Even old widowers need game.

I was talking on the phone with my mom this afternoon, and she told me that there is an older widower at church who is trying to find an older widow to date.  He’s attempting the classic (and futile) church guy game plan of approaching each widow, one by one, until he can find someone who will accept.  All the widows know about this, so that’s a big pre-UNselection minus.  Worse, he has a poor reputation and since he has been in the church for a long time, everyone knows what his problems are.  So that’s even exponentially worse pre-UNselection.

I suggested that this guy find another church, but then again, the evangelical church community in my hometown isn’t so big that word about him still wouldn’t get around.  My mom, knowing that this guy spends part of the year in Florida, suggested that he might have better luck there because nobody would know him.  Ouch.

The other bad thing about old widower game is that the older widower must also compete against the memories of all of the widows’ late husbands – men who married their wives when the wives were very young, were often the women’s first major loves, and who were the fathers of the women’s children.  That can be a really tough act to follow.  Plus, if the first husband did things right financially, the widow will have no economic incentive to remarry, either.

Bottom line:  Game is for all seasons.

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

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?

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.

Don’t let your wife befriend a firefighter!

Over the holidays, I found out that one of my brother’s longtime friends is getting divorced from his wife (but not until after they file their taxes).  I’m pretty sure everyone could see this coming, since there have been rumblings for a long time that both have been miserable, and basically the wife showed up at my brother’s wedding with her boobs out to there.  The best man also told me that she cheats on her husband all the time and goes out partying a lot.  I don’t know how he would know that, but that’s the hearsay.

Anyhow, this is one of those situations where there was a third party involved.  The wife works across the street from a fire department, and the girls from the office would go over and flirt with the firefighters at lunchtime.  The wife got friendly with a firefighter, and while I don’t know if there was any physical cheating going on, there was definitely a texting relationship, and when the husband told her to ditch the firefighter friend, the wife said no.

This is the second marriage in my brother’s friend circle that has fallen prey to firefighter mojo.  Several years ago one of my brother’s other good friends married his high school sweetheart who also happened to be one of the prettiest girls at school.  Said friend porked out after getting married while the wife, who was a teacher, met the dad of one of her students.  Said dad was a firefighter.  The wife started working out.  Guess what happened.

Also while we’re on the topic of divorce (I know, not a very up way to start the year, but it was on my mind), I have an update on Morf and Bee.  My mom told me that Bee has a new boyfriend already, and that Morf proved his beta-ness once again by HAVING DINNER WITH THEM.  If I were Morf, I would have accidentally set fire to Bee’s residence or unintentionally worn some brass knuckles when I greeted Bee’s face with my fist.  The divorce has hit Morf so badly that he has moved to the West Coast to work for his company out here.

Some food for thought about all of the above scenarios:

• Divorce-after-taxes couple got married quite young, and I had had the impression that the husband was just desperate to get married at the time and took the first woman who would have him.  This, I think, is part of why mainstream conventional wisdom recommends that people don’t get married until their mid-20s.  But that’s really just a proxy for having the maturity to be proactive and purposeful about finding a mate who is really marriage material.  Age itself isn’t a guarantee of anything.
• High school sweetheart couple were an instance where they began dating freshman year of high school and didn’t marry until they graduated college.  They had never dated anyone else, and while the husband might have looked like an apex alpha at a small high school, when he got out in the real world, it turns out he wasn’t.  Meanwhile, the wife figured out that she was still cute enough and young enough to get more alpha than she had at home.  Not that I hear that the firefighter has married her yet.
• Bee hadn’t even graduated from college yet when she married Morf, and I remember remarking at the time that I thought she was too young.  Bee also is an only child of divorced parents and used to getting her own way all the time.  Oh, and Bee and Morf recited their own vows at their wedding, which included a recounting of how Bee “just knew” when she first set eyes on Morf.  DON’T WRITE YOUR OWN VOWS.  They will never be better than traditional vows.

I hope everyone had a terrific Christmas and New Year’s Day.  It’s good to be back.

Random thoughts and links.

Some bloggers are very prolific, but I find that my inspiration comes in fits and starts.  Sometimes I can crank out a blog post quickly, but other times I’ll spend hours tinkering with a post, trying to figure out how to say what I want to say.  Sometimes I start a post and then don’t finish it for weeks or even months.  It just depends.

Since I don’t have anything fully-formed at the moment, here’s a smattering of stuff that’s floating around in my mind lately.

