Just a guess!

 

World magazine: “Christian Boy Meets Christian Girl.”

Back in June, World magazine (a biweekly politically conservative evangelical newsmagazine) did a cover story on the problems Christian singles are having finding someone to marry.  The viewpoints espoused by the interviewees sound nearly verbatim to opinions I’ve encountered (both online and in real life).  Among them:

• Guys don’t know how to pursue in a manly or godly way
• Too many rejections
• Fear of divorce
• Dating scene crippled by IKDG – pressure not to date unless reasonably certain the other person is “the one” or at least realistically could be
• Too much focus on group activities
• Women don’t want to ask men out
• Women feel men are content with apathy towards dating and women
• Men feel women are too picky and only want to be asked out by certain men
• Men are overwhelmed by choice and keep holding out for someone better-looking, more spiritual, more intelligent, etc.
• Churches don’t do anything to help singles

Did the article miss anything?  (Well, other than pointing out that everyone in America is just too darn fat and dresses like a slob.)

There’s also a sidebar one-page article called “A Man’s World,” in which (once again) the sexual economics of college campuses are discussed and (once again) the conclusion is reached that women are the losers and men are the winners.  Of course, without discussing the alpha/beta distinction among men, this isn’t exactly an accurate depiction of the reality of the SMP of the college and singles scenes.

Movie: Soul Surfer.

I recently saw the inspirational movie Soul Surfer, which is based on the real-life story of Bethany Hamilton, a Christian teenage surfer who lost her arm in a shark attack several years ago.  Unlike Fireproof, Soul Surfer had a multi-million dollar budget and major studio backing, and as a result offers viewers Hollywood production values and “name” actors who were able to bring the script to life.  The movie was shot in Hawaii and makes the island look gorgeous.  The surfing is also authentic – the real Bethany Hamilton did the surfing for her movie self – and is well-filmed.

Oftentimes when Christian stories go through the Hollywood machine, the Christian content gets watered down so as to draw a wider audience (i.e., not “offend” anyone).  That didn’t really happen in Soul Surfer.  We see the characters attending church and singing worship songs, Carrie Underwood shows up as the youth group leader to read scripture and go on missions trips, and Bethany’s dad is reading the Bible as he watches over her in the hospital.  I was surprised to see this degree of realism of a contemporary evangelical lifestyle in a major theatrical feature, but the movie manages the minor miracle of not being preachy or self-conscious about it.  The Hamilton family’s faith is presented as a normal part of their lives, not a Special Teachable Moment or Time Out For An Altar Call To The Heathens Unsaved We Tricked Into Seeing This Movie That’s Supposed To Be About Surfing  But Not Really HaHa.

Notable for readers of this blog is the portrayal of Bethany’s parents by Dennis Quaid and Helen Hunt.  It’s not just that they were believable as parents and a married couple (they were), but they were believable as a married couple who loved each other and LIKED each other and still had a sexual spark between them.  It was a pleasure to see.  Too often in movies and TV, longtime married couples who get along are portrayed as kindly roommate-partners whose pinnacle of passion is a peck when the husband or wife comes home from work, or maybe an affectionate side hug.

Funnily enough, although Soul Surfer is primo youth group entertainment, I can see it being controversial in some circles because the girls wear string bikinis throughout much of the movie (although during the surf competitions, they wear colored surf shirts).  To someone familiar with beach/surf culture, this is ordinary and unremarkable, but I can already imagine the handwringing over whether to let hormonal teenage boys view the movie for fear of inciting lust.

(For parents – there is zero bad language, and even the shark attack is pretty benign.)

You might be Christian LJBFed if…

…you ask her out and she needs to pray about it before giving you an answer.

…she never talks to you at churchly singles mingles without a less attractive, more boring, more annoying female friend around.

…she only invites you to group activities.

…she is popular at church and you are not.

…she tells you you’re a “great guy.”

…she tells you that so many girls are looking for a godly guy like you.

…she puts you on the prayer team tree and you’re not the person she’s supposed to call.

…she praises the worship leader/hot missionary/Habitat for Humanity organizer’s “servant’s heart” too much.

