What a woman thinks when a man doesn’t respond to her signal of attraction.

Matt Savage wrote a recent post on men missing signals of attraction from women.  He related a story where he was talking to an attractive young woman at a bar, and he mentioned that he liked the show True Blood.  The girl responded that she LOVED the show but, alas, had no television and did not like watching the show on her tiny computer screen.  The conversation continued and eventually petered out.

Savage then says that it took him three days to figure out that the girl had given him a huge opening to invite her back to his apartment or at least set up a future date.  Oops.

Men (in general, not Savage) like to complain about women not being straightforward and men having the onerous task of deciphering all of the cryptic messages that women send.  I guess in a man’s “perfect” world, courtship would go something like this:

MAN:  Yo, you’re hot.  Wanna do it?

WOMAN:  Okay.  By the way, it’s only easy for you to get me, ergo I am not a slut.

MAN:  *beats chest proudly*

The reason women tend to be roundabout in the ways they advertise interest, though, is that they want men to pursue them.  If a woman has to spell it out for the man, then she doesn’t feel like she is being pursued; she feels like she is the pursuer.  She will also feel like her feminine charms alone are not enough to incite action by the man, which is humiliating.  Worse, if you do end up going on a date, she will doubt your attraction to her, so expect more shit tests.  In addition, by being very straightforward, she will risk being labeled desperate and try-hard by other women and possibly other men, too.  (Everyone knows a boy-crazy girl who throws herself at every available man she meets.  No woman respects a desperate peer.)

As a result, the only option a woman has is to drop hints and hope the man responds.  If a woman suggests that you should do something together or hang out sometime, you’ve hit the motherlode.  She will not suggest hanging out to a man she has no interest in.  If she says something sounds like fun, that’s also an invitation to invite her to join in.  If she asks when the next time you’re doing X activity is, she wants you to invite her to go along.  If she asks if you need help with something, that’s also an opportunity.  If she eagerly expresses interest in something you’ve just expressed interest in (as in Savage’s anecdote above), you can make a move with confidence.

Given all of the above, when a man doesn’t act on a woman’s hints, the woman usually concludes that the man is not interested in her and has a list of 99 things he’d rather be doing.  Men complain that women want them to shoulder all of the risk, but for a woman, showing interest and dropping hints IS a risk.  Take the following scenario:

MAN:  Some friends and I are helping our buddy move this weekend.

WOMAN WHO IS INTERESTED:  Really?  That sounds like fun.  What day and time?  Do you need help?

Here is what a man with a clue would say:

MAN WITH A CLUE:  Really, you want to help?  That would be awesome.  Let me have your number so I can text you the address and time.

WOMAN WHO IS INTERESTED:  *SWOON*

HER INTERNAL DIALOGUE:  EEEE THIS GUY IS AMAZING I MUST TELL MY GIRLFRIENDS RIGHT AWAY

Here is what a man without a clue would say:

CLUELESS WONDER:  Nah, we got it.  Basically we’re just gonna be throwing some stuff in a truck and then go shoot some hoops.

CRESTFALLEN WOMAN WHO IS HATING HERSELF FOR BEING INTERESTED:  …oh.

HER INTERNAL DIALOGUE:  THIS LOSER WOULD RATHER HANG OUT WITH SWEATY, SMELLY GUYS THAN ME.  I MUST BE UGLY.  HE HAS BEEN TALKING TO ME OUT OF PITY.

Or, if she’s read He’s Just Not That Into You a bunch of times:

IRRITATED WOMAN’S INTERNAL DIALOGUE:  He doesn’t know fabulous when he sees it!  Has he looked into the mirror lately?  YOU ARE NOT ALL THAT, NIMROD.  You should be more grateful.

The signs are there if you look for them.  Just understand that the less you read them, the more frustrated a woman is going to become with you.

Singles’ Top 5 Relationship Temptations (according to Perry Noble).

A friend Facebooked a blog post by Perry Noble, pastor of NewSpring Church in South Carolina, discussing what he thinks are the top five temptations singles face when considering a relationship.  Here’s what he had to say:

#1 – Compromise! Hands down this is the first temptation…and I would argue that it is the girl that deals with this way more than the guy.  She begins wanting “Mr. Right” but will settle for “Mr. Right Now” if she perceives that all of her friends are getting married and she is not.  God has NEVER called His followers to compromise…EVER!!!  (And…ladies…if you are constantly having the defend the guy you are dating, then you know you are compromising.)

