I mentioned UNCOMMEN in Hair Shirts and Chest Thumping last week. One of their recent blog posts is Her Needs Above Yours, which claims that God orders husbands to follow pop psychology and become “emotionally available” to their wives:
…God does not make this command to men lightly. If a husband wants God to hear his prayers, which he is going to need to be doing a lot to learn to be emotionally available to her, then he will seek to open his heart to her in an open and honest way.
Despite the allusion to 1 Pet 3:7, this supposed biblical wisdom in fact comes from the Book of Oprah, an entirely new book created in the 1970s by sensitive new age guys and the women who dominate them.
Note that the fundamental problem would exist even if the blogger weren’t putting bad pop psychology into God’s mouth. This would be no less of a misrepresentation of Scripture if he instead claimed that God commands husbands to run Game.
Related:
“…God does not make this command to men lightly.”
If this isn’t blasphemy what is?
I was so surprised to read this that I had to go back to read the original article: but yes, the author speaks in the name of God!
Incredible.
When my now ex-wife was working her way up to leaving we had a series of meetings/studies with the preacher of the church we attended at the time. I had “grown up in” this church, as had every member of my family for a hundred years, and had several family members in the ministry, so I was well versed in the position the church had taken on everything to do with family and divorce for over a century. Once the preacher realized my then wife was unhappy he jettisoned EVERYTHING the church had ever taught about husband wife relations, and rebuked me for going to the Bible to justify my decisions in our family life. He made it clear that discussing what the Bible taught about marriage as well as what the church had taught in all times past about marriage was strictly forbidden. One statement he made that comes to mind is that when I objected to any woman using sex as weapon in marriage, he stated, “If you don’t want to live celibate then you had better learn to see things from her point of view.” That pretty much summed up his view on everything.
So what they really mean is:
Dwell with your wives with wisdom and understanding = Be her emotional tampon.
No thanks. I’d rather use the information I know about female nature and manage the affairs of my household accordingly without getting drawn into any fuckery. Thank you very much, bitches.
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Feelings are illusion.
They can’t be measured from person to person; there is no repeatability.
Emotional pain is a self-induced pity party as they can arise based on your hopes about a situation with no relation to the physical universe.
It follows then, if emotional pain is B.S., then, so is emotional happiness, a self-induced delusion.
Thus, she is demanding that the man participate in her fantasy delusions.
At least, that’s how I see things.
More verbal diarrhea. Men do not need to be more emotionally available to their wives, women need to stop talking two to three times more than is required to get the point across. They’ve turned emotional thinking and verbal redundancy into a positive… damn cucks!
Why is it that the man must become more feminine? How about the woman simply learn to control her emotions and communicate without harping on about her feelz and get to the point of her bitching and moaning.
And his needs, do those count at all.. nope and there endeth the lesson.
@ Pedat:
“I’d rather use the information I know about female nature and manage the affairs of my household accordingly”
Which is really what St. Peter is saying there. When he says “dwell with your wives with wisdom and understanding” or “dwell with your wives ‘according to knowledge’, and giving honour unto them, and as the weaker vessel”, he’s saying something like this:
“You all men need to understand that your wives are not like you. They’re not men. They’re women. Their lives are driven mostly by emotion and feelings. You need to help them not drive everything over a cliff with their emotions. So don’t get drawn into their drama, don’t fall into the realm of feelings, and don’t let her feelings override rationality, reason and sense. Love your wives for being women, don’t chide them for acting according to their nature, don’t be surprised or caught off guard when they act according to their nature, and don’t chastise them for not being men.”
Everyone wants to hear their own worthless opinions spoken in God’s voice.
While I hadn’t really considered applying it this way before, do you suppose that the passage of 1 Peter 3: 1-6 could be directed to wives as “potential salvation risk” verses? I ask because I don’t think I’ve ever seen any pastor or writer consider the first verse and say something like, “Wives do you see this? Your husband can be won to Christ through your behavior! That means that when you choose to disobey and act disrespectfully to him you’re actually putting him at risk of hell and Christ will the responsibility for his blood will be on your head!” But I’ve lost track of how many instances I’ve seen “spiritual leaders” take the 1 Peter 3:7, the verse that follows, and use it to threaten husbands into treating their wives with far more deference and supplication, because if they don’t, then God will choose to not hear their prayers anymore, thus condemning them to eternal punishment. And now Dalrock’s even finding examples in which they’ll use that verse to justify wiping out God’s commands to the wife just a few words ago before switching them to apply to the husband so that he’s now ordered by God to submit to her authority!
