She isn’t getting enough dates.

Eddie Kaufholz at Relevant Magazine has an article on an old standby topic, Why Don’t the Guys in my Church Ask Women on Dates? (H/T Robert Yates).  Relevant reader Erica kicks off the discussion with a letter asking why weak men are screwing feminism up:

Where are all the brave men? I will not go on a rant—and I firmly believe women can be just as brave—but I do notice a lot of Christian men who are afraid to pass the friend threshold. This is why so many women date non-Christians; because Christian guys rarely can just keep it casual and go on a date, give it a chance. What are your thoughts on this?

Thanks!
Erica

Kaufholz is smitten by Erica’s display of what he sees as deep wisdom in asking such a profound question, and by her ability to complain about men not filling traditional roles while simultaneously establishing her feminist bona fides:

Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaang! Erica bringin’ the wisdom with a punch-in-the-face question as sentence #1, a sly wink to societal norms in sentence #2, and a scathing (and true) assessment in sentence #3. Well done, and great question!

Kaufholz explains that there is nothing for Erica to improve, because she is doing everything right but the men are screwing it all up.  The rest of his article is therefore directed to the men who read Relevant:

Sweet Erica is sitting next to you in church. She is brilliant, wise, articulate and principled. And you know you’ve noticed her because you notice every brilliant, wise, etc., woman in your circle. They think you don’t notice, but we we know better, don’t we?

Kaufholz lays this at the feet of Joshua Harris and his book I Kissed Dating Goodbye, and per standard operating procedure identifies a need for men to man up.  There is of course nothing wrong with advising men to be men.  However, while everyone knows men need to man up, the Christian cultural advice on how to do this is very often meaningless and even contradictory from one man up rant to the next.  Kaufholz is certain that the problem is that men aren’t interested enough in casual dating:

We have some serious issues to work out, namely, the lack of courage displayed by really good men who are hiding their heads in the sand, even as their heart longs to connect. But why?

We’ve got yet another Christian culture problem. Somewhere in the formative and oh-so-tacky ’80s and ’90s, a message spread through Christian bookstores (R.I.P.), pulpits, youth groups, and all the nooks and crannies of God-fearing culture. This message was that casual dating is not good, women’s hearts must be guarded by men, and all romantic relationships better have marriage in mind—or the people in them are just using each other.

According to Kaufholz, courage means man up and date casually.  Stop focusing on stating intentions regarding marriage.  Instead focus on just talking:

Today’s conversation is about sweet Erica, and the Ericas that are sitting right next to you. They’re not looking for a husband right this second, and they’re sure as heck not looking for a savior. They’re looking for a kind conversation, a respectful follow-up, and a nice cup of ethically sourced, fair-trade coffee.

Yet at the CBMW JD Gunter is telling these same men to stop being such cowards by dating too casually;  they need to man up and state their intentions.  In We’re Just “Talking” Gunter explains that only weak men have casual conversations with women:

Our culture suffers from a large number of males wallowing around in quasi-manhood for many years. Boys used to grow up, get a job, and move out of the house. But we have inserted this chain of life stages from adolescence, to the college years, to early career, and so on – all of which permit young men to put off growing up, taking responsibility, and generally acting like a man.

This new phase of pre-dating called “talking” is like adolescence for relationships: an unnecessary stage in the relationship allowing young men to avoid taking responsibility and acting like men. It prevents the man from having to be clear about his intentions to pursue or end the relationship.

Notice that not only are both prescriptions for being a real man contradictory, but each starts from contradictory assumptions about why modern Christian women are so frustrated with modern Christian men.  Kaufholz is certain that fabulous Christian women are being left entirely alone, with no Christian man willing to even engage in a casual conversation with them.  Gunter is sure that the unmarried women at church are being talked to death, and are powerless to direct the relationship towards the marriages they desperately crave.

The problem is neither one of them have bothered to get a good fix on what Christian women want regarding dating, because the complaints of women are merely a springboard for telling other men to man up.  Telling other men to man up secures their own place as the only real man in the room.  The only thing Kaufholz, Gunter, and many other Christian leaders agree on is that other men are a bunch of cowards, and if only other men will become real men like themselves all of the problems feminism has wrought on dating and marriage will be solved.  While this pattern is extremely popular for obvious reasons, it doesn’t do anything to help either the frustrated young women or the deeply confused young men.

Since we started with Erica’s letter, it makes sense to go back to her complaint.  What Kaufholz should have asked is if Erica is looking for a husband, or if she merely wants to be entertained.  If Erica is looking to be entertained, as I highly suspect is the case, her best chance for this is to court for sex.  This isn’t the moral choice, but it is the practical way to get what she is likely searching for.  All she needs to do is put herself out there with a promise of relatively quick sex in exchange for being suitably entertained.  I believe Erica already knows this though, as she hints at it when she writes:

This is why so many women date non-Christians

If Kaufholz had determined that Erica wanted to be entertained, he could have reminded her that she already knows how this is done and pointed out the moral problems with this path.  In doing so he would have avoided assisting her in rationalizing this as part of a noble pursuit of Christian marriage.

There is however an odd chance that Kaufholz’s diagnosis of the situation is correct;  it is possible that Erica is looking to become a biblical wife, and that her problem is that she brings her fabulous self to church every Sunday but can’t manage to get to know the men in her field of prospects.  In this case Kaufholz has still badly failed Erica, because he left her with the impression that sitting pretty is her only possible course of action.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.

There is a very easy way Erica can quickly find out which men in the church are eligible for marriage*, and also find herself casually introduced to each of these men.  All Erica needs to do is let one or more of the married women in the church know that she is looking to get married.  Married women love to play matchmaker, but only if it is for marriage.  They will go to great lengths to scour their extended social network for potential suitors, but only if the ultimate payoff is the potential for a marriage.  To the extent that the married ladies in the church aren’t tripping over themselves to locate every last eligible bachelor in the land and finding any and every excuse to put Erica in a position to interact with these men, it is because they don’t believe Erica is looking to marry.  This isn’t to say they need to believe that Erica will marry any given man they subtly or not so subtly put her in contact with, but that they don’t believe that if they find enough good matches for her that marriage is in the cards.

The irony here is Erica’s problem with the married ladies in the church is the same problem she has with the unmarried men in the church.  The reason Erica isn’t getting asked out on dates by marriage minded young men isn’t because of a fad which fell out of favor before the men her age quit fearing a terminal case of the cooties.  Her problem is no one but already married men like Kaufholz and Gunter believes she is seriously looking to marry.  The unmarried men and the married women believe that Erica is very likely a waste of time and effort.  Based on her letter to Kaufholz, I can’t think of any reason to believe that this assessment is wrong.

However, some of the young women reading this post and Kaufholz’s article will be sincerely looking to marry.  My advice for them is to find a way to convince the married women at church (or even just the married women they know) that they want to marry.  If they are young and pure(ish) and seem sincerely interested in getting married soon, this should be fairly easy to do by simply mentioning it to a married woman or two.  But the reality here is such young women already know this, and are generally terrified of what they know will come next.  They know that for the next year or so they will constantly be invited to social events or manuvered to one side of the room or another while the married women make introductions to eligible men.  This is embarrassing, because it means asking for (or at least accepting) help, and more importantly it doesn’t involve sexy strangers running day game on them at the most unlikely times and places.  But again, this all comes down to the fundamental goal.  If the goal is to be entertained, court for sex.  If the goal is to look for a husband, find a way to convince those who know you best that this is what you actually want.

*There is a bit of corollary advice for men looking to marry.  Such men only need to convince the married women that they meet the basic requirements of eligibility.  Note that convincing married women that a man wishes to marry isn’t on the list.  Unless a man goes out of his way to signal that he does not wish to marry, the married women know it is a pretty good bet that he would be willing to marry if introduced to the right young woman:

  1. The man has a good job.
  2. He isn’t already married and doesn’t have a girlfriend.
  3. He has moved out of his parent’s house and supports himself.
This entry was posted in Complementarian, Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, Death of courtship, Finding a Spouse, Relevant Magazine, The only real man in the room, Turning a blind eye, Weak men screwing feminism up. Bookmark the permalink.

386 Responses to She isn’t getting enough dates.

  1. theasdgamer says:

    because Christian guys rarely can just keep it casual

    What does this mean?

  2. Pingback: She isn’t getting enough dates. | Manosphere.com

  3. theasdgamer says:

    Singles groups would do well to teach men and women separately about how to do double-entendres. Oh, wait, they look askance at DE’s. Never mind. The problem is the hyper-puritanical view of sex in churchianity.

  4. The only thing Kaufholz, Gunter, and many other Christian leaders agree on is that other men are a bunch of cowards, and if only other men will become real men like themselves all of the problems feminism has wrought on dating and marriage will be solved. While this pattern is extremely popular for obvious reasons, it doesn’t do anything to help either the frustrated young women or the deeply confused young men.

    The funny thing is there are a bunch of men on this forum who have before said the exact same thing. Be like them, i.e. perfect, and marriage and women will following easily; and of course, be 6 foot 5 inches tall and sculpted like a Roman or Greek statue but with the accompanying foot long, and last but not least, have a perfect commanding but wholesome attitude and, well… why does everyone pretend that the two are different?

  5. donalgraeme says:

    I think you might give the “matchmakers” in Church a little too much credit Dalrock. While Christians fathers generally don’t want to see their daughters marry too early, from my experience most nearly all Christian women don’t want to see Christian women as a whole marry too early. So this plan only works when the woman reaches an age which they consider it acceptable for her to marry.

  6. What does this mean?

    It means that Christian guys are losers and boring and talk about marriage and stuff; and she would much rather have casual sex with some dudebro instead.

  7. So this plan only works when the woman reaches an age which they consider it acceptable for her to marry.

    28-30?

  8. Pingback: She isn’t getting enough dates. | Neoreactive

  9. Dalrock says:

    @Donalgraeme

    I think you might give the “matchmakers” in Church a little too much credit Dalrock. While Christians fathers generally don’t want to see their daughters marry too early, from my experience most nearly all Christian women don’t want to see Christian women as a whole marry too early. So this plan only works when the woman reaches an age which they consider it acceptable for her to marry.

    There is something to this, but I think it generally has far more to do with not believing that a woman beneath a certain age is looking to marry. Given the stats, there are good reasons for this. It isn’t that I don’t agree that the ladies in the church very likely have feminist notions about when a woman should marry, but that their desire to compete with other women for the prize of being the one to set up the marrying couple will outweigh their feminist inclinations here.

    But if a young woman finds herself surrounded by married women who refuse to help because she is too young, she should find a way to locate a less militant group of married women.

  10. Also, this connects to your old article about what courtship is dead. If Christian men are going on dates with women who don’t even intend to get married in the near future but just want to keep it ‘casual,’ it becomes a huge waste of resources for the Christian man, both his time, money and sanity. The non-Christian man probably gets sex as part of his deal.

  11. I'm drunk says:

    Or more likely Erica is fat.

  12. Opus says:

    I am a weak man who loves screwing up feminism.

  13. okrahead says:

    Erica is specifically advertising for Beta orbiters.
    1) She states she is not offering marriage
    2) Nor is she offering sex
    Yet she expects to be entertained and having “good men” available to take care of her emotional (and most likely financial needs).
    All while excusing her sisters who date bad boys, which is a sure tell that she is dating the bad boys herself. Women excuse in others what they do, or wish to do, themselves.
    So by all means, man up and be Erica’s beta orbiter. Entertain her and waste your money on her, while she secretly loathes you and can’t wait to spread her legs for hot rockbanddrummer after the show. Because everyone knows that truly strong, mature, Christian men are definitely not looking for women interested in marriage and commitment to Christ… just ask Erica.

  14. okrahead says:

    On the bright side, the fact that Erica feels the need to go on a “Christian” forum and bemoan the fact that Christian men aren’t willing to line up for the honor of being her beta orbiters could be a good sign… maybe the red pill is getting through to a wider audience..

  15. “Where are all the brave men?”

    First words out of an obese woman’s mouth when she’s frustrated with her lack of sexual interest on the part of men. Shame them for not being man enough to handle fat and sassiness.

    She is brilliant, wise, articulate and principled. And you know you’ve noticed her because you notice every brilliant, wise, etc., woman in your circle.

    First presumption of a man willfully ignoring his insight about the nature of the male sex drive – identify with the feminized false notion that men should be attracted to (dubious) intrinsic qualities that flatter a woman’s ego, not extrinsic sex appeal and femininity.

  16. Feminine But Not Feminist says:

    Donal is right about the older women not wanting the younger women to marry until their later 20’s. I’ve never seen it encouraged in church; not with myself or anyone else looking to marry early. And when a younger couple gets engaged, it’s met with fake congratulations accompanied by passive aggressive attempts to scare you both out of it. In my experience anyway.

    Another thing to consider regarding matchmaking is that oftentimes the older women don’t have such good taste in the men they set you up with. Case in point, about 4 years ago an older woman friend I knew (and a friend of hers that I also knew) decided to set me up with a guy they both knew. They raved about him, telling me what a nice guy he is and all that, and that I should go out with him. I agreed to a blind date with him… Worst.Date.Ever. He had a bunch of tattoos (I only saw the full length sleeves of them, but he apparently had one of those long sleeved t-shirt kind of tattoos that covers your torso and arms)… and, he started bragging about having his you-know-what pierced! I became wary of who I let play matchmaker with me after that. There’s very few people I would trust to pick someone out for me.

  17. Minesweeper says:

    @theasdgamer says: February 22, 2015 at 2:40 pm
    “”because Christian guys rarely can just keep it casual”

    What does this mean?”

    means she is wanting hookup culture with christians, who just might drive her to church on a sunday morning after a damm good seeing too the last 8 hours beforehand.

  18. Minesweeper says:

    and yes, I know christian woman like that, who have done exactly that.

  19. earl says:

    It makes me wonder if these guys have even been in the dating scene the past 5-10 years. My guess is no.

    Sure you can state your intentions to a woman. If it involves marriage or some sort of commitment you can almost count on her giving you the ‘NEXT’. They all want a man to pursue, cherish, and love them…but when the rubber actually meets the road they never seem to find the guy THEY want to do this.

  20. williamwilliam says:

    I have told my daughters to be prepared to marry young.

    I suspect many young men don’t marry simply because the woman acts opposed to marrying young or provides too much time for the young man to change his mind.

  21. Laura says:

    Every single post in this thread so far is completely depressing. Our culture really has fallen apart.

  22. Tom K left a comment over there that said it best…

    The fact is, a man needs a woman for just two reasons: to bear his children and to be grateful to him for giving her children and for taking care of her. Anything else isn’t worth his time. Why would any man want to spend time with a woman if it’s not going to lead to either sex or marriage?

    Yup. Pretty much. She Erica just wants to be entertained and she wants the Christian guys to pay to entertain her. Forget it. They can’t be bothered.

  23. Guys I’ll handle this.

    Laura,

    Every single post in this thread so far is completely depressing. Our culture really has fallen apart.

    One question, just one. What does Erika bring to the table to justify her desires?

  24. Minesweeper says:

    “I suspect many young men don’t marry simply because the woman acts opposed to marrying young”

    She does, but she wants a full relationship at the same time, and ONLY the males are being shot down over having this type of relationship. So the young men who know this, can’t provide this relationship without severe criticism and discipline, the females will then be comforted or given a pass completely.

    I’ve seen this so often, its almost insane. The young men in church are seeing divorcing women having affairs while their put soon to be ex upon husbands are being strung up left right and centre. No wonder they don’t make a move.

  25. Tom says:

    > If they are young and pure(ish)

    I nearly spilled my coffee when reading the “(ish)” part of that statement.

    It is a sad state of affair when the simple mention of a woman’s purity elicits uncontrollable laughter..

  26. Laura says:

    @IBB

    Maybe Erica has nothing at all to offer to a Christian man. I’m not defending Erica, and she may be a bad-tempered, obese slut who has her own private motives for attending church which do not include worshipping Christ. Certainly a lot of people attend just for the music or to socialize or worst of all, so that they can look down their noses at those who no longer attend.

    I’m just saying that sometimes our entire culture looks utterly broken and unfixable. Dalrock’s idea of older ladies from church doing some matchmaking sounded promising, but Feminine But Not Feminist has given a powerful counterexample of that strategy. So powerful that it has left me with a very disturbing visual image that I would like to erase from my mind.

    Seriously, this is the saddest thread ever.

  27. Brookes says:

    The part about girls in church sitting and looking pretty but not doing anything to get to know the guys in their sphere is something I’ve seen a lot. It’s a special kind of social retardation that I’ve only seen in churchy girls. I’ve had girls act completely uninterested in me and freeze up when I try to initiate conversations but then later I’d hear from a mutual friend that they like me and are wondering why I haven’t asked them out yet. In some cases, I think the reason that happens is that girls in the church don’t know how to flirt and get nervous around guys. In other cases, I think it’s almost like the girl goes on strike and refuses to interact with the guy at all unless it’s him taking her to dinner or asking her out. She’s not giving it out for free, the guy has to wine and dine her. But the “it” in this context isn’t even sex, it’s just conversation. Of course, that never works. The only guys who are that forward with girls who seemingly have zero interest in them are Omega Males with no social skills. I’ve seen it a million times.

  28. earl says:

    Well you can make a move if you want…but the reality is:

    1) Most women don’t bring much to a relationship unless your motive is to sin. And at this point with all the laws even sex is getting you into a beehive of trouble. I’d take a good woman over being single…but I’d take being single over trying to woo a woman who only has sex in her arsenal.
    2) Be prepared for rejection. LOTS of rejection. The male market and women have had the poison from the evil stepsisters injected in it gets harder to believe that even good women want marriage.

    It’s not even the fact rejection happens. It’s the fact women say they want these things, then when they get it they find every way to reject it.

  29. Laura,

    I’m just saying that sometimes our entire culture looks utterly broken and unfixable. Dalrock’s idea of older ladies from church doing some matchmaking sounded promising, but Feminine But Not Feminist has given a powerful counterexample of that strategy. So powerful that it has left me with a very disturbing visual image that I would like to erase from my mind.

    Fair enough.

    Seriously, this is the saddest thread ever.

    Its pretty sad. But this is where we are at.

    I don’t have a problem with Erika stating that she wants men to pay to entertain her. I just wish that Kaufholz would have called her out on that behavior.

  30. Elspeth says:

    Because we were so young when we married and everything turned out great, my husband and I are completely on board with our girls marrying very early, even as we accept that it may not play out that way for a a number of reasons. However, Donal is right that married Christian women generally shudder at the notion of very young people (men or women, really) marrying.

    About two weeks I was speaking with a neighbor ( a devout, missionary, homeschooling mother) who asked me about a young man we’re both acquainted with from our neighborhood. He was friends with her daughter and is still friends with mine. I told her that over a year ago he married the young woman he had been dating during high school, and that they have a baby coming in April. The bride is also very close to our family.

    She immediately looked dismayed and started asking all kinds of questions: Does he have a job? Is the bride working? When I told her the bride is a homemaker, she looked even more concerned: He has a job that can support a family without having earned a degree? What? Are they living with one of their parents?

    She was genuinely worried that these kids had made a horrible mistake. withheld the urge to scold her because I know she had true affection and concern for the young man but I was also a little confused as to why she wasn’t happy these Christian kids did the right thing.

    It’s truly not a good bet to bet on older Christian women to encourage marriage for any young woman under 23.

  31. Laura says:

    @IBB:

    What do you mean that you “don’t have a problem with Erika stating that she wants men to pay to entertain her” AND you “wish that Kaufholz would have called her out on that behavior.” Why should Kaufholz call Erika out on expectations that you don’t consider inappropriate?

  32. According to Kaufholz, courage means man up and date casually.

    Yes, it’s quite a logic pretzel, but that seems to be the takeaway. It’s right there in her question, too: why are men afraid to cross the friend threshold and why won’t men date casually? So it’s courageous to ask women out and then just date them forever without offering a commitment. Who knew?

    Of course, that won’t be the case when she hits 35 and decides she’s ready to shift to Act IV: Marriage in her life script. Then it’ll be time for men to stop being afraid of marriage and start proposing already.

    Sometimes it really is fried ice.

  33. Libertarian Anarchist says:

    “This is why so many women date non-Christians…”

    Translation: It’s single Christian men’s fault when single Christian women date and sleep with men they shouldn’t because the Christian men are not willing to conform to the women’s preconceived cultural expectations and leave them no other choice because “there’s no good men left.”

  34. Its not whether or not I find Erika’s behavior appropriate or inappropriate. She is just being honest. I respect people who are honest even if I disrespect what they are saying. But Kaufholz couldn’t say anything for a variety of reasons, not the least of which, the feminist imperative.

  35. Renee Harris says:

    The Blessing of psalms 91 be on you darlock. Or you know thanks for this post

  36. Lyn87 says:

    IBB asks,

    One question, just one. What does Erika bring to the table to justify her desires?

    That was one of my first thoughts as well. We get a glowing description of the “Erika’s” in our midst: brilliant, wise, articulate and principled. That’s quite a list, but I wonder what it could possibly mean. True brilliance is exceedingly rare. Only 15% of the population is even one or more StDevs above average in intelligence, and most of them are men. In a church with 500 members (a good-sized church – far larger than most), you can count the “brilliant” women on the fingers of one hand… and you can probably count the brilliant single women on the thumbs of one hand… if that. Now add wise, and articulate, and principled, and you’re essentially unicorn hunting at that point. Such paragons exist, but to pretend that the pews are overflowing with them is just nuts… especially is we stipulate that a wise Christian woman wouldn’t waste years of time and thousands of dollars on a degree she’ll never use, an articulate woman would be able to make her intentions and desires known, and a principled Christian woman would be a virgin.

    So… does Erika bring THAT to the table? Do all the other “Erika’s” supposedly crowding the pews bring it as well? Simply speaking, no: they do not.

    Very few “Erika’s” even bring what they’re advertising in the “Relevant” article, but even if they did, what makes them think that that’s what marriage-minded Christian men want? Is she slender? Is she demure? Can she cook?… or is she a Daughter of the King, who expects to be treated like a princess? Does she just want to be entertained? Validated? Does she want a celibate boyfriend for years on end with no guaranteed outcome? A beta orbiter? Does she offer the men something besides a chance to prove themselves to a woman who isn’t interested in – and will not commit to – even the possibility of taking the relationship anywhere?

    In short, does she offer anything except the chance for a man to bask in her awesomely-awesome awesomeness?

  37. KP says:

    It’s right there in one of the comments:

    MOST.

    WOMEN.

    SAY.

    NO.

    Please not, this comment was NOT made in the context of men asking for or expecting sex, it was not made in the context of men asking for a woman to marry them, it was in the context of a bloody casual coffee date. Great G*d but we are doomed!

  38. Minesweeper says:

    @Laura
    “Seriously, this is the saddest thread ever.”

    Really ?? you think this is bad, you should track down Dalrock’s other threads that relate to men being destroyed by frivolous divorce. Denied access to their own children, and having 75% of their monthly salary removed from them at source (lets also not forget the jail time threat if they don’t keep working), while her rotating selections of Harvey McBadBoys enjoy what was previously his house, his kids and the various joy’s of his xwife. And also along side the false accusations of abuse thrown against the husband that accompany almost every divorce.

    Obviously this thread is just sad to you. The eternal solipsism of the female mind.

  39. tz says:

    Erica sounds more bitter than sweet. Brilliant and wise, and next to you in church talking to her girlfriend about her career, or whatever technical problem required her brilliance.

    What does the man who dates her get out of it except the bill? No, man up and spend an unpleasant evening going to dinner and a chick flick and expect only “constructive criticism” on your words and actions instead of a thank you. Maybe instead it will be fun, but usually it starts with a larger group doing something together where behavior can be gauged. Where it can be determined that Erica is really sweet and fun and likes Chinese food and music or whatever, so it isn’t a pure “cold call”.

    Does Erica act feminine? Perhaps that is the lost art. We had both Flirting and Courtship. The latter is all but disappeared, and the former is called “sexual harassment” (unless you are an Alpha or PUA). Men are told attention is unwelcome – and have gotten the message.

  40. Laura says:

    @IBB

    OK, I thought that the issue was that Erika was considered to be disingenuous about her desire for the sort of courtship that traditionally led to marriage. I think part of the problem is that all of the old definitions have changed, so that it is hard to understand what people mean by words like “dating.”

    And part of the problem must surely be that the old system in which most working class girls picked a husband during high school, and most middle & upper class girls picked a husband during college has completely broken down. With no societal deadline/timeframe in place any longer, the process has no end point for men, which makes it pointless for men. I won’t say that I understand the anger/frustration that men must feel, because that will just unleash the fury of the manosphere on me. I will point out that although men are DIRECTLY affected by the lack of a deadline, that women are INDIRECTLY affected, because the confused societal boundaries lead to false assumptions on both sides in individual cases.

    @Dalrock

    Why do you say that the man must NOT be living with his parents in order to be taken seriously? If Mom & Dad live in a McMansion, and he can stay there for free while he pays off student loans or saves up for a down payment for a house of his own, why is this inappropriate? A nice, quiet bedroom & bath in the ‘burbs with Mom & Dad is a whole lot better than a cheesy apartment where your car gets broken into every four months and the neighbors play loud music when you need to sleep.

  41. There is a bit of corollary advice for men looking to marry.

    With one caveat: those married women might try to set him up with the single mom who keeps getting involved with bikers, or the BPD born-again virgin, thinking that this great guy is just what she needs to go straight. A guy better be careful what matches they bring him. A girl can count on the matchmaking ladies to put her together with guys who are capable husband material, if perhaps not terribly exciting.

    But that’s exactly Erika’s problem; as you say:

    But the reality here is such young women already know this, and are generally terrified of what they know will come next. They know that for the next year or so they will constantly be invited to social events or manuvered to one side of the room or another while the married women make introductions to eligible men.

    Telling someone she’s interested in marriage gives away some of her control. It surrenders one of her best tools for chasing away uninteresting men — telling them she’s not ready to marry. If she declares her interest, even if it’s only to the matchmaking ladies, then when she starts shooting down the nice providers they match her up with, she’ll have to think up another excuse, and that’s hard work.

    She doesn’t want much: just for lots of attractive men to ask her out regularly but leave the status and progress of the relationship entirely in her hands, moving ahead (or not) at whatever pace she sets. And it never occurs to her or millions of other girls that that’s incredibly selfish and narcissistic, and unrealistic unless she looks like a model.

  42. Opus says:

    May I say that I cannot understand what on earth Kaufholz is saying.

  43. ChildofRa says:

    Is there a group or convention or something for single men and women to attend who are strong in their faith ,wanting serve Christ and have traditional gender roles? Cause there’s this blog, peaceful wife & wintery knight that all pretty much say the same thing yet I read the comments and I’m just like why don’t the followers of these blog just mix and mingle – it seems it would the problem of searching for a god fearing Christian man/woman.

  44. Gunner Q says:

    “Every single post in this thread so far is completely depressing. Our culture really has fallen apart.”

    I was going to say. The untold part of this story is the young men who are rejected/used when they try to get a date and shamed when they don’t try to get a date. It becomes a betrayal of trust in which both sluts and Churchians tag-team him for as long as they can pull off the deception. By the time he ejects from the mess, he’s learned to hate and distrust all women and clergy, if not Christ Himself.

    But our culture didn’t fall apart, it was dismantled by Elites and Churchians. Recognize them, shun their poisonous influences and trust Christ to preserve the remnant He always does. It hurts but this is as close to Hell as we believers will ever get.

    We have a future. They don’t. Never forget that.

  45. Dalrock says:

    @Elspeth

    She was genuinely worried that these kids had made a horrible mistake. withheld the urge to scold her because I know she had true affection and concern for the young man but I was also a little confused as to why she wasn’t happy these Christian kids did the right thing.

    It sounds like in the situation you describe the concern was that the man was too young to marry and support a family, not that the woman was too young to marry. If she were 19 and he was 22 or 23 and had a decent job it sounds like she wouldn’t have had such a concern. Part of this is the reality of our economy, that it is very hard for young people to get started. Part of this is an acceptance of the fact that marriage under such conditions is hard, and when marriage is hard women divorce marriages fail.

    It’s truly not a good bet to bet on older Christian women to encourage marriage for any young woman under 23.

    Is there anyone here who thinks Erica is under 23, or that she is even closer to 23 than 33?

  46. Opus says:

    I also note Erica’s assertion that she ‘firmly believes’ that women can be brave (what on earth can she be talking about) but she does rather give the impression that bravery is one thing she doubts in women or at least in herself.

  47. earl says:

    ‘We get a glowing description of the “Erika’s” in our midst: brilliant, wise, articulate and principled.’

    It seemed like the guy was white knighting these ‘Erika’s’ without knowing much about this women.

    Granted there are women like this out there…but to throw those adjectives at them takes years of merit and not from one letter lamenting about how men aren’t asking her to casual dates.

  48. earl says:

    ‘By the time he ejects from the mess, he’s learned to hate and distrust all women and clergy, if not Christ Himself.’

    Well hopefully he doesn’t take that hate and distrust to women and apply it to Christ because that is false thinking. Unlike a lot of woman…when Jesus said something, he meant it and proved it.

  49. Elspeth says:

    If she were 19 and he was 22 or 23 and had a decent job it sounds like she wouldn’t have had such a concern.

    You may be right. I may have jumped to conclusions, but I assured her that this young man does have a job that can support his young family. He is a very intelligent young man by any standard, but especially today’s standards. Perhaps she felt he would be best served by going to college.

    Also, she was over 30 when she married (she ‘wouldn’t have been ready any sooner” in retrospect). I may have unwittingly factored that into her response.

    In fact, almost every Christian mother in our homeschool group who is my age has been married a significantly shorter time than us and the women who have been married as long as we have are all at least 10 years older. We just celebrated our 21 anniversary and without fail, the congratulations are followed by ‘Wow, you guys must have been really young” and the attendant stuff.

    I just don’t think you can expect middle class, educated Christian women to encourage young women to marry before they have also checked off all the requirements that are considered imperative to experience before sttling down.

    And for the jaded, I don’t mean sexual experience. I mean first college, then missions abroad, etc. the Christian equivalent of the secular path. The expectation that they will do so is ubiquitous. People look at our family as weird because our girls attend collee while living at home. There has been concerned expressed about they way we’re doing this as well.

  50. The part about girls in church sitting and looking pretty but not doing anything to get to know the guys in their sphere is something I’ve seen a lot. It’s a special kind of social retardation that I’ve only seen in churchy girls.

    They can’t ask for what they want, because even they realize it would sound ridiculous. If a girl wants sex, that’s pretty straightforward, and a guy can understand it and act accordingly. Likewise, if a girl is looking for marriage, a guy knows what that means and can pursue her or not.

    But these girls are looking for something like an open-ended multi-year “relationship” with no sex (there may be sex if he makes her tingle, but she can’t offer it up front, because she’s a good church girl), and where she’s completely in charge. That’d sound insane if she said it out loud, so she has no choice but to sit there and look pretty and hope guys will come along and offer it out of the blue.

  51. earl says:

    ‘Telling someone she’s interested in marriage gives away some of her control.’

    Well the reality of marriage is you have to give away your power for love. Most gals get the idea that their power is more important than anything else.

  52. Tam the Bam says:

    “She is brilliant, wise, articulate and principled.”
    It was at this point I looked up the googlemachine’s definition of “Poe’s Law”.
    Well played Mr Kaufholz sir, straight through the covers.

    PS I divine that Erika is DTF but needs plausible deniability.
    Sunday morning night club. Pack her off to the Chateau post-haste, more to her taste I suspect.
    If a Christian man is not eventually, no matter how tentatively and speculatively, seeking marriage, then what the hell is he playing at? Placeholder boyfriend for all eternity? A position as first footman or butler?

  53. Laura says:

    @Minesweeper

    I’ve read a lot of Dalrock’s other threads. over the past couple of years

    This thread isn’t sad because Erika isn’t being asked out to dinner. This thread is sad because every time I think I fully understand how sick “Christian society” has gotten, someone reveals a whole new level of pain.

    Elspeth and maybe one or two other people have mentioned that the older women in the church are NOT on board with young people getting married, and the experience of Feminine but not Feminist was a daggar through the heart of the idea of having older women play matchmaker.

    The definition of “Christian” is now too elastic to mean anything, and so are words like “dating”. So having somebody fix a young girl up “on a date” with a “Christian man” could mean absolutely anything.

    @Dalrock

    I assumed that Erika was in her early twenties. If she were younger, the journalist wouldn’t have seen the absence of gentleman callers as a problem. She could be older, but I didn’t see any information about her career or credentials, so I assumed that her awesomeness was based on her youth and beauty. I didn’t read the original article, though.

  54. Dalrock says:

    @Elspeth

    You may be right. I may have jumped to conclusions, but I assured her that this young man does have a job that can support his young family. He is a very intelligent young man by any standard, but especially today’s standards. Perhaps she felt he would be best served by going to college.

