Mistakes.

Missing your exit on the freeway.

Dialing the wrong number.

Forgetting to write down a debit in your checkbook.

Banging a guy you just met in a bar.

One of the greatest things a man can do for his wife.

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.

I’m going to be out of town for a while.  I just got a call tonight that my dad passed away.

Boundless blogger considers first anniversary a “miracle.”

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.

Very early in this blog’s existence, I wrote a post in which I said:

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.

Lo and behold, Boundless has provided us with a real-life example of this type of talk!  Blogger Nathan Zacharias commemorated his first anniversary with a post disparaging himself and extolling the beneficence of his wife for not divorcing him already.  Says he:

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.

Stereotypical feminist is stereotypical.

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:

1. Gloria hates Tebow for living out his traditional (Christian) values.
2. 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.)
3. 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.

 

Jack Dawson game.

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?

Don’t let your wife befriend a firefighter!

Over the holidays, I found out that one of my brother’s longtime friends is getting divorced from his wife (but not until after they file their taxes).  I’m pretty sure everyone could see this coming, since there have been rumblings for a long time that both have been miserable, and basically the wife showed up at my brother’s wedding with her boobs out to there.  The best man also told me that she cheats on her husband all the time and goes out partying a lot.  I don’t know how he would know that, but that’s the hearsay.

Anyhow, this is one of those situations where there was a third party involved.  The wife works across the street from a fire department, and the girls from the office would go over and flirt with the firefighters at lunchtime.  The wife got friendly with a firefighter, and while I don’t know if there was any physical cheating going on, there was definitely a texting relationship, and when the husband told her to ditch the firefighter friend, the wife said no.

This is the second marriage in my brother’s friend circle that has fallen prey to firefighter mojo.  Several years ago one of my brother’s other good friends married his high school sweetheart who also happened to be one of the prettiest girls at school.  Said friend porked out after getting married while the wife, who was a teacher, met the dad of one of her students.  Said dad was a firefighter.  The wife started working out.  Guess what happened.

Also while we’re on the topic of divorce (I know, not a very up way to start the year, but it was on my mind), I have an update on Morf and Bee.  My mom told me that Bee has a new boyfriend already, and that Morf proved his beta-ness once again by HAVING DINNER WITH THEM.  If I were Morf, I would have accidentally set fire to Bee’s residence or unintentionally worn some brass knuckles when I greeted Bee’s face with my fist.  The divorce has hit Morf so badly that he has moved to the West Coast to work for his company out here.

Some food for thought about all of the above scenarios:

• Divorce-after-taxes couple got married quite young, and I had had the impression that the husband was just desperate to get married at the time and took the first woman who would have him.  This, I think, is part of why mainstream conventional wisdom recommends that people don’t get married until their mid-20s.  But that’s really just a proxy for having the maturity to be proactive and purposeful about finding a mate who is really marriage material.  Age itself isn’t a guarantee of anything.
• High school sweetheart couple were an instance where they began dating freshman year of high school and didn’t marry until they graduated college.  They had never dated anyone else, and while the husband might have looked like an apex alpha at a small high school, when he got out in the real world, it turns out he wasn’t.  Meanwhile, the wife figured out that she was still cute enough and young enough to get more alpha than she had at home.  Not that I hear that the firefighter has married her yet.
• Bee hadn’t even graduated from college yet when she married Morf, and I remember remarking at the time that I thought she was too young.  Bee also is an only child of divorced parents and used to getting her own way all the time.  Oh, and Bee and Morf recited their own vows at their wedding, which included a recounting of how Bee “just knew” when she first set eyes on Morf.  DON’T WRITE YOUR OWN VOWS.  They will never be better than traditional vows.

I hope everyone had a terrific Christmas and New Year’s Day.  It’s good to be back.