Consider it yet another example of how the modern pastors preach two Gospels; One focused on grace and freedom for the women, and one focused on laws and penance for the men. Can’t imagine why they’re having any trouble making converts!
“But, if a man is to love his wife, he is going to have to make a transition and become more emotionally available to her to meet her needs.”
Imagine the uproar if we reversed that and claim that if a woman is to love her husband, she has to be the one to change, be available more, and to meet HIS needs and submit.
Nah, that would be “controlling” and, my new favorite term, “spiritual abuse.”
Messed up the copy in that last post; Feel free to delete it and run this one instead.
While I hadn’t really considered applying it this way before, do you suppose that the passage of 1 Peter 3: 1-6 could be directed to wives as “potential salvation risk” verses? I ask because I don’t think I’ve ever seen any pastor or writer consider the first verse and say something like, “Wives do you see this? Your husband can be won to Christ through your behavior! That means that when you choose to disobey and act disrespectfully towards him you’re actually putting him at risk of hell, and the responsibility for his blood will be on your head!” But at the same time I’ve lost track of how many instances where I’ve seen “spiritual leaders” take 1 Peter 3:7, the verse that follows, and use it to threaten husbands into treating their wives with far more deference and supplication — because if they don’t, then God will choose to not hear their prayers anymore, thus condemning them to eternal punishment. And now Dalrock’s even finding examples in which they’ll use that verse to justify wiping out God’s commands to the wife just a few words ago before switching them to apply to the husband so that he’s now ordered by God to submit to her authority!
Consider it yet another example of how the modern pastors preach two Gospels; One focused on grace and freedom for the women, and one focused on laws and penance for the men. Can’t imagine why they’re having any trouble making converts!
@Darwinian Arminian
That sort of reading is anathema to Calvinism because of predestination/Unconditional Election. Calvinist organizations include: Southern Baptists, Primitive Baptists, Independent Baptists, all Presbyterians, Church of Christ, virtually all churches with the word ‘Reformed’ in their name, and others.
Some people want to keep men in the dark about female nature and what God has to say about it.
I stand to be corrected but that quote does not make sense in English. Even if it did make sense (which it doesn’t) it is surely – in so far as one may understand it – theologically wrong which we usually spell HERESY.
Should a husband want God to hear his prayers I had always understood that there is a crackle-free instant connection. God does not (unlike AT&T) do crossed-lines.
Wait, isn’t talking to your wife about your feelings “burdening her with unwanted emotional labor”, as feminists would put it? I think when feminists want men to be more “emotional available” they mean to listen patiently and attentively while she talks and talks about her feelings.
@Hugh
Is this blasphemy?
Or is is Heresy?
Dalrock, sometimes a good WH40K meme is appropriate. I don’t have the ability to articulate a biblical argument or chain of thought as some commenters here like Cane, thedeti, or Jonadab the Rechabite, but this is about old fashioned Heresy.
I used to wonder why history was full of violent reactions to Heresy, but I have a better contextual understanding now. The insidiously destructive effects of little Heresies over time leave nothing but a steaming pile of crap. There is no reformation that will work; it must be shoveled out and returned to its base state in regard to behavior, culture, etc.
I’m looking forward and imagining the next steps of history, and a more active response to Heresy looks to be in the cards.
Oh yeah, women reeeeeeeeally want to hear how we’re feeling. They won’t sneer or scoff or put us down if we admit to sadness or frustration or feeling blue. Noooo, never.
Matthew 23:1 Then Jesus spoke to the crowds and to His disciples, 2 saying: “The scribes and the Pharisees have seated themselves in the chair of Moses; 3 therefore all that they tell you, do and observe, but do not do according to their deeds; for they say things and do not do them. 4 They tie up heavy burdens and lay them on men’s shoulders, but they themselves are unwilling to move them with so much as a finger. 5 But they do all their deeds to be noticed by men; for they broaden their [a]phylacteries and lengthen the tassels of their garments.”
The only difference is that the modern scribes and Pharisees “do all their deeds to be noticed by” women, they thump their chests, and their garments are hair shirts.
[D: Very well put.]
There’s a very clever two-step here: first, we are supposed to buy the interchangeability and equivalence of the sexes (such that even biology is now a mental state); obviously there’s not even a fever-dream of a Scriptural basis for that.
