I was thinking some more about contemporary evangelical tactics to spread the good news and concluded that there is a lot of “Jesus is your boyfriend” language in outreach jargon these days. I’m pretty sure everyone has heard variations of the following at church or similar:
God wants to have a personal relationship with you.
God wants to know you intimately.
God is passionately pursuing you.
God has a plan for your life and is the Ultimate Provider.
God gave up everything just to reach special ol’ you.
Basically: Jesus has oneitis for you, and He’s got it baaaad.
I understand that the “personal God” emphasis is just the pendulum swing to the opposite end of the unpopular hellfire and brimstone approach, but when you look at it objectively, it makes it sound like God is writing your spiritual Harlequin novel. If you were to substitute “Joe Alpha” for God, the above sound like they could be the M.O. of the hero of this month’s iteration of The Flame and the Jewel or whatever romance novels get named. Unsurprisingly, this God-as-supernatural-suitor approach has worked quite well in recruiting women, because women want to be eternally pursued. Who better to know you intimately than the Supreme Being of the Universe who, by the way, forgives you of everything you have ever done wrong and still wants you to be His?
Given this approach, you’d think it would be equally unsurprising that it’s much harder to get men into church, but no: evangelicals are mostly still scratching their heads about this troubling phenomenon. (Well, scratching their heads when they’re not screeching at men to put down the XBox, stop having unrealistic standards of beauty, and man up, anyway.) It apparently has not occurred to the evangelical brain trust that men do not respond to passionate pursuit for an intimate relationship, nor are most men interested in having tear-filled meltdowns as they are overwhelmed by their emotions in light of receiving the truth. Men are not drawn to guys because they have good haircuts and wear “regular, accessible guy” Hawaiian shirts and eschew pulpits and drop the word “awesome” a lot. It’s just…men thirst for leadership, for fraternity, and for purpose, and what churches are offering up is not that but “Talk intimately to Jesus, He wants to KNOW YOUR SOUUUUUL” messages accentuated by easy-listening keyboarding from a Korg that has a spider web of wires protruding from it as everyone holds hands across the aisle. For a lot of men, this is like applying spiritual Nair to the spiritual hairs on their chests.
I think if churches want to get men back in the pews, they need to inspire men. They need to give men reasons, not emotions, to walk with God. They need to know that in knowing God, they will discover purpose for their lives, that God permits challenges in life to spur growth, that God is just and fair and disciplines out of love, not spite, that He is the wind at their backs and the leader of their battalions, and that he is the Almighty and we enter into His presence by His grace. A church that can harness the stout hearts of men can change the world. Attracting women would not be a problem, because women are drawn to men with purpose and passion.
I mean, if churches are going to cater in outreach to the inner princess of every woman, then they should at least give equal opportunity to the men by appealing to their inner comic book superhero.
Do married people know any single people? Why does it seem like once people get married, they’re sucked into a “young marrieds” vortex, never to be seen again by those eternally cruising eHarmony?
I feel like the process goes something like this:
Two young people from the singles group start dating.
Group expresses approval. Single women force down their bitterness jealousy if the man is attractive.
Engagement! Everyone cheers.
Wedding with many references to God’s blessings.
Newlyweds disappear into the Young Marrieds Vortex, where the ratio of singles to marrieds in all further social activities is 1:20 at most.
Couple buys a minivan and will have a child seat in the car for the next 10 years.
I’ve taken flack here for not having a social circle where people seem to know any single men who would be potential marriage material for me (or for them). But do young marrieds (or older marrieds, for that matter) really know that many eligible bachelors or bachelorettes? It seems like young marrieds are just relieved that they actually found someone worth marrying, and now that their task has been completed, everyone else is off their radar. And older marrieds, particularly in the church, have social lives that almost exclusively revolve around socializing with other married couples. If someone is single, it’s because that person was widowed.
