Sex in last place.

As far as I can tell, most Christian advice about picking a spouse puts sex, or sexual spark, or whatever you want to call it, in last place.  It may be because a lot of Christians have mediocre sex lives (just hypothesizing), or because traditionally it was more important for a woman to find a good provider than it was to find a good lover, or because Christians just assume that sexual attraction will be there in some form whenever you put a man and a woman together, but whatever the case may be, at least when I was growing up, sexual attraction was, like, the last thing to consider when checking off the list for husbandly attributes.

Things that are more important than sex:

• Loving Jesus
• Attending church regularly
• Submitting oneself to God’s will
• Reading the Bible and praying
• Having a good job and being a provider
• Not a smoker
• Not a drinker
• Not a gambler
• Not a swearer
• Not an abuser
• Not a porn-watcher
• Loves kids
• Would be a good father
• Gets along with his own family
• Gets along with your family
• Sexually pure
• Sexually faithful
• Completely loyal
• Kind
• Compassionate
• Gentle
• Responsible

(The female version just has opposite genders, and women aren’t required to be providers.)

So, once you have all of these items checked off, THEN you can consider if the other person is at least somewhat sexually attractive to you, and if the person ISN’T at least somewhat sexually attractive to you, then maybe it’s time to start praying and then God may enable you to become sexually attracted to that person.

And, in the churchly way of thinking, the reason this kind of advice works is because it’s “the world” that puts inordinate importance on sexual attraction, and Christians are not to be of “the world,” and that appeals to the whole counter-cultural instinct.  Additionally, a lot of people ruin their lives by letting their sex drives do all the thinking, so there’s a precautionary aspect as well.  Churches are in the business of fixing people, but it’s even better not to have to fix people.  Also, nobody wants to think of all of the senior citizens at church ever having randy feelings.

The other thought that I had was that a lot of single Christians are not beautiful women or top-drawer men, and if churches can get singles to get past the requirement of throbbing physical attraction, more Christians will get married.  And since marriage is good for society and the church and people, then everyone wins.

Take, for example, Candice Watters’ advice from this article from Marry Well:

If what he’s looking to hold his marriage together for “many, many, many years” is sexual attraction, he’s setting himself up for disappointment. The only way to keep the high-jinks of new love going is to keep starting over with new lovers.

But that’s the message we’re bombarded with in our culture. In Hollywood especially, the end of the emotional high signals the need to move on to a new relationship where the high-octane meter gets to start over. Sometimes that means serial dating. More often it means divorce and remarriage. Tragically one in five married couples won’t reach their 5th anniversary.

But it need not end this way. When two believers come together in marriage, they have the potential, when the giddy feelings ebb, to leave what C.S. Lewis calls the “thrill” phase of romance for the “quieter and more lasting kind of interest … and happiness that follows.” He encourages this process, noting it is “one little part of what Christ meant by saying a thing will not really live unless it first dies.”

But in order for that to happen, we need to have realistic expectations, and the awareness that those giddy feelings will ebb.

….

I suspect your friend would say his desire for a “zing-pop” connection is consistent with Song of Solomon. There certainly was chemistry between Solomon and his bride. But nowhere in Scripture is that given as a condition for a God-glorifying marriage. You can build a strong, godly, world changing marriage on many things. But you can never build that simply on looks. Good looks are a bonus.

….

I worry for men like your friend who may miss out on highly productive marriages and families that are fruitful for the kingdom, simply because the women God brings to them don’t, at first, cause a chemical reaction.

The problem with Watters’ argument is that she is jumping to the apex fallacy of sexual attraction being the sole reason to marry.  Physical attraction is important to men, but only the most foolish men marry strictly for physical attraction.  (And they really would be idiots, because everyone knows that senior citizens don’t pose for centerfolds.)  But it’s amply evident from reading manosphere blogs that sexual attraction does help to keep marriages together in times when it would be easy to give up, because sex bonds people together.  Just remove sex from a marriage and see how long it lasts with any degree of happiness on either side.

This kind of advice completely misunderstands (at best) and disregards (at worst) male sexuality and what motivates men to pursue women.  When a man is sexually attracted to his wife in a functional marriage, he will be more productive, more open to her counsel, and all-around more content and happy.  I think what Watters is really doing is projecting her desire for young women not to fall prey to alpha players (“he’s so hot that I have to be with him even though he’s a loser”) onto men and their interest in attractive women (“she’s an idiot who hates kids, is in credit card debt up to her eyeballs, and is an alcoholic, but man, I’ve gotta spend the rest of my life legally bound to those jugs!”).