Then, because we’re all the same, we’re supposed to become women, because that is personal growth and God is really expressing between the lines.
This is doctrine in every church I’ve attended in the past 10 years. A majority are sola scriptura, and socially very conservative. But they express the same premises and secular obligations of an Oberlin gender studies class.
Dear Canon Rex:
The most fun I had trolling Catholic Answers blog was doing the “agree and amplify” bit, in exactly the way that you suggest here. Unfortunately, they banned me and deleted all the funny caterwauling.
If you ever get over there, try it out.
As we read: husbands, submit yourselves unto your own wives, as unto the Lord. For the wife is the head of the husband, even as Christ is the head of the church: and she is the saviour of the body.
Guaranteed to have Xanthippe begging for the D in ten seconds flat.
Boxer
@Opus
This is his allusion to 1 Pet 3:7 that I mention:
But the verse no where says men need to be emotionally available.
Is mad as hell a feeling?
Women already make support groups for everything, it is their first instinct when anything happens no matter how grave or trivial. What wife is comfortable with her husband acting just like the women of the support group? None of them. He is supposed to behave differently. That’s why the biblical instructions about husbands and wives are written the way they are, to keep both parties from being the woman.
Who are these guys? It’s actually painful.
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@Boxer
I don’t have an account over at CAF, but I do browse it frequently. (For faith/doctrine/morals stuff) Yeah, it’s pretty blue pill over there for most of the posters.
I remembered they had a thread awhile back about the Red Pill. The hatred and total misunderstanding of it was shocking. (They even mentioned Dalrock) In all seriousness, there is a TON of things that can be reconciled with Catholic teaching and TRP: the problems that are/or come from abortion, divorce, contraception, sex before marriage, and more traditional gender roles, encyclicals from past popes, just to name a few. There is so much common ground, so it was amazing to see the quick rush to judgement and rapid assumptions that all who “take the red pill” are misogynists or “losers” or whatever.
I suppose that those topics in the grand scheme of things haven’t totally clicked together for them yet or they don’t have to deal with the problems other people do, so they can’t even fathom someone else’s perspective.
Oh well. To each their own.
God bless.
@CaneCaldo: “Calvinist organizations include: Southern Baptists, Primitive Baptists, Independent Baptists, all Presbyterians, Church of Christ, virtually all churches with the word ‘Reformed’ in their name, and others.”
You need to strike Church of Christ from that list. They are full-blown Arminian. They believe you can lose your salvation. Southern Baptists are usually 4-point Calvinists (sans unlimited atonement) if they see themselves as Calvinists at all. Most Evangelicals and Baptists spurn the Calvinist label because they associate it with Reformed denominations that assert double predestination or absolute predestination which leads to the rejection of evangelism. Reformed denominations also believe in a federal view of the church and family which views the church as a mediator between God and family and the husband as a mediator between God and his wife and children.
This is distinct from the evangelical/Baptist belief in the priesthood of all believers.
Dalrock:
One must note that the phrase: “emotionally available” is nowhere well-defined by the author. It appears to be a nebulous sort of placeholder for “doing some shit that makes the wife happy.”
Clearly, if your wife isn’t happy, it must be your fault, since you weren’t “emotionally available” (whatever that means), and thus the unhappiness is ultimately your fault.
Boxer
Correction:
” Southern Baptists are usually 4-point Calvinists (sans unlimited atonement)…”
I meant to say “(sans limited atonement)”
T: Total Depravity
U: Unconditional Election
L: Limited (or definitive) Atonement
I: Irresistable Grace
P: Perseverance of the Saints
Slightly OT: @Darwinian Arminian, @Cain Caldo
“That sort of reading is anathema to Calvinism because of predestination/Unconditional Election. Calvinist organizations include: Southern Baptists, Primitive Baptists, Independent Baptists, all Presbyterians, Church of Christ, virtually all churches with the word ‘Reformed’ in their name, and others.”
I was listening to Stefan Molyneux the other day and he likened post-modern liberalism to hyper-calvinism. After making that connection and reading your statements, I’m becoming more and more convinced that reformed (calvinist) theology without a gospel and biblically centered basis is equal to post modern liberalism. “There is no law, but grace. You can’t judge me! I will act as I will act because I have been predestined to life and all will be forgiven!”