• Mrs. Cubbie Fink wrote a book.  It’s called What Is He Thinking? and contains the results of Mrs. Fink’s interviews with “men she respects who hope to get married some day.”  According to the description, “The men share their thoughts on topics like how women can respect themselves and the men in their lives, modesty, purity, taking it slow, friendship, letting guys lead, and more. This book gives them the floor to say what they would really like women to know.”  Or, you know, you could just read some men’s blogs FOR FREE and find more honest, more real, and more true information.  Somehow I find it hard to believe that men would be truly frank with someone who looked like Mrs. Fink, but that’s just cynical ol’ me.  P.S. If anyone wants to hook me up with a copy of the book to review, let me know.
• There’s been noise in the media lately about how 80% of self-identified evangelical singles aren’t virgins.  Well, duh.  Most people can wait until age 22 for sex.  Asking the same people to wait until they’re 30 or 35 or older to have sex is just preposterous.  I generally think that after the age of 25, a lot of Christians say “F THIS” and do what their hormones tell them to do.  If Christians really are serious about preventing premarital sex and the social ills that result from fornication (single moms, bastard kids, poverty, demand for government entitlements, STDs, abortions), then they need to change their attitudes about (a) instructing their kids on marriage and its obligations, (b) when it is appropriate to get married, and (c) getting involved in finding good mates for their children.  I know it’s unpopular to try to shape your child’s romantic destiny (yet okay be a helicopter parent dragging your kid over the finish line to get the minimum SAT score necessary to get into a decent college), but wishful thinking is clearly not keeping the kids out of each other’s pants.
• I came across a shop on Etsy that sells sexy bikinis for plus-size women.
• Women admit they were more attractive at 19.  They are actually shocked at how good they looked when they were younger.
• I started following the whole Tim Tebow thing after I saw someone on TV trashing him as a QB a few weeks ago.  Is the publicity good or bad for Christians?  Weigh in.
• I guess a special on virgins wasn’t enough for TLC, so now they’re doing a special on Sunday, Dec. 18th called Geek Love.  In the Venn diagram of life, those two circles intersect quite a bit.  Here’s a promo clip:
  
•  Lady Gaga is a good example of a woman who is extremely sexual but not at all sexy.
• An older article at The Art of Manliness that I read recently:  5 Easy Ways for the College Student to Upgrade His Style.  Antonio strongly favors a classic, somewhat preppy look, but his general points are good ones for men of any age.
• Buy clothes that fit.  Don’t buy anything that doesn’t “sing” when you put it on.  Buying something because “it’s a great deal” is the worst reason to buy something.  Better to buy something more expensive that is great on you, because you’ll wear it more and pay for itself that way.
• Saw this review of an item at Old Navy, written by a mom who claims she is a size 18:  “I don’t always have the time to pull together a nice outfit outside of sweats and a t-shirt. This shirt makes it easy to pull a nice outfit together quickly whether it’s with cargos, jeans or a skirt.”  A nice outfit outside of sweats and a t-shirt?

Until next time,

a.h.

Don’t marry a pro-choice woman.

Let me preface what I’m about to say with the acknowledgment that many good women are nominally pro-choice, which is to say that their bleeding hearts won’t permit them to legally “force” any woman into a pregnancy she doesn’t want but they are in general horrified by the idea of a woman having a baby cut up and scraped out of her uterus.  Such women typically believe strongly in contraception and “responsible sex” and do not believe in abortion as back-up birth control.  These aren’t the women I’m referring to.

Rather, the type of woman I’m referring to is the type who is ideologically committed to the complete autonomy of a woman’s body to the point where an unborn baby may be considered a parasite and that even a husband has no say and deserves no say in his wife’s choice to abort their child.

