Marrying someone you can’t live without.

There is a line of romantic advice that goes something like, “Don’t marry the one you can live with, marry the one you can’t live without.”

It’s a statement that’s meant to be profound in its simplicity, but the more I hear it and read it and think about it, the more I think it’s a huge load of poo.  It reeks of soulmate-ism and conjures pictures of a bedraggled, dehydrated man crawling wearily through the desert until he finds a miraculous pool of refreshing water, upon which all of his problems disappear.

What if you got married, and the next day your spouse died?  Are you going to keel over and expire because your sole tether to the mortal realm had passed on?  But those are the kinds of logical results you get when you subscribe to overemotionality.  More importantly, how, exactly, had this person managed to live prior to discovering your precious existence?  That is truly one of the great mysteries of the universe.

This statement would hold more water if it said marry the one you don’t want to live without.**  That’s what marriage really is, isn’t it?  Voluntarily choosing someone over all others every day until one of you croaks.  That’s the real love right there, not lofty paeans to volatile passion.

**The implication is that the feelings are mutual.  Otherwise, a restraining order is in your future.

Anthem for the gameosphere (NSFW).

Also works for Christian honeymoons!

A truth universally acknowledged.

After a certain age, when you break up with a man, he will be married to someone else within a year.

The latest example of this phenomenon?  Nathan Zacharias of Boundless, who writes that a year ago on January 8, he was depressed and distraught after a difficult break-up.  One year later, he is on his honeymoon with his “beautiful” (read “SHE’S AN 8!“) bride.

Ten bucks says his ex-girlfriend is breathing fire and drowning her sorrows in Haagen-Dazs and “You go girl!” sessions with girlfriends.  Note also that the first three comments on the post are from admiring female readers saying how “inspiring” and “encouraging” they find Zacharias’s story.  (Read:  the power of preselection!)

The lesson?  Girls, if you want to get married, find an emotionally wrecked Christian man coming off a bad break-up, smile at him, and you, too, can be married within a year!

Holding out for an alpha like dad.

It is often said that girls marry men like their fathers.  I think this is due partly to familiarity; dads are the primary source of a girl’s understanding of what a man is, so it makes sense that in seeking a man for herself, she will seek one like her father.  (Likewise, men often marry women like their mothers.  One of my brother’s friends is living proof of this.  His mother is a domineering battle axe.  Guess what kind of woman the friend married and is apparently quite happy with?)

So what happens when a girl’s dad is an alpha male?  Doesn’t that make it ten times as hard for her to settle down with a beta?  If she’s used to a man who makes decisions and doesn’t back down, who lovingly teases her and her mom, and is clearly in charge of the family, why would she ever want to settle down with a man who is too petrified to ask her on a date, who dithers over decision-making, who defers to her every whim and strives to make her happy at all times, and who apologizes for himself all the time?  Even if she did fall for a soft, sweet beta, the bloom would probably not be on the rose for too long, and she would soon be gritting her teeth as she clung to the remains of her attraction.

I think that another reason the daughters of alphas want alphas themselves is that she wants her husband to be able to hold his own with her dad.  What kind of woman can admire and love a man who shrinks in the presence of another?  Especially when the man is the girl’s father – if he can’t command her dad’s respect, how can he have her respect?  If the point of marriage is that a man and woman marry and form their own family unit, then having a dad who is still the top alpha in the woman’s life doesn’t bode well for the success of the marriage because the new husband and wife aren’t really their own independent family unit.  The woman will end up deferring to her father, not her husband, because her dad is the one with the true authority.  (See:  Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey’s ill-fated marriage.  Nick couldn’t overcome father-in-law Joe’s overwhelming presence and influence over Jessica.)  The issue just gets compounded when alpha brothers factor into the scenario.  If a girl grows up surrounded by an alpha dad and alpha brothers, who know how to handle her, her mother, and other women, she’s going to even more expect her future husband to be at or at least near their level.

Personal alpha dad anecdote from this weekend:  my dad was going to bed and gave my mom a peck goodnight on the lips.

MOM:  Excuse me?  That’s it?

DAD:  That’s all you deserve!

And he didn’t give her a better kiss and sauntered off to bed with an SEG on his face.  (Note:  some nights when she says this, he does give her a better kiss.  Gotta keep the wife on her toes. :))

P.S.  I saw both Harry Potter and the Never-Ending Camping Trip Deathly Hallows Part 1 and Tangled over the weekend.  If any readers are interested in a discussion post (or posts), let me know.  Tangled in particular has some interesting gender dynamics discussionables.

Prenups.

Lover of Wisdom recently asked my opinion about pre-nups and what the evangelical female consensus is about them…so, Lover of Wisdom, this one’s for you.

Prenups are not a topic that comes up often when I’ve talked with other single Christian women about getting married, but my general feeling is that most single, conservative Christian women do not want a prenup for themselves.  They consider prenups an insult to their loyalty and devotion and a sign of no confidence on the man’s part.  A man who wants a prenup is a man who believes the union cannot last, may already be looking for a way out, and/or is more interested in himself than in his future bride’s well-being.  The average Christian woman does not see a prenup as protection for the man – or for herself.

