Dissolution with UCCA’ [child support]), but that’s it. Maybe “Leif” isn’t his real first name (just a reference to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leif_Ericson?)?
Contagiousness of divorce:
http://simulacral-legendarium.blogspot.ca/2013/07/re-httpdalrock.html
I once had a similar conversation with a female family member about gay marriage and divorce. There was a lot of agreement around various points of gay marriage being bad and divorce being bad. But when I suggested that the church should be the one to decide who gets divorced and still be in good standing(similar to the catholic church outside the US), all agreement abruptly stopped.
I’ve been lurking here for months, and this is the best post yet. I’m a single Christian man in my late 20s. Grew up in a liberal non-Christian household and became a Christian in my late teens after my parents went through a bad divorce. It’s shocking that even though Jesus talked about divorce more than nearly every other social issue, it is so accepted today and most Christian denominations either accept it or are at least unwilling to fight it. I don’t always agree with the perspective of this site on some issues, but I keep reading and learning. Thanks to all the commenters for great educational discussions.
I am always a tad suspicious of ladies who come here brandishing a photo (of themselves?) wherein they look hot. I am also suspicious of women who claim to be anti-divorce but then raise the bogey-man of violence and abuse as their get-out-of-marriage-free card. Having said that wallowing in being a martyr is merely using a blog as an emotional tampon.
When it comes to divorce women are like Lemmings. Men only divorce when there is someone younger and hotter to marry. Most second marriages fail: some are an improvement on the first.
I went ahead and read Matt’s entire post and left a comment as well, because I really hope he can manage not to let the divorce apologists pull at his heart strings and have him posting an “I was wrong” post in the next few weeks. My comment:
Despite the backlash you get from divorcees on this one, please do not back down. Do not retract it. You already made it clear right here in the post that in extreme circumstances divorce may be warranted. Everyone thinks their little plot of unhappiness and discomfort qualifies as extreme.
Please don’t buy into the “divorce is too complicated and personal for you to ever understand fully so you’re judgmental and that hurts my feelings.”
God understands everything and He hates divorce. You are on the right side of this one. Stay the course here Don’t capitualte to the hurt feelings a few women who have resorted to shooting the messenger because they don’t like the message even though they know it’s true.
I hope I wasn’t the only one but I was not inclined to read through all of the 700+ comments he’s received thus far.
I am always a tad suspicious of ladies who come here brandishing a photo (of themselves?) wherein they look hot.
LOL.
Men only divorce when there is someone younger and hotter to marry.
Or when they think they can find someone hotter and tighter to marry. But yes, I agree. Men are far less likely to leave simply because they are unhappy. But they will leave for another woman.
Unless it’s Prince Charles.
@Elspeth
It occurs to me that men do not become unhappy or bored. Unhappiness and boredom seems to be an entirely female response to marriage. Men just do not go round bewailing the fact that they are Unhappy (though they might happily cheat if the opportunity comes their way) – even if by any reasonable standards they should be unhappy – it would never occur to them that they might be. Men tend to see Marriage as a permanent state, like having a job until sixty five, or being bald. Their word tends to be their bond. Men thus accept (in a relationship sense) what comes their way – women don’t – and males who divorce would be regarded by their male friends and associates as dangerous and unreliable and thus not to be trusted generally. Worse – when a man’s wife divorces – or even a girlfriend parts company – the assumption by all men is that it is the fault of the man. The man is seen as a loser, whether he is cut-up about it or indifferent – contrast that with the fussing that all women receive on divorce from other women – and of course the renewed romantic interest from men – men prefer not to get involved with married women, because they can never be certain that the husband will not make them regret their dalliance – but with a divorced woman that sort of risk is usually much reduced.
In the world of work, however – where women tend to be risk averse – men take chances, and usually without a safety net. A successful man is attractive to women – witness that Wendy Dang (the former Mrs Murdoch – wife of the newspaper Tycoon) – who has been waxing lyrical over the fine body (I kid you not) of former Prime Minister Tony Blair. This is surely the ultimate in Hypergamous gold-digging.
“The woman is complaining to her mother about the trouble of having a child with a man with kids, the man’s time and money being spread thin. When the mother told her that she should’ve thought about that before having a child with a man with 4 kids, the woman’s response was that she “was blessed with a child” and that “God wanted her to have a child”
This woman doesn’t go to church, read the bible and has never spoken about God before this.
I’m noticing more people like this who consider themselves Christians but don’t exactly live Christian lives. The talk up forgiveness and non judgement only when the light is shinned on them.”
—-
This isn’t a special quality of Christianity, or even religion. Some people (especially women) desire not being responsible for their own choices.
It’s the same appeal of the ‘tingle bra’ Dalrock was posting about recently. It wasn’t your choice to have sex, it was ‘true love’; the bra decided for you (even though a bra cannot consent to sex).
It wasn’t your choice to date/romance/sex/love/whatever. It was the horoscope or astrology, it was meant to be. You read in a magazine quiz that this kind of cad/player man, who you just coincidentally happen to be attracted to, was your ‘type’ – the magazine quiz of eight questions was personalized to your answers, it wouldn’t lie. It said you were attracted to charming men, and look, you are! It was meant to be. You just did what you were supposed to, following the quiz; it was everything ELSE that failed, he wasn’t what the magazine said he should be. Your romance was so much more mundane than the magazine/fairy tale/romance novel/Twilight said it would be! You didn’t choose for any of this to happen, it’s everyone else’s fault (especially that good-for-nothing man, how DARE he not be as you imagined/fantasized/desired him to be).
It wasn’t your choice to deliberately cheat and get pregnant/become a single mother. It was destiny/your last chance/meant to be. You’re just doing what makes you happy. Doesn’t everyone deserve to be happy? You are trying to get me to go against my own happiness! Who is the selfish one here? Jesus would want me to be happy.
I didn’t go out to a bar and have a one-night-stand. One thing led to another, and somehow I ended up in his bed. [Notice this: women describing life as happening to them, as though they are entirely passive. Once you pay attention to this you notice how frequent it is. “I happened to find myself pregnant at 17.”, happened to find myself divorced for the second time, happened to find out he wasn’t the man I married, happened to fall out of love, happened to have an affair, etc… So many women act like they don’t have any control or agency in their own lives]
The big one: I didn’t have regrettable sex. I was raped/pressured/got naked and climbed into his bed and went three rounds but didn’t consent to morning sex/whatever. <– 90% of false rape accusations are either to deceive the woman herself or another person (lover, parents, etc…) about consenting to sex.
—-
My rambling point (sorry, it's late): Women aren't being traitors to their religion or spirituality. They like religion and spirituality and personalized quizzes and astrology and palm reading and tingle bras because it requires no responsibility of them; rather it absolves them of any of the consequences (negative feelings) of their behavior.
I think it was Cali above, who used the Doritos analogy. In short, he said while he could bullshit and rationalize making a bad choice, he could never convince himself that eating junk food was the proper choice, or what he should do. WOMEN CANNOT ENDURE THIS DISSONANCE. Not like men can. They will do whatever their emotions tell them to do. They will satisfy their desires and "be true to themselves" (ever heard that one? this empty phrase means to follow your emotions in women speak, but notice how the phrase, which has replaced obeying god in the girl guide pledge, is about justifying emotion-following), whatever the cost. Thus they have to rewrite everything in order to go along with this. That is the aim of just about everything women do: justifying doing what they want to do, in a way that is congruent with their emotions.
This is why the woman in Dalrock's post is so concerned with Walsh's tone, his empathy, his lack of compassion and love, etc… rather than his substance (which she admits agreeing with). She, like all women, don't care about the substance, she cares about her feelings. Thus she writes a rejection of a premise (frivolous divorce is bad) she actually agrees with, in order to avoid feeling bad about her frivolous divorce. This is why women are so focused on "not judging" others – they don't care about determining standards of behavior and what is right and wrong, they want to avoid negative feelings that come from social disapproval and internal dissonance.
Deliberately divesting oneself of agency is thus the best ploy a woman can pull: she is no longer responsible for her actions. She would have been "unsafe" if she had stayed, her children are "better off" without their father, etc… The woman in Dalrock's post will never come out and say why she divorced, because that would put the responsibility on her. Rather, it suffices that divorcees feel bad about "having" to divorce.
Everyone always told me women are emotional, but being able to actually see them as creatures of pure emotion was a big part of opening my eyes. Hope that was coherent enough to convey my message.
@Dalrock 7:15 PM Feb 5. “Because of this, when the tingles fade she no longer feels morally bound to remain married, and can even make the case to herself that it would be immoral to remain married to a man she no longer feels romantic love for.” I remain convinced that the love pill, the women’s eros enhancer, is a moral pursuit within marriage.
@Opus “I am always a tad suspicious of ladies who … look hot.” I feel morally obligated to investigate further.
@Elspeth “Or when they think they can find someone hotter and tighter to marry.” You are wrong. Dalrock has hammered this point over and over again. Men DO NOT file for divorce more as their wives get gray and wrinkly.
@Cail
It doesn’t surprise me that a churchian would hop on the bandwagon for something supposed to mitigate the consequences of casual sex (and even serial monogamy). The HPV debate is something that I wish Conservatives had saved up the credibility to win. As somebody in the pharma industry, there’s a lot I can say about it, but I won’t. The science behind it is sketchy at best (studies attempting to quantify one variable while neglecting others tend to be so…….how does one control for sexual activity as a variable, for example?).
* http://dailymed.nlm.nih.gov/dailymed/lookup.cfm?setid=30952400-0572-4431-9150-3a41affffb9a
That’s the structured product label with a base summary of the drug’s pharmacogenetics, pharmacokinetics, Adverse Event breakdown, and Clinical Summaries. It’s a whopper. If you wanted the actual Case Study Reports, you’d most likely need to apply through the Freedom Of Information Act which is not worth the time, hassle, or possibility of ending up on somebody’s naughty-list. Another problematic part is the tracking of the drug after the studies are complete, known as “Postmarketing Experience.” All submitted information is voluntary. As my final comment, I’ll simply note that the study was named “Females United to Unilaterally Reduce Endo/Ectocervical Disease,” and that the company who created the drug began teaming up with NOW to push for mandatory vaccination for all 6th-grade females in 2008.
*Note: there is another vaccine by another company. I have not looked into that one with as much scrutiny. A key concept for both is the risk they were forced to mention with “Syncope,” which is the medical term for passing out. If you read the reports, it’s almost like they’re treating this as a normal reaction to a vaccine, and worse, treating seizures as a normal part of an average person passing out.
“Or when they think they can find someone hotter and tighter to marry.” You are wrong. Dalrock has hammered this point over and over again. Men DO NOT file for divorce more as their wives get gray and wrinkly.
No,they don’t. Not usually Jf12 I agree. I was not implying that every man does that. What I said was that when they do leave, this is usually why. That they don’t leave for general reasons of unhappiness like most women do. When they leave, there is almost always another women waiting in the wings.
Further, I was simply pointing out that it is entirely possible for a man to sin against a woman through no fault of her own. Don’t know if I ever shared this, but my mother was my father’s second wife. He has said without equivocation that the first wife did nothing to warrant his behavior. His first wife wasn’t even that old, as she was in her mid-20’s when they divorced. She wasn’t ugly or fat.
When I finally met the first wife when my half-brother died a few years back, she was in her 70’s and my husband commented on how beautiful she must have been 60 years ago, based on what she looks like now- in her 70’s. My father said she was a good wife. He simply wanted my mother more. My dad has long since come to faith and is one of the most devout, solid men bar none. But it was what it was.
So I agree that it has nothing to do with the woman being old and wrinkly. But it does happen, and it isn’t that uncommon.
@Elspeth
I find your posts thoughtful and sincere. Thanks for contributing.
It is a sad fact that men often think with their crotch. It’s a source of a lot of pain and suffering in this life.
Elspeth:
The more I read your writings about your backstory, the more I understand why you think as you do, and why you view men as you do.
Men are generally as faithful as their options. Most men don’t cheat because they can’t. Most men are faithful because no one other than their wives is willing to sleep with them. Sounds harsh, but it’s a fact, especially in this SMP/MMP.
@Elspeth, yes there are bad men who can get their own way with women plural. “But it does happen, and it isn’t that uncommon.” It is uncommon *comparatively*.
The more I read your writings about your backstory, the more I understand why you think as you do, and why you view men as you do.
I think men are great. What are you saying Deti?
Elspeth:
The men you knew and remember from your childhood were very good with women. You married a man who was and is good with women and who was trained to be good with women by a man who was good with women.
By good with women, I mean “is skilled at attracting, handling and dealing with women.”
For you, a defining trait of masculinity is skill with attracting, handling and dealing with women.
Thus, you simply cannot fathom how a man (or a human being with male genitalia, if you prefer) can have difficulty with attracting, handling or dealing with women. Your near-inability to wrap your mind around this characterizes a good part of your worldview.
Nice PHP code there, Thinkn’Man!
@Elspeth: It’s amazing how many women believe all men are master seducers, when the only men they CHOOSE to notice, are the master seducers.
Thinkin’Man, you may be using a poor choice of language for those objects. Consider this alternative:
https://github.com/ErisBlastar/cplusequality
Lmao!
“I’ve been divorced four times–”
Well, no one should take ANY advice on marriage or dating from him, that’s for sure!
Skimmed some of the comments linked to over at Walsh’s blog (I don’t much care for his site for various reasons) and once again I’m struck by the common error of confusing “niceness” with a number of other things: “nice” is not the same thing as “caring”, or “loving”, or “good”.
What if instead of divorce the topic was booze? How many women would get worked up if some man blogger (maybe that should be “manblogger”…) were to offer the opinion that constantly drinking is a problem? “Oh, you say she’s an alcohollic just because she keeps a bottle of vodka in the lower drawer of her desk and the level of liquid drops every day. How can you be so judgemental” — would anyone aside from the perpetually clueless or an ignorant naif write that? I do not think so. Because the vast majority of women don’t regard that level of boozing as something they would want. But the FI demands an eject button in all relationships, due to hypergamy, and will resist mightily any attempts to take that option away.
MarcusD, thanks very much for the useful references in this thread, it is downright fascinating to see how fairly simple experiments can be used to suss out the effects of ovulation on the behavior of women. The glasses / red pill are once again verified as accurate in terms of the truths about women. Again I predict that feminists will of necessity become more and more opposed to science, as science steadily refutes fundamental premises of feminism.
@deti Although the apex fallacy, having seen it, seems to be self-evident, as “the man whose eyes are open hath said”, it remains hidden to women, maybe especially to redpill women. But they are to be commended for signs that they try to get rid of it.
@Anonymous
“Thinkin’Man, you may be using a poor choice of language for those objects. Consider this alternative: https://github.com/ErisBlastar/cplusequality”
That was hilarious. I almost took it seriously (until I realized they had too firm a grasp of ‘objects’ and “hierarchies” to be a woman.)
Thanks for the laugh.
Thanks, that’s clearer, and I think generally true. Men don’t get “restless” in relationships the way women do. Not that it never happens, but in general, if a man liked a woman well enough to marry her, he probably likes her well enough to stick with her even if things get tough. A man expects some unhappiness in life, and he doesn’t take it as a sign that the relationship is failing.
