God’s perfect timing = hamster food?

One of the most difficult explanations to counter in churchly circles is that of “God’s will,” a.k.a., for dating/marriage purposes, “God’s perfect timing.”  See, if God is all-knowing and all-powerful while you’re just a broken, measly human with sinfully compromised reasoning capabilities, then pretty much no explanations, short of outright contradicting Scripture, can disprove “God’s will.”

But is God’s perfect timing just fancy hamster food?  In a recent Boundless article, Candice Watters answers a reader who sounds like a typical Christian beta girl.  Reader writes:

I’ve never had a boyfriend. To love a man with the love God has given me for others is one thing I desire above all else. But I’ve yet remained “invisible.” Is something wrong with me? Every person I know tells me “Oh, you’re the sweetest person I know,” “You’re so loving,” and so forth. From others’ compliments I don’t think I’m hard to get along with, and I think I’m average looking.

I try to get myself involved with different social circles and activities, but I’m invisible. And the guy friends that I’ve thought, Maybe there is something here, end up dating other girls. I’m happy for them, but it makes me wonder what’s wrong with me? What is your suggestion for shaking this feeling of “something-must-be-wrong-with-me” syndrome that I seem to be struggling with?

Now, if Watters were a member of the manosphere, she would probably first congratulate the girl on keeping her virtue intact because everyone knows that even a pretty ugly girl can go out and extract sex from some random dude, so isn’t it a miraculous accomplishment that this girl hasn’t turned into the vilest of slutty slut sluts yet, not that anyone believes truly virtuous girls actually exist.  Then Watters would probably tell Reader to lower her expectations, not to get promoted at work, and become wildly sexually attracted to someone she’s not that attracted to, because 30 is on the horizon and the mewls of the cats are getting louder.  Tough love, you hear.

But that’s not, of course, what Watters does.  Instead, Watters launches her own story of how it was not her chubbiness during her 20s that kept her from finding her husband — it was actually God’s will.  Watters says:

Boy, can I relate to your question! I was sure something was wrong with me. Being overweight in college and for most of my 20s, I was certain that if only I could lose 30 pounds, I’d have a boyfriend. That feeling was intensified by all the “you’re such a great gal; some guy is going to be very lucky to get you,” comments I heard from older, married Christian men. I could almost hear the subtext I assumed went with their complements: “You’re a great gal, though a bit on the chubby side, but you sure are nice and have a pretty face.”

Ugh. The longer I went with failed dieting attempts, the more frustrated and lonely I grew. If all that was keeping me from a good man and a godly marriage was a smaller dress size and if I lacked the self-control to lose weight, then it was my own fault for being single for so long.

Thankfully, there was a lot about that “what’s wrong with me?” way of thinking that wasn’t true. Yes, I was overweight. And I suspect there were guys who may have found me attractive and asked me out if I’d been thinner. Maybe. But even more important in my getting married was God’s timing.

So Watters admits that her weight was likely the reason that men weren’t finding her attractive, but she refuses to accept that that ultimately had anything to do with her finding a boyfriend and getting married.

She then goes on to talk about how each person is God’s special creation, which is par for the course for this sort of advice, but she then discusses how we all have a role to play in getting married.  Among the resonsibilities are “striving for sexual purity; being a good steward of your time, talents, and treasure, as well as of your opportunities and your fertility; seeking out and actively participating in Christian community; and waiting to date someone who is spiritually mature (being equally yoked). In short, you’re called to discipleship (2 Peter 3:18).”  But…losing weight isn’t a part of that, when every woman knows deep down inside that thin women are more attractive to men?

Watters then issues her St. Crispin’s Day speech:

Do you think you’re too fat? Too thin? Too tall? Too short? Too shy? Too outgoing? Too ugly? Too pretty? Too blonde? Too old? Too spiritual? Too something? Or maybe you think you’re not enough. Not funny enough. Not thin enough. Not smart enough. Not spiritual enough. Whatever it is that you think you’ve identified about yourself that’s keeping you single, it’s not the whole picture. There may be some areas where you need to mature, and if you’re persisting in sin, then certainly you must repent and turn away. But it’s possible that it’s simply not time yet. This became clear to me when Steve started dating me before I started shrinking. I talked before about finally losing weight. And though I’m glad for that, I’m equally glad that our relationship took off while I still had weight to lose. Turns out there wasn’t anything wrong with me. It’s simply that before Steve, it was the wrong time.