…the pastor instructs everyone to reach across the aisle for prayer and you get to hold her hand only to find out it’s cold and limp and she doesn’t give a quick, churchly squeeze at “amen.”

…she calls you a brother in Christ.

His churchly dating status: a table.

How the average churchly single girl sees her options.

You might be a beta church girl if…

…you have long, straight hair clipped back by a barrette.

…you own a long, denim skirt.

…you have ever had a quilted Bible cover with handles.

…you’ve never worn heels higher than 1 1/2 inches.

…you don’t see the need to wear makeup.

…the only young women’s magazine you’ve ever subscribed to is Brio.

…you volunteer in the church nursery/teach Sunday school to toddlers.

…you love heartwarming Hallmark movies, the Anne of Green Gables movie, and the 1995 BBC version of Pride and Prejudice.

…you’ve ever loved a Janette Oke novel.

…you memorized a raft of Bible verses to earn a scholarship for Christian summer camp.

…you have pledged to have your first kiss on your wedding day.

…you wear a Wordless Bracelet when none of the popular kids do.

…you bought a T-shirt at a Point of Grace concert.

…Elisabeth Elliot, Shaunti Feldhahn, and Stasi Eldredge are some of your favorite authors.

…your first celebrity crush was Michael W. Smith or Steven Curtis Chapman.

…the only social topic that gets you more fired up than abortion is evolution.

…you feel uncomfortable in shirts without sleeves.

She freaked out when he did not read her mind.

Boundless put up an article today that further demonstrates why church dating is so difficult.  In “How Not to Freak a Girl Out,” Martha Krienke shares a letter from a reader wherein the reader describes that after knowing a guy for two weeks, he asked her out with Boundless-style intentionality, explaining that he saw her as “marriage material.”  Reader promptly FREAKED OUT and rejected the guy.  Then her hamster went into overdrive, culminating in the letter to Boundless.

I’ll admit that the guy made the mistake of destroying any mystery he may have possessed by laying all of his cards out on the table at the get-go.  He also, I assume, made the mistake of proceeding without enough (any?) IOIs from Reader.

But Reader’s letter to Boundless was so hamsterrific, my eyes boggled, and it speaks to Boundless’s disconnect with the realities of the SMP that Krienke didn’t rebuke Reader.  Reader writes:

I know that Boundless and many circles are beginning to promote guys becoming pursuers and moving purposefully toward marriage. But I’d like to promote that there needs to be more caress, creativity and sensitivity in this area. “Putting the ball in her court” too early may drive a godly lady to emotional turmoil. She may need time to marinate in his light affections and attention before having him express in words his intentions and affections.

The idea that Reader wanted to be wooed rather than told “I’m looking for a wife, and you seem like wife material” – I can understand that.  Especially after only knowing a guy for a couple of weeks and probably not having much one-on-one interaction with him, it probably came off a little like the guy was going shopping and she looked like a good deal.  But then all of Reader’s purple prose about marinating and “emotional turmoil” betrayed entitlement:  that she expected this guy to read her mind and know exactly how she wanted to be pursued.  She continues:

To be poetic, I describe my “feelings and affections” like a flower that grows. We gently, and in good amounts for the specific type of flower, give it water and sunlight. [In relationships], the water and sunlight are the “pursuit/flirting/feeling the water.”  The flower represents the “relationship.” And the growth of the flower represents the “feelings and affections.”  The blooming of the flower represents “commitment.”

I think that for this particular flower, there was too much sunlight and water too early. The flower was not ready to bloom yet. It had not grown enough in the right conditions to be ready to bloom.

Church guys, if you would like to be successful in acquiring a woman who seems like “wife material,” adhere to the above instructions…if she’s not already attracted to you.  What reader is ignoring is that if this guy had already been attractive to her, she wouldn’t be going on about watering, stems, and blooming, or needing to “marinate.”  She would have jumped at the opportunity to go on a date with this guy and would be reading Passion and Purity to try to keep her hormones in check.