A man might cheat if a cute enough girl at work snaps her thong at him, but he’s not going to blow up the marriage himself unless he’s sure something better is waiting. And men aren’t likely to think that unless it’s clearly true, because we’re not constantly pumped full of self-esteem and pretty lies about our options. A man is much more likely to be pessimistic about his options: that the woman he has now is the best he can do, and that leaving her will sentence him to years of loneliness.
So you really only see a man blow up his marriage when he stumbles over a hot little number who’s far more exciting than his wife — probably more exciting than he ever thought he’d get — and that just doesn’t happen very often. The stereotypical example is the young medical student who marries when he’s struggling to get through school and then becomes much more attractive when he starts his practice, but that’s not as common now because people aren’t marrying early like that as much and not as many men are jumping up in income that way. Most guys don’t go through a jump in attractiveness, so they can’t suddenly “do better” than the wife they signed up for.
archer:
Matt Walsh hasn’t been divorced 4 times. That’s hyperbole and he explains it in the body of his post.
“A man might cheat if a cute enough girl at work snaps her thong at him, but he’s not going to blow up the marriage himself unless he’s sure something better is waiting.”
I agree. It generally requires another woman ACTIVELY pursuing a married man for the cheating and subsequent divorce to occur.
In the case of my parents, my mother had an affair when I was about eight years old, and the marriage was forever rocked by it. When I was about 16, my father began an affair with his cute (but not younger than my mother) secretary. I think she made him feel manly and needed, whereas my mother was busy trying to prove how much of an independent breadwinner she could be. But in the end, it was ultimately my mother who filed for divorce, and my father eventually married the secretary. (My mother took my father to the cleaners in court.) I sometimes wonder how things would have ended up had my mother stuck by my father and refused to file for divorce. Would he have finally done it? Or would he have come back? But if my mother were of that character, would he have ever cheated? Or maybe my stepmother was just too much of a temptation for any man.
Ah well, it is all water under the bridge, I suppose.
Men are more polygamous than hypergamous. Look at the top men in history, genetically. For example: a Sultan, who kept a harem in addition to his wife; a King who kept a favorite mistress to entertain him, but was more serious with his Queen; Genghis Khan (most likely the single most successful male in human history, in terms of numbers of descendents), who raped his way across Asia, bedding a new woman every time he dismounted his horse; or Casanova, who charmed countless girls into spending a single, thrilling night with him before leaving, never to return.
The whole “trading up” thing is not really the goal of the male; he doesn’t need to monopolize a top mate. Granted, in our monogamous society a man may desire to trade in infertile for fertile, but very few men can make huge jumps in SMV. Look at the top men who got divorced in this modern day, the Tiger Woods, and McCartney’s and the like: who filed, and who has a higher SMV (ie. more likely to do better than their current spouse)?
I think this idea of a man trading in his decrepit 60-year-old (who is most likely younger than he is) for a nubile 20-year-old is pure fantasy. Maybe men are a bit more attractive simply by being taken, but few men have the options to reliably trade, most will be harshly punished by divorce law for moving from woman to woman, and most men would prefer to add another woman to the mix and have both than trade.
My opinion, and at least in my corner of the world, in seems to pan out. Women I’ve seen generally won’t leave if they don’t have somewhere else to go. Even Eat Pray Love ends with a new marriage. Men who I’ve seen break up/divorce in my social circle generally do so out of dissatisfaction with their current partner rather than a better option appearing. Women I see generally move from relationship to relationship rather than from singlehood to relationship.
@Cail Corishev “we’re not constantly pumped full of self-esteem and pretty lies about our options. A man is much more likely to be pessimistic about his options” Yes, very ture in our culture, which is why the manosphere exists: to counter the culture by promoting the abundance mentality for the good of mankind.
Re: men inspired to cheat:
Organisms ‘discount the future’ when they value imminent goods over future goods. Optimal discounting varies: selection should favour allocations of effort that effectively discount the future relatively steeply in response to cues promising relatively good returns on present efforts. However, research on human discounting has hitherto focused on stable individual differences rather than situational effects.
In two experiments, discounting was assessed on the basis of choices between a smaller sum of money tomorrow and a larger sum at a later date, both before and after subjects rated the ‘appeal’ of 12 photographs. In experiment 1, men and women saw either attractive or unattractive opposite–sex faces; in experiment 2, participants saw more or less appealing cars. As predicted, discounting increased significantly in men who viewed attractive women, but not in men who viewed unattractive women or women who viewed men; viewing cars produced a different pattern of results.
Wilson, Margo, and Martin Daly. “Do pretty women inspire men to discount the future?.” Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences 271.Suppl 4 (2004): S177-S179.
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Related:
The authors report a field experiment with skateboarders that demonstrates that physical risk taking by young men increases in the presence of an attractive female. This increased risk taking leads to more successes but also more crash landings in front of a female observer. Mediational analyses suggest that this increase in risk taking is caused in part by elevated testosterone levels of men who performed in front of the attractive female. In addition, skateboarders’ risk taking was predicted by their performance on a reversal-learning task, reversal-learning performance was disrupted by the presence of the attractive female, and the female’s presence moderated the observed relationship between risk taking and reversal learning. These results suggest that men use physical risk taking as a sexual display strategy, and they provide suggestive evidence regarding possible hormonal and neural mechanisms.
Ronay, Richard, and William von Hippel. “The presence of an attractive woman elevates testosterone and physical risk taking in young men.” Social Psychological and Personality Science 1.1 (2010): 57-64.
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Women, and why they react to attractive men (hint: testosterone is a key ingredient for inciting what? …)
Recently, Roney et al. (Roney, J.R., Lukaszewski, A.W., Simmons, Z.L., 2007. Rapid endocrine responses of young men to social interactions with young women. Horm. Behav. 52, 326–33; Roney, J.R., Mahler, S.V., Maestripieri, D., 2003. Behavioral and hormonal responses of men to brief interactions with women. Evol. Hum. Behav. 24, 365–375) demonstrated that men release testosterone and cortisol in response to brief social interactions with young women. The current experiment examined whether women show a similar endocrine response to physically and behaviorally attractive men. 120 women (70 naturally-cycling and 50 using hormonal contraceptives) were shown one of four 20-minute video montages extracted from popular films, depicting the following scenarios: 1) an attractive man courting a young woman (experimental stimulus), 2) a nature documentary (video clip control), 3) an unattractive older man courting a woman (male control), and 4) an attractive woman with no men present (female control). Saliva samples were taken before and after presentation of the stimulus, and were later analyzed for testosterone and cortisol content via enzyme immunoassay. Naturally-cycling women experienced a significant increase in both testosterone and cortisol in response to the experimental stimulus but to none of the control stimuli. Participants taking hormonal contraceptives also showed a significant cortisol response to the attractive man. Women may release adrenal steroid hormones to facilitate courtship interactions with high mate-value men.
López, Hassan H., Aleena C. Hay, and Phoebe H. Conklin. “Attractive men induce testosterone and cortisol release in women.” Hormones and Behavior 56.1 (2009): 84-92.
Re: ” this increase in risk taking is caused in part by elevated testosterone levels” more likely vice versa. Injecting healthy men with a little extra testosterone does not cause any changes in behaviors at all.
“A man might cheat if a cute enough girl at work snaps her thong at him, but he’s not going to blow up the marriage himself unless he’s sure something better is waiting.”
LMFAROTFP!
BS! I have known way too many men, including a brother, who were just plain sluts. The banged who they could for as long as they could waiting to get caught. Men are not saints, sorry!
There’s no court case involving the two of them. There’s a “Jennifer Erikson vs David Erikson” (filed in San Diego on 05/02/2013, also with reference to ‘Dissolution with UCCA’ [child support]), but that’s it. Maybe “Leif” isn’t his real first name.
I always thought Leif was a joke for the sake of (limited) anonymity. This is “Leif” (David) on LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/david-erikson/9/7a4/b88
He is a VP of a software company in San Diego, CA. Fits the bill.
My experience lines up more with Guy’s than with Cail’s on the issue of men leaving marriages. I’ve seen one or two guys blow up a marriage for younger/hotter/tighter, but it’s rare in my experience.
Most of the time in my experience when a man files for divorce, it’s because his living situation has become totally unbearable, to the point that literally ANYTHING would be better than continuing to live in it.
I wonder sometimes if this isn’t some women’s MOs : she doesn’t want to be the one who pushes the button; so she makes his life a living hell until he can’t take it anymore and then HE pushes the button because if he doesn’t he’ll literally go insane.
For you, a defining trait of masculinity is skill with attracting, handling and dealing with women.
Thus, you simply cannot fathom how a man (or a human being with male genitalia, if you prefer) can have difficulty with attracting, handling or dealing with women. Your near-inability to wrap your mind around this characterizes a good part of your worldview.
Ah, okay. I see what you mean now. Not sure if I believe that skill with women is a defining trait of masculinity. However, I admit that I have something of a blind spot, apex fallacy if you will, in that I have mostly been surrounded by men who have had no shortage of female company.
I really do understand that not all men are good with women or attractive, just as not all women are attractive and/or have an easy time attracting a mate.
As badly as I know this will go over, I can’t help but wonder if you guys overstate the percentage of men who are in such dire straits with women. There are still a lot of men getting married. Getting a woman to walk down the aisle toward you does still signal some degree of success doesn’t it?
The is the additional issue of getting women to undersand the sacredness and binding commitment they are undertaking and the obligations they need to fulfill.
DeNihilist, I suppose that all depends on what subset of society you are surrounded by….
@Deti:
It is, for some. And, sometimes, he just takes a gun to his head and she gets to play grieving Widow as well. For a while. But, hey, SS Survivor benefits kick in and, depending on what he made, might net more than had they divorced.
The Churchian version is to blue-ball him so hard he chases the first other Woman that shows the minimal amount of interest, so she can divorce him after the affair.
@Elspeth “I can’t help but wonder if you guys overstate the percentage of men who are in such dire straits with women.” We know; the whole point is that the direstraits betas are under-the-iceberg for women. Elsewhere a woman this week claimed that all women know that all women find most men sexually attractive enough and have to exert considerable self control when out and about in public.
DeNihilist, I’m not saying men don’t sleep around. I’m saying that a man who’s sleeping around generally doesn’t want out of his marriage. If he can get some hot sex from his secretary in the afternoon, while staying with the mother of his children and having a decent life with her otherwise, he’ll usually be fine with that. A man who cheats is looking for more/better sex, not a new marriage. He’ll only blow up the old marriage if the new girl has him so head over heels that he gets stupid. Notice that even societies which turn a blind eye to mistresses, like the French, don’t think much of a man who gets goofy enough about his fling to try to marry her.
That’s very much a contrast to women: if a married woman cheats, it’s usually because she’s already checked out of the marriage emotionally, and she’s just lining up her exit route.
Deti, I agree with you. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a guy blow up a marriage the way a woman will, actually. (I’m not counting guys who cheated and got caught; just guys who decided to end the marriage themselves.) I mainly included that possibility to head off that argument. I’m sure that somewhere, sometime, a doctor did dump the faithful wife who put him through medical school to marry his hot nurse. It probably didn’t happen as much in real life as it happened in the movies, and it seems unlikely to happen at all today since such people don’t marry young anymore, but it probably did happen. Not nearly often enough to justify the fear women have about it, or the general shifting of marriage to post-college to avoid that fate.
@Marissa
Ah, I should have looked at LinkedIn. Good find.
Well, it looks like he’ll be paying lots of child support.
“Elsewhere a woman this week claimed that all women know that all women find most men sexually attractive enough and have to exert considerable self control when out and about in public.”
Bwahahahahahaha!
The reality is, most women want all men to be sexually attracted to them.
“As badly as I know this will go over, I can’t help but wonder if you guys overstate the percentage of men who are in such dire straits with women. There are still a lot of men getting married. Getting a woman to walk down the aisle toward you does still signal some degree of success doesn’t it?”
Ummmm, no. Not necessarily.
For a lot of men, the reason he “got her to walk down the aisle toward him” is because she is a washed up party slut in her late 20s who decided it was time to get married. She looks around and sees the pickins’ pretty slim. Alpha, F__kbuddy and Harley are nowhere to be found. So, she finds Eddie Steadyman, who she went to high school with and who now works as an engineer and drives to work in his Camry, which is as reliable as Eddie is. She snags him with a few blow jobs and some mind-bending sex. She puts on the act long enough to get the ring and the date. Within a few months after the wedding, the sex life goes kaput, and she starts planning her escape.
Honestly, Elspeth, I’ve explained this over and over again, everywhere. DO we have to keep going through this same concept? Seriously?
I forgot to mention that Eddie crushed on PartySlut in high school, but PartySlut was too busy with Alpha, F—kbuddy and Harley. Eddie didn’t even register on PartySlut’s radar screen.
So, no, Eddie finally getting PartySlut to put on an (off)white dress and “walk down the aisle toward him” as an “Oh, well, I guess he’ll haffta do” Plan B (or Plan P, or Plan W) is not really “some measure of success”.
Perhaps you don’t see it the same way; but men generally don’t like being thought of as the “consolation prize”, the Hamburger Helper you go home with after losing on The Price Is Right, the “thanks for playing” guy.
Believe it or not, many men stumble into it. Most women still want to get married — at a later age than they used to, but the desire for marriage is still powerful. They have to marry somebody, and there aren’t enough alphas to go around, so a guy in the 4-6 SMV range will find himself getting opportunities to marry by default at some point. (See: Jenny Erikson.)
It’s similar to sex: an average-looking guy who’s open to casual sex will “get lucky” once in a while throughout his life. He’ll never know how it happened, because it’ll mostly be a matter of being in the right place at the right time: she wanted to get revenge on her cheating boyfriend, she was on the rebound, she was really drunk, etc. A woman decided to have sex and he was there and not unacceptable.
So getting married does show some degree of success. But it doesn’t indicate that she’s really attracted to him; she may have been more attracted to being married and picked him out as being manageable. A man can find himself married to a woman who has no desire for him, who runs things from the start and does the minimum to keep him content enough so she can be a Mrs. As “success,” that’s pretty thin.
The high prevalence of sexual desire complaints in women have led a number of researchers and theorists to argue for a reconceptualization of female sexual desire that deemphasizes the drive model and places more focus on relational factors. Lacking in this effort has been a critical mass of qualitative research that asks women to report on their causal attributions for low desire. In this study, the authors conducted open-ended interviews with 19 married women who had lost desire in their marriage and asked what causal attributions they made for their loss of sexual desire and what barriers they perceived to be blocking its reinstatement. Three core themes emerged from the data, all of which represented forces dragging down on sexual desire in the present sample: (a) institutionalization of the relationship, (b) over-familiarity, and (c) the de-sexualization of roles in these relationships. Interpersonal and intrapersonal sexual dynamics featured more prominently than did relationship problems in women’s attributions. The authors discuss the results in terms of clinical implications in the psychosocial component of treatment for hypoactive sexual desire disorder.
Sims, Karen E., and Marta Meana. “Why did passion wane? A qualitative study of married women’s attributions for declines in sexual desire.” Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy 36.4 (2010): 360-380.
lady N
The reality is, most women want all attractive men to be sexually attracted to them.