It is a problem that modes of communication considered to be healthy are generally feminine. If you have a problem, you’re supposed to use lots of “When you do X, I feel Y” statements. You’re supposed to talk out a problem until you reach some verbal resolution. Men don’t necessarily want to build to some big catharsis or epiphany.
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A bit o’ hair-shirtery for your Friday afternoon reading pleasure.
https://www.theedgescollective.com/home/2017/6/19/fighting-for-my-wife
Oops, just saw someone already posted that link. 🙂 Carry on.
One must note that the phrase: “emotionally available” is nowhere well-defined by the author. It appears to be a nebulous sort of placeholder for “doing some shit that makes the wife happy.”
Boxer —
Yes. I suppose the “thinking”, if one can describe it as such, is that dwelling with one’s wife “according to knowledge” and “honoring” her mean that the husband needs to understand (have knowledge of) her need for his emotional availability, and therefore make that available to her as a part of dwelling with her “according to knowledge”. Of course that “thinking” essentially makes the wife’s ways of being in the marriage the standard for both husband and wife, which leads to a very feminine standard for everything the husband is doing in the marriage, lest he be accused of not “dwelling with [her] according to knowledge”, and therefore (again, according to this “thinking”) cut off by God. Essentially unless the man feminizes, he isn’t dwelling “according to knowledge”, and is sinning, per this view. A crazy view and one which has *never* been the common teaching of the Church in its history, but that doesn’t matter much to these folks, obviously.
@Canon Rex —
In all seriousness, there is a TON of things that can be reconciled with Catholic teaching and TRP: the problems that are/or come from abortion, divorce, contraception, sex before marriage, and more traditional gender roles, encyclicals from past popes, just to name a few. There is so much common ground
Well, unless you happen to be one of those Catholics who doesn’t agree with much of that teaching, or only pays lip-service to it, which is the case, in my observation, with MANY of the participants at that forum, particularly the louder ones. In praxis, the generally accepted approach there appears to be to find whatever justification you can with your good brain to justify doing what you feel is right, regardless of what the RCC actually teaches publically/officially on the matter, by means of Olympic-quality mental gymnastics — that is, if they even bother to honor the official teaching to begin with. In that list, you won’t find that much support for traditional Catholic teaching on divorce and gender roles — in fact, you’ll find normally outright hostility for those teachings, really. Heck a good number of the participants there are not even Christian (it seems like every time I go there following one of the links that Marcus posts here I see a poster or two in every thread who is self-described as “atheist”, and then of course there’s Xanthippe, who is basically a feminist clothed in a rather very thin veil of Catholicism of her making). That place is best used as a source of humor than anything else, I think.
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This and other propaganda like it amounts to a denial of the husband to impose any sort of healthy boundaries or standards in his family or private life. He has to express himself in ways that his wife deems qualify as “available” to her, even if it’s not how he actually feels.
@Dalrock – a great example of this kind of thinking is in the movie “Operation Pacific” with John Wayne. I highly recommend watching it, if you haven’t already. On top of being a good WW2 flick, it also drops a lot of Red Pill truths.
I would note the Bible says nothing about emotional availability, but it does regarding sexual access. These people literally say the opposite of what the Bible says on a topic. Husbands need to express themselves in ways that placate their wife, while their wife can deny sex all she wants.
When I was in college I had a housemate who had a bumper stick that said “Lord, save me from your followers!” I’m finally beginning to appreciate the sentiment behind it.
So if I am treating my wife bad and God needs to teach me how to do it right, it wont happen because He wont heare me since I am treating her wrong.
This violates the essence of our Christian walk and repentance. We acknowledge how impotent we are and God needs to change us. Now it cant happen if our wife feels she is being mistreated.
OT, but maybe a topic for another post: the effect of number of sexual partners on first marriage longevity:
https://www.mercatornet.com/family_edge/view/the-most-important-correlation-in-all-of-social-science/19344
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@Novaseeker
Yes. Sadly, it seems many only “pay lip service” as you say. Especially on more traditional gender roles, it’s like everyone forgets about it. Then it becomes almost a taboo topic and strange if someone actually speake about it. Then we get the usual “don’t be a doormat. Abuse is wrong.” All these qualifications. People make it too complicated. Wives, submit to your husbands as he is the head of the family. Husbands, love your wife as yourself. It’s that simple! And yet people scramble to try and explain or defend it with awkward conditions on the verses. If everyone just followed it and read it as it is, there would be no issuse. But alas, we’re not perfect human beings.