    Also, she was over 30 when she married (she ‘wouldn’t have been ready any sooner” in retrospect). I may have unwittingly factored that into her response.

    I have no doubt you read her correctly. I should have been more precise. I was commenting on the specific thought process you described, as it is something I see fairly often.

    In fact, almost every Christian mother in our homeschool group who is my age has been married a significantly shorter time than us and the women who have been married as long as we have are all at least 10 years older. We just celebrated our 21 anniversary and without fail, the congratulations are followed by ‘Wow, you guys must have been really young” and the attendant stuff.

    I just don’t think you can expect middle class, educated Christian women to encourage young women to marry before they have also checked off all the requirements that are considered imperative to experience before sttling down.

    In my limited observation what I’ve found is that Christian home-school moms are generally representative of larger Christian culture. There is no shortage of feminism, bitching about husbands, or even tattoos. Truly traditional women stand out in such a crowd. I don’t think most homeschool moms will encourage women to marry young, but I don’t think most, and certainly not all, would pass up the chance to score a (marriage) matchmaking win if they came across the extremely rare instance of an 18-22 year old woman sincerely looking to marry. Either way such young women are rare, and I would guess even less likely to seek out help than older husband hunters because they tend to be surrounded by energetic young men who while not likely thinking of marriage could be fairly easily brought around to the idea by a woman just like themselves. It is generally the older husband hunters who “can’t find any men”.

  55. Boxer says:

    Dear Earl:

    Good insight…

    Well the reality of marriage is you have to give away your power for love. Most gals get the idea that their power is more important than anything else.

    Women are made insecure by cultural memes originating not specifically in feminism, but in capital generally. Corporate interests (today’s “ruling class”) like an insecure population, because they are susceptible to sales pitches. People are kept in a perpetual state of insecurity, never feeling “good enough”, and these same people will work overtime to buy that overpriced wrinkle cream and that shiny new car (which isn’t objectively any better than the one they’re already driving, of course).

    This filters down into female consciousness. Women are terrified of giving themselves over to a man, because they’ve been told their whole lives that they aren’t “good enough”. When MRA and PUA types decry the prevalence of “shit-testing” they’re really constructing a critical theory of society without knowing it. People who are convinced that they will never be “good enough” construct false personae, and are terrified of having their flaws known and deconstructed by others. This leads to a fear of intimacy.

    Of course, intimacy between the couple leads to children, and the construction of a more perfect society in microcosm (the family). Capital finds it beneficial to destroy such things before they start, because the functional family illuminates the lie that we are living in a progressive society now. We’re not, of course. We’re all of us cattle, waiting for the slaughterhouse in a feedlot.

    Boxer

  56. Scott says:

    Fantastic, and I think Donal is probably right. The most likely response will be “oh sweetheart, you are too young! You need to have fun.”

    By the way, here is my latest.

    http://courtshippledge.com/2015/02/365/

  57. Minesweeper says:

    @Laura
    You said. “Seriously, this is the saddest thread ever.”
    then
    “This thread is sad because every time I think I fully understand how sick “Christian society” has gotten, someone reveals a whole new level of pain.”

    you mean this is how you feel right now ?

    Read this Dalrocks “A case for anger” :
    https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2012/02/22/a-case-for-anger/

    Let us know how you feel about this one.

  58. kracken says:

    I’ve seen 3 different girls post this article on facebook and each of them have been on a first date with me.

    I’m a 24 year old guy who goes to a big city church. I’m 6’3″, good looking, athletic, confident, and I’m in my 4th year of med school. I go on a LOT of first and second dates, basically with any girl I meet at church who’s decently cute and seems nice. I rarely go on a third or 4th date, because usually I can quickly ‘next’ a girl because she: 1.) tries to have sex with me on the first or second date 2.) laughs and brags about how shes terrible at cooking, cleaning, playing with kids, finances, etc. 3.) her work/career/hours are going to make it difficult to get together.

    From my perspective, the non-obese girls get asked on dates. They are just get upset that men can see they’re not really bringing as much to the table as they think they are.

  59. Pingback: Performance and desire and courtship and dating post script | Reflections on Christianity and the manosphere

  60. earl says:

    ‘People who are convinced that they will never be “good enough” construct false personae, and are terrified of having their flaws known and deconstructed by others. This leads to a fear of intimacy.’

    This is also what happens in the ‘gamma male’ portion of the population. Vox did a good summary of that earlier this week.

    http://alphagameplan.blogspot.com/2015/02/are-you-gamma-1-of-2.html
    http://alphagameplan.blogspot.com/2015/02/are-you-gamma-2-of-2.html

    Even in the comments women remarked how women display these traits too. Seems like it is a human personality weakness and not just a gender based one.

  61. Spike says:

    The glaring problem with Erica is that too many young Christian men are already given the messages of both Christian and contemporary cultures: Study hard. Work hard. Train hard. Avoid obvious vice. You will be rewarded with a woman with the values of your mother, that will allow you to start a family just like your father did, and his father before him….

    ….Only that no reciprocal message is given to young Christian women to accept the complementary role. Just about all of them want career and jobs ahead of marriage, with the result that a serious young man will cop a rejection as she runs the other way like he has the plague. He won’t even know what he is doing wrong.
    You see, Daddy has told her to get an education, and he can’t bear the idea of her getting screwed once she has grown up. Mommy has also told her that Daddy isn’t the best she’s had so she should hold out. So parents bury their collective heads in the sand, while she gets screwed. And screwed. And screwed again – INSTEAD of getting married.

    When I was maritally minded, I met with a lot of rejection from young Christian women. I originally put this down to “incompatibility” for whatever reason. After the first few rebuffs, I found one of my rejections wrapped around some ‘thing’ that looked like he was missing a chromosome.
    As I had already been rejected, I asked her what he had that I didn’t (after all, I had noting to lose).
    She: “Oh… you know…(shrug)
    Me: “No, I don’t. Please elaborate”.
    She: “He treats me the way I like”.
    Me: “Is he a Christian?”
    She: “No, but I’m working on that (Yeah, right)”.
    Me: “How is it that he treat you in a way that I wouldn’t”?
    She:(shrugs and laughs) “I don’t think I can answer that easily”

    I went on to find that of all of the Christian girls I knew in my youth, only a handful had signed up for Christian marriage. Many ended up divorced and wrecked.

    Young Christian men need to be told Red Pill truths. Two sets of books operate, and men need to realize that women aren’t playing by rules that they are.

  62. earl says:

    ‘Young Christian men need to be told Red Pill truths. Two sets of books operate, and men need to realize that women aren’t playing by rules that they are.’

    Well the first truth men need to know is that any vice a woman does commit is swept under the rug or blamed on men. The rules applied to woman are sending them to hell in a handbasket and dragging all men along with them. How can women find forgiveness and true peace if all their sins are rationalized away?

  63. okrahead says:

    Okay, I went over to the original article at “Relevant” magazine…. First thing I noticed is the photograph at the top… The uber thin female model is wearing short, short, short shorts… so short, in fact that her pockets extend well below the shorts themselves. I have it reported from much darker parts of the sphere (Roissy, if memory serves correctly) that this is a 100% slut tell.
    The cringe-worthy beta with her is grinning like a goon, while playing, of all things, a ukelele. While playing most instruments may be alpha, I maintain that the ukelele is at best beta… I can feel my t level sinking just by typing the word.
    Within the article itself Kaufholz advises us that Erika is seeking nether a husband NOR A SAVIOR. Mind you this is AT CHURCH. I read twice to be sure… he does not say that Erika is not seeking a man at church to save her, but rather that she is not seeking a savior. Period. Do these people even know or care about basic Christian doctrine?
    Why would a Christian man be even remotely interested in this? A c-tease with no interest in Godly marriage or finding a Savior? And instead the churchians offer shaming language for rejecting this? Really, in the end, it reads as nothing more than a giant hamsterization to justify churchian womynz sleeping around with rockbanddrummer and harleymcbadboy, all because those cowardly Christian men won’t hang out and buy them stuff…..

  64. Anonymous Reader says:

    Dalrock
    The only thing Kaufholz, Gunter, and many other Christian leaders agree on is that other men are a bunch of cowards, and if only other men will become real men like themselves all of the problems feminism has wrought on dating and marriage will be solved.

    Not just leaders, there’s more than one blogger peddling that. “Your wife would not be contentious if you were like me” is just as solipsistic as any special snowflake princess, and yeah, it puts all the blame and responsibility on the man. It’s another version of “women have no free will”.

    Elspeth
    And for the jaded, I don’t mean sexual experience. I mean first college, then missions abroad, etc. the Christian equivalent of the secular path.

    More than one woman has found her first sexual experience in that way, if not at college then on a mission abroad. Some of them marry, some (most?) don’t. I’m not being sarcastic. Anyone who really thinks that sending a 19 year old woman to, oh, Peru or Argentina in the company of 21 year old men on “mission” can’t possibly result in sex, because all of them have a Bible in their backpack…anyone who thinks that needs a pair of glases, and should think again.

    Watch what the Erikas do, not what they say. If they meant their words, their actions would match…

    Cail Corishev, it is exactly fried ice.

  65. If women are desperately hoping for these uber-shy (apparently) Christian men to Man Up and talk to them, they could try another tried and true method for getting a man to sate them: Tell them she’s interested.

    Radical and shocking, I know. And yes, I understand that somewhere along the way being a man somehow became intertwined with asking a girl out, because…because…yeah. But desperate times, right?

  66. “I went on to find that of all of the Christian girls I knew in my youth, only a handful had signed up for Christian marriage. Many ended up divorced and wrecked.”

    I had a platonic lunch with a young woman who used to attend the same church as me. When I asked if the guy she was seeing was actually saved, her response was something along the lines of, “I’m still trying to gauge that.” In other words, probably not. But hey, she admitted that she was growing more and more jealous of the couples she saw in public and in church. And aside from that, he’s studying to become a lawyer. No way to pass that up!

    I almost feel bad for the guy. Almost.

  67. (Sate should be date, though the typo is amusing.)

  68. Josh says:

    Sadly, this message is also being preached from the pulpits as well. We could even throw ccm music and christian movies into this category as well. To quote Denver Pyle (Uncle Jesse from Dukes of Hazard), “it’s like going to church without your shirt on, something doesn’t feel right”.

    I was recently in my local christian bookstore. I hate going into that place. It is the same rehashed modern christian view in brick and mortar form. I only go in there for my son who likes veggie tales. He loves LarryBoy probably because he’s a huge Batman fan.

    I told my wife that the most important part of this store and they have it in the back corner. The bible and biblical reference section. This should be front and center in every christian bookstore. I refuse to venture into the book, clothing, music, and movie section of the store.

    I think that I almost had one of the staff members in tears. She was asking if we were going to watch War Room when it comes out. Sadly it is August 28, which is my wife’s birthday. I told her that if it was like the other Kendrick Brother movies, No. She asked me if I watched Fireproof. I told her that I have watches it. She said wasn’t it a great movie. I said how can it be a great movie. A narcissist wife withholds sex from her husband. Because she can’t get his $24,000 to buy her mom’s medicial equipment. Yet she can’t spend any of her money on her own parents. Even though she has a cushy job as a hospital administrator. She becomes a stumbling block for her husband. She commits spiritual adultery with the doctor and vice versa. She wants out of the marriage because she isn’t “happy” and not getting her way. Yet when her husband does pay for the equipment. She never asks for forgiveness for what she did or reimburses him.

    Why has Christian art become a business and not a ministry? Where is Handel’s messiah, Michaelangelo, and Dante? Now today, we have the Kendrick brothers, and ccm music artists. Who are gay, atheists, and denounce creationism. Yet they’re still producing “Jesus music”.

  69. Rollory says:

    “Unless a man goes out of his way to signal that he does not wish to marry, the married women know it is a pretty good bet that he would be willing to marry if introduced to the right young woman”

    I just want to note that for the past 15 years I met the 3 criteria you list, knew quite a few married women, and absolutely nothing of the sort ever happened. My (unmarried) sister has made a point of introducing me to her friends (none of whom struck me as the sort I’d want to be married to). That’s it.

    It is true that none of this was in a church context, or hardly so. I went through a phase where I was looking into churches for this purpose and only found aging liberals or stuff I just could not even pretend to agree with.

    I no longer meet conditions 1 and 3 because, seriously, fuck it. I am no longer interested in busting ass for other people and getting nothing out of it except money. I don’t have a particularly expensive lifestyle, and money is the one thing for which I do not lack.

  70. Lyn87 says:

    I have a question for the group – I keep encountering the idea that young Christian women are doing a lot of missionary work in their late teens / early 20’s. When did that start? I was a teacher in a Christian school as recently as a few years ago, so I saw a lot of Christian (or at least churchian) girls around that age. I only recall two girls doing anything even remotely like that… and both were very serious girls who moved to crappy foreign countries to do full-time, long duration, missionary work. I have a lot of respect for both of them. One was my “Girl Friday” (teacher’s aid) her senior year, and she was a real looker – she could have gone to any Bible college and landed almost anyone she wanted, but she got on a plane after graduation and moved to Romania instead. The other girl spent her childhood in a Russian orphanage – where she lost a foot to frostbite – before being adopted by an American Christian family. She moved back to Russia after she graduated to work with orphans like herself.

    Serious missionary work is a hard calling – a tough row to hoe indeed. It’s not something people do on a lark, and flighty girls don’t sign up for that sort of thing. So, what do you all mean when you refer to the kinds of missions trips these churchian girls are taking? I know some churches sponsor short trips to help with projects, but most of the people I’ve known who do that are adults, not college-age girls… is this really as common as some of you are making it seem?

  71. anonymous_ng says:

    @Lyn87, I get the feeling they are the Spring Break/Summer mission trips to Latin American countries, or maybe the occasional medical mission trip to Africa.

    I’m not trying to denigrate people’s generosity, but I often wonder why they’ve got to fly half way around the world to engage in missionary work.

  72. Renee Harris says:

    “malcolmthecynic on February 22, 2015 at 9:10 pm
    If women are desperately hoping for these uber-shy (apparently) Christian men to Man Up and talk to them, they could try another tried and true method for getting a man to sate them: Tell them she’s interested.”
    And he will call you a slut, an ungodly woman and tell you that lord called him to celibacy. Or maybe just happen to black virgins in their late 20…

  73. Johnny Doe says:

    Married women love to play matchmaker, but only if it is for marriage.
    ===

    Absolutely correct. At a church I used to attend, there was a mom of three who really tried to get me to pair up with her oldest daughter. At the time, I didn’t think much of it, because she was pretty socially retarded and not very open, it seemed. Also, she had soft looking arms at age 18 and it showed when she came back from college already married–she ate way too well in college and that showed a lack of discipline and aversion to adversity in life, IMHO.

    The next daughter left her out-of-town school after a year as a dance team member and quickly grew a gut from too much brew and chicken wings…but, someone was dumb enough to engage that one.

    The last daughter just was never a good enough specimen to even bother with.

    There was one other young lady who was openly outgoing to me when I first started attending, but according to her POF profile at the time, she was one of those “average” 5’0″ women…and we all know as guys what that means! That was a no-go. She’s since married, though, which makes me feel better…that it wasn’t me.

    Last and least, there was this relatively swell looking blondie who also had up a rather demanding Match profile (the “I love travel” and “you should grow a beard” kind) and openly stated that teaching high school kids “can be frustrating”, which as you know is what any sane man wants in a possible mother of his children…she came across as socially retarded, too. Never see her around guys and I literally took her as a lesbian looking at her Facebook–no guys around her in her pics. I figured that our several common friends would be enough for an add, because…social circle! Nope.

    Basically, as noted, if they aren’t being touted by the church moms, they usually have good reasons for that.

    Rollo hit this on the money. If qualities are being touted that guys don’t care about, they’re flat out ogre-like.

    That aside, I’ve had pretty good luck socializing with the high school senior types on my side job as of late. You know, they do know I have a grad school degree as of December and they don’t care that I am twice their age, either. I’m a good boy, so I’ll late them graduate first. But, since feminists think it’s wrong for a man to have a choice in who I date, I dare not go against the grain and turn away whichever one of these cuties wants to company me on the town come summertime.

  74. Johnycomelately says:

    “Women are terrified of giving themselves over to a man, because they’ve been told their whole lives that they aren’t “good enough”.”

    I must live in a parallel universe because where I come from all I here is how woman are special, empowered, smart, driven….

    Seems like they have plenty of self esteem to knock back betas, it’s the alphas they quiver for that they think they aren’t good enough and realistically they aren’t, they’re just place holders.

  75. JDG says:

    Seriously, this is the saddest thread ever.

    It is a sad thread, but IMO and experience Dalrock is spot on in his analysis. I keep saying that the vast majority of Western women (US,Canada, UK, and the like) are not wife material. Unfortunately this includes women in churches, since most church goers are conforming to the world and not the other way around. Once you get your mind around that, the rest falls into place.

    28 – 30 is already late to start a family. Sure it’s done all the time, but the woman’s most fertile years are squandered. And every year spent in a university is another year learning/reinforcing pro-feminist, anti-Christian and anti-family behavior.

    But even if you find a young woman willing to marry in the US, what are the odds she was raised to honor her commitments and to respect/obey her parents and/or any future husband? What are the odds she can/will cook and clean? What are the odds that she has kept her self unsullied?

  76. KP says:

    Lyn87,

    What anon_ng said. In other words, missionary tourism.

  77. Laura says:

    @Minesweeper

    Thanks for the link — I hadn’t ever looked at that thread, and it was quite good. But what makes you think that I am unsympathetic to the plight of men who are frivorced by their wives, and saddled with support obligations that are beyond their ability to pay?

  78. Boxer says:

    Dear Johnny & Earl:

    I must live in a parallel universe because where I come from all I here is how woman are special, empowered, smart, driven….

    Women hear that bullshit too, which is why they’re terrified of confronting the fact that they can never live up to the hype. Many of the most insecure ones build up the “bitch shield” in order to keep the ego from collapsing.

    This is why the most defective ones can be found acting the most entitled. The huge, hideous fattie with body odor who is screaming about how she “don’t need no man” is the stereotype that illustrates the phenomenon.

    This is also what happens in the ‘gamma male’ portion of the population. Vox did a good summary of that earlier this week.

    No question.

    Thanks for posting these links mate. I don’t often read Vox Day, but when he can be distracted from the Sci-Fi nonsense (admittedly I ain’t a fan) he’s one of the best essayists in the androsphere.

    Boxer

  79. Minesweeper says:

    @Laura
    I asked you a couple of questions in my previous replies, see if you can find them (consider it a ‘where’s wally’ type of game) and most importantly answer them.

    Then I’ll answer yours.

  80. KP says:

    Boxer: Alpha Game Plan is almost exclusively about gender, cultural, and political issues. If you stay away from his Vox Populi blog, you will very little about Sci Fi per so (stuff like Gamergate excepted, but then again that’s pertinent.)

  81. MarcusD says:

    “Which Catholic (Or Other) Dating Website Is Right for Me?” A Published Guide to Them.
    http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=947541

    Resources for a Single Mom Raising Boys to be Men
    http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=947558

    What Qualities Define a desirable Husband?
    http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=947542

  82. justdoit says:

    >> They’re not looking for a husband right this second, and they’re sure as heck not looking for a savior

    Sure as “heck” not looking for a savior???? These chicks are church-goers, and they are not looking for a savior???? Kaufholz is completely retarted. How can he be so bone-headed as to describe churchian women as “not looking for a savior”? The mind boggles. Kaufholz is every bit as fucked in the head as those whiney husband-horny churchian women who are not “not
    looking for a savior”.

    (Credit to okrahead for getting to this before I did)

  83. Church is for Girls says:

    @Dalrock

    I have to agree with donalgraeme. I have a good friend who’s a devout Christian. He sponsors people for RCIA. He gives generously and helps the poor on a regulsr basis. He attends Eucharistic adoration. this man also has a great career as an engineer. he’s handsome and 6 foot 1. His chief problem is that he works a great deal.
    Yet the Christian women in his parish do nothing to introduce him to women. they all know he is interested in getting married and starting a family.

    the inescapable conclusion is that the Christian Church and its Christian women in particular are anti-marriage.

  84. Oscar says:

    Lyn87 says:
    February 22, 2015 at 10:08 pm

    “Serious missionary work is a hard calling – a tough row to hoe indeed. It’s not something people do on a lark, and flighty girls don’t sign up for that sort of thing. So, what do you all mean when you refer to the kinds of missions trips these churchian girls are taking? I know some churches sponsor short trips to help with projects, but most of the people I’ve known who do that are adults, not college-age girls… is this really as common as some of you are making it seem?”

    My wife did a mission trip to Burkina Faso the summer before we started dating. It was one of the reasons I was interested in her. It let me know she was adventurous and enjoyed overseas travel, which came in handy in her time as an Army wife. You should hear the stories from that trip!

    A friend of ours went on a mission trip to India. She married one of my college room mates.

    Mission trips don’t prevent girls from getting married. At least not the ones that make marriage a priority. Neither my wife nor our friend can be described as “flighty”.

  85. justdoit says:

    MarcusD pointed us to this treasure-trove if insane statements by supposedly Christian women:

    What Qualities Define a desirable Husband?
    http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=947542

    Here is one example from a particularly insane woman:

    ————————————————————————————————————

    Yesterday, 6:10 am
    nodito nodito is offline
    Regular Member

    Join Date: October 15, 2007
    Posts: 1,368
    Religion: Catholic
    Default Re: What Qualities Define a desirable Husband?

    Work ethic is in top five. I never would have said this before marriage, but I see so clearly how blessed I am now to have a husband who works hard at his job and then comes home to help with the kids and chores. Being a parent is long, tedious work and it is so nice to have someone to share the burden, instead of letting me, the stay-at-home mom, pull all the weight of my job myself.

    Beyond that: kindess, intelligence, a sense of humor, good communication skills, and good with children.
    __________________
    Ubi caritas est vera, Deus ibi est.
    —————————————————————————————————————-

    You could not make this stuff up, I swear. I’m dumbfounded.

  86. mrteebs says:

    This is why so many women date non-Christians; because Christian guys rarely can just keep it casual and go on a date, give it a chance.

    And this is why genuine christian men avoid such women like the plague. No moral compass, and a pause of less than a nanosecond before it morphs into blaming men for not being in awe of her fabulousness. What committed Christian in his right mind would consider a woman of such weak character that she would rather date non-believers than trust God for a suitable man with which to become equally yoked? Oh, right. It isn’t marriage we’re pursuing here. It’s good, clean fun.

    Erica, you’re the problem dear. Please imagine yourself before the judgement seat of Christ, explaining how the truly good men are AWOL and you had no choice but to date non-believers because, well, a girls gotta do what a girl’s gotta do. Perhaps you could cite

  87. mrteebs says:

    Gen 19:30-38 as your inspiration for why God’s word need only be obeyed until it appears you might suffer a fate worse than death: datelessness.

  88. terrifictm says:

    Years ago, back in the early 80s, I was in the military in Germany and hanging out with a guy who was serving as a missionary with Youth With A Mission. He was talking about the pressure he and all the single workers were under from the orgsnzation’s leadership to marry one another. At that time I was already under the influence of the Spirit of the Age and was actually appalled that he was being “pressured” to marry without first being “in love”.
    Actually, his problem was the woman they were trying to hook him up with was one of the “strong” ones with incredible organizational skills, a real asset to the ministry, and my friend was a beta through and through. There was no way she was ever going to be able to respect him after the wedding.
    I’m sorry. I forgot my point. But I did have one.
    I think it was that I was already so far gone I couldn’t see the wisdom in what they were trying to do but probably because my friend was so not capable of leading a wife or being the head of his famil.

  89. Boxer says:

    Their slick marketing campaign need merely be “Islam : We enforce natural gender roles”. Seriously. That is all they need to do to upend the entire West.

    I’ve heard lots of guys on sites like these pine for the days when Islam will “take over” and they will have a fair shake in the Shari’a courts. In reality, feminism is making horrific inroads into Islamic culture in the USA. Go visit your local masjid on friday afternoon and see what the women are wearing (hijab with yoga pants and open cleavage — I saw this numerous times, and while the sluts were criticised when they weren’t around, no one raised a peep when others could hear). Listen to the sermon, and it will prick your ears with admonitions for husbands but never for wives. The duties of the Muslim man are numerous, but there are apparently no duties for the Muslimah.

    If my town is any indication, American Islam is in the median stages of being feminized, as Mormonism is in the median stages, and just as Catholicism is in the last stages, and as Protestant and Jewish thought has been thoroughly colonized.

    Boxer

  90. Oscar says:

    Boxer says:
    February 23, 2015 at 1:36 am

    “I’ve heard lots of guys on sites like these pine for the days when Islam will “take over” and they will have a fair shake in the Shari’a courts.”

    Islam is definitely the reason that Muslim countries are such wonderful places to live.

  91. My wife did a mission trip to Burkina Faso the summer before we started dating. It was one of the reasons I was interested in her. It let me know she was adventurous and enjoyed overseas travel, which came in handy in her time as an Army wife. You should hear the stories from that trip!

    I’m sure she enjoyed herself quite a bit and got her merit badge as well. Ah, you dated as well. Did she enamor with her tails of helping the black man and all his chillens? You are indeed blessed!

  92. Opus says:

    Happily I can answer Lyn 87’s question about missionary work, as – like vessels passing in the night – I was romantically linked with a woman, then aged twenty-three – who left the mod-cons of corporate existence in NYC to do just that, down in Latin America. I could never understand what motivated her, and yet she had more than enough opportunity to explain and in a way that a simple-minded person such as myself might understand. Years later she did explain but I had been too naive when younger to see the inevitable in-your-face explanation. The penny eventually dropped (do you have that strange expression) when she explained that having been somewhat south of your border for a year or so, her behaviour had been such that the natives were convinced that she was probably a prostitute as she had shagged so many of their fellow country-men. Simply, being fair-skinned though not exactly a HB9, her SMV was a lot higher down-there and she made full use of that advantage.

    She tells me she has a hot-line to God (and vice versa) – amazing what you can get on an i-phone 6.

  93. Don Quixote says:

    Boxer says:
    February 23, 2015 at 1:36 am

    I’ve heard lots of guys on sites like these pine for the days when Islam will “take over” and they will have a fair shake in the Shari’a courts. In reality, feminism is making horrific inroads into Islamic culture in the USA. Go visit your local masjid on friday afternoon and see what the women are wearing (hijab with yoga pants and open cleavage — I saw this numerous times, and while the sluts were criticised when they weren’t around, no one raised a peep when others could hear). Listen to the sermon, and it will prick your ears with admonitions for husbands but never for wives. The duties of the Muslim man are numerous, but there are apparently no duties for the Muslimah.

    If my town is any indication, American Islam is in the median stages of being feminized, as Mormonism is in the median stages, and just as Catholicism is in the last stages, and as Protestant and Jewish thought has been thoroughly colonised.

    I have never been inside a Mosque so I am not in a position to talk about Islam, but I work with some Muslim guys and from what I’ve seen [not much] they are not nearly as feminised as some of the Christians I have know over the years.
    5 times a week go past a Mosque that has a school attached to it, and all the women pick up their children when I go past, and they all look like Ninjas, wearing the full burka. Many of them have full face covering with only a rectangle to look through. No feminist progress in that place. And lots of kids too.

    P.S. I live in Australia, not America

  94. Eric says:

    Sweet Erica is sitting next to you in church. She is brilliant, wise, articulate and principled.

    Uh huh. When I ask a woman about another woman and hear every good quality without touching on anything physical, like, say, “pretty” or “athletic” or “petite” I ask myself “Just how heavy is this girl, anyway?”

  95. Dale says:

    @Dalrock
    >Such men only need to convince the married women that they meet the basic requirements of eligibility.
    >1 The man has a good job.
    >2 He isn’t already married and doesn’t have a girlfriend.
    >3 He has moved out of his parent’s house and supports himself.

    Rollory replied, “I just want to note that for the past 15 years I met the 3 criteria you list, knew quite a few married women, and absolutely nothing of the sort ever happened.”
    Ditto for me. Only one who even made any suggestions for improving my chances came from a Ukrainian woman I know, not the typical “church” women I know.

    But still, great article Dalrock. I appreciate your efforts to write well considered and researched articles. Thanks.

    @okrahead
    Very well put. You are worthy of respect. Don’t let a woman use you. A mutually-beneficial relationship, as described in Scripture? Absolutely. But a one-sided selfish relationship? You can do without.

    @Rollo Tomassi
    > identify with the feminized false notion that men should be attracted to (dubious) intrinsic qualities that flatter a woman’s ego, not extrinsic sex appeal and femininity

    I was going to comment on the fact I am attracted to femininity, not “intelligence”, but you beat me to it, and in a more articulate way 🙂

    @Feminine But Not Feminist
    >Worst.Date.Ever. … and, he started bragging about having his you-know-what pierced!
    Wow. Sorry you had a bad experience.
    I also have to say that my experience of women trying to help with match making did not actually help. Recently a very feminine friend offered to set me up with her friend. Since she is very feminine herself, I thought she obviously understood that was important to a husband and I was thus quite interested to meet the woman she described as a great and gorgeous woman. Turns out the woman was obese, likely about 250 lbs or more. I found this out before any meeting, but still, I used the opportunity to try to help my friend understand the need for maturity in a potential spouse.

    @Laura
    I agree, a very sad thread. Men and women seem to be oblivious to the fact that it is easier to change myself, than to change someone else.
    Is a woman having trouble attracting suitors? Perhaps she needs to seriously consider what the Bible says about being a Biblical woman, and change herself accordingly. Deut 22:5, 1 Cor 11:14-16, Titus 2:3-5. God knows better than her friends how to be a woman, and that includes being a wife.
    Is a man having trouble getting women to agree to his requests for time with them? Same as above. Josh 1:8-9, Josh 24:14-15, Titus 2:1-2.
    Is a man having trouble finding women that are worthy of being pursued for marriage? Then follow the example of Isaac, and go to a foreign country. It is easier to move myself to a culture with desirable women, than to force the women here to become desirable.

    Laura also asked, “Why do you say that the man must NOT be living with his parents in order to be taken seriously?”
    Two answers:
    a) I agree with your assessment. Why waste the money? One woman I spoke to from a far poorer country said that in her culture, most men and women remain with their families until such time as they marry. It is only our wealthy cultures that expect such waste.
    b) Per my comments above, it is easier to change myself than to change others. Since almost all girls, in my experience, expect this, I will be limiting myself if I deliberately choose not to tick this box on her list. So whether the requirement is wise is irrelevant — it exists. So change myself to meet it, rather than trying to force all the women to remove the requirement.

    @Spike
    Sorry to hear of experiences. God values you and loves you… regardless of whether I or anyone else does. Take your self-worth from that. (Not saying that I know you do not.)

    @Renee Harris
    >”…Tell them she’s interested.” And he will call you a slut, an ungodly woman
    Wow. I don’t think any of my (white) friends would have responded that way to a simple expression of interest in him. I’d suggest keep trying, but not sure if you can accept that…

    @JDG:
    >But even if you find a young woman willing to marry in the US, what are the odds she was raised to honor her commitments and to respect/obey her parents and/or any future husband? What are the odds she can/will cook and clean? What are the odds that she has kept her self unsullied?
    Excellent questions. I’d say look at her attitudes, as shown through her actions. See verses I gave to Laura above. And yes, I have to agree with your implied answer, that few church-going women choose to be worthy of marriage. If I could find one who would accept pursuit from me, that would be worth a tremendous amount.

  96. He has moved out of his parent’s house and supports himself.

    That quote pretty much sums up why a lot of men will not be getting married now or in the future. As property gets more expensive, more regulatory and burdensome. The fewer men who will opt to purchase. Furthermore, the amount of time it takes, ten years or more, for a man to acquire such a status marker, and let’s talk truthfully here, it’s not him only he has to support but must be willing and able to support a wife and kids, the more likely he is not to get married.

    However, I leave it to the mighty alpha men here, not gammas or omegas like myself, to outline exactly how men should do this in an age of recession/depression and an over burdensome government intent on crippling a man’s natural inclination to supporting himself, via the use of welfare and over taxation plus thousands of new regulations each and every year that one couldn’t possible understand or know.

    I’m sorry but this stuff should be started straight out of school with the help of parents looking to establish their children in proper marriages. A young man can establish himself but should only be looking to do so with a married woman by his side. The problem isn’t that men can’t establish themselves, the problem is they have no reason to until they’re over 30 or more.

  97. earl says:

    Straight from the CAF mouth about dating and marriage.

    ‘My wife would say dependability, reliability, trustworthiness, steadiness….now that I think of it, I guess a good husband is like a good car.

    Or to put it another way, she once compared two brothers. One of them is “the kind you want to date,” the other, “the kind you want to marry.”