It’s hard for me to make this kind of thinking jive with reality.  If there is no such thing as a soulmate, and you could conceivably have a decent marriage with any number of men, then how is something the “wrong time”?  Is is not possible that Watters could have found someone else to marry had she been thinner younger?  And that they could have had as good a marriage as Watters currently has with her husband?  Is it truly “not time yet” that keeps people from marrying?  This all comes off as pretty ironic, given Boundless’s consistent drum-beating that men have to get off the Xbox and hurry up and march down the aisle with one of the nice, available single Christian women in their congregations.

I mean, I believe in “God’s timing,” but I also think that God’s timing is often used as hamster food.  If no one is attracted to you, then you’re probably doing something wrong.  This goes for both men and women.  I mean, MAYBE in your case it’s God’s supernatural forces preventing anyone from being attracted to you until it’s “the right time,” but given that there are specific attraction factors for each sex, that tend to work regardless of someone’s character (the proof’s in the unmarried pregnant pastor’s daughters), it’s hard to believe that God’s timing is usually REALLY the reason nobody wants to date you.

But you can’t really bring this up to someone who believes in God’s timing, right?  Because if you say, “Well, it’s probably God’s timing that you can’t lose those 20 pounds,” you’re not going to have any more friends, AND you’re going to lose because the rebuttal to that is just, “Well, MY GOD is bigger than 20 pounds.”  And that settles that.  It’s not your fault.  It’s all in God’s hands.

Three must-reads.

If you haven’t read these already, you should!

The Reason Beta Males Pedestalize Women by Heartiste.  If you’ve ever wondered why there are so many guys out there who refuse to take the red pill or just can’t imagine that there are Good Girls who do Bad Things, this post explains it.  It’s the most succinct and clear (not to mention, entertaining) explanation of the origin of white knight dogma that I’ve ever read.  A sample:

So you see, in the final analysis, it is very likely, by dint of the beta male’s ignorance, inexperience and habituated veneration of women and reflexive indulgence of women’s motives, that his view of women is severely constricted, child-like in its naivete. The beta male is not privy to what Tyler Durden famously called the secret society of women. He was never invited, and he was never apprised of the secret society’s goings-on by any woman in his life. He lives in a pinched world with only a peephole to the wonders beyond, given him not by insight but by stumbling into depravity or by the good grace of a sympathetic alpha male. As far as he knows, women don’t have much sex, and they are very nice and polite most of the time.

The beta male pedestalizes women because one, that’s all women have deigned to show him of their sexual inner world, and two, he cannot bear the contrary thought, affirming and cementing as it does his lackluster place on the sexual totem pole.

Women are innately good by Dalrock.  Here Dalrock goes after FOTF’s #1 Mangina Glenn Stanton and Stanton’s book Secure Daughters, Confident Sons: How Parents Guide Their Children into Authentic Masculinity and Femininity.  Anyone who’s been hanging around Haley’s Halo for a while probably knows my opinion of Stanton (read:  I enjoyed Dalrock’s article very much), but Dalrock’s post is just that much more satisfying after reading Roissy’s above post and seeing how Stanton fits that description to a T.  Is it any wonder that Stanton, born and raised to be the best of churchly betas, would find it impossible to believe that even the sweetest, most innocent, most Jesus-loving woman possesses the ability to transform into an unhinged sexual beast given the proper enticement?

Stanton repeatedly pushes the idea that women are genetically programmed to be good, while men are not, and it is the lack of good men (whom no one trained to be good, I guess) that results in women being bad (violating their natural propensities).  Yes, it’s obvious that this makes zero sense.  Dalrock sums it up nicely:

There is a special kind of irony in him lecturing about how good men hold those who do wrong accountable just before he goes on to not hold women accountable for having children out of wedlock, frivolously divorcing, and for choosing cads over dads.

Also stick around to read the comments by deti and van Rooinek.  Good stuff from guys who’ve been in the churchly trenches.

Dating Advice: How to Pick Your Right Girl by Art of Manliness.  Brett McKay found a book from 1944 entitled How to Get Along With Girls.  (The Greatest Generation didn’t have the internet or rappers with advice for handling shorties.)  The first chapter of the book is “How to Pick Your Right Girl” and gives a checklist of traits to consider.  The charm is in the old-fashioned language.  The wisdom is timeless.  Among the things a young man contemplating marriage should consider:

• She is attractive, of course, but is that her chief asset? (Try to imagine her ten years from today.)
• Could you spend seven consecutive evenings in her company without being bored? (If the answer is affirmative, it is a good sign.)
• Is she a flirt? Does she make you jealous? (Decide whether you can stand the strain; your jealousy will persist until you grow indifferent.)
• Does she tell lies? Do you mind?
• Do you agree on children, or a career, or both? (Better settle this beforehand.)
• Does she expect you to support her in a definite style? Could you count on her cooperation in hard times? Would she go to work if necessary?

