Pugsley’s story shows the folly of the celibate boyfriend:
When I met my then boyfriend-now husband, I told him right away that I was saving myself for marriage and he was fine with that because it was my body, my choice and he loved me.
We were together for six years before we got married.
Not surprisingly, her celibate boyfriend went on to become her celibate husband. Part of this has to come from the selection process. When a young woman sets out to find a celibate boyfriend instead of a husband, her selection criteria are going to be totally different. A young woman looking for a husband will look for the best man she can attract, a man who fits the role of a husband and whom she can fall head over heels in love with. A celibate boyfriend on the other hand is a totally different animal. She needs to find someone without better options than to sign on as her official beta orbiter. She also needs to find someone whom she isn’t too attracted to, or she might slip up herself. Then after a suitable number of years of proving that she wasn’t in any hurry to marry (and most likely attaining her feminist merit badge), the celibate boyfriend is very often converted into a husband.
Again, this isn’t the biblical model. The biblical model says marry if you burn with passion, then do it like rabbits. The churchian model says to prove you really are in love by waiting to marry, most often several years, in a celibate romantic relationship. The modern (unbiblical) view is that romantic love is purer than sex, and is what makes sex and marriage moral. This overlooks the fact that like sex, romantic love is for marriage, and marriage is what makes sex and romantic love moral.
Who waits six years to marry someone????? That’s torture, plain and simple.
What of Jacob who wait’s 7 years for Rachel?
I know it’s the old testament. But this is Israel, God’s man. Why would he make him wait that long?
Not the best story for continued marital bliss tert!
He actually waited 14, but who’s counting..
@tertioptus says:
Actually it was 14 years. Either way, this isn’t presented as the biblical model for courtship, as something to emulate.
This is a new one on me. A much more common path is non-celibate boyfriend to celibate husband.
How old were they when they married? Maybe I overlooked it in the article? If they met at, say, 13 6 years makes a bit of sense. If they met at 16 6 years makes no sense.
From the article: “I realized that I couldn’t figure out how to be both religious and sexual at the same time. I chose sex.”
If this is a problem for you you are doing both wrong. I can’t entirely blame her because what she was fed was absolutely wrong (well, for the most part. The premise was sound).
From the article: “I’m now thoroughly convinced that the entire concept of virginity is used to control female sexuality.”
Why not male, too? They also are asked to wait but that doesn’t matter because male.
The only reason that she feels this way is because “purity” was idolized for her and they waited too long allowing that to become central in her view. We are a society that over thinks, overanalyzes. In those 6 years she favored herself- her supposed purity, her body, her her her- over her husband. She thinks it was always all about him but it’s clear it wasn’t. It’s been about her since the beginning. It was about her when she lost her virginity and cried in the bathroom and continued to feel ashamed- “I’m no longer special” was her thought process. It continues to be about her now. That’s the only reason she thinks things are fixed- because now everyone is focusing on her and her pleasure while her husband is an invisible supporter. This was not about waiting for purity or even pragmatism’s sake it was about waiting for her. Because she’s special, no doubt. She was special because of her purity and now she is special because of her empowerment.
What I am getting at here in my longwindedness is that the whole idea of waiting was, no doubt, invented by a woman or by a beta male trying to please a woman. Make it about her for wedded bliss. How’s that working out for them?
@feministhater, wasn’t that presented as essentially a manipulative dirty action on the father’s part? it certainly wasn’t the norm or the ideal.
Samantha and Ian got married at age 21, in 2010 I believe. I’m not sure what “together for six years” means since if she were still within that church’s framework at age 15 then they were not allowed to date or court for at least half of those six years.
@Margery
Regardless of her age, if she wasn’t old enough to pick a husband, she shouldn’t have been picking a man, period. This is a crucial problem with the celibate boyfriend. It makes it seem that foolishness is wise.
So if they got married at 21, started dating/courting at 15, they should have gotten married in half the time.
Hmmm,..let’s see if I can rephrase this so as not to offend Earl again…
Ah, I find it’s a testament to God’s power that Christian ever manage to breed at all anymore.
*runs for the exit*
The article didn’t say…or at least I didn’t catch on as to how old they were when they got married.
Anyhow, this is the folly of what traditional feminism (chivalry) is…the old “if you love me you’ll wait” gambit. Part of it is the over-forceful job that people do in teaching about sex, but a lot of it is the man falling into “preserving the beautiful moral flower” (as taught, sex is evil), and losing dominant frame.
Having an attitude throughout courtship towards a prospective wife of “you’re mine, I’m going to make use of your body in every good way possible…repeatedly…and often…when the time is right” is the better way to go rather than to supplicate oneself at the altar of woman and be purposefully asexual in order to satisfy the traditional feminist thought that the woman is pure, and holy, and all that.
True love waits. But true love claws at the door hungrily in anticipation.
Well yes, in a reality based world, they should have probably gotten married when she was 15 or 16. In a feminist world, that’s 20 years too early, and she should have been sexting for at least 15-20 years prior to marriage, as well as selling her soul to big corporates.
I agree, in reality 15 or 16. I tried to get married underage and they do not make it easy nor is it easy to get a full time job of any sort underage.
In this world and especially in the modern Christian world I really question what she meant by “together”.
If her father was truly intent on preserving her purity, why let her establish this steady boyfriend relationship as a teen to begin with? Why were she and her boyfriend spending time alone, as she described, where she claims to have been repeatedly tempted? Why teach young Christian women chastity and then leave them alone and unsupervised with a boyfriend and wait to see if they fail? The whole notion of romance outside of marriage while demanding chastity is not only unbiblical, it is sadistic to all involved.
Keep in mind that Jacob would have been perfectly willing to marry Rachel the moment he saw her – it was Laban who made Jacob prove himself worthy by performing labor for seven years before the wedding: then the old codger tricked him into marrying Leah and extorted another seven years of work from him.
But keep in mind that after the seventh year Jacob was getting it on the regular from Leah (she bore him children), while he was still working for Rachel’s… um… hand, in marriage. Jacob kept his growing family around for another six years after his obligations were over, so he must have been okay with the eventual arrangement to some degree. Nonetheless, as Dalrock noted: the situation wasn’t ideal for anyone (except Laban). Leah married a man who overtly loved her sister more. Rachel had to wait 14 years for her wedding. (This assumes that the “week” referred to in Genesis 29: 28 denotes a seven year period, which is the common understanding. Either way, they had to wait a long time.) Jacob had to go celibate for seven years, and eventually had to work 14 years to get Rachel.
Kids – don’t try this at home.
_____________________________________________
As for the celibate boyfriend thing – I don’t see the point. It’s a cultural artifact from a dysfunctional culture. When I met the then-future MRS Lyn87 on a blind date (Christian dating service in the days before the internet), we both knew almost right away. We were engaged two months after we met and married about two months after that. Long engagement to plan a big wedding? Screw that: Get ‘er dun… we gots neeeeds!
We ended up having a bargain-basement ceremony that cost us around $200 – reception included. Even then, we sort of wish we had just eloped and been done with it.
June 19, 2010.
http://www.weddingbycolor.com/sammy0415
It’s not that I’m that good, it’s that Google (and Alta Vista before that) trained their algorithms on me, apparently.
@Lyn87 re: “um … hand”
lol
Again, this isn’t the biblical model. The biblical model says marry if you burn with passion, then do it like rabbits.
Through out history and possibly still in some parts of the world today, the biblical model also includes any who were married to someone that was chosen for them. This means keeping their marriage vows and obligations to someone whom they did not choose. So attraction or not, the obligations are there. Of course in societies where parents arrange marriages, societal expectations probably reinforce the keeping of these obligations.
The teaching of the church in which she was raised.
“Marriage is the uniting of one man and one woman in covenant commitment for a lifetime. It is God’s unique gift to reveal the union between Christ and His church and to provide for the man and the woman in marriage the framework for intimate companionship, the channel of sexual expression according to biblical standards, and the means for procreation of the human race.”
http://www.idlewildbaptist.org/beliefs.php
Looking for points of agreement here and distinguishing them from controversial things. Men agree that sex after marriage is Ok. Before marriage, sex is controversial. Women believe that sex before and after marriage is controversial. Women should always have the right to say “no”–they agree about that. And they agree that husbands should keep asking for sex. Otherwise, they would be unable to deny their husbands sex, which is one of the chief joys of many women.
Amirite?
why is this written like it’s the man’s fault? it isn’t. she was a nutjob who was hoping an angel would appear & give her a pat on the back for waiting.
Lyn87 says:
“Nonetheless, as Dalrock noted: the situation wasn’t ideal for anyone (except Laban). Leah married a man who overtly loved her sister more. Rachel had to wait 14 years for her wedding.”
It gets worse. Leah was jealous of Rachel, because Jacob loved Rachel, not Leah. Rachel was jealous of Leah, because Leah bore Jacob children and Rachel couldn’t (at first).
Rachel therefore gave Jacob her maidservant as a concubine to bear Jacob children in Rachel’s place. Leah then retaliated by also giving Jacob her maidservant. That’s how Jacob ended up with 12 sons and an unknown number of daughters.
All that strife and jealousy poisoned Jacob’s family, and led to disturbing acts like nine of his sons attempting to kill one of his sons, but then changing their minds and selling him into slavery instead, and one of Jacob’s sons having a sexual affair with one of Jacob’s concubines.
The Bible mostly presents the patriarchs and their families as examples of how we should NOT live.
Rollo Tomassi says:
August 18, 2014 at 10:59 am
“I find it’s a testament to God’s power that Christian ever manage to breed at all anymore.”
And yet, Christians continue to have more children than the non-religious. For example, I have eight kids.
Beat that.
@JDG
You are confusing the terms biblical and historical. What I described is what the Apostle Paul advises in 1 Cor 7. But yes, once married you are expected to honor your vows.
Oops! Another typo. The paragraph should should read:
Through out history and possibly still in some parts of the world today, the biblical model also includes many who were married to someone that was chosen for them. This means keeping their marriage vows and obligations to someone whom they did not choose. So attraction or not, the obligations are there. Of course in societies where parents arrange marriages, societal expectations probably reinforce the keeping of these obligations.
I was referring to Christians in marriage.
Dalrock, I didn’t see your response until after I posted my correction.
@ Lyn87 says:
“We were engaged two months after we met and married about two months after that. Long engagement to plan a big wedding? Screw that: Get ‘er dun… we gots neeeeds!
We ended up having a bargain-basement ceremony that cost us around $200 – reception included.”
I proposed to my wife when she attended my Officer Basic Course graduation. She planned our wedding while I attended the Sapper Leader Course. We married when I arrived home from the SLC, and ten days later she dropped me off at the airport for my first combat deployment.
The only drawback was that I was gaunt and half-starved after the SLC, so my mama stuffed me silly over the few days before the wedding. At least I had a nice tan (on my face and hands, anyway).
An addendum to my earlier post:
My wife and I were both celibate before we got married. I had just turned 25 and she had just turned 20 – so the idea of spending a long time not having sex was just absurd, and since we weren’t going to commit fornication, the celibate boyfriend/girlfriend thing didn’t last a moment longer than it needed to.
Of course most couples (even churchians) are not waiting until marriage to have sex. As Robert What? very astutely noted, “This is a new one on me. A much more common path is non-celibate boyfriend to celibate husband.”
I think the trend Dalrock notes is enabled by a great deal of denial. Churchians like to pretend that all the young attendees (especially the females) are not doing it like bunnies, so they get to follow the Churchian version of the feminist script for their daughters (“Have lots of (whisper)celibate(whisper) relationships while you… Go to college! Start a career! Enjoy your youth!”). Their daughters are doing all the things the rest of the girls are doing, but by averting their eyes to the bobobo-like behavior in the Young Singles Group, they cling to the idea that their daughter’s relationships are more-or-less chaste.
____________________________________________
Another personal anecdote: I have a niece who always wanted to be a wife and mother. She did go to college to study a hard science and met a Navy vet (older – still celibate). They got engaged relatively quickly, and planned the wedding a few days before her 20th birthday – she wanted to already be married by the time she turned 20. They’ve been married a few years now, they have two kids, they go to the same church we do, and my wife and I just sent them on a little trip for their anniversary last weekend.
Oscar,
There was no war going on (other than the Cold War) when I met my wife, so we lacked the urgency of the, “I only have a few days before I go to the war” situation that you did. I was a First Lieutenant at the time on my first assignment after my initial training (long schools, long story). Still… I spent the third night after our wedding in an underground bunker.
@JDG
Likewise. It sounds like we are in closer agreement than I originally understood.
A man who accepts “wait until marriage” is showing that he can exercise self control and put his values ahead of his urges. A man who who is willing to wait for six years is showing that his urges aren’t very strong. A woman who chooses that man isn’t interested in a lover.
@Lyn87, loved your marriage story lol
I clicked on the story link and found this quote towards the bottom, “My feminist husband was horrified that I’d let him touch me when I didn’t want him to. He made me promise I’d never do anything I didn’t want to do ever again. We stopped having sex”. Uh…maybe the husband is gay or severely brainwashed? And what type of person describes their husband as “feminist”?
For what it’s worth, I think Christians should only wait a few months to get married.
“A man who who is willing to wait for six years is showing that his urges aren’t very strong. A woman who chooses that man isn’t interested in a lover.”
Crowhill has just edged out theadsgamer for best comment so far in this thread. Clearly I need to up my “comment game.”
Re: geo-truthiness.
Ian’s parents have lived in Maryland for many years, including many years prior to 2010. Ian has no family tree relatives in the Charlotte, much less Idlewild, area. Also for some reason Samantha’s father relocated to NewYork in 2009, although he’s back managing a restaurant as of a year ago, and Samantha’s mother is going by a different last name.
Probable scenario: Samantha met Ian in college, and a lot of other things she’s saying are similarly exaggerated to say the least.
Agreed, and, I never really got the supposed “problem” that romantic love was supposed to address.
He’s a boy. She’s a girl. Put two 18-year old kids together in a room, and barring some pronounced physical or mental handicap, they’ll end up “in love” sooner rather than later. It’s just as valid a way to produce marriage as what we’ve got now.
Boxer
Dalrock, didn’t you write about this exact same thing with Lolo “I’m a virgin” Jones, or whatever her last name was? Or was that Rollo? One of you wrote about her and said how it was risky that if a woman got the wrong mindset, and ended up staying a virgin too long, it becomes part of her identity?
I can sympathize with the writer, my parents were the same way, the sort that felt some burning need to make negative comments whenever they saw a couple kissing or a girl not dressed completely purely, or romance in a movie between unmarrieds. And now, out of the three of us that were raised that way, none of us are remotely normal. My brother is 25, single, never even had a steady girlfriend. I’m 22, same. My younger sister rebelled, ran off at age 17, and proclaims she’s bisexual now. .
Reminds me of what a pastor I knew, John Fictner of Liberty Church in Marietta, said once. “A thing that kills a lot of new driver is, they’ll drift a little off the road, then jerk the wheel into the opposite direction and end up in a head-on collision. There’s a ditch on each side of the road, so don’t overreact.”
Salon… Horrible place for a story like this. I am sure it is embellished to heighten anti-church sentiment, not that much of it doesn’t ring true.
Look, dating for six years is just ridiculous, but don’t you need a little time to figure out if the person you’re marrying is what he/she claims to be? Making a lifelong covenant before God and man–you ought to do due diligence to ensure that your intended spouse is not a sociopath. When communities were smaller and more local, it was easier for family members to “vet” a potential matchup than it typically is today.
I hope Pugsley isn’t her real name. If so, she’s just completely humiliated her husband. He looks like a loser.
For the record, Jacob only waited 7 years (+1 week) for Rachel. Read the story for yourselves. I get touchy when Bible stories get turned into myths.
Anyway, that certainly seems impressive. We’re also told that the time flew by for Jacob b/c he was so in love. Curious if that has a deeper meaning in this context.
Anyway, Pugsley’s story is more evidence of solipsism rather than a knock on Christianity. The woman wants everything to be about her, and finds virginity gives her that spotlight. She says feels she’s “soiled” after consummating her marriage, which is exactly the opposite of Biblical teaching, and more about the fact that she’s no longer going to be in the limelight. Heck, she could even have a baby, and those things get all the attention!
@archerwfisher
Yes. I wrote about Lolo in a previous post titled The folly of the celibate boyfriend.
I’m 98 percent this is her:
https://twitter.com/samanthapugsley
She looks like a butch dyke. I’m guessing that her virginity was largely involuntary.
Boxer
@archerwfisher:
http://therationalmale.com/2012/07/09/the-adolescent-social-skill-set/
It was less about virginity per se than clinging to an adolescent social skill set, but yeah…
Late Term Virgins is a better one:
http://therationalmale.com/2011/12/23/late-term-virgins/
@Crowhill
It is typically worse than this, because there is typically no promise of marriage nor a timeline to make this decision. This is the distinction between boyfriend and fiancé, although the distinction is very often blurred in our deliberately ambiguous SMP.
Were I younger and unmarried, I’d probably chat her up because I find her cute. But, I’m an outlier who likes short hair on women and women who don’t flirt with being skeletally thin.
@Boxer
I’m one that can see a bit of beauty in just about any woman who takes care of herself, but that one…let’s just say that picture will make great natural birth control.
According to this site, she’s 24….
http://www.samanthapugsley.com/711905-biography-cv
I believe the text around the story for Rachel and Jacob indicates he got her right away, but was then obligated to server 7 years for her. That sounds more reasonable to me. He still had to “fulfill her week,” but I am not convinced he waited 7 more years.
Dr Torch writes, “For the record, Jacob only waited 7 years (+1 week) for Rachel. Read the story for yourselves. I get touchy when Bible stories get turned into myths.”
That may or may not be correct. The term “week” is used in the Bible to denote a group of seven units of time. We currently consider those units of time to be literal, 24-hour days, but that is not always the case in Scripture. In Daniel Chapter 9, for example, the term weeks refers to periods of seven years. That’s why I was careful to write this:
(This assumes that the “week” referred to in Genesis 29: 28 denotes a seven year period, which is the common understanding. Either way, they had to wait a long time.)
From the context it is possible (perhaps even likely) that Laban allowed Jacob to marry Rachel at the beginning of his additional seven year period of servitude, but one cannot say that definitively. In any case, Jacob had to work seven years as an incel to get Laban’s permission to marry one of his daughters – even if she wasn’t the one he expected.
About 2 years ago I would have told my daughters and sons stay virgins, to get school in and learn and then marry around 25-30. I have completely come around to Darlock’s stance: stay virgins, find someone you love, and get married ASAP and do it like rabbits. The idea of trying to build a life without the marriage and thus by Christ without the sex is crazy. Get married by 22-23 if at all possible.
Note the key reference:
[Gen 29:28, 30 KJV] 28 And Jacob did so, and fulfilled her week: and he gave him Rachel his daughter to wife also. … 30 And he went in also unto Rachel, and he loved also Rachel more than Leah, and served with him yet seven other years.
This indicates the 7 years were after he got Rachel as wife. Reading the whole section it seems more like a summary of what happened than a step-by-step guide.
So I thought, ‘Is she a fattie’? – well not exactly but almost and though those jugs are ginormous but you would not be exactly over-proud to take her home to your parents – and what has that poor dude been doing for the six years until his marriage? Porn, Homosexuality, some other woman? This is what the alleged (because I don’t believe her as you will see and I see from Twitter that I am not the only doubter) former professional virgin and all round narcissist writes about herself: Samantha is an English studies freelance writer and photographer. She is a married bi-sexual (i.e. adulteress) and is also passionate about female sexuality, gender equality and mental health reform. Mental health note. In short whilst she was saving herself she appears to have been muff-diving. Sorry Samantha that does not count towards your virginal status.