I don’t think there are that many type 2 pro-choice women in the United States, but they’re certainly the most vocal when it comes to sex reproductive issues “women’s health.”  A good example of such a voice is the group of writers on Grey’s Anatomy, which on Thursday had a married female character (Cristina) abort her unborn child because being a mother would just get in the way of being a surgeon, which was her top priority, plus she had never wanted children and believed she would not love her child and would be a dreadful mother.  That in itself was bad enough, but what made it even worse was that this character’s husband (Owen) wanted her to have the baby and wanted to be a father.  Despite his wishes, Cristina was determined to abort their child and (in a bid to get viewers on her side) gave her best friend Meredith a speech about how she really wished she could want a child and how she wished her husband could be supportive of her and understand her, instead of leaving her sad and scared that she was going to have to abort alone.  Sadness and fear, obviously, mitigate all moral consequence.  As a result, Meredith went to Owen and talked about how she (Meredith) had been raised by a mother who loved surgery more than her daughter and how awful that was, and that if Cristina did the same thing, it would “kill” her.  Strangely enough, Meredith did not also add that it would have been preferable that she had never been born, or that her late mother regretted having a daughter who cared for her in her struggle with Alzheimer’s disease.  Owen – an Iraq War vet, by the way – was then convinced that it was right for him to accompany his wife to the murder of their unborn child, and he dutifully burned his man card on the altar of feminism.  I guess viewers were supposed to take this as an example of true love, or at least that the woman is always right.  My opinion was that the writers had just made Cristina one of the most morally repugnant women to appear on the small screen and that if I had been in Owen’s shoes, I would have shown up at the abortionist’s with divorce papers.

It was interesting to read the opinions on Owen and Cristina’s actions because they illuminated the divisions within the pro-choice crowd.  At least in the comments at ew.com, about two thirds of the commenters thought Cristina behaved disgustingly.  Sure, the commenters supported a woman’s right to choose, but people who get abortions aren’t supposed to be financially secure, educated, intelligent, married women.  (And how can a SURGEON not know how to practice birth control, or at least get a tubal ligation?)  Furthermore, there was no indication of problems with the pregnancy.  Healthy unborn babies products of conception aren’t supposed to aborted, only the damaged ones.  The other third celebrated Cristina’s decision to exercise her full rights over her body and “remain true to herself,” because it would have been a compromise to her self-identity had she chosen to go through with the pregnancy.  If Cristina had had a baby, the parasites would have won.

Obviously, most people will never go through a real life version of this fictional drama, but the ideological stakes are real.  Among Christians I would presume that most will be pro-life, with varying stances only on issues like rape or health of the mother.  Regardless, for Christians or non-Christians, this is an issue I would definitely check out before the relationship becomes serious enough for marriage.  While you may not go through a scenario just like Cristina and Owen’s, you may face a scenario in which you conceive a child with Down’s syndrome, or a chromosomal disorder that makes it unlikely that your child will survive for very long outside the womb, or some other physical flaw.  You may face a scenario where the pregnancy may endanger the health of the mother.  Knowing what you both believe, and that you are in agreement on those beliefs, could save your marriage someday.

P.S.  Men, if you begin dating a woman who would deny any rights of your paternity to your unborn child, RUN!!!

Whose last name?

Off the top of my head, I can’t think of any conservative Christian marriages of my acquaintance where the wife didn’t take the husband’s last name.  Even among the nominal or seculars, I know very few couples who don’t share the husband’s last name.  (Although my own family is an exception.  One of my cousins married a woman who hyphenated her surname, which caused my grandmother great distress and many subtextual remarks…until one of my other cousins married a secular Hindu who didn’t change her name at all and they had the audacity to send out a Christmas card signed with both of their full names.  That caused a bit of a behind-their-backs stir.)

Perhaps surprisingly, given my upbringing and general conservatism, I’m pretty agnostic on marital naming conventions.  The wife’s taking her husband’s name is a Western cultural tradition, but it’s only that:  a tradition.  It’s not mandated by the Bible, and I can’t recall ever hearing any sermons even addressing the issue.  Sharing the husband’s last name doesn’t make a couple more or less married, nor does it make their marriage better or worse off, just like wearing a wedding band in and of itself doesn’t make someone married or make a marriage better or worse.

I do think that it’s best that married couples with kids all share the last name.  It’s just easier to identify the family as a unit, it cuts down on confusion with teachers and other parents, and it gives kids a tangible “belonging” as a family member.  As for hyphenation, it’s just cumbersome.  Think of poor little Johnny taking his SATs and only being able to bubble in “Nakopokoulous-Sm” because his hyphenated name is just too frickin’ long.  Not everyone can have a hyphenated surname as snappy as the Jolie-Pitts.

Of course, it’s easiest just to follow convention.  (That’s why it’s convention.)  If you decide not to follow convention, you should also be willing to accept that other people won’t agree with your decision and may even get confrontational/judgmental about it.  Then again, I would expect people to be understanding if your fiance’s last name is, say, Fahrts or something along that line.