FIFY.
“Getting a woman to walk down the aisle toward you does still signal some degree of success doesn’t it?”
Oh, you have no idea.
I was just at a wedding between a cute college grad and the nerdy, underweight love of her life. Not sure why she was into him. Everyone told stories of how they met and how the romance was kindled. It was particularly painful to here his overweight female friend from high school tell her take on it– how he used to ask her what women think, and so on. (Hint: she was his beta orbiter.)
But let me tell you. Her walking down the aisle to him doesn’t mean crap. How long will she be into him? Does she have any concept of loyalty or commitment? If he breaks his back for her, will he be held in contempt by her or by people in general?
But especially… if at any point she ever clicks in her mind that he has to win her again, that he has to qualify for her again, that he has to live in a perpetual state of courtship for her and never cease pursuing her… then he can very rapidly find himself in a Xeno’s paradox scenario with zero support from his church, no sympathy from anyone else, and nothing but contempt from her.
Was it about him or was it about her day and her chance to be the envy of her friends? Did she want to get married or does she want to be married? Did any of that hoopla have anything to do with him? Who knows? It’s all a roll of the dice.
Honestly, Elspeth, I’ve explained this over and over again, everywhere. DO we have to keep going through this same concept? Seriously?
About as many times as I keep having to go over that other concept with you it seems, LOL.
Anonymous, no I really think most of us want ALL men to be attracted to us. However, we only want the attractive ones to try to do anything about it. 😀
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Here’s the quote jf12 is talking about. It’s by Alte at ZippyCatholic.
“I think most men would be shocked to realize how many men women find at least mildly attractive ***”
Here’s the link so you can read it in its original context:
http://zippycatholic.wordpress.com/2014/02/01/definition-of-a-natural-alpha/#comment-17302
I literally laughed out loud when I read it. That statement is risible, absurd, and has positively no basis in any kind of reality I am aware of. To most women, most men do not even register as men; they are sexual blanks.
The only way I can fathom that Alte would say something so patently ridiculous is if something is peculiar to the area she lives in. She intimated she is living in Europe; things may be different there. She describes all men in her locale as somewhat alpha, so that might have something to do with it. But as far as describing the SMP in the US, no. That is NOT what the US SMP looks like. Not at all. And it is not how most women think about most men in the US. Not at all.
@lady N, I humbly bow before your superior logic. I do believe women not-so-secretly enjoy the plight of beta orbiters.
“To most women, most men do not even register as men; they are sexual blanks.”
I am going to have to think on that one for a bit….self-examine and whatnot. Hmmmmm…
jf12, it feeds our egos to know that men find us attractive….regardless of what the men look like. Remember, to a great degree, it is about how men make us feel. We are emotional creatures after all. 🙂 But as for the ability to make us tingle, well that is where a man’s attractiveness comes into play.
Personally, I can find a man attractive, but if I don’t think he finds me attractive, then no tingle. There is no greater turn off than a man who isn’t sexually attracted to me. My mother was the same way. So, is that because we are prideful women, or is that simply how most women are? I don’t know. But perhaps it is one reason why I never had crushes on celebrities or boys who were out of my league when in high school.
Cail
I think you’re probably right about that. I’ve heard that same comment from enough people, and seen it play out in people’s lives, so I guess it kind of makes sense. Women get really bent out of shape about it because (not only is it immoral but) they assume it means the same thing when a man does it as it would if they did it.
I suppose it varies somewhat from woman to woman. Based solely on visual cues, most men are sexual blanks to me and always have been. The number of men I find attractive increases slightly (from like maybe 5% to maybe 15-20%) after I’ve interacted with them a bit. I wrote a post about this last year on my old blog:
http://leticiamary.wordpress.com/2013/02/24/watching-shadows-come-into-focus/
Deti, it’s not complicated: all the men she sees are attractive, because the attractive ones are the ones she sees.
Of course, some of that depends on the definition of “mildly.” Obviously, there will be occasions where a woman is forced to “see” an invisible man. Say she’s been set up on a blind date, and she arrives to discover that the man isn’t attractive to her at all; he’s the kind of man who normally would be invisible to her. But she’s a nice enough person that she tries to find something attractive about him to make the evening more pleasant — maybe he has nice hair or is very polite — so she can say he’s mildly attractive. If you lower the bar far enough, almost everyone can clear it.
Or maybe she’s spent enough time on red-pill thinking that she’s able to force herself to take off the blinders and see the invisible men, and find something “mildly attractive” about them. That would take practice and exercise, but it’s possible. But does “mildly attractive” mean “makes me desire him,” which is the only level of attractiveness that matters?
If a few women are able to see the invisible men and find something attractive about them, that doesn’t change the fact that most men are invisible to most women; any more than the fact that some men are chubby-chasers changes the fact that most men prefer an hourglass figure.
The reality is, most women want all attractive men to be sexually attracted to them.
FIFY.
Alpha is assumed.
A motivational/individual differences model of infidelity is proposed in the course of empirically evaluating the traditional dichotomy between emotional and sexual motives. A scale assessing motivations for infidelity was developed and administered to 432 college students, 120 of whom reported past dating infidelity. Four motivations were identified and were associated as predicted with Big Five and other trait constructs; Sex was predicted by male gender, lower age, and unrestricted sociosexual orientation (SO); Dissatisfaction was predicted by female gender and Extraversion; Neglect was predicted by Neuroticism; and Anger by Neuroticism and low Agreeableness. As predicted, a two-factor model provides a poorer fit with the data than a multi-factor model. Unrestricted SO partially mediates the gender difference in endorsement of a sex motive for infidelity.
Barta, William D., and Susan M. Kiene. “Motivations for infidelity in heterosexual dating couples: The roles of gender, personality differences, and sociosexual orientation.” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 22.3 (2005): 339-360.
(NB: women score higher in neuroticism)
—
http://facweb.northseattle.edu/ratkins/ClassMaterials/PSYSOC230/230Activities-Instructor/13-Adult%20Years/a-Sexual_Infidelity_Married_Americans.pdf
lady N
Anonymous, no I really think most of us want ALL men to be attracted to us.
You want all the men that you are aware of to be attracted to you. Since women are, generally, unaware of the majority of men…
However, we only want the attractive ones to try to do anything about it. 😀
Half a truth is better than none.
Much as I suspected. We may be wrong, very wrong, but I think Lady N needs to do some Manosphere homework.
ladyN
jf12, it feeds our egos to know that attractive men find us attractive….regardless of what the men look like.
FIFY again. Looks are not as important an attractor to women as they are to men.
When I first began reading Game texts just a few years back I did not believe what I was reading. So I chose to test some of the concepts in a semi-scientific way. I found that I could walk into some coffee joint as a grey man, totally invisible to women, and then through the use of some very simple techniques I would make myself pop into some woman’s view. I do not exaggerate, I have had college aged women look right through me / around me for tens of minutes, only to see them make eye contact while fiddling with their hair a short time later after I applied light Game. I can also do the reverse – make myself visible, then apply a bit of self-betaization and fade right out of a woman’s sight. I’m satisfied via multiple experiments that this process is explicable and repeatable. It’s no accident, it’s not a coincidence.
The majority of men are grey shadows to you, unless you are a very unusual woman. So when you write of “men”, you are not writing of all men, or the majority of men, you are referring to the minority of men that you can “see”. It is a sample error, just like the classic “all I want is a nice guy” line women will say over and over again; the correct statement is “all I want is the man I am attracted to to be a nice guy”. Attraction first, niceness later (and that “niceness” is a different thread of thought so I am stopping here…).
Marissa
Alpha is assumed.
Hypergamy speak truth.
Look for “eye contact”: http://evolution.anthro.univie.ac.at/institutes/urbanethology/resources/articles/articles/publications/renninger2004.pdf
Elspeth,
A lot, but less and less. The marriage rate is decelerating.
That depends on the company that is being kept during the conversation.
Among men to their male peers, (NEVER to women) marriage is increasingly being seen as some degree of settling. This is most particularly the case for good looking professional men who are educated and younger. They regard it as just getting tired of playing the field and now they are ready to “settle down” so to speak. In that sense, this is for the men who actually have options to marry or not to marry. So we are talking about the alphas and some more viable betas.
That may not be the case for the majority of the betas and gammas and omegas and whomever else we have for the non-alpha Greek-letter-males here at Dalrock’s blog. Some of them wish they could settle down, but never had a truly viable option (that they would have opted for) in settling. Sure they could marry (man up with a slut and step father her 3 bastards), but what they would have to “settle for” is so “unsettling” that they would never feel “settled” had they “settled“…
…so they don’t “settle.”
Gone are the days where men compete with one another to marry the gorgeous girl next door. They just don’t do that anymore, (not really.) Largely, she wouldn’t have them and largely, they don’t want to get married. There just isn’t the incentives anymore and walking down the aisle isn’t regarded as a “success” the way it once was.
Cail, reread my comment and basically said the same as you “until they get caught”, so yes, I will have to retract my LMFAROTFP! and agree.
Deti, you are not understanding Alte’s quip, as you seem to grind everything through your own filter. She was not talking about finding men attractive in a sexual sense, but in just an attractive sense.Like looking at a sunrise. I must come from the stone age, because my filter of life is so vastly different then yours.
I actually know woman who can appreciate a nice set of abs or long strong legs, or a friendly smile of a man without running it through their tingle meter. Maybe you should consider moving to a place where the people are just that, people!
It’s strange; whenever I walk into a coffee shop I always assume that every woman fancies me and I act accordingly – confident aside to the barista, my movie-star smile – you get the idea. Then when I leave I imagine they are all disappointed as to my departure. Sometimes of course it backfires, not that I care: there is always another coffee shop. Always had the ability to pick women (older than myself) up in the street – since I was fourteen – and always when I am least thinking about it.
I don’t force myself and so usually nothing happens.
Elspeth
Getting a woman to walk down the aisle toward you does still signal some degree of success doesn’t it?
Your own perspective is showing. No offense intended. Maybe you’ve never seen a shotgun wedding, but I have. It is hardly a secret that young women who want to get married and who have some idea what “ovulation” means can figure out how to get pregnant, say, during the summer after High School graduation. In such a case, who is getting whom to walk down the aisle? Yes, this isn’t as common as it once was, I agree.
You assume attraction on a wedding day because you were attracted, it appears to me. Not All Women Are Like You (NAWALY).
Elspeth, I did a bit of math on Zippy’s site the other day, but thanks to new knowledge, I will happily update it here.
50% of marriage ends in divorce, of those 50% half are repeat offenders (source, Matt Walsh), So in reality, approx. 75% of first time marriages are until death do you part. Or in other words, 3 outta every 4 marriages are “stable”
SSM,
I loved your post and the 10 things to fix society to make it more family friendly. I largely agree with all of them but I think you and I can both agree that your list is complete and total pipe dream where NONE of the items on your list will ever come to fruition in either of our lifetimes (certainly not in our United States.)
@DeNihilist, wrong. The extrapolated-to-lifetime first-marriage divorce rate remains 50%, the same as it’s been stuck at since the 1970s. Even in short time windows (15 yrs) it’s 40%.
Re: Unattractive men being invisible
We had a meeting with my son’s guidance counselor to get his schedule lined up. He’s a married man, but was wishy washy, mamsie pamsie, saying things like, hmmm, let’s see, do you think he might like to take psychology, how about sociology. Shortly after we were in a meeting with him another male teacher (gruff looking like my husband was with a beard and almost a matching flannel shirt and jeans) and the principal who is a large lesbian woman who has a 17 year old son, who was clearly the AMOG. She was the decision maker and very rational with the interests of our 17 year old in mind. When the counselor brought up psychology again she laughed and said, um no, lets schedule something fun here (mechanics). Later that night RLB and I were talking about the differences between the three and I realized I would not be able to pick the counselor out in a crowd. I had spent an hour in his company that day and I hadn’t a clue what he looked like. Two days ago we had another appointment with him. I made a conscientious effort to look at him. He is physically not an ugly man…
Re: sexual blanks. Keep in mind the vast majority of women will say, sometimes in the same breath, “How come men can’t relate to me as just a friend, a human being, nothing sexual possible, like I try to relate with {unattractive} men all the time?” and “There is no such thing as women putting men in the friend zone. That’s ridiculous, and besides, what would be wrong with being friends anyway?”
Are you sure that’s true, Nihilist?
In the 1995 NSFG, this type of measure was used to show that 50% of all women’s first marriages end in separation or divorce after 20 years (6).
From here: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr049.pdf
I don’t understand statistics math very well though.
@Elspeth “Getting a woman to walk down the aisle toward you does still signal some degree of success doesn’t it?” I’ve clicked my heels together three times, closed my eyes and held my breath and held my mouth right, my whole life trying to believe that. I’ve really tried to believe, for example, that 1-out-of-50 was some degree of success. I no longer believe it’s worth while trying to believe that failure is “some degree” of success.
@Marissa, you are correct. From that same publication
“Looking at 20 years, the probability that the first marriages of women and men will survive was 52% for women and 56% for men in 2006–2010. These levels are virtually identical to estimates based on vital statistics from the early 1970s.”
DeNihilist:
“Deti, you are not understanding Alte’s quip, as you seem to grind everything through your own filter. She was not talking about finding men attractive in a sexual sense, but in just an attractive sense.Like looking at a sunrise. I must come from the stone age, because my filter of life is so vastly different then yours.
“I actually know woman who can appreciate a nice set of abs or long strong legs, or a friendly smile of a man without running it through their tingle meter.”
DeNihilist, you are completely, irretrievably wrong about your reading of Alte’s quote. Oh yes, she most certainly was asserting that many women find most men mildly SEXUALLY attractive. Anyone could see from the context that she’s not talking about art appreciation here.
Here is the quote in a more fulsome context:
“Conjuring up the infamous “tingles” aren’t usually enough to get her to sleep with you, anymore than appetite is enough to get her to eat something you’ve cooked. The offering has to be convenient to her, up to her standards and tastes, and reconciliable with her moral views. Even if she’s half-starved and drooling, you probably won’t be able to get her to eat rotten meat — not even if you add a nice garnish. If you did, with enough effort and patience, finally stumble upon a woman who would eat your maggot-ridden steak, most of you wouldn’t be daft enough to turn around and say, “See? See? Deep down, all women just want rotten meat! You just need to add the right garnish,” as if you’d discovered gravity. Which is essentially what the PUAs are doing.
“I think most men would be shocked to realize how many men women find at least mildly attractive, but women reject the sexual advances of men they find attractive all. the. time. Really. The Old Testament rape clauses touch on this very fact. Modern rape statistics also make this clear, as much as feminists would rather claw their eyes out than admit. We have to reject nearly all of the men we find attractive, even if we don’t have any scruples, because otherwise we’d spend all day on our back and would never know who the father of our children was.
“The sexes aren’t that different, in this regard. Wearing makeup and a push-up bra will make you more attractive (even to the men who swear otherwise), but that doesn’t mean that every man within a five-mile radius will follow you home. Most of them, most of the time, will have a good reason to say, “Thanks, but no thanks.””