Read the whole article.  I’m sure we can all think of at least a couple people in our lives who would have benefited from having such a list and taking it seriously.

I’m planning on seeing The Hunger Games tonight.  Last year I wrote a post on the book, so if you’re new here and have an interest in the book/movie, there’s something else you can put on your reading list.  Ha!

I’m sure she thinks he married her for her intelligence and good personality.

 

(My favorite comment:  “Next ask her whats heavier, a pound of feathers or a pound of potatoes.”)

HT: my Facebook feed

Projection: “respecting a man who is ‘verbally open’ with his interest” edition.

In the latest Boundless podcast thread, commenter Elizabeth said the following:

But really, I would very much respect any man who is verbally open about his interests to a girl; especially if he is still seeking what God wants.

Stop right there, missy – we’ve got ourselves a classic case of projection!  For any blog newbies, here’s why it’s projection:  because Elizabeth is unknowingly referring only to men whom she finds attractive to begin with.

Imagine a scenario in which this guy

is “verbally open about his interest” to her and also happens to be verifiably seeking what God wants.

Is Elizabeth really going to “very much respect” this guy for his verbal openness?  Or is she going to mumble an awkward “thanks” and then run to tell her friends about the creeper who hit on her?

Okay, that was kind of a cheap example.  For a slightly more expensive example, let’s consider these peeps:

Of the men in this singles group, how greatly would she respect green shirt or either blue shirt if they came up to her and were very interested in her and were demonstrably “seeking what God wants”?  (Now that I think about it, this photo could spawn its own post of game/SMV analysis.  If I were feeling really ambitious, I could write a whole churchly soap opera off this picture.)

On the other hand, I’m pretty sure a guy like this could just twitch in Elizabeth’s direction and inspire respect:

Actually, he probably already has her respect.  This is why when a girl says she wants X quality in a guy, she really means that she wants X quality in a guy who is already attractive to her.

Furthermore, we know this is true in Elizabeth’s case, because she also wrote in the same post:

I have personally been very hurt by a guy who completely led me on, and if he had simply said something verbally about his intentions it would have (I’m sure) saved me from a LOT of hurt.

The key point here is THE REDUNDANCY, IT BURNSSS US, PRECIOUSSS  that she was denied by someone she was already attracted to.  Because, Let’s Be Real here:  a lot of guys, no matter how much they’re seeking after what God wants, and no matter how “verbally open” they are with her, are even going to have the opportunity to lead her on.  (Not that they would, even if they had the opportunity.)

If you don’t understand projection and can’t recognize it, a lot of dating advice is going to steer you wrong.  Part of the reason I write about the things that I write about here is that so many people are hurt in the dating game not because of being led on, but because there is a general deficit of knowledge and understanding of the dynamics of the SMV,especially in the church.  How many girls would be saved from “being led on” if they understood their true SMV?  And knew that SMV and MMV are not completely synonymous?  Likewise, how many more guys would find dating success (and be able to keep marriages together) if they understood the SMV and female sexual imperatives?  Moreover, how many people would be more emotionally well-off if they understood that being a Christian has NO SMV VALUE in and of itself.  Like other characteristics, being a Christian only has SMV value if other, more primal criteria are satisfied.  But we’re stuck with so much Christian dating advice that encourages people to work on their character and their relationship with God, as if that’s just as good on a fundamental level as going to the gym or learning charm.

By the way, men project, too.  Most men, when talking about characteristics they’d like in a woman, mean “in an attractive woman.”  Kind of like when male celebrities say that they don’t value looks in a woman that much, what they really mean is that they don’t care so much if a woman is an 8.5 or a 9 if she’s got other good qualities.  So when, say, Justin Bieber says that he doesn’t care about looks so much as a girl’s heart (theoretically – I don’t know if he has ever said this), he means the heart of a girl who is an 8+; whether she is an 8 or 9 is immaterial.  Sorry, Belieber 4s.

Marriage for companionship.

Most advice about marriage in the manosphere revolves around sex, who’s having it, who’s not having it, how to get it, how to get more than you’re getting, and how to get better than you’re getting if you’re getting any at all.  This is understandable since the internet is full of men who are only moderately attractive to women at best but still managed to get married.  (To make this equal opportunity:  the internet is also full of women who are only moderately attractive to men at best and care very much for their cats.)

