Act interested.

One part of my church’s Sunday service that I would happily do away with is the time when the pastor tells everyone to stand up and greet other people.  It’s one of the most useless ways of forcing people to “get to know each other.”  Most people are horrible at talking to people they don’t know, so just add in the pressure of being forced to do it, and you end up with a lot of really limp handshakes and lack of eye contact.  My church is particularly terrible at eye contact.  Most people I shake hands with, other than all of the old people who are delighted to see a younger person at an early service, are not even looking at me when they say hello and shake my hand.  They’re already glancing off in the distance, probably at their next limp hand-shaking victim.

This got me thinking about interactions with the opposite sex.  If you’re on a date with someone, or even meeting someone, it’s important to make eye contact.  If you’re trying to talk to someone and they’re looking everywhere except at you(r face – boobs don’t count), it’s pretty obvious that the person is not interested and has a bunch of other things they’d rather be doing.  It’s pointless to talk to the side of someone’s face.  I hope that the next time this happens to me, I’ll just walk away rather than politely endure the awkwardness.

If you were a swagger coach: bassoon quartet edition.

This is the most purely nerdy thing I have ever seen on the internet.  (Pure nerdiness lacks the repulsive desperation/shame factor commonly associated with nerds.)  I encourage everyone to watch the video, but if you don’t, this is what it contains:  a bassoon quartet playing selections of score from the Super Mario Bros. video game series.  This video is special because pretty much every aspect is nerdy to the hilt.  To wit:

• Bassoon quartet.  You have to be a very dedicated band geek to play the bassoon, because bassoons are not cheap.
• The music is from a series of video games, which someone obviously had to take the time to select and arrange.
• I didn’t realize until the musicians stood up to take their bows that the blonde on the left is female.
• Everyone in the quartet is wearing glasses.
• Everyone in the quartet has a dorky haircut.
• The Asian in the back stops playing and beatboxes unironically at two different times and occasionally makes sound effects noises.
• Everyone is wearing the same custom shirt, which features four bassoons and which I assume is their group outfit.
• Everyone is wearing stone-washed jeans that look like they came straight out of 1996.

If you were a swagger coach and were hired to prep these kids for a night of sarging cheerleaders, what would you advise?

A premature proclamation?

Suzanne Gosselin recently wrote an article at Boundless called “Recognizing the One,” in which she recounts that she knew her now-husband was “the one” when the Holy Spirit told her so (which just so happened to be at a moment when Kevin, to whom she was already attracted, was alpha-ly going on about his passions and plans for life…funny how that works).

In the comments, someone named Andrew3 wrote of his criteria for a future wife:

This is my criteria for knowing if a woman is “The One” for me:

1. She believes in Jesus Christ as her Saviour.

2. I can imagine her bearing my children through the method designed by God at the beginning of creation. (Genesis 4:1)

3. She wants to marry me.

That is it! The first woman who fulfills all three of the above criteria will be my wife for the rest of our years on earth.

Now, maybe he really means this, but I highly doubt that these are his only criteria.  What if the woman also…

…had three kids by three other guys?

…pole-danced not for Jesus?

…had $50,000 worth of credit card debt?

…had two ex-husbands?

…had a lot of male Facebook friends who liked to message her?

…liked to post pictures of herself in a bikini on Facebook?

…had no female friends?

…made more money and/or had more education than he did?

Maybe Andrew3 is just really young and therefore hasn’t thought any deeper than his three criteria.

 

No, thou shalt not let thyself go.

Recently Boundless blogger Suzanne Gosselin highlighted an article on Rachel Held Evans’s blog entitled “Thou Shalt Not Let Thyself Go?“, in which Evans puts Mark Driscoll on blast for the following 2006 statement:

“At the risk of being even more widely despised than I currently am, I will lean over the plate and take one for the team on this. It is not uncommon to meet pastors’ wives who really let themselves go; they sometimes feel that because their husband is a pastor, he is therefore trapped into fidelity, which gives them cause for laziness. A wife who lets herself go and is not sexually available to her husband in the ways that the Song of Songs is so frank about is not responsible for her husband’s sin, but she may not be helping him either.”