Her article is of course merely an opportunity to bash Christians as she flirts with Atheism. I too was told by my clerical teachers not to do certain things. In hindsight by the way I think they were right, but did it stop me? Of course not indeed if anything it was a barrier to be broken and at the earliest possible time. For a girl who complains on Twitter about sexual harassment she puts up an awful lot of photos of herself especially of her chest.
A rather confused young woman and on a Jenny Erikson scale out of ten I’d say about eleven.
Can we find more about her poor (presumably gay) husband.
It’s a growing trend to see girls pledge purity until marriage. But the mistake is purity in conjunction with the incessant bleating at these young men and women to WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! for marriage. WAIT until all the stars are exactly aligned just right. WAIT until you’re done with college. WAIT until you’re done with grad school. WAIT until you have the exact job you want. WAIT until you’re living where you want. WAIT until you have a house. WAIT WAIT WAIT.
Look. The time will never be right for marriage. You will never have enough time, enough money, a good enough job, a big enough house. If you love each other enough and you burn with passion, and she respects him and can follow him and can fall head over heels for him; then she should marry him. If he loves her and burns with passion to sex her, then he should marry her.
Robert What? touched on this at the top of the thread. What’s more common than celibate BF to celibate husband is slut having sex with men who won’t marry her and whom she isn’t really thinking about marriage with; to marrying a beta orbiter whom she can control with ladling out sex in dribs and drabs.
@Bucho, she’s recently 25, making her 18 when she wrote requesting moar gory horror-sex stories.
http://www.amazon.com/forum/thriller?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=Fx2QR0B8FFJIDUZ&cdMessage=Mx8P310KIIVUW9&cdPage=1&cdSort=oldest&cdThread=Tx43O8COU4AEXL
From what I can glean she was goth in high school for at least a little while. The ONLY connection she might have with Ian from before college that I can find (with one finger …) is a Neopet she may have made in his honor when she was 15. So it is possible they were “together” online for a few years before college.
While the linked story clearly shows a potential downside to waiting for marriage, and in general I’m inclined to agree with “The Follow of the Celibate Boyfriend,” I’d be interested in an honest treatment of what “when passion burns get married post-haste” is supposed to look like in the modern age. I’m not convinced that early marriage is the panacea that it is sometimes made out to be. (Part of this may be from my own experience, having gotten at 21.) It seems that a lot of the pro-early-marriage people are looking wistfully back on a bygone age where adulthood started much earlier. Now, one can argue that maybe it should start earlier than it does, but education of at least four years post high school is required in many fields. This may or may not be wise on the part of society, but it is a fact. “Passion” starts “burning” somewhere around 14 for most people. Even if we assume, for the sake of argument, that women should not be educated beyond a bare minimum, Christian men are still in a pickle if we’re going to require that they be able to show the ability to support a family prior to marriage and sex.
So, rather than ask the question of what should be done at the societal level, let’s ask the question:
What would you recommend to your son and to your daughter given the realities of modern society and why? Do you see any potential problems or caveats with your recommendation?
Okrahead @ 11:07 am:
“If her father was truly intent on preserving her purity, why let her establish this steady boyfriend relationship as a teen to begin with? Why were she and her boyfriend spending time alone, as she described, where she claims to have been repeatedly tempted? Why teach young Christian women chastity and then leave them alone and unsupervised with a boyfriend and wait to see if they fail? The whole notion of romance outside of marriage while demanding chastity is not only unbiblical, it is sadistic to all involved.”
You nailed it. The Churchians are violently schizophrenic on marriage and sexuality, pushing the chaste to extreme self-denial while simultaneously enabling the feral to run free.
Their true colors show when the Christian Betas start asking for a pre-mortem reward.
Bucho says:
August 18, 2014 at 1:13 pm
My exact reaction to the picture on her site: http://cheezburger.com/6264363008
Dalrock, this is my first comment, I generally like your blog, but the above frame is just a dead-end. I know several (at least a dozen come into my mind right now, including my sister and my brother-in-law) christian couple (Eastern Europe), started dating before their twenties (say 18), both christian, both chaste, first relationship for the most. Once the guy graduated, he proposed her, and married soon thereafter. Before the graduation, they could have not married, because they did not have a background to start a common life, and in most cases the parents did not have enough money to support them.
I am pretty sure that they struggled with temptation, but they did not have sex before marriage, and as far as I know in each case that I can think both of them were virgins before they married. Of course, when the guy proposed her, the she accepted at once (I’ve never heard a girl who refused a proposal in the church.)
Well, probably, that is not the case here, but in general, I do not think girls delaying marriage (at least not here). Usually, couples here marry right after the graduation. (And yes, I’ve heard some girl complaining that they find it too late.)
What would you recommend for them? If they are approached by a christian boy, just refuse him because he is only 18, and cant support a family? Or tell him to wait for, say 5 more years?
From Pugsley’s article:
“When he did, I obliged. I wanted nothing more than to make him happy because I loved him so much and because I’d been taught it was my duty to fulfill his needs. But I hated sex.
“My feminist husband was horrified that I’d let him touch me when I didn’t want him to. He made me promise I’d never do anything I didn’t want to do ever again. We stopped having sex. He encouraged me to see a therapist and I did. It was the first step on a long journey to healing.
“When I have sex with my husband, I make sure it’s because I have a sexual need and not because I feel I’m required to fulfill his desires.”
There is always a horribly distorted view of sex and a woman’s sexual role in marriage whenever these discussions are had. A wife is supposed to be sexually available to her husband at all times. She is supposed to give her husband sex when he wants it. Look at it this way: Would a wife put up with a husband who said “well, I’ll work when I feel like it. I’ll give you money to take care of the family when I feel like it, or I think it’s a good idea, or when I decide you need it”. Would a wife put up with that? Didn’t think so. So it is with sex and a husband’s view of it.** But women don’t want this. They don’t want to be totally sexually available to their husbands, for many reasons, chief among them are that most wives just do not desire their husbands sexually. This is a problem because most women are having sex with men who are more sexually desirable than they can get for marriage.
The other prime reason that women don’t want to be sexually available to their husbands is if they are, then they cede a lot of control in the marriage to the husband. A woman before marriage is able to control men by using sex and sexual access. Sex, sex appeal and sexual access are the greatest measures of a woman’s power, and if she gives them completely and totally to one man, she has given up most of her power. She doesn’t want to do this, of course, because that would require her to submit and trust, and what if he screws it up?
** NOTE TO liberals, feminists and other dipshits: I AM NOT SAYING THAT A WIFE IS CONSENTING TO RAPE. I am not saying a wife must have sex when sick or injured or recovering from childbirth. No loving husband would demand sex under those circumstances. I AM, however, saying that a lot of wives unreasonably withhold and limit sexual access. No wife is too busy that she can’t take 20 minutes out of her schedule to take care of her husband’s need. And if she is, then her priorities are screwed up. I am also saying that if a woman doesn’t consent to having sex with a particular man when HE wants to and NOT just when SHE wants to, then she should not marry that man and should not marry at all, because she has a distorted and improper view of marriage.
I’m guessing she was around 18 when she got engaged. Not sure what the story is on Mr. P. I’m guessing he’s in the IT field….
Since someone has already found who her husband is, I’ll post this….
http://www.mywedding.com/samanthaandian/index.html
@Boxer says:
“I’m 98 percent this is her:
https://twitter.com/samanthapugsley”
So irritatingly artsy-fartsy!
@jf12 says:
“she’s recently 25, making her 18 when she wrote requesting moar gory horror-sex stories.
http://www.amazon.com/forum/thriller?_encoding=UTF8&cdForum=Fx2QR0B8FFJIDUZ&cdMessage=Mx8P310KIIVUW9&cdPage=1&cdSort=oldest&cdThr”
Someone please explain: how does this…
… square with this?
“There is something about erotic horror that just gets my attention. I think it may be the danger of sensuality mixed with the shock of gore. There is nothing like an erotic horror experience. Unfortunately, I have not had luck in finding many.
I have read everything I could get my hands on by Richard Laymon. He is the perfect read. Things get violent, and when you least expect it, there’s an intriguing aspect of sex that just makes everything…interesting.”
And finally it all fits together. I promise, all free, all public knowledge.
http://www.mywedding.com/samanthaandian/stories.html
Ian’s (“Pugs”) attraction to the supernatural started earlier than Samantha (“Sammy”), at the latest at approximately 13. He was online all night every night, totally caught up in horror, satanic, and photorealistic fantasy murder/sacrifice images, video, stories, and bulletin boards. He cooled off from his real interests by more boring stuff, including attempts at “hacking” WoW , Hello Kitty revenge porn (don’t ask), and bullying younger kids at normal gamer sites.
At one of these sites, Sammy was attracted to Pugs’ evilness, and by age 15 they had done some blood rituals for each other (not making this up). Still totally online relationship for some years. Her family is in turmoil for a few years, but the cause/effect is difficult to sort out. Against his parent’s wishes, he joins her as soon as she is legally emancipated, and asks her to marry him within weeks of meeting in person. For several years physically together she keeps getting more and more into the local satanic/horror scene,while he gets less and less into it. She gets some smattering of jobs, not enough to support living on her own, so some money comes from father or boyfriend, and she nearly flunks out.
There isn’t enough easy info to determine where they usually actually slept, but they were definitely at best technically virgins at the wedding. They get married. He buckles down and gets student awards and a series of nice jobs. She is flaking worse and worse, loses even her lousiest part-time job. No exaggeration 90% of her “art” comprises her taking pictures of herself getting killed and/or sacrificed especially in her wedding dress, the kind of stuff that used to turn Ian on. Apparently they feel a need to escalate, incorporating other women into their bed.
Lyn87 wrote “That may or may not be correct”
You’re trying too hard. The marriage week was the custom of the day for the married couple, a week to spend together w/o other responsibilities. Pretty much what we call a honeymoon.
Your response is thus silly.
@jf12 says:
“And finally it all fits together. I promise, all free, all public knowledge.
http://www.mywedding.com/samanthaandian/stories.html”
None of that bizarre garbage is even remotely Christian. In fact, quite the opposite. Yet, Salon.com didn’t even bother to question or check up on her supposed Christian faith.
Never let the facts get in the way of a good Christian-bashing, I guess.
Big wedding; Bridesmaids, Grooms Under Grooms, Under Maids – and its own web-site – I’ve never seen that before. Honeymoon in Mandingo land. She is obviously a romantic at heart.
‘I didn’t ask to be raped’ as she reveals her fat thighs and fatter stomach. Don’t tell me she is a rape victim too. Her body her choice but that is a crime against felt tip.
Perfect wedding so I look forward to the perfect divorce.
Looking at that wedding album, she has definitely chubbed up quite a bit since then.
@ Lyn87, crowhill
“A man who who is willing to wait for six years is showing that his urges aren’t very strong.
Meh, his urges might be strong and his self-control might be stronger. One thing’s for sure. She had six years of enjoyment blue-balling her fiance.
A woman who chooses that man isn’t interested in a lover.
Maybe she likes using him as her sex-denial toy with many years of sadistic happiness in view.
Sorry to bust the meme … celibate man, celibate woman = four kids and a mutually satisfying relationship. When God’s way doesn’t work it’s because we try to shove our way into the middle of it and justify it.
Welcome Orangeman,
I’m not familiar with Eastern European customs on the matter, and my post was more regarding what we are seeing in the West. With that in mind, approached for what? To be his girlfriend? To be his betrothed? to be engaged? If one of the latter, are there strong customs in place to enforce this? Would either of them be doing something morally wrong if they fell in love with another, or a series of others, during the 5 year period before marriage? Would the young woman be wrong if she got tired of waiting after two years, and married a man who was ready to marry? Would the man be wrong if he decided after a few years that another young woman would make a better prospective wife, and swapped her into the wife-in-waiting position?
Women believe that sex before and after marriage is controversial.
‘Cept when in thrall to tingles.
“It is typically worse than this, because there is typically no promise of marriage nor a timeline to make this decision. This is the distinction between boyfriend and fiancé, although the distinction is very often blurred in our deliberately ambiguous SMP.”
The blurring (often obliteration) of that distinction is at the root of much parental/societal disengagement with sexual sin in the SMP. It’s no big deal because either the elders did “it” themselves or knew people who did.
The “it” then was premarital sex with a fiance. The “it” for the last twenty years that the elders have been out to lunch is sex with a boyfriend or worse. Both sin, but of an entirely different nature.
“refuse him because he is only 18, and cant support a family?”
You can support a family just fine at 18 if you’re working. You can’t support a family, two cars, a 4 bedroom house, the latest electronics, etc at 18 but you can certainly support a family.
There is no harm or shame in marrying “poor” and building your lives together from there. It’s my personal belief that there is great value in it. Families are only expensive because we make them expensive.
Oscar
None of that bizarre garbage is even remotely Christian. In fact, quite the opposite. Yet, Salon.com didn’t even bother to question or check up on her supposed Christian faith.
Again, this rant appears to have first seen publication at xojane – attempting to use reason, logic, facts, etc. is a waste of time and energy. This rant has many tells of disinformation / propaganda, starting with the “my body, my choice” text early on in the “purity” rant. Again, someone correct me if I am wrong, but the “purity ball” subculture does not use 2nd stage 1970’s feminist tropes such as “my body, my choice”.
This is propaganda. It was not written in good faith. It is propaganda. It contains a mix of facts and fancy, truth and lies (lies by comission and lies by silence). It is intended to propagandize young women.
I can’t put it any clearer than this.
@Anon Reader
The problem is the basic argument is so common as to be cliché. Her story may well be BS, but we are constantly bombarded by this kind of message. Moreover, the basic story of a Christian girl keeping a celibate boyfriend on the hook for years while delaying marriage is one I’ve personally seen, and I would expect others here see this frequently as well. Earlier this year a friend of mine told me about his pastor’s recent college grad daughter not wanting to marry (yet) her boyfriend of 3+ years (he wants to marry, she wants to wait). This wasn’t seen as a scandal in that church because they weren’t having sex, and it is a very conservative church by today’s standards. In fact, there is a strong sense in modern Christianity that not offering to be a celibate boyfriend is a sign of a bad man.
Similarly, there is the commenter Happyhen11 over on the “What is modern marriage for?” thread hand-wringing about the “damage” of teaching young women the importance of virginity before marriage, going on at length about how much she identifies with Pugsly. She is either a troll or just a Christian feminist cliché. I can’t know, but I can respond to the BS argument either way.
Well she admits that she has some mental health issues on one of her sources. How well it is being controlled is questionable, though. I wonder what the state of mind she is in when she has these outbursts that passes as journalism. Whatever it is, I hope she is getting the appropriate help….
DrTorch writes:
Your response is thus silly.
And your certainty about the correctness of your interpretation of an ambiguously-worded passage is not, of course. Thanks for clearing that up.
For the record, I did not say that you were wrong – in fact I said that, “it is possible (perhaps even likely) that Laban allowed Jacob to marry Rachel at the beginning of his additional seven year period of servitude, but one cannot say that definitively.”
Do you really believe that it is literally impossible that the term “week” might have the same meaning in Genesis 29 as it has in Daniel 9 – even though the same Hebrew word – שָׁבוּעַ` – is used in both places, and can mean either seven days or seven years? Because that’s the only way my response could be construed as “silly.”
Look, I’m starting to think that the week in question was probably seven days rather than seven years, but since you admit to getting “touchy when Bible stories get turned into myths,” you ought to tread cautiously where Scripture is not perfectly clear, lest you make some myths of your own.
Oscar/jf12:
Thanks to the links to her web page. You guys are right. She’s sorta short, which she couldn’t help, but once had a nice figure and long hair. Not to let her husband off the hook any. He was once a decent looking and presentable fella also.
I find it interesting to chart the course from “respectable dude with cute girlfriend” to “sloppy looking potbellied neckbeard with angry bulldyke domestic partner”. Adler pointed out that there was never any such thing as a healthy member of a troubled couple, and this makes his point well enough.
Best, Boxer
@Dalrock, the modern Catholic perspective is given in “Love and Responsibility”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_and_Responsibility
later embellished in the ex-cathedra (Pope deliberately acting in his duty as spiritual leader of the Catholic church) teachings of Theology of the Body. Which I will summarize here:
“Man up and stop pestering your wives for sex all the time! Women determine what is right and good and true.”
Lyn87 wrote “Do you really believe that it is literally impossible that the term “week” might have the same meaning in Genesis 29 as it has in Daniel 9”
Impossible is a strong word, granted. But looking at the text from several perspectives:
– The use of years everywhere else in that passage
– The custom of the honeymoon week
– The fact that it says he fulfilled “her” week. Leah’s week. Her bridal celebration. Not his “week” to serve Laban, not Laban’s “week” due to him, not Rachel’s “week” for fulfillment of her bride price. Leah’s week. So how would that week mean 7 years?
Kind of off topic, but Jacob was celibate for at least several decades before Leah and Rachel and the others.
How many of these guys do you suppose started out ‘saving themselves for marriage’?
http://www.reddit.com/r/DeadBedrooms/
One should not mock other people’s misery, but then plastering your life all over the net merely asks for comment.
Her photos are distinctive and put me in mind of Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights: woman alone in a haunted lanscape. The only ones that aren’t are those of her ‘incredibly brave friend’ with the Felt Tip body-writing.
This is what she says about herself on 20th April this year: ‘I’m at a time in my life when I need to make some tough decisions. I don’t want the life of a stay at home wife. I’m not ready for children and stay at home mum status. Now add my anxiety problems and figuring thing out becomes impossible’. Her anxiety problem has a name: General Anxiety Disorder.
At the moment she is on a short holiday minus husband. If she had children to care for she could stop indulging in first world problems but would that be fair on the children.
Ahh yes, yet another man who has achieved the high status marker of ‘celibate husband’ mangina hipster dude. Once the reputation of wives in western society as sexless shrews circulates among the younger generations of single Christian men, how long will it be before they lose interest in marriage completely? Count me out for a start.
It’a always been interesting to me that so many interpret Paul to have meant “it’s better to be married than to burn with passion”, when what he actually meant was “it’s better to marry than to burn in hell because you are committing sins by having sex outside of marriage”. As a practical matter, this does mean that if you can’t control your sexual passion so as to avoid sinning while remaining unmarried, “by all means” you should marry so that you do not burn — but Paul wasn’t saying “it’s better to get married than to be celibate and have blue balls”. For Paul it’s all about whether you can control your sexual passion and avoid sin, not whether you have sexual passion to begin with. Yes, I know that the prevailing Protestant interpretation is “better to marry than to burn with passion”, but it’s just an odd interpretation of what Paul is saying.
Dalrock on the propaganda
The problem is the basic argument is so common as to be cliché. Her story may well be BS, but we are constantly bombarded by this kind of message.
Good propaganda contains enough truth to make it plausible. This makes it more convincing to the target audience. I agree that this is a common story. The first step to dealing with the common story is to recognize when someone is engaged in propagandistic lying, and point that out. IMO.
Those familiar with the purity movement should be among the first to spot the glaring inconsistencies in the propaganda presented to us, because they are obvious distortions of the purity movement vocabulary and goals.
I’m not arguing with anyone’s points. I’m strongly suggesting that trying to deal with a propaganda piece via reason and logic is possibly a waste of time.
“In fact, there is a strong sense in modern Christianity that not offering to be a celibate boyfriend is a sign of a bad man.”
Well, it wouldn’t be the Christian thing to pressure a girl to have premarital sex with you using the threat of breaking up with her.
However, if you want to break up with a girl because you want to get married and she refuses, that’s perfectly reasonable. A fellow can’t waste the best years of his life getting strung along.
Did a check to look this woman up and got this
http://www.xojane.com/author/samantha-pugsley
Samantha Pugsley is an English Studies graduate, freelance writer, and photographer. She’s a married, bisexual, artsy super nerd who loves Marvel, fantasy/science fiction novels, video games and writing fanfiction. She’s incredibly passionate about gender equality, female sexuality and reproductive rights as well as mental health reform.