The major problem with the Boundless approach to dating is that Boundless doesn’t believe in/hasn’t discovered the alpha/beta divide.  It assumes that all men are starting from the same place and therefore need only apply the same steps to get where they want to go.  But because some men are alphas and even more are betas, a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work, and it only leads to results like the one chronicled by Reader.  Telling men to “man up,” “be intentional,” and “stop jerking girls around” is only useful for alphas.  Telling a beta to man up and be intentional leads to freak-outs and rejections.  By omitting the critical step of gauging female interest (and responding accordingly), Boundless dooms many men to dating failure.

Reader concludes:

I’m hoping that I might have a chance to start over. To get to know each other as brother and sister serving together. To get “pursuitive hints” without being faced with an expression of intentions. To get to grow in my own affections before being asked to commit.

[In my final refusal toward him,] I never actually meant that I didn’t want to be pursued. I guess I just wanted to be pursued in a lighter, slower and building sort of way.

I would say that Reader is in the “neutral” zone with the guy, otherwise she wouldn’t have expressed interest in “get[ting] to know each other as brother and sister serving together.”  Having rejected him, she wants the option of having him back so she won’t feel like she made a big mistake if he turns out to be a catch.  If he were truly repulsive to her, she wouldn’t have wanted to get to know him in any way.  That said, it’s pretty clear that he’s not super attractive to her – a woman invoking brother/sister comparisons, even if it’s brother/sister in Christ, is not a sign of burgeoning attraction.  Overall, Reader’s letter just seems to be a politely-worded complaint that she wasn’t pursued in the desired manner.

Still, Reader’s situation does shed light on the dating situation that most singles will face in the church, mainly because most people are not automatically attractive to vast numbers of the opposite sex.  Most church guys will still need to learn some game and learn to read IOIs.  Boundless keeps neglecting to mention (because it doesn’t distinguish between alphas and betas) that intentionality alone is not enough.  Most church girls will have to accept dates requested in a less than ideal manner, with guys who are not super attractive to them at the time of the asking.  Alas, Mr. Darcy doesn’t go to your church.  Neither does Megan Fox.  But on the upside, you’re probably not Chunk from The Goonies, so take comfort in that silver lining.

 

Bad alpha dads: the movie.

The folks who made Fireproof, about an alpha firefighter who was an inadequate husband, are returning this fall with Courageous, a new film about a group of alpha policemen who are inadequate dads.  Judging by the trailer, it looks like this movie, like its predecessor, features a Sage Black Guy who points the Struggling White Guys to God.  Ten bucks says this will be another box office hit.

Suggestions for future movies:

• White mom who is stretched too thin between work and kids gets advice from Sage Black Churchgoing Neighbor and learns to let God make her husband a better husband.
• White teen girl who is tempted by alpha jocks gets advice from Sage Black Churchgoing Friend and learns to let God be her one true love.
• Pregnant white teen girl is encouraged by evil public school counselor and pushy nonbeliever parents to get an abortion, but after talking to a Sage Black Churchgoing Lady, learns to value life as God values life.
• White male business/land owner struggling to make ends meet is approached by unsavory investors to start a casino or strip club, but gets advice from Sage Black Churchgoing Employee and learns to let God provide instead.
• Politically powerful white male racist has the opportunity to create more oppression for people of color, but after an encounter with a Sage Black Churchgoer in great financial need, learns to be colorblind as God is colorblind.
• White male missionary is discouraged after not seeing conversion results, but after an encounter with a Sage Black Local with great faith, learns to have same faith.

HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY, READERS!

Character matters: Morf and Bee edition.

Yesterday my mom told me that Morf, the son of one of her best friends, is definitely splitting up with his wife Bee after four years of a marriage that, as far as I can tell, never really took off.  There’s a “for sale” sign in their yard, and Bee has apparently already moved out.  Again.

Morf is a pastor’s son and attended Christian school all his life, including college.  He was popular, good-looking, and athletic, and seems to be a romantic.  (He gave his college girlfriend a promise ring.  I remember groaning when my mom told me.)  After college, Morf found some success as a salesman in the Chicago area, and it was during this time that he met Bee in (of all places) an internet chat room.  In a stroke of fate, Bee turned out to be a hometown girl who had attended the same high school that Morf did, only she was four or five years younger.  Bee had actually seen Morf way back when and immediately knew he would be her future husband.  Morf and Bee began dating and married when Bee was 20 in a ceremony where they had written their own vows.  The only thing keeping their story from being a Nicholas Sparks novel was that no one was terminally ill or in the military.

