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.

Feeling free to flirt.

It has been my experience in the church that flirting is implicitly frowned upon.  Growing up, I never heard a youth group sermon denouncing flirting, but in advice columns and articles written to youth and singles, flirting is usually cast in a negative light.  Although flirting at its purest is a natural way for two people to express chemistry and attraction, it often leads to confusion, manipulation, and drama.  Women naturally interpret a man’s playful attention as romantic interest, and when that doesn’t result in a date, hearts get broken.  Men likewise can get their hopes up when a girl flirts back at their overtures, then crushed when the girl says she just wants to be friends.  Not surprisingly, the church would rather have its young people avoid all of the emotional turmoil, and so we end up with exhortations to “man up” and “take the lead” (for men) and “be available” (for women).

This advice sounds solid, if a bit staid (I always imagine an unsmiling man somberly informing a woman, pre-selected for her pristine Christian character, that he would like to court her for the possibility of marriage, and the woman gravely agreeing.  Then they both wanly smile off in the distance, content in following God’s Will For Their Lives).  It’s a complete picture, just one stripped of color.  But how does this work in practice?

Consider the following scenario:  Regular guy Mario attends a hip, modern church called The Pillar.  (It used to be called Sandals until someone realized that that was the same name as a Caribbean vacation company.)  Mario starts noticing that an attractive young woman attends the same Sunday school group.  Mario finds out, through strategic eavesdropping, that the young woman is named Peach.  After a few weeks of observation and finding Peach to pass muster, Mario begins talking to Peach on Sundays.  Peach is friendly but doesn’t give any obvious IOIs.  Mario wants to date Peach.  What should he do?  If he shows “initiative and leadership,” he could be LJBFed.  If he waits around for clear IOIs, he will be accused of lacking initiative and leadership.  Mario decides that LJBFing is a fate worse than death, so he doesn’t ask Peach out.  Peach, meanwhile, has her own conundrum.  She likes Mario, but she wants to avoid a reputation for being a flirt, so she doesn’t overtly encourage his attentions.  She also thinks that Mario might just be friendly, and flirting with someone who is not interested back would be embarrassing.  She decides to wait for a more clear-cut signal.  Mario and Peach continue in their holding pattern, at least until bad-boy Wario shows up, flirts up a storm with Peach, swoops her away, and leaves Mario grumbling that Wario is stupid and ugly and Peach is a jerk-lover like every other girl.

But what if Peach had flirted with Mario, only to turn him down when he asked her out?  Why would Peach send such mixed signals?  Well, it’s possible that Peach saw Mario as someone “safe” who would never ask her out.  I don’t know what it is about the feminine psyche, but a lot of times it’s much easier to flirt with someone you have little interest in romantically than to flirt with someone you have a crush on.  Maybe it’s because you usually feel more self-conscious around a crush, and you also don’t want it to be too easy for the crush to get you, because otherwise, how do you know if he’s actually interested in you?  Plus, again, women don’t like feeling like they are chasing the guy, and Approaching + Flirting = Chasing.

So what is the answer?  I don’t know.  I think it’s wrong to deliberately dangle the carrot in front of someone you have no intention of feeding it to, but at the same time I don’t think it’s a good idea to be so unreadable that no one figure out what you’re thinking.  Alas, there is no foolproof way to avoid bumps and bruises on the road to love.

Like paper near a flame.

One consistent drum beat I’ve heard in the manosphere is that of a nearly obsessive fear of marrying a woman with a low or nonexistent sex drive.  This coincides with the idea that a man needs to “test drive” a woman before shackling himself to her with a ring, because what if she never puts out after the wedding night and horror of horrors you didn’t know this was going to happen because like a chivalrous white knight idiot you never had sex with her before the wedding?  Or – even worse – what if she only wants to have sex for a couple of years and then, after she gets her baby, she never wants to have sex again?  Sure, there’s a lot of derision of Carousel riders, but when push comes to shove, at least a Carousel rider is going to let you ride.  (Well, until she finds the next rider and takes half of your fortune with her, but at least you got your turn, which for most men seems to be better than no turn at all.)