Here are the parallel verses that tell us what it means to “dwell with them according to knowledge.”
Colossians 4:1 Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal; knowing that ye also have a Master in heaven.
Ephesians 6:8-9 [Servants] Knowing that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free. And, ye masters, do the same things unto them, forbearing threatening: knowing that your Master also is in heaven; neither is there respect of persons with him.
I Peter 3:7 Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered.
Men are not commanded to understand women.
We are to rule our households in the knowledge that we have a Master in heaven who holds us accountable.
We are to value our wives as God’s more vulnerable adopted children.
Crying. “Feelings”, in this pop psych context, always comes down to “men need to cry more”. Don’t bother with any actual personal problems you may be having; nobody wants to deal with that lame garbage. Just squeeze a few out and all your problems disappear!
Hey, it usually works for women, don’t it?
“He wasn’t emotionally available” is just another of the bullshit meaningless things women say when they have already decided to dump a guy (or actually have dumped him). If she is happy and the vajayjay is tingling then his “emotional availability” won’t even be on her radar screen.
People forget we have thousands of years of history with children never being heard, men ignoring women, and men even living without TVs and Netflix. We have generations that had stiff upper lips and did not whine or make themselves emotionally available to anyone. And somehow we all survived. Somehow we survived generations of kids who were spanked as children, generations of people staying in jobs that were tough and they did not like for the money. The now is so alien to history people forget that it does not need to be this way it may be worse.
But sure, God commanded men to be “emotionally available” because that sounds like an ancient commandment.
From the link Hmm provided, I searched on the National Survey of Family Growth, and that led to these links:
https://ifstudies.org/blog/counterintuitive-trends-in-the-link-between-premarital-sex-and-marital-stability/
https://ifstudies.org/blog/children-in-single-parent-families-are-more-likely-to-witness-domestic-violence
From the link Hmm provided, I searched on the National Survey of Family Growth, and that led to these links:
https://ifstudies.org/blog/counterintuitive-trends-in-the-link-between-premarital-sex-and-marital-stability/
His analysis of that data is interesting.
I think his idea that the 2 partner women being higher risk than 3-9 partner women being based on the prior partner “providing one suitably serious comparison/alternative”, but not enough alternatives to make her feel secure about her current choice, may very well be correct. Of course, the data still says that 0-1 have the lowest rates — it’s just relatively few women in those demographics (2010 5% virgins at marriage, 22% 1 partner at marriage, and that’s probably the guy they’re marrying). Interesting to read, though.
Would be interesting to see the date of divorce pushed further out than merely 5 years after marriage. How many remained married after say, 20 years or more…?
Heh! They presume to know who God wants men to be. And it’s in Oprah’s image!
More seriously, this way of thinking about the human person, as some we know, even to its final end, is completely wrong. No one knows who they really are but God. We are not the names we give ourselves, nor the totality of our knowledge, nor our feelings.
We don’t know who we are until we find union with God. We are a mystery as deep as the image of God. The idea that these people know what anyone is supposed to become in God’s provenance is profoundly heretecal.
There are terrible theological errors at root in this complementarian ideology. Until I read Dalrock, I really didn’t get how bad it is.
@ Boxer says:
June 23, 2017 at 12:12 pm
“One must note that the phrase: ’emotionally available’ is nowhere well-defined by the author. It appears to be a nebulous sort of placeholder for ‘doing some shit that makes the wife happy’.”
They’re deliberately vague weasel words. The author doesn’t want to define what he means, because if what he meant was well defined, the reader could identify an objective standard, evaluate whether or not the standard is reasonable, then (if it’s reasonable) compare his own behavior to the standard.
If the standard was good and reasonable, that would result in greater maturity, and eventually the reader would no longer need the author’s advice.
By using weasel words, the author sends the reader on a wild goose chase, perpetually attempting to meet a “standard” that doesn’t really exist. He may as well try and nail down jello. It’s a game the reader can’t possibly win, so it’s best to not play at all.
In short, when someone starts using weasel words (and politicians are masters at this game), hold on to your wallet.
@Novaseeker @FH
Both are excellent points. I went to the NSoFG website and found lots of data about our perversions, but was unable to easily find the data they used to graph sexual partners versus percentage married.
Women don’t even want a man who shares his deepest darkest feelings with her. “Emotionally available” is code for something else. My guess is exciting, outgoing, charming, socially skilled – i.e. “Alpha”.