AND…ladies…if he is not pursuing you in a godly manner (which means he is not constantly trying to stick his hands down your pants) then drop him!

Yes, the abuse of exclamation points and ellipses is tedious, but if you can get past that, what we have is a grade-A example of the type of dating advice that leaves Christian singles single well into their 30s.  While there are plenty of marriage-obsessed young women out there who jump at the mere hint of any halfway decent man’s attention, this NEVER COMPROMISE advice is why there are numerous 30-year-old Christian girls who have never had a boyfriend.  I also think this type of advice plays into the pedestalization of women that the church is so (in)famous for – if you’re a female 4 who loves the Lord, waiting for your heroic Christian male 8 to wake up and realize you’re the one for him is just not going to work out well for you.

Re: men who are “constantly trying to stick his hand down your pants” – the most church alpha way of dealing with a woman regarding sexual desire is to acknowledge it openly and then draw a line in the sand and stick with it.  Constant pushing of limits can get you branded a pig who is just looking for a warm body.  Primly abstaining out of “respect” or pretending you don’t struggle with temptation will just make her angry.

#2 – Believing That Marriage Will Solve The Struggles You Are Facing While Dating! Marriage is a magnifier…and if it is a small deal when you are dating then I promise it will be a BIG HONKIN’ deal when you tie the knot!

Can’t argue much with this.

#3 – Going Too Fast! Anyone can fool anyone for a short period of time!  You need to date someone “until the new wears off!”  If two people are in a hurry to get married then it is usually because they are trying to hide something from the other person…or because they just want to have sex!

I don’t think that short courtships are a problem per se.  The problem is infatuation clouding good judgment.  Basically, if the only thing you like about the other person is making out with him or her, then you probably shouldn’t rush into marriage.  But if you have values in common and enjoy doing things together other than sucking face, then I don’t see how dating for 2 years versus 9 months is really going to make a substantial difference in the success of your marriage, especially when you’re out of college.

#4 – Trying To Be The Person That The Person They Are Dating Wants Them To Be Rather Than Who They Are – If you are having to lie about who you are to date someone…then you need to break up today!  Ladies…DO NOT SAY you love football and want to go to games with him if you don’t know the difference between the offense and the defense.  Dudes, DO NOT SAY you absolutely LOVE chic flics and want to watch them for hours if doing so drives you crazy!  If you are doing things you HATE to do…but have refused to be honest and tell the other person the truth…then you are being dishonest with them.

There’s a difference between being honest and being an intolerant stick in the mud.  If you don’t like football but your loved one does, be honest about it but be willing to participate without whining the whole time about your sacrifice.  Also, it’s okay not to do every single thing together as a couple.  Just because he doesn’t want to do something with you doesn’t mean that he doesn’t love you.

#5 – Seeking Advice And/OR Affirmation From The Wrong People! Single people…please, if you want marriage/dating advice…then go to people who are actually married and have been so for a long time!  Why in the world would you ask a single person for marriage advice?  Why would you ask someone who has literally blown through relationship after relationship how to have a relationship?  Because they read a book?  Because they know some Bible verses?  REALLY?  If you want to know how to have a successful relationship…ask those who have one.

This is TERRIBLE advice.  By the same logic, you should not listen to teenage moms preach abstinence or alcoholics preach sobriety.  Truth is truth no matter whom it comes from.  It may taste better coming from someone who’s walking the walk, but marriage advice from married people isn’t necessarily going to be better than from an unmarried person.

The importance of compatibility.