In the Christian community, male fear of a sexless marriage seems to be as widespread as outside the church, but even more intense and much more underground.  It’s intense because devout Christian men know that they have one shot at marriage, which in turn is their one shot at finding a sex partner for life, and underground because Christians like to pretend that sex is a mystery that doesn’t exist don’t like to talk much about sex other than “Teens, don’t do it.”  For the Christian alpha male, there’s not much cause to worry – Christian alpha males almost always get snapped up right after college, or, if they delay marriage, whenever they feel like it’s finally time to leave and cleave…er, I mean, whenever the Holy Spirit speaks to them about the next season of life.  (As has been said here before, did anyone ever believe that Christian dating guru, pastor-to-be, megaflirt Joshua Harris was going to have genuine trouble finding a wife?)  It’s really the Christian beta males who must trek through Mordor to get to Mount Doom, only to possibly discover Gollum waiting to chomp off their finger.

The conundrum facing Christian beta males seems obvious:  Christian women don’t want beta males any more than non-Christian women do, Christian women have been trained not to give any signals of attraction, Christian women want to be “friends” for an unspecified amount of time first…yet Christian women expect men to “man up” and charge ahead, brandishing leadership skills in every facet of life, but not in too sexy a way, lest he be branded a sex-craved deviant or cause a sister (whom he should be treating with absolute purity) to stumble, but not so unsexy that the woman would rather wash her hair.  And a brother is somehow supposed to divine his future wife’s sex drive out of this?

While I empathize with Christian men facing the Leviathan of holy dating, I also think that the fear of marrying a low sex-drive woman is overblown.  I don’t know any single Christian women who are not confirmed spinsters who aren’t jonesing for sex.  As one of my single Christian female friends has said on a number of occasions, “I need to get married soon, because I’m ready to explode.”  It’s like shaking an unopened 2-liter bottle of soda and leaving the cap on.  You may not see a ton of bubbles, but the pressure is most definitely building up inside.  Men, please be encouraged that you won’t be buying a bottle of soda that is flat, but a bottle that is very agitated and waiting for the right time to unleash a torrent of passion.*

Interestingly, this subject came up in the comments of a recent Boundless post.  What began as comments to the female follow-up to “I’ll Go Out With You If…” (featuring the usual drivel) somehow morphed into some women admitting that yes, they did have sex drives that they were working to keep a lid on.  In one comment, a poster named Ashley summed it up thusly:

This is probably unrelated to the actual topic at hand, but I have never been able to explain this to a guy in a way that he can understand. There’s just no good way to tell someone, “I am so fantastically, unrestrainedly into you that I’m going to need us to work on the relational/emotional/intellectual connection here and I am going to need you to not. touch. me. until we talk about it — and I really have to warn you, I may need you to pull the breaks on me.”

Commenter Andrea-Elena responded:

Or how about…

I haven’t gotten to be physical much with guys in my life and I’m longing so much to touch and do all those things that even if I’m not over-the-moon into you, I might still pounce on you just ’cause I like you enough and I find you attractive enough and women get horny too!!!

I feel as if I ought to have a business-size card with that on it to give to a guy when we first start dating.

…

I was inexperienced until the age of 23. So I didn’t really know my own “strength” (heh, heh). I didn’t know I could be or would ever be the aggressor in making out. And there were times I was. Sure, that’ll be awesome when I’m someone’s wife. But it’s awfully dangerous during dating, especially at the beginning stages when it’s so easy for the physical bonding to escalate and go at a much more rapid pace than the “who we are as people” aspect of getting to know each other. And some guys don’t defend their own boundaries very well at times. Just as some of us gals don’t either at times.