Yes. The words are very vague, probably to make it completely untestable. The result: when some young couple asks for marriage advice, give them some vague gibberish about “communicating your emotions” and when it doesn’t work, it’s easy to say they just didn’t do it right or are still not being as emotional as they could be.
Dalrock, the embedded video ads do a force-scroll — meaning, if I scroll down to read comments, the page will immediately scroll back up to where the videos are. This happens not just once, but any time the video is playing, essentially making it impossible to read comments.
I’m running the latest version of Safari on the latest version of OS X. I doubt I’m the only one experiencing this.
I don’t think Dalrock controls those. It is likely a WordPress issue.
Everyone wants to hear their own worthless opinions spoken in God’s voice.
Yes, and they’re getting bolder than ever in their attribution. Perhaps this is a result of knowing that most people who claim to be Christians are so ignorant of the Bible that they couldn’t distinguish its contents from those of a phonebook. Thus any obviously moronic statement can be ascribed to Scripture and be readily believed by huge numbers of people.
1 Cor 11
For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man. 9Neither was the man created for the woman; but the woman for the man.
Nova: “Essentially unless the man feminizes, he isn’t dwelling “according to knowledge”, and is sinning, per this view.”
I sold a motorcycle to a big strapping warehouseman who is also an elder at his charismatic church.
In the course of a couple of meetings with him, I learned all about his marriage, and (to summarize), he is married to a volatile, complaining, angry woman who kicks the crap out of him weekly — whereupon he prays for insight so as to keep her maintaining an even strain. Or at least not yelling at him and threatening the household’s existence. (He’s once-divorced and afraid it will happen again. He also was recruiting me — a single, divorced dad — to his congregation.)
Well, the wife finally approved his purchase of the Guzzi and he brought over the cash. He began another homily about how we men must pray to better serve and satisfy our women. Evidently this is one of the core values of his church. I did ask him if he thought she should occasionally just suck it up and try to make him happy, but I waited until I had the cash.
I think this is an example of a man desperate to be “emotionally available.” To him and his wife, I think it means that he never does anything that throws her into a rage, that he never ask her to look in the mirror if she is unhappy and wants the people around her to be unhappy, and that when she does go off, he is there to mollify and ransom her anger.
When blue pill, I assumed I needed to be “emotionally available”, and in confiding my fears once or twice a year, I earned my ex-‘s contempt. In the divorce she brought up such conversations 10 years after the fact. I do my best to validate female emotions these days, provided they are of the angry or overtly selfish variety. But I have learned to say, in respect of a few subjects, “I don’t talk about that.” This has a salubrious effect on females, and you don’t stand accused of running a pity party.
“,,, provided they are NOT of the angry or overtly selfish variety…”
We have generations that had stiff upper lips and did not whine or make themselves emotionally available to anyone. And somehow we all survived. Somehow we survived generations of kids who were spanked as children, generations of people staying in jobs that were tough and they did not like for the money. The now is so alien to history people forget that it does not need to be this way it may be worse.
Amen,
@BuenaVista,
“When blue pill, I assumed I needed to be “emotionally available”, and in confiding my fears once or twice a year, I earned my ex-‘s contempt.”
This is an important point, if a husband shares too much about his fears, his mistakes, his personal failings a mediocre wife will lose respect and a good wife will get fearful that he can’t lead well. Good leaders project confidence and have a plan.
My wife appreciates that I am emotionally stable. Be the oak tree and let her be the thunderstorm. Poon Comm. XV:
https://heartiste.wordpress.com/the-sixteen-commandments-of-poon/
Bee,
This is an important point, if a husband shares too much about his fears, his mistakes, his personal failings a mediocre wife will lose respect and a good wife will get fearful that he can’t lead well.
One wonders if what a man gets from such a wife is worth this level of perpetual self-vigilance and staying on one’s toes.
BuenaVista,
I think this is an example of a man desperate to be “emotionally available.” To him and his wife, I think it means that he never does anything that throws her into a rage, that he never ask her to look in the mirror if she is unhappy and wants the people around her to be unhappy, and that when she does go off, he is there to mollify and ransom her anger.
Quite the anecdote. When one feels down, remember that there are many men out there who have it worse.
Dear Fellas:
…
This is an interesting topic. I think there’s probably little difference between an “emotionally available” man and a ball-busting shrew. Healthy attraction is usually about dipolarity, with men and women on opposite ends of the same symbolic sphere.
