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.

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.

One thing women don’t want to hear.

There are a lot of things women don’t want to hear, but this one ranks pretty highly:

You’re the kind of girl men want to marry.

On its face, it’s not a bad thing to tell a single woman.  It’s a compliment to be wife material.  The problem is that the only time a single woman ever hears this is in the context of her not dating while she watches all of the sluttier dumber more fun girls getting asked out and being showered with male attention.  Usually this sentiment is uttered by an older married woman who is decades removed from singleness and has no clue how the current dating market operates.*  It’s even worse if it’s uttered by a newlywed.  (Marriage makes everyone a sage expert on relationships, and no one is sager or freer with advice than a woman who has been married fewer than two years.)

Single women really hate being told they’re marriage material, because what they hear is:

• You are not pretty.
• You are not fun.
• You are boring.
• You are staid and matronly.
• You are such a dud that men would rather spend time and money on stupid girls than you.
• You are such a dud that men would rather spend time and money on girls with bad personalities than you.
• You are not good enough for a man’s firstfruits; you get the leftovers after he’s had his fun with the fun girls and finally decides it’s time to be boring and settle down with the girl who “saved herself.”  Thank the Lord for the boring girls, because otherwise he would have to marry a dumb slut!

The companion sentiment just rubs salt in the wound:  I don’t understand why no one has snatched you up yet! (Also, Those guys don’t know what they’re missing!)

This just makes single women irate (on the inside).  They must smile politely and offer up a gently self-deprecating demurral, but in their minds they are screaming, “If I’m so great and I am truly what men want, then why don’t any men want me?!?!  HEY, YOU INSENSITIVE BOZO, HAS IT EVER OCCURRED TO YOU THAT I’M NOT THAT GREAT AND I’M NOT WHAT MEN WANT?  MEN WANT THE OPPOSITE OF ME AND YOU ARE NOT MAKING ME FEEL BETTER.”

I think a better approach is to agree with the single woman that it’s hard to find someone.  Affirm her feelings on the matter and encourage her to hang in there.  This other stuff is just damning with faint praise.

*My mother would be appalled and in denial if she were told that the current dating scene goes something like this:

1. Go to a party.
2. Get drunk.
3. Make out and/or have sex with someone you meet at the party.
4. Repeat steps 1-3 a few times with the same person.
5. If neither of you can find someone better at another party, decide you are now in a relationship, you guess.

ManLingo: “I want to marry a girl like you.”

Sometimes when a man and woman become close friends, the man will say to the woman, “I want to marry someone like you” (or some variation thereof).

This is how the woman hears this statement:  “I am falling in love with you but I don’t know how to express it.”  Usually at this point in the relationship, the woman is harboring secret hope that the man is in love with her, because she is already in love with him.

This, however, is what the man really means:  “I want to find someone hotter who has your personality but I don’t want to hurt your feelings and actually tell you that I’m not physically attracted to you in the least.  Plus, I am enjoying your no-strings-attached company and you’ll do until I find someone who meets my criteria for physical attractiveness.”

Preventive thinking.

Unlike most people my age, I’ve never had sex with a stranger (a.k.a. one night stand) or even made out with/groped a stranger.  Part of the reason for this is that I don’t hang out at places where things like this usually get started (bars and clubs), part of it is that single men in my age range (make that men in general) very rarely even try to strike up conversations with me, and part of it is my morals.  Usually when I am considering bending my morals, though, the following thoughts usually start running through my head:

• What if it’s bad?  Like, repulsively bad?  I don’t want to be stuck with that kind of memory.
• What if it’s bad because of me and he tells all of his friends how awful I am and I become a dinner party story?
• What if he gets fat and bald and I see him again in the future and am stuck with the knowledge that I made out with that bald lardball?
• What if he becomes obsessed with me?
• What if it’s awkward afterward?
• What if I become clingy and emo?
• What if he has a girlfriend?
• I probably don’t mean anything to him.
• He probably wouldn’t care if it’s me or some other girl.
• What if I find out that he regularly hooks up with dumb, trashy girls?
• What will my friends think?…oh, who am I kidding?  I know what they’ll think.
• You’ve been in such a long dry spell…is this the guy you really want to end the dry spell with?
• Am I going to be glad or embarrassed tomorrow?

I know, I should probably be thinking of Bible verses against sexual immorality instead, but vanity works, too.

Before wife, loser. After wife, ex-loser?

Or: with your help, he shall be healed.

I’ve noticed that it’s fairly common in evangelical circles for a man to more or less prostrate himself at the feet of his wife’s saintly goodness, proclaiming some mixture of the following:

• I don’t deserve my wife.
• I was a mess before I met my wife.
• If it weren’t for my wife, I don’t know where I’d be right now.
• I don’t know what she sees in me.
• I’m an idiot, but for some reason, she married me.

