The perfect storm (stealth date follow-up).

In my last post, I discussed a Boundless post by Tom Neven about his daughter Hannah, who had gone on a stealth date with a male friend who she knew was interested in her.  Naturally, the readers, good Christians that they are, piled on in the comments on everyone involved — so much so that Hannah felt compelled to write a defense of herself.  Oh, Hannah.  This is something that I would never recommend doing except in a case of libel where it is imperative to your legal or job security that you right the record.  First of all, nothing on the internet is as important as people on the internet think it is.  It’s very easy to get into an internet echo chamber where every voice has an exponential effect on the noise, and before you know it, you’re swimming in the din over something as trivial as which objectively attractive actress is a 9 and which is a 10.  Second, who cares?!  Why get ruffled over what a bunch of keyboard critics whom you’ll never meet think of you, your beta boy, your dad, your approach to dating, or anything else?  Nine times out of ten, a person who takes to the internet to defend his or her opinion is only going to dig the hole deeper and give opponents more grist for the mill.  Let your opinion speak for itself.  If other people don’t like it, they can fight about it amongst themselves while you go out and do something constructive with your time.  Besides, most people are bad at putting out their own fires, hence the existence of the PR industry.

What Hannah wrote is not all that interesting, anyway.  Anyone with a clue about college-age church girls could have written a nearly identical blast (“blah blah blah, I am not shallow or vain, we don’t have any chemistry, why is everyone hating on me? I’m innocent and he needs to man up!”).  What is actually interesting is the variety of opinions expressed in the comments.  Boundless is only occasionally useful for advice, but it is eminently useful for taking the temperature of young evangelical thought.  Here is a smattering of “advice” from the Boundless commentariat (my paraphrases):

• The reason you don’t feel any sparks is because you didn’t start praying about it the minute he started giving you attention!  Elisabeth Elliot prayed when her third husband first started paying attention to her.
• You’re just an alpha chaser who is going to get her heart broken!
• OMG Hannah ur so wise and it was so totally not a date! U GO GURL!!11!
• Tom Neven, you’re a bad dad who humiliated poor Beta!
• Women should never initiate a DTR until they are asked out!
• We need to be more like Jesus!
• I am GRIEVED that I hurt you with my comments!  I am so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so sorry!
• Women shouldn’t turn down any dates because they will get a reputation for saying no and then no one will ask them out!
• Don’t give up on chemistry, Hannah!  My own personal experience proves that chemistry is important!
• Hannah, I know you are a woman of substance because I have gone through the same circumstance!
• Hannah has the right to date only men with whom she feels chemistry!
• Men need to stop bringing their hurtful baggage to these discussions so things can stop being so tense around here!
• OMG WHY IS EVERYONE SO MEAN HERE? JESUS WOULD NOT APPROVE.

Sometimes when I read comments like these, I wonder if there is any hope for harmony between the sexes in Churchland.  I suppose the most salient point is that Betas now have even more motivation to “man up,” because of the fear that their target’s dad might take to a widely read blog to advertise their beta-ness.

Possibly the worst comment of all, more for its substance than its attitude, was that of a young woman who had dated a man for an entire year while not being at all physically attracted to him.  She writes:

A few years ago I had my first boyfriend whom I dated for about a little over a year. He was a great Christian guy, a true gentleman, always paid for me, and even remembered the exact calendar day of when we first started talking and our first date. The problem: I wasn’t physically attracted to him. We held hands once but I never wanted to do it again. I never let him kiss me either. Sure, he would have made a great husband and if I never broke it up, we would probably be planning our wedding right now.  The point is that I believe attraction and spark should be among one of the top priorities in a potential spouse. [AH:  my emphasis in bold]

OH MY GOODNESS.  I CAN’T EVEN WRAP MY HEAD AROUND THIS.  IS SHE A ROBOT?!?!?!  (…IS HE A ROBOT?!?!?!)

The stealth date and the tease.

stealth date: when a male friend asks a female friend for a one-on-one outing, during which he tries to exert date-like behavior such as paying for the food/activity, going somewhere non-casual, or making exceptional plans for the outing, all the while never specifying that he wants it to be a date.