Readership, if you have young married friends, do they have a social circle that includes singles that they could set you up with, or do you find that they’ve been sucked into the Young Marrieds Vortex?
In the dating thread on one of the message boards I read, a board member posted that for some reason, the majority of men she goes on dates with turn out to be hardcore conservatives. While she, presumably a liberal, claims not to mind this, the most recent man she’s dated is anti-Obama, anti-government, and owns a lot of guns. He also subjects her to his views but won’t listen to hers.** After he called for a fourth date, OP declined, citing their views as being too different.
Sir Libertarian didn’t read this as a rejection and instead began calling and leaving Facebook messages stating his belief that they are perfect for each other and that she’ll come around.
OP says that she has been ignoring him but is now afraid that he will start coming to her house, even though he has never been to her house before. (He happens to know one of her neighbors.) OP has sent one message to Sir Lib to stop messaging her, but he hasn’t stopped. OP then asks the board for advice on how to protect herself.
So far there has only been one response***, which was to start keeping a Stalker Journal immediately. Responder advised OP to (a) keep every single message exchanged between them, (b) to threaten him with going to the authorities if he doesn’t stop, and (c) to go to the authorities if threats don’t work.
It should be obvious to all the regulars around these parts that Sir Lib’s true problem wasn’t that he had conservative beliefs, but that he just wasn’t a sexy alpha. He had enough rudimentary game to make it to a third date with OP, but not enough game to make his holding of conservative beliefs attractive to OP, or to enact radio silence when OP rejected him. In bombarding OP with what I presume to be teasing admonitions that she’ll come around, Sir Lib came off as needy, and therefore beta, and therefore scary. (Men should not be afraid of women complaining that a man didn’t want to be friends/stopped all contact after a breakup. A woman can curse your existence up and down for such jerkiness, but the more she curses you, the more she is secretly attracted to your alpha non-neediness. If you ever had a chance with a woman, sometimes falling off the face of the planet is the best way to get her back.)
But all of this is elementary stuff. I think the more troublesome issue in the above scenario is that OP fears Sir Lib and that she is being advised to keep a Stalker Journal. This is not to say that stalking is not a real phenomenon or that there are never situations where such action is warranted, but as far as I can tell, Sir Lib hasn’t made threats to OP or written weird or disturbing things to her. By her own admission, he has never shown up at her house. Furthermore, OP says that their last date was last week, so it’s not like this has been going on for that long. But Sir Lib’s beta behavior (and ten bucks says he thinks he’s full of alpha swagger) is enough to inspire fear.
There are some here who consistently pooh-pooh Game and think it’s a big joke, but the above scenario, which I don’t think is an uncommon occurrence, negates that. Sir Lib, if he doesn’t get it together, could find himself under investigation by the police, and all because he didn’t have Game; well, maybe not Game moves so much as inner Game. But inner Game is a huge part of having Game at all. We like to gnash our teeth over alphas getting all the breaks, but I think the above scenario shows how having Game can save your life and reputation.
By the way, in defense of OP – Sir Lib seems to be someone she didn’t know well prior to going out with him. Since his character was unvetted, it’s natural for her to jump to the worst conclusion in the name of self-preservation. When it comes to strange men, women are taught to err on the side of caution. (Not that women err that way too much when the guy is a sexy alpha, BUT.)
**He probably just didn’t listen the right way, not that he didn’t listen at all.
***Since I began writing this post, there have been two more responses, both agreeing wholeheartedly about the Stalker Journal.
First: a moment of mourning for the Pats since my dad was from Massachusetts.
Second: It struck me over the weekend that Christian media is often accusing mainstream media of peddling an unrealistic romantic fantasy for women that causes women to become dissatisfied with the men available to them in real life and to not look for godly standards. But doesn’t Christian media peddle the exact same unrealistic romantic fantasies (while looking for overly godly standards)?