I highly recommend following the link to see what this woman looks like. When I first read the article I had in my mind some image of a cute little waif, what I clicked on was an obviously mentally ill woman who does not take any care of herself.
I believe Dalrock is probably spot on about her husband. Chances are he is one of these slimy low testosterone weaklings you see blowing around society. No wonder she was disgusted on her wedding night.
But I wonder. Bi-sexual and married? This woman is either being delusional (ie she is claiming a certain sexual status for attention) or has either slept with other women before her marriage or during her marriage. In the first case, she would be another hysterical attention whore, in the second, an adulteress who is married to a weakling.
@Novaseeker, you would have us believe that in addition to instructing us in the first part of 1 Cor 7:9 that marriage is the remedy in this life for those who cannot contain in this life, Paul did not merely amplify in the second part but completely redirected the entire focus, destroying the this-life focus of the first part. “It’s better to hold your nose and go through with the icky thing, instead of going to hell.”
Dalrock,
Happyhen is not a troll, or a feminist (or Christo-feminist). I am familiar enough with her story to know why she is upset by all of this. Unfortunately, it is emotionally jarring enough for her that she cannot explain herself well. And by that I mean she is emotionally projecting and writing to defend this woman because she has projected herself into the woman’s shoes.
Hmmmm,…
Not sure if troll:
Lesbian Fu*ks and Beta Bucks.
@Novaseeker, on the other hand, the missing hell word does make a funny kind of sense as a sort inside joke, given that Paul was definitely advising to not marry if you were able not to. “Given the choice between marriage and hell, it’s somewhat better to choose marriage.”
Oscar says:
August 18, 2014 at 2:06 pm
http://t.co/92DeCQ0Q4B
I’m having a heard time believing we are looking at a potential date rape victim here. Did she really have to say “no!” to some one? Is the percentage of obese girls who have to say “no means no!” very high?
It seems almost as believable as a homeless man being seduced into a marriage.
I told him right away that I was saving myself for marriage
Wow, that takes me back… A young lady I knew in grad-school – she was a freshman when I met her – had a guy on the line who was going through his medical residency and she played that game of “saving herself”. Of course, what he didn’t know was that after they went on a date she would come over to my place to “work the randiness out”. So whenever I hear about a woman saying something like that, I can’t stop thinking of my little freshman. I saw her for four years and the month before her marriage she went off the pill since her plan was to have a baby as quickly as possible, and she thought it would be a turn on to go through the marriage ceremony pregnant. Don’t know if she succeeded on that note, but she did “deliver early”. That was almost 30 years ago. Do know they had a beautiful little girl, that I still get photos of, since I was her “God-father” – I still like that… Of course, she may be his… And hey, if you listen to the feminists, it doesn’t matter who got Momma preggos, it’s the man that pays that is the “father”…
Kind of a self serving viewpoint if you ask me… But it worked pretty well for me… And he got a woman that really enjoyed sex out of the deal….
… the basic story of a Christian girl keeping a celibate boyfriend on the hook for years while delaying marriage is one I’ve personally seen, and I would expect others here see this frequently as well.
Sadly yes. Even in the very conservative churches I am involved with I see daughters and parents of daughters pushing this for the most part. They usually want the kids to be older and finished with college, especially the girls. It makes no sense biologically or biblically IMO (nether does sending them to college IMO). I’m no longer surprised though, as I have learned that conservatives are basically feminists at heart (though often unknowingly).
The bright side of ministering under the above circumstances is watching someone change from a feminist conservative into a biblical Christian. It takes a lot of patience, but I have seen it.
@Cotto
but education of at least four years post high school is required in many fields.
Ten to twenty years ago I might have been inclined to agree with that, but the state of the trades at the moment makes it a better choice (IMHO). It takes less money and less time to get into many in-demand trades. Besides that, there are plenty of alternate options (to 4-year post-secondart) that are just as good, if not better (i.e. avoiding $100k worth of student debt).
I see frequently on Free Northerner and other places that the proper response to endless marriage delay and careerism is to marry very early. Being horny does not entitle you to marry. This has never been a Biblical or traditional model outside of a tribal society. Should a 16 year old girl marry? Possibly, but to a 25 year old man. A man is just going to have to tough it out for a while until there is some sign of responsibility and economic stability. A couple of 16 year olds encouraged to shack up and crank out kids on daddy’s dime are not going to mature normally. The exception might be in a family that has a farm or business that the young man can jump into immediately.
@Anonymous Reader
“Again, this rant appears to have first seen publication at xojane – attempting to use reason, logic, facts, etc. is a waste of time and energy.”
You’re right. Silly me. I keep expecting journalists to – you know – do their job. I need to stop that.
@JDG says:
August 18, 2014 at 6:26 pm
“I’m having a heard time believing we are looking at a potential date rape victim here. Did she really have to say “no!” to some one? Is the percentage of obese girls who have to say “no means no!” very high?”
That’s not what confuses me. I’m confused because, on the one hand she posts an anti-rape photo, and on the other hand she admits to reading what amounts to rape fantasies, and even complains that she can’t find enough of these sick rape fantasies to satisfy her.
But, there I go trying to use logic again.
Oscar, you are referring to Salon.com, what does that site have to do with journalism?
More broadly, if you reflect on the last few years (think of the Prop 8 fallout in California), it should be obvious that “journalism” is not much of a profession any more.
But, there I go trying to use logic again.
LOL!
Yep, happens every time.
@Anonymous Reader says:
August 18, 2014 at 7:38 pm
“Oscar, you are referring to Salon.com, what does that site have to do with journalism?
More broadly, if you reflect on the last few years (think of the Prop 8 fallout in California), it should be obvious that “journalism” is not much of a profession any more.”
Yeah. Exactly. My mistake.
@JDG
To be fair, he wasn’t alone. He had a dog.
To be fair, he wasn’t alone. He had a dog.
LOL!
True enough.
I for one think it’s nice that the lady has stopped worshipping her own vagina, and is now worshipping her own feelings. (the ones she feels with her vagina)
And now there is a whole generation of young “adults” who worship their feelings. (the girls worship their own feelings; the boys worship the girls’ feelings, but have a sense of humor about it)
http://www.girlsaskguys.com/other/q1103596-sex-without-love-is-love-without-sex-is-what
This article is clearly completely fabricated, and designed to re-instill atheist, feminist beliefs.
You guys are just being silly now.
Agree with Edwin. As I stated in the last thread, this is a James Frey-esque fakey-fake to please all the clucking lefty hens and be all anti-Christian.
Shades of that fictional story Dalrock exposed from OK Cupid.
“It’a always been interesting to me that so many interpret Paul to have meant ‘it’s better to be married than to burn with passion’, when what he actually meant was ‘it’s better to marry than to burn in hell because you are committing sins by having sex outside of marriage.'”
Actually, the original interpretation is the correct one, despite what the Gnostics would have us believe. Paul was saying, “If you’re horny, get married.” That’s why God gave most of us a sex drive.
Thankfully, I’m now asexual, so I won’t have to worry about walking that plank.
@just Saying
You let another man marry that whore because it worked out for you. You don’t care that the kid might be yours and on top of that you allowed her to continue involving you in her life after they got married, humiliating her husband even further.
Appreciate your honesty in letting us know what goes on. At the same time, in all honesty, you are garbage and you should not be allowed to live.
Chastity is not synonymous with virginity. It includes virginity but it also extends to sex within marriage. Sex within marriage is chaste and pleasing to god.
Frigidity is not chastity nor is promiscuity. Chastity is promiscuity within marriage and virginity outside of marriage.
It is true Leah’s marriage feast lasted a week, not 7 years. There is a place or two in the Bible where a week implies 7 years, but one should not automatically plug ‘7 years’ in any place where it says a week.
Zodak says:
August 18, 2014 at 11:31 am
“why is this written like it’s the man’s fault? it isn’t. she was a nutjob who was hoping an angel would appear & give her a pat on the back for waiting”
This is EXACTLY my thoughts when I read it. It is also by no means unique to women in marital situations.
As a martial arts instructor, I have watched many men and women obtain black belts under extremely rigorous circumstances.
When men get a black belt, they usually punch the air and want their first post-black belt lesson.
When women get a black belt (in a watered-down version of the men’s black belt!) they expect some spiritual experience to occur to them, and are very frequently depressed when it doesn’t happen. Consequently, they either drop out of the system or we don’t see them for months on end, where they go on some other “spiritual quest”.One even told me that her quest involved “having evolved past my husband” (read: failed at marriage).
I am not making this up.
DrTorch,
I’m going to leave this conversation about Jacob and Laban after this post. I’m the guy who first pointed out that the passage was ambiguous at 11:14 A.M. today. You declared your position to be the only correct possibility at 12:59 P.M.. I reiterated that the passage was not definitive at 1:19 P.M., and gave my reasons why, while agreeing that your explanation was the likely one. You reiterated that only your position could possibly be correct at 2:21 P.M., and called my response “silly.” I showed that it was possible to read the passage either way – even using the Hebrew word that has dual meanings – שָׁבוּעַ` – while once again stating that your position was probably correct. You backed off the word “impossible” at 4:22 P.M., but continued to argue for a position that I had already conceded – twice – was probably correct. Odd: since I’m the guy who first pointed out that the commonly-accepted “year” explanation was not the only one possible.
A72 is also correct at 10:56 that the likely explanation is that it was seven days, but the context allows either one to be possible, since both the honeymoon period and the seven additional years he worked for Laban would be referred to as a week – שָׁבוּעַ` I’ll give you Rachel if you wait for a שָׁבוּעַ`… Then Jacob worked for him for a שָׁבוּעַ`. So this is not just a case of randomly plugging in “years” – Jacob did, in fact, work for Laban for seven more years after that conversation – in “payment” for Rachel’s hand. It seems to me that the word causing us the trouble is the word “she” in verse 27 – if the “she” is Leah, then the passage clearly means seven days – but if the “she” is Rachel, it’s probably seven years. Given the context of verse 26, “she” is probably Leah, thus “days” is probably correct.
Again, I’m not saying that the “day” interpretation is wrong – I’ve repeatedly said that it is likely to be the correct one. I’m responding to your correct statement that mythologizing Bible stories is bad, and that we should tread carefully when we walk where Scripture does not definitively light the way – I would think that would not be controversial. I’m saying that one should be wary of making definitive declarations when more than one explanation is possible. Given that, I’m not sure what we’re disagreeing about.
To any spectators following this – if this seems like a trivial matter, it is not. Whether Jacob served Laban before or after his marriage to Rachel may not matter to us, but the question we’re dealing with is when we can justifiably make definitive doctrinal statements – and that matters A LOT.
Okay. I think we’re all on the same page. I’m done.
I don’t know why, but this pic seems appropriate on several different levels…
Female Roommate..yes or no?
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=903690
I am the wife and the provider…
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=903711
What is heavy petting, exactly?
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=903744
Dalrock,
You see this makes perfect sense. But if you show this to any pastor, most likely they are just going to smile, shrug their shoulders, and say “whatever” because this is just not that important to them from a Biblical standpoint. They are not going to care, not (EVER) going to call out the behavior of women looking only for the celibate boyfriend.
Getting back to the original post, if a young Christian man is looking for a wife, what’s the best way for him tell whether a potential prospect is looking for a husband, or a celibate boyfriend?
@deti
It’s a growing trend to see girls pledge purity until marriage. But the mistake is purity in conjunction with the incessant bleating at these young men and women to WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! for marriage. WAIT until all the stars are exactly aligned just right. WAIT until you’re done with college. WAIT until you’re done with grad school. WAIT until you have the exact job you want. WAIT until you’re living where you want. WAIT until you have a house. WAIT WAIT WAIT.
The annoying thing is that waiting so long increases their chances of failure, which in turn often leads to them rejecting Christian sexual morality, as well as blaming the notion of waiting until marriage for their failure (which is just a little silly). The idea of waiting implies (or rather, entails) that something will eventually happen.
There are days when I wonder if Heartiste will create “waiting Game.”
Regardless of her age, if she wasn’t old enough to pick a husband, she shouldn’t have been picking a man, period. This is a crucial problem with the celibate boyfriend. It makes it seem that foolishness is wise.
Let me expand on the teen dating exception for 6+ years dating.
1. A large Christian subculture exists with parent involvement in their kids dating lives (trying to restrict heavy romantic displays and sex). Assuming for the moment a 16 year old claiming to have dated for 6 years, the first two years may indeed be anything but dating both from learning about each other, motivations, and all the coquetry with none of the meaning, both parental and juvenile. Add in a year or two of education after high school grad, and they’ve been “dating” in a very loose sense, but only seriously for 2 years.
2. Girls are more prone than boys (and I’m talking about boys speaking frankly) to count from the moment everybody know he had the hots for her to proposal as an uninterrupted dating experience SIMPLY for having not dated others in that period and keeping regular contact. Hamster rationalization takes over through all the fast breakups, combines together the time period to fit the “Princess Narrative” i.e. he was always my prince in that time, and surfs into the classical churchianity how-cute-what-a-touching-romance-story affirmation from her peers & older women.
He could’ve easily been postponing to see if she was really the one and gaining the skills for the income to support a family. Blue-pill maybe with ONE-itis, but not necessarily full party to a 6-years of dating experience.
Two other random thoughts:
3. “MY BODY MY CHOICE” makes me sick to my stomach coming out of anyone professing to know Christ as their savior. This is classic sinful attitude, pushed through the female empowerment feminist reframe and bought up by Churchianity wholesale. We were bought at a price, no longer our own (1 Cor 6:20, Ro 12:1). Being saved is no excuse to go back into worldly action (Ro 6) … “my choice” particularly smacks of finding morality if she chose to sin, so long as she’s the one doing the choosing and not somebody else pressuring her.
4. “He loved me” is also cringe-worthy. You can tell from context its the back-wards love. BECAUSE he married up THAT redeemed his past dating and proved his love. Love isn’t manifested in long dating relationships (and Dalrock you hit that one out of the park). It’s still classic Holy-Path-To-Marriage false narrative–I’m going to judge his current love by going into the future and examining the past action and deciding if it was really love if I liked how everything turned out. Compare to relationships that end (Oh, I was more mature than him … he was not good enough for me … any number of reasons) and we know after the fact that it indeed wasn’t love.
“I’m not familiar with Eastern European customs … ”
.
My ancestry is Eastern European and Orthodox.
A while back, in some regions, the custom used to be that a young man in his mid 20s would marry a young woman (completed puberty, able to get pregnant) in her mid teens.
The father watched the boy grow up, the boy watched the girl grow up.
A few years before marriage could become appropriate, an identified (as a strong possibility, and on his way to becoming established) young man would start to participate (to some extent) in the girls family, to ensure compatibility, and to help (in limited ways) with raising her.
In short order it would become obvious that either 1) that pairing would not work, or 2) the girl liked and looked up to the young man, and the young man liked, and enjoyed guiding and protecting, the girl.
By the time she became a young woman and her hormones started raging, she was already receptive to his established dominant position, and the step to marriage (timewise, and as a life change) was relatively small, with minimal to no angst and uncertainty.
Doing something like this in the modern world would be much more difficult, logistically and in other ways, but the principle remains.
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Samantha Rodman makes the case that men are right and women are nuts.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/samantha-rodman-phd/what-women-think-about-sex-vs-reality_b_5601040.html
Not in so many words, of course. In her previous article about what men get wrong (which about the only thing men get wrong is assuming their wives are NOT nuts), she pointed out that the fact that almost all wives deliberately deprive men of sex has nothing to do with what the men do or don’t do. Her basic message is sympathetic, but useless, to men: “Sorry, Charlie.”
@SocietalDecay re: how to tell.
There is not only not just one best way to tell, in most cases there is *no* good way to tell. One way that could work is if he happened to be so attractive that she continually whined that she could hardly keep herself off him. This therefore works for about 0.5% of men.
Yes. A month or two should do it.
Look, people buy houses in which they expect to spend decades, taking on 30+ years of debt, based on a 10-minute walkthrough and a day or two of thinking about it. They help their kids select a college, believing it will determine the trajectory of their success in life, based on some brochures, web site reviews, and an afternoon visit. They hire employees who are critical to their financial success based on half-hour interviews. It’s ridiculous to think you need years to determine whether someone is “compatible” enough with you for marriage.
And the stats bear that out: even people who live together before marriage, often for years, have a similar or worse divorce rate to people who do not. Even living together doesn’t allow them to spot whatever it is between them that will make the marriage fail. The truth is, if you can’t tell someone is psychotic in a a couple months of courtship and a few months of engagement, you wouldn’t be able to spot it if you stretched that out to ten years.
People don’t delay marriage because they need time to vet the other person. They delay marriage because they don’t want to get married yet.
re: living together.
Every properly performed study finds that periods of unmarried cohabitation increase breakup rates. The key understanding for analysis is that for those who eventually marry, the timeclock for divorce starts upon moving in together, not at the wedding. For those who never marry the breakup rate is enormous.
@jf12
Then there’s this gem along the sidebar: “The Very Last Thing I Wanted To Be Was A Twice-Divorced 35-Year-Old Single Mom” http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/07/life-after-divorce-_n_5565474.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular
“I was going to marry, have my two kids, watch them grow, stand arm-in-arm with their father as they walked down the stairs for prom, graduation, leaving for college, and then, when the they left the nest, we’d grow old together, comfortable in our little regimen of gardening, taking trips and bouncing our grandchildren on our knees.
…
“when I became a stay-at-home mom after the birth of our first daughter, things started getting less-than great. When we had our second daughter I realized there was no way I could live the rest of my life like that.”
So in other words, she found out that her fantasy was a fantasy, and rather than facing real life she nope’d on out of there.
And then she found mr, Super-Alpha-Man who dumped her like an Alpha:
“Shortly thereafter, I met the man I was sure was my soulmate. We rushed into the relationship, found ourselves pregnant rather early on and got married. And then, a month after our first anniversary, I discovered his affair — his two year-long affair. His two year-long affair with a close friend of mine. I tried to make it work, because the very last thing I wanted to be was a twice divorced 35-year-old single mom of three young kids. Eventually he decided he no longer wanted to work on us any longer and moved out. I was devastated and sunk into a deep depression. Everyone said “hang in there; it’ll get better.” I couldn’t believe them. But I hung in there, and thanks to my friends, my family, and most importantly, my children, it really did get better.”
Wait…if she found his two-year affair a month after their first anniversary, then how does she say they “rushed into the relationship” and got pregnant “rather early.” Just how long were they together when they were married?
“I’ve since met a wonderful man through online dating. He’s exactly what I want in a partner, all the things I learned through my countless “failures.””
Someone’s gonna have to hamsterlate this part for me, because I’m not sure if “exactly what I want in a partner” is a beta schlub with a phat wallet or a man that makes her go all tingly.
Also, “countless ‘failures'”? she slept with that many men in a period of 3-6 years?
Making up for lost time, I guess.
“I once thought being mid-thirties, twice divorced with three kids was a dating death sentence, but it’s not. It’s just the beginning. ”
It is just the beginning.
The beginning of the end, because as we all know:
she’s reaching the end of her peak in about -15 years.
Not true unfortunately, as you prob know BPDers are incredible about keeping you in the dark to their true personalities until the deal is signed and they have their foot in the door. A very common tactic that ehy have to use, otherwise no-one would touch them with a barge pole.
I favour the Jewish engagement system, wherein they actually live together ala Mary & Joseph and then tie the knot before deciding to consummate.
Hah, the Mark Driscols of this world may prod the men folk to marry their churches single mothers giving the example of Joseph.
And he still married a virgin !
So suck it up marky boy.
Does she seem anxious to get married? That’s probably the best test. Does she talk positively about marriage and children, or does she sprinkle any discussion of marriage with words like “someday” and “yet”? It might be okay if she has a practical reason to wait a while, like if she’s about to start a six-month study program overseas, so she wants to set the date for three months after that to leave some time for planning when she gets back. That’s reasonable. But “I don’t want to get married until after (undetermined number of years of) college, because I can’t imagine planning a wedding while I’m going to school,” is not reasonable.