    The kind they want to date would be the opposite of dependable, reliable, trustworthy, steady. In other words, the bad boy. Christian men looking for marriage should avoid women just looking to date.

  98. Renee Harris says:

    Not to sound like an idiot, but what kind doctor are study to be and what is favorite Scientific dis discipline ?

  99. Renee Harris says:

    I’m a 28 butterface. I try to kind and honor God . I’ve never kiss a boy. So I’m too old get married, and so how being unkissed makes one a slut. Meanwhile, girls at church sleep around are able to marry. It’s just confusing

  100. Emily says:

    re: married women playing matchmaker
    I think one of the reasons you may not get much help from married women in church is that they have the same problem most young men have these days — finding a women worth setting them up with. My husband and I have a good friend in our church who is single and looking to marry. I would set him up in a heartbeat if I knew anyone suitable. Maybe my social circle is just too small, though. I’ve already given him advice on what kind of woman to avoid and he seems to already be aware of these things. I really do hope he finds someone as he would be a very good catch for any sincere young Christian woman.

  101. Novaseeker says:

    Straight from the CAF mouth about dating and marriage.

    ‘My wife would say dependability, reliability, trustworthiness, steadiness….now that I think of it, I guess a good husband is like a good car.

    Or to put it another way, she once compared two brothers. One of them is “the kind you want to date,” the other, “the kind you want to marry.”

    The kind they want to date would be the opposite of dependable, reliable, trustworthy, steady. In other words, the bad boy. Christian men looking for marriage should avoid women just looking to date.

    Sure, but there’s no real way around that. It’s a manosphere truism that for a large percentage of women (yes, NAWALT, but MALT in this case), that distinction is made intuitively and viscerally. I remember the old bar game girls used to engage in when I was in my 20s — it was called “F/M/K”, and the idea was to look around the bar and identify each of the men as either men you would “F”, men you would “M”, and men who should be “K’d”. Obviously a game, but it’s intuitive because it relates to an instinctual categorization that they make anyway. Nowadays, this is all more out in the open — heck, even Sheryl Sandberg openly writes about this in her book — you date certain kinds of guys in your 20s, and then you marry a different kind of guy later on. This is what we call “lane changing” or “AF/BB”, or what have you. The trick is finding one of the relatively few women who is not like that, which is a challenge in this culture, even among Christian women — Christian women are, by and large, not very different in this aspect than other women are. Of course, NAWALT, but you have to persevere to find one of the ones who isn’t, and that can take some time, and never actually happen.

    The other alternative, of course, is to be satisfied with being the husband type in that scenario — which is what many guys do, as a practical matter. Some of them even have a superior attitude about it as well, sort of like “well, she wouldn’t have married any of those losers, anyway, so I’m obviously superior to them”, rather than taking the manosphere view that she was giving away for free what he had to pay for, even if that payment is in the form of a commitment which the others were not asked to make. Many guys have accommodated themselves to this, as a reality, I think, because they prefer it to the alternative of being frozen out in perpetuity, or trying to find one of the relatively few women who are not lane changers in this culture.

  102. PokeSalad says:

    [[She is brilliant, wise, articulate and principled.]]

    In other words, obese.

  103. PokeSalad says:

    [[[Why do you say that the man must NOT be living with his parents in order to be taken seriously? If Mom & Dad live in a McMansion, and he can stay there for free while he pays off student loans or saves up for a down payment for a house of his own, why is this inappropriate? A nice, quiet bedroom & bath in the ‘burbs with Mom & Dad is a whole lot better than a cheesy apartment where your car gets broken into every four months and the neighbors play loud music when you need to sleep.]]]

    …and the Internet Strawman Award goes to…….

  104. So, what do you all mean when you refer to the kinds of missions trips these churchian girls are taking?

    It varies. In some churches, it seems common for young people to do a year or two as a missionary. We Catholics don’t have anything like that (we leave that kind of thing to the religious orders, or occasionally a married couple), but I’ve seen short trips of a week or two. A group of kids goes to some poverty-stricken area in Latin America or somewhere and helps build houses or dig wells.

    Some are boy-only or girl-only, which isn’t so bad; but many are co-ed, with all the obvious problems of putting a bunch of horny single young adults together in an exotic location away from the usual societal and parental restrictions.

  105. javaloco says:

    It was pretty much stated in Dalrick’s post, but church guys have generally been beaten down by ‘the only man in the room’. Of course they don’t know how to be casual.

    Flipside is that the girls, regardless of qualifications, gave been built up into goddesses with all the rights that go with the title.

  106. Scott says:

    Why do you say that the man must NOT be living with his parents in order to be taken seriously?

    This is something Mychael and I, if we are serious, are willing to accept as a possibility. I can see my son and his future wife living on our property for the first couple of years while he gets things off the ground. We have enough space to offer them reasonable privacy and autonomy (they could even live in our camper a distance away from the main house). Desperate times, and all that. I want them to be able to hit the ground running, with little nor no debt.

  107. Dalrock says:

    @Emily

    re: married women playing matchmaker
    I think one of the reasons you may not get much help from married women in church is that they have the same problem most young men have these days — finding a women worth setting them up with. My husband and I have a good friend in our church who is single and looking to marry. I would set him up in a heartbeat if I knew anyone suitable. Maybe my social circle is just too small, though. I’ve already given him advice on what kind of woman to avoid and he seems to already be aware of these things. I really do hope he finds someone as he would be a very good catch for any sincere young Christian woman.

    Yes. There is a scarcity of eligible men, with the “Peter Pan” phenomenon and the most eligible men being snapped up by young women who got there first. But young women looking to marry, and willing to accept a bit of help, are scarce enough that they are still the limiting factor. Age plays a role in this because the older the age bracket the larger the percentage of single men who earn nothing. Other forms of baggage (some mild, some not) are of course concentrating at the same time in the group of never married men and women as each group gets older. By the time the bulk of the Christian carousel riders decide to look for a husband, the pickings of age appropriate eligible men is very slim.

    But none of this is a reflection on the married ladies at church. They are trying to find matches with the resources available. This again proves the lie that if only men would man up and date these women all would be solved. Large numbers of the women complaining are really asking to be entertained. Many of the few serious ones complaining are older than the pool of eligible young men, because a 28 year old woman with a newly minted merit badge won’t be a good fit for 23 year old man who has much promise but hasn’t made his way in the world yet.

  108. Heartstorm says:

    Maybe she should consider what it is about asking her out that requires a man to be brave.

  109. entropy is my god says:

    She is but one of the many spokesperson(s) for America.

    Revelation (18:5 -18:8) KJV

    For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities. 6Reward her even as she rewarded you, and double unto her double according to her works: in the cup which she hath filled fill to her double. 7How much she hath glorified herself, and lived deliciously, so much torment and sorrow give her: for she saith in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widow, and shall see no sorrow. 8Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and famine; and she shall be utterly burned with fire: for strong is the Lord God who judgeth her.

    Reward her even has she has rewarded you, double unto her double according to her works……

    Only out of courtesy to Dalrock will that not be extrapolated on. How can any man who claims to take the bible as real, the words as literal, the message as truth not realize that America, or perhaps all of western civilization is the Whore of Babylon.

    Every woman (AWALT) says “I sit a queen and am no widow”, what do you call someone who is not married who says “She is brilliant, wise, articulate and principled.”

    When justice arrives, clad in the vestment of torment for those who drank of the whore’s cup, there will be no sympathy.

    The time to repent is now.

  110. Biscipus says:

    So she wants men to fullfil traditional roles and she wants to fill the role of some kind of empowered woman, which is perchance not the kind of woman a traditional man is looking for, makes sense why this kind of man would be bypassing this group of cackle if hens.

  111. Dalrock says:

    @Scott

    Why do you say that the man must NOT be living with his parents in order to be taken seriously?

    This is something Mychael and I, if we are serious, are willing to accept as a possibility. I can see my son and his future wife living on our property for the first couple of years while he gets things off the ground. We have enough space to offer them reasonable privacy and autonomy (they could even live in our camper a distance away from the main house). Desperate times, and all that. I want them to be able to hit the ground running, with little nor no debt.

    I would guess that age would be a factor here. A late teens or early 20s man who has much promise and ambition but just hasn’t gotten there yet is one thing. There is a sort of romance to it, as the couple is very young and just getting started. Moving a 27 or 30 year old man onto the property so a daughter who waited too long can marry a man without a decent job has a very different feel.

  112. thedeti says:

    @ Dalrock:

    “My advice for them is to find a way to convince the married women at church (or even just the married women they know) that they want to marry. If they are young and pure(ish) and seem sincerely interested in getting married soon, this should be fairly easy to do by simply mentioning it to a married woman or two. But the reality here is such young women already know this, and are generally terrified of what they know will come next. They know that for the next year or so they will constantly be invited to social events or maneuvered to one side of the room or another while the married women make introductions to eligible men. This is embarrassing, because it means asking for (or at least accepting) help, and more importantly it doesn’t involve sexy strangers running day game on them at the most unlikely times and places. But again, this all comes down to the fundamental goal. If the goal is to be entertained, court for sex. If the goal is to look for a husband, find a way to convince those who know you best that this is what you actually want.”

    This is a fantastic post. This is mostly good advice to the women who want to get married. I know you said in the post that the advice is for women who sincerely want to get married. That then raises the question of whether these women who want to marry really know what’s involved in marriage.

    I raise the question because I think you’ve given the “want to be married women” too much credit. I am not convinced that “want to be married” women are squeamish about it because they don’t want to ask for help. Maybe some of it is because they won’t have chance meetings with sexy strange men. But I don’t think that’s the issue.

    I think the main issue is that the “want to be married women” want the cultural idea and ideal of “marriage”. They don’t want to actually be wives. They don’t actually want to join their lives to the men who asked for marriage. They want an extravagant wedding followed by her receipt of the title “Mrs.” and the fact that she can now add “wife” and soon “mother” to her list of “merit badges”. It’s so she can say “I did that. I got married. I was able to convince a man to make the ultimate commitment to me.”

  113. thedeti says:

    And to add to my last comment:

    What’s really going on here is the “want to be married women” don’t want to actually make a commitment to one man . They don’t want to be held to promises and obligations that would involve opening a few doors and closing all others. They don’t want to commit themselves to one path involving a few options. They want to keep all their options open. Marriage, at least biblical marriage, forecloses most options.

  114. Elspeth says:

    Dalrock said that the young man should be self-supporting, not that he had to own a house.Or even that he has to buy one. There’s nothing wrong with refusing to take out a mortgage in this economy. Renting is perfect acceptable.

    We lived a small apartment for 8 years before we could buy a house, and it was fine. Even with our first three kids running about, we were happy enough. We ate good food, had a decent car, even went out from time to time. A perfectly good life without a big house or a big yard.

    Part of the problem is that Christians have bought into worldly standards of success.

  115. Scott says:

    Deti-

    Exactly, but I think Dalrock has essentially called this bluff with some of his follow up comments in this thread.

    Mychael and I know at least 10 young (under 30) single men who would make fantastic husbands. If a single female, say between 18-28 came to us who was sweet, had learned homemaking skills, wanted to attach herself bibilcally to a man and have babies, she would be married in 3 months.

  116. by now many of you have figured out, that due to my great musical talent, da GBFM is really mick jagger:

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2964059/Mick-Jagger-71-cosies-Jude-Law-s-model-ex-Alicia-Rountree-28-Rihanna-s-birthday-bash-attended-exclusive-pre-Oscars-brunch.html

    i hope to keep things “casual” as a christian man, so as not to offend her holy femalesz sensibilities.

    also, while i am very humble when i deliver my church sermons and never claim to be the “only man in the room,” i cannot but help being the “lostasest cockaest” man in the room.

    i have a lot to be humble about. more than anyone else. so don’t judge.

    lzozzlzllzlzlzz

  117. thedeti says:

    “Mychael and I know at least 10 young (under 30) single men who would make fantastic husbands. If a single female, say between 18-28 came to us who was sweet, had learned homemaking skills, wanted to attach herself bibilcally to a man and have babies, she would be married in 3 months.”

    Yes, those men would make good husbands. But I’d bet most of them would not make sexy sex partners. They likely range from lower beta to gamma on Vox’ sociosexual hierarchy. And that’s a big part of the problem. The other part of the problem is as you say: Most single women between ages 18 and 28 do not really want to marry men who are willing to marry them. I’d go further, and say their lack of interest in marriage to these men is because those men aren’t attractive, or at least aren’t as attractive as the men who they used to date/have sex with.

  118. Scott says:

    But I’d bet most of them would not make sexy sex partners.

    I think you meant “super hot, sexy McSexerson sex partners.”

  119. Erica writes,

    “Where are all the brave men? I will not go on a rant—and I firmly believe women can be just as brave—but I do notice a lot of Christian men who are afraid to pass the friend threshold. This is why so many women date non-Christians; because Christian guys rarely can just keep it casual and go on a date, give it a chance. What are your thoughts on this?

    Thanks!
    Erica”

    Dear Erica,

    As Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, and as the police state, church, university, family courts, Supreme Court, and workplace are managed by scorned women (as da beenrakififedsz buttehxttxed them in colleegzlzzzzzlz and tapeed it in secrtetedzc and now they are scrnedz), men are reluctant to engage with said furies.

    This is not cowardice. This is intelligence..

  120. entropy is my god says:

    When justice arrives, those blinded by their Idolatrous amenities (smart phones), their worship of Moloch (abortion), and their elevation of envy, gluttony, and covetousness to god(s) will whimper into their now useless affirmation devices. Crying out in pain that their sycophantic worshipers can no longer praise them, they will wither into action less sacs of pathetic flesh. In a trance they will slowly starve, whispering; “How could this happen to me? Why did this happen to me?” until they die of shame.

  121. Anonymous Reader says:

    i have a lot to be humble about. more than anyone else. so don’t judge.

    Classic. I thought there was a GBFM Imposter on the loose & the Original GBFM was gone, but clearly that’s not the case.

    lollz.

  122. Oscar says:

    feministhater says:
    February 23, 2015 at 1:40 am

    “I’m sure she enjoyed herself quite a bit..”

    Living in a pup tent in a village in 120+ degree weather with camel spiders crawling everywhere probably wasn’t enjoyable (having done it myself in different circumstances), but ministry isn’t about enjoyment, is it?

    “… and got her merit badge as well.”

    What merit badge is that?

    “Ah, you dated as well. Did she enamor with her tails of helping the black man and all his chillens?”

    Ministry works best when women minister to women and men minister to men. That’s true pretty much everywhere.

    Also, is there something wrong with “19… go[ing] and mak[ing] disciples of ALL NATIONS, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything [Christ] commanded [us]”? (Matt 28:19-20)

    “You are indeed blessed!”

    Yes, I am. Thank you. Are you?

  123. Lyn87 says:

    I’m waiting on a message to Christian women telling them that they need to brave where it matters.

    Are they brave enough to enter marriages where they don’t have the power of the state to take a man’s children, house, worldly possessions, and future income for any reason or no reason at all? Are they brave enough to forgo a few spins on the carousel, and give their bodies to one man – and one man only? Are they brave enough to truly submit to their husbands without reserving the “right” to judge them at every step?

    If they are, they ought to be manning the ramparts to get rid of no-fault divorce and the presumption of mother custody or even joint custody. They ought to be shunning their unrepentant sisters who destroy their families. They ought to be coming out against “baby-momma” culture. Until that happens I’m under no obligation to take them seriously when they complain that they aren’t getting enough dates or marriage proposals.

    But if it’s bravery they want… okay, why were none of the women brave enough to rebut this?

    Diane Penna commented…

    “…We want men who are brave enough to approach us. Take a chance, men. If things don’t work out, obviously God has something greater in mind. And please consider us single mommies. The “widowed and orphaned” need love, too.

    The fact that she equates “single mommies” (almost all of whom are in that predicament by choice) to be in the same category as the “widowed and orphaned” (who most assuredly are not that way by choice) is disgusting. She is not a widow and her children are not orphans. She needs love, too? Well maybe she shouldn’t have taken that shortcut through the bars and bedrooms, because it looks to me as if she’s had plenty of “love” already, and a man would be wise to look elsewhere for a wife. She’s a bad risk, and she brings a boat-load of sexual and financial baggage with her into a marriage.

    Why weren’t any of those dozens of female commenters brave enough to say that she’s wrong and does not represent them?

    So what are we left with? Fat, bang-out, entitled women-children who bring little to the table besides risk, debt, drama, and another man’s bastards. This isn’t about lack of bravery… avoiding that isn’t cowardice, it’s just common sense.

  124. Hank Flanders says:

    I’m so weary of “man up” articles. At this point, I’d be really impressed to see a “woman up” article, one that tells women that they need to be courageous and give things a chance by saying “yes” to casual date requests. There might be a slight implication that “both sides are to blame” as a side-note in a “man up” article, but I have yet to see an entire article in which the woman’s behavior in that scenario is the main topic.

    Anyway, the thing is that there’s no point in asking a woman OUT if she doesn’t seem to want to talk to you for more than a couple of minutes IN (at church or wherever). If she’s looking away or generally showing signs that she hopes the conversation will end soon, then I’m going to go out on a limb and speculate that I don’t think she’s going to be interested in continuing that conversation over coffee.

    I even had one woman give me the awkward “you’re asking me out?” look, the one where she just kind of pauses, looks down and eeks out “…OK…” when I suggested she watch a short clip of The Office, a show we had previously discussed and one she had shown enthusiasm about watching, with me on my laptop after our prayer group was to have concluded. (She didn’t watch it with me by the way. I think she avoided me the rest of the evening). By the way, I’m not hideous, (overly) awkward, pushy, or creepy. I am learning that I’m average in looks, though, which I guess can equate to creepy these days.

  125. Lyn87 says:

    @ feministhater
    February 23, 2015 at 1:40 am

    That was a cheap shot. You owe Oscar an apology.

  126. Sorry Lyn but I don’t agree with women doing missionary stuff in any country but their own. They only have one reason to do it and that is to explore and find themselves; and we all know what that means.

  127. entropy is my god says:

    Lyn87

    Here to white night for all the pure, innocent, driven snow, young brides of the king? The girls so pure that they would deign to set foot in the darkest jungle of Africa to spread the word of God?

    You have said on numerous occasions that you were in the service and deployed. Tell the fine people here on this board about the POW camps in IRAQ and the phenomenon know as waffle butt.

    Explain that, then come back and white knight for these pure missionary women, who only long for the souls of the poor….

  128. Scott says:

    Yikes. Things got ugly here pretty quick today.

  129. Dave says:

    Renee Harris says:
    February 23, 2015 at 7:01 am

    I’m a 28 butterface. I try to kind and honor God . I’ve never kiss a boy. So I’m too old get married, and so how being unkissed makes one a slut. Meanwhile, girls at church sleep around are able to marry. It’s just confusing

    Unfortunately, this happens quite a bit. But it is a good idea not to be too hard on yourself. Butterface or not, you do sound like a person with a beautiful soul, and there are good men out there who would find you beautiful despite what you referred to as a butterface.
    There are a few suggestions you might want to consider: Keep being yourself; remain feminine; maintain a good weight; be friendly to guys; maintain your values; learn to cook; consider a wardrobe makeover; take a second look at your list of requirements in a future husband, and see if it could be trimmed a bit; read up a bit about men and what makes them tick (be sure those materials are written by men or by women who value femininity).
    Remember that God made you beautiful—everything He made was good. Above all, pray that God will send you your own husband who will appreciate you and love you. You don’t have to kiss many frogs before you meet the right man.
    Of course, none of this guarantees anything, but they greatly increase your chances. And, no, being 28 does not make you too old to get married. Older guys in their mid to late 30s and 40s will not consider you to be too old at all.

    There are more suggestions here:
    http://www.thefemininewoman.com/2010/01/why-men-do-not-want-to-marry/

  130. entropy is my god says:

    @ Scott

    I admire your fight for courtship but why would you say the truth is ugly.

    John 14:6 KJV
    Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life

    If Jesus is truth (and he himself said that he was) then we should never be afraid to tell the truth.

  131. earl says:

    ‘This is not cowardice. This is intelligence..’

    Exactly.

    Women are choosing their paths of career, dating, and hookups with men who aren’t marriage material then get mad when the results aren’t in their favor for being a suitable wife.

  132. Scott says:

    The fact that she equates “single mommies” (almost all of whom are in that predicament by choice) to be in the same category as the “widowed and orphaned” (who most assuredly are not that way by choice) is disgusting.

    Lyn87-

    This (specifically) is a major battle in this front. That is, equating “widows and orphans” to garden varieyt single motherhood. Bottom line is, because of the herd mentality, the godly women of today must call this out.

    I do it frequently, but regularly get called mean. I have the stomach for it, but it pretty much invalidates my argument in the eyes of the sheep around who hear it. On the occasion that I ask the simple question “what were the conditions upon which she became a single mother” it’s like I clubbed a baby seal.

  133. Lyn87 says:

    Entropy,

    What on Earth are you talking about? I asked a question about “Girls Gone Wild Missions Trips” because it is outside my experience, and suddenly you accuse me of white knighting because the two young women I know who went into the mission field were serious enough to walk away from a life of first-world comfort to minister to the poor in Eastern European hell-holes – and neither was part of some co-ed “mission tourism” program.

    Like I said, one of those girls was very pretty, and we all know that pretty girls can have whatever they want. I would bet my next three house payments that she was a virgin, too. She could have easily had a comfortable life: married, children, ministering in suburbia. But she felt a burden for the downtrodden in Romania after going there with her parents, and she went… and stayed. If even a girl like that doesn’t make the grade for you, you’re are delusional as the baby-mommas who think the hunky handyman millionaire is going to show up any day now.

  134. entropy is my god says:

    You never mentioned that she went their with her parents. That is vastly different than going there by herself.

  135. Scott says:

    why would you say the truth is ugly.

    I guess I don’t know the truth of every single female missionaries situation. I really have very little experience with it. The few I know ended up in relatively stable marriages.

    Actually, come to think of it, I think they were all married already and went on mission trips with their husbands.

    Mostly I was just talking about the level of bitterness in the arguing. I think there may be some wiggle room on the missionary thing.

  136. Oscar says:

    feministhater says:
    February 23, 2015 at 10:51 am

    “Sorry Lyn but I don’t agree with women doing missionary stuff in any country but their own. They only have one reason to do it and that is to explore and find themselves; and we all know what that means.”

    Really? So, Mother Theresa, Amy Carmichael, Gladys Aylward, Lottie Moon, Elisabeth Elliot, Rachel Saint, Maria Franziska von Trapp, etc., etc., “only ha[d] one reason to do it and that is to explore and find themselves; and we all know what that means.”?

    Pray tell, how do you know that?

  137. entropy is my god says:

    Oscar,

    Are your really going to argue the fringe cases as the majority? Hasn’t Dalrock pounded home the statistical relevance of probability yet? Or are you going to say we should teach nuclear physics to middle schools since Einstein existed? Or maybe short people should plan on careers in the NBA because of Muggsy Bogues?

  138. earl says:

    ‘On the occasion that I ask the simple question “what were the conditions upon which she became a single mother” it’s like I clubbed a baby seal.’

    Well that would entail her to reveal that she’s a fornincator. One thing’s for sure…if she’s a single mother that was widowed she’ll tell you straight up on that fact.

  139. Oscar says:

    Scott says:
    February 23, 2015 at 11:11 am

    “I guess I don’t know the truth of every single female missionaries situation.”

    Neither do “entropy is my god” or “feministhater”, but that doesn’t stop them from believing they do.

  140. entropy is my god says:

    @Scott

    “Actually, come to think of it, I think they were all married already and went on mission trips with their husbands.”

    No one, not feminist hater, not anyone has said one negative word about women going on missionary trips with their husband. It is single women going on trips by themselves that is being castigated, and rightfully so.

  141. Oscar says:

    entropy is my god says:
    February 23, 2015 at 11:15 am

    “Oscar,

    Are your really going to argue the fringe cases as the majority?”

    Where did I argue that fringe cases are the majority?

  142. Yoda says:

    . I am learning that I’m average in looks, though, which I guess can equate to creepy these days.

    True this is.

    http://drhelen.blogspot.com/2011/06/vox-at-alpha-game-dont-listen-to-female.htm

  143. PokeSalad says:

    [[Maybe she should consider what it is about asking her out that requires a man to be brave.]]

    Um, that would be a) looking past her appearance and b) looking past her sexual history. Both of these not mentioned specifically, of course.

  144. Lyn87 says:

    Entropy,

    The first time she went to Romania was as a high-school student (a year or two before I met her). She went with her parents – I think they have relatives there, but I’m not sure. Her senior year was my first year teaching at that school, and she was my “Girl Friday,” so I got to know her pretty well. Her family was heavily involved with the school, and I knew them well too. They weren’t “Sunday Christians” – they were the real deal as far as I could tell, including the girl. She was no carousel rider, although with her looks she certainly could have been had she been so inclined. But like I wrote earlier: I would bet my next three house payments that she was a virgin.

    After she graduated she went into the mission field in Romania. Her family did not. Because her younger siblings attended the school, I would get reports about her from her parents from time to time – the last time I heard anything about her she was still working with the poor and spreading the gospel. But then 9-11 happened and I got recalled to active service and never went back to teaching, so I lost track of all of them.

  145. Yoda says:

    This (specifically) is a major battle in this front. That is, equating “widows and orphans” to garden varieyt single motherhood. Bottom line is, because of the herd mentality, the godly women of today must call this out.

    I do it frequently, but regularly get called mean

    If correct you do
    and asshole called you are
    then on correct path you would be.

  146. Oscar says:

    entropy is my god says:
    February 23, 2015 at 11:17 am

    “No one, not feminist hater, not anyone has said one negative word about women going on missionary trips with their husband. It is single women going on trips by themselves that is being castigated, and rightfully so.”

    Right, so that would include Mother Theresa, Amy Carmichael, Gladys Aylward and Lottie Moon among many others. For what purpose do you think they traveled to faraway lands while single, by themselves?

  147. PokeSalad says:

    [[i have a lot to be humble about. more than anyone else. so don’t judge.]]

    Winston Churchill on Stanley Baldwin: “He’s a modest man, with much to be modest about.”

  148. Oscar says:

    Lyn87 says:
    February 23, 2015 at 11:24 am

    “After she graduated she went into the mission field in Romania. Her family did not. Because her younger siblings attended the school, I would get reports about her from her parents from time to time – the last time I heard anything about her she was still working with the poor and spreading the gospel. But then 9-11 happened and I got recalled to active service and never went back to teaching, so I lost track of all of them.”

    That can’t be right, Lyn. According to “feministhater” and “entropy is my god”, there is absolutely only one reason a young woman goes to the mission field, and “we all know what that is”. They know your former student better than you do precisely because they’ve never met her.

  149. earl says:

    Personally if I knew of a woman that went on a mission trip that wasn’t like a spring break thing that would give her points in my eyes.

  150. PokeSalad says:

    [[Yikes. Things got ugly here pretty quick today.]]

    It is a bit wearying to constantly read the ‘outrage’ of the lucky few who found unicorns. Im sincerely happy for them, but they are guilty of the Apex Fallacy themselves.

    Just because THEY found a unicorn does not invalidate the general point.

  151. Yoda says:

    Take a chance, men. If things don’t work out, obviously God has something greater in mind. And please consider us single mommies.

    From a single mom Anakin Skywalker did come.
    Turned out poorly it did.

  152. Anchorman says:

    entropy,
    There’s a young woman from my church who recently went and returned from a missionary trip to South Africa. Her father is a deacon and raised her in a strict house.

    She said she was called. She went for four months (the full time asked for her to serve). She blogged about it and kept in contact with her family and the church.

    I know her fairly well. Enough to say that she didn’t go for personal discovery. She was called by God and went. She was more than a little scared, because South Africa is far from peaceful. Still, she went. She’s back and talks and talks and talks about the people she met and brought them to meet Christ.

    Now, does that mean your generalization is wrong? No. I think there’s an element of truth to some folks going on mission trips to “find themselves.”

    However, I can’t agree that God won’t call women to the mission field.

  153. Oscar says:

    PokeSalad says:
    February 23, 2015 at 11:32 am

    “It is a bit wearying to constantly read the ‘outrage’ of the lucky few who found unicorns.”

    Who’s outraged? Who found a “unicorn”?

  154. jaybeespancakes says:

    @Oscar

    From a reading of her biography, Mother Theresa’s travel and missionary work involved pledging herself to a Catholic order and forsaking all the rest. She was, therefore, not by herself.

    Since you invoke her, what does she say? She does not appear to think a lot about the thing I know I’ve seen a bit much – the teenage girl who “gets that calling” and wants to travel around the globe away from family and support network, and usually bad things come of this:

    “Love begins by taking care of the closest ones – the ones at home.”

    “I want you to be concerned about your next door neighbor. Do you know your next door neighbor?”

    “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”

    “Jesus said love one another. He didn’t say love the whole world.”

    “The way you help heal the world is you start with your own family.”

    “It is easy to love the people far away. It is not always easy to love those close to us. It is easier to give a cup of rice to relieve hunger than to relieve the loneliness and pain of someone unloved in our own home. Bring love into your home for this is where our love for each other must start.”

    The great woman would have said, “Cultivons notre jardin” – without a touch of irony or any idea other than that the work was required for everyone to be the light and salt exactly where God had put him.

  155. entropy is my god says:

    @Oscar

    “Really? So, Mother Theresa, Amy Carmichael, Gladys Aylward, Lottie Moon, Elisabeth Elliot, Rachel Saint, Maria Franziska von Trapp, etc., etc., “only ha[d] one reason to do it and that is to explore and find themselves; and we all know what that means.”?”

    1. We can both admit that these cases are statistical anomalies. No doubt at a minimum 3 SD to the right.
    2. Arguing that any significant portion of women (per #1 >98%) are going to do what a statistically insignificance number have done (<2%) is absurd.

    You might as well argue that since only 98% of hand guns when loaded and held against the temple result in death when the trigger is pulled it is a smart idea.

  156. PokeSalad says:

    [[Who’s outraged? Who found a “unicorn”?]]

    Oh, please. Not today, my friend, with all respect. 🙂

  157. Laura says:

    @Scott

    You and I are talking about two different things. I was asking why a SINGLE man whose parents own a spacious house needs an apartment of his own to prove that he is not a loser. You are talking about allowing the young couple to live with you post-marriage.

    My advice to a young single man would be to live with Mom & Dad until you are ready to get married. With no rent or utilities, you can make rapid progress toward paying off student loans or saving up for a house down payment.

    But newlyweds should have LOTS of privacy, and they need to spring for a separate apartment not-too-close to the parents and in-laws. If they can’t afford an apartment, they shouldn’t get married. The only possible exception to this that I can think of would be that there is an unplanned pregnancy and one set or the other of the prospective grandparents allows the young couple to live with them for a while to keep costs down and care for the baby while the parents work or finish school. It’s a very undesirable situation, but at that point you just have to do what you can to survive.

    I don’t know the Bible citation, but “hope deferred makes the heart sick.” Women are hard-wired to want the house with the picket fence, and living with the in-laws, especially with no time limit, isn’t even close.

    House prices in my area appear to be flat or declining, despite the endless hype of the realtors. People who do a lot of looking can find a good deal. If a decent three-bedroom/two-bath house or townhouse with small yard in a safe neighborhood is 10 or 15X the young man’s income, he needs to consider relocating to Flyover Country, where getting married and starting a family is simply a lot more affordable than it is on either of the coasts.

  158. Oscar says:

    jaybeespancakes says:
    February 23, 2015 at 11:40 am

    “The great woman would have said, “Cultivons notre jardin” – without a touch of irony or any idea other than that the work was required for everyone to be the light and salt exactly where God had put him.”

    If that is true, then why have Christians – starting with the Apostles – always traveled to far away lands to preach the Gospel?

  159. A late teens or early 20s man who has much promise and ambition but just hasn’t gotten there yet is one thing.

    Right. The reason “doesn’t live at home” is on so many girls’ lists today is that they don’t intend to marry until 30ish, and they don’t want a guy who’s been living at home for 30+ years. A 20-year-old guy who lives at home while he takes classes and works toward his electrician’s license would be a different story, but they won’t want to marry him for at least a decade. By that time, they expect him to have gotten that license, started a career, bought a home, etc., so he’s ready to wife them up when they say so.

    He’s definitely not supposed to keep living at home because his needs as a single man are small and it lets him help his parents out, figuring that he’ll wait until he has at least a potential wife in the picture before he starts preparing a nest. No, the nest is supposed to be cozy and luxurious when she’s ready to move into it; she certainly doesn’t intend to struggle through a few first years of hardship together with him.