So, men, take heart.  Chastity is not synonymous with a lack of sex drive.  Sometimes women may seem distant with affection because it’s the only way they can stop the snowball from accelerating down the mountain.  That said, I think it’s prudent for a couple who are getting serious to talk about sexual expectations in marriage.  If those expectations don’t line up and there doesn’t seem to be a way (or willingness) to make them line up, then the relationship really should be reconsidered.  Generally speaking, instead of spending a lot of time worrying about whether or not his future wife is going to want to have sex with him, a smart man would use that time to work on making himself so irresistible that his wife would have no choice but to jump him and have her way with him.

* Another way of putting it:  I DIDN’T WAIT THIS LONG SO I COULD HAVE FIVE MINUTES OF LAME, DUTIFUL SEX ONCE A MONTH.

Beauty is not insurance against infidelity.

Just weighing in on the Demi Moore/Ashton Kutcher cheating thing.  Yesterday Roissy was gloating that, as he had predicted, Ashton Kutcher cheated on his significantly older wife.  (According to Wikipedia, Kutcher is 32 and Moore is 47.)  Roissy’s assertion was that Moore was just too old to keep her husband’s sexual attention and that she was a fool for thinking she could.

Well…yes and no.  I don’t think Demi Moore would have been much less in danger of having her husband cheat on her if she were 25 instead of 47.  Best-case scenario is that it just would have taken longer for him to cheat.  Ashton Kutcher has sufficient looks, fame, and wealth that regardless of whom he was married to, he would still be faced with constant temptation.  It’s more likely that Kutcher, like so many men in Hollywood before him, simply succumbed to the temptation of a young woman who was freely offering herself to him and pumping up his ego.  And in Hollywood, such women are numerous, especially when they can get something else out of the affair, like fame or access to even higher-status men.

Would it have been wiser for Kutcher to marry someone younger (if he had to marry at all, which he probably shouldn’t have)?  Possibly, but many beautiful women in Hollywood who are younger than Moore have been cheated on.  The only way female beauty is a protection against male infidelity is when the woman’s beauty greatly outpaces the man’s status, so that the man feels he has something irreplaceable to lose, and even then, it’s not a sure thing.  (Real-world example:  Roissy’s regular commenter Gorbachev, a self-proclaimed 6 who has been dating for a few months a woman whom he considers the hottest woman he’s ever seen in real life, a woman who gives him agonizing oneitis – and he still cheated on her.  And then went on the internet and told everybody.)

Basically, if you don’t believe that marriage is an exclusive sexual relationship for life, you shouldn’t marry.

BlogBiz: I got a Twitter.

It is insanely hot in Los Angeles – triple-digit heat – and it’s sapping my will to blog today.  This is the Gaian payback for an unusually mild summer, methinks.

In the meantime, in case you haven’t noticed, I jumped on the social networking bandwagon and got a Twitter account for the blog.  Sometimes I come across articles or other media that are of interest to the readers of this blog, but I don’t have the time or inclination to dissect them, or I don’t feel that a quick blurb is worth a blog post.  Twitter seemed to be the perfect solution for passing on these items.  So check out the feed on the right-side column, follow me if you wish, and if something sparks enough interest, I can always blog about it later.

Speaking of which, if you have a topic that you think would make a good blog post, write me or leave a comment here.  I can’t promise to write about the topic in the future, but it’s always good to have a pot of ideas percolating.

Thanks to everyone who has visited the blog.  You make my day, at least most of the time. ;D

Hypergamy and the stigma of being the back-up plan.

There is a pretty impassioned hash-out going on at Boundless on the topic of why men don’t ask women out.  (Yes, Boundless went to that well again.  As they say, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.)  As per usual, it’s a veritable cornucopia of insights into the modern evangelical female mind and young, evangelical relationships (or the lack thereof) in general.

One point that was brought up in the comments is that men risk their reputations when asking out women from a certain church.  If a man screws up his courage, asks out a woman, and she shoots him down, he is then socially obligated to wait an undefined period of time before asking the next woman out from the same group, lest he be pegged desperate, creepy, or undiscriminating (i.e., a wannabe player).  The risk factor is high, because one wrong move can decimate his chances with anyone for a long time.  No woman wants to be some man’s back-up plan when the most attractive option flames out.