I mean, you’ve got Christian media on the one hand warning that (essentially) Titanic is bad for you, Reese Witherspoon romcoms are bad for you, romance novels are bad for you, etc. Unrealistic expectations of beauty, don’t you know that life isn’t a never-ending date?, and (DUN DUN DUN) these people have sex outside of marriage! Okay, fair enough.
But then that same Christian media turns around and foists Rebecca St. James’s “purity advice,” True Love Waits, Joshua Harris and kissing dating goodbye, and Stasi Eldredge’s Captivating (which includes chapters titled stuff like “Romanced,” “Beauty to Unveil,” “Arousing Adam,” and “Warrior Princesses”) on readers, and we’re supposed to believe that Christian media is peddling wisdom because it’s, like, Christian and stuff. How is the “Daughter of the King!” industry not setting up women for the exact same problem of an unrealistic romantic fantasy? You’ve got Rebecca St. James, whose entire adult life has been spent in the entertainment industry where the vast majority of males (and therefore the guys in her social circle) are well above average in looks and have success in a way that the average man will never attain, advising young Christian women on how to find her male peers lacking in romantic worthiness staying pure until they marry The One. You’ve got True Love Waits telling horny teenagers not to have sex until they’re married, which in this culture may not be for another 15 to 20 years, and expecting that signing a card is going to be a meaningful deterrence in the heat of the moment. Joshua Harris scared a generation away from dating because some guys in dating didn’t have lofty enough goals. And then you have people like Stasi Eldredge writing dreamy prose about how God can romantically and emotionally satisfy women. Here is a quote from Eldredge’s book Captivating:
We long for romance. We are wired for it; it’s what makes our hearts come alive. You know that. Somewhere, deep down inside, you know this. But what you might never have known is this…
This doesn’t need to wait for a man.
God longs to bring this into your life himself. … He wants to heal us through his love to become mature women who actually know him. He wants us to experience verses like, “Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her” (Hos. 2:14). And “You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride” (Song 4:9). Our hearts are desperate for this. What would it be like to experience for yourself that the truest thing about his heart toward yours is not disappointment or disapproval but deep, fiery, passionate love? This is, after all, what a woman was made for.
HOW CAN A NORMAL, FLESH-AND-BLOOD MAN COMPETE WITH GOD FOR A WOMAN’S SWOONS?
[Insert obligatory Fireproof mention here.]
And yet it’s the mainstream media that’s to blame for setting up unrealistic expectations, tsk tsk.
It seems to me that Christian media sets just as high a bar a fantasy for Christian women as the mainstream media does, if not higher just due to the fact that a staunch Christian woman is far more likely to hold out for “God’s best.” I feel like we are constantly assured that God is going to give us his Best if we just have faith and wait for it. This especially includes marriage. Don’t settle for less than God’s Best. Do you want to have a good, God-honoring marriage? Then hold out for His Best. You’re 25? You have time. You’re 30? Keep praying for God’s Best. 35? Keep trusting God to bring you his Best. 40? God’s Best doesn’t have a timetable. 45? Nothing is impossible for God, who is writing your love story. God will bring his Best to you in his perfect timing. 50? Sometimes God’s Best doesn’t include a husband, but that doesn’t mean it’s not God’s Best for you.
The main difference I can see between Christian and mainstream romantic fantasies is that the former causes people not to get married at all, and the latter causes break-ups after the wedding. In Christian terms, it’s better to be forever alone than to get married and then divorce because you’re not happy. But for every woman who can’t find someone to meet her expectations, another guy has to remain single, so…..
Hello, readers, I’m back. From what I can tell, my absence didn’t exactly stop people from getting all emotional about things I’ve written, or things that people think I’ve written that I’ve not actually written. Oh, the joys of having a blog!