  160. thedeti says:

    The thing about “single mommies” being equated with widows and orphans is a sore spot for women, of course. Women need to understand that this is about risk for the man. A man marrying a single mother (i.e. a baby mama or a divorced woman) takes on even greater risk than in marrying a woman without those encumbrances. Most single moms are such because of poor decisions: You got knocked up. Or you married a douchebag who tingled you and knocked you up and didn’t stick around. Or you frivorced your child’s father. Any way you slice it, you’re high risk, and frankly not worth it.

    Women are just going to have to get over this and deal with it. It’s about risk. High value men don’t take on high risk propositions. If you’re a high risk because of poor decisions, then you’ll get low quality men. That’s just how it is.

  161. Bluepillprofessor says:

    @Minsweeper (taking @Laura to task for the eternal solipsism of the female mind): I actually yelled out the same thing to my computer screen. THIS thread is “sad.” THIS?
    Not the divorce rapes.
    Not the children separated from their fathers and then brainwashed and alienated from them- drip, drip fucking drip.
    Not the prominent writer who wanted to surprise her husband with the divorce papers and was irked that her pastor told her husband (and then had her excommunicated).
    Not the sex denying frigid, harpy, bitch wife caught on tape fucking the football team before she became a born again virgin for her wimpy, mousy little provider (who acted EXACTLY how society demanded that he act).
    Not the perversion of our churches and Holy Scripture by churchians bowing like Aaron and the disobedient and sinful Israelites to the (fatted) golden pussy.
    Really?

  162. earl says:

    Well basically she made a bad decision and put her chips in on a guy who wasn’t good marriage material and got burned. Heaven help the next man who thinks a burned woman is a good investment.

  163. Scott says:

    Just because THEY found a unicorn does not invalidate the general point

    Let me just address real quickly here. It is entirely likely that although Mychael and I have been very upfront about the conditions of how we met, unless folks are obsessively following our story, they wouldn’t know. I don’t hold that against anyone.

    However, to characterize it as me finding a unicorn, is quite misleading. I have an 18 year old step son. How do you think THAT happenend? I am divorced and I married under blue pill conditions.

    I then started reading around these parts and “swallowed the red pill” which was very painful. I had to drag my wife kicking and screaming accross the threshold of biblical marriage, which she freely admits to. But there was much weeping and gnashing of teeth in the process. During the worst of it, I doubled down on submission and headship (and a lot of other stuff) and came within a hair of losing my marriage. I took a huge risk to do that.

    I have a sweet, submissive wife, yes. But getting there almost cost me everything–for what would have been a second frivorce.

    NOW we have our website and are trying to promote it as ministry. But we are a couple of fallen sinners, just like everyone else around here.

    Just be a little more careful there. You got it wrong.

  164. entropy is my god says:

    @Oscar

    Not into math perhaps?

    Lets talk about what you are asserting then.

    “Since some statistically insignificant portion of all of the woman who have ever lived was able to go alone in to a foreign country on a missionary trip and not fornicate than my (Princess, snowflake, strong empowered sassy classy daughter of the king,) will be able to do it as well”

    That is the advice you are giving.

    Does anyone else see the problem with this?

    @Lyn

    So you know of one, exactly one, woman who “may” not have fornicated while on mission trip. This is still exactly the same statistical failure that Oscar is making.

  165. Oscar says:

    entropy is my god says:
    February 23, 2015 at 11:41 am

    “We can both admit that these cases are statistical anomalies. No doubt at a minimum 3 SD to the right.”

    I never stated otherwise, but since the famous examples demonstrate that exceptions exist, is it possible that exceptions exist beyond the famous ones? I provided you with two examples (the two I know best), Lynn provided you with one and Anchorman provided you with another.

    “Arguing that any significant portion of women (per #1 >98%) are going to do what a statistically insignificance number have done (<2%) is absurd."

    Who said anything about "any significant portion of women"? Lynn asked about young women going on mission trips in relation to marriage. I gave him two examples (again, the two I know best) of young women who went on real mission trips with real hardship, real preaching and real results*, then came home got married (at 22 and 23) and started families. I doubt anyone (male or female) looking for a "find myself" experience would sign up for that kind of service.

    After that, "feministhater" made a bunch of vague comments about my wife. I asked him to clarify his comments, but he hasn't, so I won't speculate as to what they meant, since, unlike him, I don't pretend to know what is in someone's head until they let it out. That's why I ask questions.

    *The SBC no longer sends missionaries to that area of Burkina Faso because they were able to train enough local missionaries (the purpose of the trip) that the locals now do all the evangelism. In other words, they did exactly what they Apostles did, evangelize, plant churches, train the new Christians and move on to the next mission field.

  166. Oscar says:

    entropy is my god says:
    February 23, 2015 at 12:00 pm

    “Not into math perhaps?”

    On the contrary, I’m very good at math. You, however, don’t seem to be very good at reading comprehension. Case in point…

    “Lets talk about what you are asserting then.

    ‘Since some statistically insignificant portion of all of the woman who have ever lived was able to go alone in to a foreign country on a missionary trip and not fornicate than my (Princess, snowflake, strong empowered sassy classy daughter of the king,) will be able to do it as well’

    That is the advice you are giving.”

    Since I am neither asserting what you claim I’m asserting, nor have I given any advice, I’m left to wonder whose writing you’re reading.

  167. Oscar says:

    PokeSalad says:
    February 23, 2015 at 11:42 am

    “Oh, please. Not today, my friend, with all respect.”

    Okay. But seriously, I have no idea what you’re talking about.

  168. entropy is my god says:

    @Oscar

    “I don’t pretend to know what is in someone’s head until they let it out. That’s why I ask questions.”

    Nor do I. However, I have asserted that in all likelihood (>98%) of women who go on mission trips are going to fornicate on said trip. Selling young men on the idea that they have a good chance of getting a virgin wife out of a woman going on a foreign local mission trip is selling snake oil, and you admit as much.

    “I never stated otherwise, but since the famous examples demonstrate that exceptions exist, is it possible that exceptions exist beyond the famous ones? I provided you with two examples (the two I know best), Lynn provided you with one and Anchorman provided you with another. ”

    Do you really believe that women in the church line up to tell about their fornication and adultery from the “mission trip” they went on? Maybe that is why there are not hordes of anecdotes about this ready at hand to discuss.

    As a frequent commenter on this blog do not pretend to be so naïve as to believe whatever a woman says, especially when there is literally no benefit and many negative consequences for admitting to what she really went on a missionary trip for.

  169. Lyn87 says:

    Entropy,

    I have been perfectly clear, so since you keep sniping at me I have to assume that you simply do not want to believe anything that runs counter to the narrative in your head. Good day to you.

  170. entropy is my god says:

    @Oscar

    “Since I am neither asserting what you claim I’m asserting, nor have I given any advice, I’m left to wonder whose writing you’re reading.”

    If you are not asserting “that because there are a few special cases of women who went on a solo missionary trip and did not fornicate then men should look to these women to marry and fathers should encourage their daughters to do this” than what are you asserting.?

  171. Yoda says:

    Most single moms are such because of poor decisions: You got knocked up. Or you married a douchebag who tingled you and knocked you up and didn’t stick around. Or you frivorced your child’s father. Any way you slice it, you’re high risk, and frankly not worth it.

    The risk part there is.
    Then “the character” part there would be.
    A double downer difficult to overcome

  172. Escoffier says:

    Where is Handel’s messiah, Michaelangelo, and Dante?

    It’s been secularized, that is, to the extent that it’s not completely ignored.

  173. Laura says:

    @Earl, Scott & Yoda

    The large church that I was attending just after my divorce pressured all the “Single Moms” to form a group led by a Single Mom. BAD DECISION. The church had lots of groups for various other types of people, and felt that they ought to be doing SOMETHING for single mothers. I didn’t want to go, and neither did anyone else but we all did attend for a few meetings. The group initially consisted of maybe 4 or 5 divorced women, a couple of unwed mothers of the abandoned type, one unwed mother of the “single mother by choice” type, and one early-thirties young widow with two young children.

    What was surprising, at least to me, was how little the different types of single mothers had in common. The widow was envied by us all: she and her late husband had been living in Chicago when he had a massive heart attack and died in his mid-30s. His grief-stricken multi-millionaire parents asked the widow to move to California, where they would help raise the children. And by “help” they meant the works: her own expensive house, private school for the boy and girl, etc. She would also have received Social Security, but that would have been mere pin money compared to what the in-laws were forking over. There was probably also insurance and possibly a pension. She was loaded, and did not need to consider working outside the home.

    The single-mother-by-choice appeared to have sufficient resources for her chosen lifestyle, and no legal issues related to custody. Nearly everybody else had financial problems, and most of the divorced women had on-going conflict with their ex-husbands. The abandoned single mothers had the youngest children (babies) and had huge logistical problems and very poor job prospects, but no legal problems. One of the divorced women had recently been divorced for the second time, and was deeply ashamed of having failed twice. Her first marriage may have ended with a frivorce on her part, but my impression was that the second marriage ended against her will. She was an accountant, though, and doing OK financially.

    The divorced women did NOT like being lumped in with the never-marrieds, and the members of the group had such widely divergent needs that the group format was a huge mistake. Individual counseling would have been more appropriate. Some of the women needed some Tough Love in order to bring them to repentance so that they could avoid sin in the future. Others were so completely beaten down and overwhelmed by guilt, shame & circumstances that they needed a carefully-constructed support network. Of the divorced women, over half had ex-husbands who had been in jail at some point, and this was in a VERY upscale area of California. No doubt some of them were frivorcers, too, but a husband who can’t stay out of the slammer usually has multiple negative traits.

    The only reason that I write any of this is that I know that many of the people who read this blog are very involved in their own churches. The single mother problem needs to be tackled, but it needs to be handled with a great deal of care. If too much is done for them too openly, it does make single motherhood look more manageable, especially to immature potential unwed mothers.

    If I were a guy, I would not want to be pressed by the church to do yardwork for a divorced woman or car repairs for a single-mother-by-choice. And the “true widows” may actually be in a better financial situation than most married women of their age, so they shouldn’t be getting automatic assistance, either. The bottom line is that a poorly-thought out “single mothers’ program” is worse than doing nothing at all. Probably the best thing that you could do for most of them would be to help them get a higher-paying job or information on whatever lower-cost housing options might be open to them, and help them put together a workable budget, while strictly limiting other types of help.

  174. “Well basically she made a bad decision and put her chips in on a guy who wasn’t good marriage material and got burned. Heaven help the next man who thinks a burned woman is a good investment.”

    Yes. Very Christian. Heaven help the God who thinks a sinner is worth saving.

    And when you find someone who never made any mistakes, never sinned, never yielded to temptation, then I have a handy bridge to sell you. I’ll send you a picture as soon as I get your picture of your “worthy” wife candidate.

    In my experience, there actually do exist people wise enough to learn from their own mistakes. the key to finding a good wife or husband is not to find someone who never failed – an idiot’s quest – but to find someone who learned from their mistakes.

    It is a practice I recommend highly, and you can start with this thread.

  175. BradA says:

    This was way back at the start, but I did not see it dealt with in the first several replies, so I thought it may still be worth addressing.

    FH said,

    The funny thing is there are a bunch of men on this forum who have before said the exact same thing. Be like them, i.e. perfect, and marriage and women will following easily; and of course, be 6 foot 5 inches tall and sculpted like a Roman or Greek statue but with the accompanying foot long, and last but not least, have a perfect commanding but wholesome attitude and, well… why does everyone pretend that the two are different?

    I am guessing that I am one of those men he maligns. I would appreciate seeing the quoted material that says that. I did not marry until the latter half of the 20s for my wife and I. It has been far from a perfectly smooth ride, but I can confidently state I am convinced God ordained it, bumpy or not. Nothing is easy on this earth and claiming anyone is saying that is disingenuous at best.

    I also looked reasonably good when younger, but I was never destined for the cover of GQ or such. You don’t have to be perfect to have a long stable marriage. It is a challenging path, but it can be taking and accomplished. That is the real point. Some who try it may fail, but that does not negate the value of the attempt. Don’t let bitterness blind you.

  176. BradA says:

    tz,

    Maybe instead it will be fun, but usually it starts with a larger group doing something together where behavior can be gauged. Where it can be determined that Erica is really sweet and fun and likes Chinese food and music or whatever, so it isn’t a pure “cold call”.

    That was my point in another thread where we were talking about dating. Claiming that one on one dating is the best ignores the point that you best see someone else, including a wide range of female actions and desires, in a group setting far better than you will one on one.

  177. BradA says:

    Laura,

    The problem with the guy living with his parents is it shows a lack of motivation on his part. It may make sense from a practical viewpoint, but how many really have the excellent living arrangement you note rather than just their old bedroom in the family home?

    We have a relative who is taking a year off after college to “find himself” (or something like that). It is really just a case of being lazy and playing games, with his mom supporting this because she was the helicopter parent and likely doesn’t want that to end. I am not close enough to know every last details, but I would not recommend anyone marry that young man for many reasons, living at home is just the tip of the iceberg, but a tip nonetheless.

  178. Yoda says:

    but a husband who can’t stay out of the slammer usually has multiple negative traits.

    But a positive one they do have.
    Attract chicks they do.

  179. Yoda says:

    but to find someone who learned from their mistakes.

    Often difficult to discern this is.
    For many like the dark side it would be.
    Once you go down that path, forever control your destiny it will.

  180. PokeSalad says:

    [[but to find someone who learned from their mistakes.

    It is a practice I recommend highly, and you can start with this thread.]]

    So, enlighten us, O Wise One, on your foolproof technique for discerning the ‘truly repentant’ from the much-larger group that will never learn? How can we be sure, as to confidently bet our worldy resources and future financial standing on the odds that that single momma is really a diamond in the rough, despite her tattered history? Give us the DaVinci Code, good sir, so that ALL of these manosphere websites and blogs will instantly fall silent and irrelevant…

  181. earl says:

    ‘Yes. Very Christian. Heaven help the God who thinks a sinner is worth saving.’

    Being forgiven for sin and marriage material are two different things. If women would stop with the rationalizations and blaming men for their sins and sought forgiveness from God…that goes a long way. It would certain help them to show some humility.

  182. Laura says:

    @BradA

    I see what you are saying, but I still say that there is a huge advantage to the later marriage if the guy stays with Mom & Dad long enough to pay off his debts and start the marriage debt free. Back in the late 70s/early 80s, it was common advice to young couples to postpone children for a few years while they got they had some fun and saved up for a house down payment. The problem was that many couples did not actually have the self-discipline to save up any money, and all the years of being Dual Income No Kids just meant that they developed a lifestyle and a set of spending habits that were completely unsustainable once the children arrived.

    As far as the “old bedroom” goes, even if the parents’ house is fairly modest, if the elder siblings have all moved out the guy will still have a bedroom to himself, and probably a bathroom to himself. And lots of the houses built in the past 40 years ARE large.

  183. Laura,

    I see what you are saying, but I still say that there is a huge advantage to the later marriage if the guy stays with Mom & Dad long enough to pay off his debts and start the marriage debt free.

    With the exception of my freshman year (dorms, don’t count that), I lived at home the whole time I was in college.

    At 22, I moved into the “in-law” apartment attached to my parents house and paid for all the utilities (and gave them $200 a month for “rent.” Whoopie-do.)

    At 23, I graduated college. I did NOT move-out. I worked two jobs. I started putting a whole lot of money in the bank.

    At 25, I bought a townhome. I moved out of the house the first time in my life. I have never rented an apartment in my life.

    I never had any trouble finding girlfriends. I had one gf who was so in-love with my situation she flew cross-country to visit me under these living circumstances. The women who were NOT impressed with my living situation (through my early 20s) were insane.

  184. BradA says:

    Josh,

    I told my wife that the most important part of this store and they have it in the back corner. The bible and biblical reference section. This should be front and center in every christian bookstore. I refuse to venture into the book, clothing, music, and movie section of the store.

    They would go out of business very quickly if they did so. The goal of any store is to at least make enough money to stay in business. How many bibles have you bought there? How many could you really consume? I would bet you spent more on VeggieTales than bibles in the past few years, even taking into account the higher cost of bibles.

    I did buy one leather covered one recently, but I have not purchase one for many years as I work mostly electronically now. No store could survive on that. I haven’t been in a Christian bookstore for years either though, so that wouldn’t help them either.

    (I bought a Spanish bible with a leather-ish cover. I want to see if I can work my Spanish back up with it. I bought it at Sams Club because it was fairly cheap.)

    The sentiment is right, but it is a store that happens to sell Christian items, not an outreach ministry. Support such if you think it that important instead of judging those who are trying to stay afloat. Would it be better if they were not there? (Possibly, as many bricks and mortar stores are going out of business today.)

  185. BradA says:

    Laura,

    I still say that there is a huge advantage to the later marriage if the guy stays with Mom & Dad long enough to pay off his debts and start the marriage debt free.

    Staying out of debt in the first place is the better idea Laura. Why did the young man in question need to run up much debt in the first place? No affordable places to get a degree and live at home?

    I would also reinforce that most who do that will not be building toward the future, they will be sponging off their parents. That is a reality you should face.

    A women could probably do well finding such a young man who was dilligently building for the future – both his own skills and helping his parents improve their own house. Judge how much of his spare time he devotes to making their place better. Even handling routine items like mowing would show some dedication (if voluntary and without griping) than just focusing on his own life. I have yet to see someone in person who did that though.

  186. BradA says:

    Scuzza,

    Yes. Very Christian. Heaven help the God who thinks a sinner is worth saving.

    Someone can be saved without being married. Bad comparison!

  187. BradA says:

    Josh,

    Why has Christian art become a business and not a ministry? Where is Handel’s messiah, Michaelangelo, and Dante? Now today, we have the Kendrick brothers, and ccm music artists. Who are gay, atheists, and denounce creationism. Yet they’re still producing “Jesus music”.

    Which ones are openly gay?

    The examples you note were often on the payroll of some sponsor as well, so they just had a different source for their income, not necessarily a holy one.

  188. Opus says:

    Handel lived in Brook Street, next door to Jimi Hendrix, When Opera became stale he turned his attention to Oratorio, that is to say, without scenery but with a chorus and a fair number of these Oratorio were derived from the Bible. Oratorio had developed in Italy as it was illegal to produce Opera during lent. The same stricture did not apply to England where the only consideration was commercial appeal. Charles Jennens constructed the libretto for Messiah which Handel then quickly set to music and it was premiered in Dublin in1744. It is surely the staple more than any other piece of the Choral societies up and down the land. Handel did not usually have a sponsor (that is to say a commission) and wrote commercially for the various London Theatres (both Opera and Oratorio). He was adept at investment on the Stock Exchange. He never married. Biblical stories were popular – as they still are.

  189. Laura says:

    @BradA

    It may be that I am completely out of touch with modern expectations, and that a guy who lives with his parents is such a bad risk that even 20-something girls can spot the problem.

  190. Minesweeper says:

    @Bluepillprofessor, looks like we are on the same page on this and quite a few other things. Note she is unable to reply, I’m not sure if she has managed to answer a single question anyone has posed to her yet, but I’m not going to go over her comments to check.

    In my experience (was married 11 years to a Scandinavian Christian (\sarcasm) feminist(turns out)) the only way to ask a female to do anything is to ask her not to do it, this is also the experience of every man I ask this question “does your wife do anything at all you ask of her?”, female rebellion against anything a man asks is now completely full blown.

    As far as she is concerned, its abusive if she does anything she dosn’t immediately want to if a man asks her. Ive experienced this with gf, ex wive, friends etc. Its epidemic.

    But a female asking a man to do anything, its generally done immediately without any issue.

  191. Minesweeper says:

    @BPP, thinking about it more, I think a female knows that if she does something when asked it diminishes her power and worth/value, which is strange to males because we think the opposite, someone who can’t follow through on the simplest instruction (ala my x+gfs) is almost utterly useless to us on every level. But something inside the female mind thinks completely the opposite. I hope to never employ a female, I’ve known other men who have and they said never again. In fact they even dissolved the whole enterprise just to remove that possibility. They had enough. And this is probably one of the most skilled medical people I know how has saved countless lives. He still does this, but will never employ anyone again. And I can understand his reasoning.

  192. BradA says:

    Laura,

    But newlyweds should have LOTS of privacy, and they need to spring for a separate apartment not-too-close to the parents and in-laws. If they can’t afford an apartment, they shouldn’t get married. The only possible exception

    You are showing that you are creature of your culture far more than you realize. The idea of a white picket fenced house is only valid for very recent times.

    Many families were built with the couple living with parents in the past. It may have some drawbacks in today’s day and age, but it does not have to be the horrid thing you note.

    The I need my own McMansion, even if small, is a huge problem today and is one of materialism. God designed a woman to be a help meet for her husband, not to live in suburbia.

    Exactly which Scriptures say that a stand alone house of their own is an innate need?

    I would also note that the DFW area is far from either coast, but it is not exactly cheap here. It is only cheap in comparison to the coasts or perhaps Austin.

    That doesn’t mean living on their own is a bad idea, but I believe much of history did not have that the way we do now and humanity continued anyway.

    Your point about widows not always needing help fits with the Scriptures. I believe Paul noted that only widows without family should be covered. That would not include ones with family to support them.

    Cail,

    don’t intend to marry until 30ish

    Many don’t think about what their target husbands will have done with their sexual needs while waiting for women to be ready at this time. And this would be just in time for the woman’s sexual desires to be on the downward glide path.

  193. BradA says:

    Laura,

    Do you really think most young men who live at home are doing so to be a better future husband? Maybe you are accurate there, but it doesn’t fit with what I have seen.

  194. BradA says:

    Entropy and FH are too full of hate and accusations to admit any woman can have some merit on their own.

    My wife had a 3 week mission trip the year prior to our marriage (before she knew me). While the drugs she took could have led to our inability to have children, she did not sleep around while there. Believe what you want.

  195. Oscar says:

    Lyn87 says:
    February 23, 2015 at 12:11 pm

    “I have been perfectly clear, so since you keep sniping at me I have to assume that you simply do not want to believe anything that runs counter to the narrative in your head.”

    Sure seems that way, doesn’t it?

  196. Anonymous Reader says:

    Oscar, Lyn87, consider one other possibility: what you think of when you read the words “mission trip” and what feministhater thinks of are not the same thing.

    I’ll offer a hint: the words “missionary tourism”.

  197. BradA says:

    I should have probably said “anger” instead of “hate” in my post above, but the core point remains.

  198. Oscar says:

    entropy is my god says:
    February 23, 2015 at 12:11 pm

    “@Oscar

    ‘I don’t pretend to know what is in someone’s head until they let it out. That’s why I ask questions.’

    Nor do I.”

    If that is true, why do you insist on ascribing to me assertions I never made? What is the source of these assertions I never made? For example…

    “Selling young men on the idea that they have a good chance of getting a virgin wife out of a woman going on a foreign local mission trip is selling snake oil, and you admit as much.”

    Can you name a young man to whom I’m selling anything? Or are you saying Lyn (the person with whom I began conversing) is a young man in search for a bride (he’s over a decade my senior and married much longer than I)? Can you quote my alleged “sales pitch” to Lyn?

    Also…

    “As a frequent commenter on this blog do not pretend to be so naïve as to believe whatever a woman says”

    Would it surprise you to learn that I don’t believe whatever anyone says – male or female? Would it surprise you to learn that I believe in observing a person’s (male or female) behavior for indicators of character before I take their word at face value in anything?

    entropy is my god says:
    February 23, 2015 at 12:17 pm

    “If you are not asserting ‘that because there are a few special cases of women who went on a solo missionary trip and did not fornicate then men should look to these women to marry and fathers should encourage their daughters to do this’ than what are you asserting.?”

    My, what a difference! Instead of TELLING ME WHAT I THINK (as though you can read my mind), you ASKED ME WHAT I THINK. See? That wasn’t so hard, now, was it?

    To see what I’m asserting, all we have to do is look back at Lyn’s thread to which I responded, and my response.

    Oscar says:
    February 23, 2015 at 1:16 am

    Lyn87 says:
    February 22, 2015 at 10:08 pm

    “Serious missionary work is a hard calling – a tough row to hoe indeed. It’s not something people do on a lark, and flighty girls don’t sign up for that sort of thing. So, what do you all mean when you refer to the kinds of missions trips these churchian girls are taking? I know some churches sponsor short trips to help with projects, but most of the people I’ve known who do that are adults, not college-age girls… is this really as common as some of you are making it seem?”

    My wife did a mission trip to Burkina Faso the summer before we started dating. It was one of the reasons I was interested in her. It let me know she was adventurous and enjoyed overseas travel, which came in handy in her time as an Army wife. You should hear the stories from that trip!

    A friend of ours went on a mission trip to India. She married one of my college room mates.

    Mission trips don’t prevent girls from getting married. At least not the ones that make marriage a priority. Neither my wife nor our friend can be described as “flighty”.

    So, there’s the conversation between Lyn and me. Note that I was referring to the “serious missionary work” that Lyn rightly described as “a hard calling – a tough row to hoe indeed”, and “not something people do on a lark”, and that “flighty girls don’t sign up for that sort of thing.” He’s right.

    I then very briefly described my wife’s and our friend’s experiences as overseas missionaries. I left out a lot of details, but I reasoned that if anyone wanted details they could ask. Revolutionary concept, I know.

    Finally, because this thread is in part about young women being unserious about, and delaying marriage, I added the fact that young women (like my wife, who married me when she was 22, and our friend, who married my former roommate when she was 23) who make Biblical marriage a priority can participate in serious overseas ministry and still marry young. Or, put another way, if a young woman delays marriage because of mission work, marriage probably isn’t a priority for her.

    That’s it.

    No sales pitch to anyone. No advice to anyone. No assertions about what percentage of anyone does anything. Not even a suggestion as to what decision anyone should make about this or any other subject.

    Only an observation based on personal experience.

    I suppose I could’ve written a disclaimer stating that my experience may not match others’ experience, and therefore others may reach different opinions, but I reasoned that intelligent, reasonable, logical people could discern that on their own.

    Maybe I was wrong.

  199. Oscar says:

    Anonymous Reader says:
    February 23, 2015 at 7:37 pm

    “Oscar, Lyn87, consider one other possibility: what you think of when you read the words “mission trip” and what feministhater thinks of are not the same thing.

    I’ll offer a hint: the words ‘missionary tourism’.”

    Lyn and I both already explained that “missionary tourism” is not what we’re talking about.

  200. Emily says:

    @dalrock
    What is interesting about the situation I described earlier is that our friend was rejected by a young
    woman in our church who then went on to marry a guy who evidently had some problems ( I don’t know if she was aware of them beforehand). I never could understand the attraction, really. Now that marriage is unlikely to survive. She lost an opportunity to have a really good husband and now may have to carry the baggage of a divorce in the future. It is a sad state of affairs. I hope that I will be able to guide my own children away from these kinds of mistakes. But one can only do what one can.

  201. Anonymous Reader says:

    Lyn and I both already explained that “missionary tourism” is not what we’re talking about.

    But it could be what feministhater is talking about.

  202. Dale says:

    @Elspeth:
    >We lived a small apartment for 8 years before we could buy a house, and it was fine. Even with our first three kids running about, we were happy enough. We ate good food, had a decent car, even went out from time to time. A perfectly good life without a big house or a big yard.

    Thank you for the good example!

    @Lyn87:
    >Are they brave enough to enter marriages where they don’t have the power of the state to take a man’s children …

    That is an excellent comment. Yes, if a man and woman truly trust God, why do they need to retain rights that are forbidden in Scripture? Adultery, unsubmissive wife, unloving husband, etc.

    >The fact that she equates “single mommies” (almost all of whom are in that predicament by choice) to be in the same category as the “widowed and orphaned” (who most assuredly are not that way by choice) is disgusting.

    True. Unfortunately, the pastor of the church I just stopped attending gave the exact same view, in one of the morning services. (wrt giving to the poor)

    @Hank Flanders
    >Anyway, the thing is that there’s no point in asking a woman OUT if she doesn’t seem to want to talk to you for more than a couple of minutes IN church.
    I have wondered about the exact same thing. I find it hard to get a single woman to talk to me. Guys and married couples, no problem. But the single women talk for a minute or two and then move on. Don’t think I am creepy either, but I supposed I’m not the best person to judge that 🙂

  203. Dalrock says:

    @Oscar

    Lyn and I both already explained that “missionary tourism” is not what we’re talking about.

    I haven’t followed the exchange closely, but I am curious what your thoughts are on the feminist angle of this. We live in a society where feminist rebellion is openly celebrated. Women covet the status of men, and this is now institutionalized even for Christian women. Is there a line that you see here? Certainly some of the women going off on their own to do missionary work are doing so because they want to show that women can do everything men can do. Some of them are doing the same thing with dangerous missionary work that women are doing with the UFC, the military, war zone reporting, etc. Feminist Christian Sheila Gregoire even made the connection in her post about Lara Logan and women in the military:

    Lara Logan was willing to take the risk, and it didn’t turn out well. But it was still her decision, and to say that she can’t go because she’s a woman seems paternalistic. It’s like saying that a woman can’t decide to be a missionary in a dangerous land, even if she feels called to do so, because it may be dangerous. We applaud women who risk their lives for the sake of the gospel; obviously no gospel is involved in what Ms. Logan was doing, but I don’t think we can say one is wrong and the other right. In both cases, women are taking the responsibility for themselves on themselves.

    My guess is we could go back to church tradition to get a read on what is appropriate. I don’t know the history there though. Perhaps someone else here does.

    Incidentally, when looking for the Sheila Gregoire quote I noticed one of her most popular posts is her complaining that women in church are being asked to make sandwiches when someone in the church dies. Sheila doesn’t have time for making sandwiches because she is too busy running her ministry. Women need to go on strike to get the men at church to make their fair share of the sandwiches. You can’t make this stuff up. When Women Start Saying “No” to Church Activities

    Women have become busier, but church life hasn’t adapted to this new reality. It’s still expected that women will teach Sunday School, run the nursery, cook for the potlucks, and supply the funeral sandwiches. That’s what a church community is all about, right?

    Now most churches do have a dedicated army of older women who have given selflessly over the years to create community. They’ve cooked more casseroles than President’s Choice, they’ve decorated for Christmas and Easter longer than I’ve been alive, and they’ve made church homey and inviting. We couldn’t function without them.

    Unfortunately, there aren’t very many of them left, and my generation isn’t exactly clamouring to fill their spots. And so these ladies, who have given tirelessly for decades, have even more thrown at them. They “overfunction”, as Peter and Geri Scazzero, authors of The Emotionally Church Church say, filling in the gaps so that other people–including many of the men–can get away with underfunctioning. Churches tend to take advantage of those who consistently say yes, instead of telling them, “You’ve done enough.”

  204. BradA says:

    Dalrock,

    David Yonggi Cho (sp?) said he would use female ministers to open up an area where men wouldn’t go and then send men in to properly take over once it was started. That idea would certainly clash with many today. It doesn’t answer your question, but is a related point from outside the US. (He was formerly Paul, but changed his name for a reason he tied to Saul/Paul’s conversion. That is completely off the topic.)

  205. Renee Harris says:

    @kracken
    Not to sound like an idiot, but what kind doctor are study to be and what is favorite Scientific dis discipline ?

    You sound like my friend J. Only he is a filmmaker. All the marriage age ladies in my social circle ( make up of four Different churches) want to be his Mrs. So far he only show interest in his ex gf , ( briefly ) to me* , and my friend Jen.
    * I don’t know If he like me. We would be in a large group with prettier girls but he alway been looking at me. I told him like before this….

  206. Opus says:

    There is a massive difference between men going off to do missionary work and women doing the same. Lara Logan (who brought about her own troubles – always assuming that she was being truthful) made the headlines because she was female. No man would even have been noticed: one dead Egyptian protestor is just a statistic; one woman wearing revealing clothing and getting physically propositioned is a tragedy with the under-dressed slut as the ultimate of victims of third world, that is to say brown-skinned, sexism. Her ‘chikan’ or’ encoxado’ experience (my heart truly bleeds for her) was self-inflicted.

    As I indicated with my former girlfriend from NYC, the rigors and difficulties of life were merely a cover for plausibly deniable sex-tourism and probably a merit badge for doing without central heating. At any moment she could (and could afford to) catch a plane and return to the civilization of the Hudson River Valley; the Latino natives had no such choice and were stuck in the war zone. I always thought it ironic that whatever happened, the Latinos ended up with gringos; either by way of the military and their weapons, or humanitarian help to make amends for the efforts of the missionary’s fellow countrymen.

    To continue her story (in brief) she married a native and had a child and then returned with her husband to America. When he expressed a desire to return with his family to the country of his origin she objected on the grounds that it was no place to bring up a child. The hypocricy (and lack of marital submission) of her position was simply lost on her. Female missionaries are Marie-Antoinette playing shephardess.

    Happily, the only missionaries I meet are well-turned out and ultra-polite Mormons.

