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

Or: with your help, he shall be healed.

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

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

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

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

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

The importance of having chemistry.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The fine art of settling.

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

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

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

The solution?  Sound the drumbeat of settling!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Learn from Adam.

Men’s Game blogs often advocate that a man not do what his wife tells him to do for fear of compromising his masculine authority and becoming less attractive to her as a result.

What most people don’t realize is that the Bible teaches the same lesson:  Eve tells Adam to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, and like a good beta husband, he does.  Voila!  Sin!  Seriously, three chapters into Genesis, and we’ve already got Adam doing Eve’s bidding.  The results of such betatude?  Well, in addition to the aforementioned sin and therefore death (no more Tree of Life!), not to mention expulsion from Eden:

• Women experience pain in childbirth — this is an exclusively human trait; no other animals experience pain in giving birth
• Women are put under the authority of their husbands
• Men must toil to ensure they can eat
• Sinful nature is passed on through men

Lesson?  Don’t do what your wife tells you to do, or suffer the consequences.

(Probably the second-best “Don’t listen to your wife” Bible story?  When Sarah told Abraham to take her servant Hagar as a concubine.  The result of that union was Ishmael.  The Middle East thanks you, Abraham!)

Don’t be these guys, Vol. 1.

There are a couple of message boards that I skim read pretty regularly that are mainly populated by women in their 20s-40s.  This means that there tends to be a fair amount of relationship talk.  For anyone with traditional values, most of it is a little depressing since most of the women are feminists (or are brainwashed by feminist principles) who have not yet hit the Wall and are clearly operating under the assumption that they will always be able to attract men as easily as they do now — therefore their feelings take utmost precedence in their decision-making.  I was skimming reading today and came across a couple of relationship threads that made me shake my head regarding both the men who are discussed and the OPs’ treatment of them.

Guys, don’t be these guys.

THREAD 1:

OP brags advertises in the subject line that her boyfriend asked her to marry him but she said no.  In the post she says that she feels “horrible” about it but that it had nothing to do with her boyfriend, plus he knew beforehand that she never wanted to get married.  Despite this apparent knowledge, he proposed anyway and then seemed “disappointed” when he got rejected.  The rest of the posters divide into two groups, one in support of the OP, the other warning her that this could be the beginning of the end, but most of them congratulate the OP for her honesty and agree that not only does marriage have little significance in the area of commitment (this despite the documented increased volatility of non-marital unions), no one should stay in a marriage if she is “unhappy.”  The posters generally agree that there will always be “someone else” if the boyfriend walks.

Later the OP returns to the thread to inform everyone that she and her boyfriend “talked” and that the boyfriend apologized to her for assuming she would say yes.  Yes, he APOLOGIZED.  OP reports that this “talk” lasted TWO HOURS.

I feel like the takeaway lessons from this story should be obvious, but anyhow:  Men, if you want to get married, then don’t date a woman who says she NEVER wants to get married and believes her feelings love for you is equivalent or even better.  Sure, you might be the superhero to change her mind…but you might not.  Why waste your energy on a woman who’s a tough sell as opposed to a woman who really does want to be married?  Second, NEVER APOLOGIZE FOR PROPOSING.  My goodness.  If you want to marry someone, then I very well hope that you are prepared to lead in all aspects of the relationship and won’t wither in the face of a woman’s disgruntled vanity.  Third, never discuss a woman’s feelings with her for any amount of time over, say, thirty minutes, tops.  What could the OP and her boyfriend possibly have discussed for that long without running around in circles with the woman continually gaining momentum against the man?  The longer you let her run on, the less authority you have in the relationship.  Probably what happened here is that the OP browbeat her boyfriend for well over an hour for disturbing her feelings.  No wonder she doesn’t want to marry him.  The real question is why he wanted to marry her.

THREAD 2:

OP is a med student who has been pining away for a guy in her program for the past two years.  She deeply regrets not telling him that she’s in love with him.  They are on the verge of graduation and will soon be going their separate ways, so OP asks for advice about how to tell this guy about her feelings.  (Anyone who’s read my blog lately knows my feelings on the topic.)  Of course, in a show of female wishful thinking solidarity, the other posters rally around her, telling her to invite him out for dinner, get some drinks in her, and spill her guts.

Later in the thread, OP reports back, saying that she did exactly as the posters suggested and…drum roll, please…their advice WORKED.  (Hey, it happens every once in a blue moon.)  After exams, she and her friend went out to a “nice steakhouse” where she worked up the courage and blurted out her feelings to him.  The guy then admitted that he’s been feeling the exact same way.  OP says that they concluded that they both used their coursework as a reason not to take a risk and that each other was the reason they hadn’t dated anyone else in the entire time of their program.  OP then says that the evening went perfectly and hints that they slept together because she had just arrived home (and apparently sprinted to the computer) and the timestamp was in the morning.  Plus, they found out that they would be doing residencies in the same city.  Much cheering from the peanut gallery commences.

