Why women overrate their looks.

In the last thread, I had mentioned that based on some experiences I had recently had, I was starting to wonder if most women overrate their looks/SMV.  I think a couple of commenters agreed, and commenter CAB mentioned that he had seen an instance of this in a blog thread that I had linked to where a female commenter had estimated herself to be in the 7-7.5 range.  The only problem, CAB noted, was that a few weeks prior, this same commenter had posted a link to her Facebook page, which had allowed him to see some photos of her…and she was no 7-7.5.

Roissy maintains that all women intuitively know where they stand on the 1-10 scale and that it is delusional, hamsterrific vanity that makes them score themselves higher than they ought.  He is right…mostly.  I don’t think most men realize that female self-image is a maelstorm of a lot of competing messages and ideas, some of which can contradict each other yet still be held concurrently by the same woman.  Basically, women’s opinions of themselves doesn’t occur in a vacuum, and it is these exterior and interior pressures and suggestions that mold and re-mold that opinion throughout each day.  (This is partly why a woman can feel perfectly fine about her body at noon and be in tears about it an hour later.)

Before I start discussing different factors that contribute to a woman’s overestimation of her looks, I want to state upfront that no woman alive is satisfied with her body.  Every woman probably has at least a half dozen things she would like to change about her body, and that is a very conservative estimate.  This includes women who are famous for being beautiful and have bodies and faces that are the envy of most women.  Actually, those women are probably the ones most paranoid and insecure about their looks since their looks are literally their primary source of value and there is new, younger competition coming on the scene every day.  Women who claim to be truly content with their bodies either are lying or have reached a point in their lives where they’ve given up on their looks.  Sometimes the lady truly doth protest too much.

Probably the strongest factor in women’s overrating of their looks is women’s conflation of personality with physical beauty.  Just as a woman will find an average-looking man with a good personality handsome, she will also consider an average-looking woman with a good personality prettier than she objectively is.  So if a woman believes herself to have a good personality, she will probably give herself an extra point or two that a man would not give her if he saw her across the bar – or across the church foyer.  In most women’s minds, a number rating includes a consideration of personality.  And, well, how many women truly think they have dud personalities?  Have you ever noticed how many average- or below average-looking women claim to have beautiful, gorgeous, amaaaazing friends who are funny, witty, and smart to boot – and then you meet them and one is slightly cross-eyed, one is top-heavy, and one is inoffensively unremarkable, even though they’re all dressed tastefully in Banana Republic?  Which brings to me to my next point, which is….

Groups of female friends tend to become an echo chamber of inflated rankings.  Most women do not have close friend groups that include 3-point spreads of beauty.  It’s far more likely that the “pretty one” of the group is at best a half to one point better-looking than the others.  The plainer friends then normalize their rankings relative to the pretty one’s, and because they’re not that far away from the pretty one and they’re all factoring in personality points, a group of 5s can easily see themselves as 7s.  Also, girl etiquette requires friends to praise each other’s looks and insist that their friends are pretty – “You look terrific!” “You were so pretty in that dress!”  “I love your hair!” “Girl, you look HOT tonight!” – so no woman is going to say to her friends, “Um, actually…you’re sort of busted.”

A corollary to this is the opinion of Mom and Grandma.  Many mothers refuse to believe the fruit of their loins is anything but gorgeous, and grandmothers are genetically programmed to think their granddaughters are beautiful.  But if Mom and Grandma see beauty that no one else does, well……..

Another strong factor is environment.  If you’re a 7 and you live in a town of 4s, people are going to treat you like a 10.  (And, because your church and women’s groups preach against the unrealistic image of female beauty in the media, your “real” beauty is going to be even more valuable.)  People do, to a certain extent, normalize their expectations to their surroundings.  This notably includes the tendency of horny alphas to slum.  If you’re a female 5 who hooks up with a few male 8s, you’re not going to think you’re a 5 anymore; you’re going to think you’re pretty hot and those guys who used you are just big fat entitled jerks.  Then again, sometimes any male attention, period, is enough to convince a woman that she’s hot.  It’s not uncommon for a single woman in her mid-30s to have a longtime beta orbiter from high school or sleazy alpha friend who’s always looking for sex.  That the woman can reject these men leads her to believe her sexual power is greater than it is in the wider market, even as the same woman complains that she can’t find any attractive men who want to date her.