Anyone who thinks this set of quotes is talking about finding men attractive as a function of art appreciation, like looking at a sunset or a Rembrandt, is simply being disingenuous. That is not at all what Alte was saying.
@ Anonymous Reader:
Your own perspective is showing. No offense intended.
It’s becoming painfully clear that my experiences with my husband, in-laws, and extended male family members is unique from the narrative commonly related here. I have however seen among the younger husbands increasing rates of infidelity on the part of wives as well as husbands, and other terrible things done to husbands. I’m not totally clueless about what often happens after the vows have been said.
Maybe you’ve never seen a shotgun wedding, but I have.
Mine was not a shotgun wedding in the traditional sense, because where I’m from there is no real pressure to marry a girl just because you got her pregnant. It is actually more common to NOT get married when you find yourself pregnant. Even if the father is a good man, that translates into being a good father because black men simply don’t marry women they don’t want to be married to. Hence the 70% OOW black birthrate and near comparable black divorce rate. So no, I don’t know that I have ever seen a shotgun wedding.
50% of marriage ends in divorce, of those 50% half are repeat offenders (source, Matt Walsh), So in reality, approx. 75% of first time marriages are until death do you part. Or in other words, 3 outta every 4 marriages are “stable”
If that’s true DeNihilist, it certainly qualifies s breaking news to me.
@IBB:
I know the marriage rate is decelerating, but among men 30 and over, marriage is still an aspiration as far as I can tell. Or perhaps I’m wrong about that.
Re: divorce rates
With 2010 as the standard population, the age-standardized divorce rate rose by 40 % between 1980 and 2008. After a slight dip in 2009—possibly a result of the Great Recession (Chowdury 2012; Cohen 2012; Schaller 2013)—the rise has continued, and 2011 has the highest divorce rate of any year to date. If we substitute 1980 as the standard population, the change becomes smaller but remains substantial: if the age distribution of married women in 2008 had been the same as it was in 1980, the divorce rate in 2008 would have been 25 % higher than in 1980. Thus, the apparent stability of the unstandardized divorce rate since 1980 is an artifact of a shift of the married population out of high-divorce younger ages into lower-divorce older ages; if we hold the age distribution constant using either 1980 or 2010 as the standard, we can see a substantial increase in divorce rates. Even if the ACS overreported divorces by 15 %, the data would indicate a sizable increase in age-standardized divorce during the past three decades, regardless of the standard used. This finding does not reflect peculiarities of the DRA: the 2011 refined divorce rate was even higher for states outside the DRA.
[…]
The shifting age pattern of divorce suggests a cohort effect. The same people who had unprecedented divorce incidence in 1980 and 1990 when they were in their 20s and 30s are now in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. The Baby Boom generation was responsible for the extraordinary rise in marital instability after 1970. They are now middle-aged, but their pattern of high marital instability continues. As Brown and Lin (2012) pointed out, part of this may simply be a consequence of the high divorce rates that they experienced earlier in life, given that remarriages tend to be less stable than first marriages.
[…]
There have been striking changes in the age pattern of divorce over the past three decades. Divorce at age 40 or older is much more common than it was, and divorce of persons in their teens and early 20s has dropped. The cohort born after World War II divorced more frequently than those who came before, and they are continuing to do so at unprecedented rates as they age. It makes sense that the Baby Boomers divorced more than their predecessors. The loosening of legal constraints and declining social stigma has reduced barriers to divorce, and the opening of new economic opportunities for women allowed many to escape bad marriages (Ruggles 1997). But why has divorce leveled off or started to decline among the young?
The decline in divorce rates among women under age 25 probably reflects increasing selectivity of marriage. Fewer young people are getting married: over 40 % of the population in 2008 had not married by their 30th birthday, marking a fourfold increase since 1980. With the rise of cohabitation, it is likely that many couples who would have been at the highest risk of divorce in the past—for example, those entering unions as teenagers as a result of an unplanned pregnancy, or with low levels of income and education—are forgoing marriage entirely (Cherlin 2004; Smock et al. 2005). As pressures to marry recede, people can be more selective about their partners; thus, it makes sense that marriages may become more stable. We do not, however, anticipate that a decline of divorce will lead to an increase in overall union stability. Because cohabitating unions are more unstable than marriages, we expect that the rapid rise of cohabitation among the young will neutralize any decline of divorce (Kennedy and Ruggles 2013; Raley and Bumpass 2003).
Kennedy, Sheela, and Steven Ruggles. “Breaking Up Is Hard to Count: The Rise of Divorce in the United States, 1980–2010.” Demography (2014): 1-12.
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13524-013-0270-9
Re: Unattractive men being invisible
There is very little research on “sexual invisibility” of men. (For women, it’s the pet cause of feminists; for minorities, it’s the pet cause of critical theorists and their ilk.)
DeNihilist:
By the way, I’m not grinding Alte’s words through my own filter, or any other filter, for that matter. What I’ve done is read the words Alte wrote at Zippy’s blog and determined her overall meaning through my knowledge of her words’ common, everyday, ordinary meanings.
Alte’s words. Common, everyday, ordinary meanings.
Words mean things. And I assume that people intend to say what they mean through using the common, everyday, ordinary meanings of the words they decide to use.
Two things that are considered misogynistic:
http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/02/06/creepily-lifelike-sculpture-of-undies-clad-sleepwalker-prompts-freaked-out-students-to-launch-petition/
(“The sculpture is a ‘source of apprehension, fear, and triggering thoughts regarding sexual assault’ for many”)
—
http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/02/06/texas-executes-woman-for-slaying-of-mentally-impaired-man-she-lured-with-promise-of-marriage/
(Ignored by liberal woman’s rights groups crying in their lattes about equality: “… only the 14th woman executed in the U.S. since the Supreme Court in 1976 allowed capital punishment to resume. Almost 1,400 men have been put to death during that time.”)
—
Both comment sections are worth reading.
@Cail
“”If he can get some hot sex from his secretary in the afternoon, while staying with the mother of his children and having a decent life with her otherwise, he’ll usually be fine with that. A man who cheats is looking for more/better sex, not a new marriage””
DING!……DING!…….DING!…….we have a winner!
I can think of a dozen guys that I know that fall into this category that you describe.The usual reasoning is that they have some overweight sexless hog as a wife that does not “put out”.Their attitude is…”you are not cutting me off….just losing your place in line”….and they are correct!
@AR re: “I have had college aged women look right through me / around me for tens of minutes, only to see them make eye contact while fiddling with their hair a short time later after I applied light Game.” in light of MarcusD’s Renninger’s “Females attract attention by displaying {not necessarily}subtle nonverbal solicitation signals.”, and preselection game strategies Sir Chancealot was discussing.
The 16 yr old Alpha Slut Of the Group of my robotics team, whom I’m around for a couple hours most evenings, displays unsubtle indicators of interest to many if not most males, old men as well as young boys, in her immediate proximity, probably fully half of each month. No, I’m not talking about like “She has breasts!” quote unquote indicators, nor even just the common broadcast displays of flesh and sexuality like in revealing clothing and twerking, I’m talking about the ASOG taking hold of men’s arms and draping them around her shoulders saying “ooh, that feels good!”, batting her eyes and doing the “ooh, I’m glad to have a man around that can do that!” thing, the “ooh I just like to hug!” hugging a guy for too long until she starts to breathe heavily, calling a boy over to where a rug is rolled up with the pile exposed and she is rubbing her hand back and forth on it and she takes his hand “Here! Feel this, do like this. Ooh!” looking at him intently to ensure he is feeling it too. And climbing into males’ laps whenever one is open. And of course she’s been about a hundred boys’ “girlfriend” within a couple of years already. Notice I haven’t mentioned her attractiveness.
Each male that gets some of her wide-spread attention does seem to get a temporary but immediate boost in visibility to other females. For some reason, women seem to preselect a male more based on the overt sexualness of the interest some other woman displays in him, rather than her actual attractiveness, or pickiness, or anything. I’m wondering if the concept of hiring a girl to pretend to be your girlfriend might be most effective if she were clearly an actual prostitute.
Hmm, feminine viewpoint showing. Elspeth doesn’t realize the simple fact–marriage is about the woman. It’s about how a *woman* got the *man* to commit to her, invest in her, and decide he loves her so much he’s legally putting his life at her whim.
Same idea as trying to shame “men for being sluts.” Men choose to get married or not–and it’s NOT getting married, but still having a hot woman and a great sex life that’s an achievement. Marriage is just a trap for men, these days.
MarcusD, good finds–it’s heartening to read the comments on the first one which are mostly agape at the feminist insanity.
LOL. I’d never read that comment of Alte’s but I think Deti is interpreting her quite well. Hard to misinterpret some of that, isn’t it?
I wouldn’t go nearly as far as she does here (she goes pretty far), and I suspect she threw in bit of satire in for good measure, but I do think that there more men who women find at least moderately attractive than Deti does.
I also think that there are plenty of men who have a nice feature that a woman might notice and feel no tingle whatsoever. People have different things that crank their engines, after all.
Okay, so what I am taking away from all this is that all women want all men who they are aware of to find them sexually attractive. And what makes a woman notice a man as a sexual being varies from woman to woman, but if a man is sexually invisible to a woman then for all intents and purposes he is invisible period.
Harsh. Sounds dehumanizing to all persons involved. Is it that way for men? If a woman is frumpy and unattractive, will men even remember that she was in the room?
@deti, “Thanks, but no thanks.” vs “Those puppies followed me home.”
“I’m wondering if the concept of hiring a girl to pretend to be your girlfriend might be most effective if she were clearly an actual prostitute.”
I have had men at a bar tell me that not only is a wedding band not a deterrent to aggressive females, but sometimes it makes them even more sexually aggressive. I would ask my husband, but he never wears his.
@lady N I do not think men tend to think of “kinda ugly, but clearly interested in sex” when they think of “frumpy and unattractive”. I think men CORRECTLY think “She looks like she doesn’t want sex with anyone ever, and deliberately is doing her best to make sure everyone knows it and to leave her alone” when they think “frumpy and unattractive”.
The only problem with the theory that women only want to be attractive to the men they are aware of is that women also want to be attractive to other women as well. Not in a sexual way but in a competitive way. I would argue that most women want to be attractive period…which is why I don’t understand this phenomenon of wearing pajama sweats and no bra to the local Wal-Mart…in broad freaking daylight.
@ archerwfisher:
Hmm, feminine viewpoint showing. Elspeth doesn’t realize the simple fact–marriage is about the woman. It’s about how a *woman* got the *man* to commit to her, invest in her, and decide he loves her so much he’s legally putting his life at her whim.
Yeah, I confess my feminine viewpoint, being female and all. When it comes to marriage, it really isn’t necessarily about “how a woman got a man to decide he loves her so much he’s putting his life at her whim.”
That’s a very simplistic view, sir. If my husband left me, or as is more common today, if I left him, the magnitude of what I would lose on every metric is overwhelming. Stupid, selfish women think they and their children are better off without their husband.
Men choose to get married or not–and it’s NOT getting married, but still having a hot woman and a great sex life that’s an achievement. Marriage is just a trap for men, these days.
So which is it? Does she trap him with her wiles or does he choose? As for having a hot wife, I think most men understand that their wife is going to age. No escaping that. She can keep the sex coming and be a good first office, but she certainly can’t guarantee him a hot wife for the duration. Especially if *she wasn’t all that hot to begin with.
*That was self-deprecating humor, not a dig at other women, by the way.
@Elspeth “I do think that there more men who women find at least moderately attractive than {men think}.” I’ve heard that a LOT my whole life and tried to believe it for the longest time. It wasn’t until I definitely stopped believing it that I started doing something about it.
“I think men CORRECTLY think “She looks like she doesn’t want sex with anyone ever, and deliberately is doing her best to make sure everyone knows it and to leave her alone” when they think “frumpy and unattractive”.”
Aha! So, it is all about the signals a woman sends to a man which makes her become a sexual being. But then, isn’t that the same for women? If a sloppy man droops his shoulders and a talks with a soft voice, isn’t he also giving off a rather asexual vibe?
“Not in a sexual way but in a competitive way” describes my wife fer sure.
“That’s a very simplistic view, sir. If my husband left me, or as is more common today, if I left him, the magnitude of what I would lose on every metric is overwhelming. Stupid, selfish women think they and their children are better off without their husband.”
Elspeth, I don’t even know if they really believe their children are better off…although they sure do try to convince themselves and others they are. Based on my limited life experience, generally the woman is putting her vagina before the needs of her children.
“If a sloppy man droops his shoulders and a talks with a soft voice, isn’t he also giving off a rather asexual vibe?” Here we are at the rotten meat. Basically about every not-actually-dying-from-long-illness-today man wants sex about every day, steak or hamburger. When a man says a woman looks like she is giving off a more sexual vibe he always means she looks more likely to have sex with him, and she is more likely to be hamburger. Symplectically, not symmetrically, when a woman says a man is giving off a sexual vibe it always means he looks like SHE would like to have sex with him, and he is more likely to be steak.
Did you see MarcusD’s link to the “sexual” creep statue?
I have had men at a bar tell me that not only is a wedding band not a deterrent to aggressive females, but sometimes it makes them even more sexually aggressive.
Of course, to seduce a married man is an ego-validation home run. It feeds her narcissism and makes her feel superior to the other woman if she’s able to seduce a married man, she feels more sexy and desirable. “I’m so hot, I can make a man forget his vows to his woman at home.”
“ I also think that there are plenty of men who have a nice feature that a woman might notice and feel no tingle whatsoever. People have different things that crank their engines, after all.”
I suppose that could be. From a male standpoint, I have attended school or worked with and around attractive women for more than 30 years. Any man who got supremely distracted or bonered up around every attractive woman he came in contact with would be medically and psychologically unable to leave his home. He would be constantly passed out from lack of blood to the brain and never, ever get anything done, ever. We men learn from a very, very early age to size up a woman sexually and then mentally move on. We can check out a woman from front to back, head to toe, and assess her sexual fitness and attractiveness, and we can do all that in a fraction of a second.
@jf12
There is substantial evidence that in human mate choice, females directly select males based on male display of both physical and behavioral traits. In non-humans, there is additionally a growing literature on indirect mate choice, such as choice through observing and subsequently copying the mating preferences of conspecifics (mate choice copying). Given that humans are a social species with a high degree of sharing information, long-term pair bonds, and high parental care, it is likely that human females could avoid substantial costs associated with directly searching for information about potential males by mate choice copying. The present study was a test of whether women perceived men to be more attractive when men were presented with a female date or consort than when they were presented alone, and whether the physical attractiveness of the female consort affected women’s copying decisions. The results suggested that women’s mate choice decision rule is to copy only if a man’s female consort is physically attractive. Further analyses implied that copying may be a conditional female mating tactic aimed at solving the problem of informational constraints on assessing male suitability for long-term sexual relationships, and that lack of mate choice experience, measured as reported lifetime number of sex partners, is also an important determinant of copying.
Waynforth, David. “Mate choice copying in humans.” Human Nature 18.3 (2007): 264-271.
I deduce that Lady N is still on the nursery slopes of all this.