That said, I think the average single Christian woman might be more tolerant of a prenup if there were a very large disparity of wealth between the future bride and groom.  In most marriages, a bazillionaire is not marrying a pauper, as people tend to marry those of similar socioeconomic background – and in doing so, end up marrying someone with a similar attitude toward money (both the making of and management of it), which reduces the likelihood that one sees the other as a love ’em-and-leave ’em get-rich-quick scheme.  Additionally, most people tend to marry relatively young, which means that typically neither bride nor groom is at a point in their career where they’re making scads of dough.  If both bride and groom are, say, 30 or younger, there’s usually not much of anything to protect.

However, when a very rich person is marrying a very…not-rich person, all sorts of flags of suspicion immediately go up.  Since it is not common for people of very disparate economic status to meet and socialize, outsiders start to wonder how they met…why they met…what he sees in her…what she sees in him.  The flags go up even faster and harder if the poorer party shows unfavorable signs of being from a lower economic class, such as in manner of dress and comportment.  In this sort of case, I think even a church girl would recommend that the richer party get a prenup (if that person is dead set on marrying someone who seems like a bad deal to begin with).

As for myself, I don’t like the idea of a prenup for the reasons stated above.  I think it’s bad form for a marriage, which is supposed to be the melding of two lives into one, to start off with each party on opposite sides of a table and armed with lawyers who are seeking the best deal for their clients.  (Each party to a prenup should have his or her own lawyer.  I would never recommend to any couple to have the same attorney craft their prenup.  Hello, conflict of interest.  No, besotted couple, your love is not greater than the legal system.)  That said, I am not opposed to prenups in principle.  If a couple want to have a “contingency plan” in place, that’s their business.  In cases of large, inherited wealth, I can even see why anxious parents might urge their son or daughter to get one.  But in general, I would counsel any couple wanting a prenup to examine hard their motivations for and expectations about marriage and commitment.

Charlotte Lucas did right.

The Bible notwithstanding, Pride and Prejudice is the second-most authoritative book on courtship in an evangelical girl’s library (the first being the beloved IKDG).  I have yet, at least in an internet forum, to come across a single Christian woman who doesn’t look to P&P as a blueprint for how to do relationships right.  When confronted with the idea that P&P contains a heavy dose of female fantasy (the protagonist, a poor farm girl, marries the wealthiest, most handsome man in the county; he is so besotted that he still loves her despite her giving him a scathing browbeating upon his first proposal), most Christian girls will defend the book because the characters have character and show “growth.”  This allows the book to escape being lumped into the shameful romance novel category.

My criticisms aside, P&P does rise far above the typical Harlequin, in part due to its literary value, and (in my opinion) largely due to its incisive take on human nature.  Part of the reason that the novel still resonates nearly 200 years later is that Austen captured human nature accurately, and human nature doesn’t change.  Everyone knows a Mrs. Bennet, a Miss Bingley, a Lydia Bennet, a Lady Catherine, a Wickham, and so on.

One character who is rarely discussed, though, is Elizabeth Bennet’s best friend Charlotte Lucas.  The novel tells us that Charlotte is 28 years old, single, and plain.  In rural early 19th-century England, her chance of marrying is all but gone. In contrast to Elizabeth, who at age 20 refuses to marry pragmatically, Charlotte believes that love in marriage is hit-or-miss, and that it is better not to know too much about one’s spouse prior to marriage, since husband and wife are bound to drift apart and annoy each other, anyway.

When Elizabeth vehemently rejects a proposal from her cousin Mr. Collins, a clueless, pompous clergyman, Charlotte swoops in and snags him.  Elizabeth is shocked upon finding out and can’t believe Charlotte would give the doofus the time of day, but Charlotte calmly reminds Elizabeth that she is not a romantic and that given Mr. Collins’s material assets and social standing, she figures her chance at happiness is as good as anyone else’s who marries for love.

Shortly after Charlotte’s marriage to Mr. Collins, Elizabeth visits her friend for a few weeks, and through her eyes Austen reveals that Charlotte deals with her marriage by intrepidly avoiding her obnoxious husband whenever possible and politely not seeing his faults otherwise.  She is depicted as a tolerant and intelligent wife, if one who openly settled for a man she didn’t love.

I’ve seen some commentary that is critical of Charlotte – if Elizabeth is Austen’s mouthpiece, then Austen herself looked down on Charlotte’s choice to marry Mr. Collins – but I can’t hate on her.  Charlotte, old by the standard of the time and not pretty, had two options:  either remain a spinster and continue to live at home with virtually zero hope of ever marrying, or marry an obnoxious lunk and get to be mistress of her own house.  I think she made the right choice.  Collins is not depicted as type who would notice that his wife had very little affection for him; in fact, he comes off as kind of asexual.  The world is not everyone’s oyster, and given the circumstances, I think both characters made out about as best they could.  It would have been very difficult for Mr. Collins to find a wife who would have fallen in love with him, and nobody was beating a path to Charlotte’s door otherwise.

Would I encourage a modern-day Charlotte Lucas to make the same choice?  Maybe.  If marriage is what she really wants and she understands its obligations and is prepared to fulfill them, then I don’t see the harm in accepting the non-ideal but only offer on the table.  The success of a marriage is due largely to the actions of both parties after the vows.  If the actions are good, I think both people will be better off than if they had remained single.  Not that even this is easy to find in these non-self-sacrificing times….

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Can’t argue much with this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The importance of compatibility.

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

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

……

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.