Women also have a tendency to disregard the toll that age and weight take on their looks.  A woman who was an 8 at age 18 will probably not rank herself lower than a 7 at age 38, barring a colossal weight gain or other drastic change.  Additionally, most women do not think that a 20-pound weight gain is that damaging to their appearance.  So Mabel got a little chubbier since high college…it doesn’t matter because she’s still got a great personality, great hair, and great fashion sense!  That tire around the middle?  Oh, that’ll go away when she finds time in her busy schedule to go to the gym…someday…soon…ish.  Anyway, she’s still a cooler chick than all of those vapid girls who only care about exercising and eating salad.  Men are so shallow!

Finally, yes, there is an element of delusional vanity, too.  It is just incredibly, unspeakably painful for a woman to accept that she is not beautiful and is actually not all that appealing to look at.  It is equally painful for a woman to accept that she has lost all of her beauty, especially if she was known for her beauty in her youth.  (That is why in Los Angeles it is not uncommon to see borderline grotesque-looking women in their 50s and 60s sporting immobile faces, duck lips, and breast implants as they exercise themselves into their skinny jeans after trips to the salon.  Or, see:  Madonna.)  For these women, the most delusional shred of hope is better than no hope at all.  This is also why – in my opinion – the modern evangelical church stresses inner beauty so much to young women.  If you have inner beauty, then no loss or lack of outer beauty can really hurt you.  Not that this message has no merit, but if the message is that Jesus, the Ultimate Lover of Your Soul, is relentlessly, passionately, daringly pursuing you, and not just you, but you as you actually are, not the idealized version of you that sticks to her diet and does her makeup and hair every day – like Edward Cullen a regular lover might, except for all of the icky horniness – then where is the motivation to spruce up the physical body?  Jesus already loves you as you are, and isn’t it the job of men to be more like Jesus?  The responsibility is therefore on men to be like Jesus, rather than you conforming to the world, HELLO.

But, in spite of all this, is it really all that bad for women to overrate their looks?  Most women end up marrying, and chances are, their husbands rank their wives’ beauty higher than the average man does.  (What else can explain the abundance of men on the internet who claim to be dating/married to female 8s?)  And what man wants to be with a woman who feels bad about her body, anyway?  So maybe it all works out in the end, and very few are any worse off for it.

Note: I have turned off threaded comments, so when you are replying, please specify to whom.

Crush control.

Since my last post, I’ve suffered from the dilemma of too much choice of what to write about.  Too many topical write about-worthy things have happened – Glee‘s two most prominent female stars Britney Spears-ed themselves up for creepy pervo photog Terry Richardson; Famous Women with talk shows Disapproved of said Glee stars; an EW.com feminist Disapproved of the Famous Women’s disapproval; Boundless had another post with comments full of Christian female projection about what men find attractive and shaming of the “number rating” system; Boundless also had a post on international/interethnic marriages, which of course prompted dozens of comments reeking of the superiority of Christians who marry outside of their nationality; a personal experience that added another notch to the “all the good ones are taken, gay, or taken and gay” column; various other experiences that made me wonder if most women overrate their looks/SMV; and a message board post from a girl who is living with her ex-boyfriend and is very upset that he is getting involved with another woman, a situation whose stupidity makes me want to bash heads against the wall, not the least of which is my own.  Choosing from any of the above is tough, so I’m going to go with another Dating Thread scenario, one which is exceedingly common these days.

I think I’ve discussed male/female friendships before, but it’s a situation that tends to cause a lot of heartache and grief, so it’s worth discussing again.  Here’s what happened:

Esmeralda is a graduate student who has a massive crush on a fellow student, Phoebus.  Esme and Phoebs are inseparable and hang out together all the time.  When they’re not together, Phoebs constantly texts Esme.  They are so tight that Esme’s roommates mistakenly thought that Esme and Phoebs were dating.