Elsewhere a woman this week claimed that all women know that all women find most men sexually attractive enough and have to exert considerable self control when out and about in public.
Must have been a female attempt at sarcasm or satire
Hi Dalrock. I’ve just lurked until now, but I wanted to thank you for providing such sane advice in general – even though I’m secular, I’ve found your voice one of the wisest on the internet in this arena.
For what it’s worth, I’m actually divorced (“starter marriage”-style, in my early 20s, no kids) and I recently wrote about my annoyance with other divorcees regarding the super predictable “don’t judge me!!” line. Even if you don’t think divorce is a sin, per se, *and* even if you’ve been divorced, there is still plenty of reason to want divorce to retain much of its social stigma.
http://cathedralwhatever.wordpress.com/2014/01/05/thats-not-how-norms-work-divorce-stigma-edition/
Thanks, I look forward to continuing to read your material, all best.
-CW
@Opus “whenever I walk into a coffee shop I always assume that every woman fancies me and I act accordingly” Changing the word woman to man, I’ve always assumed that’s the way that women operated – women know they have (most) men’s attention if they want it. But women seem perturbed by creepy men’s attention, and dismayed that they don’t have attractive men’s full attention. So maybe the abundance mentality, although a good thing for men, isn’t so good for women.
@MarcusD
“”http://news.nationalpost.com/2014/02/06/creepily-lifelike-sculpture-of-undies-clad-sleepwalker-prompts-freaked-out-students-to-launch-petition/””
Read this in the Toronto Star this morning.
@deti “We men learn from a very, very early age to size up a woman sexually and then mentally move on. We can check out a woman from front to back, head to toe, and assess her sexual fitness and attractiveness, and we can do all that in a fraction of a second.” We men are HB 10-point-scale (decimal points) rating machines. That part women probably already knew. But we aren’t going to treat IOI from a 6.3 any different from a 7.8, unless we get to have IOI from both, and even then if we get to then we’ll still pick both, instead only the hottest. That’s the part women have difficulty believing, I think.
Yes, though we (I, anyway) won’t remember her features with the same clarity as the hot chick’s.
It’s different for men: we see all the women who come into our line of vision, but we very quickly rule out the unattractive/impossible ones. (By “impossible” I mean if she gets closer and you realize she’s 12 or 92, or actually a long-haired dude, or your grandma.) We see them all, and every single one gets evaluated, even if it’s completely automatic and takes a millisecond, and is given either a thumbs-down or a “Hmm, potential.”
That’s why no man would ever say the equivalent of what Alte said: “All the women I meet are attractive.” (Unless maybe he lives on a movie set.) Since I see and evaluate them all (mostly unconsciously, but I can think back later), I have a pretty good idea what the ratio of attractive/not is, and why the unattractive ones got voted down (almost always excess weight).
Re: wedding rings:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puzzle_ring (if I ever marry, I’ll be buying one of those, because they’re “unique”)
—
Tuch, Richard. The single woman-married man syndrome: Masochism, ambivalence, splitting, vulnerability, and self-deception. Jason Aronson (Northvale, NJ), 2000.
—
The so-called “wedding ring effect” isn’t clear cut in the literature. One study that doesn’t support it:
Individuals are often restricted to indirect cues when assessing the mate value of a potential partner. Females of some species have been shown to copy each other’s choice; in other words, the probability of a female choosing a particular male increases if he has already been chosen by other females. Recently it has been suggested that mate-choice copying could be an important aspect of human mate choice as well. We tested one of the hypotheses, the so-called wedding ring effect—that women would prefer men who are already engaged or married—in a series of live interactions between men and women. The results show that women do not find men signaling engagement, or being perceived as having a partner, more attractive or higher in socioeconomic status. Furthermore, signs of engagement did not influence the women’s reported willingness to engage in short-term or long-term relationships with the men. Thus, this study casts doubt on some simplified theories of human mate-choice copying, and alternative, more complex scenarios are outlined and discussed.
Uller, Tobias, and L. Christoffer Johansson. “Human mate choice and the wedding ring effect.” Human Nature 14.3 (2003): 267-276.
(Although, there are opposing forces ignored, such as the fact that “interacting” with a married man can be considered socially unacceptable).
However:
There have been dramatic shifts in relationship structures and processes among young adults recently that reflect greater acceptance of casual sexual encounters and concurrent relationships. Yet social norms prohibiting attraction to and sexual connection with others outside an exclusive relationship appear to remain. The current study assessed whether relationship status of both evaluators and targets influenced perceptions of targets’ attractiveness and desirability as potential short or long term partners. Young adults (n = 195; 61% female) judged photographs of opposite sex individuals varying in relationship status, which was either known or not known to participants. Men rated women believed to be single as more desirable but equally attractive as attached women, whereas women rated men believed to be attached as more attractive but equally desirable as single men. Only female participants appeared sensitive to social norms prohibiting attraction to attached targets. Participants in relationships devalued all targets in terms of attractiveness and desirability, regardless of the quality of their own relationship. If norms are shifting to reflect greater “fluidity” in structures, then relationship status should have little or no impact on judgments. However, this was not found to be the case. Findings are discussed in terms of implications for research on attraction and relationship longevity.
O’Sullivan, Lucia F., and Sarah A. Vannier. “Playing the field? Does actual or perceived relationship status of another influence ratings of physical attractiveness among young adults?.” Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science/Revue canadienne des sciences du comportement 45.3 (2013): 210.
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I don’t have the citation on hand, but testosterone in men goes down when encountering women already in relationships.
@jf12
In nonhuman animals, mate-choice copying has received much attention, with studies demonstrating that females tend to copy the choices of other females for specific males. Here we show, for both men and women, that pairing with an attractive partner increases the attractiveness of opposite-sex faces for long-term relationship decisions but not short-term decisions. Our study therefore shows social transmission of face preference in humans, which may have important consequences for the evolution of human traits. Our study also highlights the flexibility of human mate choice and suggests that, for humans, learning about nonphysical traits that are important to pair-bonding drives copying-like behavior.
Little, Anthony C., et al. “Social influence in human face preference: men and women are influenced more for long-term than short-term attractiveness decisions.” Evolution and Human Behavior 29.2 (2008): 140-146.
@Mark
Do you find the Star as insufferable as I do? 🙂
“Is it that way for men? If a woman is frumpy and unattractive, will men even remember that she was in the room?”
What Cail said.
I’d add this: we evaluate every single woman for sexual fitness and attractiveness. Everything is evaluated: hair, eyes, nose, lips, hands (wedding ring or no), arms (arm fat), breasts, hips, stomach, butt, legs, feet, manner of dress, makeup, weight, overall attractiveness, best feature, worst feature. Each woman is then assigned a rough number: HB 9, HB6, HB 4, etc. Each woman is then mentally placed into one of two “piles” or “buckets”:
1. Yes, I would have sex with her.
2. No, I would not have sex with her, given current conditions.
There are many, many more women in bucket 1 than in bucket 2. The ratio is around 2 or 3 women in bucket 1 for every one woman in bucket 2.
All of this takes place within a fraction of a second per woman. A man can assess an entire roomful of women in well under one minute.
“Elspeth: So which is it? Does she trap him with her wiles or does he choose? As for having a hot wife, I think most men understand that their wife is going to age. No escaping that. She can keep the sex coming and be a good first office, but she certainly can’t guarantee him a hot wife for the duration. Especially if *she wasn’t all that hot to begin with.”
Firstly, looking around at Kennesaw State (where I went) most women can’t guarantee “slim girlfriend” anymore, lmao.
And today, I’d say today mostly it’s a choice that he’s forced to make, or dodge. I was driving to work, and saw a most fitting billboard for D Geller and Sons Jewelers outside atlanta. A scowling woman holding up her ring finger by itself. Looking around at my college classmate’s banters about marriage and such, it’s always the women saying things like “hopefully we’ll be getting married soon, blah blah” and the men say things like… oh wait, they don’t bring up marriage to girlfriends, lmao.
What if a woman is like a man in that she subconsciously evaluates every man she meets? Does she have abnormally high testosterone?
No, I think the lady commenter is right. Didn’t Christ say “a man shall be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh…or whatever you feel, I’m easy and totes don’t ever judge or be a hater.”
I expect the marriage rate to go down much further: http://www.pocketfullofliberty.com/obamacare-democrats/
“All of this takes place within a fraction of a second per woman. A man can assess an entire roomful of women in well under one minute.” It’s a background daemon for men, totally biological and not socialization. “There are many, many more women in bucket 1 than in bucket 2. The ratio is around 2 or 3 women in bucket 1 for every one woman in bucket 2.” The big reason men aren’t constantly exhibiting erections or other IOI is because we learned we HAD to contain ourselves within about the first two weeks of puberty or risk arrest or hospitalization. The containment is totally due to socialization.
@Alogon
https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2014/02/05/off-to-the-races/#comment-108174
@jf12
I’ve read that it’s as fast as 13ms/face (but don’t have a source on hand).
This varies, of course, depending on the man’s tastes, options, age, etc., but I’d say that’s the ballpark. I’ve said before that I rarely see a physically fit woman in my age range who’s not attractive to me. If I see her figure approaching and there are no noticeable bulges in the wrong places, she’s in the “yes” stack provisionally until I can get a closer look. It’s possible for a really unfortunate face to move her to the “no” stack, but that happens rarely enough that it’s a bit of a surprise when it does, and it’s always accompanied by some regret. On the other hand, I’ve never been attracted to an obese woman. Never.
So if 36% are obese, and you add another couple percent that are just plain ugly, that leaves a good 60% who qualify as attractive — almost a 2/1 yes/no ratio.
True. In a matter of seconds, he’s divided them into ‘yes’ and ‘no’ stacks and singled out the one he’d take if he got his choice. If he’s on the prowl, he’s probably also ranked a #2 and #3, and perhaps also picked out a few who appear to be closest to his SMV and thus most approachable. Most of this is unconscious, and happens regardless of whether he has any intention of acting on it.
As for being in the Manosphere nursery, I am okay with that. Although I find the topic of “how men and women really think” to be an interesting one, Dalrock’s commentary on feminism is what sucked me into this blog in the first place. You can thank Ann Barnhardt for the link. 🙂
@lady N There are three classic masculinization symptoms of a woman with sustained abnormally high testosterone levels (>~ 200 ng/dL)
1. Irreversibly enlarged clitoris, typically all the way up to a large fraction of a micropenis.
2. greatly increased interest in sexual things, and in females regardless of preexisting tendencies, manifesting especially as masturbation
3. marked disappointment that other people, especially females, aren’t as impressed as they should be
Welcome to the club.
“In a matter of seconds, he’s divided them into ‘yes’ and ‘no’ stacks and singled out the one he’d take if he got his choice. If he’s on the prowl, he’s probably also ranked a #2 and #3, and perhaps also picked out a few who appear to be closest to his SMV and thus most approachable. Most of this is unconscious, and happens regardless of whether he has any intention of acting on it.”
Yep. It literally is as rapid as yes yes yes no no no no yes YES yes DEFINITELY yes yes no no NOF–KINGWAY yes yes yes and so on.
BTW women are never going to hear about the first two weeks, from any man.
For women that process is nonononotinamillionyears nonononononono yes nononono ABSOLUTELYNOT NOF—CKINGWAY nononono yes nonononononononono maybeonaslowday nononononononon sure nononononon yougottabekiddinme nononono HELLYEAH nononononono TAKEMEHOMERIGHT NOWANDDOME nononononononononono
“Welcome to the club.” Can’t say I am in that club. lol
For Marcus, and whoever, re: total lack of behavioral (including sexual) changes with extra T in healthy men, even with high doses.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8045977
There are a couple of other references reporting more systematic exploration and varying doses, all with the same complete lack of effect of extra T. I can look around for the references.
The story seems to be that most healthy men produce way too much T, maybe partly to compensate for potential environmental estrogens, such that above a threshold (whether that be 400 ng/dL testosterone blood levels, or 300) there is no effect of extra T. Thus, definitely, more sex produces more T, not vice versa. Definitely, increased muscles produce more T, not vice versa. Definitely, ncreased aggression produces more T, not vice versa. I’m leaning towards (actually I’ve fallen over), probably but not definitely, i.e. without references, more attention from females produces more T, not vice versa.
“What if a woman is like a man in that she subconsciously evaluates every man she meets? Does she have abnormally high testosterone?”
Lady N: I have yet to meet a woman who truly does this. I think you’re still talking about evaluating attractive men. For the typical woman, most men just don’t register. She evaluates the men she finds attractive and sorts among those men.
Consider the ways women talk about or think about men they aren’t sexually attracted to. To such women, they are not even men. They are just males – human beings who happen to have male genitalia. The way women think or talk about males is as follows, for example:
–I just don’t think about him in that way.
–I guess he’s a really nice guy. Just didn’t really think about him otherwise.
–Gee. Never really thought about it.
–Larry the janitor? He’s so nice.
–He’s a good friend. We’re just friends.
–Let’s just be friends.
So no, women don’t typically subconsciously evaluate every male they see, except to differentiate between attractive (men) and unattractive (males).
The signs of a woman with abnormally high testosterone are: flat ass, hairy arms, aggressive personality, increased sex drive, and lowered 2-4 hand digit ratio. Women who have taken steroids for bodybuilding report much higher sex drive. They also tend to have elongated clitorises.
On this latter point: A man typically has a ring finger which is considerably longer than his index finger. It’s a sign of increased exposure to testosterone while in utero. Women typically have longer index fingers than ring fingers; or the index and ring fingers are of comparable length.
That study is from 1994 – there should be something newer (e.g. http://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr=&id=MkrAPaQ4wJkC&oi=fnd&pg=PA87#v=onepage&q&f=false – Bancroft, Iohn. “The behavioral correlates of testosterone.” Testosterone: Action, Deficiency, Substitution (2012): 87.)
Strangest paper I’ve read in the past month: http://my.psychologytoday.com/files/attachments/87184/kuhlerock2012.pdf
For women that process is ………………………………….. yes ………………………………………….. yes ………………………………….. maybeonaslowday ……………………………………………….. HELLYEAH …………………………. TAKEMEHOMERIGHT NOWANDDOME ………………………………………..
Fixed for lolz.
(But still scientifically valid.)
I agree with Deti and Cail, but there is something else which I imagine is common for all men and which might come as a surprise to women: namely, when we meet a woman we are attracted to, we are also (but on a completely different scale) assessing her viability as a potential long-term mate. The criteria for that is entirely different from whether we might want to bone her. On many threads Deti has set out those matters which are deal breakers – and usually beginning with Tats: generally the more feminine, the more likely the woman is to get high marks. As women are (in the main) in the contest to secure the best available man then far to many women seem to be their own worst enemies.
The fact that I may desire a woman is not the same as my wanting her.
Re: tattoos: http://simulacral-legendarium.blogspot.ca/2013/07/tattoos-and-body-modifications-links.html
Lady N: “But perhaps it is one reason why I never had crushes on celebrities or boys who were out of my league when in high school.”
Wow, Lady N, I’ve never heard anyone say that before. That is me, to a T!