Evans then says:

I fear that the sentiment behind these remarks—that the Bible holds women to a certain standard of beauty that must be maintained throughout all seasons of life—remains pervasive within certain sectors of the conservative evangelical community.

She then calls out Christian authors Dorothy Patterson and Martha Pearce, as well as unnamed pastors in her own life, for telling women that they should remain beautiful and sexually satisfy their husbands to the point where the husbands will have zero temptation to stray.

Evans warns:

The message is as clear as it is ominous: Stay beautiful or your husband might leave you.  And if he does, it’s partially your fault.

Evans goes on to say that nowhere in the Bible are women commanded to remain physically beautiful for their husbands and instead highlights the usual verses about how beauty is fleeting, yada yada yada.  But Evans then goes one step further and labels the advice to stay attractive misogyny.  She contends that Scripture affirms that beauty decreases with age and childbearing, and – SHAMING ALERT! – “frankly, the suggestion that men are too weak to handle these realities is as emasculating as it is unbiblical.”  (Anytime someone starts a sentence with “frankly,” it’s an alert that condescension and/or shaming is imminent.)

Evans ends the article with this hamsterrific, projection-tastic piece de resistance:

Rather it is to help set women free—from the lie that God is disappointed when our bodies change, from the lie that it’s our fault when men cheat, from the lie that we become worthless as we grow older, and from the lie that that the Bible is just another glossy magazine whose standards of beauty we will always fail to meet.

While reading this article, I questioned whether Evans knows anything about men, or about women.  I don’t know anything about Evans, but it seems like she’s projecting her own insecurities onto men at large, and in trying to defend herself is actually propagating more garbage.

Very few men expect their wives to remain as physically attractive over time as they were on their wedding day, so Evans’s contention that there is some sort of churchian imperative never to age just seems totally bogus.  What men do expect, however, is that their wives care for their looks.  There is a big difference between showing natural signs of aging and packing on fifty pounds and wearing sweatpants all the time.  A wedding ring isn’t a license to start eating Ho-Hos to your heart’s desire, or shoving all your makeup in a drawer that will never again see the light of day.  So yes, this means that a woman who completely neglects her appearance and expects her husband to “just deal with it” is a woman who enables her husband to stray.  She doesn’t cause him to stray, but in neglecting her appearance, she makes it easier for another woman to catch his eye.  The reality that Evans seems to be most ignoring is that to a man, his wife’s investment in her appearance is a sign of respect for him.  And a man usually interprets his wife’s respect as love.  So man whose wife doesn’t care for her appearance tends to think that she doesn’t love him.  And a man who feels unloved is an unhappy man who is a prime target for temptation.  It’s up to your man to stray, but you can make it easier for him not to.

Does the Bible contain positive commands to women never to age or to work as hard as they can to retain their beauty?  No.  But the Bible doesn’t contain positive commands NOT to do so, either.  When the Bible tells women that their greatest beauty is in their spirit and demeanor, it’s not a permission not to care about their looks; it’s a reminder that the true beauty of a person comes from within, not that their looks have NO place of value.

But even if you buy everything Evans is selling, consider the shoe on the other foot.  Would Evans ever consider it okay for men to stop caring about making a living?  Would she be okay with a man deciding, “Well, I’m married now.  That’s a lot of responsibility, so I just can’t work as much as I used to.  I don’t think I should be expected to keep making more and more money, anyway.  That’s an ominous lie of materialism and there is no biblical command to make a lot of money.  So, yep, I think my wife should be okay with me not making $100,000 a year and keep loving me the same now that I’m only bringing home $20,000.”  Yeah…I don’t think so.

All I’m saying really boils down to one thing:  do things that make it easier for your spouse to love you.

P.S.  I glanced at the comments.  Oy, vey.

[ETA for reference: Suzanne Gosselin’s referring article, “Thou Shalt Not Become Ugly.”]

Taylor Swift can teach you about romance.