So in general, does she seem like she wants to get married? It takes time to train a celibate boyfriend and make sure he’s going to be willing to accept an “upgrade” to celibate husband. Delaying marriage for a few years and seeing how he reacts is a critical part of that process.
Yes, I’ve know a few. Read what I said again: if you can’t spot one in a month, you probably won’t be able to spot her in years. As you say, BPDers are excellent at keeping their psychosis hidden for as long as necessary. If anything, the longer you spend with one unawares, the more you’ll get pulled into the madness and the less likely you’ll be to be able to judge her rationally.
The idea that living together first will let the couple test their compatibility for marriage is one of those things that makes sense on paper, but doesn’t work out in practice. Ditto the idea that long engagements make for healthier marriages. We have a couple decades of experience and stats now to prove it.
To me, the best test for a BPDer is catching one in a lie. Then when you confront, you get a long, elaborate explanation that at least makes plausible sense. The key is the explanation – it’s lengthy, it’s tedious, it’s detailed, and it actually could be true. It makes sense but it usually fails the Occam’s Razor test.
BPDers always seem to get themselves into tough spots and always have to lie their way out. You’ll probably catch them in a lie in the first month or two.
“But “I don’t want to get married until after (undetermined number of years of) college, because I can’t imagine planning a wedding while I’m going to school,” is not reasonable.” Cail Corishev
And the degree is usually something like an MSW where they turn around and get a job with the county making 30K a year and paying off (re: future husband will have to work extra hours to pay off) a 90K loan.
@Pro-Truth re: last thing.
She didn’t want to be twice divorced, so she’s setting her cap at thrice.
re: countless.
I agree. I cannot understand why *women* and only women, think that repeating this lesson 289 times means that they are slowly learning to avoid it.
@Cail, re: “People don’t delay marriage because they need time to vet the other person. They delay marriage because they don’t want to get married yet.”
This is the single biggest takeaway of the phenomenon of delayed marriage.
Let’s also remember that Jacob had Leah for those seven years, he definitely had an outlet for his passions, his example does not count as ‘waiting’
The tradition of teaching that Jacob waited for Rachel is the lie which Dalrock is eviscerating.
Jacob purchased two wives; each with a bride-price of seven years of labor to Laban. The transaction–the relationship–was between two men. Jacob wanted Rachel because she was pretty, but Leah was older (probably more responsible) and a better woman who loved God.
Either way: Jacob didn’t date anybody.
Off the point of this post: Jacob and Rachel are a cautionary tale.
This it’s partly due to the fact that these civilizations were not dependent on complex economic systems. Ours, or better yet the western model thrives on all the lousy expenditures, emotional and mental damages that occur during our best reproductive years. Think of all the business that revolves around it, divorce court, dating coaching, all the silly gift giving, contraceptives, college, beauty industry (aka looking for a mate) STDs (proliferation and prevention).. I mean I could continue all day. It goes so far that economic status is implicitly the number factor to marriage for the average woman and a prerequisite for a man. Until the money element is removed you can expect massive delays in reproduction and marriage.
* number one factor
“I’m not familiar with Eastern European customs on the matter, and my post was more regarding what we are seeing in the West.”
I can assure you that we have no particular customs here (Hungary), and we (the local churches) deal with almost the same problem that you in the States. The human nature is pretty much the same everywhere, we share the same cultural basis, and Sex & City is available all over the world.
We have minor structural differences in the church, but it does not influence my answer.
(I’m 28, so this isn’t my problem, just curious.)
“With that in mind, approached for what? To be his girlfriend? To be his betrothed? to be engaged? If one of the latter, are there strong customs in place to enforce this?”
To be his girlfriend of course, but let’s assume the latter two. To enforce what? A prompt engagement? marriage within a year? neither party can broke the engagement?
If it is the first one, and either party can cancel the engagement, I do not see any point in a fast engagement (or any difference with the “christian dating” conception)
I do not see the possibility of the second either. Although it is legal to marry in the age of 18, most of the couples can not pay for an own household (as they do not have steady income), and in most cases parents can’ support them either.
The third one would be equal to a marriage. I do not agree with the above commenters, some months is definitely not enough to know someone.
“Would either of them be doing something morally wrong if they fell in love with another, or a series of others, during the 5 year period before marriage? Would the young woman be wrong if she got tired of waiting after two years, and married a man who was ready to marry? Would the man be wrong if he decided after a few years that another young woman would make a better prospective wife, and swapped her into the wife-in-waiting position?”
No, of course not, but they probably go to the same church, both christian, share the same interest, I do not see any point in denying a chaste relationship; Furthermore, this makes for boys under 25 impossible to seek any type of relationship.
But that was only an example Dalrock, my main point is – as far as I can see it – the reason behind the long christian and chaste relationships is not that the girl denies the marriage or refuses the proposal.
I read the original article and what I can say is that they adored virginity as god. That has consequences.
Yeah, I see what you mean now, and grudgingly agree you are correct. They will only show their real psychosis when they assume its safe to do so without repercusions. Keep your passport handy as they say and some clothes in the trunk.
Surely though, a living together peroid without sex would be enough to coax out and filter for most severe problems before you sign a ruinous contract with a lunatic headcase ? My ex revealed her true nature just before marriage when we had to spend a few weeks living together, wasn’t long enough that I could put a halt to the procedings without knowing what the hell was really going on.
Thats what I thought the Jewish style of engagement enabled – no ?
If there is no possible way of identifying who is sane or not before marriage, then how can you trust anyone? If we had done that 6 months before I don’t think she could have kept the illusion going that long, she cracked very quickly under the very slight pressure of living together.
Maybe she knew the game was up for me anyway 😀 and decided to come out of the closet, maybe she would have sat on it for 6 months. Who knows.
@Cane Caldo says:
August 19, 2014 at 9:22 am
“Off the point of this post: Jacob and Rachel are a cautionary tale.”
The entire story is a cautionary tale, especially when you get to the part where the two sisters start to compete with each other for their husband’s affection and how that jealousy and competition poisoned their children.
@ Societal Decay says:
August 19, 2014 at 1:17 am
“Getting back to the original post, if a young Christian man is looking for a wife, what’s the best way for him tell whether a potential prospect is looking for a husband, or a celibate boyfriend?”
Other men probably have better advice than I do, but I prefer the direct approach, because it’s the only one that works for me.
I made it very clear to girls I dated in college that I was looking for a wife, not a girlfriend. Obviously, that scared a lot of girls away, but it got me the one I married.
In my experience its abit like being brainwashed, same thing cults do, anytime they are caught in a lie you get a barrage of high intensity emotional messages (usually screamed or raged) from half a dozen different directions/viewpoints.
Now the human brain esp a man’s (with our less ability to decode control,manipulation,emotional strategy), just isn’t built to decode what the heck that means. You’ve gone into fight or flight mode, your frontal cortex is making for the door, as should the rest of you.
In my experience feminism is just like BPD behaviour thats been codified into law and sanctified.
BPDers and NPDers normally align together (with relationships too). So you have BPDers screaming I’m a victim, and the NPDers (most politicians+CEO’s of charities etc) make the laws based on believing their screaming’s.
Its manipulation at the government level. It would be beautiful to see if it wasn’t so catastrophic. We have lost so much sanity in our society when they believed the lie that woman don’t lie.
Minesweeper, yes, it’s quite possible that yours got cold feet and was trying to blow up the marriage at the last minute. They can’t stand to be held responsible for anything negative, especially something that might bring judgment like calling off a wedding, so they try to drive others into doing it for them.
I lived for several months with a complete basket-case, and would have longer if she hadn’t run off. The “catch her in a lie, confront her, get a plausible answer that you can’t quite prove a lie” cycle became almost daily after a while. She was expert at making me feel guilty for distrusting her and trying to “control” her. It took a long time to get over her (the sex was incredible and plentiful, of course). I know now that she was a poster child for BPD, but at the time I had no idea so I rationalized away everything she did.
While it’s true that you can spot a BPD sooner or later if you know what you’re looking for, I think it’s also true that if you know what you’re looking for, it won’t take that long. And if you don’t know, you won’t get it until she’s gone and you have a chance to de-program yourself and reconnect with objective reality.
Exactly. The problem you have with this “True Love Waits” teaching is this: You’re taking a single isolated Scripture verse and then fashioning a whole doctrine after it, which is inconsistent with the rest of Scripture. It’s amazing how many different references to Genesis 29:20 I find. Basically put, whoever came up with that doctrine shopped, deciding to conform Scripture to their wishes instead of conforming themselves to Scripture.
And the only way you can really take the whole story.
In other words, they are taking an exceptional case out of Scripture and turning it into the norm.
BPD?
BPD: Borderline Personality Disorder
NPD: Narcissistic Personality Disorder
http://truelovedoesntwait.com/
Cail if only ! I think it was far more the case that the pretence that she kept up she could no longer do while having just normal daily life when removed from her environment of origin and extended family.
She was spending some time on her own while I was at work, and if their is one thing you know about BPDers is that spending time alone makes them even crazier due to the intense abandonment feelings they experience.
When she ran off you were saved my friend. But yeah the sex can be great – anything you like anytime.
I had no idea until she had gone what the heck was wrong with her. I think I’m still deprogramming from a whole lot of crazy. You would have found like I did, your next relationship with a non-BPD just feels so amazing.
Cail Corishev
Ditto the idea that long engagements make for healthier marriages. We have a couple decades of experience and stats now to prove it.
The two exceptions that come to my mind, one from the 80’s and one from the 00’s, involved couples who announced their engagement and set their wedding date 1 year hence. In both cases there was a female relation of the bride (such as a sister, cousin, etc.) who had in the previous year gotten knocked up. Genteel version of “I am better than her” IMO. Both still married to the best of my knowledge. 6 month engagement seems more than long enough to me.
Deti
BPDers always seem to get themselves into tough spots and always have to lie their way out. You’ll probably catch them in a lie in the first month or two.
There’s no real way of knowing if BiPolar Disorder is more common now than in past decades / generations / centuries or not. However given the amount of brain-chemistry-altering drugs that are handed out like candy at Halloween by doctors, it seems likely. What’s the effect of Prozac or some other SSRI on a developing child in utero? Eh, it’s safe…or so we are told.
It occurs to me that as part of The Glasses / Red Pill a man, especially a young man, ought to learn how to tell the difference between normal female fitness-testing / ditzyness / etc. and real-deal BPD. Women are often adept at spinning absurd yarns out of their feelings, but as you note the abnormal brain of someone with BPD goes way, way overboard. A man needs to have some idea of what that looks like in order to avoid an expensive learning experience. But he also needs to have the confidence to NEXT, to preserve himself by disengaging. That means he needs an abundance mindset, not oneitis or scarcity. As Cail implied it is easy for a credulous man, especially one in his 20’s, to get dragged down the rabbit hole of BPD and the longer that goes on, the messier a breakup will be for all concerned.
Parenthetically, I have gotten to know a few men on the Aspie or Autist spectrum over the years, and in some ways they really do seem hyper-male in terms of single-mindedness and concentration to the exclusion of everything else. If I recall correctly, BPD is much more common in women than men; perhaps it is vaguely similar in that properties normal to women are pushed to a great extreme. Corrections on this little hypothesis welcome.
@Cail
They can’t stand to be held responsible for anything negative, especially something that might bring judgement like … causing endless problems in a marriage coupled with a complete refusal on every level to address even the slightest of those.
So true, you seem to have got a handle on this, I’m (even years later) still unpicking it all. It’s definitely a anti-BPD defence move, pick a problem you guys have and resolve it. With a BPD that will never happen, ever.
Cail touched on another prime reason it takes so long for men to see what a BPDer is doing: The sex with a BPD is off the charts. A lot of guys who get involved with a BPD are getting more, hotter, and wilder sex than they’ve ever seen or heard of. That’s how they throw their men off the trail: ply and lure them with hot, plentiful, swing from the chandelier sex. When the complaints come, it’s “You’re getting laid, ain’t ya?” and “Oh, come here, let me take care of that little problem for you” as she strips out of her clothes.
Another way to spot a BPD is that she uses sex to deflect and “solve” problems in the relationship.
Minsweeper on BPD
If there is no possible way of identifying who is sane or not before marriage, then how can you trust anyone? If we had done that 6 months before I don’t think she could have kept the illusion going that long, she cracked very quickly under the very slight pressure of living together.
How about a nice, week long camping trip with a group of friends? I’ve come to the opinion that many people will reveal quite a bit about themselves out in the woods when heat comes from fires made with gathered wood, and so forth. Even a week at a KOA might well flush out some flaws in detail. Shorter time period than your suggestion, likely as effective?
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The whole problem in the west is that we have completely severed dating and courtship from marriage. Almost all dating is done with no intent to marry or even looking to marry. Dating starts long before there is even the posibility of marriage. What purpose is there for two teenagers dating in a culture that says marriage is for people in their thirties. Women who think marriage is for someday, later, not now have no business dating. And men that are not interested in marriage shouldn’t be dating these women; although the do sort ofThe whole problem in the west is that we have completely severed dating and courtship from marriage. Almost all dating is done with no intent to marry or even looking to marry. I the west dating starts long before there is even the possibility of marriage. What purpose is there for two teenagers dating in a culture that says marriage is for people in their thirties? Women who think marriage is for someday, later, not now, have no business dating. And men that are not interested in marriage shouldn’t be dating these women; although the do sort of deserve each other.
The rest of the problems follow from this source. The woman spends 10 to 15 years being courted; free meals, lavish entertainment, free stuff, and gifts. Her sense of entitlement to her definition of romance becomes too huge for any marriage to satisfy. This becomes the new normal. After all of that it is a big disappointment to settle for one guy that wants and expects reciprocation.
deserve eachother.
@deti says:
August 19, 2014 at 10:45 am
Cail touched on another prime reason it takes so long for men to see what a BPDer is doing: The sex with a BPD is off the charts. A lot of guys who get involved with a BPD are getting more, hotter, and wilder sex than they’ve ever seen or heard of.
Yeah, but after a while it can get just too wierd, believe it or not, guys do need boundaries in the bedroom, without those its almost hard to quantify whats going on, its like an endless credit card that you never have to pay, eventually everything loses its value when its ‘free’.
AR – BPD is Borderline Personality Disorder. I think Bipolar is just refereed as such. Although they do often get confused when being diagnosed. I know BPD females who are on Bipolar meds, its quite well known there is a problem with the diagnostic kits.
I don’t think a camping trip with others would do, BPDers are at their best with outside people to impress and obtain validation from, as long as they aren’t on their own for more than 2 mins, they will be having the best time of their lives. My ex was at her best hosting large parties or camping trips. At her worst when stuck alone with nothing to do.
Please edit this overwriting error.
Here are some ways to detect a woman who might suffer from a mental illness (not just BPD, not just NPD, not just Bipolar):
1. She rushes into a relationship with you and the relationship turns immediately sexual. She is very, very serious about you, about making a life with you, and about making this work.
2. The sex is off the charts fantastic, all the time. She uses sex to smooth over problems and issues in the relationship.
3. She overreacts at small problems.
4. She never accepts responsibility for any problems in the relationship.
5. She is being treated for, or has been treated for, any kind of substance abuse/dependency. (Sorry, female recovering alcoholics, but most of you have some sort of mental illness and/or deep-seated mental issues that are very, very hard to dislodge.)
6. Closely related to 2 and 5, she “medicates” or “numbs up” with something. Whatever it is: Church. Food. Sex. Religion. Weed. Shopping.
7. She never seems able to manage daily, day to day life functions. She’s always playing catch-up, always falling behind, never gets out in front of things coming up.
8. She has an explanation for everything that absolves her of all responsibility for any problem, their causes, and their consequences.
*I think Bipolar is just referred as such
@deti, re: “Another way to spot a BPD is that she uses sex to deflect and “solve” problems in the relationship.”
Nothing quite like the embarassment of riches to make a man seem spoiledly humble bragging. “You wanna talk about problems with sex? Well my girl couldn’t get enought! yadda yadda”
@deti – your check list should be part and parcel of every schoolboys guide to female relations handbook. And you are right, they are all into some sort of substance abuse.
Its not just all female either, I knew of 1 woman who married a BPD male, turns out he was snorting lines of coke in the bathroom on the wedding day unbeknown to her and just prior to this tried to strangle her.
Oh yeah another for your check list deti – some form of physical violence.
At the risk of earning the ire of Earl, our good friend Paul does not actually say you can’t have sex before marriage. He says:
“If any of you burn (with passion) and cannot control yourselves with your virgin…let them do what they will. But let them marry.”
Note the order of events. Horny-Fuck-Wedding. Nothing about waiting for 6 years. The Biblical prohibition is against adultery (sex with a married person not your spouse) NOT against fornication (sex between unmarried persons). Yes I know you can spew out various verses that obliquely reference fornication- something in Revelations about “All liars, fornicators, effeminate men etc” go to hell. Are we to take that literally? All effeminate men go to hell? We are in BIG trouble if that is the case because it is easier for an Alpha to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a Beta to man up. I suppose with God all things are possible but still…
@infowarrior1 –
This is a little late as a reply, but the combination of the timezone I’m in and my work schedule means I’m often late to replies. But regarding your August 18, 2014 at 10:48 pm comment, I have to take issue with the following statement:
Frigidity is not chastity nor is promiscuity. Chastity is promiscuity within marriage and virginity outside of marriage.
I agree with what I think you’re trying to say here, but that’s not what “promiscuity” means. The words “promiscuity” or “promiscuous” always imply multiple sexual partners; they mean not being picky. One dictionary defines “promiscuous” as “having casual sexual relations frequently with different partners; indiscriminate in the choice of sexual partners.” Another defines it as “Having or characterized by many transient sexual relationships.”
A better way to express what I think you meant to say would be: “Frigidity is not chastity, nor is promiscuity. Chastity is virginity outside of marriage, and humping like bunnies within marriage.”
I can’t say that I’m all that good at spotting “crazy” – but since Dalrock and most of the guys here are coming from a Christian starting point, it seems to me that we’re glossing over the value of discernment. Men of the world have to rely on charts and graphs to calculate the odds – Christian men have all the same tools, plus the guidance of the Omniscient One to guide us.
From my childhood my parents prayed for my brother and me that we would find good women who loved us. They didn’t have long lists of traits – just the few things that mattered to the parents of boys. My brother chose poorly, but it wasn’t that he had to, or that he was tricked, or that God failed him: he knowingly married a slut. He knew it was wrong at the time – I know he knew because he hid her past from all of us until she had run off with their kids and her former lover. I can understand why he married her: he thought she was cute and he was watching the time tick away. However, had he acted with discernment he would have never gotten tangled up with that sociopathic train wreck to begin with. Part of what attracted a happily married guy like me to the manosphere was watching what that redheaded-bundle-o’-crazy did to my brother and the kids, and the further damage she would have done but for Divine protection of my family.
I am not a “better” man than my brother, but by the grace of God I didn’t make the same mistake. Once I got some “frame” in college I was the one doing the “nexting” rather than being “nexted” myself, and I did it ruthlessly. (Not that I was ever mean about it – I just treated a break-up as something that would not be improved by drawing it out or inserting a lot of emotion into it.) But when I met the then-future MRS Lyn87 (as I have written before) I knew pretty quickly. The moment she knew is instructive as well – we were about to go out on a date and some crisis flared up. I told her we should stop and pray together about it. I took the lead, and as we sat there on her couch praying it was like God smacked her upside the head and said, “Are you blind? This is the man I have for you.”
She took the suggestion. That was 27 years ago and neither of us has regretted it for a moment.
Christian men are not to be wandering through life blind – by all means count the cost, be wise about the signs of bad women, and ultimately, seek out the guidance of the Holy Spirit and follow it. God has never led me into a mistake.