Taking the house.

I was thinking about the thread that will never die, which made me think about the following exchange from Ocean’s Eleven.  Danny Ocean has just been released from prison, and instead of commencing a morally upright new beginning, he tracks down his old partner Rusty to help him mastermind a robbery of  three prominent Las Vegas casinos.  Rusty, however, thinks this is a huge mistake.  Danny is determined, though, and turns on his powers of persuasion.

RUSTY:  I need a reason.  And don’t say money.  Why do this?

DANNY:  Why not do it?  Because yesterday I walked out of the joint wearing my entire wardrobe and you’re colddecking Teen Beat cover boys.  Because the house always wins.  You play long enough, never changing stakes, the house takes you.  Unless, when that special hand comes around, you bet big.  And then you take the house.

It occurred to me that this is the mating strategy that Rebecca St. James followed.  As is well-known, she was very vocal about her virginity and her intention not to have sex until she was married.  She became the poster child of True Love Waits, cut a purity crusade anthem called “Wait for Me,” wrote the foreword to IKDG, and in general became an evangelical darling.  Which was great and all, but no one could have predicted that Rebecca would go on to spend something like 16 or 17 years publicly waiting.  Even among Christians, I think, there’s a point at which admiration turns to UM, WHAT’S YOUR PROBLEM?, especially for someone who has beauty, wealth, and access to presumably high-quality men.

But instead of cashing in her chips and getting out of the game with a respectable profit, Rebecca bet big on 7-Card Spinster and took the house.  She waited, and waited, and waited…and ended up with a Beefcake Missionary who now has the good fortune of being in a band with a mainstream hit single, and who is both good-looking and gentlemanly enough to have old college acquaintances looking him up and vouching for his gentlemanly beefcakiness.  Were there really NO other godly men Rebecca could have loved and who were willing to marry her in the last 17 years?

I expect that as a result of waiting and winning, Rebecca will continue to be a role model and inspiration to many single Christian women around the world, as she is now living proof that waiting and trusting in God brings big rewards…eventually.  My question is this, though:  is this a strategy that single Christian women at large should follow?  I ask this because I feel that it IS the strategy that single Christian women are being encouraged to follow:  don’t settle, don’t compromise, trust in God’s perfect timing, and He will answer the cries of your heart with more love than you can possibly imagine.  You are His dear, precious daughter whom He loves passionately!  Which is true, and yet…

…most churches have plenty of single women in attendance and few, if any, Jacob Finks in attendance.

So where does this leave most single church girls?  Holding all of their chips, waiting for that special hand to come around, hoping that they’ll be the one to beat the odds?  Or beating themselves up in the belief that if only they were more spiritual and “together,” God would finally send them the man of their dreams?

It’s just hard to see any other strategy catching any kind of fire, for a couple of reasons.  One, American culture is all about going for the brass ring, shooting for the moon, believing that you’re the exception that can defy the odds.  Two, this mindset colors everything we do, including dating and marriage.  Churches these days are all about God wanting The Best For Us.  God’s Best.  God’s Blessings.  Showering, Raining Down, Covering You, Wrapping You In His Arms, etc.  It’s not that most churches are preaching prosperity gospel (at least, I don’t think they are), but it’s not an uninfluential mindset.  Third, most young women are taught that they “deserve” a “great guy.”  It’s all over the place in the media.  Single female characters on TV and film who are looking for love are consistently told by friends that they “deserve” someone great (someone who’s going to be worth all of your own greatness, someone who will appreciate you just as you are, someone who won’t treat you like crap like the last jerkface you dated…).  Anyone who disagrees with this probably is a misogynist.  What young women want to hear that God’s Best for them might include a husband who’s mediocre-looking, bad at sex, and only wants to watch sports on TV?

Still, would it really be better to tell women to cash out early and forget about waiting for the special hand to bet big on?  That’s horribly unromantic.   Most women wouldn’t go for that, and most men would be offended and/or devastated if they suspected that their wives didn’t think the husbands were the best they could get but the wives just didn’t want to wait around forever.

So where does a single woman find the sweet spot between waiting for her “great guy” and settling for what’s available because the “great guy” is never going to come and find her?

DON’T TURN THE COMMENTS INTO A WOMAN-BASHING SESSION.  THERE ARE PLENTY OF OTHER PLACES TO DO THAT.