Among Christian women, humility is an ENORMOUS turn-on and is considered an outward sign of inward maturity.  This is probably why Christian women love saying that they were “blessed” by something someone said or did ( e.g., “Your thoughtful words just blessed my day so much”, as opposed to “Thank you for stroking my ego the compliment”) and that doing something for someone else is a “privilege” (e.g., “I had the privilege of ministering to those in need today” instead of “We served food to the homeless”).  So I suppose it makes sense that Christian men have learned that putting themselves down scores points with the opposite sex.  It’s also part of the beta scourge that has infected the modern church – men feeling so guilt-ridden and/or unworthy and/or inferior to women that they have a hard time owning their masculinity.  It is very rare to hear a Gen-X or younger Christian man say of his wife, with gusto, “Heck, yeah, she got one heckuva deal in marrying me!” and actually mean it.

This “my wife is better than me” attitude is sad.  It may be humble on the surface, but it’s really just a big fat ugly DLV.  I would hope that a husband would feel that he is shaping his wife’s character just as much as she is shaping his, and that the quality of her life has improved by being married to him.  Otherwise it starts to seem like the whole marriage hinges on the wife’s inexplicable beneficence – which of course just makes her seem all the more saintly.

Basically, men should be grateful for the good that their wives bring into their lives – but not at the expense of acknowledging the reverse.

The importance of having chemistry.

I was reading an article at (where else?) Boundless the other day where a reader wrote in with a question about the importance of chemistry.  Three years ago, the reader, a college student, had a passionate – and apparently chaste – relationship with a young man who excited her emotionally.  (Unsurprisingly, he played in a band and did spontaneous things for her.)  According to the reader, they had an incredible connection with each other.  Alas, the young man dumped her, and eventually she started dating another young man who was his exact opposite:  predictable, responsible, faithful, and intentional.  They have been together for two years, and although they are not (yet?) engaged, he has indicated to her and her parents that he would like to “love and cherish only [her].”  The reader claims that she loves this young man (who is a pre-med student) but feels no chemistry with him, especially not in comparison to the band guy, and even goes so far as to say that if she and Pre-Med broke up, she could go on without him with no problem.  Recently, she met up again with Band Guy, and all of the chemistry they shared came rushing back, reminding her of how powerful a connection between two people can be.  Now she is conflicted – does she hold out for chemistry with a spouse, or should she proceed with Pre-Med?

Candice Watters wrote what I felt was an overly judgmental and completely missing-the-mark response.  First, she chastised the reader for “acting married” with Band Guy and then stated that if the reader hadn’t had a prior relationship with Band Guy, she and Pre-Med would already be married.  Because, apparently, if Reader hadn’t had that Band Guy relationship to compare Pre-Med to, she’d have been ga-ga over Pre-Med.  Or something.

But Candice didn’t stop there.  She then stated that chemistry is just a “polite way” of saying sexual attraction, and went on to relate two other readers’ stories where the young women didn’t think there was any chemistry initially but changed their minds after several dates and are oh-so-grateful that they did.  Candice also advised Reader not to marry someone she didn’t want to marry, but not to NOT marry someone just because he doesn’t measure up to Band Guy.  She then more or less urged Reader to proceed with Pre-Med, saying:

It sounds like you have a great man in your life. Are you friends? That is foundational. Are you both committed to living for Christ? That is essential. Do you spur one-another on in your faith and service to God? Are you together looking toward a God-honoring, fruitful marriage? These are the first questions to answer. From there, you can let love grow. And as I’ve seen in the stories of others, chemistry may rightly follow.

Needless to say, I think Candice was so far off the mark she might as well have set a course for China.  First of all, Reader has been dating Pre-Med for TWO YEARS.  How the heck much longer is she supposed to wait to, by Candice’s definition, become sexually attracted to this man?  Also, what kind of man stays with a woman who, after two years together, says that they could split up and she’d be fine?!  Any Roissy readers (or readers of any other Game blog) could easily diagnose what’s going on here in a jif, and it is not that Reader played marriage with irresponsible Band Guy and thus ruined herself for a quality Christian provider like Pre-Med.  The real problem is that Pre-Med is a classic, boring Beta who knows zip about female attraction psychology, has DLVed himself to a level of almost zero by virtue of his publicly broadcasted Oneitis and pedestalization, and, I’d wager a guess, not only has no clue about what’s going on in Reader’s head, but probably hasn’t made any meaningful sexual moves on Reader, either, out of “respect.”  A toothless baby sounds more dangerous than Pre-Med.  If anyone truly cared about Pre-Med’s precarious relationship health, he would send Pre-Med to Roissy and force him to educate himself before he lost Reader for good.