I think deti’s list is great, provided it’s approached holistically. Nearly everyone (men too) will occasionally flip one of the switches on that panel.
Just as important, in my opinion, is checking out a prospective wife’s background — with a modicum of dispassion and fairness. This is hard for a young man to do when he’s blinded by eros, which is why matchmakers and parents of the groom were so handy in years past.
Does she have a history of getting drunk and banging strangers? Is she a heavy user of marijuana or a user of any other substance (I wouldn’t trust a heroin junkie no matter how long they have been reformed). Does she have weirdo tattoos or piercings? Does she curse in public, or in excess in private? Good manners are more important than many would have you believe. They’re the outward expression of an inner peace that is lacking in some people.
How does your future wife describe her own parents? Her brothers and sisters? This is the most obvious tell as to what your relationship with her will end up like. If she hates mom and/or dad today, and berates them to you, she’ll make you the subject of her eventual critique, orated to the next gent down the line.
Best, Boxer
Everyone should ignore everything Bluepillprofessor wrote in his last post. He wrote the following heresy, “The Biblical prohibition is against adultery (sex with a married person not your spouse) NOT against fornication (sex between unmarried persons). Yes I know you can spew out various verses that obliquely reference fornication…”
There is nothing “oblique” about it. The Greek New Testament uses the word fornication – porneia (πορνεύω) – 26 times, 20 of which refer specifically to individual sexual sin.
The word porneia (πορνεύω) means sexual sin in general, whereas adultery – moicheia (μοιχεύω) – specifically involves sexual sin (fornication) with a married woman. All adultery is fornication – some fornication is adultery.
Lest anyone believe BPP and start to think that the Bible only condemns adultery (a subset of fornication), Galations 5:19 directly contradicts BPP by listing both words: “Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness…” [emphasis added].
Wow!!! deti’s comment (August 18, 2014 at 1:57 pm) & Jf12’s comment (August 18, 2014 at 2:15pm) are both great! What a scary and twisted story… she is in no way some kind of feminist model (except for the FACT that she actually IS lol). I’ve been reading an interesting book written by a feminist (picked it up by accident when taking my son to the library & he was throwing a fit b/c Mommy actually wanted a book), so I grabbed the first interesting looking one I could find. It really is an eye-opening lesson in how feminism was basically started. The glorification of purity and being asexual (celibacy) was started in Christianity (namely, Catholicism) – complete with women LEAVING their husbands and children in order to remain PURE and holy (sexless). **This is DIRECETLY related to the fact that Catholicism was so anti-sex at that point in history.** And these women were looked up to for this atrocity of abandoning their children and husbands, they weren’t shamed for what they were doing – it was considered better to be “pure” than to be a mother and wife. There is an image included of a mural made by the church where married men and women were placed at the bottom of the totem pole so to speak – the least able to receive blessings from God due to their being sexual!!! Literally, the mural is of women and men receiving blessings of grain and possessions, and the married couples are on the bottom and receive the least. Talk about misrepresented biblical teachings that still affect many religious people today!
The author (obviously) views these women as the first feminists due to their sticking up for their body and right to live how they dictate the course of their lives – modern thinking for women back then – even though she does seem sympathetic to the husbands of such wives – feminism is, after all, only concerned with how anything might affect women. The book is fascinating because it goes on to the more recent events around 1800-1900 that are so familiar to some of the things Rollo & Dalrock post about TODAY as back then – feminism really hasn’t changed that much. Truth is truth… and its become addicting to me from reading what ya’ll write. I’ll be writing quite a few posts I imagine based off this feminist’s book. Thank you Dalrock.
@Dalrock:
“This overlooks the fact that like sex, romantic love is for marriage, and marriage is what makes sex and romantic love moral.” – Doesn’t this imply that the entire boyfriend-girlfriend relationship is immoral? You shouldn’t be searching for boyfriend/ girlfriend for a relationship, but a potential husband/ wife for a marriage.
Hey Lyn87:
Do you have an opinion on the concept of “natural marriage”?
I don’t agree with bluepillprofessor’s interpretation of the text either. (I’m not an expert, just a reader, but I can’t seem to come to his conclusion). There is something to be said for people who, without any priest or rabbi around to perform a ceremony, commit to each other and start living with the dignity of man and wife. This often happens after copulation and pair bonding. The couple might have their own ceremony, or might merely discuss their plans for the future. Either way, people who do this are at least as “married” as the typical couple who halfheartedly signs the documents down at the marriage commissioner’s office.
Catholic theology seems to recognize this as a social reality, as does (of all people) Pat Robertson. Thoughts?
Best, Boxer
@Lyn87, re: spotting crazy.
Besides the usual offhand “degrees of craziness” remarks, it is also true that nobody can possibly spot will-be crazy, nor will-be devil possessed. It’s simply impossible.
Boxer asks me, “Do you have an opinion on the concept of “natural marriage”?”
Why, yes… Yes, I do (big surprise, right?). I have addressed the issue before, but with all the comments and commentators around I don’t expect you to remember what I wrote. In my writings I have always maintained that the state should have no say in defining marriage – which is something set up by God. My wife and I are married because we took vows and then had sex – not because we got a piece of paper from the state. If the state where we were married suddenly notified us that there was something wrong with our marriage license that rendered it legally invalid, we would still be every bit as married as if there were no such issue. It would effect how we file our taxes and not much else.
That’s why I don’t give much thought to so-called “Gay Marriage.” Gay people cannot marry and never will be able to: and getting a license from the state that allows them to file joint tax returns won’t change that one iota. Even exchanging vows won’t do the trick, since marriage vows exchanged within such a union do not and cannot create an actual marriage.
As for priests or rabbis: vows are vows, and whether they are witnessed by others is irrelevant to their “bindingness.” We have ritualized the event of entering the state of matrimony by having events called weddings, but in my estimation the only things that matter are the commitment (which probably ought to be explicitly verbalized) and the consummation.
jf12 writes, “nobody can possibly spot will-be crazy, nor will-be devil possessed. It’s simply impossible.”
Matthew 19:26 says, “But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.”
Thus my earlier comment about prayer and discernment.
@Lyn87 says:
August 19, 2014 at 1:11 pm
“jf12 writes, “nobody can possibly spot will-be crazy, nor will-be devil possessed. It’s simply impossible.”
Matthew 19:26 says, “But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men this is impossible; but with God all things are possible.”
Thus my earlier comment about prayer and discernment.!
Well now your victim blaming !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
/snark
Heresy? @ Lyn: “Everyone should ignore everything Bluepillprofessor wrote in his last post. He wrote the following heresy, “The Biblical prohibition is against adultery (sex with a married person not your spouse) NOT against fornication (sex between unmarried persons). Yes I know you can spew out various verses that obliquely reference fornication…”
There is nothing “oblique” about it. The Greek New Testament uses the word fornication – porneia (πορνεύω) – 26 times, 20 of which refer specifically to individual sexual sin. ”
26 mentions in a 2,000 page book? Since I’m already a heretic I might as well go all in. How many mentions of touching a woman who is on her monthly shame? How many mentions of not even touching anything that an unclean woman touches. My guess is a lot more than 26. Do you sleep in separate bedrooms 5 days out of the month? Of course not! Those OT laws were ritual purification stuff and we are all under “grace” today.
For the NT how many of those references were among lists of examples of the types of people who were likely to be damned (presumably unless they accepted Christ) and not fully inclusive. ALL liars? Really? The level of literal reading stretches the mind. Jesus himself forgave the adulteress and it is adultery- not fornication- that is in the 10 Commandments.
Finally, Paul gave the unmarried a get out of fornication free card if you “marry” the virgin who you could not control yourself with. Problem is in Paul’s day that was not such a disaster. You just added her to the Roster in your home. Today it has far different consequences.
@Boxer: Here is the REAL heresy. There is NO marriage today. It doesn’t exist as an institution. If something bears NO resemblance to the institution sanctioned by the Lord then it has NO right demanding strict compliance to MAN-MADE laws- particularly when they run counter to the laws of God. God says women are to submit. Man’s laws do not require this and in fact they encourage the woman to rebel. The way it plays out is this. Man and woman form a LT commitment and start having sex. THAT commitment is the Biblical marriage. That is the closest thing we have today- a “marriage” where the man is free to “leave” with little consequence. (in the 1st century the man could return his bride to her father in disgrace, and he could always take another wife- how’s that for the hard dread!). THEN if they break up, you can decide retroactively (using hamster-logic/TM) that it was actually not a marriage after all so of course you are free to ‘remarry.’ Rinse- repeat. At least it precludes ONS and requires the slut avoidance policy. Plus it is a LOT closer to what the Lord was talking about than the broth these celibate Churchians are trying to sell.
BPD: Borderline Personality Disorder
NPD: Narcissistic Personality Disorder
Are these real things, or just symptoms of a selfish, self-centered, immoral person? I don’t mean any offense. It’s precisely because of mental illness in my family that I am very wary of labeling everything some kind of disorder.
Is it a coincidence that we have more incidence of this (as evidenced by the comments here) at the exact point in our cultural timeline where everything is sexualized, proliferation of choices is the norm, and accountability of any kind has all but dried up?
Minesweeper
AR – BPD is Borderline Personality Disorder.
Thanks for the correction, I mis-typed, but all I know about this is from arms-length study. I had one experience with one woman who probably could have used some therapy, but I can’t say what the problem(s) happened to be. So it’s academic to me, except in terms of the reality around me.
I think Bipolar is just refereed as such. Although they do often get confused when being diagnosed. I know BPD females who are on Bipolar meds, its quite well known there is a problem with the diagnostic kits.
That’s interesting.
I don’t think a camping trip with others would do, BPDers are at their best with outside people to impress and obtain validation from, as long as they aren’t on their own for more than 2 mins, they will be having the best time of their lives. My ex was at her best hosting large parties or camping trips. At her worst when stuck alone with nothing to do.
Ah. Long walks in the country, then, quiet reflective moments with just one person and nature – would that flush out some of it into view, then?
@thecivilizationalist
Correct.
BPP,
Your lack of understanding of the basics of exegesis is mind-boggling. You admitted that the ritualisms of the Old Testament law are not binding in the Age of Grace, so why bring them up? You noted the passage about liars (and others) not going to Heaven, but completely ignored forgiveness of sins – which is the main point of the Bible.
You felt comfortable stating that Paul condemns adultery (sex with a woman married to another man), but not fornication between unmarried people. Yet the word “adultery” only occurs four times in the New Testament, while the word “fornication” appears 26 times (20 times in reference to sexual sin). Yet FOUR times is enough for you to declare a definitive Pauline condemnation of adultery, while TWENTY separate condemnations of fornication (in the NT alone) is just an oblique reference that may be ignored at will. Which is it?
And since you wrote this whopper, “26 mentions in a 2,000 page book?” I guess I’ll go ahead and point out that the word “crucify” only occurs 16 times in that 2000 page book. By your reckoning, the crucifixion of Jesus must have been an event of little consequence since it only get 4/5 the number of mentions as the “oblique” references to “fornication.”
As for your last paragraph to me – Paul didn’t give anyone a “get out of fornication free card.” He laid out the rules for what do if someone committed the sin of fornication. It didn’t change the fact that it WAS a sin, but he specified that certain actions had to take place once the sin had taken place – in addition to repentance, not instead of repentance.
You are telling people that God’s Word condones fornication – stop it.
“Ah. Long walks in the country, then, quiet reflective moments with just one person and nature – would that flush out some of it into view, then?” -AR
That’s probably another reason it seems like a lot of these girls are obsessed with traveling to these exotic destinations. Gotta always be where there are constant external stimuli.
Blueplillprofessor @ 11:20 am:
“Yes I know you can spew out various verses that obliquely reference fornication- something in Revelations about “All liars, fornicators, effeminate men etc” go to hell.”
You refuted your own argument with that “oblique” reference.
“For the NT how many of those references were among lists of examples of the types of people who were likely to be damned (presumably unless they accepted Christ) and not fully inclusive. ALL liars? Really? The level of literal reading stretches the mind.”
If you’re looking for the difference between liars going to Heaven and liars going to Hell then it’s repentance. Christ said as much to the adulteress. If you’re looking for a loophole in Biblical morality then don’t bother. Either God does not exist and you can do as you wish, or He does exist and you will not outwit him.
Boxer @ 12:49 pm:
“Do you have an opinion on the concept of “natural marriage”?
…
There is something to be said for people who, without any priest or rabbi around to perform a ceremony, commit to each other and start living with the dignity of man and wife.”
From the Christian perspective, marriage is an act of God. You can view it either as a three-way partnership or God combining the two people into a single identity. Hence the longstanding tradition of involving a priest as God’s representative. This isn’t something we Christians should give up.
From the non-Christian perspective, a natural marriage like you describe would be fine except when children enter the picture. At that point, the parents have incurred the serious commitment of raising them. That commitment doesn’t NEED to be formalized but it’s a good idea, like doing business with contracts instead of handshakes.
In fact, take note that a major part of Marriage 2.0 is divorce courts refusing to honor formal marriage commitments like prenups. The commitment gets redefined years after it’s made and without the consent of all parties involved. Even under human law, that’s illegal.
BDP sounds a lot like demon possession to me. Any thoughts?
The biblical model says marry if you burn with passion, then do it like rabbits.
While this is true on the surface, how practicable is this in our modern day? The typical kid starts burning with passion from teenage years, say from age 15 if not earlier. Assuming he waits until 18 before courting a woman, how long will this courtship be before he is able to head a family? Most professional degrees take 7 to 10 years of college education on average. Are we advocating that young people get married before they are able to earn a living?
I think there are no easy answers.
Again, I do agree with the premise, but I have a problem understanding the practicability.
I have always maintained that the state should have no say in defining marriage – which is something set up by God. My wife and I are married because we took vows and then had sex – not because we got a piece of paper from the state.
Ditto.
@JDG re: possession.
Yes. As someone said, discernment. Fits in with Elspeth’s observation of non-coincidence.
Lots of people saying that you can’t identify crazy in a short period of time. In my experience crazy almost always runs in the family. Are mom and dad together? Are either on psych meds? Any strong family history of addiction, jail time, tattoos? Also, adopted people are often nuts, likely due to genetics.
Most professional degrees take 7 to 10 years of college education on average.
We should also keep in mind that college isn’t what it used to be. I would only consider trade school or STEM. I would also say that the woman doesn’t necessarily need a college degree, especially not before marriage or in the child rearing stages of marriage. That should take out some of the complexity, and save some money down the road (considering that many degrees that women get are next to worthless).
Dear Fellas :
Thanks for your responses. Please see below…
@Lyn87
You should maybe open up a blog? I find your explanations useful and well-informed. I’m sure I wouldn’t be the only one to visit.
Anyway, I think we’re all susceptible to reading religious texts through the filter of our own rationalization hamsters. There are plenty of things mentioned in the Bible… Samson’s enjoyment of prostitutes, Solomon’s polyamory, David having his friend murdered so that he could bang the widow. These little artifacts humanize the characters, but they clearly don’t imply an endorsement of the behavior by the author.
@Bluepillprofessor
Do you have a New Testament reference for this specific ceremony: the “returning of the bride to her father”? I realize it happened, but I don’t see it endorsed anywhere in the text. I also can’t concur with your position that a husband is “free to leave” his wife with “little consequence”.
When I read the New Testament (or the Talmud, or the Qur’an) it talks about divorce being a fact of life, but the fact that we divorce each other displeases God quite a bit. We are warned that we face plenty of consequences (first order punishment for divorcing, and second order consequences for the inevitable fallout of the divorce). This is not something that men or women should approach lightly, if they take these religious texts to heart.
This is regrettably common among the less-disciplined parties to modern marriages. I don’t really see how your proposal would rectify the situation, though. It seems like an inverted form of feminism, where men should have the threatpoint to frivorce their wives at a whim, and take new wives, etc. How is this better than the cultural garbage-heap we’re forced to navigate now? More importantly, where are these liberties advocated in the New Testament?
Best, Boxer
“The whole problem in the west is that we have completely severed dating and courtship from marriage. Almost all dating is done with no intent to marry or even looking to marry. Dating starts long before there is even the posibility of marriage. What purpose is there for two teenagers dating in a culture that says marriage is for people in their thirties.”
Who is this “we?”
“This it’s partly due to the fact that these civilizations were not dependent on complex economic systems. Ours, or better yet the western model thrives on all the lousy expenditures, emotional and mental damages that occur during our best reproductive years…”
It’s not that we have “complex economic systems” but that we have a mass media and institutionalized educational establishment-driven society that has purposely inculcated a deliberate, multi-generational propaganda mind war to brainwash we the sheeple to delay marriage so as to effect an insidious population control agenda.
The same “complex economic system” (Keynesian debt slavery to the fiat usury banksters 2big2fail) was in place in the 50’s during the baby boom era.
All the lousy expenditures, emotional and mental damages that occur during our best reproductive years are due to deliberate, society-wide indoctrination that promotes feminism, credentialism (aka YOU MUST GO TO COLLEGE TO BE ABLE TO GET A REAL JOB), and debt slavery…which all feeds into the larger agenda of those who are behind this propaganda war – total population control.
TL;DR – Read the Jaffe Memo. Our modern lives of delayed marriage and below population replacement level demographics were planned out for us.
The memo was written in 1969.
Any of these proposed ideas look familiar?
You should maybe open up a blog? I find your explanations useful and well-informed. I’m sure I wouldn’t be the only one to visit.
No you wouldn’t be the only visitor. Lyn87 is one of the most intelligent and resourceful participants in the manosphere that I have encountered (Lyn87 if you reading this, don’t get a big head). There are others on that list, but not all that many. I won’t list the other names for fear of more big heads.
GunnerQ,
Thanks for the back-up: I was starting to think that nobody but me was going to refute BPP’s view that fornication isn’t a sin. I have ceased commenting on three “Christian” blogs in the last three years… the main reason? Someone would come along and write something wildly heretical (like the idea that God approves of fornication) and I would be the only one to offer a rebuttal – I would be far more likely to be called a “Pharisee” than receive an “Amen.” That led me to believe that the readers of those particular blogs really weren’t interested in the “Christian” part of a “Christian blog” discussion. Not some of them… all of them. I know that’s not the case here. (I’ve come to regard the term “Pharisee” as a compliment these days, because the only people who seem to use it are people who just don’t like straight talk. Being called a “Pharisee” by a Churchian is akin to being called a “Misogynist” by a Feminist.)
Anyway, your statement, “Either God does not exist and you can do as you wish, or He does exist and you will not outwit Him” is awesome.
I see you took a stab at Boxer’s question about “Natural Marriage” as well. I have no kids, and I see your point about the practical ramifications of having them in a marriage that is not recognized by the state. The problem with the idea that a legal marriage is better because it’s a contract is only valid insofar as the state will treat the marriage as a contract – and therein lies the problem you noted. As we all know, that’s cool (mostly) as long as the couple themselves feel bound by the terms of the marriage, but the state does not treat even legal marriage as a contract if the woman wants out.
I’m thinking as I type, but it occurs to me that a man who wants kids should probably get legally married anyway: not because legal marriage has much to do with actual marriage… certainly not because the legality is necessary for a marriage to be “real”… but simply because the father and the kids are somewhat better off from a legal standpoint if the father is officially married to the mother, and he’s no worse off if things go south. It’s not like a man who’s raising a child with his “natural wife” would be any less screwed if the relationship ends. In other words: as long as the couple is married the law doesn’t work against him and provides some small benefits, while if the wife decides to leave he’s no worse off than he would be anyway (he’s screwed either way). I’m willing to admit I may not have considered everything: like I said… I have no kids.
To dig up an older topic in this thread, I’m surprised that several people mis-corrected Jacob/Rachel’s story.
>>> What of Jacob who wait’s 7 years for Rachel?
Actually it was 14 years. Either way, this isn’t presented as the biblical model for courtship, as something to emulate.