In comparison, there is a mere pittance of discussion of marriage as a form of companionship.  From reading the manosphere, you’d think that marriage basically boils down to the five minute seal flop.  Which is not to say that sex isn’t an important part of marriage, but most people, even the married, are doing something else during the other 23 hours, 55 minutes of the day.

When you think about it, the older you get, the more necessary it is to be married to have any sort of guaranteed companionship.  Here’s why:

Once people get married, they tend to drop off the face of the planet since 92% of their energy is now being directed into their spouse.  (Make that 99.999% if kids are in the picture.)  So there go all of your married friends.  Then, all of your single friends tend to be desperate, and so if one of your friends is so fortunate as to find someone to date, the special someone eats up the lion’s share of your unmarried friend’s time.  That leaves you with the least sexually attractive friends left in your group, but even those people may have other obligations eating up their time.  Sometimes it’s work, sometimes it’s church or other organizations, sometimes it’s being the free babysitter for all of your married friends’ kids, but I’ve found that often in the case of women, their families eat up their time.  If a girl lives in the same town as her parents, she may spend a lot of time with them.  If a girl lives WITH her parents, you’ll see her once a month, tops.

Additionally, you can’t be friends with a member of the opposite sex.  You can’t be friends with a married person of the opposite sex, because that person’s spouse will become jealous.  You can’t be friends with a single member of the opposite sex, either.  It’ll either get weird because one person has more feelings than the other person, or it’ll die because the one person found someone to date.  Or it’ll get weird because you and the special someone hate each other.  Being friends with members of the same sex leads nowhere.  (Who doesn’t feel pity towards single-sex groups of late 30-somethings/40-somethings when you see them out on a Saturday night dolled up in their best Kohl’s?)

So, ultimately, the only possible recourse for continuous companionship is marriage.

Of course, the wrinkle of marriage is that in order to get the companionship, you have to find someone you could conceivably give the five minute seal flop to with abandon every day for the rest of your life….

Do married people know any single people?

Do married people know any single people?  Why does it seem like once people get married, they’re sucked into a “young marrieds” vortex, never to be seen again by those eternally cruising eHarmony?

I feel like the process goes something like this:

• Two young people from the singles group start dating.
• Group expresses approval.  Single women force down their bitterness jealousy if the man is attractive.
• Engagement!  Everyone cheers.
• Wedding with many references to God’s blessings.
• Newlyweds disappear into the Young Marrieds Vortex, where the ratio of singles to marrieds in all further social activities is 1:20 at most.
• Couple buys a minivan and will have a child seat in the car for the next 10 years.

I’ve taken flack here for not having a social circle where people seem to know any single men who would be potential marriage material for me (or for them).  But do young marrieds (or older marrieds, for that matter) really know that many eligible bachelors or bachelorettes?  It seems like young marrieds are just relieved that they actually found someone worth marrying, and now that their task has been completed, everyone else is off their radar.  And older marrieds, particularly in the church, have social lives that almost exclusively revolve around socializing with other married couples.  If someone is single, it’s because that person was widowed.

Readership, if you have young married friends, do they have a social circle that includes singles that they could set you up with, or do you find that they’ve been sucked into the Young Marrieds Vortex?

Have Game and stay out of a stalker journal.

In the dating thread on one of the message boards I read, a board member posted that for some reason, the majority of men she goes on dates with turn out to be hardcore conservatives.  While she, presumably a liberal, claims not to mind this, the most recent man she’s dated is anti-Obama, anti-government, and owns a lot of guns.  He also subjects her to his views but won’t listen to hers.**  After he called for a fourth date, OP declined, citing their views as being too different.

Sir Libertarian didn’t read this as a rejection and instead began calling and leaving Facebook messages stating his belief that they are perfect for each other and that she’ll come around.

OP says that she has been ignoring him but is now afraid that he will start coming to her house, even though he has never been to her house before.  (He happens to know one of her neighbors.)  OP has sent one message to Sir Lib to stop messaging her, but he hasn’t stopped.  OP then asks the board for advice on how to protect herself.

So far there has only been one response***, which was to start keeping a Stalker Journal immediately.  Responder advised OP to (a) keep every single message exchanged between them, (b) to threaten him with going to the authorities if he doesn’t stop, and (c) to go to the authorities if threats don’t work.