Recently, Esme and Phoebs met up with some other students in their program and went to hang out at the house of Esme’s arch-nemesis, Morticia.  They all ate, drank, and made merry.  Then, needing more alcohol, Esme, Phoebs, Phoebs’ roommate, and Morticia headed out to the bars and met up with some other friends.

Now, if Phoebus had been looking for an opportunity to make a move on Esmeralda, this would have been it.  Fueled with liquid courage, she was more than ready for the taking.  Instead, this happened:

Phoebus danced with Morticia and made out with her.  They left a couple minutes later.  Ten minutes after that was last call, and Esmeralda felt incredibly awkward passing Phoebus and Morticia outside and exchanging hellos.

Esmeralda now feels devastated/angry/humiliated/still in love with Phoebus.

I hear about or read about scenarios like this all the time.  The daughter of one of my mom’s good friends had something very similar happen to her a couple of years ago.  (In her case, she met a nice Christian boy and hung out with him all summer; he told her he wanted to marry someone like her; they went their separate ways when school resumed in the fall; she flew down to Florida to surprise him; she then discovered that he was dating someone else.)  Candice Watters’ own history with her now-husband, Steve, very much resembles Esmeralda’s plight.  (In Candice’s case, she confronted Steve and told him she would cut him off if he didn’t want to date her.  Months later he decided to give up his Southern belle ideal and date Candice after she lost some weight and grew out her hair.)

It’s almost useless to offer any advice to women in Esmeralda’s situation, because the woman will rationalize away all reason.  This guy is different, not all guys are like that, you can’t make generalizations, I’d rather be his friend than not at all, etc.  Pretty much all you can do as a friend is just tell that person you don’t want to hear about any more of their self-inflicted melodrama.

A more effective solution is just not to get into such a situation in the first place.  This means not having a male friend as an emotional confidant.  This also means not having a male friend with whom you spend a lot of free time, especially if it’s one-on-one.  This includes non-stop texting.  If a male friend wants to send you regular texts checking up on you or sharing details of his day or confiding his feelings in you, he’s crossing the friendship line and should not be surprised if his female friend starts falling in love with him.  Most women, even the most strident feminists who think that abortion is a self-evident human right and that rich white men should pay for everything for everybody (unless they’re on a date), want to feel emotionally taken care of, and will start falling in love in a typical feminine fashion if they sense that the man is willing to care for them that way.

A good litmus test for whether or not you’ve crossed the line is the one that Esmeralda failed:  do your friends/roommates think you are dating this guy or that for all practical intents and purposes, he is your boyfriend?  If there is any ambiguity, you should take a step back.

As for Phoebus…I think men who act the way he has are selfish jerks.  Yeah, yeah, it’s the woman’s fault, she let it happen, she should have known, blah blah blah.  Her lack of knowledge or self-control doesn’t make his actions any less selfish.  It’s the equivalent of a woman dressing slutty, letting men shower her with attention and gifts, going home with the man she likes best, getting naked, and then saying she’s saving herself for marriage and she never intended to have sex with him.

Basically, don’t get emotionally intimate with a friend of the opposite sex, and don’t spend too much time together, unless you’re pursuing a romantic relationship.  Otherwise one person tends to develop unreciprocated feelings for the other person, and a lot of heartache can ensue.

 

Man as a mirror.

I wasn’t going to write about Karen Owen and her, uh, list, figuring I’d have nothing new to add to the conversation, but I had an experience over the weekend that changed my mind.

I had arrived at Borders to meet some female friends for our weekly Bible study.  While two friends went and got coffee, I held down the table.  Having just awakened from an out-cold nap just about 30 minutes prior, I was still feeling a little groggy and trying to snap out of it.  I tried to telepathically will my friends to hurry back to the table so that I could order my own overpriced cup of coffee.  Tragically, my telepathy failed.

A large, hairy, possibly somewhat Armenian-looking guy with cornrows dressed in the drab guy uniform of knee-length shorts and an enormous T-shirt sat in the armchair to my right with his beat-up MacBook and headphones.  I didn’t really notice him until he got up and went to unplug his power cord near my table.  As he passed behind me, I heard him talking out loud.  I think he was trying to be lighthearted and jovial and attract my attention that way, but I was still groggy and didn’t care what a large, hairy, badly dressed man wanted to say to me if he wasn’t going to engage me directly.