Both men and women are born with a drive to couple up and raise children. Whether instinct outweighs a lot of contemporary social engineering is the real question.
Best,
Boxer
Boxer,
Both men and women are born with a drive to couple up and raise children.
The sphere consensus is that female hypergamy leads to polygamy. A couple stays together only until the infant is up on its feet and can move around. 80% of women pursue 20% of men…
If 1:1 pairing up was natural, then the average man would have no trouble getting and keeping the average woman even now..
I separately contend that the condition of poverty that existed for 99.9% of human existence buried a lot of these female traits. Modern prosperity, ironically, has elevated women into a Peter Principle of civilizational uselessness….
Of course, an article at Heartiste exhibits that which I have been saying for years :
https://heartiste.wordpress.com/2017/06/24/comment-of-the-week-women-are-anti-civilizational/
The diametric opposition between unrestricted female nature and the core pillars that any successful, prosperous, and free society is built on is worthy of profound and punctilious study.
Anon, I had a similar response to Bee. If that is what he calls a good wife, than count me out. I don’t know him, so maybe he just wrote too quickly, it seems cartoonish otherwise. If we are going to use simplistic phrasing like being an oak, then I will do the same. You be an oak, but for me, I will speak the truth and put my confidence in Christ. Proverbs 16:9. Why would a good wife need sanctification if everything is okay. Confidence in what? My Dad woke up and couldn’t walk, that’s a normal life, so according to Bee, he should shut up because otherwise his wife will get fearful. Losing the ability to walk IS a fearful thing, but ones confidence can only be that Christ’s purposes remain and a loss of mobility, eventually is temporary.
I wrote:
Then anon wrote:
In other words, women satisfy the drive to couple up and raise children by… you guessed it: coupling up and raising children. ;p
A minor point, but polygamy means something specific, and it doesn’t really include serial monogamy. That’s something different.
By the looks of things in my area, the average man has no trouble getting and keeping the average woman. ‘The average woman’ being more weighty, loud and crude than I’d prefer, but still.
Best,
Boxer
Both men and women are born with a drive to couple up and raise children. Whether instinct outweighs a lot of contemporary social engineering is the real question.
Boxer, I th1ink you just hit on something that deserves a LOT more examination.
Dear Feeriker/Anon:
A classical reading of Freud would but the libido at the center, and this agrees (I take it) with anon’s citation of “sphere consensus”.
The problem with Freudianism (either in Freud, or in the manosphere) is that it never really approaches the neurotic tendencies in even the happiest husband. It seems to me that there must be a competing instinct in healthy men, which is often overshadowed by the life instinct, but which is repressed in a coupling.
I wrote about it here:
https://v5k2c2.wordpress.com/2017/04/13/angst-mgtow/
I’d love to see you (and Anon, too) write about it. I note that you have a blog, but don’t have any articles on it. If Anon has one, I don’t know where it is.
Commenting on Dalrock is good, but having your own site is also good, and one can do both. You guys should consider hosting some stuff. You’re both clever writers and sharp thinkers.
Boxer
I’d love to see you (and Anon, too) write about it. I note that you have a blog, but don’t have any articles on it. If Anon has one, I don’t know where it is.
Heh. Yeah, I did set up a WordPress blog a few months back, but haven’t had time to populate it with content (that pesky necessary-evil beast called “Work” has been taking up WAAAAYYYY too much of my time lately).
Even when I do have the time, my blogging in the past has tended to be sporadic at best. To be honest, others here and elsewhere tend to “beat me to the punch” on topics of interest and importance and call out the key points in far clearer and more convincing prose than I would use. I’ve been content for the last five years or so to mostly respond and add to others’ content. However, once I do “breathe life” into my own blog, I’ll let everyone know.
Boxer,
By the looks of things in my area, the average man has no trouble getting and keeping the average woman. ‘The average woman’ being more weighty, loud and crude than I’d prefer, but still.
But they still divorce (50%) or threatpoint/nag (another 25%). So even this is not available to the average man with any reliability.
‘But if a husband is going to become who God wants him to be, he is going to need to learn to share his heart. For a woman, it is not enough to know what he did during a day. She often wants to understand how he influenced someone for the better, or how a difficult situation affected his heart, or how he needs her support and strength to accomplish his goals.’
What comes out of your mouth is basically sharing your heart. So you don’t have to make it a long winded emotional discussion if you don’t want to. It’s not a hard concept to understand.