Is society so broken that every piece of advice or persuasive argument must be presented using extreme examples as rationales?  Can’t there be a happy medium where sex appeal is given its due while also encouraging the value of character?  Sheesh.

Boundless continues to beat “the only true beauty is a good personality” drum.

I guess it’s been too long since Boundless reminded everyone that your personality is the only thing that matters, so they had uberbeta Andrew Hess whip up an article that not only shames people for liking attractive people of a healthy weight, but also blames pornography for unrealistic standards of beauty.  (Um…has he seen the women who act in porn?  Unrealistic, yes.  Beautiful….um.)

The whole article was completely all over the place, as if Hess were grabbing at anything that could even slightly strengthen his argument, which basically boiled down to, “Pretty people have it better, and that sucks.”

First, he lamented the old Sprite slogan that said “image is everything.”  Because darn it, some people actually believe that image matters.   Then he was sad that people had to debate whether a fat man was fit to be President (no shout-out to William Howard Taft?), and even slammed The Biggest Loser for providing the drama of watching obese people lose weight “fast.”

Next, he brought up the ominous statistics of the $60 billion-a-year weight-loss industry and the 75 million Americans currently on diets.  (And this is a bad thing because…?)  And whoa, can’t forget the whole clothing and makeup markets.  Tsk, tsk.

Then Hess asked us what the “real costs of a culture over-emphasizing image and attractiveness” are.  Wellllll, if fat Americans going on diets – and statistically, the U.S. has a majority of its adult population that is overweight – and wanting to dress fashionably constitute “over-emphasizing image and attractiveness,” is that necessarily a bad thing?  Shouldn’t a nation of fat people desire to be less fat?

But instead of discussing his own ideas of what would constitute an ideal world (where I guess it doesn’t matter if you’re fat), Hess bizarrely then starts bashing pornography as creating a population unable to appreciate true beauty.  WHAT?!?  Is he honestly trying to say that if pornography didn’t exist, the average person would find fat people more attractive?  I mean, it sure sounds like it.

Hess then makes an appeal to the spiritual:

The teachings of Jesus and the other New Testament writers point people toward a focus on spiritual realities rather than physical ones. In fact, Peter clearly instructed first-century women to focus on their inner beauty rather than the external, “Do not let your adorning be external—the braiding of hair and the putting on of gold jewelry, or the clothing you wear—but let your adorning be the hidden person of the heart with the imperishable beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which in God’s sight is very precious” (1 Peter 3:3-4). Peter taught women to think about beauty in terms of their spiritual conformity to Christ’s character, and in the same way, men should think about image and attractiveness in terms of character.

Hess is trying to tie two things together that don’t belong together.  Peter correctly admonishes women to cultivate their personalities, because physical beauty is temporary.  But I’m pretty sure Peter wasn’t speaking to a room full of Weight Watchers members, either.  These verses aren’t an excuse to let yourself go crazy with the Ho-Hos because you’ve got a good personality.

Hess continues:

When the Bible describes the beauty of Christ, it always speaks of His love, His humility, His sacrifice for His people, His continuing work as their mediator, and many other things He is and does. It never even mentions what He looked like. We must learn to see the beauty in ourselves and others in the same way.

This is classic churchian logic:  your exterior doesn’t matter so long as your ~heart~ is beautiful.  But this is utterly ridiculous, because deep down, people know that their insides eventually show up on their outsides.  That is how most people can (often correctly) identify people’s character traits from their appearances.  You wouldn’t want a disheveled, sloppy person to work for you, because that sloppiness indicates interior character failings.  So why are we as Christians continually asked to pretend we are blind?  I’m not advocating a lack of compassion by any means, but I really resent being told to ignore cues that are necessary for society to operate properly.

Hess finishes up:

In a culture that boasts image is everything, let’s remember true beauty is a heart growing in the likeness of Jesus Christ. We should regularly recalibrate our hearts upon eternal reality and not spend our time, energy and money chasing physical beauty that simply will not last. Turns out godliness is everything; image is a distant second … if that.

Absolutely unfair to apply this kind of thinking to something that is a true problem and is unhealthy for society, to families, and to individuals.  But maybe it’s just indicative of the culture as a whole, that perspectives are that out of whack that someone can write an article like this and think it represents a well-thought-out idea some sort of social justice.

It would be nice if Boundless could produce a writer who could craft a persuasive argument that was worth reading.

 

Pervy church geezers.

Just as pretty much every evangelical church has a Youth Group Guy, pretty much every evangelical church also has a Pervy Church Geezer.