I guess he also figured out that his indirect approach wasn’t working, so when he sat back down, he spoke to me directly, using my shoes as an opener.  He asked if they were Burberry.  I said no, they were $14 from Payless.  He said they looked like Burberry because of the plaid pattern.  I said that the plaid was the reason I liked the shoes.  He then asked if I was there for a Bible study.  (He must have seen my Bible with its gilded page edges.)  I answered affirmatively, and he went on to ramble about how he think it’s good to read the Bible, even if you don’t believe, because there’s good stuff in there with good morals and Jesus had a lot of good things to say, etc. etc.  I nodded a couple of times and agreed with him but didn’t encourage the conversation to continue, all the while trying to decide if this guy was legit or weird and wondering if I was being a bad Christian for not asking him where he thought he would spend eternity if he died tonight or doing other Christian Outreach Moves especially when he clearly had a positive attitude about Christianity and my goodness I REALLY needed some designer coffee or food so I would be more pleasant and awake.  Finally he concluded and decided to leave, and we bid adieu.

Later on that night, I thought about what had happened and concluded that I would have snapped to far greater attention had the guy who approached me better-looking, better-dressed, more articulate, or wittier.  I would have acted more interested and possibly even thrown out some charm if he had been more in line with the type of man I find attractive.

Then I thought about Karen Owen and how her List only featured athletes and how most people believe she was only discriminating in reporting her adventures, not in having such adventures in general.

I’ve read before that men consider the looks of their wives/girlfriends to be a reflection of their own quality as men; that men do think of women as arm candy, and the better-looking the woman, the higher-status he must be.  In a way, a woman is a mirror back to the man of the type of man he is.  I think the inverse is true for women as well, that the status of the man or men they’re associated with is a mirror validating their beauty and worth as women, the logic being that high-status men choose high-status women, therefore if a high-status man chooses me, I must be a high-status (read: beautiful, sexy, alluring) woman.  For someone like Karen Owen, an attractive but not pretty girl, the drive to secure a mirror that reflected what she wanted to see was pretty all-consuming.  That she apparently picked and chose who made it onto the List supports this theory, since a girl who gets the best must be one of the best herself.  A lesser man’s inclusion on the List would only have lowered her value in her own eyes, and in the eyes of her friends.  If men typically go only for what they think they can get, then it’s pretty depressing if the only men who are coming after you are unimpressive, because that means you must be unimpressive, too.

So to bring it back around to my experience with Big Borders Guy, on the one hand I tried to feel flattered that this guy was doing a daygame cold approach – and I am not approached very often, much less cold, so I should have felt extra flattered – but on the other hand, he was not the reflection of myself that I wanted to see at all, and I think it would take a toll on my ego if BBG-types were the only ones who approached me.  The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. Or, perhaps more accurately, the spirit is reluctant, and the flesh is weak.

(Also, let this be encouragement to men to dress better.  If you look like you just rolled out of your parents’ basement and you try to approach women with minimal game, it’s probably not going to go in your favor.)

BlogBiz: No more namecalling.

I’m tired of reading comments where posters are calling each other names like idiot, sweetheart, moron, bitch, or any of that ilk.

From now on, I’m just going to start deleting comments with name-calling insults.  It’s ridiculous that grown men can’t get through a discussion without puerile mudslinging.  If you want to play the neener-neener game and call each other names, take it off the blog.

Game on film: “The Body Politic” edition.

Even though most Hollywood players consider themselves socially progressive, meaning they support, inter alia, same-sex marriage, women’s rights, the Prius, your taxes paying for everyone else’s health care, the idea of minorities, and Christian/Christianity-bashing, they can often be downright Paleolithic when it comes to depicting romance onscreen.  It’s astounding to me how often biological truth trickles through the ideology.  Yes, there are still people trying and failing to make The Michael Cera into a romantic trope, but for the most part, when the writers of a film or television show are trying to put two characters together, they’re going to incorporate elements of Game, especially if the protagonist is a woman.  Despite all of the social inculcating from kindergarten on that “boys and girls are equal,” NO ONE, not even Progressive Hollywood, truly believes that a woman is capable of falling in love with a submissive man.  This is why you will see a lot of sitcoms with doofus, no-Game husbands and smart wives – but you won’t ever see a show about how a smart woman falls in love with a doofus, no-Game man.  (If one manages to make it to the air, it will not last long.)  If the marriage is already established, it is taken for granted that at some point in the past, the man had enough Game to get the woman to marry him, and it is equally taken for granted that he then deteriorated into a hapless beta schlub.