It should be obvious to all the regulars around these parts that Sir Lib’s true problem wasn’t that he had conservative beliefs, but that he just wasn’t a sexy alpha.  He had enough rudimentary game to make it to a third date with OP, but not enough game to make his holding of conservative beliefs attractive to OP, or to enact radio silence when OP rejected him.  In bombarding OP with what I presume to be teasing admonitions that she’ll come around, Sir Lib came off as needy, and therefore beta, and therefore scary.  (Men should not be afraid of women complaining that a man didn’t want to be friends/stopped all contact after a breakup.  A woman can curse your existence up and down for such jerkiness, but the more she curses you, the more she is secretly attracted to your alpha non-neediness.  If you ever had a chance with a woman, sometimes falling off the face of the planet is the best way to get her back.)

But all of this is elementary stuff.  I think the more troublesome issue in the above scenario is that OP fears Sir Lib and that she is being advised to keep a Stalker Journal.  This is not to say that stalking is not a real phenomenon or that there are never situations where such action is warranted, but as far as I can tell, Sir Lib hasn’t made threats to OP or written weird or disturbing things to her.  By her own admission, he has never shown up at her house.  Furthermore, OP says that their last date was last week, so it’s not like this has been going on for that long.  But Sir Lib’s beta behavior (and ten bucks says he thinks he’s full of alpha swagger) is enough to inspire fear.

There are some here who consistently pooh-pooh Game and think it’s a big joke, but the above scenario, which I don’t think is an uncommon occurrence, negates that.  Sir Lib, if he doesn’t get it together, could find himself under investigation by the police, and all because he didn’t have Game; well, maybe not Game moves so much as inner Game.  But inner Game is a huge part of having Game at all.  We like to gnash our teeth over alphas getting all the breaks, but I think the above scenario shows how having Game can save your life and reputation.

By the way, in defense of OP – Sir Lib seems to be someone she didn’t know well prior to going out with him.  Since his character was unvetted, it’s natural for her to jump to the worst conclusion in the name of self-preservation.  When it comes to strange men, women are taught to err on the side of caution.  (Not that women err that way too much when the guy is a sexy alpha, BUT.)

**He probably just didn’t listen the right way, not that he didn’t listen at all.

***Since I began writing this post, there have been two more responses, both agreeing wholeheartedly about the Stalker Journal.

Princess fantasies from both sides.

First:  a moment of mourning for the Pats since my dad was from Massachusetts.

Second:  It struck me over the weekend that Christian media is often accusing mainstream media of peddling an unrealistic romantic fantasy for women that causes women to become dissatisfied with the men available to them in real life and to not look for godly standards.  But doesn’t Christian media peddle the exact same unrealistic romantic fantasies (while looking for overly godly standards)?

I mean, you’ve got Christian media on the one hand warning that (essentially) Titanic is bad for you, Reese Witherspoon romcoms are bad for you, romance novels are bad for you, etc.  Unrealistic expectations of beauty, don’t you know that life isn’t a never-ending date?, and (DUN DUN DUN) these people have sex outside of marriage!  Okay, fair enough.

But then that same Christian media turns around and foists Rebecca St. James’s “purity advice,” True Love Waits, Joshua Harris and kissing dating goodbye, and Stasi Eldredge’s Captivating (which includes chapters titled stuff like “Romanced,” “Beauty to Unveil,” “Arousing Adam,” and “Warrior Princesses”) on readers, and we’re supposed to believe that Christian media is peddling wisdom because it’s, like, Christian and stuff.  How is the “Daughter of the King!” industry not setting up women for the exact same problem of an unrealistic romantic fantasy?  You’ve got Rebecca St. James, whose entire adult life has been spent in the entertainment industry where the vast majority of males (and therefore the guys in her social circle) are well above average in looks and have success in a way that the average man will never attain, advising young Christian women on how to find her male peers lacking in romantic worthiness staying pure until they marry The One.  You’ve got True Love Waits telling horny teenagers not to have sex until they’re married, which in this culture may not be for another 15 to 20 years, and expecting that signing a card is going to be a meaningful deterrence in the heat of the moment.  Joshua Harris scared a generation away from dating because some guys in dating didn’t have lofty enough goals.  And then you have people like Stasi Eldredge writing dreamy prose about how God can romantically and emotionally satisfy women.  Here is a quote from Eldredge’s book Captivating:

We long for romance.  We are wired for it; it’s what makes our hearts come alive.  You know that.  Somewhere, deep down inside, you know this.  But what you might never have known is this…

This doesn’t need to wait for a man.

God longs to bring this into your life himself.  … He wants to heal us through his love to become mature women who actually know him.  He wants us to experience verses like, “Therefore I am now going to allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak tenderly to her” (Hos. 2:14).  And “You have stolen my heart, my sister, my bride” (Song 4:9).  Our hearts are desperate for this.  What would it be like to experience for yourself that the truest thing about his heart toward yours is not disappointment or disapproval but deep, fiery, passionate love?  This is, after all, what a woman was made for.

