Rebranding submission.

Mention “submitting to your husband” to the average woman, and she’ll look at you like you just suggested that the U.S. should bring back slavery.  These days submission has such a negative rep that trying to sell women on submission is like trying to sell paleo dieters some carbs.  In my opinion, given the current cultural climate, trying to pound the submission drum is just going to come up against a lot of resistance.

Last weekend I had lunch with a recently married friend and got onto the subject of submission.  While she had a knee-jerk reaction to the word itself, she actually agreed that deference was a part of her marriage and that it worked for her and her husband.  So maybe submission just needs rebranding.  When a woman hears “submit,” she thinks “become a doormat, throw brains out the window, let husband become a tyrannical dictator.”  Of COURSE women are going to reject submission when it is so closely correlated with those ideas.  But deference – and the connotation of agency involved in the decision – that seems a little more appealing.

So maybe the subject should be approached from that angle – ladies, can you defer to your husbands’ decision-making?

I suppose we can quibble over whether women should just suck it up and ACCEPT that the Bible says submission so therefore they have to SUBMIT whether they like it or not, but there’s also a reason that chewable pills taste like fruit, so………

 

Give them something real.

Hey, guys, writing my first post from my new laptop!  The old one finally crapped out after six years, and now I’m trying to figure out if Windows 8 is a brilliant innovation or a brilliant disaster.

I’ve had this post on my mind for a while, and it sort of has to do with the usual around here, but it also applies to life in general.  My boss recently celebrated her birthday.  I’m not a gift person, but I felt that a card was not enough (and then I found out that she isn’t a card person anyway, which mooted the card idea), so I decided to bake some cupcakes for her.  Not cupcakes from a box – cupcakes from scratch, with frosting from scratch.**

When I brought in the cupcakes the next day, my boss acted like I had roped the stars and laid them on her desk.  She then proudly handed out cupcakes to everyone on the floor.  Afterward I had several people rave about the cupcakes to me – and look completely shocked to find out they were made from scratch.

The whole experience hammered home that people are starved for realness – not just food, but from people.  Our world is so fast and fake, and I think a lot of adults spend much of their time feeling overwhelmed to some degree.  So when someone injects some simple realness and simple consideration into their lives, they can hardly believe it.

Maybe in the church community we take realness for granted, because churches are all about building community and meeting together and eating (seriously, how many church events do NOT include eating?).  But people who aren’t plugged into a church community are often very isolated, especially if they don’t have family nearby or are estranged from their families.  I think that as Christians we sometimes, as a result of being in a community, get very myopic and spend a lot of time tending mainly to ourselves.  Some of this is natural, but even as we take collections for missionaries and do specific missions activities, we forget that there are people we associate with every day who are in need of simple acts of real love.  And I know that this blog mainly exists because church culture gets a lot wrong, especially in the area of dating and romance, but as Christians we do have something very real to offer the people in our lives.  We have the chance to pass on the love that transformed our lives to others.  I think we too often forget how profound that is, because we’re too busy measuring ourselves against the super-Christianity of Joe Worship Leader or Sir-Prays-Out-Loud all the time.

So, give the people in your life something real this week.  People are looking for the genuine article.  The small things, in the end, are often the biggest things.

**I used the Betty Crocker carrot cake recipe.

Tired of Christian dating advice acting like physical attraction is an either/or proposition.

I can’t remember if I’ve discussed this article from MarryWell before, but even if I have, it’s worth a revisit.  I bookmarked the article a couple of years ago in anticipation of blogging about it, but did I ever get around to the blogging part?  ANYHOW…it’s your basic “how important is physical attraction?” Q&A, wherein a thirtysomething single female MarryWell-er gets an answer from Candice Watters.  (Longtime readers of my blog can probably tell you Candice Watters’ opinion on the topic, and my opinion of Candice Watters’ opinion on the topic.)  Basically, the reader says she forwarded the infamous “Brother, You’re Like a Six” Boundless article to a single male friend whom she felt needed the ~advice, and he wrote her back a lengthy reply that basically reads like typical manospherian reasoning on the subjects of looks, chemistry, and attraction.  Since this reply from the horse’s mouth wasn’t good enough for Reader, who believes men are “swayed heavily by…our culture” and “secular standards about who to pursue,” she went to Candice to get the answer she wanted to hear.