  207. If a women wants to do missionary position ‘work’ and feels ‘called’ to do it, then she must go do that and not get married. She must devote her life to her work, otherwise, she needs to devote her life to her husband and family.

    These men, Oscar and Lyn, and merely providing cover for these wimmenz to delay marriage even further and have some ‘fun’ on the side, missionary style.

  208. Lyn87 says:

    feministhater,

    Since you’re so adept at reading the minds and knowing the deeds of thousands of people you’ve never met, perhaps you could give us some specific insights into the stock market – I’m sure we’d all like to make a little extra cash. You see, I don’t think you’re nearly as psychic as you claim to be, but I’ll admit I’m wrong if you can prove it. In the meantime I accuse you of bearing false witness against some of my sisters in Christ, with absolutely nothing to back it up except your idle speculations about what they are thinking and doing. So I have a challenge for you: some time today give us a list of twenty stocks that will rise and twenty stocks that will fall on the NYSE between the closing bell today and the closing bell tomorrow (25 Feb 2015), or shut up about your so-called ability to read other people’s minds… and repent of your slander.

  209. Lyn, what is the matter? Do you feel the need to chastise? Are you judging? Listen, either the woman becomes a missionary, like mother teresa, or she becomes a mother and wife. Why are you providing cover for ‘sisters in Christ’ to continue wasting time? I don’t give a two-dollar crap about the stock market, it’s a rigged and silly game, shifting wealth from idiots to big corps and banks. Why would I give advice to people on an obviously fraudulent casino game?

  210. If these women are so concerned about doing the works of the Lord, there are far more problems, brought on by their very own actions I might add, for them to fix right bloody well at freaking home…. not some African civil war zone where Western interference and Churchy interference are the common cause of the strife..

  211. Lyn87 says:

    I’m judging? This is what you wrote about people you’ve never met – whose names you have never even heard:

    If a women wants to do missionary position ‘work’ and feels ‘called’ to do it, then she must go do that and not get married. She must devote her life to her work, otherwise, she needs to devote her life to her husband and family.

    These men, Oscar and Lyn, and merely providing cover for these wimmenz to delay marriage even further and have some ‘fun’ on the side, missionary style.

    That was YOU. You know… the “judgy” one in this conversation. All I asked you to do was offer some evidence that you were as good of a mind-reader as you claim to be. I notice that you declined.

    What a surprise.

  212. You’re talking about maybe one or two women who might, maybe, possibly being trying to do some sort of gospel work about Christ and helping people, other than their own which is where they should be starting, but only maybe. And then going on to congratulate them, thereby encouraging more women to go over and do all this stuff in dangerous countries with very little protection or supervision, thus wasting time and doing who knows what and possibly getting killed. Here’s the rub, you say I don’t know what every single women on this earth gets up to, yeah sure, I don’t but I think we all have a darn good idea what they do get up to. It’s not called ‘finding herself’ or ‘something she just has to do before she’s ready for marriage’ for no good reason. Why do you feel the utter need to defend these women? Are they actually helping their countrymen and women, are they actually providing the means to these other people to get them out of poverty, or are they merely continuing the practice of keeping them in poverty by allowing them to survive far above the population that they and the land can sustain them at?

    You are providing cover, that’s not judging, that’s pointing out exactly what you and Oscar are doing.

  213. BradA says:

    FH, how do you know what they should and shouldn’t do? Which Scripture applies to a woman doing missionary work? What proves all those doing Bible translation work with Wycliffe, for example, are just looking for sex?

    One individual is called the accuser of the brethren. You are filling his role.

    What evidence is available that almost all women merely practice missionary tourism rather than doing serious work? I may question the dedication of some, but some flighty women do not make all women flighty.

    Though I believe you have also insulted all women in other contexts too, which puts more context here. That indicates your accusations are just that, accusations, and spawned by the same individual who regularly accuses those who follow Christ.

  214. BradA says:

    No one is encouraging anyone. Lyn, Oscar and I are merely noting some women do just fine in missionary work. My wife is wonderful and all, but she is not a special snowflake. She didn’t fit your profile however, so she can be ignored in your view.

    Do you really think it is more likely that women will sin on a “missionary trip” than they would if they stayed in the US? The lure of foreign men may motivate some, but I think it is more likely most will merely be apostate right where they are.

  215. Brad, I’ll fill that role happily. What evidence do you have that any of these missionary women are not having sex? Yes, I know, you can’t as it’s impossible to prove a negative. However, since you cannot, no man can, and thus any woman who does so becomes suspect. I just look at their reasoning as for why they have to go and why they don’t do it for life if it is their actual calling, which is always their reason..

    I insult women all the time, why should this time be any different?

  216. Do you really think it is more likely that women will sin on a “missionary trip” than they would if they stayed in the US?

    Duh? Less supervision and no blowback due to the man being half the world away?!

  217. Opus,

    Happily, the only missionaries I meet are well-turned out and ultra-polite Mormons.

    And their “missions” are purely CONVERSION focused. They are not pouring concrete in Sudan to get clean water running to a village. They are roaming around on bicyles with the intent to “lecture” you about what they know, things you don’t know. They are really only interested in SELLING the LDS (to convert you so you will in-turn, give your ward money) NOT is trying to help. Conversion for this is “doing some good.”

    Our neighbor had the two boys come into her house to meet her husband. Little did they know that he RCC Priest was also over, the boys refused to even sit down. They just shrugged their shoulders, turned around, and walked out of the house. But before they left they said that they would pray for my neighbor. That is mission work for them.

  218. Lyn87 says:

    You just can’t get your act together, can you? I know two young women who made serious commitments to doing missionary work in Eastern Europe – former students of mine who have done – are as far as I know are still doing – more to further the gospel than probably any man on this forum, and all you can say is that the vast majority of female missionaries are engaging in sexual tourism. But you have offered exactly nothing to substantiate your claim. So… one more time. I’ll type slowly for you:

    Put. Up. Or. Shut. Up.

    To make it easy for you to prove that you have this ability to read minds and know hearts that you continue to claim to have, I’ll even give you a template for you to cut-and-paste into your next comment.

    These twenty NYSE stocks will close higher on 25 Feb 2015 than on 24 Feb 2015:
    1
    2
    3
    4
    5
    6
    7
    8
    9
    10
    11
    12
    13
    14
    15
    16
    17
    18
    19
    20

    These twenty NYSE stocks will close lower on 25 Feb 2015 than on 24 Feb 2015:
    1
    2
    3
    4
    5
    6
    7
    8
    9
    10
    11
    12
    13
    14
    15
    16
    17
    18
    19
    20

    There you go, feministhater, just fill those in accurately and I’ll concede your point.

  219. Lyn, sure, whatever, they are all stupendously good women doing everything Godly and that’s all. I wonder why the Church is in such disarray with such spectacular women at the helm?! Actually, all women should spend at least, at least, 10 years doing such Godly work, possibly 20, the world should be a verifiable heaven by then.. I applaud you and them, I agree, you and Oscar and Brad are 200% right, let’s send them all to those places they so desperately need to go. Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, e.t.c, spread the Gospel!

    And really, I don’t need to prove some test you made up to prove I read minds, I don’t. You’re being silly.

  220. I’m being 200% serious about sending them to those places. The gospel needs to be spread in the Middle East and there are thousands of Christians being persecuted there and these women are perfect for the job.

  221. You just can’t get your act together, can you? I know two young women who made serious commitments to doing missionary work in Eastern Europe – former students of mine who have done – are as far as I know are still doing – more to further the gospel than probably any man on this forum, and all you can say is that the vast majority of female missionaries are engaging in sexual tourism.

    I’m sorry to have messed up feminism for them. Eastern Europe is boring though, they need to start spreading the gospel in Nigeria or something. I hear Boko Haram is hiring.

  222. Lyn87 says:

    feministhater @ February 24, 2015 at 10:07 am I assume you’re familiar with the term “Straw-Man Fallacy.”

    Keep flailing, kid. (I realize that you’re a grown, man, but since you’re acting like a child I’m going to treat you like one).

    The number of people who have advocated for women being “at the helm” is exactly ZERO. The number of people who have advocated for all women to do missionary work is exactly ZERO. Do you even have a point, or are you just going to keep arguing against points nobody is making?

    Anyway, I’m not the one “being silly.” That’s you, with you blanket statements, sweeping accusations, and straw-man fallacies, based on nothing more than your supposed ability to read minds. I’m not the one to make the claim… you are. I see that you’ve backed down from it now that I asked for proof, so I guess it wasn’t silly of me at all.

    Let’s face it, you don’t just hate feminism… your words strongly suggest that you hate women, even my sisters in Christ.

  223. Probably. What of it. They have never cared one damn about me, these sisters in Christ, for years I tried but to no avail. You are right, they are perfect angels and deserve marriage 2.0, all of it. At least they won’t get married to a hater like me, eh?

  224. By allowing these women, your wives, to do missionary work, thousands of miles away from their home. You are asking them to take the helm… ergh, I give up. Have at it, perfect Lyn, I await your glorious utopia, for you are perfect.

  225. Oh, they’re your sisters in christ, oh I get it now, you’re casting me out. Oh, hallelujah!

  226. What proof did you ask for? That I prove I can read minds? I can’t, never said I could. You were silly to have brought such a bogus claim to begin with. I can’t read minds but I can sure gather what people mean and why they do such things. If you really believe these women are righteous creatures and are doing everything in their power to spread the gospel, good. However, you are providing cover for the many other women who are not; and that’s the point. Pompous Lyn.

  227. BradA says:

    FH,

    Brad, I’ll fill that role happily.

    Then you have indicated you are definitely not a Christian. Why should we care what you think about Christian practices in that case? Lots of people accuse what they are not involved with. They normally should be ignored rather than followed.

    Gladly becoming one with the devil is not a good thing either. That is worse than any sex tourism as it is the groundwork of far worse undermining of everything holy.

  228. I actually misread your comment brad, I thought you said, “You are filling the role of an accuser,” not The accuser. However, if you really feel I am the devil or filling his role, I suggest you don’t respond to me.

  229. Lyn87 says:

    Straw Man Fallacy again. The number of people who said that any of those women are “perfect angels” is exactly ZERO.

    But the more important thing is that you have given in to hatred. “What of it. They have never cared one damn about me, these sisters in Christ, for years I tried but to no avail.”

    Once again you have made a claim to be able to read their minds.

    But you say, What of it? as if it was of no consequence. To harbor hatred is to embrace damnation… and you’re not only harboring it: you are positively wallowing in it. You have completely missed some of the most important aspects of Christianity if you can hate all women because a few of them treated you badly. We’re not allowed to hate anybody.

    Romans 12:15 says, “Looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled…

    Not cannot embrace both Christianity and hatred. But you are making railing accusations against Christians and spreading your lies and filth to everyone on this forum. You need to repent while there is still time – before the hatred goes any deeper than it already has. I’ll pray for you – and I’m not saying that to be condescending (I’m far from perfect myself) – I really mean it. You need the Hand of God to touch you.

  230. Gladly becoming one with the devil is not a good thing either. That is worse than any sex tourism as it is the groundwork of far worse undermining of everything holy.

    Well, I am not purposefully fulfilling his role as I misread your comment. I will respond to it though, in the context of me indirectly fulfilling his role. The Church, as it currently stands, needs an accuser. I have not accused God at all. The Church on the other hand, is completely without a foot in Christianity. I am not humble about my views, I am very humble about my looks and intelligence though. I am also angry about many things. I can usually keep it under control but I vent from time to time. God doesn’t seem to actually care about that, hence my unsaved position, because I have yet to feel any sense of love from him or Christians as I know them. They are like you, never listening, only placing words in my mouth. They will do everything in their power to give women everything they so desire but look upon me with scorn. I used to think it was something about God placing burdens on those who can handle them but I’ve come to think differently and I don’t think that’s it. I cannot handle my burdens, I cannot handle the hate I have for how I look and feel. I cannot handle that I will never actually be loved for who I am but instead must change absolutely everything about myself before I am accepted, helped or liked.

    Hate is all I have left, I don’t fit in, I am not needed, nor wanted. I sometimes wish I could just drift away and die. That is the truth.

  231. terrifictm says:

    So true, Earl. NEVER waste your time on a woman who wants to date. There are women out there who recognize their purpose and goal in life is to bear children and build a hearth and home. A man needs only to be alpha to ONE woman – his Wife. All the rest are a waste of seed.

  232. Lyn, their actions speak far larger than words. I don’t need to read minds to understand that. Please stop with the mind reading. I never said I could.

  233. Lyn87 says:

    feministhater @ February 24, 2015 at 10:51 am

    Do you think Satan likes you any better than God does?

    We often do not and cannot understand the ways of God: “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” – Isaiah 55:9, but we can understand Satan just fine, He is the destroyer.

    Just yesterday my pastor was preaching from Matthew 5 about anger. It’s a very serious matter – akin to murder. Sobering for me, as I get angry at my boss on a pretty regular basis. God has been dealing with me about that.

  234. Semi-serious question here.

    I know what the LDS ask of their “sister-missionaries” and what they ask of their “elders” and why there are those differences (primarily based on safety first) and I know what they are asking of my young cousin in HIS mission work in Prague. (He’ll be there for another 14 months, we are helping to support him.) What I want to know is what type of mission work would a protestant church ask (specifically) of a female missionary and how would that differ from men? I only ask that because just recently (here in Arizona) we buried a female “missionary” (a secular-college aid worker, Karla Mueller) who was doing “work” somewhere she should not have been, was captured by ISIS, and wound up getting killed.

    The world is not benign. And I strongly discourage parents who think it is a good idea to send their daughters on missions (be they church or in Mueller’s case, school related.) In most of the 3rd world, female missionaries (whether they are spreading the Good News of Christ, trying to convert to the LDS, or doing Peace Corps work) really are in extra jeapordy mostly because many of the protections they are so used to getting (from feminism) do not exist where they will be doing their work. And if they are not made aware of that ahead of time things like THIS could happen.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_Corrie

  235. Kevin says:

    In my faith the majority of young women now go on missions. These missions are 18 months, may or may not be to a foreign country and the locations are selected for them. They are always with a female partner, may never be alone with men. They are heavily supervised (as are the young men doing the same). I am sure there are a small percentage who mess up sexually and are sent home in shame, but the numbers are probably less than <1%. Its just not that environment. Its an environment of hard work trying to do the work of Christ.

    I know nothing of other faith's missions but I know from my experience that this is a great learning experience, very hard work, and lays a good foundation through both personal development, increased faith, and often an international appreciation of the differences in the world to move forward in life.

    A second question – some were talking about the impossibility of finding a worthy virgin to marry. I agree. I discuss this with my sons. So what can be done. Well, too are perfect even in this important thing. I think its important you have a tough conversation before marriage. But if my sons are willing to take the risk the way to know if someone repents is they changed. They did not get off the carasol at 28 because they needed to find the right beta, they got off earlier and did not ride long because of the conviction of the Spirit. And they never go back. They accept whatever their faiths ecclesiastical consequences are and they change their lives. I agree no one needs to give a ring to a slut, and I would not knowingly do that, but if they want to get married they may be able to find those who have at least turned back to Christ.

  236. Kevin says:

    …too few are perfect…. or maybe even no one.

  237. Yes, and looking is akin to adultery. Must be murdering up a storm by now.

    Satan doesn’t like me… oh okay, I’m not exactly looking for his approval. I do understand that nobody much likes me. I’m expected just to get on with life, a point which has plagued me for my life. If nobody cares, you don’t get a sense of love. Which is apparently this great Christian thing. Yet, any Church, any Christian group pretty much wants nothing to do with a person like me. I guess I have to be able to purge all the hate, all the bitterness and all the anger, then they will like me, right? Or perhaps not. I don’t know. If only it were that easy.

    You forget something else, I run purely on faith, nothing else. I have no other reason to believe in God, none. When I look at the world, I don’t get a sense of awe or love, but bitterness and anger. I don’t want to live here, I don’t care to. It is a world filled with honourless humans, tyrants, do-gooders, hopelessness, despondency and death. I don’t get it, for a man like me, there isn’t a reason to existence.

  238. fh,

    I don’t get it, for a man like me, there isn’t a reason to existence.

    Sure there is.

    If tomorrow you disappeared and never again posted on this forum, we here would miss you.

  239. Lyn87 says:

    For the record, feministhater says:

    Please stop with the mind reading. I never said I could.

    However…

    @ February 24, 2015 at 8:09 am you accused single female missionaries of engaging in sexual tourism under cover of missionary work…
    …for these wimmenz to delay marriage even further and have some ‘fun’ on the side, missionary style…

    @ February 24, 2015 at 9:31 am you told us that their concern for the lost was not real…
    If these women are so concerned about doing the works of the Lord…

    @ February 24, 2015 at 10:16 am you said that I was upset because these women had messed up feminism, which must have involved mind-reading since I never said any such thing.
    …I’m sorry to have messed up feminism for them…

    @ February 24, 2015 at 10:26 am you claimed to know what all Christian women care about…
    … They have never cared one damn about me, these sisters in Christ, for years I tried but to no avail…

    @ February 24, 2015 at 10:28 am you accused me of secretly wanted to give headship to women, although I have consistently spoken out against that very thing…
    …You are asking them to take the helm…

    And yet you have denied – at least four times so far in this thread – that you have claimed the ability to read minds.

  240. Scott says:

    FH-

    Feel free to contact me through either of my blogs. (The Courtship Pledge or Western Philosophy and Eastern Faith).

    Your last few posts are concerning.

    Even if you don’t, contact someone. Either way, my family will pray for you this night at our dinner table.

    Scott.

  241. Lyn87 says:

    Scott says:
    February 24, 2015 at 11:15 am

    Seconded.

    Nobody here hates you, FH. I don’t think so, anyway. You’re in a pit of despair, and you needn’t stay in it. If I come across as strident, it’s only because I only mean to speak truth, not be pugnacious.

  242. Kevin,

    A second question – some were talking about the impossibility of finding a worthy virgin to marry. I agree. I discuss this with my sons. So what can be done. Well, too are perfect even in this important thing. I think its important you have a tough conversation before marriage.

    But that “tough conversation” before marriage is not what is happening Kevin. For a Christian man who wants to marry a virgin (for whatever reason) he is having a conversation with his parents and his clergy and is largely being told (not just by society, but most importantly churchianity) that he is being selfish. How DARE he insist that only virgins are acceptable to marry! He should just take whatever woman is willing to accept him because SHE is the “prize” and he should just be thankful for that.

    That is where we are at. It is the feminism that has had an influence on so many people to alter their perception of what “thinking/desire” is or is not, tolerated. So is it any wonder why an ever steadily increasing tiny percentage of Christian men are doing as Paul has instructed and not taking wives? I am not the least bit surprised. What with marriage 2.0, if they can’t have it “all” then they don’t want any of it.

  243. Lyn, context, please include the whole quotes, not the pieces you choose.

    By allowing these women, your wives, to do missionary work, thousands of miles away from their home. You are asking them to take the helm.

    You are asking them to take the helm because you are allowing them to go thousands of miles away to dangerous countries that they will have to take control due to the situation and how it unfolds.

    for these wimmenz to delay marriage even further and have some ‘fun’ on the side, missionary style…

    That’s not reading their minds, that’s understanding their intentions. Otherwise, how could any of us tell what a person’s actions means? Where do you think the saying,”Do as I say, not what I do” came from?

    If these women are so concerned about doing the works of the Lord…

    Well, I don’t have to read their minds, that’s why they do the missionary work, right. That’s what they say they do if for, right? Or I am mistaken?

    They have never cared one damn about me, these sisters in Christ, for years I tried but to no avail…

    They don’t and never have. I have been to Church, I have been to social gatherings, I have been to singles groups and tried to speak to the women. They couldn’t be happier to be rid of me, where do you think the hate and bitterness comes from? Birth? Lol, probably does come from birth…

    And yet you have denied – at least four times so far in this thread – that you have claimed the ability to read minds.

    Shoot, four times? More than Peter denied Christ? Wow! You must be special, lol!

  244. Thanks Scott, I am way too old for courtship pledges or matchmaking or any sort of relationships. A good reason why I am angry, life is wasted and I cannot get it back. Furthermore, I don’t live in America. If you feel like praying, that’s fine, thank you. I don’t know what good it would do though, I’ve prayed for years and I feel more anger at every year that goes by.

  245. fh,

    I’m with Scott. I am concerned about you. If you ever need to talk, we are there for you. Send me email…

    innocentbystanderboston@yahoo.com

    …because right now, you don’t sound too good.

  246. Calling men cowardly for knowing when to avoid a bad entanglement with a woman who is more trouble than she is worth only shows the blind ignorance of the religious who make such specious accusations. Screw them and their Bronze Age superstitions.

  247. IBB, thanks. I don’t need to talk though, I need practical steps to alleviate anger, depression and bitterness. Talking only makes me angrier or more disheartened. I rant from time to time because it provides a release valve, that’s all. I have no solutions to this problem, I am entirely sure that there are so many people like me with the exact same problem but there is no help.

    There’s a couple reasons I’m angry and there isn’t a damn thing I can do to correct them. The anger is in response to the helplessness.

  248. Lyn87 says:

    FH,

    I’m not going to continue to fence with you: my point stands and I suspect you’re smart enough to realize it. The bottom line is that you’re trapped in a downward spiral of bitterness and can see no way out. I get it. And of course God gets it far better than any of us. Sometimes we have to hit bottom before we look up. I’d offer to be of help but you surely don’t want it from me. Get with Scott, then. You need to reach out to somebody from whom you’re willing to accept assistance. Going it alone is not the answer.

  249. BradA says:

    FH,

    The Church, as it currently stands, needs an accuser.

    What Scripture supports that view? The Church needs some changes, but it is up to the Lord of the Church to do that, not His servants to do it on their own.

    Hate is all I have left, I don’t fit in, I am not needed, nor wanted. I sometimes wish I could just drift away and die. That is the truth.

    This belief is the core of your problem. I may oppose what you say, but I would have no trouble working with you (in person most likely) to see that you can still have a part if you will keep from letting darkness consume you.

    I would agree with what Lyn said, though I do not believe anything you do here can cause you to go to hell as I am in the eternal security camp. It could consume any good that you might do and completely negate any chance of rewards in the next life, even to the point of causing others to reject Him.

    It is important that you work through the anger and the pain. You should know that I have been doing enough of that myself with my own experience with adopting our 4 children. I can be very cynical and blunt with all that, but I regularly strive to keep the right focus even so. It would be far better for you to be able to work some of this out as it is literally eating you alive!

    Dalrock is free to give you my email, if you could not find it. Drop me a line via Google by looking for my blogs there, if you ever really want to work through things. These threads would not be the best forum for that.

    No one is irredeemable, but some of us push away the very things that could help us through.

    Hope this makes sense. You do have value, you are just not displaying it here.

  250. BradA says:

    FH,

    IBB, thanks. I don’t need to talk though, I need practical steps to alleviate anger, depression and bitterness.

    Argue with God about it. Yell at Him if you must, He is “man enough” to take it. Just get it out and then move on. Fill yourself with the Word of God. Get a good audio Bible and then play it all the time. Saturate your mind.

    I have walked and continue to walk a path like yours, and His Word is all that has kept me sane.

  251. BradA says:

    A good reason why I am angry, life is wasted and I cannot get it back.

    I raised 4 children who all turned their backs on me, to return to a very dysfunctional birth family. I feel my life was wasted in many ways. I have developed somewhat of a relationship with my oldest son who is in town now, but it remains very challenging and I doubt I will ever be able to rely on him as I expected to help care for me when I am too old to do so myself.

    I can completely relate to feeling like I have wasted my life, but wallowing in that is not an option. I may get hit with it, as I did with emotions while shopping with my son & his wife and daughter at Ikea this weekend when I reflected again that I have no contact with 4 of my 5 grandchildren. It sucks more than most now, but I cannot stay there.

    Neither can you stay where you are and survive. Help is out there, but the question is whether you will take it.

  252. earl says:

    ‘There’s a couple reasons I’m angry and there isn’t a damn thing I can do to correct them. The anger is in response to the helplessness.’

    Then reach out to God if you can’t correct them. There is nothing that can’t be fixed if you reach out to God and develop a relationship with Him.

    That’s all prayer is really about. Not getting wishes granted, not having your problems magically fixed, it’s developing a relationship with the one person who knows you better than you know yourself.

  253. earl,

    Then reach out to God if you can’t correct them.

    fh has done that. He feels frustrated because he doesn’t think God has listened to him.

    There is nothing that can’t be fixed if you reach out to God and develop a relationship with Him.

    That’s all prayer is really about. Not getting wishes granted, not having your problems magically fixed, it’s developing a relationship with the one person who knows you better than you know yourself.

    That is right. fh just hasn’t figured out yet what we all here have figured out, that sites like this one here with Dalrock (and a few others with Elspeth, Cail, Scott, and SSM) are evidence of God answering our prayers.

  254. earl says:

    ‘fh has done that. He feels frustrated because he doesn’t think God has listened to him.’

    Has fh ever been quiet enough to listen to what God has to say?

  255. Artisanal Toad says:

    @FH
    There is a flip-side to your anger. Having been divorce-raped, had my children stolen from me and thoroughly alienated from me, I don’t think your “right” to be angry comes anything close to mine. Yet, living well is the best revenge. So, let’s talk about solutions.

    I have searched the Scriptures repeatedly and seriously. Years ago I started a MDiv program and after a year ditched the whole thing. They were way too PC for me. The problem you have is the same problem I have. God said “It is not good for man to be alone.” THAT is the root problem. The current issue is the womynz have been given a legal (in)justice system they can use to use and abuse men. I’m a veteran of this fight and I know wherefore of what I speak.

    That said, I have three questions for you.

    1. Do you want a wife? I’m talking about right now, not years ago.
    2. Do you want said wife to crank out kids for you?
    3. Assuming the answer to #1 is yes, how important are the intangibles to you? I’m talking about companionship, common interests, personality, yada, yada, yada.

    If the answer to #1 is no, then as a man speaking to a man, quit your bitching. Shut up and soldier. You claim the faith, work it out in fear and trembling.

    If the answer to #1 is yes, then #2 is very relevant. It isn’t so much “do you want a wife?” as it is “do you want a family?” In either case, you need and want a woman. Either she’s going to be a woman that provides you with sexual release and is (hopefully) pleasant to be around, or she’s going to do that and provide you with progeny as well. However, If your answer to #1 is yes, your answer to #2 is no and your answer to #3 is “not that much” then all you’re looking for is a warm, wet hole. If this is the case, the only question left is whether you can support her.

    The study of game reveals some very, very unpleasant truths about women. However, let’s look to the teacher and see what he said. We first ;keep in mind that all Scripture is inspired of God and trustworthy for teaching, preaching, training and rebuking that every man might be fully equipped. OK? You still with me?

    while I was still searching but not finding– I found one upright man among a thousand, but not one upright woman among them all. Ecclesiastes 7:28 NIV

    Did you get that? You aren’t going to find her because according to the Word, SHE DOES NOT EXIST. Period. That means you have to settle for something less than what you probably want. It is all well and good for a young man to want a virgin bride. But that doesn’t mean she won’t nuke your family, steal your children and make your life living hell. We’ve all seen the studies that show women who marry as virgins are the best bet to getting and keeping a successful marriage. But, (and here is the problem with statistics) that doesn’t paint the whole picture. While I do not deny the importance of purity and sanctity, there are other factors involved. INCENTIVES MATTER. When the incentives are structured to give the woman (refer to the above teaching) greater incentive to exit the marriage rather than to stay in the marriage, you will see widespread divorce. When incentives are arranged (by choice or circumstance) to favor staying in a marriage, you will see relatively few divorces.

    Women are women. (Always remember that)

    Recognize that your fantasy wife doesn’t exist. She isn’t out there. THEREFORE:

    Ask yourself some questions. I don’t know how old you are, but an aging whore might be a good match if you don’t want children. Keep in mind that I focus on solutions, not bitching about the problems. I recall my father’s prime directive at our lab: “We read the data first, then we write the report.” I focus on solutions but evidently some of those solutions are outside of what Dalrock can bear and he recently deleted a comment of mine because (evidently) it caused him some heartburn. However, I think you need to take a serious look at what the teacher had to say. You aren’t searching for a needle in a haystack, you need to simply recognizing that the needle doesn’t exist!

    If you can reach this level of understanding, you have a target-rich environment. NOW, we devolve to your personal development. Are you fit? Have you taken the time (and money) to learn how to dress well? Do you have sufficient income? If you can’t answer yes to the last three questions, you’re a troll. Go away, because you have no control of all those areas which are extremely important to women.

    The first problem you’ll have (if you’re older) is there are very few eligible wives for you. Jesus made it clear that God will not accept an illegitimate divorce (Matthew 5:31-32), A state-court judge cannot issue an order of dissolution that invalidates God’s Word. She may be legally divorced, but according to 1st Cor. 7:10, she’s still married (separated). That’s an adultery offense if you choose to hook up with one of those women. So we recognize that there are very few eligible women available to marry once a man hits middle age. The women will scream about this, but there are two points. First, there is NOTHING in Scripture that gives the woman the right to divorce her husband (unless he’s the unbeliever who left her). Therefore, the marriage exists, but the husband has a way of escape in that he can take a second wife. Second, 1st Peter 3:1 says that the wife is to be in submission to her husband even if he is disobedient to the Word. Adultery is disobedience to the Word.

    Women have no excuse but there are very few eligible women out there.

    However, unicorn hunting is a waste of time. Find one you think will work and go to work. Dal doesn’t like it, but my opinion is polygyny is the only safe marriage a man can get today.

  256. Lyn87 says:

    Neo Conned (@neoconned):
    February 24, 2015 at 11:47 am

    Oh, lookie, another atheist, sex-pozzy, rad-fem, liberal has arrived to tell us know-nothings that we… know nothing… or something. At least her(?) name fits her well:

    Neo Conned.

    How apropos. Neo Conned, as in “Fooled by What is New.” Her name is practically a synonym for the logical fallacy known as “argumentum ad novitatem.

    She doesn’t believe in “bronze age” truths that have stood the test of time… nope, she’s neo conned, so she prefers to believe in the latest intellectual / social fads instead… that will be proved false before the ink is dry, like the ones that came before them.

  257. Novaseeker says:

    IBB, thanks. I don’t need to talk though, I need practical steps to alleviate anger, depression and bitterness. Talking only makes me angrier or more disheartened. I rant from time to time because it provides a release valve, that’s all. I have no solutions to this problem, I am entirely sure that there are so many people like me with the exact same problem but there is no help.

    There’s a couple reasons I’m angry and there isn’t a damn thing I can do to correct them. The anger is in response to the helplessness.

    Depression and anger are flipsides of the same coin — the difference is typically that depression is inwardly directed and anger is outwardly directed. They often have a similar basis — a feeling helplessness. A lot of people get to a point where they feel that way — it isn’t extremely uncommon or anything. But there are a few keys to getting out of that place.

    One is actual medical treatment. Depression (and its outward manifestation of anger) is a medical condition, and should be treated that way. It’s well worth getting at least a consultation about it.

    Another is moving away from feeling helpless towards feeling empowered. That doesn’t happen overnight, but it requires a series of small steps, taken one after the other, and a series of small successes. Life is never really wasted until it is over, and so there’s always the chance to start moving in a direction you want, and take more control over what’s happening in your life. It isn’t like you can waive a magic wand and fix everything that makes you feel helpless and angry in a day. You can’t. But what you can do is decide to move in a different direction, a direction you want to move in personally, and take small and regular steps in that direction. This helps to overcome, gradually, the sense of powerlessness which can lead to the kind of depression and anger you’re describing. Those steps don’t have to be in the direction of women or anything related to that — but they need to be steps in a direction you’d like your life to go realistically given your age and circumstances, and something you can make progress on in steps over the course of time. Focusing on that will help to gradually make you feel less helpless and more in control of what is happening, as you move in the direction you’ve chosen.

    When you have times of anger, physicality is a fairly good way to manage it — that is, working out, running, lifting weights, something physical which engages your body and allows you expend the energy that anger is creating within you in a way that dissipates the energy. This has the impact of taking that energy that was created by the anger and moving ito to something else, which in effect deprives the anger of energy, and helps it to dissipate. It’s a technique that many people who are struggling with anger and depression use regularly to great effect. In fact, it’s also generally recommended that anyone who suffers from depression should engage in some kind of regular workout if only to generate endorphins and reduce stress, both of which can help alleviate despressive feelings and symptoms.

    Of course, to do any of this, you’re going to have to *want* to do it yourself. Many people who suffer from depression do not really want it to go away — or, rather, do not want to do what it requires to go away, for various reasons, and it’s very difficult to make someone who is depressed get better if they aren’t committed to that themselves. So you have to be honest with yourself. But of you do want to get better, you can — it will take effort and work in a few areas, for which there’s medical and other help available, and will take time, but it can be done and millions of people have done it sucessfully.