Jacob worked 7 years, was tricked into marrying Leah, and then was given Rachel 1 week after, in return for working 7 more years. He didn’t have to finish off the 14 years before getting to sleep with her.
” 28 And Jacob did so. He finished the week with Leah, and then Laban gave him his daughter Rachel to be his wife. 29 Laban gave his servant girl Bilhah to his daughter Rachel as her maidservant. 30 Jacob lay with Rachel also, and he loved Rachel more than Leah. And he worked for Laban another seven years.”
On another tangent, I despise the new PC NIV translation. “30Jacob made love to Rachel also” just sounds vulgar after growing up reading the old NIV. I guess I can look forward to being like the cranky KJV-only people in a few more decades.
[i]I’m thinking as I type, but it occurs to me that a man who wants kids should probably get legally married anyway: not because legal marriage has much to do with actual marriage… certainly not because the legality is necessary for a marriage to be “real”… but simply because the father and the kids are somewhat better off from a legal standpoint if the father is officially married to the mother, and he’s no worse off if things go south.[/i]
This is pretty much true. Divorce is not the absolute worst thing that can happen. What if the mother dies? Married Father has default custody, right of attorney, medical decision authority etc. in terms of the kids.
Marriage is a total crap shoot in today’s day and age. But if you are a man, and you do want to have kids, you should do it within marriage – not just for religious and moral considerations.
Keoni Galt
I am an old fart. I did it the way you suggested. And as it turned, out my wife did die very young, leaving me with 4 children the youngest 3 at the time. The issue I have is that I do not see it as a good alternative for my sons in their twenties now. You must be joking when you say “he’s no worse off if things go south”. In this Child Support based culture the single father is much better off than the divorced father. The single dad will be maxed out with CS because all men must be punished for associating with women and having her not be haaaaapy. However, he still has the financial capacity to try again. The divorced father is pretty much buried by alimony, CS, and having almost all of his assets stripped during the divorce. Having been both I can assure you that the divorced dad is much worse off. And he will have little to no contact with his children and there will be parental alienation. Having been married does not save a man from any of the predations and viciousness of women and the divorce industry. At least if they don’t have the signed contract of indentured servitude he can save part of his dignity.
As to your early comment:
““The whole problem in the west is that we have completely severed dating and courtship from marriage. Almost all dating is done with no intent to marry or even looking to marry. Dating starts long before there is even the posibility of marriage. What purpose is there for two teenagers dating in a culture that says marriage is for people in their thirties.”
Who is this “we?””
I’ll state that we is the culture in the US. All of us are part of the problem.
The divorced father is pretty much buried by alimony, CS, and having almost all of his assets stripped during the divorce. Having been both I can assure you that the divorced dad is much worse off.
Can’t argue with your experience. Just saying….on a Christian blog where most participants claim to adhere to the laws of God as laid out in the Bible, the only legitimate place to have sex is marriage.
IF — and I say that with all caveats regarding full knowledge of how our Soviet Family Court System operates — IF a young man wants to have his own offspring, he should do so by properly vetting women until he can figure out if she could be a suitable, loyal wife he could marry to have kids with.
Kids should have an intact home with a Mother and a Father.
I’ll state that we is the culture in the US. All of us are part of the problem.
Sorry, I was just being facetious. My point is that this entire “problem” we are dealing with, was deliberately fostered. Most folks don’t realize that the role they play in this is that they are blindly following the mainstream dictates of our society…especially Christian Father’s advising their children to follow the population control agenda of mainstream society instead of the Biblical model.
In short, mike, the people responsible for our current affairs have one overriding objective – to break up the Father-headed family, destroy marriage, and ensure that as many people as possible don’t get married and don’t have children.
Having a successful marriage with lots of children IS the only way you truly beat them at their own game….
KG,
You noted that sex/procreation is only sanctified within marriage: which is true. My ramblings were in response to Boxer’s question about differentiating between natural marriage and legal marriage. My contention are that both are marriage, but that only legal marriage has the imprimatur of the state.
MD5,
I wrote the comment you responded to that Keoni agreed with. My point about being “no worse off” is because if a man legally deemed the father, whether he was legally married to the mother doesn’t impact his CS – he’s the man on the “blame” line, and that’s all that matters. He pays, she plays. End of.
We all know that, and I considered the alimony thing before I wrote what I did, but if a couple has a “natural” marriage rather than a legal marriage, he’s still going to lose his assets if kids are involved. If they have mixed their finances like married couples do – both living in the same house with one set of furniture, for example, the joint assets will be divided as if they had a marriage license issued by the state (which means the lawyers get half and she gets most of the rest). As for ongoing payments, they used to call it “Palimony” – I’m not sure what they call it now. I’m just saying that, on average, a man whose “natural” wife decides to leave with the kids is not much worse off than a man whose legal wife does the same thing. A man who was legally married might be better off in the sense of getting access to the kids, rather than the “ex-boyfriend who writes her checks” would be. Plus, as Keoni noted, a legal widower has a much easier time than the guy without the paperwork if the wife dies. On the other hand, the legally married guy will be more likely to have to pay alimony and have more lawyers bills in the event of divorce – so there’s pluses-and-minuses both ways, I suppose. Your thoughts? This isn’t something I’m an expert on.
Thanks for the back-up: I was starting to think that nobody but me was going to refute BPP’s view that fornication isn’t a sin.
This is so blatantly obvious that even non-Christians know it isn’t right.
Elspeth says:
August 19, 2014 at 1:56 pm
“BPD: Borderline Personality Disorder
NPD: Narcissistic Personality Disorder
Are these real things, or just symptoms of a selfish, self-centered, immoral person? I don’t mean any offense. It’s precisely because of mental illness in my family that I am very wary of labeling everything some kind of disorder.”
They are very real. Although the current culture is to think of these people as making choices which are evil, the fact is they are in fact evil. They’re Demonic.
I deal with them all the time, I have been involved with them occasionally romantically to my detriment.
They wear a mask of sanity, but underneath it is malice. Just as their are people that are saints, there are people on the other side of the spectrum.
Just as some people are selflessly good, they are selflessly evil. They hate for hate’s sake. They will suffer to do evil.
It is not selfishness that motivates them, this is a mistake, it is the will to do evil, to visit harm on others to destroy that motivates them. And they hide it because they know how people would react to them, they hide to attack, to ambush.
Also, yes there are more of them, our culture creates more opportunities for them to occur every year.
Did the person grow up in a broken home or single mother?
Was he victimized, especially sexually molested? (again the chances of that are higher in a broken home)
victim or see violence? (again higher in single mother homes)
Raised by someone with a personality disorder?
The list of things goes on and on. The more single moms, the worse it gets.
All these things increase the chances someone will end up with a personality disorder, and the more of them there are the more they begat.
We are well past the tipping point with a 40% single mom rate. Same with marriage, the divorce rate for new marriages is rapidly approaching 90% its just hidden so far, but the rest of the country will catch up to California’s 79% divorce rate, and pass it.
I don’t have my Heartiste hearts to highlight the word science but wish I did.
http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/05/09/study-nagging-by-a-spouse-could-shorten-your-life/
Danish researchers from the University of Copenhagen said having a nagging partner can significantly shorten one’s life, and could result in three extra deaths per 100 people per year.
The study also said people nagged by their spouses are more likely to get heart disease and cancer.
The study followed nearly 10,000 Danish men and women between the ages of 36 and 52.
I know why this is. Because repeatedly firing up the “fight / flight / freeze” response with no respite, with no way to burn off those complex chemicals, yanking on the limbic system like a midschooler pulling the fire alarm again in order to get out of a test – all of this absolutely negatively affects the immune system (cancer) and the endothelial system (heart / stroke).
How many men develop high blood pressure after the youngest child leaves home, eh?
A BPD woman can kill a man in a few years. Normal women can do the same, it just takes longer.
And this is just another example of ancient knowledge that got, er, forgotten in the last century.
Thanks to Anonymous Age 72 back when he was Age 68:
Better a tent on the roof than a big house with a contentious wife
Proverbs 25:24
Lyn, always glad to support another Christian!
JDG @ 2:54 pm:
“BPD sounds a lot like demon possession to me. Any thoughts?”
I find it unlikely, having once known a priest in that line of work. BPD is sufficiently well-defined, consistent and common that demonic influence can’t be assumed. Like a runny nose that could be pneumonia but is probably just a cold, BPD shares symptoms but not causes.
Never be quick to assume demonic possession. A few weeks ago I was in a store near a major bus stop. There was a crazy bum outside who kept screaming things about God and America. Finally, a passerby paid him to shut up and he did… he just wanted money.
Ah, the Bay Area.
Elspeth @ 1:56 pm:
“Is it a coincidence that we have more incidence of this (as evidenced by the comments here) at the exact point in our cultural timeline where everything is sexualized, proliferation of choices is the norm, and accountability of any kind has all but dried up?”
It isn’t a coincidence but the causes have more to do with the loss of stabilizing factors like family, church and work. Some of us can hold together with no external support, Mad Max-style, but that isn’t typical.
Honestly, I’m rather proud of my fellow Americans for holding things together for so long. If the Christian church hadn’t been sabotaged by Churchianity then I think we would have beaten the Communists once again.
My not-at-all-a-doctor take on BPD is that it’s what you get when a girl suffers some sort of childhood abuse, especially at the hands of her parents, and then is allowed to run feral (“independent”) by modern society. The childhood stuff explains the intense abandonment feelings you mentioned, and the way she uses the crazy to drive people away before she can be abandoned again. The feral lifestyle supercharges that, because she has no one to provide the behavioral boundaries she desperately needs.
The pros want there to be a physical cause for it, like there appears to be in some cases for depression, because that means a possible drug fix and money to be made. But so far they’ve come up dry, and nothing they can do has much effect on it. Certain types of cognitive behavioral therapy seem to help a bit if they’re followed religiously for a number of years, but some experts also say people tend to grow out of it with age.
So you’ve got a feral girl who drives herself like a speeding truck in and out of relationships through her 20s and into her 30s, getting crazier as she goes, blowing apart relationships that her friends and family desperately hope she’ll keep, running off to meet convicts — you know, the usual. Then she starts seeing a therapist, and after a few years and tens of thousands of dollars — coincidentally about the time she’s hitting the wall — she makes some breakthroughs and seems to settle down and become capable of acting like a human being. I have my doubts.
Funny thing is, in today’s system of date -> shack up- > long engagement -> marriage, many people would consider a one-year engagement to be short, if you haven’t been a “couple” for several years already. I too would lean toward 6 months as preferable. If both people are ready for marriage — and they shouldn’t be dating if they aren’t — and they’ve spent a few months on the basic courtship stuff like spending time with each other’s families and going over their checklists of dealbreakers, six months should be plenty of time to test yourselves for cold feet and get a wedding planned.
Dalrock: I’d like to get your take on this.
http://www.thomasumstattd.com/2014/08/courtship-fundamentally-flawed/
Quite possible. If not outright possession, then one of the milder forms like oppression (influence, but not overt Exorcist-style control). I usually don’t mention that angle because most people, even Christians, simply don’t believe in the demonic in any real sense these days. But I mentioned childhood abuse above, and that often opens the door for demonic influence, so it could all tie together.
Carmack, I’ve seen that anti-courtship article popping up on Facebook lately. He makes a few good points, but he’s attacking a version of courtship that has some pretty weird elements. Looks like mostly a strawman to me, but I guess there are people who are doing it that way — no kissing before the wedding, for instance, and very tight parental control over everything. It’s not the traditional courtship that I’ve read about, but some new creation, which I suspect some Churchian parents have cobbled together to try to reconcile chastity with delayed marriage and go-girl feminism. So some of it does sound strange, but he’s too willing to throw out the baby with the bathwater by rejecting “courtship” altogether.
Girls are liking it, of course, because he tells guys to:
A) Just ask girls out; don’t be afraid of rejection, but don’t push either.
B) Don’t worry about marriage; date around and have fun and let it happen.
C) Pay for dates.
What’s not to like?
“If I recall correctly, BPD is much more common in women than men; perhaps it is vaguely similar in that properties normal to women are pushed to a great extreme.”
You are correct just as there are more male antisocials than women. They’re just the masculine and feminine versions of sociopath.
Although I have dealt with worse.
Cail is right that the families hope they’ll settle down. They usually don’t and the families tend to be horrible enablers. They rarely warn a prospective mate of what they’re getting into.
I’m not sure they ever “get better” they may slow down some but if you go to
http://www.shrink4men.com/
It makes it pretty clear they often don’t. There are crazy cat ladies out there and they come from somewhere.
as for the demonic thing, the guy that wrote a “road less traveled” has a book on that very idea. And there are stories, especially about NPD and the supernatural element.
Finally, as for detecting them, other than looking at their history or catching them in a lie, there is one other way.
If you see a flash of anger/rage in their eyes that seems out of place with the situation, and I mean a brief flash before its gone, you’re probably dealing with a personality disordered person.
that was their mask slipping ever so briefly.
You can sometimes see it in pictures of them, everyone is smiling but there’s something off about them. Look at the eyes and you will see malice
Cail Corishev
If both people are ready for marriage — and they shouldn’t be dating if they aren’t — and they’ve spent a few months on the basic courtship stuff like spending time with each other’s families and going over their checklists of dealbreakers, six months should be plenty of time to test yourselves for cold feet and get a wedding planned.
Yes, I agree with this. However, as I explained previously in both cases the woman of the couple had a blood relation (sister, cousin, etc.) who had gotten knocked up. My apologies for not being more clear: the sister, cousin, etc. had become pregnant but was not married. In one case a shotgun wedding followed, in the other case the more usual and dreary drifting-into-sorta-kinda-an-LTR-with-a-guy-for-a-while followed. In both cases the women were clearly making a statment: This is not a shotgun wedding and this marriage is intentional. Hence the 1 year engagement. And again, both are still together to the best of my knowledge. So that worked, for them, in that case.
I agree that 6 months should suffice. Sometimes people choose to make a point, take a stand, stake out a position, make their intention clear, with the duration of an engagement. Hope this is clearer.
Cail Corishev
I usually don’t mention that angle because most people, even Christians, simply don’t believe in the demonic in any real sense these days. But I mentioned childhood abuse above, and that often opens the door for demonic influence, so it could all tie together.
Thought experiment for someone to carry out:
Question for churchgoing people, “Do you believe in angels”? followed by “Do you believe in demons?”
Logically, in Bible terms, if you believe in the one, then you should believe in the other. However, I would bet vastly more churchgoing people would answer “yes” to the first and “maybe” or “no” or “Yes, but…” to the second question.
@Cail Corishev:
I agree; there were some good points in that article, but there are some holes in the author’s thinking. He says that divorces in marriages that began in courtship are spiking and attributes this to incompatibility. But what he doesn’t ask is: which party is filing for divorce? I suspect the spike is due to influence from our Bernankified Miley Cyrus frivorce-happy culture rather than to incompatibility due to courtship instead of dating.
Really, I think either one could work in a tight-knit isolated community with fathers who (a) teach their sons how to lead a girl and (b) don’t view their daughters as princesses and prevent them from acting like princesses. But the truth is that current culture is hostile to both courting and dating. If you ask a 21st century girl to dinner, she’ll think you’re a chump. Legal incentives to divorce, princess culture, and a society that worships vulgarity are all bigger problems than courtship vs. dating.
@Anonymous Reader says:
August 19, 2014 at 7:03 pm
I don’t have my Heartiste hearts to highlight the word science but wish I did.
Danish researchers from the University of Copenhagen said having a nagging partner can significantly shorten one’s life, and could result in three extra deaths per 100 people per year.
The study also said people nagged by their spouses are more likely to get heart disease and cancer.
The study followed nearly 10,000 Danish men and women between the ages of 36 and 52.
I know why this is. Because repeatedly firing up the “fight / flight / freeze” response with no respite, with no way to burn off those complex chemicals, yanking on the limbic system like a midschooler pulling the fire alarm again in order to get out of a test – all of this absolutely negatively affects the immune system (cancer) and the endothelial system (heart / stroke).
How many men develop high blood pressure after the youngest child leaves home, eh?
A BPD woman can kill a man in a few years. Normal women can do the same, it just takes longer.
And this is just another example of ancient knowledge that got, er, forgotten in the last century.
Thanks to Anonymous Age 72 back when he was Age 68:
Better a tent on the roof than a big house with a contentious wife
Proverbs 25:24
Oh yeah, these people will shorten your life span, I became seriously ill after my very very high and protracted conflict ridden divorce and am still dealing with the serious repercussions of that. So yeah, kept my worked for assets, lost my health. Although if I had lost my assets too I was so at the end of my tether I just might have done something very stupid indeed, she had pushed me and my lawyers to the edge of sanity. That level of stress will magnify any underlying health issue a hundred fold and leave you crippled emotionally, mentally and physically.
And as for this happening in families -my ex : neglectful charismatic Christian BPD waif mother, absent NPD alcoholic father = one f****ed up queen BPD kid
I concur that those I know how are adopted also are totally screwed like this, its the failure to not be abandoned or neglected during the crucial early years, causes the brain to flip into a fail safe mode (for a child) for survival. When you head of children who commit suicide they have encountered the same environmental failure but were unable to flip over successfully.
Saying that though, what helps you survive as a child is fatal as an adult.
And check this out :
Domestic abuse crime considered by ministers
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-28860213
5 years if convicted of emotional abuse, well guess just how many women will be convicted of that ? – zero
SO along with scores of other laws all fully twisted to support the man-bad view, it looks like any say at all by the female will now be enough to have the guy kicked out of his house in a heartbeat. And jail time if she is not happy. VAWA for the UK.
Note they are selling this law based on a women getting killed a few years ago who was being stalked by her psyco-ex, note these 2 conditions DO NOT match up, but hey they are sure as hell using it to sell it.
I just can’t see relationships still be able to occur, the threatpoint against men is becoming so huge, any relationship you have will have to have a policeman (or 2) and a magistrate present at all times, just for the males protection against false accusations.
Bizarrely in my lifetime we seem to have gone to no fault divorce and FAULT IN EVERYTHING ELSE (for the man) in interpersonal relationships.
Dr T. hit on a great point in a recent avfm youtube, in that she stated that often families will NOT warm the prospective husband as they are so desperate to get rid of the troublesome child. This is my experience too, heck the town practically had a parade when I took her off their hands.
Ah well, the things God uses to change you. And as for spiritual oppression of the host with BPD, I don’t think its just that but it can be a factor, the brain is plastic and can malform/reform they are discovering. Its not like bones or liver, its like the internet, it can reroute, alter change its structure and this will alter the personality of the host, even if unintended consequences occur because of it.
What have you heard ?
If I have a broken bone in my foot – my metatarsal – that is what I have. I do not have a bi-polar broken bone or a narcissistic broken bone or even a borderline broken bone. Every one is clear what it is – I can’t walk properly.
With the brain however medical science begins to make religionists look the home of rational thought. There is only one brain and some people become over emotional – a failure to respond in cynic or stoic fashion to the vicissitudes of life. The will is strong but the control is missing. Thus we have the psycho-babble which is the DSM IV creating ever more psychological categories than Christians can find angels on the point of a needle (though occasionally erasing categories – such as homosexuality) and an industry grown up to serve those convinced that they too suffer from one of these named disabilities. Whatever the medical profession say of Mrs Pugsley (and we are supposed to offer sympathy to a worthy victim) it is pretty obvious what is wrong with her – poor little rich girl of mediocre talent with no purpose in life beyond her own whining.
Carmack,
I read the “Courtship” article you linked. I imagine it won’t resonate with many guys here, as the “Courtship Cult” is well past its prime, and was only popular among certain groups. I recall it being all the rage in the 1990’s among the weirder elements of the Evangelical set. (Nothing against evangelicalism in general: I consider myself to be an Evangelical Fundamentalist – but there was a lot of dross in the pot.)