Roissy – or Chateau, or Citizen Renegade, or whatever he’s calling himself/themselves these days – believes that compatibility of values and sexual attraction are unrelated.  Moreover, it is not even necessary to conceal a difference of beliefs.  Says he:

You’re doing it wrong if you think dating ideologically dissimilar people is about keeping topics “under wraps”. It’s nothing of the sort. Real sexual attraction and love circumvent that type of defensively dull mechanistic dating jive. It’s irrelevant to men with tight game, because “major lifestyle differences” would hardly ever be summoned, purposely or inadvertently, to move a seduction forward. That is because what builds attraction is not a discussion over national health insurance or the blessings of having kids. Sustained sexual attraction is an ancient instinct that reacts to certain mate value cues, and political conformity is not one of them. If anything, a girl can be *more* attracted to a man who is ideologically different from her, as long as he is passionate about his beliefs without being charmless in explaining them. Girls are often shocked into arousal by the presence of a man willing to speak his mind and refrain from obsequiously parroting her opinions.

……

Now at some point down the road those arid and tingle-killing ideological, religious or political issues will rise to the fore. It is inevitable when you spend so much time with a girl that it becomes impossible to sequester zones of discussion in an unshared limbo. But ultimately it won’t matter if the girl loves the man. She’ll instead be more drawn to his standing firmly for his principles.

He’s not wrong – if all you’re going for is attraction for a hook-up, fling, or short-term relationship.  Even for a long-term relationship, differences of ideology and principles may not be enough to disrupt attraction.

Most people, however, will balk when it comes to marriage to someone with significantly different values.  Roissy, as someone who professes never to marry, will never face these concerns.  But most people do marry, and differences of values will almost certainly come into play for evaluating someone’s spousal potential.  And this is wise and prudent, because marriage is the mingling of two lives into one, a voluntary relinquishment of freedom and personal choice.  When you enter into an arrangement where (typically) finances are joined, families are joined, children are begotten, and your entire future has the other person tethered to it, differences start to matter very much.  What kind of man marries a woman with a very different attitude about spending money?  About expectations for standard of living?  About the importance of extended family?  About raising children?  About faith and politics?

A dating relationship is like a buffet, where you can choose the things you like and ignore the ones you don’t.  Marriage, on the other hand, is a “you have to clean your plate” sort of deal.  The more differences and incompatibilities there are, the more work it will be to maintain the relationship.  Hollywood likes to glamorize the “rich girl/poor boy” dichotomy, promoting the idea that “love conquers all” (never mind that in real life, male proles typically do not end up with wealthy blue blood heiresses) but in real life where there are bills to pay and aging parents to take care of and kids who need attention and lawns to mow and cars to wash, every difference between you and your spouse is a friction point.  When life’s stresses set in – and they will – loving and living with someone who is in opposition to your values will become incredibly difficult in a way that two more like-minded people will not experience.  (Which is not to say that Sam and Sue Sameness will never experience marital difficulty, only that their harmony of values will smooth over a lot of potential friction points.  Shared values can help sustain the bond between two people when ~feelings~ aren’t at the forefront.)

Compatibility of values is especially important when it comes to having children.  Most people marry in anticipation of having a family, and some marry because their little bundle of joy is already on the way.  This is where the values rubber really starts to meet the practice road.  How are you going to raise your child?  Will you spank or do time-outs?  Public, private, or homeschooling?  Sugary treats or celery sticks?  How many hours of Wii per day?  Of Disney Channel?  Will you take your children to R-rated movies?  Stay at home mom or daycare?  How old must your daughter be to wear makeup?  To date?  Will you take your kids to church?  To which church?  What traditions will you celebrate?  What will you teach your children about life?  About other people?  About him- or herself?

Obviously, most people do not find and marry their opposite-sex twin.  All couples will have matters on which they must surrender or tolerate.  I think it’s foolish, though, to marry primarily for attraction and not for shared values.  For men, especially – a woman is only going to be at her physical peak for a short amount of time compared to the amount of time you will be married to her.  What’s going to help keep you bonded after everything starts to sag and deflate?

To the men who are saying, “Pfft.  I’m so alpha that my 8+ wife abandoned all of her beliefs and adopted my own!”:  then I posit that her beliefs weren’t really very important to her, if she didn’t struggle at all with giving them up.  (Some seed falls on the path and gets eaten by birds, some falls on rocky soil, some falls in the weeds….)

Virtue alone is not enough.

One of the dirty little secrets that no one tells you growing up in church is that virtue alone is not enough to attract a mate.  Keeping your pants on, never telling lies, and praying and reading the Bible are all fine and good and important, but if this is all you bring to the table, it’s going to be very difficult to interest someone.  This is because nobody wants to be with someone who is bland.