When the topic has arisen on my blog, usually the proposed solution is just not to date women from your own church, thereby sidestepping the possibility of social ostracism.  (Of course, if you happen to find someone from another church, the single women at your own church will just despise you for not finding any of them up to your lofty standards.  Or, if they find the girl not up to snuff, they will decide that you like to slum.)

Given women’s hypergamous natures, however, I started wondering if more church women would say yes to a date with a man who had just been out on a date with another woman from the same church group.  Getting rejected by a girl in the group serves as a pretty unavoidable and obvious DLV.  If Jim Bob asks out Sue on Sunday for a date on Tuesday, and she rejects him, there is a very tiny probability that Wendy will say yes if Jim Bob asks her out on Wednesday after singles group.*  Wendy would likely cite the abovementioned reasons for rejecting him, but isn’t her hypergamous hamster the real reason?  Conversely, getting accepted for a date would be a big DHV and make a man more attractive to the other women in his social circle.  If Jim Bob asks out Sue on Sunday for a date on Tuesday, and she accepts, wouldn’t Wendy be more likely to accept a date from Jim Bob as well when he asked on Wednesday?  Someone needs to do a study on this.

* Exception:  Wendy has a pre-existing crush on Jim Bob and is doing the happy dance on the inside that she’s finally getting a shot at her dream guy.

Mike, Molly, and missed signals of attraction.

Last night the new Chuck Lorre sitcom Mike and Molly premiered.  In the episode, Mike, a cop, and Molly, a fourth grade teacher, individually attend an Overeaters Anonymous meeting.  Molly is charmed by Mike’s sense of humor and introduces herself to Mike after the meeting ends.  What happens next is right out of the Matt Savage playbook of missing signals (I kid with love, Matt):

Molly tells Mike that she’s a fourth grade teacher and would love to have a police officer come and speak to her class, HINT HINT HINT.

Mike responds that she should contact the police department and they’ll send someone over.  (Level of obliviousness:  10.)

Molly’s face immediately falls at his not taking the bait.  (Her inner monologue:  OH NO HE DOESN’T LIKE ME I WANT THE EARTH TO SWALLOW ME WHAT DO I SAY NOW????)

Fortunately for Molly (and for the premise of the sitcom), Mike’s cop friend suggests that Molly give Mike her number and Mike can talk to her class himself.

Molly happily gives Mike her number and tells him to call her.  Mike says he will.  Molly lingers, hoping that Mike will ask her out.  He doesn’t.

Molly leaves with her sister, and Mike’s friend chastises him for not making a move.  Mike defends himself, saying he didn’t want to look desperate.

Scene ends on a button.

Watch it here:

Sometimes art really does imitate life!

Dating recon and some ideas.

Yesterday I hung out at a friend’s house.  It was a perfect day for being outside:  not too warm, not too cool, a pleasant breeze, mostly insect-free.  Later, after I had advised my friend on her eHarmony matches (they suckered her back in), her brother Fernando and cousin Billy Bob joined us for a game of Mexican dominoes.

Anyone who has played Mexican dominoes before knows that it is not a fast game, so I knew that I had the perfect opportunity to pick Fernando’s brain about dating and women.

Fernando’s main complaint about women and dating was that too many women are “not fun” and only want to “go to restaurants and drink wine.”  He wanted to find women who were more interested in outdoor activities like sports, hiking, and camping.  Finding non-butch church girls who like to do these things has not been an easy task.  Fernando also said that too many women only talk about themselves on dates.  When I asked what he meant, he said that they talk too much about their goals in life.  He would like to find a funny girl who can make him laugh.  When it comes to dressing, Fernando said he loves stilettos and hates pants tucked into boots, unless the pants are leggings.  (Where Fernando is going to find a funny, sporty, Christian girl who wears stilettos and doesn’t like to go to restaurants and drink wine and talk about herself the whole time is a good question.)