My other bone of contention with this response is with Candice’s definition of chemistry.  Between a man and a woman, yes, there is usually a component of sexual attraction in chemistry, but it is not the whole of chemistry.  And it’s not just men and women who have chemistry between them.  Two men can have chemistry, as can two women, though not sexual (well, unless they’re gay).  A better definition of chemistry is simply the intellectual and emotional “clicking” of two people.  Chemistry happens when two people’s energies feed into each other and produce a harmony of existence.  When two people have chemistry, conversation flows with ease.  Jokes don’t have to be explained, nor do they sail over the other person’s head.  Silences are not awkward.  Quite often, two people with the right chemistry can go for years without seeing each other or speaking to one another, yet can pick up right where they left off whenever they do see each other again.  Similarly, two people with the right chemistry can meet and be chatting with each other like old friends almost instantaneously.

This is the chemistry that I think Reader was referring to in her letter, both what she had with Band Guy, and what she is lacking with Pre-Med.  A woman longs to be known by the men she loves.  She wants to feel that he understands what is going on inside of her and that he has special insight into her mind that no other man has.  Women want love in general, but they also want a specialized love from their man.  This specialized love is what Pre-Med is sorely lacking in.  Women do not suffer feeling generic.  Ten bucks says that if Reader and Pre-Med break up, Pre-Med will treat his next girlfriend exactly as he’s treated Reader.  The success of that relationship will hinge on whether or not Pre-Med and New Girl have any natural chemistry between them.

As for the sexual component of chemistry, it’s a must for any marriage.  Few things make a woman recoil in fear and disgust more than the prospect of having to have sex with a man to whom she is not sexually attracted.  For most women, sexual attraction grows as their general attraction to a man grows; it’s not uncommon for a woman to see or meet a man and not feel anything for him until she gets to know him.  But I also think that sexual chemistry is actually chemical.  The point of sexual reproduction is genetic diversity, which strengthens the species, so we will therefore seek out matches that will result in that diversity.  How else to explain someone who is great on paper, and you may even get along well, but there is inexplicably just zero sexual attraction?  Yet sometimes you meet someone, and even though the person may not be your “type,” there is just that immediate pull towards the person, like you physically have to be in that person’s space?

Generally speaking, women, upon meeting a man, will place him in one of three categories:  (1) Yes, Please, (2) Wait and See, and (3) NEVER IN  A MILLION YEARS.  I think that subconsciously, this is heavily chemically chemistry-based, especially for categories (2) and (3).  Sometimes a Yes, Please doesn’t pan out; he’s not the guy you hoped he would be, or, equally as likely, his looks worked for you, but his body chemistry just didn’t mesh with yours.  But a Wait and See often means that his body chemistry doesn’t turn you off and you just have to wait and see if there’s more from the intellectual and emotional end that works for you.  (And vice versa for Never in a Million Years.)

It’s the Wait and Sees that I think women should be more open to.  But I resent the evangelical push to make women feel guilty about rejecting a solid Christian provider man when he is clearly a NIAMY (AND a boring beta to boot).

Blaming current ideals of beauty.

One thing that has started to drive me crazy is (Christian) women’s constant blaming of not having a boyfriend or husband on impossible “current ideals of beauty.”  Whenever a woman goes through a dry spell and is verging on bitterness, nine times out of ten she’ll say, “Well, I just don’t measure up to all those models/actresses in the magazines, and that’s what men want.”  (I just realized that I’ve actually sort of discussed this issue before on the blog, but it’s an issue that keeps rearing its only-beautiful-by-the-world’s-standards head, so why not write about it again?)

This is a cheap excuse because it oversimplifies the issue.  Men are biologically programmed to desire beautiful women, and Hollywood actresses are selected for their beauty.  Of course men “want” the beautiful women in movies and TV shows and Victoria’s Secret catalogs.  But men also understand that (a) there are very few women, if any, they know in real life who are that beautiful and, possibly more importantly, (b) they don’t have what it takes to snag a woman who is that beautiful and keep her for themselves.  Not to mention, most men aren’t going to move to Hollywood just to try to get one of those women for themselves, especially not when they’ll be battling multi-millionaires and powerful Hollywood execs and men who are ten times as good-looking for those women.  So men settle.  Mate selection is a pragmatic undertaking when it comes right down to it.