But – you sputter – how can virtue be bland?  It’s VIRTUE.  It’s what we should aspire to!  God calls us to be virtuous!

Yes, but…how can I put it?  A perfectly serviceable couch is more appealing to a buyer if it’s presented in a showroom that complements and enhances it, as opposed to, say, sitting on the side of the street.  In other words, in the moments when you’re not telling lies and not having sex and not reading the Bible or praying, you still need to be interesting and socially adept.  A man who refuses to tell lies and can also tell interesting stories and play the guitar is going to be more interesting and attractive than a man who refuses to tell lies and rarely engages with other people and has no particular interests.

Additionally, I think there is also a tendency for the bland virtuous to start becoming resentful of others for not being attracted to virtue.  This undoes all of the good of being virtuous in the first place…and suggests that maybe you’re not as virtuous as you think you are, if you’re going to get all bent out of shape at others for not prizing your virtue.

In short:  if the main good character trait you can use to describe yourself is “I’m a virgin!” (or “at least I don’t do X and Y like everybody else”), you’re probably not going to get too far with the opposite sex.

You get what you pay for.

The dating advice thread strikes again.

Situation: Woman (I’m assuming late 20s-mid 30s; let’s call her Emmy) dates man for two years, during which time she regularly, loudly, proclaims to all who will listen that she deserves better than what he is giving her.

She breaks up with him.

But apparently is allowing him to live at her place while his apartment is being renovated.

He tells her that she deserves better than what he could give her.

She is privately devastated to hear this, and writes that hearing it was no vindication, that she felt no euphoria, pride, or triumph.  Instead, she felt only sadness as she asked herself repeatedly why she had spent two years in the relationship.

I think Emmy’s original problem was that she dated a downtrodden beta so she could have a relationship but, after the initial “I have a boyfriend!” euphoria wore off, never felt that he was higher value than she was.  Believing a man to be higher value than her probably would have offended her feminist principles.  (I am assuming she is a feminist because the majority of posters on the board are college-educated, non-religious, politically liberal women.)  Anyhow, she figuratively emasculated him to all who would listen, probably thinking herself clever, and then, after destroying the remaining dregs of attraction she had for him, finally broke it off.

But being a woman, her hindbrain (as Roissy might say) is not allowing her to make a clean, emotion-free break like an alpha male.  Instead, she is upset that he wouldn’t alpha up in the face of her colossal shit test of putting him down publicly, and is trying to give him a final chance to assert himself by allowing him to live with her for as flimsy a reason as his apartment being renovated.  (Seriously, does the man have no other friends?!  Women, never date men with no friends.)  When he parroted back to her the exact things she said to him during their dating relationship, she felt overwhelming despair because she realized she had allowed herself to have sex with an unfit man for two years.  Yet she can’t at all see what role she played in the demise of their relationship.

A smattering of advice from the regulars:

• Aww.  Let’s hang out and drink until you forget him.
• Sometimes you wish you had the chutzpah to shout that you could do better than his tiny penis.
• You’re the better person for allowing him to stay with you.
• Don’t worry, everyone has made this mistake.

Really, just where have all the good men gone?

The reason that men need to be strong with women is because women cannot be strong with other women.  A woman is socially obligated to tell her friend whatever it is the friend wants to hear, even if it completely contradicts reality.  A woman who goes around telling unwanted truths to her female friends will probably not remain friends with those women for long.  So, men, if you want better women, you need to be a better man first.  If you take control, women will follow.  Maybe not every woman, but a lot will.  If you tell a woman the truth, she will take it to heart if she has any respect for you at all, even if she throws a fit.

I once knew a young guy who was from a very small, very conservative town.  He was the type who had sisters with rarely-cut, long, wavy hair whose idea of nice clothes were long, cotton-knit dresses with tiny flowers on them.  His upbringing was so conservative that he had been taught to stand up whenever a woman entered the room.  It was only when he came to the “big city” (population 100,000) to go to school that he discovered that this was the kind of behavior that made people stare in a bad way.  So he stopped doing it, which he semi-regretted.  One day he mentioned that he constantly had women throwing themselves at him – young, old, it didn’t matter.  They would actually tell him how attractive they found him and how much they wanted to date him.  Looking back, I can now see that this all stemmed from his impeccable masculine frame.  It’s rare to meet a man with that kind of frame, much less a very young one.  He wasn’t built.  He wasn’t particularly good-looking.  He wasn’t a snazzy dresser.  But he was so sure of himself in a quietly powerful way that women were falling at his feet.