My cousin and his wife were heavily into the “Courtship” thing for their kids, as were a lot of parents among my Evangelical acquaintances and colleagues, and one thing I noticed was this: none of them had met their spouses that way. It has always impressed me as sort-of creepy that parents were SO involved in the details of their children’s relationships as they neared adulthood. It gave me the same uneasy feeling a lot of people get when they see the “purity ball” pictures today. Here’s the thing with my cousin: he was a “playah” who talked an excellent game – to the point of running Bible studies in his college dorm room and browbeating everyone about sexual morality. (You see where this is going)… then he had to announce that his girlfriend was pregnant and they were getting married. (He also successfully stole a few million dollars from his own father, but that’s another matter. His pastor is okay with it because the tithe on a few million dollars buys a lot of pews and songbooks.) Most of the people I knew who were advocates of “Courtship” were pretty flaky on a lot of things, and almost all of them were heavily into the “Name it and Claim it / Hyperfaith” stuff propagated by false teachers like Kenneth Copeland, Benny Hinn, Robert Tilton, and Kenneth Hagin. The “Courtship” fad was just another new bandwagon for them to jump on.
So… while it is common among parts of the hard-core home-school set the writer grew up in, I think he vastly overestimates the number of people who seriously adhere to it. In my observation it’s not all that widespread, and the people who tout it tend to talk about it more than they practice it. Having said that, I’ve been out of the dating scene for a long time and boys and girls act differently than I recall having been common when I was that age. He does make some good points about traditional dating, though. I agree with him that dating isn’t a particularly terrible way to find a spouse, although the modern practice of just turning hormonal kids loose with no boundaries in a hyper-sexualized culture is a very bad idea. But I disagree with our host that dating is only appropriate for those ready for marriage right now. I went on dates with quite a few young women, kissed a few more, and went “steady” with a few of them, too. Some of those dates were awkward, many were enjoyable, one particularly fun blind date turned out to be married (oops – no second date for her), some were for events where it is just customary to bring a date… and every one of those relationships taught me things about myself, and about women. I have few regrets, and no major ones. I learned a lot about dealing with women from my dating successes and failures, and dating helped me sand down the roughest edges of my previously-significant social awkwardness while I was not ready for marriage, so that when I was ready I was able to conduct a quick yet methodical search without having to learn a lot of stuff late in the game. By the time I met my wife I was efficiently “nexting” women nearly every week – offers that I would have clung to like a life-preserver a couple of years earlier… so when I met the right girl I didn’t have to wonder.
@Carmack,
“Really, I think either one could work in a tight-knit isolated community with fathers who (a) teach their sons how to lead a girl and (b) don’t view their daughters as princesses and prevent them from acting like princesses. But the truth is that current culture is hostile to both courting and dating.”
I agree with you on this.
Dating and courtship both have pro’s and cons. The blog writer and the comments I read there have followed a red herring. The rising divorce rate among home schooled couples is sad but dating will not cure it. The root of the problem is that churches, homeschool groups, Christian families, and Christian colleges no longer prepare women to be wives and mothers. Instead they prepare them to have a career and/or ministry.
Churches, homeschool groups, Christian families, and Christian colleges refuse to teach the controversial sections of the Bible which discuss men being strong leaders, women being helpmeets to their husbands, women being submissive to their husbands, married women staying home and having lots of children, women not teaching men, etc.
Dating before being “ready” for marriage wouldn’t be as dangerous if it were done within a small, tight-knit community as it was in my rural grandparents’ time. In that case, if you happened to fall in love/pregnancy with someone, odds were good that it could work out, because you had similar backgrounds and faiths, the families already knew each other, etc. Maybe they weren’t always officially “courting” with a stated schedule toward marriage, but everyone knew that was part of the program within some reasonable time frame.
That’s very different from the usual situation today, where you meet a girl at work, school, or elsewhere, start dating her and fall for her, and only then start to find out whether your viewpoints are compatible, or whether she’s even interested in marriage at all. You can find yourself head-over-heels for someone and then hear her say, “Oh, I don’t ever want kids.” At which point, if you’re not confident in yourself or have a tendency to one-itis, you may start discarding your own goals and desires to accommodate hers, and end up in an open-ended “relationship” that ends messily when one of you finally gets bored/frustrated enough to blow it up.
The traditional (Catholic) courtship model I’m familiar with isn’t that different from dating, except that you don’t do it until you’re both at least willing to marry, and you involve each other’s families and friends rather than spending all your time sneaking off alone getting romantic the way new lovebirds are wont to do. And if it looks like marriage isn’t in the cards, you part ways as painlessly as possible and take your search elsewhere. All the other stuff, the refusal to kiss or touch, the purity balls and so on, is unnecessary weirdness. Like I said before, I suspect people are adding that stuff to try to make it sustainable over a longer stretch of time, because they don’t want their perfect princesses tying themselves to some icky man at age 18 and “missing out” on education and other wonderfulness.
@Cail, I’m trying not to be facetious, so please believe me. I’m pretty sure I could not kiss a woman with romantic intent without already achieving that goal. That is to say, kissing makes me feel in love (as well as vice versa: being in love makes me feel like kissing). This may be due to my small N, but I feel that kissing with a woman that I wasn’t in love with would have the exact same kind (if not degree) of going-through-the-motions as having sex with a woman that I wasn’t in love with. Or maybe I just really like kissing.
Cail,
Good point, and similar to what the writer was told by his own grandmother. For those who didn’t read the article, a common rule back then was that people started to date in junior high school (they also married about five younger than people do now, and teenage marriages were fairly common), and they could date as much as they liked, but they could not go out with the same person twice in a row. In other words, a girl could go out with Bill on Tuesday and again on Friday, but only if she went out with Steve in between. As long as everyone had the same rule, nobody got too serious until they were closer to the threshold for marriage.
As he noted, it’s important that we all mean the same thing when we say “dating.” If we mean it as his grandmother explained it, it’s pretty casual and definitely not exclusive. That’s different than “going steady” (which was still a thing when I was in high school), which denoted at least a long-term possibility, and was considered inappropriate for kids too young to be conducting a genuine mate search.
In short, before you were ready to start a serious search (as opposed to being ready to actually marry), you had to “spin plates.” As long as everybody played by the same rule, almost everyone could date, since the rule required a person to date a lot of different people if they wanted to date at all – the market rewarded “novelty”. As I wrote above, casual dating – and especially plate-spinning – did wonders for my attitude and knowledge about women.
________________________________________________
Quick plate-spinning story that I’ve told before – A “good girl” girlfriend flaked on me once and left me high and dry for an event we planned to attend that evening. I went moping back to my room in the barracks and ran into my roommate and his fiance, who was being visited by her notoriously-slutty sister, who also had no date for the event. The two of us ended up together, and I dated her for a while (I didn’t sleep with her despite her best efforts), and when my regular girlfriend came back her friends told her about it immediately. We didn’t talk to each other for a little while, but when we did it was on my terms: I told her that I was going to date other women (and she knew exactly who I meant). I even told her that since we weren’t exclusive she could date other guys. Lo and behold – not only did she NOT date other guys, but she started trying harder to please me, even to the point of telling off her “friends” who bad-mouthed me to her all the time. I didn’t understand anything about pre-selection back then, but I figured out the basics pretty quickly. Even my “slutty” girlfriend (who was stationed overseas on a short tour at the time) gave up seeing other men – and proposed to me in a letter! (Much to the amusement of my friends. I declined, of course.)
So now whenever I get hit on by a woman I immediately tell my wife about it. Not to make her jealous (she is not the jealous type and she knows she can trust me), but because my dating experience taught me that pre-selection is sexy to women. My wife knows that I’d never spin another plate, but it doesn’t hurt that she knows I could. That’s not Dread Game by the way – no threat is even implied, but women like to know that other women find their mates attractive.
thought this might interest some here –
http://stuartschneiderman.blogspot.ca/2014/08/regretting-divorce.html
Marriage in the UK is about to come to a crashing end:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/11043785/Bullying-husbands-face-jail-under-new-proposals-by-Theresa-May.html
JF12, I know what you mean; it’s pretty intense for me too. But I think those boundaries are something people have to set for themselves. If a couple wants to save kissing for the wedding night because they’re afraid it could lead to sin, that’s up to them. My objection is just to the people who set that up as an ideal, as if people who can restrain themselves that much are holier or more likely to be a good couple. I think everyone here can recognize the opposite danger: if your bride says she’s fine with not kissing before the wedding, there’s a chance that she’s not really very attracted to you, and you’re setting yourself up for a world of pain.
It seems to me that some people are idolizing chastity to the point of setting up a sort of super-chastity that they can brag about. The ideal is virginity until marriage. To achieve that, it’s important to avoid occasions of sin, but that doesn’t mean you have to be silly about it. Don’t suck face for an hour late at night in your apartment; but sharing a kiss when you drop her off at home, where her dad might peek out at any moment, ought to be safe for most people.
Elspeth says:
August 19, 2014 at 1:56 pm
Haven’t read all of the comments, but I’d offer that a great many diagnoses reflect the “sin to syndrome” metamorphasis that has overwhelmed western society. The helping professions keep inventing new maladies (or even eliminating them – see homosexuality) that would have simply been viewed as sinful behavior (or an inclination thereto) in an earlier age.
That being said, if BPD is a thing, I believe I’ve seen it up close and personal.
Elspeth says:
August 19, 2014 at 1:56 pm
Haven’t read all of the comments, but I’d offer that a great many diagnoses reflect the “sin to syndrome” metamorphasis that has overwhelmed western society. The helping professions keep inventing new maladies (or even eliminating them – see homosexuality) that would have simply been viewed as sinful behavior (or an inclination thereto) in an earlier age.
That being said, if BPD is a thing, I believe I’ve seen it up close and personal.
@Cail re: “Don’t suck face for an hour late at night in your apartment”
Can I do it for twenty minutes? Until I need glasses? Ok, now that was facetious.
But this isn’t: to me the near occasion of sin is already being alone with a “strange” woman in an apartment. And yes, been there done that, more than a couple times, although I usually mostly kinda tried not to, because, ya know, a boy’s gotta have some standards. So by the time actual kissing commences (and yes, been there done that, more than etc) it’s passed being the “near” occasion into the literally in-your-face this-is-happening occasion.
Keoni Galt says:
August 19, 2014 at 4:04 pm
I’m not entirely sure that the presumed legal protections afforded to a father by way of a civil marriage a) can not be worked around via other legal contracts and b) are not outweighed by the ‘expected value’ of the costs (financial and otherwise) of a possible divorce proceeding.
The problem with civil marriage is that you get “b” above which quite effectively incentivizes the destruction of the putative legal protection it was supposed to provide in the first place. Being civilly married alone is insufficient to satisfy the sacramental requirements of any Christian denomination whereas being sacramentlaly married outside the bounds of the civil realm is throughly sufficient in this regard. The latter state of affairs accomplishes the sacramental requirements while not exposing the parties to the unholy machinations of the domesitc relations industry (with the notable exception of child custody) and the perverse incentives attached thereto.
In other words, if you’re not legally married, she’s far less likely to blow up the family than otherwise.
Dave: Assuming he waits until 18 before courting a woman, how long will this courtship be before he is able to head a family? Most professional degrees take 7 to 10 years of college education on average. Are we advocating that young people get married before they are able to earn a living?
Why not? First, you don’t need a “7-10 year professional degree” to earn a living. Second, it costs just as much to live single as it does to live married — probably more, in fact, due to the high cost of housing, which effectively gets cut almost in half for a married couple.
(Unless you’re confusing the cost of marriage with the cost of a wedding…)
Lyn87, the problem with his urging people to date like his grandparents is that he also talks against parental involvement. I understand he’s reacting to the overly protective tendencies of the purity ball crowd, but he goes too far the other way. If our grandparents had “dates” in junior high, they weren’t anything like dates now. They were at church and school dances, the malt shop, neighborhood picnics, things like that. They were also dating kids whose parents their own parents knew, socialized with, and possibly went to church with. Nowadays, a junior high girl is likely to date a boy from school whom her parents don’t know at all, or even one she met online. It’s a much different context, and he doesn’t seem to be taking that into account.
Agreed. Going to her apartment alone and telling yourself it’s okay because you took a no-kissing pledge would be foolish.
Yes. Childbirth and kids cost money, but people who say they can’t afford marriage itself are just being silly. If it cost more to bring someone into your house to share expenses, there would be no such thing as roommates. If I went out and found a woman to marry tomorrow, we’d instantly save one rent/mortgage check and one home worth of utilities every month, probably some on food (cooking at home is more enjoyable for two), something on insurance policies, and so on. If you can’t afford to get married, you’re doing it wrong — probably letting her run wild with the finances.
Societal Decay @ 10:07 am:
“First, you don’t need a “7-10 year professional degree” to earn a living. Second, it costs just as much to live single as it does to live married — probably more, in fact, due to the high cost of housing, which effectively gets cut almost in half for a married couple.”
Agreed. Spending a few years as a double-income, no-kids household is a good way to pay off some debt.
The idea that marriage’s purpose is having children is quite toxic*. Not only is it unBiblical, it sells the idea that a guy needs to be professionally established with a three-bedroom house before getting a wife. How that is going to happen before he’s 40, especially in the current economy, goes unsaid.
*Usual caveats for the risks of Marriage 2.0.
Cail Corishev
It seems to me that some people are idolizing chastity to the point of setting up a sort of super-chastity that they can brag about.
Then it isn’t really so much about chastity, as about a public show of chastity, right?
Reminds me of the politician who makes a big show of eating [ethnic food] on camera – is it about the food, or about impressing someone else?
@Cail re: foolish.
Yep. I agree with you agreeing with me agreeing with you. I was quite leery of being alone together with a woman, i.e. not very foolish, when single and dating. Both of the women that I was alone together with during that time I wound up kissing, of course, and asking them to marry me, in that order, of course. My first wife I never kissed until the wedding kiss.
The idea that marriage’s purpose is having children is quite toxic*
Not quite IMO. I would say the idea that having children is the ONLY purpose for marriage is incorrect and unbiblical. I think marriage sets the framework for legitimacy. Having children is one of the purposes of marriage, so is legitimate sex, so is glorifying God by following the example of Christ and His church.
God told them: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it,..”, and I think we (as a people) are foolish to expect everything to be perfect before we have children. My opinion is that the average child in a 3rd world nation like the Philippines is better off than a great many children here (not even counting the kids who never made it out of the womb).
A woman spends a month tracking every mean thing she says to her boyfriend.
http://thoughtcatalog.com/charlotte-green/2014/08/i-took-note-of-every-mean-thing-i-said-to-my-boyfriend-for-a-month-and-this-is-what-i-found/
Not exactly surprising.
Anchorman says:
August 20, 2014 at 9:12 am
That article makes me wonder if this:
http://www.vice.com/read/is-reducing-the-male-population-by-90-percent-the-solution-to-all-our-problems
isn’t all that far fetched.
@Lyn87
I read the article, “Why Courtship is Fundamentally Flawed”, and the first word that came to mind was “bullshit”, especially when I read this…
“The lack of exclusivity helped the girls guard their hearts and kept the boys from feeling entitled to the girl. How could a boy have a claim to her time, heart or body if she was going out with someone else later that week?”
Apparently this guy’s never heard of “hooking up”, or “one night stands”, or the Magaluf Girl. He doesn’t seem to understand how much the culture has changed (even in the Church) from the time his grandmother was a girl (60 years ago?) until now.
Alivia complains that after she got tired of being sexual with her boyfriend and wishing he were not so familiar, or rather that she could have anewstranger in her … er … life, so to speak, that he was a big fat meanie because he didn’t want to hang out ljbf-style.
“I started to feel myself not just falling out of love with him, but also craving something different and more fulfilling. Yet at the same time, the thought of not having him in my life felt both sad and unfamiliar.”
http://thoughtcatalog.com/alivia-hall/2014/08/you-were-once-a-lover-now-youre-a-stranger/
“Second, it costs just as much to live single as it does to live married — probably more, in fact, due to the high cost of housing, which effectively gets cut almost in half for a married couple.
Yes. Childbirth and kids cost money, but people who say they can’t afford marriage itself are just being silly. If it cost more to bring someone into your house to share expenses, there would be no such thing as roommates. ”
I have to really disagree with this. It seems logical and rational to the male mind that you would “share expenses” and it would be cheaper married than single, but it almost always the other way around.
I know several divorced men that are better off financially divorced than married because women as a rule tend to spend more than they have (and by have that counts everything he has). It is the nature of women to never be satisfied and always want more, and so it is their nature to go into debt to fuel this. You see this all the time with divorced women getting huge settlements and then five years later going to court to get more because they have run through the money.
They don’t care where the money comes from as long as it is spent on them.
A spouse is not a roommate. A wife has considerable amount of leverage over the husband that a roommate does not have. There are boundaries with a roommate that do not exist in marriage.
It is “abuse” these days to limit the wife’s access to the bank accounts, credit cards and everything else.
I have known men that were sound financially bankrupt themselves once they got married.
So no, it is not cheaper to be married, it is never cheaper.
Minesweeper says:
August 20, 2014 at 1:53 am
@Ra’s al Ghul says:
August 19, 2014 at 10:16 pm
And there are stories, especially about NPD and the supernatural element.
What have you heard ?
http://www.amazon.com/People-Lie-Hope-Healing-Human/dp/0684848597/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=undefined&sr=8-1&keywords=m.+Scott+Peck
http://www.amazon.com/Glimpses-Devil-Psychiatrists-Personal-Possession/dp/1439167265/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1408555395&sr=8-1&keywords=m.+Scott+Peck+exorcism
I have heard stories about weird things going on around some NPD. I have never seen it, but a supernatural element is sometimes described. Odd coincidences, odd things happening like electronics getting fried during a rage out.
Gotta agree with Ras on this one. Marriage is generally the most expensive “lifestyle” a man can opt into.
Oscar,
Your point is certainly valid – but the author is talking about a community that already has the “No sex before marriage” thing down pat. These are people who actually never kiss until they are man-and-wife standing at the altar. For good, bad, or otherwise, I kissed an indeterminate number of girls before I got married, and I managed to not have coitus with any of them. Some may call that “technical” virginity, but that’s okay, because words mean things, and a technical virgin is still a real virgin. Saying that “technically” 2+2=4 doesn’t change the fact that 2+2=4… “technically” is redundant. That’s not to issue blanket approval for anything that falls short of PIV, though, and I’m not qualified to tell anyone else that, “This is okay but that is too far.” I simply do not have enough scripture to define where the line belongs, and as I have shown in this thread and others, I don’t make definitive statements without that. I suspect the guys here could not reach even a loose consensus, and we’re pretty homogenous compared to the general population.
For the people in the “Courtship Cult” – which is his target audience – dating a’la the way his grandparents did IS better than the way they’re doing it. They are not a hyper-sexualized culture, and any girl with the propensity to act like “Magaluf Girl” would never have been in Magaluf to begin with. In THAT culture – like in his grandmother’s culture – the “dating” culture might work pretty well. It’s really the culture that matters most in the “meta” sense.
Even when I was going up my parents were aware that some people advocated extreme levels of parental involvement in their children’s relationships and rejected it as being crazy – nobody was calling it “Courtship” at the time though. My father was a pastor (retired now), and that has potential pitfalls all its own. HE was called to pastor – not me – and God doesn’t establish special, stricter rules for the children of pastors. A lot of P.K.s go waaaaay off the rails because their parents held them to standards that only applied to them. If it’s okay for everyone else to do “X” but not me, I’m going to throw the B.S. flag. But if none of the kids in the church can do “X,” that’s a different matter. Again… culture. My brother and I had basically one rule – “God says that fornication is a sin, so don’t do that.” Got it. THAT I can handle.
Gunner Q says: “The idea that marriage’s purpose is having children is quite toxic. Not only is it unBiblical, it sells the idea that a guy needs to be professionally established with a three-bedroom house before getting a wife.”