So if men are willing to settle, but they’re not settling for you, why is that?  It could be any one or more of several possibilities:

• Your physical appearance needs help. The average man doesn’t require that you be a size 2, but you should look like you are at a healthy weight for your body type and care about your appearance.
• Your personality needs help. Smiling more and complaining less are good ways to start.  Also, if the only thing that interests you is what’s in Us Weekly, it won’t hurt expand your intellectual horizons.  (Unless you’re a 10.  Then you will probably be forgiven for being shallow.  But if you’re a 10, you probably don’t have trouble attracting attention in the first place, so….)  This goes along with…
• You need better social skills. Don’t expect other people to entertain you or keep the conversation going.  People get resentful when others expect them to do all the heavy lifting in a conversation.  Learn how to listen and how to ask questions that keep conversations afloat.  Also, make eye contact and learn how to give a good handshake.  Have a shortlist of conversation starters mentally on hand if you struggle with coming up with ideas.
• You don’t go anywhere where you can actually meet single members of the opposite sex who are realistic marriage prospects. This ties into…
• You want someone of a caliber you can’t realistically hope to attract. Age, wealth, looks, talents, intelligence, etc. are goods you bring to the mating table.  Don’t overestimate the value of yours.  If you’ve got a 5 face and a 20-lbs. overweight body, the charismatic, single, multi-talented church worship leader isn’t going to go for you, no matter how amazing a man of God he is or how good of friends you think you are…or how much your female friends encourage you to keep your hopes up because you are an amazing person.
• You honestly haven’t met anyone who sparks with you even though you take care of yourself and have a good personality. This one is perhaps the toughest to deal with and has no easy solution.

Just remember – is everyone you know who is married drop-dead gorgeous and the Most Amazing Person Ever?  No?  Then there’s always hope for you.

Also, about Hollywood beauty and the images you see in film and on TV and in magazines:

It is true that Hollywood, the primary American cultural arbiter of beauty, has rather narrow standards.  It is rare to find a principal actress in a movie or television show who exceeds a size 6, tops (the exception being actresses who play “types” or are there mainly for body image affirmative action – but even these women, for the most part, aren’t bigger than the average American woman, who is a size 12 or 14, depending on which poll you use).  But Hollywood is a manufactured fantasy world, with its inhabitants carefully selected to fit within certain parameters, at least on the screen.  This extends right on down to the extras; it is rare for even the background actors in a typical production to be obese or objectively unattractive, on the whole.  In the real world, you will not find a general population ever to be as good-looking as the people of a Hollywood production.  So with that in mind, it’s really pointless to compare yourself to the people in a movie or TV show.  Those few people were selected out of hundreds or even thousands to fit specific needs demanded by the script, director, and/or producers.  Real life isn’t like that.

The thing is, men know this.  They have eyeballs and can tell that the women that surround them in everyday life are not Jessica Alba, Megan Fox, Charlize Theron, Halle Berry, or any of the little pretties on CW shows.  Yet somehow these men manage to date and get married to regular women, so they can’t be that picky about looks.  If every man held out for a 10, hardly anyone would be married.

The fine art of settling.

There’s a lot of talk these days in both the Christian community and mainstream society about settling.  The story usually goes something like this:

Before the sexual revolution, you could only get a 6 if you were a 6, a 3 if you were a 3, etc.

Nowadays, 1s through 10s are going for the 10s, leaving everybody else out in the cold until they are forced by necessity to settle, resulting in aged, dessicated husks of formerly semi-attractive women going for the nerdy beta providers they couldn’t stand in high school; or, if the 10 is a man, he has his entire lifetime to keep playing the field.

The solution?  Sound the drumbeat of settling!

This isn’t necessarily bad advice, especially when you consider that the dating/mating market ultimately bows to pragmatism.  For example, if you’re holding out for a physical 10 who matches your laundry list of must-have character traits, and you live a town populated by beer-drinking pizza-eaters whose idea of fine fashion is Kmart, you will either have to lower your standards or move somewhere else…or pray that God not only bring Prince Charming to Buckville but also have him fall in love with you.  Similarly, the market adjusts to what is actually available.  I’ve seen plenty of men online gripe that they go to a highly ranked college and all the women there are trolls who act like they’re 10s and can get away with it simply because there is no one else sluttier better-looking available.

The real strength of settling, or settling wisely, is that it most enables you to find a mate who will both make you happy and whom you can make happy with the least amount of stress.  Everyone brings a different set of goods to the mating table.  Common sense dictates that those with equivalent (and complementary) amounts of goods are likely to mesh the best.  If Person A is very attractive, very smart, very athletic, and very creative, she could make Person B, who is of average looks, intelligence, athleticism, and creativity quite happy with no trouble at all.  But how could Person B, who is inferior to Person A in all of those attributes, reciprocate?  Person B would be killing himself to keep Person A’s attraction centered on himself.  And what happens to Person A/Person B’s relationship when Person C, who is very handsome, athletic, smart, and creative enters Person A’s sphere at work?  How much easier is it going to be for Person A to find points of commonality with Person C than with Person B?  Mismatches of goods result in inherent instability within a relationship because one person will always be playing catch-up.