This young guy was also a Christian, so he wasn’t having sex.  Strictly comparing him to the ex-boyfriend from the dating advice thread, he comes out inferior on paper, sex-wise.  After all, the ex-boyfriend not only got to have sex with Emmy for two years, he has now been able to convince her to house him for an indefinite length of time, and I am quite certain that if he wanted to resume having sex with Emmy, he could make it happen.  He’s about one wine bottle and a candle away from boom shaka-laka time.  But he really isn’t the more successful man, is he?

P.S.  I am not trying to say that women are not responsible for the choices they make.  Emmy got exactly what she paid for out of the relationship.  But because women are uniquely programmed to follow strong men, it behooves good men to take the lead and guide women into making good choices they might not have made on their own.

The perfect storm (stealth date follow-up).

In my last post, I discussed a Boundless post by Tom Neven about his daughter Hannah, who had gone on a stealth date with a male friend who she knew was interested in her.  Naturally, the readers, good Christians that they are, piled on in the comments on everyone involved — so much so that Hannah felt compelled to write a defense of herself.  Oh, Hannah.  This is something that I would never recommend doing except in a case of libel where it is imperative to your legal or job security that you right the record.  First of all, nothing on the internet is as important as people on the internet think it is.  It’s very easy to get into an internet echo chamber where every voice has an exponential effect on the noise, and before you know it, you’re swimming in the din over something as trivial as which objectively attractive actress is a 9 and which is a 10.  Second, who cares?!  Why get ruffled over what a bunch of keyboard critics whom you’ll never meet think of you, your beta boy, your dad, your approach to dating, or anything else?  Nine times out of ten, a person who takes to the internet to defend his or her opinion is only going to dig the hole deeper and give opponents more grist for the mill.  Let your opinion speak for itself.  If other people don’t like it, they can fight about it amongst themselves while you go out and do something constructive with your time.  Besides, most people are bad at putting out their own fires, hence the existence of the PR industry.

What Hannah wrote is not all that interesting, anyway.  Anyone with a clue about college-age church girls could have written a nearly identical blast (“blah blah blah, I am not shallow or vain, we don’t have any chemistry, why is everyone hating on me? I’m innocent and he needs to man up!”).  What is actually interesting is the variety of opinions expressed in the comments.  Boundless is only occasionally useful for advice, but it is eminently useful for taking the temperature of young evangelical thought.  Here is a smattering of “advice” from the Boundless commentariat (my paraphrases):

• The reason you don’t feel any sparks is because you didn’t start praying about it the minute he started giving you attention!  Elisabeth Elliot prayed when her third husband first started paying attention to her.
• You’re just an alpha chaser who is going to get her heart broken!
• OMG Hannah ur so wise and it was so totally not a date! U GO GURL!!11!
• Tom Neven, you’re a bad dad who humiliated poor Beta!
• Women should never initiate a DTR until they are asked out!
• We need to be more like Jesus!
• I am GRIEVED that I hurt you with my comments!  I am so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so sorry!
• Women shouldn’t turn down any dates because they will get a reputation for saying no and then no one will ask them out!
• Don’t give up on chemistry, Hannah!  My own personal experience proves that chemistry is important!
• Hannah, I know you are a woman of substance because I have gone through the same circumstance!
• Hannah has the right to date only men with whom she feels chemistry!
• Men need to stop bringing their hurtful baggage to these discussions so things can stop being so tense around here!
• OMG WHY IS EVERYONE SO MEAN HERE? JESUS WOULD NOT APPROVE.

Sometimes when I read comments like these, I wonder if there is any hope for harmony between the sexes in Churchland.  I suppose the most salient point is that Betas now have even more motivation to “man up,” because of the fear that their target’s dad might take to a widely read blog to advertise their beta-ness.