Anyhow, I thank everyone who offered condolences and kept me and my family in their prayers. As most people have correctly surmised, my dad’s death was unexpected. One night after exercising after work, he had chest and back pains. My mom wanted him to go to the doctor right away, but out of manly pride and a lifelong dislike and avoidance of doctors, he refused. The next day the symptoms persisted and he still refused to go to the doctor. The next day, a Saturday, still experiencing symptoms, he finally went to the doctor, who informed him that he had had a heart attack. They put a few stents in, but because he had waited so long, they couldn’t put all the stents in that they wanted to. He would have to come back in a couple of weeks for another operation, a few days after which he could return to work. On Tuesday the 10th, the hospital released my dad, and he came home. We talked that night before I left for my softball game, and he sounded upbeat and much stronger than when he had been in the hospital. Five and a half hours after our call ended, my brother called me to say that Dad had died in bed of another heart attack and that he hadn’t suffered.
I’m not going to wax poetical about losing a parent; it’s not something that can be understood by those who haven’t experienced it, and those who have already know all the feelings I’m currently going through.
What I will say is that one of the greatest gifts that a man can give his wife is financial security in the event of his death. This doesn’t mean that a man needs to be Mr. Moneybags and have a million-dollar life insurance policy, but it does mean that a wife should have cash easily and immediately available to her and that she also knows where the money is going to come from in the future. For starters, she’s going to have to spring for the burial or cremation, and that’s going to start around $6000 for the cheap end (cremation) and more likely be around $10,000 or more for a burial. Going into $10,000-worth of credit card debt or embarking on a payment plan because you died isn’t how you want your widow to kick off her new reality. On top of that huge expense and the emotional devastation, she’s going to have to talk to the lawyers and accountants and Social Security and whoever else. By taking care of her most critical survival need, you can ease one large area of fear. That’s love. I know I spend the majority of time talking on this blog about alpha moves, but financial security is one of the biggest, most important beta moves a man can offer.
If you are a married guy, or are thinking about getting married or are engaged, and you haven’t given much (or any) thought to your wife’s life after you die, I implore you to put a plan in place. If you keep putting off dealing with your mortality, someday will eventually become today, possibly a lot sooner than you expect, and most likely your widow will be the one dealing with the consequences of your procrastination while she is grieving. Giving your wife financial peace of mind in the middle of emotional devastation is a tremendous act of love.
Does the Boundless blogger consider his first anniversary a “miracle” because he or his spouse nearly died last year and only miraculously survived? No. Did one of them commit adultery and then repent, restoring the marriage? No.
No, our Boundless blogger considers his first anniversary a “miracle” because, basically, his wife didn’t divorce him for being imperfect.
I’ve noticed that it’s fairly common in evangelical circles for a man to more or less prostrate himself at the feet of his wife’s saintly goodness, proclaiming some mixture of the following:
I don’t deserve my wife.
I was a mess before I met my wife.
If it weren’t for my wife, I don’t know where I’d be right now.
I don’t know what she sees in me.
I’m an idiot, but for some reason, she married me.
Sarah and I just celebrated our first wedding anniversary. She’s stuck with me 367 days, and that’s a miracle. No, seriously, it is.
….
No longer can I focus on just caring for my needs. No longer can I get by with looking at a situation by how I see it. [AH: Syntax doctor says what?] Instead, I look at it through her eyes, too. That means I see myself from her perspective. And I have to say, the view isn’t always pretty.
I long to serve Sarah in any way, but that doesn’t mean that my selfishness doesn’t rear its ugly head often. There are plenty of times when I have to tell Sarah I’m sorry for something I did or didn’t do.
The ring on my finger and the vow in my heart sheds light on my negative traits often. And so when I tell people I don’t deserve Sarah, I’m not joking.
….
Why Sarah chose me, I’ll never know. And as a I told someone close to me the other day, I deserve Sarah even less now than I did a year ago. But she loves me anyway.
….
I don’t like seeing my finger without the ring. My finger looks bare without it. And that’s what I’d be without Sarah. [AH: He would be bare without his wife? "Bare" as in exposed, or "bare" as in I-meant-to-say-lost-or-lonely?]