Over at Boundless in an article entitled “Help, I’m on a Date and I Can’t Get Out!”, blogger Tom Neven writes that his teenage daughter Hannah recently went on a stealth date with a beta male friend.  Hannah and beta male friend were talking about getting frozen yogurt, which turned into a trip to get said frozen yogurt.  Neven says that Hannah had a paralyzing moment of indecision as she ordered, suddenly realizing that she might be on a stealth date.  Which she was, as Beta Male Friend offered to pay for her as “his treat” before Hannah could pull out her wallet.  Neven writes with fatherly amusement that Hannah now faces the “not-fun task of letting him down — easily.”  Poor beta male.  He played it safe, and now it’s going to blow up in his face.  At least he will have the memory of one blissful afternoon of paying for Hannah’s Fro-Yo to sustain him during the inevitable darkness.

Normally I would put 99% of the blame on Beta Male Friend for not making his intentions clear at the outset, but Neven, after telling this story, then blithely reveals that Hannah knew that Beta Male Friend had a crush on her.  This changes EVERYTHING.

Ladies, do NOT go on one-on-one outings with male friends who you know have crushes on you.  This is usually called “leading him on” or “being a tease.”

I will cut Hannah some slack because she is a teenager and therefore probably doesn’t know better, but did she really think that she could go out one-on-one with a male friend who had already expressed interest in her, and not give him hope or the wrong impression?  It’s clear from Neven’s post that Hannah had not previously made it clear to Beta Male that she had no romantic interest in him.  She knew, yet continued to buddy around with him and voluntarily went somewhere alone with him and allowed him to pay for her.  What do you think was going through Beta Male’s head?  Yay, I love being platonic friends!  She will so appreciate my paying for her!  Tonight I will finish reading Wild at Heart and tomorrow I will think of doing something manly that will actually make her like me! Hardly.

But even if Hannah HAD said “No, there are 500 guys in line ahead of you that I’d rather date/marry/have sex with,” she still went out with this guy on an outing that had every appearance of a date, all the while knowing that he was romantically interested in her.  How is that not textbook teasing (albeit of the chaste, church teen variety)?

Yet Neven does not even acknowledge this.  Instead, he treats the situation as a rite of passage, an unavoidable bump on the road to maturity, and commiserates with guys who have had the LJBF talk.  Nowhere does Hannah receive any blame for what happened.  In Neven’s mind, this whole ordeal appears to be just a little adolescent misunderstanding, tee hee.

But this just demonstrates how deeply embedded secular dating values and feminism have become in the church.  On the one hand, we have a poor little beta male who can’t muster the courage to ask a girl out directly.  And on the other, we have a girl who leads on her interested male friend with nary a reprimand from her Christian father.  And people think that what churches need are a hip worship band and more social outreach projects.

Field Report: Clapping on Command edition.

Not too long ago, I had the opportunity to attend a taping of the upcoming syndicated version of Don’t Forget the Lyrics.  It was an all-day affair during which we powered through eight shows, three of which featured cheerleaders from professional sports teams (none of whom should quit her day job…ugh, my ears) and one a celebrity singer.  In between shows, the ADs would shuffle around the audience so it wouldn’t look like the exact same people were there for an entire week of tapings (and wearing the exact same outfits).  That’s the magic of television right there.

If you are a sociable person, tapings are a good opportunity to meet new people.  There is usually a good amount of down time, and since nobody usually knows anybody else, people tend to be more open to talking to strangers than otherwise if you just act friendly.  I hadn’t brought any books or magazines with me, either, so talking to other people was about the only way to save myself from downtime boredom.

In the morning, while we were lined up waiting to have our attendance taken and go through the gate, I ended up standing near two young guys who were hired audience.  They were both tall and pretty well-built in a standard-for-an-aspiring-actor sort of way.  One was a little more attractive than the other and gave off the impression that he was aware of his genetic blessing.  I tried to strike up some conversation with them, starting off with some little quips about waiting in line, but neither guy really bit.  The better-looking guy actually seemed a little irritated.  Fine, dude, sorry I’m not a 10 and you’re as interesting as a stick in the mud.  So much for that.