Possibly the worst comment of all, more for its substance than its attitude, was that of a young woman who had dated a man for an entire year while not being at all physically attracted to him.  She writes:

A few years ago I had my first boyfriend whom I dated for about a little over a year. He was a great Christian guy, a true gentleman, always paid for me, and even remembered the exact calendar day of when we first started talking and our first date. The problem: I wasn’t physically attracted to him. We held hands once but I never wanted to do it again. I never let him kiss me either. Sure, he would have made a great husband and if I never broke it up, we would probably be planning our wedding right now.  The point is that I believe attraction and spark should be among one of the top priorities in a potential spouse. [AH:  my emphasis in bold]

OH MY GOODNESS.  I CAN’T EVEN WRAP MY HEAD AROUND THIS.  IS SHE A ROBOT?!?!?!  (…IS HE A ROBOT?!?!?!)

The stealth date and the tease.

stealth date: when a male friend asks a female friend for a one-on-one outing, during which he tries to exert date-like behavior such as paying for the food/activity, going somewhere non-casual, or making exceptional plans for the outing, all the while never specifying that he wants it to be a date.

Over at Boundless in an article entitled “Help, I’m on a Date and I Can’t Get Out!”, blogger Tom Neven writes that his teenage daughter Hannah recently went on a stealth date with a beta male friend.  Hannah and beta male friend were talking about getting frozen yogurt, which turned into a trip to get said frozen yogurt.  Neven says that Hannah had a paralyzing moment of indecision as she ordered, suddenly realizing that she might be on a stealth date.  Which she was, as Beta Male Friend offered to pay for her as “his treat” before Hannah could pull out her wallet.  Neven writes with fatherly amusement that Hannah now faces the “not-fun task of letting him down — easily.”  Poor beta male.  He played it safe, and now it’s going to blow up in his face.  At least he will have the memory of one blissful afternoon of paying for Hannah’s Fro-Yo to sustain him during the inevitable darkness.

Normally I would put 99% of the blame on Beta Male Friend for not making his intentions clear at the outset, but Neven, after telling this story, then blithely reveals that Hannah knew that Beta Male Friend had a crush on her.  This changes EVERYTHING.

Ladies, do NOT go on one-on-one outings with male friends who you know have crushes on you.  This is usually called “leading him on” or “being a tease.”

I will cut Hannah some slack because she is a teenager and therefore probably doesn’t know better, but did she really think that she could go out one-on-one with a male friend who had already expressed interest in her, and not give him hope or the wrong impression?  It’s clear from Neven’s post that Hannah had not previously made it clear to Beta Male that she had no romantic interest in him.  She knew, yet continued to buddy around with him and voluntarily went somewhere alone with him and allowed him to pay for her.  What do you think was going through Beta Male’s head?  Yay, I love being platonic friends!  She will so appreciate my paying for her!  Tonight I will finish reading Wild at Heart and tomorrow I will think of doing something manly that will actually make her like me! Hardly.

But even if Hannah HAD said “No, there are 500 guys in line ahead of you that I’d rather date/marry/have sex with,” she still went out with this guy on an outing that had every appearance of a date, all the while knowing that he was romantically interested in her.  How is that not textbook teasing (albeit of the chaste, church teen variety)?

Yet Neven does not even acknowledge this.  Instead, he treats the situation as a rite of passage, an unavoidable bump on the road to maturity, and commiserates with guys who have had the LJBF talk.  Nowhere does Hannah receive any blame for what happened.  In Neven’s mind, this whole ordeal appears to be just a little adolescent misunderstanding, tee hee.

But this just demonstrates how deeply embedded secular dating values and feminism have become in the church.  On the one hand, we have a poor little beta male who can’t muster the courage to ask a girl out directly.  And on the other, we have a girl who leads on her interested male friend with nary a reprimand from her Christian father.  And people think that what churches need are a hip worship band and more social outreach projects.

Young beta in love uses Facebook to speed the demise of his 2-week relationship.

I’m sure this is not an unusual occurrence, but for the love of Pete, people need to count to five hundred twenty before they post anything to Facebook.