There’s more, but you get the picture.
Okay, I am not married, so maybe I’m just being a Neanderthal on this topic, but is it not possible to express gratefulness for a spouse without TOTALLY PROSTRATING ONESELF AT HER FEET?
More importantly, does Nathan Zacharias believe that his wife would write a similar article expressing the following?
how unworthy she is of her husband
that she has no idea why he married her
that their one-year anniversary is a miracle
that she deserves him even less than she did at the time of their wedding
how ugly she sees herself when she looks at herself from his point of view
that she often has to apologize to him for things she did or didn’t do
I mean, maybe she would. Maybe she does see herself as so unworthy of her husband that she would make a public proclamation of it. Maybe she considers her husband a prince without equal. Or…maybe she agrees with him. (As a point of comparison, I don’t recall Suzanne Gosselin, Boundless’s most recently married female blogger, ever writing a comparable post at her one-year anniversary. I also don’t ever recall Candice Watters opining similarly about her marriage with Steve back when they wrote for Boundless. Chelsey Munneke, Boundless’s recently engaged blogger who believes weight loss for a wedding is an unnecessary stress, has never spoken of her fiance this way, either. Rather, she believes her man should love her for her, daughter of the King that she is. Google-fu experts, feel free to prove my memory wrong.)
I know that it’s popular in evangelical circles to speak of everything in terms of being “sacrificial.” Sacrificial love, sacrificial serving, no one deserves anything, we’re all sanctified losers, boo hoo hoo, etc. But this just isn’t a healthy attitude to have in a functional, earth-bound relationship. Of course no one “deserves” anything; that’s a given. Humility and tolerance are important in a marriage for sure. But acting like those traits in a spouse are miraculous is a problem. Not all that long ago, those were expected in a marriage. That these are no longer givens but miracles just speaks to how weak marriage has become in America and in the American church.
Furthermore, even if Zacharias used “miracle” for hyperbolic effect, it is still problematic because it accepts modern divorce culture as legitimate. If he is joking that he is grateful that his wife didn’t frivolously divorce him, then he accepts that this is a realistic possibility for him. His wording at least suggests this: he doesn’t mention anything about her honoring her vows despite having to live with his imperfections. Instead, he chalks up the endurance of their marriage to her love for him. Well, Nathan, what is going to happen when your wife doesn’t feel “love” anymore? And are you expecting to be even less worthy of her after two years of marriage, or does the unworthiness sort of level off after a while? What happens when your wife realizes that she’s been loving someone so unworthy of her affection? Time to start apologizing for more things you didn’t do, I guess.
Do Christians really want to see stronger families? Do Christians really want to see positive changes in society? Less poverty, less abortion, less welfare, fewer single moms, fewer divorces? Then they really need to begin with marriage, and not just badgering unmarried 28-year-olds about joining eHarmz or making all the husbands do “The Love Dare” or giving purity rings to 15-year-olds who will not realistically marry for twenty more years.
I was lurking at one of my usual haunts and in this thread came across an argument between two women about the social/moral merits of Tim Tebow vs. LeBron James. Unsurprisingly, the more conservative woman (whom I’ll call June) supported Tebow while the obvious feminist (whom I’ll call Gloria) supported James. Here’s the exchange:
June:
Here’s what I don’t get. Why can’t everyone just stop being bitter and praise the kid for what he is. Is he a legit good quarterback? No. Is he beating all the odds and doing well beyond his means? Yes. Is he out at clubs with bitches, raping girls, or killing dogs? No. Why can’t everyone just stop and realize for once, a good person with a good heart that is working really hard and getting to enjoy it, whatever the talent level, is reaping the rewards? It makes me mad.
and
Like, if this isn’t a fel good sports story, than what is. I mean the kid in the offseason goes to prisons and talks to people. Most players after one negative tweet go off in the locker room in a tirade and he’s never been impolite or anything and even in losses, is gracious. I have seen opponents that are ruthless 99% of the time, as soon as they hit him, immediatley help him up. HE is the epitome of sportsmanship and what should be shown to children. He is succesful by sheer will, and not raw talent. I don’t understand.