On the other hand, I entered high school at the height of a lifelong weight problem, and had the self-esteem to match. I lost the weight by the end of my jr year, but I didn’t lose the idea that I was unattractive. It wasn’t that guys were “invisible” to me, it’s that I was so sure they weren’t interested, that, even when they obviously were, I either discounted it completely (and ended up insulting them), or I froze. Took me years to get past it.
I’ve decided that, at least in that respect, I’m just an interesting psychological phenomenon. To me, anyway. 🙂 Hanging around these parts (here, Sunshine Mary’s, Elspeth’s and Peaceful Wife — great suggestion, whoever made it, thank you!), is especially thought-provoking, because so much is starting to make sense, and it’s really, really helping. I’m fortunately married to a good man who is strong, kind and patient (and who thinks, poor guy, that he married well), and I aim to make this the kind of marriage he deserves.
I expected this process to be fraught with pain (since, getting to this point very much was). I have to say, though, that so far it’s actually kind of fun! 🙂
I hate this path of thought. If married women can get a divorce b/c their husbands looked at porn and lusted, them married men should be able to get a divorce if their wives read 50 shades of grey or Harlequin novels. Believe me,the only reason to read those types of books is to lust and not about the husband. Also my rule is, if you have divorced twice, marriage is not for you. Stop it, and be single. I have offended more than a few with that advice. I tell them God must have given you the celibacy gift you just haven’t exercised it yet.
“A man typically has a ring finger which is considerably longer than his index finger. It’s a sign of increased exposure to testosterone while in utero. Women typically have longer index fingers than ring fingers; or the index and ring fingers are of comparable length.”
Interesting. My ring finger is definitely longer. Isn’t sizing up a man into attractive or in attracting the same thing as men assessing women? It is just that after a man is put into the box of unattractive, it is damn difficult for him to climb out of it. Men have scales for women (1 to 10)….and women have boxes?
Donna, your issue sounds like one of poor self-image and low confidence. I really think mine was an issue of pride. It wasn’t that I was a particularly attractive girl above others, but I really had no interest in making an ass of myself, even in private, over a boy or man who didn’t even know I existed.
It’s not attraction regardless of gender, it’s what’s attractive for each gender. In other words, women are looking for cues as to resources (assessed primarily by socio-economic status – SES), and men are looking for cues as to reproductive ability (assessed primarily by beauty).
I definitely recommend reading the influential 1989 paper by David Buss: http://ewyner.com/psychology/Studies/Buss%20(1989).pdf
Buss, David M. “Sex differences in human mate preferences: Evolutionary hypotheses tested in 37 cultures.” Behavioral and brain sciences 12.1 (1989): 1-49.
There’s a scene from Scrubs that sums up the process of attraction for men. If this embedding works, it’s at the 1:00 mark:
If it doesn’t work, the scene goes like this:
Todd the surgeon walks up to the nurses: “Ladies? Now that The Todd is a resident, he wants to clear things up so you don’t have to wonder anymore….”
He points at the different women one by one, saying: “Yes. Yes. No. Yes. No. And…yes if I’ve been drinking.”
This is true, but it depends on the man’s maturity level. When I was young and stupid, I fell for a girl based purely on attraction and then rationalized her long-term suitability whether it was truly there or not. Now as soon as the attraction kicks in, I start sussing her out for red flags. Separating the two is something a man has to learn and be taught, the same way a girl has to learn that she shouldn’t jump on the bike of the first “exciting” guy she meets.
Deti, of course you filtered Alte’s remarks. That is what we do as humans. My filter is just different then yours. My take on Alte’s comment, was of someone who was using humour, or we say here, taking the piss outta, the pro-gamers in the comments above hers. I chuckled. But her statement about attraction comes across to me, through my filter, as one of appreciation. She reminds me of my wife with some of her remarks. I find that attractive.
oh come on8oxer man, at least the Blackest Hoor of the Apocalypse shalt be greatly satisficed thereby. A certain Ms ‘Abbie Smith’ of OK, I am given to understand.
D’ye have her phone number by any chance?
(Aye, I ken she’s a lezzer & a Joo. So?)
Deti, but I will give you this point, as I approach 60, some of the young waitresses at the bar I hang at for wings and beer night, do seem to look right through me, even though I am the one deciding on her tip. The smarter ones actually look us older guys in the eye, and have some laughs with us. Needless to say, it is the second group of servers that get a good tip.
(My favourite being, don’t go out in the rain without an umbrella!)
As to the divorce stats, I have to admit I am not a statistician, neither do I play one on T V
Lady N, oh, definitely. But my reasoning wasn’t very different from yours. Self-protection, when unreasonably fearing being “wrong” about some guy’s intentions, is also a form of pride. (Heh. What percentage of the women who “ignore” so-called Beta guys are actually just … screwed up?)
@Marissa
it’s heartening to read the comments on the first one which are mostly agape at the feminist insanity.
Yes, the NP is a decent website for comments. The articles aren’t rare; every week there’s an article where a feminist complains about something, and the student union (having nothing better to do, and desiring to show that there is never not a motivation for student protest), starts clamoring for attention.
The CBC (Canada’s national broadcaster), on the other hand, tends to have insane comments that you’d expect from feminists (e.g. “[…] the existence of men means women are victims”).
Dear Brother Tam:
My condolences on this sad news about y’r beloved. ;p
“What percentage of the women who “ignore” so-called Beta guys are actually just … screwed up?”
Ha! Exactly. How many were raised by sexually aggressive, immodest mothers, for example? How many were raised to distrust men? How many have a very poor self-image and when they look in the mirror they see someone as a 3 on the hotness scale when most men would put them at 7?
Sure, there are lots of petty, narcissistic bitches out there…..but there are a lot of wounded women too.
@MarcusD
“”Do you find the Star as insufferable as I do?””
Yes I do.My number one paper is the Globe & Mail.Next is the National Post.I quickly read the TO Star about the same way as I do the TO Sun.During election time you will notice that the TO Star always endorses the NDP…..which brings out it’s true leftist leanings.
“What percentage of the women who “ignore” so-called Beta guys are actually just … screwed up?”
If we remove the quotes around “ignore”, the accurate if imprecise figure is … 100%. All of ’em Katie. i.e. of the 80% of women who think 80% of men are below average, 100% of them are seriously broken.
of the 80% of women who think 80% of men are below
I think that comes from the OkCupid survey which is selective of certain types of people.
Let’s call it 80% of women who think 20% of men are above threshold.
Relating to the “PIV = Rape” blogpost from a few weeks ago: she’s written more.
From: http://witchwind.wordpress.com/2014/01/18/in-retrospect-to-the-85000-reformism-and-other-things/
(As I’ve said before, how do you convince someone that you aren’t gaslighting them?)
—
Comments include:
Men say its fake but I don’t trust anything men say.
So, remember, resist; do not comply! Goddess bless.
Men surveil Radical Feminists and subject radical feminists to Two Minutes Hate. These are indicators of an Orwellian totalitarian regime and surely these men have all read Orwell being Modern and Literate and all.
Tracy defined CB’s post as reformist to the extent that CB doesn’t name the agent, that is why men isolating us from one another is so dangerous, why it’s so important to huddle together in this circumstance because men are waiting in line to rape and kill us
I was talking about culling boys for reasons of female survivalism from male violence, which is different from women having to kill / abort the children resulting from the constant marital rapes, regardless of sex.
[…]
There are at least a thousand men Right Now, as we speak, who have Babies on their dicks. This is not good for Babies and Babies die from male treatment of them including Rape. Men also just flat out Kill babies all the time and this Includes Male babies. Men favor Infanticide actually. They favor all Killing, and that includes killing other Boys and Men.
etc.
re: HB ratings. There was a link to someone’s HB rating poll (last week?) of photos of mostly thin casually dressed young women and I took a couple minutes total and rated them, then afterwards found the other link where the guy posted his typical decimal ratings as calibration. I had them from 5 to 9, kind of wondering when a 3 or 4 would show up, then I read his explanation that he was shooting for a calibration of the above-average ratings and didn’t care about below. None of my ratings were more than a point different than typical, even though I am on old man, and my personal preferences are for slightly heavier 40ish women, and even though I am lifelong totally unexposed to mass media except Internet.
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/370451/feminist-mystique-kevin-d-williamson
@Lady N:
On the “Women evaluating Men” concept, Sunshine Mary attempt that before she took down the old blog. She barely made it through a short trip to the grocery store before the mental fatigue set in.
Men do evaluating every Woman they meet, but it’s not by the process that Women think. It’s merely a subset of our Survival Instinct. It’s the reason a Man can scan a room for 1 second and pick out Dangers. It’s that fast. The “double take” of a Woman is when she is so far outside of the “norm” for looks that she original sets off the “be sure to inspect that” instinct. We actually don’t go “damn, she’s hot!” until the second look.
Those things may make the situation worse, but they aren’t the reason that non-dominant men are normally invisible to women. That’s just the way women are wired, just as men are wired to instantly respond to a certain waist/hip ratio or the swishy movement of long hair. All women, not just broken ones; women who do see most men have learned to do it despite it not being in their natures.
It’s not “petty and narcissistic,” it’s just female. There are probably good reasons for it: for men, seeing and evaluating every woman can be distracting, and being attracted to 60% or more of the fertile female population means many opportunities for temptation. It’s probably a good thing that women are only attracted to 20% or so of men, as a self-defense mechanism to make it easier for them to stay faithful. It’s a good thing that women are naturally attracted to the men who have the strength and dominance in the tribe to provide for them, just as it’s a good thing that men are automatically attracted to physical attributes that signal health and fertility.
Those innate drives aren’t the problem; our twisted society that fails to put limits on women’s behavior and encourages short-term thinking is the problem.
As to most men being invisible to women…
Not long ago I attended a large fundraising event and ran into a female HS classmate and some of her friends. They were complaining that there were no attractive men at the function (there were over 400 people there, and probably 60% were male). These women, on average, are pretty solid 5-6’s in their mid-40’s of normal intelligence and social skill. One of them identified a single (meaning one) man as having potential (he was probably late 20’s and put together pretty well) out of over 200.
I actually pointed out a few matches for these gals; they hadn’t even registered with them.
To women, not merely as a general rule but as something akin to a mathematical identity, “where are all the good men” means “there are so few good enough men”.
“It’s probably a good thing that women are only attracted to 20% or so of men, as a self-defense mechanism to make it easier for them to stay faithful.”
Yes and no. It USED to be a good thing back in the day, when Elly May’s (non-sibling!) choices in men within a day’s walking distance comprised first cousin once removed Jethro, the closest neighbor son Billy Bob Jr, marginally better than his dog Dog Jr, and Geezer Willis, who plays with his gun, or something, in his overalls on his porch whenever he has female company.
Nowadays, though, it simply means that out of the thousand men a woman comes in contact with daily, she’s attracte to 200 of them, and she has an 80% chance of not being attracted to her partner, AND she has no real practice or incentive, at all, in turning away from really really attractive men, the way that non-jailed and non-hospitalized men have contained themselves from their extreme attraction for most women. And now all the women here hate me because it’s true.
As women no longer need men for provisioning or protection, it is hardly any wonder that men – not having been genetically selected for good looks – are invisible to Hurting’s High School friends. It is as if I were to complain at a similar gathering (to the one he attended) that I could not see any cute Miss World contestants and thus there were no desirable women. That may however be a bad analogy: what perhaps I would have said was that I could not see any women who were fertile and single and chaste and that there was not one marriageable woman at the gathering. I think that might shock the females although it would be true.
Those of us who labour under the delusion that we are indeed desirable to all women tend to be pretty upset when rejected out of hand by ordinary women (5s and 6s) who make it clear that they are too good for us. Subsequently cutting them dead usually has them pleading for forgiveness ‘ere long.
As women no longer need men for provisioning or protection, it is hardly any wonder that men – not having been genetically selected for good looks – are invisible to Hurting’s High School friends.
There’s some truth t0 this. Largely the things that men have been selected for, over thousands of years, have become obsolete and dysgenic for women. Women now select on the basis of sex appeal, primarily, with other factors being “nice to have” but in no way anything that is a dealbreaker or something that makes her stay in a relationship where the sex appeal is gone. We will increasingly have generations of men and women bred for sex appeal – which will mean much better looking people on average but also a much higher average level of sociopathy.
I cannot follow the wording of N as she goes anti T. The subjectivity of evaluating whether there is a sexual effect when T supplementation is used (self reporting: no change in kissing, cuddling, sex) negates the seriousness of the study in that vein.
The claim N makes here:
increased muscles produce more T, not vice versa
Calls her seriousness into question. First, these are not mutually exclusive, and second, its utter nonsense to claim that T supplimentation does not result in muscle mass gain. I mean waaaaaaay out there agenda driven nonsense, I suspect the CHURCH OF OFHAVV has been indoctrinating members again. (OganicFood-Homeopathy-Anti-Vaccine-Veganism)
I submit that if Christians embraced our faith with the fervor of those in the CHURCH OF OFHAVV there would be a worldwide revival like never seen before. Imagine the parallel, Christians would spend a great deal of time seeking out studies and facts online that they could use to go evangelize people with later.
@hurting
If one of those guys showed up at the table and had game, those girls all would have lit up. most women dont even realize how turned on they are untill u start kissing them. women just take longer to warm up. when i approach women i assume (wrongly sometimes but who cares) that they really are thirsty for some male attention. Once they want your attention, then u can amp things up to the kind of attention that men enjoy.stop listening to what they say, watch what they do.
“Once they want your attention, then u can amp things up to the kind of attention that men enjoy.” This is the key, right here. Don’t give a woman the womanly attentions she thinks she wants “Why won’t men take me seriously?” Give her the manly attentions you know she actually wants instead.
@Novaseeker
I am indebted for my insight to a certain Dalrock.
Elsewhere I stumbled on the following: As most men in the west did not reproduce, those that did, wanted to sleep with the most attractive; this in turn produced pretty girls – as well as civilisation. In places where it was more of a free for all the level of female beauty tends to be less high than in the West, where males have restrained their natural lusts – and do not get an erection just because a pretty woman is walking around naked. I am bound to say that I have observed that not to be the case with certain non-western men. Certainly I cannot think of any other species who are turned on by body measurements or a pretty face – cats and dogs for example all look the same (to me – both male and female) as I suppose they do to the dog and cat – they have a far greater sense of smell – and for all I know other forms of instinct.
jf12,
Last year’s runner up to Argo for movie of the year Silver Linings Playbook, had a scene that really bothered me. But it goes to show where society’s sense of right or wrong is. Bradly Cooper’s character comes home early from work to his home to hear his wedding song playing, seeing his wife’s lovely clothing all over the place, and hearing the shower running. So of course, he walks up there assuming she was in the mood. He finds his wife in the shower making love to one of his co-workers. And his co-worker tells Bradley Cooper…
Of course, Cooper’s character beats this man (who was committing adultry with Cooper’s wife) to within an inch of his life. And Cooper gets in trouble. Cooper has to go to jail (or the hospital for 8 months plus therapy.) And Cooper’s wife gets a restraining order against her own husband because she’s afraid of him. So does Cooper’s former coworker. Cooper can’t even show his face around his former place of employment (a school.) And why? Because the man having sex with Cooper’s wife wasn’t breaking any of man’s laws. only God’s law. Cooper’s rightous indignation and violence towards his wife and this man sticking his penis inside his wife is never justified. That is where we are because in our society, marriage is not sacred.