On the surface, the Pervy Church Geezer looks like any other typical Church Geezer**.  (**Roughly age 55+, but the whiter/less hair, the more geezery.  “Old enough to have a grandkid whose mom wasn’t a teenager” is another good off-hand measure.)  Like most Church Geezers, Pervy Church Geezers tend to be longtime church members in good standing, with faithful, post-menopausal wives and adult children who have permanently left the nest.  The main difference is that respectable Church Geezers actively refuse to be attracted to young women, reminding themselves that (a) young single women at church could (theoretically) be their daughters or granddaughters, and (b) their wives deserve their libidinal respect, while Pervy Church Geezers treat Sunday morning greeting time as a three-minute Mardi Gras:  a time when all of the normal rules of conduct don’t apply, and they get to hug and squeeze young women without prejudice under the guise of church family friendliness.

For the typical Pervy Church Geezer, this short greeting window is the highlight of his week, as it is most likely the only time he (a) sees any young women, and (b) is permitted physical contact with them.  If you are a young woman and you get to know a Pervy Church Geezer, he will probably keep tabs on your attendance and mention to you that he missed you if you skip a week.  He may also compliment you profusely on your appearance, especially if you wear a dress.  And if you wear heels, his head may explode.

One thing that Pervy Church Geezers are not is creepy.  Creepy church geezers are sexually threatening; Pervy Church Geezers are not.  Rather, Pervy Church Geezers are like jolly grandpas getting one last jump on a car battery.

Although I will say from experience that if a Pervy Church Geezer sticks his face in your neck when you give him his Sunday morning hug, that might be crossing the line a little.

 

If you are hot enough, he will ignore your jackhammery laughter.

Over the weekend I attended the wedding reception of a friend of mine and ended up at a table with the groom’s best friend B and B’s much younger girlfriend G.   My guess is that the age gap was somewhere around 20 or so years.  Intrigued by this real-life example of Game principles, I sat back and observed.

B was pushing 50, tall, with strawberry blond coloring and his age undeniably settling in to his face.  Fortunately for him, genetics had blessed him with a full head of (non-gray) hair.  He seemed confident and outgoing and had solid body language.

G was your typical high-maintenance SoCal Asian:  meticulously styled hair, full makeup and constant reapplication of lip gloss, high-end name brand clothing with, as she pointed out, six-inch heels.  She was objectively quite pretty.  Accordingly, her mannerisms were almost cartoonishly feminine:  continuous laughter, a constant need to touch and be close to her boyfriend, and I’m pretty sure she said zero interesting things the entire time.  I mainly remember her making remarks about makeup, her sister’s plans not to have a destination wedding, and how she gets her boyfriend up early every morning to make him go to yoga class with her.  Oh, and she has a little dog.

The longer I watched G, the more fascinated I became with the exaggerated way she pursed her pillowy lips when she talked.  The way her eyes widened and her mouth opened four inches every time she laughed and remained open.  And the way that laugh resembled a kinder, gentler version of Janice from Friends.

By this point there were about four different Haleys at war with themselves in my head.  Catty Haley was rolling her eyes and shaking her head at G.  Analytical Haley was trying to figure out what was keeping B and G together other than sex.  Cynical Haley was telling Analytical Haley, DUH, NOTHING.  Holy Haley was brusquely chastising Analytical and Cynical, reminding them that G was a perfectly decent and genuinely nice human being, as was B, and trying to imagine scenarios in which B and G had deep, meaningful conversations about the Future, the State of the World, and Interests in Common Other Than Yoga Class.  James Joyce teared up with pride.

While all of this was going on in my head, I had the horrible realization that I was a terrible loser at love compared to G, and there was no starker comparison than that between us.  I contemplated what it would take for me to turn myself into a knock-off version of her, and it gave me mental vertigo.  (I mean, I do pretty well with pervy church geezers, but I attribute my appeal to the novelty of my relative youth and the scarcity of my kind at the geezer-friendly early Sunday service.)  It was all a little bit like being strangled by a live-action version of Roissy’s blog, or discovering that you had gone to war with a spoon in your hand while the other person wielded a bayonet.  I kept asking myself, Is this what I need to be?  Is this what men want?  Because me as I am is not really tearing it up with the opposite sex, non-geezer edition.  Maybe the ratio is 1 glossy-lipped Natalie Portman-esque laugh = 200 witticisms.  Time to read less and stock up on Chanel.

Lest this seem too self-pitying, it should be noted that my friend who got married is more similar to me than to G, so I don’t think hope is dead or anything.  After all, my friend’s husband married my friend, not G (or a G clone).  And G is spending her “good years” with a man who may or may not ever marry her.  In the end it may all be a wash.  Still, I think G will be able to do well for herself (should she need to) even after hitting the wall.  There are always men eager to enjoy a personality like G’s.

So, with that in mind…

Now commencing Operation: Everything Is Funnier.