A likeminded commenter (whom I’ll call Donna) adds:
Because that’s not what sports are about, apparently. It was better to hear non-stop press for months on end about where Lebron was going to sign (someone who finally just proposed to his long time baby mama, though has multiple side children) than to hear about Tebow.
As is typical of internet exchanges, one person can’t permit a dissenting opinion to go uncrushed, so Gloria immediately shows up and says:
He’s a douche, but Lebron hasn’t done anything as offensive as aligning himself with a bigoted anti-gay rights group just to push his anti-abortion agenda. Not even — ::gasp:: — having children (that he’s entirely responsible for and is actively involved in the lives of) out of marriage and not marrying the mother immediately.
He’s also by far one of the best players in the world at his sport. Something Tebow will never, ever be.
It’s like you couldn’t ask for a better subconscious confession of feminist values if it were something you could order on a menu. Let’s take a look at what’s going on here:
Gloria hates Tebow for living out his traditional (Christian) values.
Gloria also hates Tebow for being not alpha enough, i.e., she doesn’t consider him a good player. (I suspect she especially has a lot of subconscious scorn for him for remaining a virgin as well. Feminists don’t respect self-thwarted alphas.)
Gloria loves LeBron James. Notice how it doesn’t matter to her that James (himself a bastard of an ex-con) has fathered bastard children and has only recently even deigned to offer marriage to their mother. What truly matters to Gloria is that James is a charismatic apex alpha and therefore everything about him is forgivable or hamsterable.
Donna replies:
One commercial during a Superbowl, that how many of you have actually seen since, is not pushing in my opinion. But good to know Lebron is the okay douche. lol
Gloria, of course, can’t handle an apex alpha like Lebron being called something as derogatory as an “okay douche,” so she retaliates:
I don’t think Lebron is an “okay douche”.
I’m not going to morally judge him for having kids he clearly adores and a relationship that has worked for both he and his partner and hold that below Tebow’s willingness to publicly join with a group that has historically been against gays’ and women’s rights like you are.
So I guess you’re free from the moral judgment of a feminist if you fork over resources to women and children, but not if you think women should give birth to the children they’re impregnated with. Feminism is about the transfer of resources from men to women, QED! Also, the “relationship that has worked for both he and his partner” might as well be called “woman puts up with indignity of not being married in order to hold on to apex alpha male.” Any woman who honestly believes that a lower-status woman in a sexual relationship with a charismatic apex alpha male truly does not have any interest in marrying him any time soon (and therefore locking him up financially, status-ly, and at least nominally penis-ly) is lying to herself.
GRAMMAR NOTE: DO THEY NOT TEACH THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN SUBJECT AND OBJECT PRONOUNS ANYMORE? I mean, it used to be limited to stuff like “me and him went to the store,” but now I see stuff like “they bought a gift for him and I” and the above “for both he and his partner.” IT BURNSSS US, PRECIOUSSSS. It’s doubly worse because in the latter examples, people say stuff like this thinking they sound more educated. GAHHHHH!!!!!!!!! (And don’t get me started on all the people who think that plurals are made by adding ‘s to the ends of words.)
And fret not that Gloria doesn’t believe the entire feminist party line, because she follows that up with this:
There are tons of better “feel good” stories in sports than a privileged, rich white Christian male that has never been an underdog in his life before he got to the NFL getting overhyped and overvalued by the media and his cult fandom.
Look at Patrick Willis (you know, the best LB in football) and what he had to overcome as a child and young man to get where he is. Hell, watch any weekend OTL edition or E:60 and you’ll come across multiple ones each week.
Remember, if you’re a white Christian male, you never have to work for anything and you never can be an underdog. White Christian men spend all of their time standing on their mountains devising new ways to oppress women and minorities. They also practice laughing evilly and twirling their mustaches.