HOW CAN A NORMAL, FLESH-AND-BLOOD MAN COMPETE WITH GOD FOR A WOMAN’S SWOONS?

[Insert obligatory Fireproof mention here.]

And yet it’s the mainstream media that’s to blame for setting up unrealistic expectations, tsk tsk.

It seems to me that Christian media sets just as high a bar a fantasy for Christian women as the mainstream media does, if not higher just due to the fact that a staunch Christian woman is far more likely to hold out for “God’s best.”  I feel like we are constantly assured that God is going to give us his Best if we just have faith and wait for it.  This especially includes marriage.  Don’t settle for less than God’s Best.  Do you want to have a good, God-honoring marriage?  Then hold out for His Best.  You’re 25?  You have time.  You’re 30?  Keep praying for God’s Best.  35?  Keep trusting God to bring you his Best.  40?  God’s Best doesn’t have a timetable.  45?  Nothing is impossible for God, who is writing your love story.  God will bring his Best to you in his perfect timing.  50?  Sometimes God’s Best doesn’t include a husband, but that doesn’t mean it’s not God’s Best for you.

The main difference I can see between Christian and mainstream romantic fantasies is that the former causes people not to get married at all, and the latter causes break-ups after the wedding.  In Christian terms, it’s better to be forever alone than to get married and then divorce because you’re not happy.  But for every woman who can’t find someone to meet her expectations, another guy has to remain single, so…..

Boundless blogger considers first anniversary a “miracle.”

Does the Boundless blogger consider his first anniversary a “miracle” because he or his spouse nearly died last year and only miraculously survived?  No.  Did one of them commit adultery and then repent, restoring the marriage?  No.

No, our Boundless blogger considers his first anniversary a “miracle” because, basically, his wife didn’t divorce him for being imperfect.

Very early in this blog’s existence, I wrote a post in which I said:

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.

Lo and behold, Boundless has provided us with a real-life example of this type of talk!  Blogger Nathan Zacharias commemorated his first anniversary with a post disparaging himself and extolling the beneficence of his wife for not divorcing him already.  Says he:

Sarah and I just celebrated our first wedding anniversary. She’s stuck with me 367 days, and that’s a miracle. No, seriously, it is.

….

No longer can I focus on just caring for my needs. No longer can I get by with looking at a situation by how I see it. [AH:  Syntax doctor says what?] Instead, I look at it through her eyes, too. That means I see myself from her perspective. And I have to say, the view isn’t always pretty.

I long to serve Sarah in any way, but that doesn’t mean that my selfishness doesn’t rear its ugly head often. There are plenty of times when I have to tell Sarah I’m sorry for something I did or didn’t do.

The ring on my finger and the vow in my heart sheds light on my negative traits often. And so when I tell people I don’t deserve Sarah, I’m not joking.

….

Why Sarah chose me, I’ll never know. And as a I told someone close to me the other day, I deserve Sarah even less now than I did a year ago. But she loves me anyway.

….

I don’t like seeing my finger without the ring. My finger looks bare without it. And that’s what I’d be without Sarah. [AH:  He would be bare without his wife? “Bare” as in exposed, or “bare” as in I-meant-to-say-lost-or-lonely?]

There’s more, but you get the picture.

Okay, I am not married, so maybe I’m just being a Neanderthal on this topic, but is it not possible to express gratefulness for a spouse without TOTALLY PROSTRATING ONESELF AT HER FEET?

More importantly, does Nathan Zacharias believe that his wife would write a similar article expressing the following?

• how unworthy she is of her husband
• that she has no idea why he married her
• that their one-year anniversary is a miracle
• that she deserves him even less than she did at the time of their wedding
• how ugly she sees herself when she looks at herself from his point of view
• that she often has to apologize to him for things she did or didn’t do

I mean, maybe she would.  Maybe she does see herself as so unworthy of her husband that she would make a public proclamation of it.  Maybe she considers her husband a prince without equal.  Or…maybe she agrees with him.  (As a point of comparison, I don’t recall Suzanne Gosselin, Boundless’s most recently married female blogger, ever writing a comparable post at her one-year anniversary.  I also don’t ever recall Candice Watters opining similarly about her marriage with Steve back when they wrote for Boundless.  Chelsey Munneke, Boundless’s recently engaged blogger who believes weight loss for a wedding is an unnecessary stress, has never spoken of her fiance this way, either.  Rather, she believes her man should love her for her, daughter of the King that she is.  Google-fu experts, feel free to prove my memory wrong.)