Candice wrote a reply that encapsulates the aspects the I find most infuriating about Christian dating advice:  namely, that physical attraction is this sort of either/or thing that you can only count on for a couple of years, and then you plummet directly into companionate love for the rest of your life, never to feel any heat again, but that’s okay because your companionate love is so rich and deep that you’ll never miss being hot for each other except those six times you have sex per year.  Okay, that’s my paraphrase, but what other conclusion can one draw from a reply that begins thusly:

If only it were that simple! Find a gorgeous woman (or man), marry her (or him), and live happily ever after. Of course that’s how it works in the movies. But movies always end before the fireworks (what your friend calls “zing-pop”) die down. And they do. Always. Every marriage moves beyond the new-love, high-octane phase eventually, according to Psychologist Dorothy Tennov. The longest it can last is three years, and often it’s less. On average the emotional highs last between eighteen months and three years. Then what?

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 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.”

What I do not understand is this churchian insistence that marrying out of sexual attraction is this zero-sum, either/or proposition, like either you marry because you want to BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG and do pretty much nothing else, or you marry because you’re pure and holy and mainly interested in doing taxes together and making sure your future children are raised in the faith, and the sex appeal is just sort of this little side bonus.  Why can’t people marry because there’s sexual chemistry AND they are well-suited to each other in temperament and other values AND it all comes together in a complete package that includes sex, kids, and life?  Why must one preclude the other?  Why can’t you grow in companionate love and the security of stability, and still find each other sexy and attractive?  How is this “well, don’t think you’re going to find each other sexy forever, ’cause that never lasts” view of marriage going to encourage young men to marry?  I mean, what young guy (or young woman, for that matter) is going to hear this and be like, “OH YEAH, BABY, SIGN ME UP!”??

I agree that singles looking to marry need to be realistic about the mundane aspects of married life (someone who needs constant romantic drama/stimulation is not a wise marriage prospect), but I find the constant downplaying of the importance of sexual attraction really irritating.  Most men aren’t going to marry – or even begin pursuit – for lack of sexual attraction, and most women would be depressed to find out a man would pursue them without having any sexual attraction.  Marrying someone SOLELY due to sexual attraction is obviously unwise, but how many people are really doing that?  Especially in an era where you can have sex and not be judged socially without having to marry the other person – even within the church?  How many singles really get removed from churches these days because of fornication?  If anything, the current sexual and cultural climate in the U.S. is forcing men to consider other reasons for marriage, just to reduce the risk of divorce.

Other reasons this article irritated me:

• Watters’ assertion that Reader’s male friend has a “consumer mentality” about sexual attraction and the insinuation that making sexual attraction really important is per se BAD.

Your friend’s thinking mirrors our consumer culture far more than it does the Bible. God designed marriage for a purpose, several actually. And all of these purposes: “procreation, remedy against sin, mutual society, help and comfort” are achievable even if physical attraction isn’t the primary driver. That’s not to say there’s something wrong with pursuing a mate you find attractive. But it is to caution against giving looks and “chemistry” pre-eminence in the decision process.

• Watters’ slamming of Song of Solomon as an example of the importance of sexual attraction.

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. They’re like icing on a cake. And as the saying goes, if all you eat is icing, you’ll get sick.

• Her church lady-ing of Reader’s friend for his desire to be sexually attracted to his future spouse.

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.

I know I’ve said this before, but…does Watters understand ANYTHING about male attraction?  HER OWN EXPERIENCE trying to win over her now-husband seems to have taught her nothing!  Steve didn’t want to date her at first because he didn’t find her physically attractive!  How much time and heartache would she have saved herself if she had done more to make herself look good from the get-go?  Yet she continues to accuse men of passing over women who would be good wives, except those women are missing a key component of what men think makes a good wife:  physical attractiveness!!!

But sure, let’s keep praying that God will change every man’s mind about attractiveness, or at least the minds of the ones who don’t think the way women do about attractiveness.  (This is the advice she gives to the women:  don’t try to change men’s minds directly; instead, PRAY their minds into a different direction.)

Meanwhile, zero admonitions to the women to get themselves to the gym, stop eating every baked good that passes before their eyes, to dress better, and to be fun to be around.

 

Tips for improving conversational skills.

In addition to appearance, I think that one other area where a lot of singles miss the boat in being attractive to others is in their personalities.