Kind of makes you wonder how much the Tebow-hating feminists would secretly love him if:
He won a Superbowl ring, or
He had premarital sex, or
He were ABW (Anything But White), or
He gave them all $1000 and told them they were pretty.
Not that I think Gloria would ever turn down a date with Tebow if the opportunity presented itself. He’s not that unattractive to her, LET’S BE REAL.
In the comments on Dalrock’s post “The one that got away,” which discusses a woman’s penchant for holding on to memories of a previous lover even if married to a man who gives her everything she could ever want, anon66 criticizes the movie Titanic, saying:
This is why I dislike the movie Titanic. At the end of the movie Winslet’s character ends up back on the ship with DiCaprio to which I ask “What about her husband?” Was a very short fling on the doomed ship more important to her than a lifetime of marriage and children.
Commenter vitabenedicta replies:
What’s interesting is that the fiance is an alpha–socially powerful, violent, largely indifferent to her–while her paramour is more of a beta–a sexually timid white knight who dies saving her life. After he dies she marries another man, who also appears to be a beta, but he can’t ever inspire the passion that the first beta did. So the movie isn’t so much about getting “five minutes of alpha” as it is an instruction manual on how betas can succeed with beautiful women. (Basically, target young women who have never been in love before; be different than the men in her usual surroundings; and be an artist. It’s a bit of a tall order.)
I started to write a reply but then realized that it was getting long and detailed enough to merit its own post here. Since the movie will be re-released in April of this year (with a 3-D conversion, of course) to commemorate the centennial anniversary of the ship’s sinking, let’s take a look at the real alpha/beta dynamics in the film.
For those who are unaware (either having never seen the film, or have forgotten the details, or were too young to see the film when it was released [oblig. THAT MAKES ME FEEL SO OLD UGHHH]), here’s the plot: Rose DeWitt Bukater is an upper-class 17-year-old Philadelphian engaged to wealthy heir Cal Hockley. They are traveling with Rose’s mother from Southampton, England, to New York City on the Titanic. Rose feels trapped because she does not love Cal, and he sees her as a prize possession rather than a person. On the first evening of the voyage, Rose meets Jack Dawson, a penniless American sketch artist who won his steerage ticket in a game of poker. He seems interested in her as a person, and she sees an opportunity at a new life. They fall in love, the iceberg hits the ship, the ship sinks, and Rose survives empowered to live life to the fullest.
This story is framed in a flashback, with Old Rose telling the story to a treasure hunter looking for the diamond necklace that Rose received as a gift from Cal. At the end of the movie, having now spilled the secret she held so long, Old Rose drifts off into sleep (or death?) and finds herself young and back on the Titanic, where Jack is waiting for her.
It’s still hard for me to believe that the guy who wrote and directed Terminator and Aliens is the same guy who wrote and directed this grade-A chick crack (and the plot description reads like the romance novel that female romance writers all wish they could have written), but there you go.
Going back to the above comments from Dalrock’s, I disagree with vitabenedicta that Cal was alpha and Jack was beta. In actuality, the reverse is true. Titanic is actually a testament to inner game and is a celluloid representation of Roissy’s insistence that money and social status alone are not enough to win a woman’s affections.
Jack is more beta on the surface, but he has strong inner game. It is actually this strong inner game that provides the basis for the emotional through-line of the movie. When Jack and Rose first meet, Rose is about to commit suicide by jumping off the back of the ship at night. Jack is able to talk Rose out of suicide using some light negs, nonchalantly reminding her of how cold the water is and how he’s gonna hafta jump in to save her, subtly shifting the power in his favor by insinuating that she’s being silly and emotional. What he does NOT do is act like what she’s about to do is SRS BSNS. A lesser man would have acted frightened that Rose would jump.