But when a show is trying to get two characters together, you can be sure that elements of Game will weave their way into the storyline.  If the show has a “will they/won’t they” premise, the writers will give an alpha male character some super beta moments to prevent it from being utterly ridiculous that the female character hasn’t jumped him yet.  (See:  Bones.)  If the male character is a beta underdog that we’re supposed to root for, he will be given occasional alpha moments to prick the female into alertness, then re-beta-ize him to make the female character forget her attraction.  (See:  Ross and Rachel on Friends.)  Conversely, an alpha female will almost always show vulnerability to the male character before they get together.  She will be TOUGH TOUGH TOUGH – and then share a feeling and/or cry in front of the male.  A beta female, on the other hand, will become more sexy and beautiful and the male character will suddenly see her in a new light.  (This is usually accomplished by sending the characters to a dance, wedding, or other fancy outing.)

So what kind of Game tricks does Hollywood pull out when they need a male character to alpha up?  Well, the easiest, most obvious way is through looks:  the heroine usually ends up with the best-looking guy.  Granted, in Hollywood productions, everyone is attractive, even the unattractive people.  Someone who is supposed to be average-looking in a TV show is still better-looking than an average-looking regular person.  So looks aren’t usually so much a factor, unless the show is pitting a Hollywood average guy against a Hollywood handsome guy.

But even Hollywood average guys can get the girl with Game, and no greater tool can a Hollywood average guy wield than the Neg.  Shorter than the rival?  Doesn’t matter.  Not as built?  Doesn’t matter.  Not as handsome?  Doesn’t matter.  A Hollywood average guy with masterful negging powers is pretty much guaranteed to get the girl at some point down the road, which brings me to my example.

The Body Politic was a twentysomething political drama pilot made for The CW for the 2009/10 television season – a sort of CW-ized West Wing for the TXT-generation.  Featuring a very attractive cast of young actors (The CW’s specialty), it got positive reviews from just about every outlet that sampled it.  Alas, it did not go to series, but a series of clips from the pilot did make it onto YouTube.  I then tracked down the leaked presentation (the 30-minute version of the pilot; if the show had been picked up, the remaining scenes would have been produced).

In addition to establishing who all the characters were, the show spent quite a bit of time setting up a love triangle between Minka Kelly’s newbie Senatorial intern Frankie, Jason Dohring’s ambitious reporter Charlie, and Jay Hernandez’s war hero/staffer Ben.  I usually find love triangles hit or miss because of the tendency to make them very lopsided, with the eventual victor so obviously a superior choice that the whole thing is a waste of time.  This set-up, however, seemed kind of interesting because of the guys.  Dohring and Hernandez provide a very good example of Hollywood average guy vs. Hollywood handsome guy.  Hernandez, while a bit shorter than Dohring, has a stronger jawline, squarer face, and more athletic build.  Introduced in military dress, he’s clearly supposed to be the alpha.  Dohring, on the other hand, doesn’t look athletic at all, lacks a lantern jaw, and isn’t handsome.  Physically beta.  Yet I though it was pretty obvious that Frankie would eventually end up with Charlie (though not without a detour with Ben first), and all because Charlie drops some perfectly delivered negs on her in the first clip we see.  And Frankie shit tests Charlie five times in a row.  And is giving him the eyes.  Check it out for yourself.  Also worth noting is the AMOG battle between Charlie and Ben.

It would have been interesting to see how the show handled the progression of this love triangle.  My guess is that Frankie would have followed her hypergamous impulses and fallen into Ben’s alpha arms, only to feel she had a stronger emotional connection to Charlie.  But that’s all in the ether now, isn’t it?

What is “hot”?