The rest of the morning was pretty non-descript.  I sat between various teenage girls for the tapings and conserved my energy.

After lunch was when things started to get interesting again.  I was seated next to a young white guy, tall, pleasantly average-looking, on one side and a stocky, pleasant, early 20s-ish Latino guy on the other side.  I found out from Latin Luis that he was with the group of volleyball players that was at the taping.  I was able to make him smile, like when I asked if he was a volleyball groupie, but he was shy and only spoke to me when I directly addressed him.  Definitely one of those guys who has a daily word limit of around 1000 words, so pressing any sort of conversation would have been fruitless.

The young white guy, on the other hand, warmed up to me almost instantly.  I found out that he was a dancer who had been forced into ballet at age 11 by his mother but ended up loving it — and the perk of being the only straight guy in a classroom of girls.  In between the taping portions, we chatted about dancing and music, and the conversation flowed easily.  I tried to convince him to dance battle a black guy who was shakin’ it on the other side of the room, but he refused.  During the tapings, he clapped overly enthusiastically and would glance at me to make sure I saw that he was showing off being silly; I obliged him by elbowing him.  More than once I noticed that as we were sitting next to each other, his upper arm was pressed against mine.

Halfway through the afternoon, Dancer and I moved to a different row, still sitting next to each other, but on my other side was now a large stocky blond with glasses who was working as paid audience and wasn’t very happy about it.  He clapped tepidly and, when I encouraged him to do his job because it was his JOB be more enthusiastic, he complained that his hands hurt.  Herby-looking guy (yes, he was wearing Voldemort’s dreaded khakis) who whines?  I’m not sure he could have done more to DLV himself, but he couldn’t even be properly bitter, so I resigned him to the “mildly amusing” category.

When the taping was over, Dancer asked me and Blondie if he could catch a ride home with one of us.  It was already fairly late, so while I was mulling over the possibility of whether or not I wanted to take a detour to Hollywood, Blondie jumped and said he would take Dancer home.  I then remembered that I had parked in the neighborhood and wasn’t interested in walking back to my car by myself, so I asked if Dancer wouldn’t mind coming with me instead.  Blondie scoffed that the neighborhood wasn’t that bad, but after realizing that his car wasn’t parked too far from mine, decided with Dancer that they would both walk with me.

As we walked back to where I had parked, Blondie and Dancer got on the subject of dinosaurs and immediately began cracking increasingly more herby jokes about dinosaurs.  I walked ahead of them, at this point just wanting to get to the car and regretting that I had even asked for accompaniment.

At my car, Dancer said good-bye, and I gave him a half-second to ask for my number, but all he said was the generic “see you around” line.

At least it was late enough that there wasn’t too much traffic on the way home (by Los Angeles standards, anyway).

Young beta in love uses Facebook to speed the demise of his 2-week relationship.

I’m sure this is not an unusual occurrence, but for the love of Pete, people need to count to five hundred twenty before they post anything to Facebook.

I was skimming one of my regular message board haunts today and came across a thread entitled “Aw, young love.”  Thinking it was going to be about, say, someone’s junior high daughter having a crush on the most Justin Bieber-y boy in her class, I clicked.  What followed was this:

This guy I know who is about 21 and never had a real relationship just got a girlfriend. They have been dating two weeks and have already announced that they are engaged and both of their facebooks every day are full of grand sweeping poetic love declarations. The engagement isn’t a “real” one yet (like with a ring or date or real plans to move forward) but rather a “declaration of love and dedication to the emotions we feel in our hearts”

It is soooooooooooooooooo cute. I hope they survive the inevitable puppy love honeymoon stage crash. I don’t think people who have never been in a real relationship understand that not every day is going to be grand facebook declaration worthy

I’m not sure what is the worst part of this post to dissect first, because it is all bad.  The only thing that could make this story worse is if Beta in Love called up Delilah After Dark to dedicate “I’ll Be” by Edwin McCain or “Iris” by the Goo Goo Dolls to this girl.  Basically, men of all ages:  do not be this guy.  I’m sure Girlfriend is swimming in a sea of oxytocin at the moment and is therefore blind to this guy’s overwhwelming beta-ness, but eventually she is going to wake up and wonder who this drip is that she gave heart/soul/body parts to.  Also, an “engagement” with no real plans to move forward that is based on “the emotions we feel in our hearts” has approximately a 6-month expiration date, max.  I feel sorry for all the Facebook friends who will have to suffer through the inevitable crash.  Luckily for them, Facebook allows you to block people.