By “personality,” I don’t mean being the life of the party, or the person who gets all the parties started, or basically being the social hub of your network.  I just mean having a personality that people are attracted to – being a good conversationalist, being interesting, and having some social savvy about what to (and not to) say.  For women, this usually translates as some degree of charm.  For men, it’s more about having an attitude that puts others at ease – it CAN be charm, but it doesn’t have to be.  For both sexes, graciousness will take you a long way.  What you DON’T have to be is the Smartest Person or Most Knowledgeable Person.  Oftentimes, Smartest People are really irritating, because they have to be the Final Word on everything, or they price themselves out of social acceptance by operating at some level that’s beyond what everyone else is operating at.

But, you say, I HAVE a good personality!  My mom, my grandma, and all of my closest female friends assure me of this all the time!  I just have to meet a man who’s willing to look through my fat put aside media brainwashing and value me for my inner beauty!  And those men are hard to find!

OK, fair enough (anyone who’s read this blog for a length of time knows that its author hasn’t exactly been hitting home runs in the secure-a-date department) but – speaking anecdotally – there are a lot of singles out there who are pitiful conversationalists.  They’re timid, they have nothing interesting to talk about, they have no awareness of what’s going on in the world, they have no opinions about anything, they don’t know how to tease or joke, they don’t have a sense of humor, and, possibly worst of all, they depend on the other person to provide all of the conversation topics and/or depend on the other person to be the entertainment.  If you laugh a lot when you’re talking to someone, but that person never laughs, then you’re probably depending on that person to be the entertainment.  Conversation is a give-and-take.  Make sure you’re not just a taker.

If you want to become a better conversationalist, the best advice I can give you is to fake it ’til you make it.  Dig up some irrational confidence and act like you believe that other people should want to talk to you because DARN IT, you’re interesting and charming, and if people don’t want to talk to you, don’t take it personally.  It’s their loss, and besides, you’re not going to have chemistry with everyone you talk to.  Just move on and find someone else to try out your irrational confidence on.

Here are some other tips for improving your ability to converse in average social situations.

Read Something That’s Not a Novel.  Sure, it’s good to be able to talk about classic literature or opine on the latest pop-cult bestseller, but those won’t give you enough conversational breadth.  Read some news blogs, read some pop culture/entertainment blogs, read some blogs that incorporate history.  Just read things that make you more aware of the world, both now and in the past.

Listen to Stuff.  What’s on the radio?  Which acts are in heavy rotation?  Who’s got a talk radio show?  What annoying commercial is being played at every break?  Have you been to any talks or seminars lately?

Go On an Adventure.  You don’t have to be Bilbo Baggins, but when did you last go somewhere interesting?  What did you do?  What happened to you?  Did you meet anyone interesting or unusual?

Notice Things That Happen in Your Normal Life.  Humorous stuff happens all the time if you’re watching for it.  Look for the things that reveal people’s humanity.  How did you last stick your foot in your mouth?  When did you last wish the earth would swallow you up?  Who stood out to you when you were people-watching on a bench?

Learn How to Tell a Story.  People LOVE stories, so if you know how to tell one, people will gravitate toward you (or at least not act bored while you’re talking).  Always look for the shared human experience when you’re telling a story – that “oh, that totally happened to me once!/I know EXACTLY how you felt!” aspect.  (If you’re with the right crowd, bad public bathroom stories are almost always a hit.  This is because poop is a universal experience.)

Other conversational tips:

DON’T BE BITTER.  A dash of sarcasm is okay, but if you’re bitter, dour, or have a biting comeback to everything anyone says, you’re going to chase everyone away.

Look for the opening.  No one likes talking to someone who has to be in charge of the conversation at all times, but no one likes talking to someone who never contributes when given the chance, either.  Usually in conversation, the current talker will eventually make a statement designed to elicit a response, such as “Blah blah blah, blah blah blah, I couldn’t believe it!”  That last bit is the opening, and it is now your chance to affirm and then build on the statement with either your own experience (I know, that totally happened to me once!  I was…) or by throwing the ball back to the original speaker in the form of a question (Hahaha, what happened next?).