As much as physical beauty can be objectively quantified – as in, how much a person’s proportions conform to a mathematically-crunched aesthetic ideal – it is not synonymous with “hot.”  “Hot,” to me, is a confusing, vague term that, at least when used by men, seems to indicate anything from “not fat” to “younger than 23” to “conforms to the ideal woman in my head” to “old but I’d still hit it” to “facially beautiful” to “not wearing very much clothing.”  Because of the breadth of meanings of the term, I am never quite sure what men mean when they say something like, “I went to the Squiggly Piggly with my bros on Saturday night, and there were all these hot girls there!”  Does it mean that the majority of women had beautiful faces?  Does it mean they were only attractive from the neck down?  Does it mean they were non-blubbery and wearing very little?  Does it mean they were all young?  Does it mean they had good hair?  (When I was in high school, all of the “hot girls” spent a lot of time styling their hair.  Their facial beauty seemed kind of optional.)  It’s confusing, because when I think of “hot girls,” I think of women who are clearly in the 9-10 range, who have beautiful faces, stunning hair, and bodies that most women would kill to have.  But it seems like in the real world, men are much more lax with their definition.

As for women and their definition of “hot”:

Usually a “hot” man falls into one of two categories:

1. He has a precision-toned body.
2. He is confident and dominant.

Occasionally a man will be confident and dominant and have a great body.   Those guys are too good to be true.  If he’s confident and dominant and has a great body AND has a great face, then he’s just scary to all but the most brazen of women.

Prenups.

Lover of Wisdom recently asked my opinion about pre-nups and what the evangelical female consensus is about them…so, Lover of Wisdom, this one’s for you.

Prenups are not a topic that comes up often when I’ve talked with other single Christian women about getting married, but my general feeling is that most single, conservative Christian women do not want a prenup for themselves.  They consider prenups an insult to their loyalty and devotion and a sign of no confidence on the man’s part.  A man who wants a prenup is a man who believes the union cannot last, may already be looking for a way out, and/or is more interested in himself than in his future bride’s well-being.  The average Christian woman does not see a prenup as protection for the man – or for herself.

That said, I think the average single Christian woman might be more tolerant of a prenup if there were a very large disparity of wealth between the future bride and groom.  In most marriages, a bazillionaire is not marrying a pauper, as people tend to marry those of similar socioeconomic background – and in doing so, end up marrying someone with a similar attitude toward money (both the making of and management of it), which reduces the likelihood that one sees the other as a love ’em-and-leave ’em get-rich-quick scheme.  Additionally, most people tend to marry relatively young, which means that typically neither bride nor groom is at a point in their career where they’re making scads of dough.  If both bride and groom are, say, 30 or younger, there’s usually not much of anything to protect.

However, when a very rich person is marrying a very…not-rich person, all sorts of flags of suspicion immediately go up.  Since it is not common for people of very disparate economic status to meet and socialize, outsiders start to wonder how they met…why they met…what he sees in her…what she sees in him.  The flags go up even faster and harder if the poorer party shows unfavorable signs of being from a lower economic class, such as in manner of dress and comportment.  In this sort of case, I think even a church girl would recommend that the richer party get a prenup (if that person is dead set on marrying someone who seems like a bad deal to begin with).

As for myself, I don’t like the idea of a prenup for the reasons stated above.  I think it’s bad form for a marriage, which is supposed to be the melding of two lives into one, to start off with each party on opposite sides of a table and armed with lawyers who are seeking the best deal for their clients.  (Each party to a prenup should have his or her own lawyer.  I would never recommend to any couple to have the same attorney craft their prenup.  Hello, conflict of interest.  No, besotted couple, your love is not greater than the legal system.)  That said, I am not opposed to prenups in principle.  If a couple want to have a “contingency plan” in place, that’s their business.  In cases of large, inherited wealth, I can even see why anxious parents might urge their son or daughter to get one.  But in general, I would counsel any couple wanting a prenup to examine hard their motivations for and expectations about marriage and commitment.

Feeling free to flirt.