Of all the popstresses on the radio these days, none captures the girlish heart (and hamster) better than Taylor Swift, probably because she’s only 21 and writes all of her own music.  Her song “Fearless” greatly reminded me of Point IX in Roissy’s ever-so-tastefully named “Sixteen Commandments of Poon“:

IX. Connect with her emotions

Set yourself apart from other men and connect with a woman’s emotional landscape. Her mind is an alien world that requires deft navigation to reach your rendevous. Frolic in the surf of emotions rather than the arid desert of logic. Be playful. Employ all your senses. Describe in lush detail scenarios to set her heart afire. Give your feelings freedom to roam. ROAM. Yes, that is a good word. You’re not on a linear path with her. You are ROAMING all over, taking her on an adventure. In this world, there is no need to finish thoughts or draw conclusions. There is only need to EXPERIENCE. You’re grabbing her hand and running with her down an infinite, labyrinthine alleyway with no end, laughing and letting your fingers glide on the cobblestone walls along the way.

“Fearless” is all about a girl falling in love with an alpha who takes her for a drive in his car after it has rained, but the emotions Swift describes are right out of this Roissy post.  Sample lyrics:

We’re drivin’ down the road
I wonder if you know
I’m tryin’ so hard not to get caught up now
But you’re just so cool
Run your hands through your hair
Absent mindedly makin’ me want you

And I don’t know how it gets better than this
You take my hand and drag me head first
Fearless
And I don’t know why but with you I’d dance
In a storm in my best dress
Fearless

Also note the hat tips to aloofness, taking charge, a hint of danger/the unknown, and the woman not knowing the why of her feelings.  In contrast, here is a song Taylor Swift will never write:  one where she’s in the car with a guy and he’s constantly asking her where she wants to go and if he’s driving too fast and if she’s comfortable or not.  Just some food for thought.

You should just kiss her.

I was talking to my brother on the phone tonight and found out that his first college girlfriend had never let him kiss her even though they dated for a (school) year.  This was because she was one of those girls who had decided not to kiss anyone until she was married.  This was also before my brother had read The Game three times and Mystery Method twice.  And this was also in part due to the sterilized Christian college atmosphere of “even the slightest male sexual forwardness is akin to date rape.”  Ultimately, the ex-girlfriend’s unwillingness to kiss my brother led to their breakup.

But, as I learned, he should have just gone ahead and kissed her.  Years later she apologized to him for never kissing him and then confessed that she had gotten drunk and made out with some random stranger and felt awful about it.  I don’t think this made my brother feel better about all those kissless months.

All women, no matter what they say, want the men they’re dating to put the moves on them, or at least try.  If you’ve been dating a non-kisser for a while, and you have good chemistry, and you’ve just had a really great date, you may as well go for it.  She may honestly believe that she wants to save her lips for “I do,” but what her subconscious really wants is to know that the man she is dating finds her so irresistible that he can’t help but kiss her.  Irresistibility is key, though.  Anything less will seem calculated or lustful.  Another caveat:  bring your best game in case you get rebuffed – not so that you can then con her into changing her mind, but to show her that her refusal to kiss you does not affect you.  (If you have really wicked game, you should let her know how attractive you find her, and then inform her that you will not kiss her under any circumstance.  She will be dying for you to kiss her.  Hey, it worked for Rhett Butler.)

I’m not writing this to try to get men to get women to abandon their kiss-free standards.  Some women are very resolute and sincere and do make it to the altar with unbesmirched lips.  I commend these women.  But I think that a lot of young women adopt a kiss-free stance in a fit of idealistic romanticism, rather than as a result of sober contemplation.  It’s the idealistic romanticizers, therefore, for whom no-kissing often amounts to a sanctified shit test – a test that men should recognize and treat as any other.  The truth is that under amenable circumstances, a woman will kiss whom she wants to kiss.  Very, very few women can fight off the hamster for long when it comes to kissing the men they are deeply attracted to.

P.S.  This blog post should not be interpreted to mean “ASSAULT HER WITH YOUR SLOBBERY, OVEREAGER LIPS JUST BECAUSE THERE WAS A SPLIT-SECOND PAUSE IN THE CONVERSATION.”  Timing is always of the essence.