Apparently, we believe we are civilized and sophisticated enough where battery is never justified. This is the world we live in. And women are surprised that men are increasingly going their own way?
Novaseeker says:
February 7, 2014 at 9:20 am
Regarding need for men for provisioning (or lack thereof)…
Of the four females in the anecdote, three are federal gov’t employees (including one honest to God HR paper pusher). The fourth is a very intelligent IT type in private indistry.
You know AR, it occurred to me that I may have been to a shotgun wedding. Last year my daughter’s close friend, 19, got married. She was very ambitious, was senior class president, wasn’t careful, and got pregnant. She was raised in a Christian home and is a believer. Her then boyfriend was a fledgling Christian who is so intellectual he still is trying to navigate his new found faith.
But you know who it felt like was being dragged to the altar? Her. Everyone one of us who knows them well was thinking how relieved he must have felt to know that he was going to be able to hang on to her. She was probably thinking she’d marry him at some point because she is a true believer, but she had some stuff she wanted to accomplish first, and he would have had to live through the next 5-6 years hoping that she didn’t suddenly decide that she wanted more than him.
I was so concerned about how she would feel once the realities of marriage set in that one of my gifts to her was a letter. I actually posted an edited version at TC: “How to stay happily married something or other…”
So pregnancy aside, who does it appear was under the gun?
@jf12
Re: study reporting no acute testosterone overdose effects on the brain in the short window of time. I posit that higher free (meaning unbound to androgen binding protein) testosterone levels influence network topology of the brain, gradually masculinizing it, but that requires a longer timeframe.
Right. Practical needs, like the need to avoid starvation or freezing to death in the winter, used to moderate a woman’s urges. Maybe every girl in the village wanted Sven the Lumberjack; but since working at an HR job while waiting to have a fling with Sven at age 26 wasn’t an option, and Dad and society strongly frowned on being single and living at home forever, they looked around and found suitable men who were attractive enough to live with and who could provide for them. Hypergamy existed, but it wasn’t nearly the only force driving them as it is now.
Elspeth, I think I attended that same wedding, except the bride was 17. Like you, I think the couple intended to marry anyway, just not so soon (and they’re still together several years and 2+ kids later, thanks to family support and the inherited attitude that marriage is forever so you just get on with it). But as you say, it’s interesting to note that most people consider the bride to be the one needing the shotgun pointed at her these days. But it makes sense, because really, what incentive does she have to marry the father of her child, if he’s not established and wealthy?
Part of it is the assumption, firmly set in society today, that for a bright, attractive girl, the world is her oyster. She could — will, even — do great things, as long as she follows the script of delayed marriage, college education, career. Boys aren’t seen that way. A bright, handsome boy who gets an education could get a good job, but there’s not the assumption that he will as there is with girls. Besides, what if he turns out to be a video-game slob or a porn addict, and wastes away his education that way? There’s an assumption that if girls follow the basic script they’ll turn out wonderful, while boys are probably screw-ups in waiting. It’s the old “sugar and spice” and “puppy-dog tails” saying, except everyone really believes it.
So if you believe that, then naturally you don’t want your 18-year-old girl to deny herself that wonderful future that’s almost guaranteed, to shackle herself to an 18-year-old boy whose good grades make him slightly more trustworthy than a hobo.
Elspeth
You know AR, it occurred to me that I may have been to a shotgun wedding. Last year my daughter’s close friend, 19, got married. She was very ambitious, was senior class president, wasn’t careful, and got pregnant.
But you know who it felt like was being dragged to the altar? Her. Everyone one of us who knows them well was thinking how relieved he must have felt to know that he was going to be able to hang on to her. She was probably thinking she’d marry him at some point because she is a true believer, but she had some stuff she wanted to accomplish first, and he would have had to live through the next 5-6 years hoping that she didn’t suddenly decide that she wanted more than him.
Based on what you have written, I’d agree this is as close to a shotgun wedding as anyone is likely to see nowadays, and of course since she had planned to play out the standard script for the next 5 + years, she’s the one marrying against her own wishes, i.e. “under the gun”.
Since I grew up in flyover country in a dinky town miles from nowhere, I was living in the past for a while. Thus I wound up being invited to a wedding in the 80’s where everyone knew the bride was about 3 months pregnant, and considerable pressure from both families had been brought to bear on the groom. If the groom had any plans of his own for the next 5 – 6 years, nobody really cared, because “his plans” now needed to include two other people, case closed. A different culture from the one you grew up in, and frankly a different culture from what exists in that town now, 25+ years later. (As a guest from the groom”s side, I was viewed with considerable suspicion, especially every time I got anywhere near the punch bowl.) So far as I know they are still together. But obviously that kind of wedding doesn’t happen now, the OOW birthrate demonstrates that pretty soundly. The stigma of an unmarried woman raising a child by herself, or with the help of her mother and any sisters, is dwindling society-wide. [Insert standard rant here]
Actually one could argue that there are still shotgun weddings, every day. Unlike the old days, when a man who got a woman pregnant was chivvied or even forced to provide for her and his child, now the shotgun belongs to Uncle Sam and his 50 younger brothers, the “grooms” are every male paying taxes, and the “brides” are every babymomma who has married the state.
Once again, I can distill an issue down to this: responsibility decoupled from authority, in order to provide women with more choices.
CC
Part of it is the assumption, firmly set in society today, that for a bright, attractive girl, the world is her oyster. She could — will, even — do great things, as long as she follows the script of delayed marriage, college education, career.
Women in the middle class have become their own betas. And, of course, the standard script allows for a chance to snag and tame an Alpha male – the brass ring of hypergamy. The fact that this is akin to buying lottery tickets doesn’t matter, because hypegamy isn’t rational.
Cail,
Totally agree.
Partially disagree.
The assumption is he will get a good job. But that doesn’t necessarily mean he will be a good catch. That does not make him worthy of the bright,educated, career oriented, attractive girl.
There are MORE expectations on boys than they are on girls. Nowadays, a young educated man is not only supposed to pay off all his student loan debt, but he should also own his own home before he get married. I mean after all, where is she going to live if he marries her if he doesn’t already have all that taken care of?
Re: Silver Linings. I will never watch it, but the summary reads like the stupidest ever revenge fantasy. During filming, the 37 yr old leading man handsome action hero blockbuster movie actor finds his 30ish oddball highstrung emo theatre major unknown struggling actress woman, who has a real-life crush on him, with a much older (early 50s) and smaller-in-every-way man, a TV stunt guy, and totally dominates and obliterates him in front of her, totally scaring the woman with his raw physicality, but comforting her in real life. (During breaks in the filming he brought her a towel and pretended to avert his eyes, and stroked her arm and told her dirty jokes to loosen her up.) Then he gets his revenge by hooking up with a 21 yr old unusually supple blockbuster movie actress, who also has a real-life crush on him, who is playing a sex addict who is trying to get him to see how much she loves him and how much better she will be for him than other girls.
Sounds like a total recipe for the usual mgtow.
The thing about this kid though, is that I have never doubted that he will be just fine. That he is going to do everything in his power to take good care of his bride and kid. He’s very smart, and I don’t just mean school smart.
You’re right. No one really cares what the young man’s plans were. He has responsibilities now. But most young husbands embrace that and get on with it. It’s we women who tend to lament all that we could have been.
And just think jf12, Katniss Everdeen got an academy award for her performance in that movie.
@exfernal, they were giving the young men extremely heavy doses, bodybuilder anabolic doses of T, for 20 weeks straight, leading to *average* muscle mass gain of 10 lbs without working out. Zero behavioral changes, zero sexual changes.
Re: supplemental T: controlled experiments find no behavioral effects at 500% natural production. Very slight effect in very few men at 3000% natural production. Comprehensive review
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2883629/pdf/nihms147643.pdf
“Most of these latter studies have assessed AAS-induced psychological effects in doses of ≤ 300 mg of testosterone or equivalent per week (Bagatell et al., 1994; Björkqvist et al., 1994; Forbes et al., 1992; Friedl et al., 1991; Friedl et al., 1989; Hannan et al., 1991; Matsumoto, 1990). These studies have generally found few psychological changes, prompting some investigators to doubt whether AAS actually produced biologically-mediated psychiatric effects at all (Bagatell et al., 1994; Björkqvist et al., 1994). However, although 300 mg of testosterone per week is 4–6 times the natural male production of testosterone (Reyes-Fuentes and Veldhuis, 1993), this dose is still far lower than that used by most illicit AAS users, who may sometimes ingest doses equivalent to 1000–5000 mg per week (Fudala et al., 2003; Parkinson and Evans, 2006; Parrott et al., 1994; Pope and Katz, 1988; Pope and Katz, 1994; Wilson-Fearon and Parrott, 1999). Thus it is inappropriate to extrapolate from these laboratory studies to the effects that might be seen in the field.
Four recent laboratory studies have administered doses of ≥ 500 mg per week of AAS to normal
volunteers, and thus come somewhat closer to approximating illicit doses (Bhasin et al.,
1996; Pope et al., 2000b; Su et al., 1993; Tricker et al., 1996; Yates et al., 1999). These
combined studies evaluated 109 men at this dosage level; five (4.6%) of these men developed
hypomanic or manic syndromes during blinded AAS administration, whereas none showed
such syndromes on placebo. However, the 4.6% figure likely underestimates the true
prevalence of such syndromes among illicit AAS users, because illicit users may reach for
higher doses than those administered in the laboratory, as just mentioned. Also, laboratory
studies typically screen volunteers to exclude individuals with existing psychopathology or
substance use, but illicit AAS users do not screen themselves with such care.”
Elspeth,
When you are right, you are right.
The way I looked at it when I got married, I wanted to marry a woman for a whole lifetime. I wanted to grow old with my wife. Yes we were much younger then when we got married (than we are now) but I still I was planning for the whole future. I was not only thinking about kids but way past that, when we were in our 70s roaming around the country in our 42 foot diesel pusher RV. I don’t know if all men do this but I did. If I couldn’t see a future with her doing that then there would have been no wedding.
Elspeth
The thing about this kid though, is that I have never doubted that he will be just fine. That he is going to do everything in his power to take good care of his bride and kid. He’s very smart, and I don’t just mean school smart.
In an earlier time, say, 50 or more years ago, they would have married with or without ye blunderbuss and had better odds of staying together than now. Better odds in part because she wouldn’t have been soaking in choices for years, choices that aren’t all that real in the long run.
You’re right. No one really cares what the young man’s plans were. He has responsibilities now. But most young husbands embrace that and get on with it. It’s we women who tend to lament all that we could have been.
I’ve seen some of that “all we could have been”, and it can be pretty ugly on the downside. Because there really isn’t any “all we could have been”, that’s just a variant on the feminist “Have It All” mirage. A woman who pursues premed and med school to become a doctor or medical researcher is likely not going to have children, whether she marries or not. A woman who pursues the bohemian life of an artist may wind up drinking a lot, bitterly, in middle age. I can go on, and I’m thinking of real people I know or have known, but … meh.
Basically, the role or job or “office” of “Wife” has been so devalued, it’s now the 2nd or 5th or 10th choice for young women, until they suddenly look behind them at age 30 and realize they might not get to have that particular option, ever, and it becomes quite precious.
a reader
“until they suddenly look behind them at age 30 and realize they might not get to have that particular option, ever, and it becomes quite precious.”
Im watching that happen alot. Alot of women can easily find a husband or a good job in their 20s (hotness helps in the job market). when that 30 wall hits, all of sudden they are wishing they had married that “just not perfect guy” in their twentys that is now the same age as them and going after early 20yr old women. its almost like girls dont “get it” until just before they run out of most of their options. Ive had a few try to “cash in on their back pocket nice guy”, only to realize that most men, when they hit 30 all of a sudden realize the game thats been run on them. Its been fun to explain that i know how the game works, and ask if their hot little sister is single.
I am further indebted to Dalrock, here, but it is worth observing that although women may seek to ‘have it all’ there is one thing they cannot have and it is perhaps this thing – another P – that drives them to bitterness, for no matter how hard they try and even if they resist playing their pussy pass, they can never experience manly Pride – the satisfaction of a job well done or even more likely a failure to be chalked up to experience (like Nelson after his defeat at the battle of Tenerife in 1797). Even when men fail, they succeed as men. Men do not succeed for the purpose of impressing other men but for the satisfaction of getting the job done – if possible. Women are always looking to see that some man has noticed their achievement but will feel bitter that that does not make her one bit more attractive, and if she fails, will fail to accept responsibility. If however she does achieve everything, she ceases to be a woman. For those reasons female careers are as mythical as Unicorns.
The corporate cubicle worker may be able to pay for herself but in depriving a man of her job not only deprives a man of the possibility of becoming desirable as a potential husband and father but also becomes her own Beta – by providing for herself. A female Alpha can be nothing less than a slut.
Opus,
I work/worked with quite a few professional women who do just fine without men. They aren’t married. They have no children. They don’t have a man to bring them any resources. They don’t rely on government. I wouldn’t necessarily call them alpha. I think (all things being considered) the majoirity of these women, they would much rather be married to a man. They just remain the corporate cubicle worker to pay their bills because they aren’t married and will (probably) never be married. And why?
This is the common trait held by so many professional women that I worked with. Their physical appreance is the main reason why they become the lifelong corporate cubicle worker so that they may be able to pay for themselves. This has been forced upon them at birth. What choice does she have? (None that I can see.)
Eh. Yes, there are some really ugly women out there, but most of the unmarried, careerist women I’ve met weren’t that ugly. (Fat sometimes, yes, but not ugly.) Too ugly to snare the rich doctor they think their education and career entitles them to, but not too ugly to marry a decent average guy. They chose otherwise.
cause and effect and the female hamster.
that’s all I got to say about that.
Cail,
Well, you know where you and I part ways in this thinking. Your argument stems from the belief that these women had a least ONE marital offer in their life which they rejected. I would argue, they have had NONE.
Yes, and you’re still wrong. If a woman who reaches her 30s still single is not A) hideous, or B) obese, then she either C) has had outright offers of marriage at some point, or D) has made it clear to the men who would have offered that she wasn’t interested. Those are all the possibilities.
I’ve never had a marriage proposal rejected. But there were certainly relationships where I would have proposed at some point if the girl hadn’t talked about marriage as if it were about as appealing as a root canal.
If you’re naive enough to believe what women tell you about the proposals they didn’t get/accept, I can’t help you there.
@Deti:
What you’re describing is actually terrifying from a social perspective and should be to everyone, not just the religious. Even Atheists should be trembling in their boots at the implications of what you say. The reason is simple. Despite all promises of Christ’s forgiveness, a church cannot exist without standards of behavior. A line must exist, or there is no gospel, and nothing to forgive in the first place. A church cannot exist that allows sin under the notion that forgiveness is promised to all. When the inevitable backlash against this growing and peaking permissiveness comes, what will come out of it is American fundamentalism to a degree most people likely currently imagine to be impossible, and likely not seen since pre-revolution days. This has happened actually more than once in America’s history, though it seems this time we’re much closer to a real-life gomorrah than we once were. I would not be surprised if in 20-30 years time, America has it’s own version of the Ayatollah but from a Christian flavor.