On its face, this is the kind of story that makes women swoon because it is very much like something out of a movie where you’ve been pining and pining and pining and the guy actually reciprocates your feelings.  But what is ennobling about this story from the man’s point of view?  What kind of man hides behind coursework as an excuse not to date anyone for two years?  Especially when the woman is a close friend and others have pointed out that they should date?  What kind of man lets the woman take all the emotional risk in the relationship?  It seems to me like this dude would have been content to let the relationship simmer in sexual frustration indefinitely if the OP hadn’t taken the reins.  At the beginning of the story, the OP didn’t even know if they would be assigned to the same area for their residency — it sounds like this guy was willing to let the OP drift out of his life without even once making a move.  That’s not love.  That’s ambivalence at best and cowardice at worst.

It’ll be interesting to see (if we ever get to find out) how this relationship progresses once the OP and this guy are out of the med school bubble and are working long hours at different hospitals.  My guess is that once the initial relationship euphoria wears off, the guy’s natural reluctance to lead will start to kill off the OP’s attraction to him.  Pining from a distance and actually being involved in a relationship are two different things.

Did Halle Berry seal her own fate?

Yes, I am a stereotypical woman in that I enjoy reading about celebrities, seeing what they’re wearing, and dissecting their life mistakes choices.  It’s not so much a lifestyle aspiration (I live in Los Angeles and work in the entertainment industry, so I’ve gotten to see a lot of celebrities up close; most are uninteresting when the cameras are not rolling) as it is a perfect storm of things I like to analyze — faces, fashion, and behavior — all wrapped into one.  Basically celebrity trash magazines and blogs are like Super Wal-Marts of my interests…um, besides poring over John and Stasi Eldredge books, I mean.  Yeah!  Woo hoo!  Captivating 4eva!

Evangelicals spend a lot of time trashing Hollywood, not entirely without reason — Hollywood produces a lot of trash.  (Christian productions produce a lot of trash, too, but when the litmus test of trash vs. non-trash is “does it have an ~uplifting, heart-warming message that’s suitable for the whole family?”, trash production is an impossible thing to acknowledge.)  Anyhow, I see Hollywood not so much as something to denounce with the pointing finger of moral superiority but as the clearest possible picture of our sinful nature.  It is an unvarnished reflection of what lies in all of our hearts.  The only thing that separates most Hollywood behavior from our own is opportunity.  Remove all social and moral restrictions, and surround yourself with enablers and the most beautiful and powerful people of the opposite sex — the most sexually irresistible people in the world — and it’s not hard to see why celebrity after celebrity falls off the holiness wagon.

Last week news broke that 50% mega-famous, 100% gorgeous couple Halle Berry and Gabriel Aubry have split up.  (Gabriel is a male model who is the father of Halle’s 2-year-old daughter.)  They were together for four or five years, which in Hollywood time is pretty impressive.  The only thing surprising to me about this break-up was that fans were surprised.  Applying a Game analysis to the Berry/Aubry relationship, the reasons for the break-up quickly become obvious:  Halle, despite being acknowledged as one of the most beautiful women alive, is 43 and about to hit the Wall, if she hasn’t already.  Gabriel, on the other hand, is only 34.  At the time they began dating, Halle was still near the peak of her looks while Gabriel was still ascending in value.  Now, however, the tables are beginning to turn.  Halle is aging out of the fertility market, while Gabriel is just beginning to peak in his attractiveness to women.  (Obviously, being a gorgeous and successful male model, his attractiveness was high to begin with, but now he has maturity to add to his menu of scrumptious offerings, not to mention the insanely high preselection value of having dated a woman as beautiful as Halle.)  In addition, Halle got the baby she had always wanted and maybe didn’t tend to her relationship with Gabriel as before; I always got the impression that she valued having a baby over having a man.  Another important factor was probably the separation of the couple due to working in different places for extended periods of time.  Add in the unequal fame and earning power of the couple, the emotional baggage each brought to the relationship, and the extreme temptation of Hollywood, and voila!  Breakup.

Maybe the most predictive factor, though, was that Halle and Gabriel never married.  Halle is twice-divorced and has stated more than once that she has no intentions to marry again.  She told Ebony in 2004 that she wanted someone to “come and stay and be there because he wants to, not because he has a piece of paper saying he has to.”  Which is all very fine and noble, but…what if she and Gabriel had married?  Wouldn’t that have given Gabriel more incentive to stay with Halle and be an everyday father to their daughter?  Most divorces, after all, are initiated by women, and so far there hasn’t been gossip that Aubry is a player with a wandering eye.  Additionally, men generally stand to lose more (financially) in divorce, especially in California.  Despite being a community property state, it strongly favors mothers upon dissolution of a marriage.  I think it’s very possible that Halle Berry created a self-fulfilling prophecy for herself to lose a man by refusing to commit to him beyond mere feelings.  It takes two to tango, but beauty (which rapidly depreciates) and feelings (which come and go) are not the things you want to tie your hopes for a lasting relationship to.  There needs to be a stronger bond and reciprocal obligation between two people to weather the ups and downs of life, and in the vast majority of cases, that is marriage.