I know that it’s popular in evangelical circles to speak of everything in terms of being “sacrificial.”  Sacrificial love, sacrificial serving, no one deserves anything, we’re all sanctified losers, boo hoo hoo, etc.  But this just isn’t a healthy attitude to have in a functional, earth-bound relationship.  Of course no one “deserves” anything; that’s a given.  Humility and tolerance are important in a marriage for sure.  But acting like those traits in a spouse are miraculous is a problem.  Not all that long ago, those were expected in a marriage.  That these are no longer givens but miracles just speaks to how weak marriage has become in America and in the American church.

Furthermore, even if Zacharias used “miracle” for hyperbolic effect, it is still problematic because it accepts modern divorce culture as legitimate.  If he is joking that he is grateful that his wife didn’t frivolously divorce him, then he accepts that this is a realistic possibility for him.  His wording at least suggests this:  he doesn’t mention anything about her honoring her vows despite having to live with his imperfections.  Instead, he chalks up the endurance of their marriage to her love for him.  Well, Nathan, what is going to happen when your wife doesn’t feel “love” anymore?  And are you expecting to be even less worthy of her after two years of marriage, or does the unworthiness sort of level off after a while?  What happens when your wife realizes that she’s been loving someone so unworthy of her affection?  Time to start apologizing for more things you didn’t do, I guess.

Do Christians really want to see stronger families?  Do Christians really want to see positive changes in society?  Less poverty, less abortion, less welfare, fewer single moms, fewer divorces?  Then they really need to begin with marriage, and not just badgering unmarried 28-year-olds about joining eHarmz or making all the husbands do “The Love Dare” or giving purity rings to 15-year-olds who will not realistically marry for twenty more years.

Jack Dawson game.

In the comments on Dalrock’s post “The one that got away,” which discusses a woman’s penchant for holding on to memories of a previous lover even if married to a man who gives her everything she could ever want, anon66 criticizes the movie Titanic, saying:

This is why I dislike the movie Titanic. At the end of the movie Winslet’s character ends up back on the ship with DiCaprio to which I ask “What about her husband?” Was a very short fling on the doomed ship more important to her than a lifetime of marriage and children.

Commenter vitabenedicta replies:

What’s interesting is that the fiance is an alpha–socially powerful, violent, largely indifferent to her–while her paramour is more of a beta–a sexually timid white knight who dies saving her life. After he dies she marries another man, who also appears to be a beta, but he can’t ever inspire the passion that the first beta did. So the movie isn’t so much about getting “five minutes of alpha” as it is an instruction manual on how betas can succeed with beautiful women. (Basically, target young women who have never been in love before; be different than the men in her usual surroundings; and be an artist. It’s a bit of a tall order.)

I started to write a reply but then realized that it was getting long and detailed enough to merit its own post here.  Since the movie will be re-released in April of this year (with a 3-D conversion, of course) to commemorate the centennial anniversary of the ship’s sinking, let’s take a look at the real alpha/beta dynamics in the film.

For those who are unaware (either having never seen the film, or have forgotten the details, or were too young to see the film when it was released [oblig. THAT MAKES ME FEEL SO OLD UGHHH]), here’s the plot:  Rose DeWitt Bukater is an upper-class 17-year-old Philadelphian engaged to wealthy heir Cal Hockley.  They are traveling with Rose’s mother from Southampton, England, to New York City on the Titanic.  Rose feels trapped because she does not love Cal, and he sees her as a prize possession rather than a person.  On the first evening of the voyage, Rose meets Jack Dawson, a penniless American sketch artist who won his steerage ticket in a game of poker.  He seems interested in her as a person, and she sees an opportunity at a new life.  They fall in love, the iceberg hits the ship, the ship sinks, and Rose survives empowered to live life to the fullest.

This story is framed in a flashback, with Old Rose telling the story to a treasure hunter looking for the diamond necklace that Rose received as a gift from Cal.  At the end of the movie, having now spilled the secret she held so long, Old Rose drifts off into sleep (or death?) and finds herself young and back on the Titanic, where Jack is waiting for her.

It’s still hard for me to believe that the guy who wrote and directed Terminator and Aliens is the same guy who wrote and directed this grade-A chick crack (and the plot description reads like the romance novel that female romance writers all wish they could have written), but there you go.

Going back to the above comments from Dalrock’s, I disagree with vitabenedicta that Cal was alpha and Jack was beta.  In actuality, the reverse is true.  Titanic is actually a testament to inner game and is a celluloid representation of Roissy’s insistence that money and social status alone are not enough to win a woman’s affections.