This dynamic is why I find some adherents of Game to be somewhat delusional, at least if they are interested in an long-term relationship, especially one leading to marriage.  Here you have all these grown men howling about how a female 6 (not a bad-looking person, objectively) is practically an insult to them – but I highly doubt that internet enclaves of Game devotees are all 8s or above.  Men, if you are a 6 who somehow Gamed yourself into scoring a 9, how long could you keep her without losing your wits?  How difficult would it be to fend off the competition?  Could you ever relax in the presence of your 9 without fearing that you’d revealed your inner beta and destroyed the house of cards you’d built?  Ultimately no one can hide from the truth-extracting powers of time and familiarity.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is the notion of settling that seems to be pushed in the Christian community, which is to find someone who is “godly and available” and have that pretty much be the end of your criteria.  The idea of having sex with the other person is about as appealing as having your tooth drilled?  Please.  How is that at all important when the other person is stable, debt-free, and loves Jesus?  Give yourself a decade and let the chemistry develop…eventually.  By the way, marriage is for life and you only get one shot at it!

I think the best thing to do is take a look around you and see the type of person who is in your milieu.  This is the type of person that you’re naturally the most comfortable with — you wouldn’t be friends with people it was hard to be friends with, right?  So it makes sense that in marriage, a lifetime friendship (with benefits!), you would want to be with the type of person you were most comfortable with.  If the people around you are a cut below the type of person you’re always trying to date, it might be time to reassess how good are the goods you’re bringing to the mating table, and to reconsider whether you’re pursuing someone who is realistically attainable.  Likewise, if you find yourself constantly disappointed with your friends, it might be time for a friend upgrade…or a workout regimen.

Settling isn’t about feeling like a loser because you couldn’t snag an Adonis or Aphrodite.  It’s about being smart about your future and making the choices that are going to result in the most harmonious match possible.  But it also involves being realistic about yourself, which is probably the hardest thing.

Too complicated to have any generalizations apply to you.

What is with this current attitude that someone or something is “too complicated” to have any generalizations or rules apply to them?  I see it all the time in discussion forums about personal relationships.  Do we live in a world where everyone is such a special snowflake that everyone falls outside the norm?

For example, divorce.  If someone on a discussion forum announces they’re getting divorced or thinking about it, and you chime in and say, “It’s better to stay together for the kids,” I guarantee you someone will jump down your throat insisting that it’s not your life, you don’t know all the details, and that relationships are “complicated” and therefore conventional wisdom does not apply.

Or how about obesity, particularly if you’re addressing evangelical women.  No one flies off the handle more than evangelical women if a man states that women are more attractive when they are thin.  A hullabaloo over this issue just went down at Boundless recently when one of their bloggers, Ted Slater, wrote a post and used the words “bouncing beach ball.”  His post was apparently so incendiary that it was deleted and replaced with a more “conciliatory” post by Candice Watters, who used the word “precious” every five seconds to remind fat girls that they deserve love, too, while insinuating that with enough prayer, a fat girl can find a man who will love her without demanding that she lose any weight.  To top it off, Ted then posted a new post apologizing for his cruel, thoughtless words.  And to think evangelical women complain that men don’t assume enough “leadership” these days.

Anyhow, in the comments of Candice’s new post, a few men piped up to agree with Ted’s original sentiments.  Naturally, these men got flayed alive by your typical assortment of Christian lashings, such as accusations of being unattractive, having a bad personality and/or mean spirit, and not speaking in love.  Several women insisted that obesity is not a personal failing and that you can never assume that someone loves cake more than a hot body just by looking at them.  The person could have complicated medical issues!*  Plus, well, it’s hard to be thin!  And chubby girls already feel a lot of despair about not having a boyfriend!  Good Christians pretend that other people are not fat, I guess.  Let’s keep fighting abortion instead!

Is this trend the result of the self-esteem culture and its resultant narcissism?  I think it might be.  But then, as the Bible says, “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.  Who can understand it?” (Jer. 17:9)

*I am definitely aware that sometimes a person is obese due to chemical or hormonal imbalances in the body, especially something like a thyroid problem.  But it is ludicrous to believe that the majority of the American public has a thyroid problem that’s causing the love handles, love saddlebags, or whatever you want to call them.