Juneau is his Narnia.

Friends, our new friend Matthew has made his first regular post at Boundless.  I’m not sure there’s much we can do for him.

An excerpt:

Roughly two weeks ago, I returned home from leading a missions trip to Juneau, Alaska, with Campus Crusade for Christ. This was my fourth time up to Juneau with Campus Crusade; I spent the summer there back in 2004 as a college student on the Juneau Men’s Project, and I’ve been back each of these last three summers to help lead Alaska Transformation, a two-week version of that summer-long missions trip I attended as a student.

I could seriously talk your ear off about Juneau. I love it there so much. My first summer in Juneau was, most definitely, the watershed experience in my life. And my subsequent three visits — two years as a small-group leader and this summer as the guy in charge — have each been phenomenal. That place and my time there are, collectively, very present to me.

Goodness. I’m getting nostalgic just thinking about being there.

I wish you all could know the joy Juneau brings me. I mean, Juneau is my Narnia, people.

……

Also: I totally talk to the animals and they talk to me. Bald eagles are as regal as you would imagine; whales are patient, gregarious folks; and sea lions, as a general rule, could use an attitude adjustment.

Are those crickets I hear? Did this post just get weird? No, I’m not crazy, people. But I do refuse to talk to crickets. I don’t like them.

Um, OK.

Uses of totally: 2

Uses of seriously: 1

Uses of phenomenal: 1

Total number of adverbs used that end in -ly: 8

Uses of goodness (as exclamation): 2

Uses of italics for emphasis: 2

Uses of unironic exclamation point: 2

Odds that Matthew will find a churchly wife before I find a churchly husband:  4:1

The Dr. is in!

I’ve mentioned before that on one of the message boards I read, there is a dating advice thread.  Since the board is primarily female and college-educated, there tend to be a lot of feminist-inspired dating mistakes, feminine overanalysis, and questionable advice.  For your reading enjoyment, I’ve compiled some of the most recent stuff.

Earlier this month, Female A, one of the board’s most prolific and well-liked posters who is internet famous outside of the board, posted that her mother had met a charming, extroverted young man at work who was brand new to town and had shown him A’s picture.  The young man was intrigued by the picture, and A’s mother, in true Mrs. Bennet fashion, started scheming to invite him over for dinner so he could meet A, who has not met anyone new in a long time.  The only problem is that the picture the young man saw is 13 years old, and A, by her own admission, no longer resembles the girl in the photo.  Most crucially, she is much heavier now.  A acknowledged that she didn’t think Young Man would be interested in her and that he could do much better than herself.  However, she has been in such a never-ending dry spell that she’s willing to cling to any shred of hope.

Any time a woman puts herself down to other women who like her, that is an automatic invitation for the other women to pile on with “don’t say that” compliments.  A 500-pound woman could tell her girlfriends, “No one will ever love me.  I’m too fat,” and whether or not the girlfriends secretly agreed with her, they would tell the fat girl, “Don’t say that!  That’s not true!  There’s someone for everyone!  You just need to find him!  Don’t give up!  You are the most loving and kind person I know and some man will be lucky to find you!”  It’s one of the unwritten rules of female friendship that when a friend denigrates herself, you must prop her up with praise, disregarding reality if necessary.