It has been my experience in the church that flirting is implicitly frowned upon.  Growing up, I never heard a youth group sermon denouncing flirting, but in advice columns and articles written to youth and singles, flirting is usually cast in a negative light.  Although flirting at its purest is a natural way for two people to express chemistry and attraction, it often leads to confusion, manipulation, and drama.  Women naturally interpret a man’s playful attention as romantic interest, and when that doesn’t result in a date, hearts get broken.  Men likewise can get their hopes up when a girl flirts back at their overtures, then crushed when the girl says she just wants to be friends.  Not surprisingly, the church would rather have its young people avoid all of the emotional turmoil, and so we end up with exhortations to “man up” and “take the lead” (for men) and “be available” (for women).

This advice sounds solid, if a bit staid (I always imagine an unsmiling man somberly informing a woman, pre-selected for her pristine Christian character, that he would like to court her for the possibility of marriage, and the woman gravely agreeing.  Then they both wanly smile off in the distance, content in following God’s Will For Their Lives).  It’s a complete picture, just one stripped of color.  But how does this work in practice?

Consider the following scenario:  Regular guy Mario attends a hip, modern church called The Pillar.  (It used to be called Sandals until someone realized that that was the same name as a Caribbean vacation company.)  Mario starts noticing that an attractive young woman attends the same Sunday school group.  Mario finds out, through strategic eavesdropping, that the young woman is named Peach.  After a few weeks of observation and finding Peach to pass muster, Mario begins talking to Peach on Sundays.  Peach is friendly but doesn’t give any obvious IOIs.  Mario wants to date Peach.  What should he do?  If he shows “initiative and leadership,” he could be LJBFed.  If he waits around for clear IOIs, he will be accused of lacking initiative and leadership.  Mario decides that LJBFing is a fate worse than death, so he doesn’t ask Peach out.  Peach, meanwhile, has her own conundrum.  She likes Mario, but she wants to avoid a reputation for being a flirt, so she doesn’t overtly encourage his attentions.  She also thinks that Mario might just be friendly, and flirting with someone who is not interested back would be embarrassing.  She decides to wait for a more clear-cut signal.  Mario and Peach continue in their holding pattern, at least until bad-boy Wario shows up, flirts up a storm with Peach, swoops her away, and leaves Mario grumbling that Wario is stupid and ugly and Peach is a jerk-lover like every other girl.

But what if Peach had flirted with Mario, only to turn him down when he asked her out?  Why would Peach send such mixed signals?  Well, it’s possible that Peach saw Mario as someone “safe” who would never ask her out.  I don’t know what it is about the feminine psyche, but a lot of times it’s much easier to flirt with someone you have little interest in romantically than to flirt with someone you have a crush on.  Maybe it’s because you usually feel more self-conscious around a crush, and you also don’t want it to be too easy for the crush to get you, because otherwise, how do you know if he’s actually interested in you?  Plus, again, women don’t like feeling like they are chasing the guy, and Approaching + Flirting = Chasing.

So what is the answer?  I don’t know.  I think it’s wrong to deliberately dangle the carrot in front of someone you have no intention of feeding it to, but at the same time I don’t think it’s a good idea to be so unreadable that no one figure out what you’re thinking.  Alas, there is no foolproof way to avoid bumps and bruises on the road to love.

Like paper near a flame.

One consistent drum beat I’ve heard in the manosphere is that of a nearly obsessive fear of marrying a woman with a low or nonexistent sex drive.  This coincides with the idea that a man needs to “test drive” a woman before shackling himself to her with a ring, because what if she never puts out after the wedding night and horror of horrors you didn’t know this was going to happen because like a chivalrous white knight idiot you never had sex with her before the wedding?  Or – even worse – what if she only wants to have sex for a couple of years and then, after she gets her baby, she never wants to have sex again?  Sure, there’s a lot of derision of Carousel riders, but when push comes to shove, at least a Carousel rider is going to let you ride.  (Well, until she finds the next rider and takes half of your fortune with her, but at least you got your turn, which for most men seems to be better than no turn at all.)