  258. Opus says:

    ” There is nothing good or bad but thinking makes it so” Hamlet Act II Scene ii

  259. Anubis says:

    I am late to this party but I would like to point out that around the time the news broke that Rotherham UK cops& social workers admitted to ignoring the gang rapes of 1700+ indigenous little white girls by 3rd world moslems which no feminist made a peep of, feminists around the world stood up for a “good Christian girl” who was caught on video performing oral sex on 24 guys in a Magaluf bar during a “slut off” contest who later claimed to have been raped because the prize for the contest was a $7 mixed drink and not the approximately $2k treasure it was named after . It would be a brave man indeed who would marry her.

  260. Dalrock says:

    Feministhater,

    Novaseeker has good advice above, and I think it would be helpful if you reached out to Scott as he suggested. He isn’t trying to set you up in courtship. He is reaching out as a brother. If you like I can send him the email address in your login (but only with your permission). Either way, you are in my families prayers as well.

    What I will add is that it may not be clear that the reason we are concerned about your bitterness is what it is doing to you. It is poison, and it will consume you if you let it. I mentioned in a post on the topic a piece of Scripture that I find both very powerful and applicable. If you would indulge me, spend some time with John 21, especially starting with verse 15. Jesus confronts Peter for the first time since Peter denied Him as He predicted. After three rounds of “Do you love Me?” Peter is devastated, heart broken. He knows he failed Jesus terribly, and he has repented. All of us should be able to identify with Peter in this moment. We have all had to confront our own sins and repent of them. Now remember not just the pain of repentance, but the great peace that followed. For those you are bitter at, imagine that moment when they are (eventually) humbled as Peter, you, and I have all been. Empathize with them in their state of brokenness and pain, and wish for them not the pain they must endure but the peace which you and I both know can only come through repentance. This is love, and it is what we should have for our neighbors.

  261. Luke says:

    Laura says:
    February 23, 2015 at 1:44 pm
    @Earl, Scott & Yoda

    “If I were a guy, I would not want to be pressed by the church to do yardwork for a divorced woman or car repairs for a single-mother-by-choice.”

    Agreed.

    “And the “true widows” may actually be in a better financial situation than most married women of their age, so they shouldn’t be getting automatic assistance, either.”

    Agreed.

    “The bottom line is that a poorly-thought out “single mothers’ program” is worse than doing nothing at all. Probably the best thing that you could do for most of them would be to help them get a higher-paying job or information on whatever lower-cost housing options might be open to them, and help them put together a workable budget, while strictly limiting other types of help.”

    The traditional answer for mothers of bastards who cannot find a man to whom they can submit as a wife (and who will have even them) is this:

    1) put the bastards up for adoption if young;
    2) put the bastards into service if not young;
    3) put the sinful mother into a nunnery or the equivalent (humble hard-laboring job with low pay and NO access to alcohol/tobacco/drugs/travel/fancy possessions/ above all, any sex with men or admiration from men)
    4) ensure other young women see this as their likely fate should they fornicate and birth bastards.

  262. Scott says:

    Thanks D. My skills have atrophied quite a bit as a therapist, since I have become so specialized in forensics and administrative/military psych. But I sure hate to see this level of suffering.

    Some of FHs comments set off some alarm bells from a risk standpoint. He needs to talk to someone, if not me, anyone.

    The best kept secret about therapuetic outcomes is the strongest predictors of success have nothing to do with level of training. I could have 10 PhDs but if I don’t come accross as compassionate and caring for you the individual, you won’t get better.

    If you are reading between the lines that means a good friend who loves you and cares about you beats a trained psychologist who has no empathy, every time.

    Don’t close down and implode from anger. Just talk to someone you trust.

  263. fh, no one here is talking down to you or trying to belittle you. Dalrock, Scott, all of us, we are sympathetic. We are saying these things specifically because we care about you, we are worried you are going to hurt yourself (or do something far worse.) You are not alone even though you might feel that way.

  264. Minesweeper says:

    @FH, you can talk to me if you like, we are similar, you have experienced probably decades of rejection and abuse by people\church\gov etc…, and you are angry rightfully so, I can relate to that very strongly indeed. I don’t want to go into my circumstances but I had thoughts similar you yours this last weeks. If you are in discussions with Scott or whoever, then I wish you well.

    Let us know you are ok.

  265. Corvinus says:

    “First words out of an obese woman’s mouth when she’s frustrated with her lack of sexual interest on the part of men. Shame them for not being man enough to handle fat and sassiness.

”

    First words out of a non-Christian male who focuses on her fattiness. What does God say about beauty? “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”

    So, Christian men can talk all they want about not finding enough Christian tail—it’s there, it just might not be a 7, 8, 9, or 10. But the Christian woman will cook, clean, and make babies for you. Not good enough, I’m afraid.

    “What does Erika bring to the table to justify her desires?”

    She’s Christian. Enough said.

  266. Oscar says:

    Dalrock says:
    February 23, 2015 at 9:47 pm

    “We live in a society where feminist rebellion is openly celebrated. Women covet the status of men, and this is now institutionalized even for Christian women. Is there a line that you see here? Certainly some of the women going off on their own to do missionary work are doing so because they want to show that women can do everything men can do.”

    Surely that is the case for some. Unlike “feministhater” and “entropy is my god”, I understand that people have many motivations for their actions, and I don’t claim to know them all.

  267. Oscar says:

    feministhater says:
    February 24, 2015 at 9:28 am

    “Lyn, what is the matter? Do you feel the need to chastise? Are you judging?”

    So says the dude who made the following statement about my wife…

    feministhater says:
    February 23, 2015 at 1:40 am

    “I’m sure she enjoyed herself quite a bit and got her merit badge as well. Ah, you dated as well. Did she enamor with her tails of helping the black man and all his chillens?”

    Now, all of a sudden, judging is wrong. “feministhater” sure sounds like that which he hates.

    feministhater says:
    February 24, 2015 at 10:26 am

    “They have never cared one damn about me, these sisters in Christ, for years I tried but to no avail.”

    You can’t convince a woman to be your bride, so you slander mine. Did that make you feel better?

    feministhater says:
    February 24, 2015 at 11:47 am

    “I need practical steps to alleviate anger, depression and bitterness.”

    Apparently not.

    feministhater says:
    February 24, 2015 at 11:47 am

    “There’s a couple reasons I’m angry and there isn’t a damn thing I can do to correct them.”

    Here’s a clue: my wife isn’t one of them. Pour your bile in some other direction.

  268. Lyn87 says:

    Corvinus,

    I beg to differ. “Being Christian” is not necessarily enough – necessary but not sufficient. If it was, it would have to work both ways, all the “Erika’s” would already be married, not complaining about lack of dates. You see, the “Erika’s” are looking for more than “Christian” when they select a guy – they all have long lists of attributes before they’ll consent to a date themselves. Thus does the market come into being. When I was single I was a dweeb (early on), and evolved into a “good catch” as I bulked up a little, got a degree, got a macho career, got a sports car, and got some confidence. Suddenly a bunch of “Erika’s” who wouldn’t give me the time of day earlier wanted to be with me. I was a Christian when I was a scrawny student with no car and no game. Let me assure you that there was no pack of “Erika’s” knocking on my door.

    At one point toward the end of my search I got some blatant interest from a Christian girl… new convert. Very new convert. How new? She had a nine-month-old baby and was pregnant again when she found the Lord. I’m going to be honest: I didn’t even consider it for a moment. Why would I? I could do better, and I knew it. And she knew it too, but she gave it a shot. I don’t blame her for trying, but… seriously… no way.

    We don’t know what the Erika in the article is bringing to the table… we only know what she wants to get – a guy to pay attention to her while she spends a few years deciding what she wants to do. She wants a platonic boyfriend… a guy who will spend time and money on her in return for… well… nothing but the company of her “brilliant, wise, articulate and principled” self. But we all know what that means: she’s probably overweight, and let’s be honest: she’s probably pretty light in the brilliant, wise, articulate and principled departments as well. Sex is off the table, and the relationship she’s offering isn’t anything like a betrothal, so sex isn’t even a “later” thing. So… what does Erika bring to the table to justify her desire for the kind of relationship she’s seeking – platonic boyfriend to entertain her, validate her, and buy her stuff? I don’t know, but the description of her doesn’t look promising. If I were single and saw an “Erika,” what would prompt me to date her under those circumstances? What will she do that any of my guy friends won’t do without expecting me to foot the bill for it?

    But even if she’s looking for marriage (which she is not), isn’t there more to it than “Christian?” Is the list really only one item long? If it is, then any middle-aged Christian man ought to be able to walk into any Young Adult Group, pick out the prettiest single girl, and marry her on the spot. Both Christian, right? “Enough said,” or does that only apply to what men have to settle for?

  269. thedeti says:

    Corvinus:

    A woman isn’t entitled to affection, attention, commitment, or anything else from a man, simply because she’s Christian. She has to attract the man, and to do that she has to be PHYSICALLY attractive. She can complain all she wants about how unfair that is, but that’s how it is.

    Similarly, a man isn’t entitled to sex from any woman, merely because he’s Christian. Moreover, he’s not entitled to sex or anything else merely because he’s nice, kind, good, or willing to offer commitment. He has to attract the woman, and to do that he has to bring looks, confidence and dominance. He can complain all he wants about how unfair that is, but that’s how it is. I’d also add that women give men no quarter and no breaks on this, either – many a relationship and many a marriage have been ended because he didn’t bring the alpha. That’s not fair either, but it’s reality.

    So it is for women – if she isn’t willing to offer what a man wants, then she can’t express surprise or indignation when she can’t get what she wants.

  270. thedeti says:

    And, what Lyn87 said too. Much better than I did.

  271. Boxer says:

    I’ve always liked feministhater. He’s a bit rough, fo sho, but, round these parts, many bros have been put through the wringer by faggot family court judges and bitter, screwball ex-wives. I don’t judge.

    The man’s all right to me.

  272. Lyn87 says:

    Deti writes,

    “She has to attract the man, and to do that she has to be PHYSICALLY attractive. She can complain all she wants about how unfair that is, but that’s how it is.”

    And

    “…if she isn’t willing to offer what a man wants, then she can’t express surprise or indignation when she can’t get what she wants.”

    Her willingness is key. Honestly, it’s not that hard for women. One the things we know is that men have lower standards for attraction than women do. Most men find a large percentage of women sufficiently attractive, while most women only find about 20% of men attractive. If a woman just manages to stay thin and grow her hair out she will be above the “attraction floor” for most men. Except in extreme cases, both of those things are 100% under her control. Simply put, “ugly” is usually the utterly predictable result of a long series of choices for the vast majority of women who are ugly. It’s not that they want to be ugly, its that they are unwilling to do the things that would make them more attractive.

    If “Erika” expends a fraction of the effort I do at the gym and with my diet (and she’s as great as the article says she is), and makes herself approachable, she’ll almost certainly garner all the attention she could want… probably more than she wants (caveat: unless she’s fishing in a very small pond). If she learns how to flirt a little and doesn’t try exclusively for guys who are “out of her league,” she certainly will. With a 7-to-10 waist-to-hip ratio and shoulder-length hair, she’d be at least in the seven range (if for no other reason than that most of her “competition” is clinically obese). If she’s even reasonably pleasant, has decent hygiene, applies a little make-up, and dresses like a woman rather than a lumberjack, she will almost certainly receive offers. Every one of those things is 100% within her control.

  273. Hipster Racist says:

    Most fathers these days – including church-going Christian fathers, it seems, would rather their teenage daughter have casual sex at 16 than marry at 18.

    This is especially a problem with fathers who don’t have a son – they want to masculinize their daughter and turn her into the son they never had.

    Casual sex at 16 with multiple boyfriends is fine – marriage at 18 and motherhood a year later is a tragedy.

    What is wrong with fathers these days?

  274. Boxer says:

    Hipster Racist:

    This is really an interesting point.

    Most fathers these days – including church-going Christian fathers, it seems, would rather their teenage daughter have casual sex at 16 than marry at 18.

    I think it’s the mothers that do this rather than the fathers. The mothers of these girls seem to want to vicariously experience all the attention and strange dick that daughter gets.

    The fathers probably seem to hold their noses, helpless to put their collective foot down by punitive alimony and domestic violence codes. For the women and their girls, there are no downsides. They’re prodded in the direction of sluttery by the ideological apparatus (including the religious section).

    It seems like I’m being unfair to women here, but it’s my experience, and I’m sticking to it until I see evidence otherwise.

    Boxer

  275. Dale says:

    @Artisanal Toad
    >Years ago I started a MDiv program and after a year ditched the whole thing. They were way too PC for me.

    Interesting. Similar with me, except I cancelled after completing 1 year’s worth because they were too religious, rather than because they were too PC. I prefer Biblical to religious; Matt 15:1-9, Matt 23, etc. I explained this to the Dean of Theology when I decided to stop taking classes. Don’t think it helped, unfortunately.

    Re your mentioned passage, Ecc 7:27-29: Damn, that is a depressing passage. I’ll have to read the book to get that in context for a better understanding, although the chapter mentioned the “woman who is a snare”, so perhaps the author has immoral women in mind. Although the “found … among a thousand” suggests searching, or at least observing those around himself, and presumably he was not deliberately searching among the immoral. Otherwise it would be unsurprising to find only one righteous man.

  276. earl says:

    ‘But even if she’s looking for marriage (which she is not), isn’t there more to it than “Christian?”

    Yes…but if you are a believer I would say being Christian is the minimum requirement for marriage.

  277. earl says:

    ‘It’s not that they want to be ugly, its that they are unwilling to do the things that would make them more attractive.’

    True…ugliness is more of a sign of laziness more than anything.

    That not only goes for physical appearance that also goes for personality. It’s a lot easier to spew bile and hate than to make an effort to be pleasant, positive, and uplifting.

  278. Corvinus says:

    Lyn87 and thedeti, the bulk of your post focused on outside beauty, rather than inside beauty. Is that what God intended? It has been only recently that Christian men have been demanding that their Christian women look a certain way. That is the sin of modernity, or so I have been told. Back in the good ol’ days, marriages were arranged. Appearance and looks were secondary. Just sayin’…

  279. earl says:

    ‘Is that what God intended?’

    No. The whole notion of modernity is to make everything about appearance and forget about the essence. If women focused on the essence then they would become beautiful from the inside-out.

    Likewise, I want women to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly garments, but rather by means of good works, as is proper for women making a claim to godliness. A woman must quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness. But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve. And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being deceived, fell into transgression. But women will be preserved through the bearing of children if they continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint. 1 Tim 2:9-15

  280. Novaseeker says:

    Lyn87 and thedeti, the bulk of your post focused on outside beauty, rather than inside beauty. Is that what God intended? It has been only recently that Christian men have been demanding that their Christian women look a certain way. That is the sin of modernity, or so I have been told. Back in the good ol’ days, marriages were arranged. Appearance and looks were secondary. Just sayin’…

    Well, today marriages aren’t arranged. And in a situation where (1) people choose their own spouse and (2) people can leave a marriage at any time for no reason, it’s foolish to marry someone without there being lots of strong physical attraction as a baseline. It’s a very strong baseline to keep people glued together over the course of things. Of course, it can’t be the *only* thing — there has to be strong character, shared values and life goals, compatibilities in key areas, as well as many other things that are Christian-specific. But the idea that Christians should demote the importance of strong, raw, physical attraction is really a recipe for dissatisfaction and divorce in a world where people are free to choose and free to leave. We can say “well they aren’t Christian anyway if they do that”, and that’s fine, but the fact remains that there are more than a fair few quite devout Christians going into a marriage who end up getting divorced. Lowering the chances of that is critical, especially as a man given how the current system jacks men up when they get divorced.

    So, no, looks aren’t all that matters, but they do — and should, in this environment — matter for a lot. Other factors need to be taken into consideration, but the idea that looks should be de-emphasized is asking for trouble.

  281. earl says:

    ‘people can leave a marriage at any time for no reason’

    Which to me means that their character means as much if not more than their looks. If they think marriage is just another boyfriend…it doesn’t matter how much physical attraction you have.

  282. Novaseeker says:

    Which to me means that their character means as much if not more than their looks. If they think marriage is just another boyfriend…it doesn’t matter how much physical attraction you have.

    Temptation matters.

  283. Lyn87 says:

    Corvinus,

    I don’t think that a woman has to be a HB8 or higher to be worthy of attention. But I do think that a woman ought to not be a land-whale, or have tattoos, or a butch haircut. Like I wrote, pretty much any woman can get herself into the HB7 range just by taking normal care of herself… not being a pig at the table, not sitting on her butt all day, not getting inked up, not chopping her hair off, not dressing like a lumberjack, not wearing a scowl like it’s a Congressional Medal of Honor. Note that none of those things really requires her to do much of anything: they just require that she have enough respect for herself and her man to refrain from doing things that actively make her ugly. I don’t think that’s too much to ask – especially since it is far easier for an average woman to make herself attractive to most men than it is for an average man to make himself attractive to most women. But you didn’t answer my question: are you equally willing to tell young Christian women who have worked hard to make themselves into “good catches” that they are not permitted to have standards other than “is Christian?” God tells us not to worry about appearance, but He also tells us not to worry about all sorts of things, like height and money. Do you castigate women who would never date a man who’s 4’11” tall? After all, most (if not all) of the Christian women you know would not. Do you have a problem with all the articles and sermons telling men that they need to “be responsible” and show that they are “good providers” to become worthy the “Erika’s” in their midst? If not, why not? After all, Jesus said this in the Sermon on the Mount:

    Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment? Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith? Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

    If a woman has the right to withhold affection from a man who is short through no fault of his own, or even one who makes no effort to make himself financially attractive, then a man has a right to withhold affection from a woman who deliberately does things that make her physically unattractive. Right? You can take my word, or the word of almost any guy here, for this: women do not cut men much slack when it comes to their laundry list of required attributes. Fortunately I married very well, but the fact that I’m 5’7″ means that if I were single a very large percentage of women (including a large percentage of the “Erika’s” in churches complaining about lack of male attention) would have nothing to do with me. And unlike weight, I have no control over how tall I am.

    And as for the “old days” of arranged marriages, a man had to prove himself worthy of marriage by demonstrating an ability to support a family. But… when he got a woman it was to be expected that she would do what she’s told without compliant (including if he told her to stop eating so much). He also got to send her back if she wasn’t a virgin (most “Erika’s” are not virgins). He also got a woman who would bear his children, cook his meals, clean his house, and have sex without complaint. Does “Christian Erika” bring all that to the table? No – she just wants a guy (and not just any guy, trust me) to be her arm candy and buy her stuff until she decides that she’s accumulated enough feminist merit badges to settle down as she nears the end of her prime years of fertility and youth.

    If she wants is a man, and the only legitimate criterion is “is Christian,” she could have one tomorrow. There is no shortage of older, hurting, broken men sitting in the pews of inner-city mission churches who would probably love to have a “sweet young thing” like Erika in their life. They’re as Christian as she is: why doesn’t she look there? Or are women not required to abandon standards like you think men are required to?

  284. earl says:

    ‘Temptation matters.’

    Physical attraction isn’t thrown by the wayside…but if you are talking marriage then the character is just as important if not much more. The character of most of today’s women makes them ugly even if they were blessed with great physical beauty.

  285. Renee Harris says:

    I meant to ask this here: Is it wrong for virgin woman to want virgin husband? What is overweight for. 5’3? We’re do widowers hang out?

  286. Novaseeker says:

    Physical attraction isn’t thrown by the wayside…but if you are talking marriage then the character is just as important if not much more. The character of most of today’s women makes them ugly even if they were blessed with great physical beauty.

    Again, I clearly said that looks aren’t all that matters. What I am taking issue with is the post above which claims that being a devout Christian is all that matters — it isn’t, either for men or for women, when it comes to marriage and mating. Everyone knows this.

  287. Lyn87 says:

    Renee, unless the other person is a widow/widower, it is not wrong for anyone to want a virgin spouse. My wife asked me if I was when we started to get serious, and she would have dumped me if I had not been. I asked her the same question right back, of course. Understand that you’re limiting your options if you do that (just like men do), but if you want to insist on that, that is a legitimate choice.

    As for what constitutes “overweight” try this chart for the appropriate weight range depending on your build. The way to tell what your build is is easy. Using your thumb and middle finger, wrap them around your wrist right at the wrist-bone. If they overlap you have a small frame. If they touch you have a medium frame. If they don’t touch you have a large frame. Another way is to divide your waist measurement by your hip measurement. The quotient should be around 0.7. If it’s much more than that you’re too big, and if it’s much less than that you’re too skinny.

    As for where widowers hang out, I can’t help with that. Since very few women die in childbirth in first-world countries any more, young widowers are not nearly as common as they used to be.

  288. earl says:

    ‘Is it wrong for virgin woman to want virgin husband? ‘

    No.

    ‘What is overweight for. 5’3?’

    According to what you get on the internet…anything over 138.

  289. Lyn87 says:

    Physical attraction isn’t thrown by the wayside…but if you are talking marriage then the character is just as important if not much more. The character of most of today’s women makes them ugly even if they were blessed with great physical beauty.

    She ain’t pretty she just looks that way – The Northern Pikes.

    I had two jobs, I had dishwater hands
    And on the weekend in a rock ‘n’ roll band
    One Friday night in my hometown bar
    In walked a girl who looked like a movie star

    She stared at me and it was turning me on
    She said she worked in a beauty salon
    I heard a voice inside me say
    She ain’t pretty, she just looks that way

    We made a date to go for a drink
    I wore my jeans and she wore a mink
    There was this misconception all over town
    That she ate lonely guy heart by the pound

    She said “Take me home, there won’t be no fuss”
    I said “Sure you got some change for the bus”
    Watching her leave I heard the bartender say
    “She ain’t pretty, she just looks that way”

    So, I called her up, her father was home
    “Son, she’s busy she can’t come to the phone”
    I held my breath then decided to wait
    A guy like me doesn’t get many dates

    I fell in love with a model from hell
    It took some time for my hormones to tell
    That chasing her has been a grave mistake
    She ain’t pretty, she just looks that way

    Her ego wrote checks incredibly fast
    But her personality didn’t have the cash
    I laughed out loud to my total dismay
    She ain’t pretty, she just looks that way
    She ain’t pretty, she just looks that way

    She ain’t pretty
    She ain’t pretty
    She ain’t pretty
    She ain’t pretty, she just looks that way

  290. theasdgamer says:

    New post up on breaking emotional bonds. Works for beating Oneitis and for breaking up with gf’s.

  291. theasdgamer says:

    @ Corvinus

    Lyn87 and thedeti, the bulk of your post focused on outside beauty, rather than inside beauty. Is that what God intended? It has been only recently that Christian men have been demanding that their Christian women look a certain way. That is the sin of modernity, or so I have been told. Back in the good ol’ days, marriages were arranged. Appearance and looks were secondary. Just sayin’…

    Yeah, beauty is irrelevant because men care about it, and men’s attraction cues are irrelevant and inconvenient for women. This you have been told in spades by…feminism. In this context, the phrase “sin of modernity” is propaganda by churchian feminists. You will notice that there is almost no preaching on the Song of Solomon in churches anymore, despite the fact that it has a lot to say about romantic love. When it is discussed, it is carefully sanitized and spiritualized to make it acceptable to churchian feminists.

  292. theasdgamer says:

    @ Corvinus

    Back in the good ol’ days, marriages were arranged.

    Still are in many 3rd world countries. And the prospective bride and groom have veto power.

  293. anonymous_ng says:

    @Renee Harris – ‘What is overweight for. 5’3?’

    My rule of thumb is that a woman should be no more than twice her height in inches, so 5’3″ is 63″, twice that is 126#.

    For men, use three times height. So, a man who is 5’10” is 70″ tall, three times that is 210#.

  294. Lyn87 says:

    Renee,

    The chart I linked is pretty severe – you will be lean if you’re in the range specified. You don’t have to be that lean to be “not fat.” And your BMI matters as well. For example, I’m 5’7″ and I weighed 164.9 pounds this morning. I have a small-to-medium frame. Based on that chart I am grossly overweight (about 20 pounds)… but I’m not. My BMI is well within the “healthy” range because I have a good muscle-to-fat ratio (I work out most days: both lifting and cardio, plus karate twice a week). So it’s not JUST height-versus-weight. If I was 20 pounds lighter than I am I would be unhealthily underweight, and probably a lot weaker.

    I used to know a girl who was quite petite and weighed 140 pounds – “clinically obese” for her height. But she was an avid bicyclist and overall fitness nut. She looked “normal,” maybe even a little on the slender side, but muscle is 18% more dense than fat, so she wasn’t overweight by any rational definition.

    So you have to consider BMI and measurements. Simple height-weight charts are a place to start, but not a place to finish.

  295. Hank Flanders says:

    Lyn87

    One the things we know is that men have lower standards for attraction than women do. Most men find a large percentage of women sufficiently attractive, while most women only find about 20% of men attractive.

    That OKCupid study, which showed women rated 80% of men as below average, gives us some insight into this dynamic, but anecdotal evidence tells us the same. I was actually experiencing extreme depression and stress due to the realization of this fact, so much to the point that I decided to let my match account lapse after receiving more silent rejections than I would have ever expected. I’m of average looks and average height, which I thought would have been good enough with a professional job, an attractive personality, and a decently in shape body. It’s not, though, not even close.

    Besides, before my recent online dating site ordeal, I always thought of myself as at least slightly above average in looks, but as it was described in that article that Yoda linked to above from the alphagame plan blog, a male six is really not much better than a one. If that’s the way it is, then that’s the way it is. I just don’t know why women are so adamant that it isn’t this way, though.

    When I was younger, I remember my mom telling me that (unlike men?) women are more concerned with what’s inside, but she was coming from the perspective of a different generation. (She was born in the 50s). Was what she said ever really true of women in general? What proof do people have that it’s true anymore?

  296. BradA says:

    The chart I linked is pretty severe – you will be lean if you’re in the range specified.

    I was going to comment on that Lyn. I doubt I will ever be that lean, but I do want to get closer.

  297. Lyn87 says:

    BradA writes, “I doubt I will ever be that lean, but I do want to get closer.

    My wife and finally settled on something that’s working for us. Like everyone else, both of us have medical predispositions toward certain things, and every time we fixed one problem we ended up exacerbating a different one. This article spells out what’s wrong with most of what we grew up learning about nutrition.* Although he doesn’t say so, my takeaway from all this is that when we eat like God designed our bodies to eat, things stay in pretty good balance, but when we don’t do that we are courting problem.

    I also ramped up my cardio a bit, and started a fairly aggressive lifting program last fall.

    So basically we shifted to a modified paleo diet. I say modified because I’ve discovered that a radical change where I just stop doing something I love isn’t going to last… so my watchword is moderation. And… I don’t eat on when the clock tells me to – I eat when my body tells me to. I used to have a terrible sweet tooth, but now that I don’t indulge it all the time I’ve lost most of my cravings for simple carbs. The downside was that it was making my blood pressure inch up as I switched from “sweet” to “savory.” I caught it right away and reduced my sodium intake. Yesterday my BP was 120/79: perfect.

    Eating paleo doesn’t mean eating grass clippings, either. My wife makes excellent dishes with simple ingredients and spices. I haven’t felt this good for this long in a long time, and within another month or two I hope to be down to the “fighting weight” that I had in Afghanistan more than a decade ago.
    __________

    * I find it amusing that pretty much everything in the “science” books I grew up with has been discarded. Basically the only “science” left standing is the periodic table, and even it has had new elements added since then. Yet another reason to not be perturbed when someone starts spouting off about how macro-evolution is “settled science.” Future historians will look back on macro-evolution the way we look at alchemy.

  298. Artisanal Toad says:

    @Dale
    Re your mentioned passage, Ecc 7:27-29: Damn, that is a depressing passage. I’ll have to read the book to get that in context for a better understanding, although the chapter mentioned the “woman who is a snare”, so perhaps the author has immoral women in mind. Although the “found … among a thousand” suggests searching, or at least observing those around himself, and presumably he was not deliberately searching among the immoral. Otherwise it would be unsurprising to find only one righteous man.

    The point is women scream “NAWALT” but the Bible says “all women ARE like that.” If Proverbs 31 is the ideal woman, isn’t it interesting that nobody ever talks about Job 29 being the ideal man? God, sitting on His throne said “Have you considered my servant Job? There is none like him.” It is an interesting study to compare and contrast the two passages. Got into it recently with a couple of older (married) church harridans. I continue to be amazed at the power of having passages of Scripture memorized and being able to shut them down with an on-point quote.

    I’ve found that 1st Timothy 2:15 is an amazing verse because it lays down a hard NT doctrine with respect to the role of women. Contrast with Romans 1:26 and Genesis 2:24. The natural function of women is to be married and under the authority of her husband, making babies. Bring in Ephesians 5:22-24 and 1st Peter 3:1. If they try to take the “Ephesians 5;21 is the context” argument, point out that no, that argument got shot down by God in Numbers 16.

    Feminism is all about re-defining men and rejecting the natural function of women. In rejecting that, women and the men who support their efforts are leading women down the path to doom. The only way to deal with that is to apply the sword of the Word. Can’t do that unless you know it, but a serious study of the Word means that some sacred cows and perfumed pigs will get thrown on the BBQ.

    Throw in the socio-sexual and political-psychological issues and the question of “Why isn’t she getting enough dates?” is easily answered. It’s because she’s rejected the natural function of being a woman and wants something else. Yes, AWALT.

  299. Corvinus,

    I doubt you’ll ever respond to this (as there is a bit of a lecturing and a refusal to debate tone in your language) and you’ll probably never be back, but here goes. “What does Erika bring to the table to justify her desires?”

    She’s Christian. Enough said.

    Christians marry. Erika has made no indication that she is the least bit interested in this. She just wants men to ask her out on dates and entertain her. She just wants guys she is not really interested in to spend money on her. That is not Christian. Enough said.

    Lyn87 and thedeti, the bulk of your post focused on outside beauty, rather than inside beauty.

    What is inside beauty? That sounds like a codeword for butt ugly. The way a person is on the inside is all attitude. A woman can control if she wants to be a b-tch or not. Anyone can have inside beauty.

    Is that what God intended? It has been only recently that Christian men have been demanding that their Christian women look a certain way. That is the sin of modernity, or so I have been told. Back in the good ol’ days, marriages were arranged. Appearance and looks were secondary. Just sayin’…

    Back in the good ole days, women didn’t have $100K of debt, obeyed their husbands in all things, and were virgin before their marriage was arranged. All these women are gone forever. As is marriage 1.0 where you couldn’t just frivorce your spouse the moment you were unhappy. Just saying…

    You can’t have only parts of this and disregard the pieces of history that you don’t like.

    Many of the men here are terribly short. Some are just ugly men. Some aren’t bright enough to secure a meaningful higher education that will given them professional earning power. Christian women are hypergamous enough to avoid them, outright. Do you condone or condemn their behavior? Because if you condone it then condone these men for writing off whatever Christian women they want… for whatever reason… or no reason.

  300. Gunner Q says:

    Hank Flanders @ 11:10 am:
    “When I was younger, I remember my mom telling me that (unlike men?) women are more concerned with what’s inside, but she was coming from the perspective of a different generation. (She was born in the 50s). Was what she said ever really true of women in general? What proof do people have that it’s true anymore?”

    I’ve been thinking on this lately. Our fallen natures mean we have to be trained to be proper or even just decent human beings. Women back in the day were raised well, being taught to value honest and hardworking men, and that is no longer true. It’s that simple.

    Women always wanted jerks but were taught to like Steady Eddy just as men always wanted DTF Debbie but were taught to like one-and-done marriages. It’s Godly and, in the long run, healthy & happy, but any system based on restraining one’s natural impulses is obviously unstable.

    Doesn’t take a hard push to knock that train off its rails. So, AWALT but they can learn to be better… but after childhood, it’s a rare effort.

  301. Novaseeker says:

    That OKCupid study, which showed women rated 80% of men as below average, gives us some insight into this dynamic, but anecdotal evidence tells us the same. I was actually experiencing extreme depression and stress due to the realization of this fact, so much to the point that I decided to let my match account lapse after receiving more silent rejections than I would have ever expected. I’m of average looks and average height, which I thought would have been good enough with a professional job, an attractive personality, and a decently in shape body. It’s not, though, not even close.

    Besides, before my recent online dating site ordeal, I always thought of myself as at least slightly above average in looks, but as it was described in that article that Yoda linked to above from the alphagame plan blog, a male six is really not much better than a one. If that’s the way it is, then that’s the way it is. I just don’t know why women are so adamant that it isn’t this way, though.

    When I was younger, I remember my mom telling me that (unlike men?) women are more concerned with what’s inside, but she was coming from the perspective of a different generation. (She was born in the 50s). Was what she said ever really true of women in general? What proof do people have that it’s true anymore?