Anyhow, this is exactly what happened in the thread.  A lot of YOU STOP THAT RIGHT NOW, YOU ARE SO FUNNY AND SMART AND KIND, and GO FOR IT AND REPORT BACK!s.  So far there has been no reporting back, so I don’t know if Mom’s Dinner has happened, but Dr. Haley’s initial assessment is that things are going to go only so far as Mom’s Dinner and no further.  I’m guessing that Young Man is not going to like discovering that not only does A no longer resemble her picture, the main reason she no longer resembles it is because of her weight.  And she’s 13 years older.

Female B attends a church that a Nice Young Guy (whom I’ll call Brad) also attends.  They primarily see each other at church since they don’t live in the same town.  B has been harboring a crush on Brad for several months.  Finally they get to the point where Brad asks for B’s number via instant messenger.  B spends several days in anxiety as she waits for Brad’s call.

A week later, B reports back that Brad didn’t call but then called to apologize for not calling.  He’s been busy, you see, and he’ll call this next week when he has more free time.  She confronts him at church and becomes upset when she thinks he doesn’t want to talk to her.  So she approaches him after the service and asks if he even still wants to be friends.  He immediately answers yes, and B susses out that Brad had no idea that girls get upset when guys don’t call.  She also thinks he has never dated before.  They make plans to hang out later in the week.

Two days later B reports that Brad did come over and they made out.  Brad thinks she is beautiful and really likes her and just had to get over his nerves.  However, they are not yet “dating.”  B is glad she tolerated Brad’s shyness.  Other women in the thread congratulate B.

Yesterday (about two weeks later) B posts that she is no longer livid that Brad stood her up twice and then called four days after the fact to inform her that he was too busy for her and that he didn’t want B to get her hopes up for a relationship.  B is infuriated that Brad would kiss her and then do this.  B tries to get the last salvo in by telling Brad that she gave up hope after he stood her up the second time.  B’s girlfriends console her with talk of kicking him in the nuts.

Dr. Haley’s prognosis:  Brad was never that interested in B.  Most of the work in their “relationship” was on B’s end.  Brad, however, was probably consumed with churchian guilt over using B for smoochies and hence broke it off.

Male C reports that things are “going well” with the girl he is dating, but for the fact that she often will not contact him for a WEEK.  C finds this “frustrating.”

Dr. Haley’s prognosis:  C is this girl’s beta orbiter.  Her tingle for him, on a scale from 1 to 10, is around a 1.5.

How to write a beta profile.

Boundless has a new blogger by the name of Matthew. Here’s an excerpt from his introductory post:

I’m excited to be blogging here. Why? First of all, I’ve been reading Boundless for about six years, so I’m a little bit emotionally invested in the site. Also, I think we could use more single guys one here. Can I get an “amen”?

(That’s the first time I’ve ever said “Can I get an ‘amen’?” And I promise it’ll be my last. I’ll leave those kind of comments to Lisa A.)

OK, so, how about I share a little bit about myself here. Considering that you could read my bio, I’ll keep the cutesy details to a minimum. Mainly just some Boundless-type deets.

Such as: I mentioned above the fact that I’m single — contentedly single. That’s not to say I don’t want to be married; I certainly do. I should admit, though, that I’ve become truly, legitimately “marriage minded” only in the last little while.

…..

Also: I’m 27. Which feels so much younger than I thought it would back when I was 17. As it turns out, I’m enjoying being in my late 20s: I have enough experience out in the world — career-wise and otherwise — that it seems people are beginning to take me seriously. And I feel like I’ve honed in on what it is I want to do with my life — be a professor. So I guess getting older isn’t all bad.

Overly chipper, overly wordy, overly cutesy, on-the-nose, and super qualifying.  He has Future Youth Pastor written all over him.

One of these days I’ll do a post on writing, but here is a very good example of how to write about yourself in a way that advertises that you find cats more exciting than women.

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.

OT: Go see Inception.

Inception was so good that I’m hijacking my own blog to tell people to see it.

Comments are open to spoilers, so reader beware if you haven’t seen the movie yet.

…Okay, slightly on-topic:  all of the actors, both male and female, in this movie are beautifully lensed and a pleasure to look at.  However, even though Tom Hardy’s Eames has the devil-may-care alpha swagger, I was most taken with Cillian Murphy’s Robert Fischer.