In the Christian community, male fear of a sexless marriage seems to be as widespread as outside the church, but even more intense and much more underground.  It’s intense because devout Christian men know that they have one shot at marriage, which in turn is their one shot at finding a sex partner for life, and underground because Christians like to pretend that sex is a mystery that doesn’t exist don’t like to talk much about sex other than “Teens, don’t do it.”  For the Christian alpha male, there’s not much cause to worry – Christian alpha males almost always get snapped up right after college, or, if they delay marriage, whenever they feel like it’s finally time to leave and cleave…er, I mean, whenever the Holy Spirit speaks to them about the next season of life.  (As has been said here before, did anyone ever believe that Christian dating guru, pastor-to-be, megaflirt Joshua Harris was going to have genuine trouble finding a wife?)  It’s really the Christian beta males who must trek through Mordor to get to Mount Doom, only to possibly discover Gollum waiting to chomp off their finger.

The conundrum facing Christian beta males seems obvious:  Christian women don’t want beta males any more than non-Christian women do, Christian women have been trained not to give any signals of attraction, Christian women want to be “friends” for an unspecified amount of time first…yet Christian women expect men to “man up” and charge ahead, brandishing leadership skills in every facet of life, but not in too sexy a way, lest he be branded a sex-craved deviant or cause a sister (whom he should be treating with absolute purity) to stumble, but not so unsexy that the woman would rather wash her hair.  And a brother is somehow supposed to divine his future wife’s sex drive out of this?

While I empathize with Christian men facing the Leviathan of holy dating, I also think that the fear of marrying a low sex-drive woman is overblown.  I don’t know any single Christian women who are not confirmed spinsters who aren’t jonesing for sex.  As one of my single Christian female friends has said on a number of occasions, “I need to get married soon, because I’m ready to explode.”  It’s like shaking an unopened 2-liter bottle of soda and leaving the cap on.  You may not see a ton of bubbles, but the pressure is most definitely building up inside.  Men, please be encouraged that you won’t be buying a bottle of soda that is flat, but a bottle that is very agitated and waiting for the right time to unleash a torrent of passion.*

Interestingly, this subject came up in the comments of a recent Boundless post.  What began as comments to the female follow-up to “I’ll Go Out With You If…” (featuring the usual drivel) somehow morphed into some women admitting that yes, they did have sex drives that they were working to keep a lid on.  In one comment, a poster named Ashley summed it up thusly:

This is probably unrelated to the actual topic at hand, but I have never been able to explain this to a guy in a way that he can understand. There’s just no good way to tell someone, “I am so fantastically, unrestrainedly into you that I’m going to need us to work on the relational/emotional/intellectual connection here and I am going to need you to not. touch. me. until we talk about it — and I really have to warn you, I may need you to pull the breaks on me.”

Commenter Andrea-Elena responded:

Or how about…

I haven’t gotten to be physical much with guys in my life and I’m longing so much to touch and do all those things that even if I’m not over-the-moon into you, I might still pounce on you just ’cause I like you enough and I find you attractive enough and women get horny too!!!

I feel as if I ought to have a business-size card with that on it to give to a guy when we first start dating.

…

I was inexperienced until the age of 23. So I didn’t really know my own “strength” (heh, heh). I didn’t know I could be or would ever be the aggressor in making out. And there were times I was. Sure, that’ll be awesome when I’m someone’s wife. But it’s awfully dangerous during dating, especially at the beginning stages when it’s so easy for the physical bonding to escalate and go at a much more rapid pace than the “who we are as people” aspect of getting to know each other. And some guys don’t defend their own boundaries very well at times. Just as some of us gals don’t either at times.

So, men, take heart.  Chastity is not synonymous with a lack of sex drive.  Sometimes women may seem distant with affection because it’s the only way they can stop the snowball from accelerating down the mountain.  That said, I think it’s prudent for a couple who are getting serious to talk about sexual expectations in marriage.  If those expectations don’t line up and there doesn’t seem to be a way (or willingness) to make them line up, then the relationship really should be reconsidered.  Generally speaking, instead of spending a lot of time worrying about whether or not his future wife is going to want to have sex with him, a smart man would use that time to work on making himself so irresistible that his wife would have no choice but to jump him and have her way with him.

* Another way of putting it:  I DIDN’T WAIT THIS LONG SO I COULD HAVE FIVE MINUTES OF LAME, DUTIFUL SEX ONCE A MONTH.