Unfortunately, the wedding was the pinnacle of their relationship.  About a year or so later, my mom told me that Bee had moved back in with her mom and wanted out of the marriage.  Morf tried to reason with her, explaining that they had entered into marriage for life, especially as Christians, but Bee flat-0ut told him that those rules didn’t apply to her.  Eventually, Morf was able to convince Bee to come back, and for a while it seemed that things were back on track.

Except, obviously, they weren’t.  Morf and Bee went to marriage counseling, but Bee had already checked out of the relationship.  Her friends were still in school or starting jobs, living it up in Wrigleyville (the fashionable young people’s neighborhood in Chicago), while she was stuck in podunk town married to a guy who now was working for his dad’s ministry, a.k.a. not a road to riches and earthly glory.  It seems pretty obvious that Bee had decided that a better life, free of the constraints of Morf, was out there waiting for her.

My mom is quite grieved that Morf and Bee’s relationship cratered, but in retrospect, the warning signs had always been there.  For starters, Bee was an only child of divorce and was used to getting her own way all the time.  She lived with her mom, and if her mom wouldn’t get her something she wanted, she would just turn around and get it from her dad.  The fact that her mother allowed her to move back in the first time Bee left was a bad sign as well.  Instead of telling her that she’d made her bed and now she had to sleep in it, Bee’s mother enabled Bee’s selfish behavior.  But it’s not Bee’s fault alone:  I suspect that Morf acted like a big, fat beta during their marriage.  Even before Morf and Bee got married, Morf’s mom had mentioned that Morf could never say no to Bee.  (Of course he couldn’t; he was the kind of guy who goes around buying promise rings.)  When I spoke to my mom, she said that when Bee came back to Morf, Morf acquiesced to every single thing that Bee demanded.  Which, as those of us steeped in manosphere principles know, NEVER WORKS.  By trying to make Bee happy, Morf just confirmed to Bee that he was not the man she had signed up to marry.

I suppose the golden lining is that Morf and Bee’s marriage is a classic “starter marriage,” which means that other than any emotional lumps they’ve taken through this whole thing, they’ll pretty much be right back where they started.  Not being rich, they have no significant assets to split.  They have no children.  And each is good-looking enough to attract a new spouse easily; Bee is cute, young, and vivacious, which is enough to make many men ignore all the warning signs, and women LOVE taking care of the good-looking, vulnerable men that other women abandon (it’s always a competition with women:  “I won’t treat you like dirt the way she did!”).  I expect both to be remarried within a few years, tops.

I could say that we should learn some very obvious lessons from Morf and Bee, but being human, we probably won’t.  No one wants to believe that their beloved is a statistic, rather than the exception.  Still, I believe Morf could have saved himself a lot of grief if he had more closely examined Bee’s character while they dated.  Her cuteness, along with his general desire and readiness to Be Married, probably blinded him to her shortcomings, and now he’s paying the price for that.  So, readers, choose carefully and look at the details as well as the whole picture.  Being a Christian isn’t in and of itself enough to save a marriage, nor is being cute, or young, or popular, or nice, or “having good values.”  You really have to get to the root of someone’s convictions.

P.S.  As far as I know, there is no third party involved in this split.

THIS ARTICLE, I can’t even.

The article:  Heavy Issues for Heavy Women.  (So miraculous that NAMES HAVE BEEN CHANGED.)

The discussion thread:  Miracle on Matrimony Street.

A quote:

We’ve been married for almost seven years now. One child and an additional 35 pounds later [which makes her 290 at 5’3″], my husband is nothing but more attracted to my fat frame. And he gets a little annoyed about the guys who hit on me. Just as God had made some men who prefer brunettes, some who prefer tomboys, some who prefer bookish gals, God has given some guys a deep appreciation for fat women.

Especially in light of Roissy’s post on Why European Girls Stay Thin.

BRAIN GOES KABOOM.