Her 1: I don’t want you to solve my problems. I just want you to listen to me.
Him 1: That doesn’t make any sense. Why would you talk about a problem and not have some desire to solve that problem? I’m not going to waste my time sitting here listening to you talk about a problem that you have no interest in solving. I’ve got better things to do.
Her 2: I don’t want you to solve my problems. I just want you to listen to me.
Him 2: OK. I will give you the gift of my time and listen to what you have to say. But my gift is not open-ended. I retain control of deciding when I’ve given you enough of my time. So, what’s up?
Which “him” would you say is more “emotionally available”?
She get’s off on talking to him, so he gives her the gift of his time, even if he thinks what she has to say is silly (talking about a problem with no desire to solve it). He gets off on having sex with her, so she gives him the gift of her time, even tho her low testosterone levels lead her to think he is crazy for always having sex on the brain.
Each doesn’t understand the other (because male/female don’t think the same), but gives the gift of time to the other. Emotionally available.
@ thedeti
“You all men need to understand that your wives are not like you. They’re not men. They’re women. Their lives are driven mostly by emotion and feelings. You need to help them not drive everything over a cliff with their emotions. So don’t get drawn into their drama, don’t fall into the realm of feelings, and don’t let her feelings override rationality, reason and sense. Love your wives for being women, don’t chide them for acting according to their nature, don’t be surprised or caught off guard when they act according to their nature, and don’t chastise them for not being men.”
Well-put. And if you don’t have the authority to overrule and reign in someone who is operating on this level, you’re both screwed. And your family. And all of your affairs. If this pattern comes to prevail in your society at the macro level…well, here we are.
@ Swanny River
“If that is what he calls a good wife, than count me out. I don’t know him, so maybe he just wrote too quickly, it seems cartoonish otherwise.”
You are analyzing what I wrote in an overly rigid way. Every marriage has shades of grey.
Are you currently married?
If not, do you intend to get married?
“If we are going to use simplistic phrasing like being an oak, then I will do the same.”
The oak tree parable has helped my marriage much more than the admonitions by churchian and secular marriage experts to be more, “emotionally available”.
Was Jesus wrong to tell simplistic stories about wheat, tares, stony soil, good soil, sheep, and goats?
@ Anon
“This is an important point, if a husband shares too much about his fears, his mistakes, his personal failings a mediocre wife will lose respect and a good wife will get fearful that he can’t lead well.
One wonders if what a man gets from such a wife is worth this level of perpetual self-vigilance and staying on one’s toes.”
Bingo. It isn’t. It’s a path to misery and waste. The same effort devoted exclusively to a focus on his own prosperity and happiness would make him wealthy and secure.
Dear Anon:
When we’re talking about instinct, the present is all that matters. One eats when he is hungry, and he drinks when he is thirsty, and he has sex when he is erect.
This is why (if you live in North America, anyway) you see so many decent looking men pushing strollers, a few steps behind tattooed skanks and foul fatties. The instinct is more powerful, in most cases, than the social engineering or the unpleasantness of the population.
This is why (again, if you live in North America) you see so many men who have children by two or more women. The dude gets his needs met, until he’s dumped, and then he hopefully imagines that he’ll be able to try again with the next ho’, and the process repeats.
Best,
Boxer
Could someone point out where in the commandments I can find this ‘command’ in scripture? I can’t seem to find it anywhere.
The modern evangelical church has become a cult of pussy beggars who’ve deified the Feminine Imperative.
Too bad no one gave her this:
“The essence of the spiritual life does not lie in any of those things to which I have alluded. It consists in nothing else but the knowledge of the divine goodness and greatness, of our own nothingness and proneness to evil; in the love of God and the hatred of self; in entire subjection, not only to God Himself, but, for the love of Him, to all creatures; in giving up our own will and in completely resigning ourselves to the divine pleasure; moreover, in willing and doing all this with no other wish or aim than the glory and honor of God, the fulfillment of His will because it is His will and because He deserves to be served and loved. . . . But if you aspire to such a pitch of perfection, you must daily do violence to yourself, by courageously attacking and destroying all your evil desires and affections. In great matters as well as in small, it is necessary, then, that you prepare yourself and hold yourself in readiness for this conflict, for only he who is brave in the battle will be crowned.5” from “How to Read Your Way to Heaven” by Vicki Burbach