    Online dating is a bad deal for any man who is not very, very physically attractive. It’s more like a nightclub/singles bar type environment. You can do ok if you pass that threshold, but otherwise not so much. Only the very good looking men are going to excel at online dating so I wouldn’t worry that much about it — it’s a tool for women more than for men.

    For us, it makes more sense to find a context in which you have a link to a woman and she experiences an attractive aspect of you in that context — that doesn’t happen in an online profile apart from men who are obviously very good looking (not male 6s, but 8+). In a different context, with a different way of expressing attractive aspects, you can do a lot better as a male 6 than you’ll ever do in online dating, where women are literally bombarded with messages and therefore can be, and are, extremely selective.

  302. Renee Harris says:

    “Some aren’t bright enough to secure a meaningful higher education that will given them professional earning power”
    Oh bull! I’m stupider than-all of the men on the blog and I have a BA of speech Communication. By virtue of being a man, one is smarter than me College is not necessary to make money .
    Ungodly ambition changes things But in reality, the job I have now it just to get me out of debt. I would love to quit. But the money is too good.
    If I am never to marry, I refuse to be a burden on my father’s finances. And I want my own kitchen
    If a man chooses not to get a Government approved education, then a woman should respects that choice. But every man on here is smarter than I am so they can get a degree if they want one. It’s not hard: The worst class I took was with the feminist prof. and it with my comm theory that with the bitch… But because my reading is so poor and was taking another Reading intensive literature class.#dumb planing
    Oh I coach speech from my alma mater and The year after I graduated we had a nontraditional student in his 50s. Unlike marriage for twenty something girls , it never to late be college graduate and it’ll put you in contact with younger women you want to marry

  303. Elspeth says:

    This might help Erika or others like her:

    http://www.amazon.com/Find-Husband-After-35-Business/dp/0345466268

    I haven’t read it, as I was a married mother of a 13-year-old by the time I was 35.

  304. thedeti says:

    I have found that Ivy League MBAs don’t make the best relationship advisors, in my experience.

  305. Hank Flanders says:

    Novaseeker

    Only the very good looking men are going to excel at online dating so I wouldn’t worry that much about it — it’s a tool for women more than for men.

    Thanks, yeah, I’ve been feeling a lot better since I’ve no longer been able to log into my match account. I’ve still got the ChristianMingle account, but I’m not very active on it, so its presence doesn’t really affect me that much.

    For us, it makes more sense to find a context in which you have a link to a woman and she experiences an attractive aspect of you in that context — that doesn’t happen in an online profile apart from men who are obviously very good looking (not male 6s, but 8+). In a different context, with a different way of expressing attractive aspects, you can do a lot better as a male 6 than you’ll ever do in online dating, where women are literally bombarded with messages and therefore can be, and are, extremely selective.

    You’re probably right, but it seems that the better looking women who are active on those sites aren’t just “very selective.” If they were, they should be able to select somebody within a short amount of time, considering how many messages they get every day.

    The one woman who actually did respond to me and talked to me for a couple of weeks before she stopped responding my to texts and emails said she got 40-50 messages per day on match. She wasn’t even the most gorgeous woman I messaged on there either. I considered her about a seven with her makeup on, although she was probably a good bit less without it. She said she had been on the site for nearly a year, so in one year, she should have gotten over 14,000 messages (40*365=14,600) using the daily number she gave.

    Let’s consider that her experience is about average for any woman who is in her 20s and is not deformed, obese, or has kids. Therefore, you’d think that statistically, a woman who receives over a thousand messages per month would be able to find a good guy who also meets her looks threshold within a few weeks, let alone a few months or years. If she’s not, then surely, her standards are unreasonably high, or she’s just not serious about finding a husband, right?

  306. Novaseeker says:

    Let’s consider that her experience is about average for any woman who is in her 20s and is not deformed, obese, or has kids. Therefore, you’d think that statistically, a woman who receives over a thousand messages per month would be able to find a good guy who also meets her looks threshold within a few weeks, let alone a few months or years. If she’s not, then surely, her standards are unreasonably high, or she’s just not serious about finding a husband, right?

    I think what it means is this: when you have ten opportunities, you have to pick one of ten. When you have a hundred opportunities, you have to pick one of a hundred, so you sift more. When you have 14000 opportunities, you have to pick let’s say one per week, which is 52. 52/14600 = .004.

    It’s just the numbers. Even to get to the top one per week, on an annual basis you are in her top .004. Does not work for all but the hottest men.

  307. anonymous_ng says:

    Hank/Novaseeker, that all presumes that she’s actually serious about choosing, and that she’s not just freebasing on the attention.

    I tell my kids that relationships are like buying a house. The first time you buy a house, you don’t know to look for light switches behind doors and things like this that you end up hating about your first house, but when you buy your second house, you’re darned sure going to make sure there are none of those things you hate.

    Once you’ve owned a dozen houses, you’ve got a pretty darned big list of deal beakers. At that point, you might as well buy new.

    Back when I was first separated, I used to hang out on the forums at Plenty Of Fish and I noticed that lots of people had a laundry list of deal breakers than in the end amounted to them wanting to find someone who would fit seamlessly into their life with no changes on their part.

    So, you’ve got the women who can’t get enough of the attention which is supported by the laundry list of deal breakers.

    It’s a wonder anyone ever gets married from online.

  308. tz says:

    @feministhater – I can both understand and sympathize. I’ve been and still am there. Sometimes you just want the pain to stop, and nothing brings joy because every time something good happens it is turned into a bad experience. Good things happen seemingly only to bring a worse pain out of it. It is like if every time you were offered candy, it turned out to be a joke so that everything sweet ended up causing a disaster. A habanero or wasabi, or even just styrofoam covered in chocolate. At some point you won’t want to take anymore chances on candy and associate sweetness with pain so want to avoid it altogether. God is there and this is part of the mysteries of the cross (which I might explain later), and what is Divine Mercy. There are “victim souls” – who suffer because the world is evil. The salt and light that doesn’t fail.

    @scott The best kept secret about therapuetic outcomes is the strongest predictors of success have nothing to do with level of training. I could have 10 PhDs but if I don’t come accross as compassionate and caring for you the individual, you won’t get better.

    I know your intentions are good, but you only have a fixed amount of emotional and time capital.

    I also know you probably meant something different that what you said, but it provides me a jumping off point for the issue.

    (In general, not to any specific comment or post or person)

    This is one of the critical problems: You don’t actually have to be compassionate and caring, you just need to come across that way. But you either really are or really aren’t caring and when it is the latter, the pain of yet another betrayal is added when the wound reopens because it is merely closed, not healed.

    FH asked for practical things. Sometimes it is simple, sometimes not, but I will call this one thing out – when someone is suffering and needs aid, compassion is to give the aid on the victim’s terms – what the victim needs, not what is convenient for you to provide or even what you want to provide. Otherwise they are more like a “patient”, an object that you are fixing, not a person. And often the “love” is far from unconditional – “I’ll help you if you will…”. Or dispense quick and costless advice with no responsibility. Or judgmentalism – they must have done something to cause their situation so they deserve their suffering. (I’m guilty of being on this side too, I think everyone has).

    You cannot heal suffering you won’t feel. Christ descended so we may all ascend. He suffered everything we suffered and more, and was totally innocent. He sacrificed. We generally don’t – we give out of a surplus (and I mean in all forms including emotionally), not like the widow and her mite. We pretend, and may even do lots of things, but is it because it is what I want to do it, not because although I don’t want to do it, it is the right thing, and I may get hurt and not get any visible reward in this life.

    There are enough unsaved and hurting people right in your neighborhood. But it takes something different. It is easy to build a water system somewhere in Africa. Missionary? Even when it isn’t tourism, there is something perverse about the desire to help people in remote areas when there is no shortage of people needing help locally. It is far more difficult to help someone on your own street, since that means getting to know that person as a person, and feeling his pain, and sympathizing, and maybe finding something practical that can be done, and often it can be some very small things done with great love. And some sinners won’t be saved – and you might end up weeping with Jesus.

    The internet might be great, but it only exposes the fragmentation. I’m now in a strange city where I have no friends, where I’m going to the least-bad liturgy I can find, I don’t feel at home in any of the churches, and when bad things happen I have to absorb all the hurt myself. But I’ve been doing that for years. I don’t think of “church” as a place I can seek any help. It is simply somewhere I have to go to do my Sunday and holy day obligation duty.

    While this blog and others is focused on marriage, the bigger picture is the Church is supposed to be a community. “One Body” known because “We love (agape) on another”. Where people help each other. One of my libertarian complaints is that the church now says go to the government if you are suffering. Sign up for Obamacare. Or for that card that replaced food stamps. (Aside – irony: I had to arrange and pay for the catering for both my parent’s wakes – there wasn’t even the overworked “funeral sandwich lady” or even people pooling cash to just buy it). There is no amount or kind of suffering (short of actual demonic possession, but that doesn’t happen today – right?) that the churchians won’t be able to find some uncaring, amoral, dispassionate bureaucrat to refer the person to. And “We’ll be praying for you”. See James 2:16.

    That is an interesting and ironic effect of feminism on churches. Where feminization might be thought of as being more caring, more relating, more “heart”, instead it is a shallow feel-good system that ejects anyone that really needs help. So if there is a charity, its purpose is to make the congregation feel good, not do any actual good.

    You can say you want to help people, but what you may really mean is that you wish to see them helped. Remember the story of “The Good Samaritan”. He had nothing to gain in helping the victim and actually suffered in order to help him.

    And the solution is both simple and incredibly difficult. When someone is hurting like the victim in the parable, you must be the Good Samaritan. Love thy neighbor. You may not know their name but they are not anonymous. If you wish to image Christ, it has a chance of ending on the cross. But the worst possible thing is to start with good intentions to minister to someone, and then abandon them – even if you don’t want to or intend to. How much will that tower cost to build? Doctors usually insure they will be able to complete the operation before cutting the patient open. Adding abandonment or betrayal to someone already suffering makes it that much worse – even if it is a “can’t” instead of a “won’t” continue.

    If we ever return to a healthy, unified body of Christ that is the church, there won’t be that risk because there will be many people around all willing to help sacrificially. But we are not there.

    So I’m not impressed with “offers to help” since they rarely come from true agape – a willful decision to love the person regardless and anything else will follow. Instead there will be strings, limits, constraints, or sometimes just the impossibility of being effective at a distance or given the circumstances which are well known ahead of time. But then what is the point of the offer?

    I rarely offer to help, but if and when I do, it is done with the full consent of the will to see it through even if the costs become high (much like if I ever find a wife when I will say “I do”).

  309. Hank Flanders says:

    Anonymous_ng, the attention factor that you mention is one reason I don’t like the free sites. There’s that and the fact that the person setting up the profile could be anyone, so there’s little point investing the time in messaging people who may not even be real. Now, granted, you don’t have to pay to set up an account on match, but you do in order to send or read messages, and since you can verify whether someone can read your messages, you can verify that they have a paid account if they have. I’d say most of messages were read, which meant the majority of the women I messaged were paying members. I think people are likely to be more serious about finding someone if they are paying for the service, especially now that there are free sites like OKC and POF for people who just want an ego boost. Does that make sense?

  310. therhoubbhe says:

    @Elspeth

    That book is only rated 3 stars and has quite a few one star reviews to offset the five star reviews.

    I found a cheaper and higher star rated book on Amazon for the over 35 career woman;

    http://www.amazon.com/Cat-Training-Easy-behavior-problems/dp/1499714890/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1424912040&sr=1-4&keywords=picking+a+cat

  311. anonymous_ng says:

    @Hank,
    I’d say most of messages were read, which meant the majority of the women I messaged were paying members. I think people are likely to be more serious about finding someone if they are paying for the service, especially now that there are free sites like OKC and POF for people who just want an ego boost. Does that make sense?

    Makes total sense.

  312. BradA says:

    tz,

    when someone is suffering and needs aid, compassion is to give the aid on the victim’s terms – what the victim needs, not what is convenient for you to provide or even what you want to provide.

    What exactly do you mean by that? Many who are hurting are utterly wrong and need to shift their mindset first and foremost. Their pain doesn’t justify dumb things on their part. People are where they are, but the answer is often for them to stop wallowing in the mud, not to make a pretty mud pie.

    You cannot heal suffering you won’t feel.

    Not true as the Word of God can be spoken by anyone. Many of us here have gone through quite painful things as well. Going through similar pain can be helpful, but that was not your point. Feeling their pain directly is not required if they really want change. It is irrelevant if they do not want that change. It could slightly help with motivation, though that is questionable.

    You can say you want to help people, but what you may really mean is that you wish to see them helped.

    That is not true for me. I can and would do whatever I could to help. Some things would be limited by distance, but I can relate to many of his feelings and my offers are quite genuine. Working over the Internet could give a hurt person the space they need to control how quick they took any offered help, a side of the coin you missed.

    So I’m not impressed with “offers to help” since they rarely come from true agape – a willful decision to love the person regardless and anything else will follow.

    And how do you know this? Did God give you special insight to the intentions of others, over the very same Internet you decry? Isn’t it just as possible that some are compassionate to almost everyone?

  313. Corvinus says:

    “But I do think that a woman ought to not be a land-whale, or have tattoos, or a butch haircut, not being a pig at the table, not sitting on her butt all day, not getting inked up, not chopping her hair off, not dressing like a lumberjack, not wearing a scowl like it’s a Congressional Medal of Honor.”**

    

I am sure that your list of demands, nay personal preferences, works wonders. As Earl stated succinctly, “the whole notion of modernity is to make everything about appearance and forget about the essence.”

    “Are you equally willing to tell young Christian women who have worked hard to make themselves into “good catches” that they are not permitted to have standards other than “is Christian?”

    All the time. You do realize “is Christian” entails a host of characteristics, right?

    “God tells us not to worry about appearance, but He also tells us not to worry about all sorts of things, like height and money. Do you castigate women who would never date a man who’s 4’11” tall?”

    All the time. Do you castigate Christian males who frequent sites such as Return of Kings, the den of sin, with their “advice” to “pump and dump” and avoid marriage and children entirely?

    “Do you castigate women who would never date a man who’s 4’11” tall? After all, most (if not all) of the Christian women you know would not.”

    Do you even see the irony of your statements** in relation to your inquiry?

    “Christians marry.”


    
Eventually, yes.

    “Erika has made no indication that she is the least bit interested in this.”

    You know this how?

    “What is inside beauty?”

    Proverbs 31:30—Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.

    “That sounds like a codeword for butt ugly.”

    Not in the slightest. Physical attraction, of course, matters. But the issue is that a number of “Christian men”, like their female counterparts are FIXATED on the looks of their prospective mates, as you clearly demonstrate. That is the culprit of modernity, or so I have been told.

    “All these women are gone forever.”

    ALL? No. I keep hearing that Eastern European females and Asian women are GREAT catches.

    “Back in the good ole days, women didn’t have $100K of debt, obeyed their husbands in all things, and were virgin before their marriage was arranged.”

    Do people have the liberty to make their own choices in a representative democracy, especially if said people practice their faith in a manner others deem “blasphemous” or are (gasp) not religious?

    “Do you condone or condemn their behavior?”


    
Condemn.

  314. Corvinus,

    Proverbs 31:30—Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.

    She could be beautiful on the outside and fear the Lord as well. But if she is ugly on the outside, its not uncommon that she’ll reject Christ and run to feminism.

    Bottomline Cornivus, there is no middle ground here where you can be both a Christian AND feminist. It’s one or the other. You can’t have both.

    ALL? No. I keep hearing that Eastern European females and Asian women are GREAT catches.

    A catch for what? Marriage 2.0? You can import a female from another country, marry her, and at any moment for any reason (or no reason) she can instantly divorce you and take cash and prizes. That’s the law and “Christians” refuse to talk about this in church, refuse to shame women who have done this to their ex-husbands. That is why we refer to their behavior as churchianity (once again, trying to have common ground with Christianity and feminism.)

    Do people have the liberty to make their own choices in a representative democracy, especially if said people practice their faith in a manner others deem “blasphemous” or are (gasp) not religious?

    Of course they can. But by the same token, red pill men are free to make their own choices in the representative democracy to disregard women with 100K of debt, who would disobey their husbands, and refused to remain virgin until they marry. And if you don’t like it… tough noogies.

  315. theasdgamer says:

    @ Corvinus

    God tells us not to worry about appearance

    Let’s talk about what God says about sensuality and attraction in the context of romance. Warning: Churchian-feminist ideas may be refuted.

    Song of Solomon, chapter 1

    3: “Your oils have a pleasing fragrance,” Olfactory sense

    3: “Your name is like purified oil;” Status

    3: “Therefore the maidens love you.” Preselection

    5: “I am black but lovely,” Visual beauty

    8: “If you yourself do not know,
    Most beautiful among women,” Visual beauty

    That’s just the first chapter.

    10: “Your cheeks are lovely with ornaments,
    Your neck with strings of beads.” Ornamental visual beauty

    12: “While the king was at his [n]table,
    My perfume gave forth its fragrance.” Olfactory sense

    13: “My beloved is to me a pouch of myrrh
    Which lies all night between my breasts.” Olfactory sense

    14: “My beloved is to me a cluster of henna blossoms
    In the vineyards of Engedi.” Olfactory sense

    15: “How beautiful you are, my darling” Visual beauty

    15: “How beautiful you are!” Visual beauty

    15: “Your eyes are like doves.” Visual beauty

    16: “How handsome you are, my beloved,” Visual beauty

    16: “And so pleasant!” Generally sensually attractive

    16: “Indeed, our couch is luxuriant!” Generally sensually attractive

    There are seventeen verses in the first chapter and there is a heavy emphasis on physical attractiveness. Now let’s consider how to read “beauty is vain” from Prov. 31:30.

    To whom is it addressed? To a young married woman. An older woman would already know solipsistically that beauty is vain. A young woman, not so much. Here’s the message to the young woman.

    Listen, Cupcake, you might be a hottie now, but you won’t be forever, so you need to plan ahead. Work on your character. Get in the habit of doing good deeds. Be sweet and kind. God will reward you and you will get validation based on your works after your beauty has failed.

    The message is not: “Appearance doesn’t matter.” Appearance matters very much to men for sexual attraction. Wife goggles will make things easier when wives get old.

  316. Scott says:

    All the time. You do realize “is Christian” entails a host of characteristics, right?

    This is where the rub is. Unpack it and the rest is just smoke and mirrors.

  317. earl says:

    ‘

I am sure that your list of demands, nay personal preferences, works wonders. As Earl stated succinctly, “the whole notion of modernity is to make everything about appearance and forget about the essence.”

    If a woman butchers her appearance like that…her essence isn’t feminine at all.

  318. Lyn87 says:

    Corvinus continues to misrepresent what I said and carry the “Feminine Imperative” banner hoisted high… like a Jolly Roger, come to think of it.

    He tells me that my preference for a woman who is not a glutton, or has tattoos, or a butch haircut, or is a lazy-butt all day, or is a shrew, is not “Christian.” According to him, the only thing that matters is she’s made a profession of faith. Not whether she walks in that faith, mind you, just whether she presently identifies as a Christian (since considering her present actions and demeanor are somehow beyond the pale.)

    But at least he (claims to be) consistent. He tells us that he tells young Christian hotties “all the time” that they are not allowed to have preferences. I wonder who that works out in practice. [/sarc]

    The inescapable conclusion is that Corvinus thinks that any person who says “Lord, Lord” (see Matthew 7:21) is entitled to just walk up to anyone else who says, “Lord, Lord” and express romantic interest, and that person is obligated to reciprocate. Since apparently the only legitimate criterion for accepting or denying the romantic offers of others is whether or not the other person claims to be a Christian.

    I wonder if Corvinus would accept that for HIS children. What about it, Corvinus, if some inked-up, STD-ridden, 300-pound baby-momma with three kids by three different men… with a lull-dyke haircut and a permanent scowl shows up in church one day and decides that she’d like to get with your son, will tell him that it would be “Unchristian” of him to decline? What if a convicted serial child molester who just got out of prison, living in a half-way house with no job and no skills starts coming to your church and decides that he wants to court your daughter with an eye toward marriage. Will you tell her that she has a Christian obligation to accept his romantic interest? Which is it: are you a hypocrite or a fool?
    ____________________

    But he has no shortage of accusations to level at me. He accuses me of condoning the PUA, pump-and-dump philosophy, when – if he had spent any time reading what I have written on the very website – he would know that I do so all the time.
    ____________________

    Then we get to this gem:

    Me: “Erika has made no indication that she is the least bit interested in this.”

    Corvinus: You know this how?

    Uh… because I read what she wrote. In fact, her main complaint with Christian guys is that they are looking for serious relationships, and she just wants to have fun… which is why she and her churchian girlfriends “have” to date non-Chistians.

    Pro-tip: if you’re going to accuse people of not knowing their subject, you should at least read the article under discussion. Erika’s complain is in bold print in the first paragraph.

  319. Lyn87 says:

    Edit.”:

    The paragraph that reads:

    But he has no shortage of accusations to level at me. He accuses me of condoning the PUA, pump-and-dump philosophy, when – if he had spent any time reading what I have written on the very website – he would know that I do so all the time.

    should say:

    But he has no shortage of accusations to level at me. He accuses me of condoning the PUA, pump-and-dump philosophy, when – if he had spent any time reading what I have written on the very website – he would know that I condemn that all the time.

  320. theasdgamer says:

    @ Lyn87

    Corvinus is an obvious troll.

  321. When you have 14000 opportunities, you have to pick let’s say one per week, which is 52. 52/14600 = .004.

    And that’s where she becomes so spoiled for choice that she freezes up and becomes unable to choose at all. Because not only is she getting messages from far more men than she could really consider, but she knows that means there are thousands more men out there who might be even better but don’t date online or haven’t stumbled over her profile. (In fact, consciously or not, she probably realizes the most desirable men are the least likely to be sending messages on dating sites, in general, so she hasn’t heard from the real gems yet.)

    As a man, I’ve never had to pick between more than a couple women who were overtly interested in me at once (and that only after I learned and applied game; before that it was either 1 or 0 at a time). I can only imagine what it would be like to have my phone chime multiple times every day with messages from women who want to meet me, many even offering me sex. It’s easy to see how it would encourage me to keep playing the field as long as possible, though.

  322. Lyn87 says:

    theasdgamer,

    Yeah… I suspected that immediately, but I know that now. In another thread TFH pointed out that he’s a well-known racist troll on other websites, and Corvinus confirmed that he is that person – not a different person with the same screen-name. He has added a few more posts since my initial calling-out, and all of them are garden-variety Christo-feminist trolling: logical fallacies, unsupported accusations, twisting of scripture, and shaming language.

  323. theasdgamer says:

    @ Laura

    Every single post in this thread so far is completely depressing. Our culture really has fallen apart.

    The Red Pill saddens, then you rebuild. At least you didn’t hit this as a man being frivorced and being denied access to his kids as his standard of living dropped, he lost his job, he lost his married friends, etc.

  324. Dalrock says:

    tz on one man reaching out to another as a brother:

    1. You are doing it wrong.
    2. Lets talk about me.
    3. If I were to offer to help, I would do it right.
  325. thedeti says:

    Lyn87, well done.

    “Physical attraction, of course, matters. But the issue is that a number of “Christian men”, like their female counterparts are FIXATED on the looks of their prospective mates, as you clearly demonstrate. That is the culprit of modernity, or so I have been told.”

    No, Christian men aren’t “fixated” on looks. Looks are very, very important in physical attraction and a man’s attraction to a woman. A man will not marry a woman he’s not sexually attracted to, unless he’s forced to or is a glutton for punishment. They won’t do it. They haven’t done it for thousands of years.

    Men will not have anything to do with women who aren’t sexually attractive. That isn’t going to change much, really, even though there are a lot of quite butt-ugly, bitchy, and fat women who seem to find men eventually. (Of course, their low value pulls what it can, which is usually low value men, but that’s a different story.) Fortunately, it’s really, really, REALLY easy for nearly all women to enhance their sexual attractiveness. Keep their weight down, their hair long, and their makeup on. Yet women complain and stamp their feet that even this is too much to ask. Christian women demand that men ignore their physical and personal ugliness.

    You’re aiding and abetting this seditious conduct, Corvinus. You’re encouraging women to make all this worse.

  326. Dalrock says:

    @Cail

    And that’s where she becomes so spoiled for choice that she freezes up and becomes unable to choose at all. Because not only is she getting messages from far more men than she could really consider, but she knows that means there are thousands more men out there who might be even better but don’t date online or haven’t stumbled over her profile. (In fact, consciously or not, she probably realizes the most desirable men are the least likely to be sending messages on dating sites, in general, so she hasn’t heard from the real gems yet.)

    Yes. It is the paradox of choice applied to dating.

  327. Scott says:

    You are doing it wrong.
    Lets talk about me.
    If I were to offer to help, I would do it right.

    I wasn’t paying very close attention to this thread for a bit. I didn’t even see it until you called attention to it.

    FH can still contat me through my website if he wants to.

  328. earl says:

    Put it this way…a woman who is feminine on the outside and inside will be sexually appealing to most gentlemen without doing much. Christian or otherwise. What is making them unappealing is that they are trying to be pseudo men and removing every attractive aspect of them. And this goes for many Christian women along with the secular. The only men that find these women appealing are the ones with low T levels.

    We have an example of a Christian feminist who whines about making sandwiches. She chose what side she is on. You can either be Christian or feminist but you can’t be both.

  329. theasdgamer says:

    For relationships, men want a minimum level of attractiveness (beauty and femininity) along with a lot of sweetness (sammiches), warmth, faithfulness (read “I need to mateguard my own d@mm self), submissiveness, submissiveness, and submissiveness. And respect (acknowledge the man’s higher status which will impact his sexual attractiveness for you women). And that’s a tall order.

  330. theasdgamer says:

    Note that nothing in my comment about a minimum level of attractiveness indicated any fixation on beauty–merely that minimum standards are required. Women, you can’t negotiate attraction by saying stupid stuff like “God doesn’t care about appearance”. Even if God doesn’t pay attention to appearance, men do, and nothing is gonna change that. Not a lot of feminist propaganda. It’s simply biology.

  331. Lyn87 says:

    theadsgamer writes,

    Note that nothing in my comment about a minimum level of attractiveness indicated any fixation on beauty–merely that minimum standards are required.

    Truth. When I was single the thing that would attract me the most was femininity. That’s not to say that raw physical beauty isn’t alluring – it certainly is, but I would take a “pleasingly plump” (not morbidly obese) feminine woman over a smoking hot bitch any day of the week.

    Feminine girls almost can’t help but be attractive, since femininity is inherently attractive all by itself. One way a woman expresses femininity is by trying to look like a feminine woman. In other words, all the things that Corvinus think are unworthy of consideration: not being a land-whale, not getting inked up, nor getting a bull-dyke haircut, not dressing like a lumberjack, not wearing a permanent scowl, etc.

  332. Hank Flanders says:

    Cail Corishev

    And that’s where she becomes so spoiled for choice that she freezes up and becomes unable to choose at all. Because not only is she getting messages from far more men than she could really consider, but she knows that means there are thousands more men out there who might be even better but don’t date online or haven’t stumbled over her profile. (In fact, consciously or not, she probably realizes the most desirable men are the least likely to be sending messages on dating sites, in general, so she hasn’t heard from the real gems yet.)

    This is a good point. It would explain why we see some of the same women on there for months or years at a time.

  333. Scott says:

    Reading these last few comments about attractiveness, I am struck by just how far we away we (men around here) are from normative. This is unfortunate because what is being said was considered absolutely uncontroversial just a few generations back.

    To say “a woman should try these few simple things and she will make herself very attractive to the vast majority of men” is met with gnashing of teeth of the highest order.

  334. Hank Flanders says:

    Novaseeker

    When you have 14000 opportunities, you have to pick let’s say one per week, which is 52. 52/14600 = .004.

    It’s just the numbers. Even to get to the top one per week, on an annual basis you are in her top .004. Does not work for all but the hottest men.

    How often they’re picking anybody at all, though, is what I’d like to know. This article here (http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/online-dating-men-dont-get-women-dont-understand/) includes an interview of a woman who claims she didn’t get ANY messages from guys who seemed nice at all. I just don’t believe that can be true. It’s statistically improbable. Moreover, if it were true that women were only getting “creepy” messages, then that should make friendly messages stand out as something women would respond to, right? Well, they don’t (I guess unless you’re of a very high looks threshold).

    Are we to deduce that really good looking = nice, that the woman mentioned in the article is either a liar or has a poor memory, or that the writer never actually interviewed a woman for the article? Further, can we extrapolate that women in general would also claim that they don’t get messages from anyone who seems “nice?” Again, such a claim would be statistically improbable to the point of being impossible in my view.

  335. Lyn87 says:

    Hank, et al,

    So an average woman with no obvious red flags (and a lot of secular guys have far more tolerance for what most of us consider red flags), gets about 250 hits on her profile every week(!?!?). And after a couple of years of that she hasn’t found anyone she likes, and she considers her success rate to be 0.000?

    That’s nuts. Assuming she telling the truth, the only explanation is that she’s on a unicorn safari… or maybe a safari where she won’t be satisfied unless she can get a unicorn, a yeti, and a quetzalcoatl with one shot. Whether it’s the paradox of choice, or a vastly overinflated sense of her SMV/MMV, or just garden-variety indecisiveness, any woman who can muster that much interest without finding anyone worthwhile (and she even has the ability to preemptively screen out anyone who doesn’t match her preferences), just isn’t trying.

    Any woman with access to the internet can find a man willing to be with her – a man who is at least her SMV/MMV peer.

  336. Dalrock says:

    Not all women get locked into choice paralysis. But those who do get locked into this are seeing a false sense of abundance. Imagine a small stadium filled with 10,000 men. Assume that 10,000 women are looking for husbands, and can choose from any one of the men (the men will marry whichever woman picks them). The women feel the need to sort through all 10,000 to find the best man, and don’t feel any rush to choose. Plus, choosing is fun and flattering. Men compliment them, entertain them, and buy them stuff. In their minds, all of the men in the stadium are theirs to reject. Each of the 10,000 women think they have all 10,000 men waiting for them (and only them) to choose. In the past the venue was much smaller, and just as importantly each woman saw other women starting to pick in front of her, narrowing her own choices. The pressure was on to pick well now or choose from the men other women didn’t want. In addition, in reality the woman still is competing with other women for the man’s proposal. Just because large numbers of men are messaging her, doesn’t mean any of them want to marry her. But many women have a hard time processing this, even if they understand it logically.

    Internet dating expands the size of the venue, hides the reality of her pool of choices shrinking as other women are picking the best men, and encourages women to imagine that every man who shows the most passing interest (a mouse click) would love to make them a wife.

  337. Dalrock,

    Internet dating expands the size of the venue

    Yes.

    hides the reality of her pool of choices shrinking as other women are picking the best men

    No. For two reasons.

    This first reason this is false because it would restrict the number of the men entering the stadium at 10,000 and now she’s on the clock. In reality, men keep entering the stadium (every day) from which she may choose. Her online choices never really “shrink.” And she is aware of this. As a result, she is choosey and very quick to “next.”

    The second reason this is false is you make the assumption that once a man is chosen he takes himself out of the stadium pool of men. This is usually not the case. He’ll continue meeting more and more women online giving each woman individually the false belief that once she has chosen him, she is the only one seeing him. Since women believe that 80% of men online are below average, it would follow that the 20% of men who are NOT below average are bigamistly hoarding the majority of the women who are searching, hypergamously.

    and encourages women to imagine that every man who shows the most passing interest (a mouse click) would love to make them a wife.

    This might be the case for Christian Tingle or LDSSingles or some Cathloc dating sites where the primary goal IS marriage, but we can’t assume that all the men on these sites are playing by her rules where she is only interested in meeting men who are marriage minded. There is nothing these sites do to exclude players. They will be in the pool (perhaps in ALL the pools.)

  338. Dalrock says:

    @IBB

    This first reason this is false because it would restrict the number of the men entering the stadium at 10,000 and now she’s on the clock. In reality, men keep entering the stadium (every day) from which she may choose. Her online choices never really “shrink.” And she is aware of this. As a result, she is choosey and very quick to “next.”

    Yes, her choices are shrinking every day, she just can’t see it. This is true no matter the size of the venue. She could be one of 100 women competing for 100 men, or 1 million women competing for 1 million men. Either way, as the other women start marrying, the woman’s pool starts shrinking. New males are born every day, but she has a fairly limited age window to work with, basically men her own age or older. No new 30 year old men are being born. Worse, the number of women competing for her target pool of men is increasing as younger women than her come of age.

  339. Artisanal Toad says:

    @Lyn87
    When I was single the thing that would attract me the most was femininity. That’s not to say that raw physical beauty isn’t alluring – it certainly is, but I would take a “pleasingly plump” (not morbidly obese) feminine woman over a smoking hot bitch any day of the week.