Give Time to Everyone in a Group/Be Interested in Everyone.  If you’re in a group, try to include everyone.  Sometimes you’ll be in a situation where everyone is content to listen to the main talker talk, but other times, people get really irritated if it looks like two people start having a private conversation in a group of five.  It’s better to give people the option of being listeners than to just force it on them because you and Cute Guy are turning it into the You + Cute Guy Show.  (If you find the latter scenario happening, come up with a reason for the two of you to exit so you can continue to talk by yourselves.  Don’t wait for everyone else to get bored with you and leave.)

Don’t Get Emotional.  Be the duck – let everything roll off your back.  If someone says something that irritates or upsets you, play it cool.  Don’t be vindictive or passive-aggressive.  Don’t openly challenge someone.  And don’t be a clinger, either.

Don’t Linger in Bad Conversations.  Bad conversations suck the life out of everybody.  Learn to bow out gracefully.

Use Observations About the Other Person to Open Conversations.  This is my preferred method of opening a conversation – remarking about some aspect of the other person.  “I like your sweater.  Where did you get it?”  “Nice shoes.”  “In a hurry?”  When I flew home for Christmas, I struck up a conversation with my neighbor because I noticed he was wearing a blazer.  I asked if he was going somewhere because of the blazer, he said he was wearing the blazer because they’re hard to pack, and the conversation was off and running.

Applying the above to the Christian singles community – if the only thing you have to talk about is church and your involvement in it, you need to expand your horizons.  Yes, it’s wonderfully spiritual to talk about how much you love the praise band and how you feel the Spirit flow through you when you’ve all got your hands raised in the air or whatever…but you also poop sometimes, you know?  Fun conversationalists can transition from heavenly to mundane and back without breaking a sweat.  Don’t forget that part of life includes stubbing your toe.

The above is by no means an exhaustive list, just things that sprang to mind first.  If you have anything to add, put it in the comments.

P.S.  Happy 2013, everyone!

Angles of the side hug.

I have been meaning to write about side hugs since practically the inception of this blog, but I never found quite the right angle to write from.  However, a recent side hug experience gave me (literally!) a good angle, so here goes.

First, let’s define the side hug.  If a regular hug is a full embrace, then the side hug is a half-embrace.  It involves one arm and one shoulder of each participant.  However, just as regular hugging has gradations of intimacy, I have found that the side hug does as well.

Second, side hugs are pertinent to discussion because they run quite rampant in Christian communities.  Average self-respecting (beta) church guys usually face the dilemma of not wanting to be seen as the pervy creeper (or borderline gay) who hugs all the girls in a big embrace, but also wanting to be seen as a friendly and encouraging guy (who also gets to touch women).  A regular hug is often too much, especially with jittery 20-something women.  This is where the side hug comes in:  a method for touching and conveying camaraderie and care, but not in a creepy way!

There are basically three different levels of side hugging.  Below I have listed the types and the associated romantic prognosis for each.

180-degree side hug:  In the 180-degree side hug, your shoulders and the hugger’s form a straight line.

Romantic prognosis:  Never going to happen.

Obtuse angle side hug:  The obtuse angle side hug shows a little more rapport between hugger and huggee.  This is the category into which a lot of church side hugs fall.

Romantic prognosis:  Getting warmer, but either the girl is putting on the brakes, or the guy is still too big of a beta.  Alternatively, the girl wants the guy, but she’s too chubby/frumpy/hasn’t otherwise passed the boner test…but he does think she’s a nice person.

Acute angle side hug:  The acute angle side hug is more or less just a second arm away from being an embrace.

Romantic prognosis:  Her hamster will go crazy wondering WHAT IT MEANS.  If you’re a guy who goes around giving acute angle side hugs to women, you probably have options.  Also, you could probably flip the acute angle side hug into a regular hug, and the woman would not object.  Works best if preceded by kino.

I hope this breakdown is beneficial to the readership.

ETA:  Have a good or bad side hug story?  Share it in the comments.  It’s almost Christmas, we can be a little social. :)

Church guys who lack alpha AND beta.

The manosphere usually talks about alpha and beta as an inversely proportional continuum, meaning that if a guy doesn’t have a lot of alpha, he must have a lot of beta, and vice versa.  For most practical intents and purposes, this model works.  Most guys need to tone down the beta traits and up the alpha, and then there are some who need to tone down the alpha in order to reassure their women that they do, in fact, care for them.