I was skimming one of my regular message board haunts today and came across a thread entitled “Aw, young love.”  Thinking it was going to be about, say, someone’s junior high daughter having a crush on the most Justin Bieber-y boy in her class, I clicked.  What followed was this:

This guy I know who is about 21 and never had a real relationship just got a girlfriend. They have been dating two weeks and have already announced that they are engaged and both of their facebooks every day are full of grand sweeping poetic love declarations. The engagement isn’t a “real” one yet (like with a ring or date or real plans to move forward) but rather a “declaration of love and dedication to the emotions we feel in our hearts”

It is soooooooooooooooooo cute. I hope they survive the inevitable puppy love honeymoon stage crash. I don’t think people who have never been in a real relationship understand that not every day is going to be grand facebook declaration worthy

I’m not sure what is the worst part of this post to dissect first, because it is all bad.  The only thing that could make this story worse is if Beta in Love called up Delilah After Dark to dedicate “I’ll Be” by Edwin McCain or “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls to this girl.  Basically, men of all ages:  do not be this guy.  I’m sure Girlfriend is swimming in a sea of oxytocin at the moment and is therefore blind to this guy’s overwhwelming beta-ness, but eventually she is going to wake up and wonder who this drip is that she gave heart/soul/body parts to.  Also, an “engagement” with no real plans to move forward that is based on “the emotions we feel in our hearts” has approximately a 6-month expiration date, max.  I feel sorry for all the Facebook friends who will have to suffer through the inevitable crash.  Luckily for them, Facebook allows you to block people.

The Dr. is in!

I’ve mentioned before that on one of the message boards I read, there is a dating advice thread.  Since the board is primarily female and college-educated, there tend to be a lot of feminist-inspired dating mistakes, feminine overanalysis, and questionable advice.  For your reading enjoyment, I’ve compiled some of the most recent stuff.

Earlier this month, Female A, one of the board’s most prolific and well-liked posters who is internet famous outside of the board, posted that her mother had met a charming, extroverted young man at work who was brand new to town and had shown him A’s picture.  The young man was intrigued by the picture, and A’s mother, in true Mrs. Bennet fashion, started scheming to invite him over for dinner so he could meet A, who has not met anyone new in a long time.  The only problem is that the picture the young man saw is 13 years old, and A, by her own admission, no longer resembles the girl in the photo.  Most crucially, she is much heavier now.  A acknowledged that she didn’t think Young Man would be interested in her and that he could do much better than herself.  However, she has been in such a never-ending dry spell that she’s willing to cling to any shred of hope.

Any time a woman puts herself down to other women who like her, that is an automatic invitation for the other women to pile on with “don’t say that” compliments.  A 500-pound woman could tell her girlfriends, “No one will ever love me.  I’m too fat,” and whether or not the girlfriends secretly agreed with her, they would tell the fat girl, “Don’t say that!  That’s not true!  There’s someone for everyone!  You just need to find him!  Don’t give up!  You are the most loving and kind person I know and some man will be lucky to find you!”  It’s one of the unwritten rules of female friendship that when a friend denigrates herself, you must prop her up with praise, disregarding reality if necessary.

Anyhow, this is exactly what happened in the thread.  A lot of YOU STOP THAT RIGHT NOW, YOU ARE SO FUNNY AND SMART AND KIND, and GO FOR IT AND REPORT BACK!s.  So far there has been no reporting back, so I don’t know if Mom’s Dinner has happened, but Dr. Haley’s initial assessment is that things are going to go only so far as Mom’s Dinner and no further.  I’m guessing that Young Man is not going to like discovering that not only does A no longer resemble her picture, the main reason she no longer resembles it is because of her weight.  And she’s 13 years older.

Female B attends a church that a Nice Young Guy (whom I’ll call Brad) also attends.  They primarily see each other at church since they don’t live in the same town.  B has been harboring a crush on Brad for several months.  Finally they get to the point where Brad asks for B’s number via instant messenger.  B spends several days in anxiety as she waits for Brad’s call.

A week later, B reports back that Brad didn’t call but then called to apologize for not calling.  He’s been busy, you see, and he’ll call this next week when he has more free time.  She confronts him at church and becomes upset when she thinks he doesn’t want to talk to her.  So she approaches him after the service and asks if he even still wants to be friends.  He immediately answers yes, and B susses out that Brad had no idea that girls get upset when guys don’t call.  She also thinks he has never dated before.  They make plans to hang out later in the week.