Jack is also unapologetic about his station in life and sees it as a good thing. He does not try to seek Rose’s approval (or even make any pledge or attempt to better himself for her).
He is unruffled by Cal’s continued attempts to belittle him and charms all of Rose’s upper-crusty dinner companions. He tells her what to do (“meet me at the clock”) rather than requesting behavior of her. He never panics when the ship begins to sink but remains level-headed and provides guidance to Rose the entire time. And (SPOILER ALERT) in the end he does what every woman wishes the man she loves would be willing to do for her: sacrifice his life in order to save hers.
In contrast, Cal, while having an alpha social position, has little inner game and thinks that bullying is a substitute for alpha frame. He is domineering rather than dominant. He acts defensively and lets little things bother him, and he spends most of the movie in a petulant mood, being rude to Jack because he can sense Rose’s attraction to him, and paying his #1 minion to spy on Jack and frame him for theft. When he loses his temper with Rose, it’s not one of Roissy’s occasional outbursts to correct bad behavior, it’s a man trying to intimidate because he can sense that he’s losing the woman and intimidation is the only tool he has left in his arsenal. And once it’s really and finally clear that Rose has chosen Jack for good, Cal completely loses it and picks up a pistol and chases them around the sinking ship shooting at them. These are not the actions of a man with inner game, who is in control of himself and the situation around him.
(Of course, in case we weren’t able to figure out already that Cal isn’t The One, James Cameron reveals Cal as the ultimate coward, first trying to bribe his way onto one of the lifeboats, and when that doesn’t work, actually picking up a random child and pretending the child is his so he can get onto a lifeboat. And just to make really, REALLY sure we know that Cal is a loser, we find out that Cal ultimately committed suicide when the stock market crashed in 1929. Stuff like this is why James Cameron, despite being one of the greatest action directors of all time, and one of the few blockbuster directors who actually writes his own films, will never be considered by tastemakers on par with guys like Christopher Nolan or Peter Jackson.)
In light of the differences between Jack and Cal, and the fundamental truths of Game and female attraction so simply presented, it’s not surprising to see why Titanic became such an international phenomenon. It worked because the truth of human experience is not bound by culture or nationality. Not that the nice, shiny package of a lavish period drama of class warfare that was also an action movie that was also a disaster pic that was also a “first love” love story that was also Leonardo DiCaprio at his most beautiful and charming didn’t help. But if more writers were able to access the truths of human existence, I think the box office would be doing a whole lot better.
As for the claim that Rose was some sort of awful woman for meeting Jack in Titanic heaven and not her husband, I think there are a couple of different ways to look at this. One is that yes, it’s kind of horrible that Rose still carried Jack in her heart, a man she knew for only a few days, rather than the man who was her husband and gave her her children. But Jack was a first love, and first loves have a way of sticking that later loves can never quite displace. Isn’t that why manospherians are so much about keeping numbers low? (And really, how can any man compare with a man who literally talked you off a ledge and saved you from freezing to death in the middle of the North Atlantic ocean while the luxury ship you were sailing on was sinking AND sacrificed himself in the process? Okay, and also that you had your first orgasm with him in the back of a car.)
The other way to look at this is that having Rose meet Jack in Titanic heaven is really the only way the story could have ended satisfactorily. The story was about Rose’s emotional emancipation. Jack was the agent of change. He was her savior (and Rose even says at the end of the movie that he “saved [her] in every way a person can be saved”). Having her reunite in death/dream with her late husband (whom we hadn’t even seen), right after she has finally relieved herself of the secret she has been carrying with her since she was a teenager, would have been bizarre. I can’t imagine anyone would have walked out of the theater rejoicing that Rose showed what a loving and faithful wife she was if THAT had been the ending.
It’ll be interesting to see how the film affects a new generation of movie-goers. In the age of Twilight, Facebook, and reality TV, will Jack and Rose be able to enchant today’s teens, or will the bulk of moviegoers only be nostalgia-trippers?
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