But one type of man not commonly talked about is the man who lacks both alpha AND beta.  He’s neither dominant with his wife, but he’s not sweet and cuddly with her, either.  He’s just sort of…there.  Doing his thing.  And being neither romantic nor sexy doing it.

My latest idea is that this alpha-less, beta-less man is the one that a lot of Christian relationship books are written for.  These are usually the books that encourage men to “love” their wives more by doing more and more beta things for them, and the reason for this encouragement of beta is that the authors mistakenly think that being a distant, cold husband is “alpha.”  So they instruct their readers to pour on the beta, and then the advice fails because beta in the absence of alpha isn’t attractive.

What a woman with that kind of man wants is not more flowers and more acts of service, it’s a man who will flirt with her and make her feel attractive.  THEN, once that has been established, he can do the sweet things.  But jumping right into the sweet stuff is NOT the way to go about rectifying a marriage that lacks both alpha and beta.

 

Best of Boundless: “Man Enough to Love a Real Woman.”

This is quite possibly the greatest article Boundless has ever published.

In this article, author Joshua Rogers describes how he gave up aspirations to have an attractive, non-needy, intelligent, and spiritually mature wife who was also fun to be around, and instead learned how to love a “real woman.”***

I really wanted to quote basically the whole thing, but I’ve listed the money quotes below.  In the article, they appear beneath the sub-headline Are You Man Enough?.

To those single guys out there who are trying to find the ideal woman, do the world a favor and give up. You’re not the ideal man — not anywhere close. And you would never get married if women held you to the same standard you apply to them.

But maybe you insist that you’re not going to settle for a woman who’s not everything you’re hoping for in a wife. Settle? Whatever the circumstances, believe me, she will be the one who settles for you and all your deficits. And until you realize this — through humbling circumstances or otherwise — maybe you should take a break from dating for a while and spend some time asking God to make you man enough to love a real woman.

This is the Boundless mentality in a nutshell:  (a) that men are the misguided ones, clinging to unrealistic standards and depriving worthy women everywhere of husbands, (b) that men will never equal women in moral worth because men are just too stupid, and (c) that having high standards is a spiritual failing and men must seek reprogramming from God to make them be attracted to the women around them.

Meanwhile, women are Daughters of the King who deserve to be loved for who they are, not what dress size they wear (or whatever other measuring stick is being held up to them).

It’s a good thing women are so gracious as to marry men!

***Not that Rogers ultimately deigned to marry a woman who failed to meet his standards for beauty, intelligence, and spiritual maturity.  In another article (which reads like a clinic in how to remain an involuntary bachelor for life, complete with kissing dating goodbye, beta orbiting, and scaring a girl off by talking about marriage on the first date), he describes his then-future bride thusly:

She was bright, attractive, fiercely devoted to Christ, and – in light of my recent failings – I thought she was far too good of a woman to be spending time with me.

Standards for me, but not for thee!

Should Christians think James Bond is sexy?

In a recent Boundless article, Matt Kaufman opined that in his boyhood he found James Bond greatly disappointing as a hero because Bond beds women.  While he could respect some of the things that Bond did (like fighting villains), he could never like or respect Bond because of Bond’s promiscuity.  He goes on to add that he can’t root for immoral good guys whose vices are not presented as vices.  Basically, it’s boilerplate Christian media-sighz.  (Hate is too strong a word, so Christians typically sigh and shake their heads sadly.)

Most of the comments agreed with Kaufman, with male commenters proclaiming that Captain America is a better hero than Bond because, I guess, Captain America didn’t bang chicks, and with female commenters proclaiming that James Bond is in no way attractive to them because he objectifies women.  (Never mind that in all of these movies the women come willingly to Bond without demanding marriage first.  No, that these women are willing to fornicate with Bond must be All Bond’s Fault and but for his objectifying ways, they would remain pure as snow.  Or:  if the man sins, it’s the man’s fault.  If the woman sins, it’s the man’s fault.)

What entertained me most in the thread was the spiritual one-upsmanship going on.  After a while, it wasn’t enough just to disapprove of Bond and approve of Captain America:  you had to disavow movies in general as bad, or prefer movies where a married man turns away another woman by sticking his ring finger in her face or something, or accuse James Bond of being riddled with STDs, or prefer Dietrich Bonhoeffer to Captain America (yes, one woman actually wrote this).