Two days later B reports that Brad did come over and they made out.  Brad thinks she is beautiful and really likes her and just had to get over his nerves.  However, they are not yet “dating.”  B is glad she tolerated Brad’s shyness.  Other women in the thread congratulate B.

Yesterday (about two weeks later) B posts that she is no longer livid that Brad stood her up twice and then called four days after the fact to inform her that he was too busy for her and that he didn’t want B to get her hopes up for a relationship.  B is infuriated that Brad would kiss her and then do this.  B tries to get the last salvo in by telling Brad that she gave up hope after he stood her up the second time.  B’s girlfriends console her with talk of kicking him in the nuts.

Dr. Haley’s prognosis:  Brad was never that interested in B.  Most of the work in their “relationship” was on B’s end.  Brad, however, was probably consumed with churchian guilt over using B for smoochies and hence broke it off.

Male C reports that things are “going well” with the girl he is dating, but for the fact that she often will not contact him for a WEEK.  C finds this “frustrating.”

Dr. Haley’s prognosis:  C is this girl’s beta orbiter.  Her tingle for him, on a scale from 1 to 10, is around a 1.5.

Yes, true tale.

The latest hubbub at Boundless is over this article in Christianity Today.  Gina R. Dalfonzo, the article’s author, writes:

Once there was a good Christian girl who dreamed of growing up, getting married, and having children. She read all the right books and did all the right things. She read about how she was a princess in God’s sight and how he wanted the very best for her. She committed herself to sexual purity, to high standards, and to waiting for the good Christian man that God was going to bring her.

Just as she was getting old enough to start dating, however, she noticed something. Some of the popular Christian books were talking about not dating at all, and just being friends, until God had made it clear that the guy she liked was exactly the right one for her. Her Sunday school teachers taught from a very popular book about how dating was unbiblical, and how a truly righteous young Christian man would initiate a courtship with marriage as the goal, working in tandem with the girl’s father and the pastor and others in the church body.

……..

The girl was given to understand, from various quarters, that it was girls like her, girls who delayed marriage, that were the trouble with her generation, with Christianity, and with the country in general. She was informed that it was her own fault that she didn’t have the things that she longed and prayed for. She started to hear words like “spinster” and “bitter” and “self-absorbed” and “career woman” whispered around her.

And the girl grew tired.

She was tired of advice. She was tired of waiting. She was tired of hearing about Prince Charming and Mr. Darcy. Perhaps most of all, she was tired of shaking heads.

So she ran off with the first non-Christian man who showed some interest, asked her out, and treated her with respect. And the knowing ones shook their heads and said, “What happened to her? She used to be a good Christian girl.”

I’ve never read a more succinct compendium of all of the bad dating advice bandied about in church circles.  While not every single Christian woman over a certain age will run off with the first man who looks twice at her, whether or not he is a Christian, the temptation to do so will increase and the rationalizations will start to creep in.  As long as he had good morals… But if we got along really well… He wants the same things in life that I do… He’s kinder than any of the Christian men I know, and smarter and funnier, too… He’s the only man who has ever thought I was beautiful…

It’s tiresome to hear married Christians lecturing singles about God’s good gift of marriage and how we must wait patiently for God’s perfect timing, and the meantime work on perfecting our marital skills (except for sex), or some other drivel.  At some point, every Christian longtime single asks him- or herself, “Are my Christian principles the hill I want to die on?”  What Dalfonzo’s article points out is that for some, the answer is no.

A Christian woman who holds on to her principles sometimes ends up in limbo:  not cute and girly enough for Christian men, too prudish and boring for non-Christian men.  This is how a non-ugly-faced, non-fat young woman can spend over a decade with minimal male attention thrown her way.  I have this suspicion that men think that if they see a woman and think she’s attractive, the woman somehow automatically knows and it counts toward her inner mental count of male interest.  For many women, however, short of a definitive action such as being asked for her number or out on a date, the woman will never know.

By the way, yesterday was my birthday, or, more aptly, the __th anniversary of my increasing SMV irrelevance!  Feel free to congratulate me in the comments.