Jack is more beta on the surface, but he has strong inner game.  It is actually this strong inner game that provides the basis for the emotional through-line of the movie.  When Jack and Rose first meet, Rose is about to commit suicide by jumping off the back of the ship at night.  Jack is able to talk Rose out of suicide using some light negs, nonchalantly reminding her of how cold the water is and how he’s gonna hafta jump in to save her, subtly shifting the power in his favor by insinuating that she’s being silly and emotional.  What he does NOT do is act like what she’s about to do is SRS BSNS.  A lesser man would have acted frightened that Rose would jump.

Jack is also unapologetic about his station in life and sees it as a good thing.  He does not try to seek Rose’s approval (or even make any pledge or attempt to better himself for her).

He is unruffled by Cal’s continued attempts to belittle him and charms all of Rose’s upper-crusty dinner companions. He tells her what to do (“meet me at the clock”) rather than requesting behavior of her. He never panics when the ship begins to sink but remains level-headed and provides guidance to Rose the entire time.  And (SPOILER ALERT) in the end he does what every woman wishes the man she loves would be willing to do for her:  sacrifice his life in order to save hers.

In contrast, Cal, while having an alpha social position, has little inner game and thinks that bullying is a substitute for alpha frame.  He is domineering rather than dominant.  He acts defensively and lets little things bother him, and he spends most of the movie in a petulant mood, being rude to Jack because he can sense Rose’s attraction to him, and paying his #1 minion to spy on Jack and frame him for theft. When he loses his temper with Rose, it’s not one of Roissy’s occasional outbursts to correct bad behavior, it’s a man trying to intimidate because he can sense that he’s losing the woman and intimidation is the only tool he has left in his arsenal.  And once it’s really and finally clear that Rose has chosen Jack for good, Cal completely loses it and picks up a pistol and chases them around the sinking ship shooting at them.  These are not the actions of a man with inner game, who is in control of himself and the situation around him.

(Of course, in case we weren’t able to figure out already that Cal isn’t The One, James Cameron reveals Cal as the ultimate coward, first trying to bribe his way onto one of the lifeboats, and when that doesn’t work, actually picking up a random child and pretending the child is his so he can get onto a lifeboat.  And just to make really, REALLY sure we know that Cal is a loser, we find out that Cal ultimately committed suicide when the stock market crashed in 1929.  Stuff like this is why James Cameron, despite being one of the greatest action directors of all time, and one of the few blockbuster directors who actually writes his own films, will never be considered by tastemakers on par with guys like Christopher Nolan or Peter Jackson.)

In light of the differences between Jack and Cal, and the fundamental truths of Game and female attraction so simply presented, it’s not surprising to see why Titanic became such an international phenomenon.  It worked because the truth of human experience is not bound by culture or nationality. Not that the nice, shiny package of a lavish period drama of class warfare that was also an action movie that was also a disaster pic that was also a “first love” love story that was also Leonardo DiCaprio at his most beautiful and charming didn’t help.  But if more writers were able to access the truths of human existence, I think the box office would be doing a whole lot better.

As for the claim that Rose was some sort of awful woman for meeting Jack in Titanic heaven and not her husband, I think there are a couple of different ways to look at this.  One is that yes, it’s kind of horrible that Rose still carried Jack in her heart, a man she knew for only a few days, rather than the man who was her husband and gave her her children.  But Jack was a first love, and first loves have a way of sticking that later loves can never quite displace.  Isn’t that why manospherians are so much about keeping numbers low?  (And really, how can any man compare with a man who literally talked you off a ledge and saved you from freezing to death in the middle of the North Atlantic ocean while the luxury ship you were sailing on was sinking AND sacrificed himself in the process?  Okay, and also that you had your first orgasm with him in the back of a car.)

The other way to look at this is that having Rose meet Jack in Titanic heaven is really the only way the story could have ended satisfactorily.  The story was about Rose’s emotional emancipation.  Jack was the agent of change.  He was her savior (and Rose even says at the end of the movie that he “saved [her] in every way a person can be saved”).  Having her reunite in death/dream with her late husband (whom we hadn’t even seen), right after she has finally relieved herself of the secret she has been carrying with her since she was a teenager, would have been bizarre.  I can’t imagine anyone would have walked out of the theater rejoicing that Rose showed what a loving and faithful wife she was if THAT had been the ending.

It’ll be interesting to see how the film affects a new generation of movie-goers.  In the age of Twilight, Facebook, and reality TV, will Jack and Rose be able to enchant today’s teens, or will the bulk of moviegoers only be nostalgia-trippers?