One brave soul tried to red pill bomb the place by pointing out that Bond treats women the way they would like to be treated (Jacob M, if you’re out there, swing by!).

“How to treat a woman.” Did it ever occur to you that James Bond knows exactly how to treat a woman? How to give her what she wants? James Bond isn’t exactly depicted as raping these girls. They go willingly with him. Man, the church is several generations behind the world in understanding what drives female mating behavior. The adage “chicks dig bad boys” is decades old by now, and yet Matt Kaufman and several of the commenters here keep talking about “respecting” women or treating them “uprightly.” Do you have any indication that that’s what women actually want or like? Other than Glenn Stanton’s pronouncements from on high that women are more “naturally good” than men and automatically desire traditional family life? Look, just like men are attracted to traits in women that aren’t necessarily the “right” ones, women are attracted to traits in men that aren’t necessarily “right”–i.e., quick, cheap, flashy displays of dominance and power, rather than reliability, trustworthiness, or any characteristics that would make him a good husband and father after 20 years of marriage. Women like and are attracted to men like James Bond, and therefore enjoy sleeping with them because it feels good.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not defending any of this. It’s hugely problematic. But until the church comes to grips with the depraved nature of femalesexuality as well as male, it will just continue sliding further and further into cultural irrelevance.

For his pains, he ruffled the feathers of some very healthy hamsters.

Kim:

Whoa, Jacob #18, I had to re-read your post to make sure you weren’t being sarcastic. While I’m glad that you don’t defend the behavior described, I am concerned that you believe women want to be treated that way. At least you could have modified it to “some women”

Without placing the blame on one gender since we are all sinners, my experience has been women complaining about being treated with such disrespect, myself included. A man like James Bond is not at all what I am attracted to. A man who respects and protects me? Definitely a winner.

Mrs. Ashley:

Oh Jacob M. :P That’s a pretty broad accusation you’re throwing around there. You’ve got a thread full of women here that seem more interested in character than suave here and instead of being interested in knowing what shapes their character and where to find them you instead throw them under the proverbial “All Women Want Bad Men” bus.

In my experience, women don’t prefer men who throw them under said bus.

;) Just a little dating tip.

Guys want to talk about how all women want bad men and then they keep chasing the women who want them. Now, there are women out there like that, but if you’ve been attracted to so many of them that you’re jaded about it then the odds are pretty good that 1) your picker is busted or 2) they aren’t actually all after “bad” guys, they’re just not after *you*. I know lots of decent Christian women who have married decent Christian men, and probably you do, too. I don’t think all men are smooth-talking womanizers who are skulking around trying to take advantage of whoever they can — assuming that all women are just waiting around for the right jerk to talk them into bed is just stupid.

The cries of NAWALT will echo into the past and future of a thousand generations.  Also, note the shaming language – “I had to re-read your post to make sure you weren’t being sarcastic” – “I am concerned that you believe” – “That’s a pretty broad accusation.”  And let’s not leave out Mrs. Ashley’s parting shot that if men believe women like bad men, then it’s the man’s fault for seeking out bad women.

I’ve pointed out many times on this blog that women miss that women don’t want to be treated in Bond-ian fashion by just any man.  They want to be treated in Bond-ian fashion by a man with the sexual allure of Bond.  Maybe not Bond himself, but someone who has the confidence and swagger of Bond.  (The nice suits, sophisticated gadgets, and hot cars don’t hurt, either.)  A boring man with a mediocre salary who promises he will NEVER LEAVE HIS WOMAN EVER?  Of course they don’t want him to walk up to them and whisper seductive nothings in their ears.  Until men and women get this, they will continue to be losers at love.

I also think that there’s a certain amount of projection going on.  A woman who finds a man of Bond’s basic sexiness caliber unattractive probably has never experienced attention from a man that attractive or been in the orbit of one; therefore, it’s easier for her to dismiss the idea of such a man as attractive to herself, partially because she knows she could never attract, much less receive commitment from, such a man.  And for women with this kind of sexual insecurity, the promise of commitment can be very powerful because it is not easy for them to obtain.  I think there is also some conflation going on between raw sexual attractiveness and commitment attractiveness.  The other explanation:  her hamster is lying to her.