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Even ugly women (though in their prime, few are) find husbands. Most women who are ugly are unlikely to even reach the heights of a corporate cubicle, where getting in, in the first place, requires a certain manner and a certain look – not stunning, of course – it isn’t a model agency – but suitable to look at. Office decoration one might say.
I was talking to my friend last night and asked him what the latest was with his married 30 year old niece, who works in the media. She is pleasant to look at but not stunning. To her parents disappointment, who were hoping for grand-children she has accepted yet another rise up the career ladder – and is now mixing with movers and shakers. She earns a lot of money (for very little) and far more than her blue-collar but rugged husband – a Kitchen Bitch in training. When her looks go who will surely be moved sideways but I predict divorce long before that day. Thus a race seeks its own extinction.
“she either C) has had outright offers of marriage at some point, or D) has made it clear to the men who would have offered that she wasn’t interested.” I think for essentially ALL those women it is both. She DID make it clear to the vast majority of men that she wasn’t interested in them, and some of them asked her anyway. Always, because of the apex fallacy, what women mean by zero offers is No True Offer, i.e. coming from an apex man she couldn’t turn down.
Poor IBB. She’s coming face to face with the fact that her daughters ain’t going to be able to have their cake and eat it too.
So sad.
That’s good to hear. I like to add that so-called gay marriage is a sham, no matter what judges rule or legislators legislate–just as no point of law can make Pi equal to exactly 3.14, no matter how easy that might make life for schoolchildren. So you might see me referring to same-sex sham marriage from time to time in order to make that point. People upset by the Benanke hanky-panky might also call it counterfeit marriage. Same idea.
I am puzzled by this remark.
First, there is no such thing as “being in good standing” (or not good) in the Catholic Church. The concept simply does not apply. Read the Church’s catechism. Go ahead and search the Church’s catechism if you don’t believe me.
Entry into the Church is by a Christian baptism. That’s a sacrament. Sacraments are completed by God, they cannot be undone by any act of men. Not even by the females among us. The Church does recognize that we are sinners and may be in a state of sin. But even being in a state of mortal sin has nothing to do with the concept of “standing”. For no one who enters the Hospital for Sinners is ever turned away on this side of the veil. It is not for the faithful, whether angels or men, to separate the wheat from the tares or sheep from the goats until the Final Judgment. Only at that time will God reveal to all who is saved and who is not.
Oh but what about excommunication, one might ask. Good question and the answer is that excommunication does not put anyone outside the Church (the sacramental baptism can’t be undone by men thing again). However the Hospital for Sinners may quarantine one of its patients who is especially infectious (scandalous, in Church lingo) or who abuses the medicines thereby doing harm to oneself. Being placed in the Hospital’s quarantine ward, that is excommunication.
Second, marriage among Christians is also a sacrament and likewise no act of men (or hamsters) can undo it. (Mark 10:9, Matthew 19:6) Also, Jesus clearly identified divorce as a tradition of men, not something of God. Perhaps by “divorce” you meant a purely civil divorce undertaken as a legal necessity to avoid injury to oneself or hardship to ones children while understanding that one remains married in the eyes of God until death (an unfortunate corner case of rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s). However, I am unaware of any difference in this within the Catholic Church whether in or outside the US.
There is going to be a lot of terrified women on the day of judgement. They believe in this soft palm, hollow forehead, weak in the knees Jesus. A Jesus who loves them so much he is just simply alright with anything they do, that there really is no such thing as sin anymore. They bend and twist scriptural facts to fit their narrative, and from there it’s off to the rationalization hamster 500. I am starting to believe that Hell may be populated almost exclusively by women folk, they are a most unruly and treacherous creature.
“That being said, I think I can forgive the hopeless feeling you seemed to impose on me. I think if you only knew more, you’d have written a much different post.”
“Big picture, I agree with you, but overall that post did not appear to be written out of love.”
You simply HAVE to love the CLASSICS!!! Love conquers all in journalism.
(i.e. don’t make me feel bad, call me out on my terrible behaviour/actions, or suggest that I am a failure as a wife and/or mother).
A man stuffs his laments of all he could have been. He remains silent for years. And years. Maybe always. But should he open up he’s said to be having a mid-life crisis and gets mocked and disparaged.
@ Micha Elyi:
I strongly believe that if a wife makes it very clear that she appreciates all the sacrifices her husband has made (doing this in actions as well as with words), and makes it clear to their children how vital he is to the life of the family, he’s far less likely to experience that mid-life crisis or season of lament.
I cold be wrong of course, but that’s my take. Men just don’t seem as given to profound episodes of discontent as women do. Their responsibilities take up too much of the space. And from what men tell my husband, having working wives does nothing to reduce that pressure. Sometimes it makes it worse.
“Men just don’t seem as given to profound episodes of discontent as women do.” I wholeheartedly agree. But men are the victims of their wives’ discontent as exhibited by their lack of appreciation.
I wonder why sociologists are so afraid to do the “yes dear” studies when the woman is the one saying “yes dear”?
@jf12
We are speaking about the far right segment of dose-response graph, right? It’s almost horizontal there, meaning any gains relative to the dose would be minimal, and the probability of harmful side-effects – high. At the molecular level all androgen receptors are fully operational at such doses, and. various “spillover effects” (like marginal affinity to other steroid receptors) become more important. At concentrations closer to physiological range it’s quite different.
Consider a following scenario:
– a sensitive period of high brain plasticity (intense synaptic pruning, so late teens and early twenties);
– a quite high body fat percentage (lots of peripheral aromatase leeching blood testosterone, leaving less for the brain);
– a non-competitive environment where physical activity is discouraged (little to no testosterone release spikes, translating to low baseline).
The result: a feminized, sensitive “herb” that Roissy is sooo fond of…
I wish more detailed brain maps of more variety of people than this one were available (if I’d have more free time, I’d examine variation in spatiotemporal patterns of gene expression in entorhinal cortex, for example). Our disscussion would have a higher chance to reach a definite conclusion than now.
Yes, far right. The sigmoidal dose response graph is linearish for constant testosterone blood levels up to about 200 or 300 ng/dL, but it already curves rather sharply towards horizontal by 300 or 400 (probably depending on body fat). Even large variations in T in a normal healthy adult man with baseline 800 ng/dL can have no effects. Experimentally supplements also do nothing for men with 600 basline, and most doctors claim no real effects even when baseline is as low as 400. There are no overt body or behavior effects from temporary spikes above baseline.
The question of brain T, and specifically the brain effects of spikes, especailly during teens, I don’t know.
Bibliography to this article:
Ca2+ oscillations induced by testosterone enhance neurite outgrowth
contains some interesting references.
Cail,
In your opinion.
Those are not ALL the possibilities. I am not going to waste my keystrokes and list them here, but there are many more possibilities.
Neither have I. I was 3 for 3.
Okay, why were you involved with those women? Forget it, that is a separate issue. The moment I became marriage minded, only marriage minded women would do.
I am not asking for it. I do not need or even want your help.
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Exfernal that is an interesting reference, it is useful to see science adding to the pile of knowledge that clearly shows real, tangible, verifiable differences between men and women. Anecdotes are fine, I got my own pile of them, but the real effects of testosterone and/or estrogen must be defined and measured.
Anecdote:
One of the converging beliefs across the androsphere is the benefits for men of lifting weights, of “pumping iron” as it were. At one job when I was in my 20’s I worked with a middle aged man in his early 40’s, who mentioned in a somewhat covert way to me once “I lift weights, every night. You know, for my wife”. I was skinny but still full of testosterone, so…no, I didn’t know. Looking back, that man would have benefited even more by losing the 20 to 30 pounds of belly fat he was carrying around above his belt buckle. But the weight training surely helped a bit to push up the T in his bloodstream by bedtime.
More broadly yet still anecdotally, any man who has ever been around a woman all the way through pregnancy can attest to how her brain is affected by the torrent of estrogen. Some of the changes are long term, too.
By the way….men have more cubic centimeters of brain cells than women do:
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/02/13/do-men-really-have-bigger-brains-than-women-one-study-found-out/
Compare and contrast with Female Athlete Triad Syndrome and its potential effects on the brain.
inocentbystanderbostan
You realize that even the most ugliest chicks get laid right? So perhaps some ugly chicks don’t get a proposal? I can promise you that the ugly chick would of been able to find a guy if she went out of her way to propose to someone. (Yes take responsibility and accept she is lower value and ask the question.)
Related excerpt on just how FUBAR this whole same-sex “marriage” horse hockey thing is going to make civil life in the U.S.:
http://www.wnd.com/2008/09/76555/
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“He said the state Supreme Court’s ruling fails to mention civil unions, but the state already grants “rights” for domestic partnerships:
Accordingly, same-sex couples who first obtain civil unions from, say, Vermont, will soon be allowed to travel to California and enter into marriage – either with or without their civil union partner. Thus, Arnold and Bill might be united in a Vermont civil union, but in California, Arnold may enter into marriage with Cullen, even while the civil union is still in effect. And before his “marriage,” Cullen could have united in a civil union with Dan.
It gets worse. At the same time as these males are coupling, female same-sex couples could have been undertaking similar unions. Ellen may be in a civil union with Feona, and Feona could nonetheless marry Gigi. Gigi may have had a previously conferred civil union with Heidi.
As if all of that were not enough, under California law as twisted by the state Supreme Court, Heidi could marry Dan, and Ellen could marry Bill, thus completing a circle of “love” among eight individuals, four male and four female, all of whom would have arguable legal rights to all the property owned by any one of them – no matter what state the property is in.
“If this isn’t a recipe for disaster, then California is no longer the land of fruits and nuts,” he wrote.”
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It is adorable, and educational, how Christian men believe that having affairs, instead of divorce, is a sign of their nobility. Unlike the immoral women who leave their husbands, Christian men nobly preserve their money… erm, marriage, and just take on mistresses, having their cake (money in the bank and wife at home, in that order) and eating it too (strange on the side).
So admirable. So Christian.
Thanks, Dal. This is a goldmine, truly.
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Dalrock,
I enjoy your site, but I have to make an observation: if you believe that divorce is permissible (and you’ve state so in other posts), why then do you criticize it? Christ explicitly says in that anyone who marries a women who is divorced commits adultery, with no exceptions. The word for ‘lewd conduct’ or ‘fornication’ in the passage in Matthew is ‘porneia,’ which according to the scholars of greek refers to an illicit sexual relationship. But the word for adultery at the end of that passage (I think it’s ‘moikeia’ (not sure of the spelling, but I have friends who know Biblical Greek) means sexual intercourse between two people, one or both of whom is married to another.
So if divorce is permissible, as Protestants believe (and I’m Catholic), why condemn it, even though it may be damaging or harmful to those involved with it? Why criticize a movie like “Fireproof” (which was awful, by the way) if divorce is okay? What does it matter what a spouse has done if the marriage can be ended at all? Seems to me your undercutting your argument against divorce if you think it’s okay to do so.
The Catholic Church is the only institution that has historically been against it. And for your readers who may cite annulment as a ‘Catholic divorce,’ and a way to get around the marriage, an annulment is not the same as a divorce. It’s a ruling that the sacramental, mystical bond between the man and woman never took place, for a variety of reasons, and therefore the two were never married in the first place at the time of the wedding.
Not sure where I should have posted this, but since this article is about divorce, I thought I’d submit it here.
Forget to add something: so when Christ talks about divorce, he must mean something other than the dissolution of the sacramental marriage bond; it simply means a separation (“I divorce my fork from my food, for example), but the mystical bond is still there and cannot be broken.
@Chris
I don’t know what statements you are referring to so I can’t address them. However, even if you take Christianity from consideration, the destruction of marriage has been an unmitigated disaster. I have spent a good amount of time on this blog documenting this and explaining it. One doesn’t need to be a Christian to see what a disaster we have made of the family. Would you truly challenge this?
On the differences between Catholics and Protestants, I don’t focus on this. Divorce is either never permissible or almost never permissible. My advice here is to take the teaching of your church seriously and not try to get creative in finding justifications for divorce (example).
I am not an expert on RCC doctrine, but serious Catholics whom I respect tell me that RCC doctrine on marriage is sound, even though annulments are being wildly abused in practice. In practice, annulments have indeed become a form of “Catholic divorce”. This is especially true in the US, where 6.2% of the worldwide Catholic population account for 79% of Catholic annulments:
In response to the claim that annulments are being abused in the US, the Archdiocese of Boston explained that it is in fact the other way around. The problem is that the RCC isn’t providing “justice” by failing to approve the same level of annulments in the rest of the world:
The reality is that Protestant and Catholic acceptance of divorce is rampant, and the fundamental problem is much bigger than the disagreement at the doctrinal level. I can’t reunite Protestants, Catholics, and Orthodox, and I therefore choose to generally focus on our larger areas of agreement. Christian culture is broken regarding marriage, with widespread acceptance of single mothers, divorce, and a deep seated hostility to headship.
Nonsense on stilts. Virtually every non-RCC Christian group was historically dead-set against divorce going back to the first century. As one example among many: within living memory the Assemblies of God in the US were a good deal more strict about it than American bishops. However, in recent decades most of those groups (like the RCC) have mimicked the world in accepting and attempting to justify it. This isn’t a Prot/RCC thing… as Dalrock noted, this is a problem within Christian culture. And as he also noted, this problem is only one part of an even larger problem of Christian culture. We are where we are, though, and while I won’t say that nobody’s hands are clean on this, I will say that I have yet to find any organized group that takes Matt 19 both seriously and literally.
Dalrock and Lyn87; I’m taking the church’s position on divorce seriously. You’re right; either divorce is never permissible or it is; almost never permissible is the same as permissible; once you make exceptions there’s no reason to stop.
I’m not challenging the church’s position on divorce. Just the opposite. My question to you is you is do you believe it’s permissible or not, and if it is, then why do you decry it with all of it’s bad consequences?
The fact that annulments are handed out like candy doesn’t mean the church has changed it’s doctrine on divorce; it just means that many, many members of the hierarchy aren’t upholding the doctrine. But the doctrine is still there. Most Protestant churches seem to doctrinally sanction divorce since the Lambeth conference in the 1930’s (when they also gave ‘limited exceptions’ for contraception) in clear violation of Scripture.
Don’t misunderstand me, your observations are spot on most of the time. But I just don’t see how one can decry divorce and then say it’s alright in certain circumstances.
By they way, be wary of any statistic that comes out of any diocese; they are full of liberal post VCII clerics who have either ben poorly formed or are outright in denial of church doctrine, and will use statistics to justify anything they want to. This is the same church who — with the current pope’s implicit, tacit approval — put out documents from the recent synod on the family which is ambiguous, at best, regarding ‘divorced’ and ‘remarried’ Catholics from receiving communion.
As well, the Roman Catholic Church is just one rite in the Catholic Church. I’m Byzantine Rite myself, and the doctrine is still the same; it’s binding on the whole church.