If it weren’t for sex…

If it weren’t for sex, it would be so much easier to be single (Christian-style, anyway).

If it weren’t for sex, it would be so much easier to find someone to marry.

Online dating dilemmas: the superbeta.

I finally reached the “eHarmony mail” stage of eHarmz with a 45-year-old superbeta who, shall we say, has lost the bloom of youth and looks not well-poised to recover any droplet of it.  Today he sent me the most beta-ish of beta greetings conveying his hope that I had a “happy Monday,” compliments to my family (I have an extended family photo posted) and my smile (what can I say, I have great chompers), questions about what I did during the weekend, and information about what he did on his (he went for a hike and rode his bicycle).  He then said he would “be in touch” and wished me “sweet dreams.” It was pretty much a 66-word clinic in Coma-Inducing Nice Guy-ism.  In the previous stage, where you ask three questions that the person can write in the answers for, his answers totaled 199 words.  Mine totaled 44.  I think you can see where this is going.

At what point, then, is a woman justified in writing off an online match before even meeting, provided he doesn’t offend basic principles of sanity and morality?  If a guy comes off as a lonely, middle-aged superbeta in writing and photos, what are the odds that he will be more impressive in the flesh?  Should a woman feel obligated in spending time with someone she is 99% sure she will not be attracted to?  Should a woman keep her options open in case he falls into that 1%?  I think that all single women can hear their mothers screeching in their ears, “You need to give nice guys a chance!  He might be a great husband for you!”  (My mom loves to say this about mild-mannered computer programmers.  Never mind the fact that she basically married my star athlete dad because he was hot.  Oh, and from the same denomination.  Very important.)  In the other ear are screeching manosphere men, with the mutually contradictory orders to give nice guys a chance and stop being an entitled princess, and to stop leading men on and just be honest for a change, you fat entitled whore princess who will just end up with a small army of cats.

Sometimes I think women just can’t win.  Exercise any choice, and you’re too picky and will end up alone with cats.  Be too open and you’re either disingenuous or a big fat ho.  O, the glories of the lose-lose situation.

Half of me is tempted to send this guy a link to Roissy, especially that one post at Roissy’s on why you should always write less than the woman, and say not to write back until he’s read a month’s worth of posts.  But I think I lack that measure of kindness, cruel woman am I.

 

Player attention grid.

Why players don’t think there are any “good” girls:

More anecdotal evidence that men don’t care about virginity.

So, in an effort to scrounge up twelve dates by May 10, because nobody I know knows any single Christian men, I finally forked over money to eHarmz.  The level of psychological pain this action incurred was comparable to my feelings when I see how much of each paycheck I lose to taxes.  Since starting eHarmz about a week or so ago, I have been matched with close to a couple dozen men and am in the early communication stages with a handful (they initiated contact).

In these early stages, you can send five pre-scripted, multiple choice questions to the other person.  One of the questions is “what are your feelings about premarital sex?”.  The answer choices range from “totally against” to “very much a fan” (paraphrase).  One of my friends always uses this question as a sort of litmus test for the man’s spiritual commitment, so I figured I would, too.  So far none of the men who have answered this question have answered “totally against.”  And in my preferences, I have matches restricted to the highest level of religious commitment as well as to primarily conservative Protestant denominations.  So on the anecdotal level, the idea that supposedly committed Christian men believe that sex is only for marriage is bunk.

Even more telling, though, is that NONE OF THESE MEN HAS ASKED ME THE SAME QUESTION.  If virginity/restriction of sex is supposedly so important to men, wouldn’t they be very interested in my feelings about it?  Yet so far nobody has sent out this question.

Then again, one of my other questions is “what are your feelings about gender roles” (with answers ranging from “get in da kitchen and make me mah DINNUH!” to “halfsies on all chores!”), I haven’t gotten matched with anyone who believes in traditional gender roles, and a number of the men have chosen the “we should define gender roles for ourselves” option.

I’m trying to keep an open mind, but my apathy is rising.