    I lived in the San Diego area for a decade. I met plenty of smoking hot bitches and learned that lesson well. I recall a Christmas party at the home of a woman who owned a major modeling agency. It was wall-to-wall beautiful airhead models. I wound up spending the majority of the time with her precocious children. I was able to teach both of them how to juggle that night. Their father got a shop-vac and they broke half the ornaments off the tree before they could finally keep three in the air. One would break and he’d laugh, hand them another one and vacuum it up. Women would wander in, see these men trying to teach kids how to juggle, shake their heads and walk away. I pointed that out to the dad, who agreed with me. Nurturing children held no value for them. Their mother spent the next several years trying to find a wife for me.

  340. Dalrock,

    New males are born every day, but she has a fairly limited age window to work with, basically men her own age or older.

    Hmmmm…… yeah I have seen Rollo’s SMV chart. SMV doesn’t really mean anything when we are talking actual marriage. In that sense, the only thing that matters (since winning is everything) is a woman’s actual MMV.

    I would love for you to survey the men at this site who are happily married and find out if their wives are younger, same age, or older. Mine (with an MMV of 10) is years older than I. I think you just might be surprised just how many men (who are STILL married) married older women (and why.)

  341. Minesweeper says:

    D- didnt you print the husband store joke ? Sounds very familiar to the stadium example

    http://officeforward.com/fwd-its-funny-the-husband-store-story.html

    The Husband Store

    A brand new store has just appeared in New York. When women go to choose a husband, they have to follow the instructions at the entrance:- ‘You may visit this store ONLY ONCE! There are 6 floors and the value of the products increase as you ascend the flights. You may choose any item from a particular floor or may choose to go up to the next floor, but you CANNOT go back down except to exit the building!

    So, a woman goes to the Husband Store to find a husband.

    The 1st floor sign reads:
    Floor 1
    These men have jobs.

    The 2nd floor sign reads:
    Floor 2
    These men Have Jobs and Love Kids.

    The 3rd floor sign reads:
    Floor 3
    These men Have Jobs, Love Kids and are extremely good looking.
    ‘Wow,’ she thinks, but feels compelled to keep going.

    She goes to the 4th floor and the sign reads:
    Floor 4
    These men Have Jobs, Love Kids, are Drop-dead Good Looking and
    Help with Housework.
    ‘Oh, mercy me!’ she exclaims, ‘I can hardly stand it!’

    Still, she goes to the 5th floor and sign reads:
    Floor 5
    These men Have Jobs, Love Kids, are Drop-dead Gorgeous, help
    with Housework and Have A Strong Romantic Streak.

    Floor 6
    You are visitor 31,456,012 to
    this floor. There are no men on this floor. This floor exists solely as proof
    that women are impossible to please. Thank you for shopping at the Husband Store.
    The store will now disappear and you will never find it again.

    I’ve read a better and embellished version of this somewhere else but Google isn’t pointing me in the right direction.

  342. Minesweeper says:

    @Artisanal Toad, a luckier man than most ! Doubt I would have been so principled, in fact I know I wouldn’t have.

  343. PokeSalad says:

    [[I’ve always liked feministhater. He’s a bit rough, fo sho, but, round these parts, many bros have been put through the wringer by faggot family court judges and bitter, screwball ex-wives. I don’t judge.

    The man’s all right to me.]]

    ^Truth.

  344. JDG says:

    Corvinus says:
    February 25, 2015 at 5:49 am
    Lyn87 and thedeti, the bulk of your post focused on outside beauty, rather than inside beauty. Is that what God intended?

    You say that as if there is a large supply of church going women that possess “inside beauty”. I learned long ago that lack of good looks does not an inner beauty make. And women with inner beauty are in short supply in my experience.

  345. JDG says:

    Back in the good ol’ days, marriages were arranged. Appearance and looks were secondary. Just sayin’…

    I have to agree with this though, but looks played a part to be sure.

  346. JDG says:

    Corvinus – Proverbs 31:30—Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.

    How is a woman who scorns the teachings in the Bible a woman who fears the Lord?

  347. Luke says:

    Innocentbystanderboston says:
    February 26, 2015 at 12:57 pm
    Dalrock,

    “Mine [wife](with an MMV of 10) is years older than I.”

    There is no way that this is true.

  348. Corvinus says:

    “But if she is ugly on the outside, its not uncommon that she’ll reject Christ and run to feminism.”

    Appeal to tradition fallacy. There are a number of “ugly” women who embrace Christianity, who are single for a host of reasons, and yet outright reject feminism. Moreover, “not uncommon” how? What evidence specifically leads you to that conclusion?

    “Bottomline Cornivus, there is no middle ground here where you can be both a Christian AND feminist. It’s one or the other. You can’t have both.”

    Depends on how one defines Christian.

    “You can import a female from another country, marry her, and at any moment for any reason (or no reason) she can instantly divorce you and take cash and prizes.”

    Certainly these situations occur. But how often? To what extent? See, you’re going to have to better than merely make these statements without any proof. For example, American men and Filipino women work well together. While there are cases of domestic violence and “gold digging mail-order brides”, these stories show that these relationships are loving and mutually beneficial.

    http://www.scpr.org/programs/offramp/2012/09/26/28576/imported-filipino-brides-settle-into-love-in-south/?slide=9

    “Listen, Cupcake, you might be a hottie now, but you won’t be forever, so you need to plan ahead. Work on your character. Get in the habit of doing good deeds. Be sweet and kind. God will reward you and you will get validation based on your works after your beauty has failed.”

    Sweetie, are you not shaming her to be someone that YOU think should behave and act? Again, what is it with this obsession with how a person looks?

    “There are seventeen verses in the first chapter and there is a heavy emphasis on physical attractiveness.”

    And there are several other verses in the Bible that de-emphasize beauty—looks like we have some contradictions here. So, which Bible passages are “right”?

    Timothy 4:8—For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come.

    Psalm 139:14—I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

    Besides, is God going to reject someone who is “not beautiful” according to the standards of modern men?

    “An older woman would already know solipsistically that beauty is vain”

    Talk about solipsism. There is a demand by some Christian men that Christian women must look a certain way or else they are not worthy of embracing the faith.

    “If a woman butchers her appearance like that…her essence isn’t feminine at all.”

    Who made you the sole judge of what is and what is not the “essence of femininity”?

    Lyn87, since your entire diatribe is built on a house of straw that the Little Pigs would relish, the bottom line is people will have their own standards and preferences when it comes to beauty. You can judge all you want if they meet your prescribed criteria, and deem them unworthy of dating them and/or being marriage material. But when becomes fixated to the point that Christian women ought to meet subjective criteria according to men, not God, then it is an exercise in shaming and solipsism. Victimize much?

    “What about it, Corvinus, if some inked-up, STD-ridden, 300-pound baby-momma with three kids by three different men… with a lull-dyke haircut and a permanent scowl shows up in church one day and decides that she’d like to get with your son, will tell him that it would be “Unchristian” of him to decline?”

    This statement is all I need to know. My son can meet her and decide what next to take. Of course, you offered the most extremist of cases. Not surprised in the least.

    “For relationships, men want a minimum level of attractiveness (beauty and femininity)”

    So far, so good…

    “along with a lot of sweetness (sammiches)

    Being fed is nice…

    “warmth, faithfulness (read “I need to mateguard my own d@mm self), submissiveness, submissiveness, and submissiveness.”

    Good luck on that, pal.

    “And respect (acknowledge the man’s higher status which will impact his sexual attractiveness for you women). And that’s a tall order.”


    Yep, a tall order. Better check your privilege 🙂

    “What is making them unappealing is that they are trying to be pseudo men and removing every attractive aspect of them.”



    Making them unappealing to CHRISTIAN MEN, but not necessarily men in general.

    “The only men that find these women appealing are the ones with low T levels.”

    What is it with these wild generalizations? To what extent is your claim accurate?

    
“We have an example of a Christian feminist who whines about making sandwiches.”



    Heaven forbid a woman who inappropriately makes a fuss in a time of need. As if “Christian women” have not engaged in the same conduct.

    “In fact, her main complaint with Christian guys is that they are looking for serious relationships, and she just wants to have fun… which is why she and her churchian girlfriends “have” to date non-Chistians.”

    Here is the key phrase—“because Christian guys rarely can just keep it casual and go on a date, give it a chance.” She is saying from her experience that in dating Christian guys, they put immediate pressure to be serious without letting things naturally develop. Some women also put on the “full court press” from the jump on the fellas. Now, depending on the person, that expectation may be exciting—“Yes, finally, someone who is as serious as I am”. Ultimately, she is saying “Hey, let’s go out, see what happens, and go from there”. Nothing wrong with taking that approach, some guys also think that way as well. If after two dates a man or a woman tells their date they want to be exclusive, regardless if they Christian or non-Christian, the person is not comfortable with that arrangement, there is nothing inherently wrong in saying “Listen, I am not at that point, let’s give it more time”. What is wrong with a man or a woman, who is Christian, who simply wants to have fun on a date without being grilled whether or not they are going to be a couple? It is observably true that most relationships do not mature or grow in this regard.

  349. JDG says:

    There are a number of “ugly” women who embrace Christianity, who are single for a host of reasons, and yet outright reject feminism.

    That’s an awfully small number of women you talking about there. Very few women reject feminism in truth. Oh sure they say they reject it, but they’re feminists all the same.

  350. JDG says:

    Depends on how one defines Christian.

    No it doesn’t. There aren’t multiple definitions of Christian, only what the Bible plainly states. The rest are fraudulent. Feminism and Christianity are not compatible. Methinks you may be a feminist, probably of the egalitarian flavor.

  351. JDG says:

    Who made you the sole judge of what is and what is not the “essence of femininity”?

    It’s not his sole judgement, it’s what used to be plain for anyone to see. How old are you anyhow?

  352. JDG says:

    Lyn87, since your entire diatribe is built on a house of straw that the Little Pigs would relish, the bottom line is people will have their own standards and preferences when it comes to beauty.

    And God has His standards. Would you have the whole world descend into tribal decadence? Feminine is feminine, and masculine is masculine. People don’t get to change what a thing is. Women should keep their hair long and dress modestly wearing feminine clothing. There is usually a general understanding of what that means. Those pushing to eliminate male / female differences don’t get to re-allocate those boundaries.

  353. Boxer says:

    Dear JDG:

    Would you have the whole world descend into tribal decadence? Feminine is feminine, and masculine is masculine. People don’t get to change what a thing is.

    One of the better definitions of masculinity and femininity is in Jack Donovan’s book *The Way of Men*. If Corvinus is really interested, he can get the kindle version for two bucks and figure it out. I don’t like to waste this forum’s resources debating radfems-in-disguise. It’s pretty clear that Corvinus is here simply to waste time and garner some negative attention.

    Beauty (masculine or feminine) may be about 10 percent social construct. Fashions come and go, and all that. The other 90 percent is pure biological imperative. We are instinctively drawn to feminine women, and that’s the way it always will be.

    Best,

    Boxer

  354. JDG says:

    Thanks Boxer. To be honest, I’m not even sure he isn’t a she (not meant as an insult).

  355. Renee Harris says:

    “‘Bottomline Cornivus, there is no middle ground here where you can be both a Christian AND feminist. It’s one or the other. You can’t have both.’
    Depends on how one defines Christian.”
    Sweetie
    The men on this blog don’t label feminist as idolatry, but that’s what it is. Idoralry is worshiping ANYTHING( ONE) other Yahweh. A Christian is one who worship Yahweh thru relationship based on The Cross Of Christ. On and it only matter how Yahweh defines Christian :)!

  356. theasdgamer says:

    @ Renee

    The men on this blog don’t label feminist as idolatry

    I might be an exception. And your perception about feminism being idolatry is noteworthy. The pedestalization of women is idolatrous, to be sure.

  357. Lyn87 says:

    LOL-worthy… Corvinus delivers again:

    CorvinusLyn87, since your entire diatribe is built on a house of straw that the Little Pigs would relish, the bottom line is people will have their own standards and preferences when it comes to beauty. You can judge all you want if they meet your prescribed criteria, and deem them unworthy of dating them and/or being marriage material. But when becomes fixated to the point that Christian women ought to meet subjective criteria according to men, not God, then it is an exercise in shaming and solipsism. Victimize much?

    Me: as quoted by Corvinus“What about it, Corvinus, if some inked-up, STD-ridden, 300-pound baby-momma with three kids by three different men… with a bull-dyke haircut and a permanent scowl shows up in church one day and decides that she’d like to get with your son, will tell him that it would be “Unchristian” of him to decline?”

    Corvinus lamely attempts to respondThis statement is all I need to know. My son can meet her and decide what next to take. Of course, you offered the most extremist of cases. Not surprised in the least.

    A rebuttal is not a diatribe (and extremist and extreme are not synonyms, by the way – using “big” words incorrectly doesn’t denote gravitas (look it up) – it just makes you sound like a know-it-all freshman trying to sound more knowledgeable than he is). And if you’re going to accuse me of the Straw Man Fallacy, perhaps you could point out where I committed that fallacy. We both know you cannot, because Straw Man has a specific definition, and that definition is NOT “a better argument than mine.” It is you who has committed a Straw Man error, and unlike you, I’ll explain where you did it. You wrote: “But when becomes fixated to the point that Christian women ought to meet subjective criteria according to men, not God, then it is an exercise in shaming and solipsism. Victimize much?” But that is not what I wrote at all. In fact, I was quite clear that people should not fixate on those things. In fact, in the very first paragraph of my very first response to you I specifically said that there are several factors to consider. You do know what the word “fixate” means, don’t you? To recap: you made an inaccurate parody of my argument and argued against it. THAT is what the “Straw Man Fallacy” looks like – see the difference now?

    Anyway, I gave you an entirely plausible either/or proposition to see if you would be either hypocritical or foolish. Incredibly, you managed to be both. You have told the men here that the only thing that matters is a declaration of Christianity… nothing else. So when I gave you an example of a clearly undesirable woman – a woman any man would have the right to reject for a romantic relationship – and asked if you would tell your own son that he had no right to reject her due to her declaration of Christianity, you immediately backed off… sort of. You’re a hypocrite in that you wouldn’t tell your son that it’s his Christian duty to abandon his standards (like you told us), and you’re foolish in that you would let you own son get involved with a train-wreck-in-a-skirt without strongly cautioning him about the dangers.

    You’re in over your head, Corvinus. The crap you may get away with elsewhere doesn’t fly here.

  358. earl says:

    ‘What is it with these wild generalizations? To what extent is your claim accurate?’

    Look up pictures of the women described and see what men they pull in. They don’t look masculine…you can almost be sure they don’t act masculine either.

  359. theasdgamer says:

    Lyn87 pwns CorvinusTroll.

  360. Novaseeker says:

    Besides, is God going to reject someone who is “not beautiful” according to the standards of modern men?

    That’s not relevant to whether an individual will reject someone as a potential spouse. People who are not attractive as spouses won’t get picked as spouses, whether they are righteous in the eyes of God or not. It really is as simple as that.

    What is wrong with a man or a woman, who is Christian, who simply wants to have fun on a date without being grilled whether or not they are going to be a couple?

    Not “being grilled”, but certainly being evaluated. Dating “just for fun” is problematic because it grows out of secular dating, which largely revolves around the pursuit of physical pressure. The same pressures and expectations apply in these situations as in the secular context, and it’s one of the main reasons why most Christians are fornicating with people they don’t even end up marrying. And even if they are devout enough to avoid that, if the parties decide after a couple of dates that it isn’t proceeding towards a possible marriage, it’s far better for Christians to move on to another opportunity, so that they can find someone who *is* a good prospect for marriage, avoid fornication, and begin married life. The whole concept of hedonic, pleasure-based “keeping it casual” dating is really alien to Christian mores around marriage and relationships — if Christians do date, it needs to be intentional. That is the first few dates are to discern whether there is any realistic likelihood of marriage or not — not a “grilling”, but certainly an assessment of that. That generally doesn’t happen in the “keeping it casual” context at all.

  361. Scott says:

    Dating “just for fun” is problematic because it grows out of secular dating, which largely revolves around the pursuit of physical pressure

    I would “one up” you here, my friend. There isn’t another kind of dating (beside dating for fun and pleasure). If it is for the purpose of finding a spouse, that needs to talked about very early, and then it is not “dating” anymore.

  362. Corvinus says:

    “A rebuttal is not a diatribe”

    A rebuttal is a refutation. A diatribe is a long piece of writing that criticizes someone or something. A diatribe indeed attempts to refute something. See how that works?

    “In fact, in the very first paragraph of my very first response to you I specifically said that there are several factors to consider.”

    Your first response to me was at February 24, 2015 at 7:28 pm. Yes, you remarked about a number of things, with the focal point being beauty. Subsequent posts have also primarily dealt with that topic. One can reasonably deduce that if that same issue is brought up over and over again, there is a fixation.

    “The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person’s actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position.”

    Your actual position is clear—women “ought to not be a land-whale, or have tattoos, or a butch haircut…with a 7-to-10 waist-to-hip ratio and shoulder-length hair, she’d be at least in the seven range”. As I correctly noted, fixated. Hung by your own words.

    “ So when I gave you an example of a clearly undesirable woman…”
    “in that you would let you own son get involved with a train-wreck-in-a-skirt…”

    You put forth the most extreme example under your prescribed criteria and based your entire argument on that example, with a foregone conclusion to boot. You asked me directly if I would let me son talk to this “woman”. I stated yes. What happens next, I am certain his words and actions would make God proud.

    “A Christian is one who worship Yahweh thru relationship based on The Cross Of Christ.”

    A Christian is many things, actually.

  363. Cornivus,

    “You can import a female from another country, marry her, and at any moment for any reason (or no reason) she can instantly divorce you and take cash and prizes.”

    Certainly these situations occur. But how often? To what extent? See, you’re going to have to better than merely make these statements without any proof.

    No I most certainly do NOT have to offer proof of how many times these situations occur. It doesn’t matter if it 1 or 1,000,000. The number should be 0 as this should not be legally possible. What you are doing (here) is errecting a strawman. Stop.

  364. JDG says:

    A Christian is many things, actually.

    Could you be more specific?

  365. Everything about Cornivus’s screed has been intentionally vague. So no, I doubt he could be specific.

  366. Feminine But Not Feminist says:

    @ Laura

    Dalrock’s idea of older ladies from church doing some matchmaking sounded promising, but Feminine But Not Feminist has given a powerful counterexample of that strategy. So powerful that it has left me with a very disturbing visual image that I would like to erase from my mind.

    I’m sorry… 😦

    @ Corvinus

    Why so much hate for femininity and beauty being something that men want in a woman they would marry? You seem to think that the appreciation of beauty and femininity is a bad thing. It’s not. Beauty was invented by God himself. Just look at a sunset over an ocean, or a field of wildflowers at the height of Spring, or all the leaves changing colors in the Blue Ridge Mountains in the Fall. Now look at a landfill, or the mess left behind after a tornado strikes, or the inner city stained with graffiti. How does each group of views impact you? Which one leaves you feeling peaceful, and which one leaves you feeling the most stressed out? That is what femininity and beauty in a woman, and the deliberate neglect/mutilation of such, is like to a man. And that is how God designed it. If you have a problem with that, then you have a problem with God Himself. He made beauty to be a good thing; not just in nature, but in us as well.

    I can’t think of any reason why anyone would have a problem with that, unless she has neglected/mutilated her own beauty to the point that she has little or none of it left.

    Now, there is something to be said about if a man overlooks a hideous personality (aka, bitchiness) in a woman just because she has physical beauty. Such a woman should be avoided just as a physically hideous woman would be. If that is the point that you have been trying to make here, then I have a strong hunch that (pretty much) nobody here would disagree with that concept.

  367. Lyn87 says:

    Another-swing-and-a-miss from Corvinus!

    He mischaracterizes my point-by-point take-down as a diatribe rather than the rebuttal that it is, then when I call him on it he doubles-down and insists that it is actually a diatribe (since my rebuttal was neither angry/bitter nor lengthy it does not fit the definition of diatribe). He just doesn’t know when he’s beaten…

    … so he continues to dig…

    After accusing me of fixating on beauty I pointed out that I specifically wrote – in the very first paragraph of my very first response to him – that beauty was only one factor to consider. I even clarified that beauty was mostly the result of adopting feminine traits rather than raw, genetic factors. But once again he doubled down on his mischaracterization by accusing me of focusing on physical beauty as an attraction vector. Apparently he doesn’t understand that the reason we’re talking about beauty to the extent that we are is because he keeps bringing it up. Who has the “fixation” again? But he still can’t see his mistakes…

    … so he digs himself even deeper…

    Once again he pretended that my example, which is, sadly, not all that unusual, is somehow so extreme as to be beyond consideration. Then he completely mischaracterized my question to him into something else, so he could object to that.

    This is what Corvinus says that I asked him:

    “You asked me directly if I would let me son talk to this “woman”.

    But that isn’t even close to what I asked. Remember the definition of Straw Man Fallacy I linked earlier? Corvinus apparently doesn’t. This is what I actually wrote:

    I wonder if Corvinus would accept that for HIS children. What about it, Corvinus, if some inked-up, STD-ridden, 300-pound baby-momma with three kids by three different men… with a bull-dyke haircut and a permanent scowl shows up in church one day and decides that she’d like to get with your son, will tell him that it would be “Unchristian” of him to decline?

    See? Nothing about “talking to her,” not even anything about being friends with her, not even anything about not showing Christian charity to her. I was just questioning Corvinus’ dedication to his position that it is Unchristian to decline the romantic interest of another professing Christian, to see if he would put the same burden on his son as he insists that other men shoulder. Straw. Man. Fallacy.

    I’ll repeat what I wrote earlier, Corvinus: you’re in over your head.

  368. Corvinus says:

    “You seem to think that the appreciation of beauty and femininity is a bad thing. It’s not.”

    I agree. The point being lost here is when Christians OVEREMPHASIZE it.

    “But once again he doubled down on his mischaracterization by accusing me of focusing on physical beauty as an attraction vector.”

    Wow, just wow. Not much else to say. It is lucidly clear that you fit Vox Day’s definition of what constitutes a gamma–When you are having an argument with someone and it appears you are wrong, the most common belief and defense is the other person simply doesn’t understand what you are saying.

    “When you are having an argument with someone and it appears you are wrong, the most common belief and defense is the other person simply doesn’t understand what you are saying.”

    I answered your inquiry. Perhaps in your haste to shame me you missed it–You asked me directly if I would let me son talk to this “woman”. I stated yes. What happens next, I am certain his words and actions would make God proud.

    “Such a woman should be avoided just as a physically hideous woman would be…”

    You do recall that Jesus befriended lepers, correct?

    “And that is how God designed it.”

    And, seriously, God would want his followers to “avoid physically hideous wom(e)n? I didn’t catch that advice in the Bible 🙂

    “No I most certainly do NOT have to offer proof of how many times these situations occur. It doesn’t matter if it 1 or 1,000,000. The number should be 0 as this should not be legally possible.”

    If you are going to make a statement, you better be able to back it up. Otherwise, you are offering a mere opinion. Not all opinions are valid.

  369. Lyn87 says:

    Corvinus has sort-of dropped the Straw Man stuff and gone to straight-up lying. Corvinus has twice “quoted” me:

    You asked me directly if I would let me son talk to this “woman”.

    But I never asked that. Not even once. Just to be certain that it was you making stuff up and not something I wrote inadvertently, I did a /find for the work “talk” in this thread. That word (and any word that has the letters t-a-l-k in it) appeared 66 times so far, and not one of those was me asking you if you would let your son talk to the hypothetical woman in question.

    Not. Even. Once.

    You simply constructed a “quote” that nobody made, pretended that you answered the question that I actually asked you (which you still haven’t answered, by the way), and then pretended to be offended by it. Go ahead: prove me wrong by showing where I asked you if you would let your son talk to her, or be man enough to admit that you’re wrong.

    Nobody, and I mean nobody, has suggested that it would be wrong for your son to talk to the hypothetical woman in the scenario. Quite the contrary: it would be uncharitable to do so. What I was questioning was your assertion that the only thing that matters with regard to suitability for returning romantic interest was a claim of Christianity.

    If you want to back down from that absurd stance, go right ahead. But stop pretending that I asked you about talking to someone. I did no such thing, and you know it. One more time:

    You are in over your head.

  370. Lyn87 says:

    For the sake of clarity, when I wrote this:

    Nobody, and I mean nobody, has suggested that it would be wrong for your son to talk to the hypothetical woman in the scenario. Quite the contrary: it would be uncharitable to do so.

    The point is that it would be wrong to shun her. I imagine that’s clear from the context to the grown-ups here, but I know Corvinus has problems understanding even when things are explained in detail, even more so something that requires him to understand a more complex sentence – that shunning her would be uncharitable, not that talking to her would be wrong.

  371. Feminine But Not Feminist says:

    @ Corvinus

    “Such a woman should be avoided just as a physically hideous woman would be…”

    You do recall that Jesus befriended lepers, correct?

    There’s a very big difference between “befriending” someone in order to reach out to them and minister to them, and becoming one flesh with them for the rest of your life in a marriage. The sentence I wrote that you quoted there is saying that a bitchy woman’s horrible personality shouldn’t be overlooked just because she is good looking (in terms of finding a woman to MARRY), in the same way that you have been complaining that physically unattractive women aren’t desired for marriage by Christian men. Meaning, it should take more than good looks to be marriage-worthy, it should take a good personality too. Meaning I agree that there shouldn’t be an OVERemphasis on looks where he cares about nothing else when looking for a wife. There is nothing wrong, however, with having SOME emphasis on looks and insisting that a woman be at least somewhat pleasing for the man to look at.

    “And that is how God designed it.”

    And, seriously, God would want his followers to “avoid physically hideous wom(e)n? I didn’t catch that advice in the Bible 🙂

    That’s because it’s not in there, nor is that what I said or implied ~ and you know it. When I said “and that is how God designed it” I said it in context of how beauty impacts men.

    Question for you (if you don’t give a straight-up “yes” or “no” answer with a very good reason as to why you answered the way you did, then I’ll know for sure that you are just having a good time mocking us and twisting our words around for pleasure, in which case I won’t bother indulging you further)…

    If a Christian woman were to show interest in marrying you (if you’re a man; if you’re a woman then just say so), but you had absolutely zero attraction to her to the point that the idea of having sex with her is repulsive to you, had trouble keeping up a conversation because you just don’t “click”, and she is so crazy and unkind to you that you don’t even like being in her presence at all, but she still said she would be interested in marrying you… would YOU PERSONALLY be willing to marry this woman that you flat-out don’t want, just because she “is Christian”? If “yes” then please back it up with something from Scripture that clearly shows that men are obligated to marry such a woman simply because she is Christian (good luck finding that). If “no” then please explain why you wouldn’t do so but are telling every other man here that they should.

  372. JDG says:

    If Corvinus or any one else thinks a tatted up, obese, short haired woman would make a good wife for his son, that’s on him. Even most secular guys know what those attributes mean. And even if there is a small percent of women with those attributes that actually could make a good spouse, that doesn’t change the fact that the vast majority of overweight, short haired, tatted up woman are going to have a high N count, authority problems, and serious issues bonding with any future husband. If you advertise that you are a sexually empowered, over eating tomboy, don’t be surprised if guys think you are just what you look like.

  373. Lyn87 says:

    FBNF,

    You big meanie! You just said that physical beauty is the only thing that matters and asked him if God wants him to juggle chainsaws while he’s playing chess with a leprechaun riding Pegasus.

    OUTRAGEOUS! Why are you so fixated on brake pads and orchids?

    Or at least that’s what he’s going to pretend that you wrote.

  374. Feminine But Not Feminist says:

    @ Lyn87

    You big meanie! You just said that physical beauty is the only thing that matters and asked him if God wants him to juggle chainsaws while he’s playing chess with a leprechaun riding Pegasus.

    OUTRAGEOUS! Why are you so fixated on brake pads and orchids?

    LOL

  375. Cornivus,

    Not all opinions are valid.

    Correct. Now you are beginning to understand how the majority of us here regard your commentary.

    All you do is erect strawmen. That is it. You are constantly trying to reframe every argument presented you instead of debating it. When you do that you already acknowledge that your opponent has won AND you are just too prideful to admit it.

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  378. Biff Winnetka says:

    Dating women at church is the same minefield as dating women at work. I go to church for the message of salvation, not to browse for new plates to spin.

  379. reifoh says:

    Reblogged this on reifoh and commented:
    “being talked to death”…. LOL

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  382. ChristianCool says:

    I stopped losing respect the moment this author (Kaufholz) stated: “They’re looking for a kind conversation, a respectful follow-up, and a nice cup of ethically sourced, fair-trade coffee.”

    a) I do not give a damn if some idiot is willing to pay $5 more for a bag of coffee so some corporate hack can pay an extra .10 cents to some coffee grower in a 3rd world hellhole. If a girl is into this kinda crap, she is probably a Feminist or SJW, so I would avoid her at all costs anyway….

    b) “A respectful follow-up”? What does that even mean?!? 🙄

    Follow-up about what? Follow-up after bedding the girl? A follow-up text (or call) after a boring cup of coffee??

    And then we have Erika, saying: “because Christian guys rarely can just keep it casual”.

    Does this assume all Christian men are actually serious about not engaging in per-marital sex, and therefore are boring??? Does this mean she assumes that all Christian single men in church are looking to marry right away and not pump n dump Erika into to her 30s?

    Maybe that was the case years ago, say about 15 years ago when I was 20 years old and a young buck. I can attest from personal experience and growing up in church that MANY men in their early 20s would love to marry a beautiful young lass around their age from their church. But because of Feminism, most women will whore themselves well into their late 20s or early 30s, and by then, the romantic early 20-something year old men have become cynical and many change their mind about marrying.

    So the whole thing is so upside down, it is hard to even start a rational discussiona bout this.

    Two more thoughts on this:

    1) Most Christian women these days lose interest almost right away if the Christian man does not immediately starts pushing her to bed and raising the stakes. There is no more “innocent dating” because our society is over-sexualized and corrupted to its core.

    Christian women are STILL women…. women who also grew up in our s#ithole culture poisoned by Feminism. They attend our same corrupt leftist public schools. They have just as much mental-anguish as every woman that has been exposed to this toxic substance we call FemiNazism.

    My younger cousin (who just got married now at age 34, for first time, btw) told me once he had always been more worried about secretly corrupted church girls then he is about “worldly girls”, since the worldly ones are upfront about who they are (mostly), The church girls deceived him about their own corruption outside church. It is a sad state of affairs, no question about it.

    2) Dating in church = DANGER. That is why most men avoid it. Even at my local church here in “middle America” front range of Rockies, the “heat is on” to match me with “this great woman I know” type situations. I am a target because I am bringing a LOT to the table, no ex-, no failed marriage, and a stable life. I am also known to be a bit of a buck when it comes to rules (I am constantly talking to people about how to avoid speed traps, avoiding rules, and finding legal loopholes). I am a rebel and my attitude seems to show through, even as I try to keep this aura under control. I am a good looking pretty boy 8, but with a bad boy attitude.

    People I barely in my church know come up to me offering to introduce me to some woman they know (most of these women are not even in my church). It seems like everyone in my Christian church group seems to have access to an endless supply of single moms (or divorced ones, looking for a new target!), recent converts/fakers, girls that partied too much and now they are near/post Wall and now they want a “quality guy”. Most of these women seem to be in the 28-40 age range women just desperate to nail down a sucker… I mean a “husband”. 🙄 It is to the point I feel like I am walking around with a target on my back in church.

    How stupid do these people think I am?? 😡 I already told people in church in no uncertain terms that I am NOT getting married again – period. When asked why I answer truthfully “because not only it is hard to find a decent woman, I am never going to again surrender my income, assets, and freedom to a woman’s whims and live under threat of divorce if I refuse to comply”. This is my standardized answer (which I have repeated over and over again), I am not kidding.

    I wonder if they think I am “just saying that until I meet the right woman again”. *sigh* No one tells me what the heck to do, that is why I like to work for myself and could never join the military. Having 1 wife and having her pass away is enough for me. I did not have any kids with her for a reason, it seems.

    These people do not understand “risk-benefit”. 🙄 Besides not wanting to marry again, I am not going to ruin personal relationships in my local church by going out on a date with some stupid woman they happen to know, later talking crap about me if we do not connect on a date (or worse, if I happen to nail and bail on the lower quality ones).

    Just depressing what happened to our dating (or almost non-existence of dating). And even more depressing is what happened to the QUALITY of American women in just 12 years I was outta the “dating market”. It went for “not-so-good” to abysmal fast.

    I really begin to wonder if I should even bother even looking for an LTR anymore… -_- I have even been attending church less and less lately because of this whole thing.

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