Fernando didn’t let the guys off too easily, either.  He said that at his church, the guys spend all their time messaging girls on Facebook and Twitter and that they have a Sunday face and a rest-of-the-week face.  Burn!

Fernando’s comments about boring dates got me brainstorming about date ideas.  Here’s a short list of activities that popped into my head:

• See how many grapes you can stuff into your mouth
• Staring contest – whoever laughs first loses
• Print out lyrics to dirty rap songs and give dramatic poetic readings of them
• Go to a store that sells hats and try on all the hats
• Go to a Halloween store and try on clown outfits
• Buy a Lego set and assemble it
• Buy a coloring book and crayons and make art for each other
• Sit on a bench and people watch and make up stories about the people (I recently rented Date Night, and Tina Fey and Steve Carell’s characters do this at restaurants as part of their date night ritual)
• Buy a foreign language beginner book with a CD, learn a few phrases, and then try them out in public
• Go to an arcade and play Dance Dance Revolution (if a group date, Guitar Hero for the Wii)

There really isn’t anything wrong with just going to a restaurant.  If you’re a foodie, trying new places can be a lot of fun.  I think the main point, especially early on, is to do something creative and interactive where you can build rapport and learn more about the other person in a way that doesn’t come off like a job interview.  (Of course, if one or both of you are dull as dirt, the tried-and-true blueprint is a blueprint for a reason….)

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….

No text conversation should last more than 10 messages.

Roissy – the real Roissy, not one of the A-plus-for-effort/F-minus-for-execution ghostwriters who have been plaguing the site recently – did another post on text game, where he reprints text conversations with women that his readers have submitted and then analyzes what the readers have done right and wrong.  The bad ones are cringe-inducing at best, and TL;DR at worst.  The latter make my eyes glaze over and make me wonder what kind of chump sits there and pounds his thumbs on a tiny keypad for an extended period of time that does not result in actually speaking to or being in the physical presence of the woman.

It’s impossible to run good text game when you forget the original point of texting:  brevity.  The more you drag out texting, the less effective it is.  If you can’t get your point across in one screen of text, maybe you should be sending an email instead or even…gasp…picking up the phone.  If you’re consistently sending a flurry of messages back and forth with a girl you like, maybe you should be talking on the phone or meeting in person.  Text game should be short, sassy, and always have an implied period at the end of every sentence (or, more likely, fragment).  You should not have an ongoing, day-long conversation via text where you have 200 new messages in your inbox at the end of the day.  That’s only romantic in indie movies about hapless betas.

Roissy is right that the longer you text a woman, the more the power balance swings in her favor.  (I can’t find the post where he said this, but I know I read it somewhere on the blog.)  The longer you sit there and type with your Thumbs of Thunder ([TM] Newsboys), the greater the chance that she is mentally putting you on the “entertainment” shelf or the “safe” shelf, both of which are LJBF territory.  Conversely, if she does actually like you, she will start to grow frustrated that you’re not making a move to ask her out.  She’ll start to feel like you’re just using her for entertainment.  (“I’m good enough to text ad nauseum, but not to be seen with in public?  What’s wrong with this loser?”)

This all brings me back to my subject line:  keep text conversations to a total of 10 texts between the two of you.  That’s plenty of time, text-wise, to say hello, dash off some flirtatious banter, and set up a date.  Beyond that, you start entering the land of diminishing returns and increasing the chance that you will sound arrogant, try-hard, needy, or lame.

Here’s an example of good texting that I had with my brother recently:

ME:  [attaching photo] Show mom- it’s my new comforter cover from ikea

BRO:  [an hour later] Are you 50 years old???? Hahaha

ME:  No it looks awesome in real life

And that was it.  Fun, funny, got the message across, didn’t wear out its welcome.  Sibling love strong.