As for Bond himself, the whole point of Bond is to be an idealized fantasy character and to be sexually attractive.  Bond movies are not character studies; they are meditations on a fantasy of mid-century masculinity wrapped up in an upper-crusty package.  He’s like a Brit mid-century Indiana Jones (another fantasy character).  What both characters offer is escapist adventure, where reality and consequences don’t intrude.  Maybe this is a bad thing, I don’t know.  But stories like this resonate with us because on some level, we want to believe that we have adventure, ingenuity, and resolve inside of us, and that these things make us more attractive people.  Most people will never live lives anything similar to Bond’s.  Is it bad to step into his shoes for a couple of hours?

Regarding Bond’s womanizing:  all I have to say in addition to what I’ve already said on the matter is that Bond would seem gay if he refused every attractive woman who came on to him or if he didn’t pursue any attractive women in his orbit.  If Cherry McPoppin (whatever the female du jour’s name is) came on to Bond and he said (AND ACTUALLY MEANT IT), “Actually, I’m saving myself for my future wife, and I respect you far too much to try to talk you into having premarital sex with me,” audiences would outright reject the character as completely unrealistic (in a movie where fantasy is the name of the game!) and as, well, in complete denial of his homosexuality.  If a woman accepted without disappointment such a claim, audiences would also reject that as completely unrealistic.  A woman pursuing Bond who received such a rejection would only be more motivated to have him.

 

Guy gets strongarmed into proposing to girlfriend of nine years; no one blames the girlfriend for sticking with him so long.

In a current Boundless discussion thread, Amir Larijani talks about how he and a bunch of other guys from his church staged an intervention with a peer, basically forcing him to propose to his girlfriend of nine years after she finally gave him an ultimatum.  I think we’re supposed to cheer that the men strongarmed this guy into fessing up to his commitment fears and volunteering  for lifelong financial servitude becoming the man God wants him to be, but the girlfriend is totally off the hook for sticking with a guy for NINE YEARS when he clearly had no intentions of proposing?  Did she think she had NO OTHER OPTIONS?  Was he THAT much better than everybody else?  (Or were they having sex the entire time and so she had hamstered herself into thinking he was ~the one~?  Because if they weren’t having sex, a nine-year celibate romantic relationship is just weird.)

No dating relationship should last nine years, unless you’re both widowed senior citizens who need someone to go to dinner at 4:30 with.  Especially for Christians, it sounds completely unhealthy.  Either you’re having sex, which is sinning, or you’re having almost-not-quite-sort-of sex, which is also sinning, or you’re not having sex at all, which is highly unnatural in the long term for two people who presumably are looking to have a future together where they WILL be having sex.  I can see a Christian couple putting off sex for a year or two – but nine years?

I think I’m just having a knee-jerk reaction of mortification at the thought of marrying someone who more or less had to be pinned down and forced to say “uncle.”  Sure, the woman in this sort of situation will always get cast as the angel who believed in his true, hidden self and showed biblical perseverance, faith, and loyalty in helping the man get past his fears, but….ugh.

Basically, I’m just here to reiterate my opinion that people should only date when they are prepared to enter into a marriage, and that the dating period and engagement should be short.

Don’t worry about that other person’s feelings when:

Christians usually try to care about other people’s feelings, which is why Christian criticism of non-gay, non-abortion things tends to be pretty toothless.  No one wants to run the risk of turning a potential away from the Lord FOREVERRRR by hurting that person’s ego feelings, so there are a lot of roundabout and sometimes passive-aggressive comments instead.

However, there is at least one situation where you really shouldn’t care about the other person’s feelings, and that is when there is sexual chemistry between you and someone where at least one of you is married.  Getting married doesn’t mean other people cease to be attractive.  Sometimes that just means the other person becomes MORE attractive, just like people on a diet find cake that much more enticing.

But basically, if you find yourself in a situation where a married person is attractive to you (and especially if you sense that you are attractive to that other person), you should just walk away and not worry if the other person thinks you’re rude or uncaring or whatever.  It’s more important to honor that person’s marriage (and spouse) than to try to keep up some facade of friendship.  The bottom line is that you can’t have that person, so why invest any more time in him (or her)?  Why make it more difficult to extract yourself?  It can’t lead to the place that you want it to go…at least, not without a lot of destruction in its wake.

I mean, don’t be intentionally MEAN, but don’t make that person a point in your life.  That person should be a non-point.