Modern Christians’ opinions are warped by the availability of artificial birth control since about 1960. Before BC, marriage resulted in sex resulted in children, for the overwhelming majority of couples. In the Old Testament, barrenness is seen as a sign of God’s disfavor; in the New, celebrating barrenness is a sign of societal inversion and impending apocalypse.
The point is, DINKs were a (usually temporary) anomaly. The point of waiting to become established is not to afford a wife — if childless, she has no reason not to work at a job too — but to afford a wife whose work is as mother to your children. Now, the ratcheting of expectations up to requiring three-bedroom houses, granite countertops, premium cable, etc., to have a minimally suitable environment in which to raise children is just consumerism run wild. It’s not the kids who care about that stuff. Ever since about 1960, the average home size has increased in inverse relationship to the average family size.
The idea that marriage’s purpose is having children is quite toxic*
JDG
Not quite IMO. I would say the idea that having children is the ONLY purpose for marriage is incorrect and unbiblical.
And toxic. Because the idea that having children is the only purpose for marriage leads to a child-centered marriage; this in turn will almost always lead to the mother “marrying” the children, which leads to contempt for the man, who in turn comes to resent the wife because the only reason he’s still around is the children. and so forth. It also likely contributes to empty-nest separation and even divorce.
John Rosemond has been writing family advice columns for years. He has been insistent that a child-centered family is disaster since the 90’s, and that only by putting the marriage first within the family can children be raised properly. Paraphrasing: “The marriage existed before the children came into it, and properly should continue to exist after the children have left home. Therefore the marriage is paramount, and must be the center of a functioning family”.
Obviously if no children enter the marriage, it’s still a marriage.
I was one of them, so I know it often works that way. But it didn’t for my parents and grandparents, so it doesn’t have to. My point was that it’s a way to judge a woman’s true interest in marriage: if she thinks you need several years of building up income before she can marry you, she’s A) not really that into you, and B) expecting you to fund a more lavish lifestyle than you might want to.
When people have several children, instead of having 1-2 and doting on them constantly, it actually works the other direction. I see the child-centered-ness in many small families, whether they had kids right away or waited several years. In fact, the child-centered people are often the ones who wait and keep the family small because they think each child deserves to be pampered, from having his own room to getting a free ride to college. In large families, like you tend to get when people see procreation as the primary (not only) purpose of marriage, that kind of spoiling simply isn’t possible.
Ra’s al Ghul. Who are you, and where are you holding Ras Al ghul? What are your demands?
His avvy looks-a-like theees … [Righteous Ras] , got sort of a celtic cross in the middle.
You got the four-spot off of a dice.
{sometimes it’s quite handy, being OnThe Spectrum and all ;¬¦]> }
Oh, and ..
Blueplillprofessor, had my eye on ye and all. But your avvy is the same as Bluepillprofessor, so you’re a standup guy.
Damn. My pencils aren’t aligned perfectly with the mousemat .. sorry folks, have to dip out for a bit.
craig @ 12:34 pm:
“In the Old Testament, barrenness is seen as a sign of God’s disfavor”
Can you provide a reference or two? If anything, I see childless women in the OT being treated kindly by God, like Samuel’s mother. There are proverbs that say children are a blessing from God. That’s fine but it doesn’t imply that an absence of children is a curse. Also, if barrenness is a bad thing then how can Paul recommend not getting married and, by extension, choosing to not have children?
@GunnerQ, New Testament too.
Luke 1:24-25 And after those days his wife Elisabeth conceived, and hid herself five months, saying, Thus hath the Lord dealt with me in the days wherein he looked on me, to take away my reproach among men.
There is no indication in scripture that individual infertility was a curse from God. It could be at the national level, though. Time in the Word‘s* explanation is about as good as any:
Those scriptures are conditional national blessings on the Children of Israel as long as they served God. They read as follows:
Ex 23:26, “There shall nothing cast their young, nor be barren, in thy land: the number of thy days I will fulfil.”
Deu 7:14, “Thou shalt be blessed above all people: there shall not be male or female barren among you, or among your cattle.”
Seven individual women in the Bible were noted to have been barren: Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, the wife of Manoah (her name is unknown), Hannah, Michel, and Elizabeth. Of those seven, six are known to have had their fertility miraculously granted. In none of the cases is there the slightest indication that the women were individually cursed by God in any way.
The Time in the Word* article goes on. Here’s the money quote:
* (http://timeintheword.wordpress.com/2010/03/04/gods-providential-exception-the-barren-womb-part-2/)
I see JF12 beat me to the punch while I was typing. Note that Elizabeth said, “Thus hath the Lord dealt with me in the days wherein he looked on me, to take away my reproach among men.” [Emphasis added]
Reproached by men – not by God.
People may look down on an infertile woman and assume that she’s cursed, but scripture does not support that view at all. I’ve heard “hyper-faith” loonies declare that all sickness or even tragedy is caused by some fault of the individual, rather than something that just occurs in a fallen world. Apparently they are unfamiliar with the book of Job.
GunnerQ, I did not mean to say that God declared barrenness a sign of His disfavor, although the people of Israel naturally viewed it as such, since the promises to Israel include fruitfulness as a reward for fidelity (cf. Exodus 23, Deuteronomy 7). So it was commonly thought that barrenness was punishment for immorality. Wisdom 3:13 does contradict to that presumption: “For blessed is the barren woman who is undefiled, who has not entered into a sinful union; she will have fruit when God examines souls.”
“Gunner Q says:
August 20, 2014 at 2:15 pm
Can you provide a reference or two? If anything, I see childless women in the OT being treated kindly by God, like Samuel’s mother. There are proverbs that say children are a blessing from God. That’s fine but it doesn’t imply that an absence of children is a curse. Also, if barrenness is a bad thing then how can Paul recommend not getting married and, by extension, choosing to not have children?”
Attitude is everything. Intent matters.
See King David and Michal, his wife and daughter of Saul.
_____________________
”
1 Chronicles chapter 15 (KJV)
29 And it came to pass, as the ark of the covenant of the LORD came to the city of David, that Michal the daughter of Saul looking out at a window saw king David dancing and playing: and she despised him in her heart.
”
_____________________
”
2 Samuel chapter 6 (KJV)
20 Then David returned to bless his household. And Michal the daughter of Saul came out to meet David, and said, How glorious was the king of Israel today, who uncovered himself to day in the eyes of the handmaids of his servants, as one of the vain fellows shamelessly uncovereth himself!
21 And David said unto Michal, It was before the LORD, which chose me before thy father, and before all his house, to appoint me ruler over the people of the LORD, over Israel: therefore will I play before the LORD.
22 And I will yet be more vile than thus, and will be base in mine own sight: and of the maidservants which thou hast spoken of, of them shall I be had in honour.
23 Therefore Michal the daughter of Saul had no child unto the day of her death.
”
__
re: barren. Two of several other relevant Old Testament verses
Genesis 30:1 And when Rachel saw that she bare Jacob no children, Rachel envied her sister; and said unto Jacob, Give me children, or else I die.
1 Samuel 1:6 And her adversary also provoked her sore, for to make her fret, because the LORD had shut up her womb.
Barrenness, especially for women, was definitely considered a stigma, a *handicap*, a burden.
jf12,
It seems there was a definite man-made stigma attached to barrenness. It is also accurate to call it a handicap, in the same sense that a blind person is handicapped (some bodily function doesn’t work normally). But again, nothing here indicates a curse.
John 9: 1-3 offers a similar view:
And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth. And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.
re: special needs.
Isaiah 53:4 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
When I was growing up, maybe junior high, the all-purpose schoolyard insult wasn’t “You moron!” it was “You’re ‘fflicted!” as in “Afflicted!” But it was also an excuse: if you were injured, or wanting to be considered to be injured, or for laughs, you could limp and claim to be ‘fflicted.
It’s not that long ago that the common view was that those who were “touched in the head” or had a “stroke” or the poor, the sick, the naked, those in prison, widowed, etc including barren were considered to be God’s “special needs” children.
Anonymous Reader says:
August 20, 2014 at 12:38 pm
In my comment I listed three purposes for marriage (even though there are more). Having children is a purpose for marriage, not THE purpose for marriage.
Obviously if no children enter the marriage, it’s still a marriage.
Obviously.
In agreement with Anonymous Reader’s statement, “Obviously if no children enter the marriage, it’s still a marriage.”
LDG replies, “Obviously.”
Gentlemen, I completely agree, but you might be surprised at how controversial that is. Before she and I met, my wife had been dating a guy for some time – they were high school sweethearts and everyone expected them to get married at some point. Well… it turns out that my wife has a medical condition that makes pregnancy a life-threatening condition for her. She is almost certainly barren from birth. We don’t actually know that pregnancy would kill the baby and/or her, because we never put it to the test, but the doctors seemed pretty sure.
Anyway, her boyfriend at the time wanted kids when he got married, and when she told him that she was barren his response was something along the lines of, “You can’t have kids? That’s no different than a guy that’s gay.”
Clearly he could be a bit of a douche-nozzle… And who the hell would immediately think of THAT anyway? //shudder//
He equated marriage to a barren woman to living with (and having sex with) a male homosexual. He’s not alone, either. We caught a lot of crap from family (mostly hers – they weren’t all that savvy about life-threatening conditions), when we made it clear that we weren’t going to try for kids. A lot of Catholics are just as bad: as they often consider that the main purpose of marriage is to make more little Catholics – or that at least attempting childbearing is an existential part of marriage. I’m reminded of this (NFSW):
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUspLVStPbk)
Cail Corishev says:
August 20, 2014 at 12:51 pm
Co-signing. Thie biggest lie perpetrated on the last two generations is that having a small family (1-2 kids) is the key to better development. What ends up happening is that the parent(s), can at least in the near term, focus intently on the fewer kids, but this happens to the detriment of the spousal relationship. If you have 3-4 (or 5-6), there is no choice but to make the kids mature more completely and faster (in a positive way – not becoming more worldly too young). You simply can’t helicopter parent (and thereby shortchange your spouse, among other things) when you have a larger brood (which will be spaced more closely together by necessity).
More kids than typical is divorce insurance. Not foolproof, but probably better than any other approach.
LDG replies, “Obviously.”
Lyn87 – is LDG the result of a typo or representative of something else? I only ask because you have used this before when referring to me.
He equated marriage to a barren woman to living with (and having sex with) a male homosexual. He’s not alone, either.
This brought to mind another question pertaining to this topic:
How many men in ancient times would have married a woman knowing that she could not reproduce?
How many men would do so today?
JDG,
re: LDG. I’m just a poor typist. And with all the other quirks I have… maybe a touch dyslexic.
As for your question: if a woman was a virgin, her barrenness probably would not have been apparent until she had been married for some time and unable to reproduce. Of course that doesn’t rule out that the man is the one “shooting blanks” (unless he had children by another woman), but in my understanding, the ancients usually figured the problem was with the woman as long as the guy wasn’t impotent. After all, HIS equipment was visibly working. They didn’t understand that the discharge has several components, only one of which is the sperm.
But if a woman was known (or thought) to be barren I imagine she’d have a hard time finding a husband.
Hurting, also, the more kids you have, the more obvious it is that Mom staying home and raising and teaching them is the only financially sensible thing to do. More kids also keep her busier, less likely to get “bored” and start looking for trouble. That’s not to say wives never get unhappy with busy motherhood, but it seems to be less dangerous than boredom.
Still, if anyone, Catholics included, says a marriage without children is not a real marriage, he’s wrong (and probably insulting many people for whom that is a source of pain). While Catholics believe procreation is the primary purpose for sex in marriage, it’s not the only one. The “unitive” purpose is also critical. That’s why the marital debt — one’s responsibility to meet one’s spouse’s sexual needs — does not end at menopause or take a break during pregnancy.
@Cail, I and most men and most Catholics would agree that the fact that the wife must try to put out more than she would if left to her own, er, devices is sound Biblical and Catholic teaching. But the elevation of the unitive aspects, more technically mutuum adiutorium and remedium concupiscentiae (as anti-dis-unitive, so to speak), has paradoxically made it *easier* for Catholic women to wiggle out of their obligations.
Roughly speaking, more explicitly in “Love and Responsibility”, but also in “Theology of the Body” and elsewhere, John Paul II commendably brings to our attention that the current teaching of the Catholic Church is that if the wife doesn’t want to have sex (except maybe some indefinite time in the distant future, and hell freezing over counts, I think) then the husband is being disunitive for pestering her to have sex.
JF12, there’s no such thing as “current teaching of the Church” if it contradicts long-standing teaching of the Church or scripture. That’s a problem with much papal writing since Vatican II, though (with Benedict as an exception most of the time): writings are often vague or flowery enough that they can be interpreted in a variety of ways, including ways that contradict actual teachings. If they aren’t always interpreted through the filter of Scripture and Tradition, people may fall into error. The way to read any papal pronouncement is, “Considering what we already know from Scripture and Tradition, what could this mean that doesn’t contradict that?” If you make an honest attempt to make it fit and it won’t, you throw it out. Popes can make mistakes.
The marital debt is clearly laid out in scripture and has always been Church teaching. While it may be true that a husband “nagging” his wife for sex could result in her digging in her heels and making things worse, that doesn’t absolve her sin or shift it to him. If JPII taught that it does, he was in error on that. I’m guessing (not having read it, and not having much desire to) that he was trying to be helpful, assuming — as many pedestalizing pastors we discuss here do — that a husband can catch more wifely flies with honey than with vinegar, so a husband could “fix” that problem from his end by being nicer and less demanding. That just happens to be untrue.
@Cail, I’m not even exaggerating slightly that the current teaching of the Catholic Church has flopped over in a century or less from the earlier advice to wives to “lie back and think of Eng … I mean Rome” to now advising men to “roll over and think of God, or Jesus, or the Pope, to take your mind off it”.
JF12, I know you’re not exaggerating. They’re still wrong. It’s not the first time the bulk of the hierarchy has taught something incorrect for a while, and it probably won’t be the last.
JDG
In my comment I listed three purposes for marriage (even though there are more). Having children is a purpose for marriage, not THE purpose for marriage.
Yes, I know. I was expanding on your accurate observation. Might consider when someone agrees with you they are not your enemy.
JDG @ 4:49 pm:
“How many men in ancient times would have married a woman knowing that she could not reproduce?”
Too many variables in that one, not least of which is how infertility could be known in advance. It isn’t something you can inherit.
How men in ancient times reacted to infertility is all over the place, from happy acceptance to Henry VIII.
“How many men would do so today?”
A lot, I expect, given the interest in contraception I’ve seen and the State’s having turned children into economic and legal liabilities. Throw in a touch of “genuinely helpless female” and it shouldn’t be a tough sale.
Harder in past times, no doubt, but if nothing else enough women died in childbirth a barren woman could have a window of opportunity. If she wasn’t too picky.
Yes, I know. I was expanding on your accurate observation. Might consider when someone agrees with you they are not your enemy.
Sorry my bad. I was grouchy and misunderstood. Either way I should have kept my cool.
When I was younger, I fell into the “she’s special” camp when it came to virgin girls. This led to beta pedistalization with the accompanying disastrous results.
Now that I see the error of my ways, I have a better perspective.
Refraining from evil doesn’t make you “Special”. You don’t get a medal or a crown just because you did what you’re supposed to do. Otherwise, men who refrain from rape should be regarded as heros and a man who doesn’t beat his wife is a saint.
BTW, guys, I just saw more redpill truth in mainstream. The Big Bang Theory. Lenard is talking to the tired out carousal rider Penny (who Sheldon has estimated has over 40 sex partners.) She’s thinking out loud, saying she needs to make smart life decisions, then suggests she and Lenard get married. http://sharesix.com/f/MBrmYp
Lenard. “C’mon, be serious.”
“I am.”
“So I’m a smart decision? Like a bran muffin, some boring choice you make because it’s good for you? I want to be something exciting, like a cinnabon or a pop tart!”
“Honey, what does it matter as long as I’m choosing you?” Penny asks, the clueless carousal rider talking to the beta.
@Lyn87 That’s a pretty terrible thing to have happened to your wife. I find myself that few people really understand just how devastating unwanted infertility is to women. All the “well, maybe you aren’t trusting in the Lord enough” comments are quite cruel.
@Cail Corishev
I have read all of the Theology of the Body Wednesday addresses as well as Love and Responsibility (the first translation of that was beyond abysmal, perhaps why many find fault in it now). The important bit to keep in mind is that sex is not really the main focus, rather why do we have bodies in the first place? It goes through the three major time periods, before the fall, after, and after the second coming with the overachieving theme of Christ’s marriage to the church. People focus on the sex because it’s a lot more juicy than, say, priests imaging Christ’s role as bridegroom or father.
Another important factor is the influence of brain infections, aneurysms etc. causing mental illness. I had a rather insidious brain infection for about a year before the correct antibiotics were administered (shots or IV are the only way to treat brain infections) which caused me to seem a bipolar/BPD mix. After the treatment? Normal.
The way to figure out if it’s physical or mental is a quick test, do they think they’re crazy and/or not acting normally? I knew pitching fits like a 2 year old was bizarre (during rare moments of lucidity) and got myself to medical professionals for help. BPD doesn’t think there’s anything wrong. Witness an ex roommate. Completely cracked, crying on the floor because her bf didn’t call her, making me talk to her for hours because she wanted to kill herself because some guy wouldn’t take a walk with her etc. She went to a “counselor” who told her to journal and that nothing was wrong with her.
So quick tips on mental health professionals:
1. Male. Females are too likely to side with women.
2. PHD. A master’s degree requires next to no research or experience.
3. Clinical work and/or publications. This means they’ve actually seen proper examples of all of the mental disorders.
@craig
That. This is also combined well with the fact that any training for a trade or profession is infinitely more expensive now than in the 60’s with the lovely bonus of cratering wages for people without it. So both the man (and the woman) should work to eliminate debt from said training before they get married (as well as not dating seriously) until it is a manageable size. Starting out a marriage with a significant amount of nondischargeable debt is a great way to prepare for a divorce.
“The way to figure out if it’s physical or mental is a quick test, do they think they’re crazy and/or not acting normally? I knew pitching fits like a 2 year old was bizarre (during rare moments of lucidity) and got myself to medical professionals for help. BPD doesn’t think there’s anything wrong. Witness an ex roommate. Completely cracked, crying on the floor because her bf didn’t call her, making me talk to her for hours because she wanted to kill herself because some guy wouldn’t take a walk with her etc. She went to a “counselor” who told her to journal and that nothing was wrong with her.”
While I don’t know your circumstances, I would guess you couldn’t control it.
The BPD and NPDs can, they are extremely calculating. They will wait until the guy is hooked upon them before revealing the crazy and then the guy is screwed.
Not that you can’t tell if you know their background, but then today’s society makes it more difficult to vet people then a hundred years ago. Like I’ve said, contemporary culture is geared toward personality disordered people and giving them every possible advantage in victimizing people.
There is big difference between bi-polar and BPD.
The bi-polar wakes you up at 3 oclock in the morning because she needs to have mashed potatoes. She simply has to have them, like right now, wouldn’t it be just so AWESOME if we made 5 pounds of homemade MASHED POTATOES! So lets go, I’ll peel, and you get the blender ready, with the milk, a butter, and I’ll boil them and it will great and I can’t WAIT until we have MASHED POTATOES!!!!!
………
(twenty minutes later)
…….
You are going to LEAVE ME I KNOW IT!!!!! (cries hysterically) Please, PLEASE don’t EVER LEAVE ME!!!!! I know I don’t deserve you, I’m sooooooooo stupid, I didn’t mean to wake you, and I know that you are going to DUMP ME!!!! I feel terrible, I just want to DIE!!!!!
That is bi-polar.
The BPD wakes you up at 3 oclock in the morning because she needs to have a conversation. She simply has to have it, like right now. She is accusing you of f-cking another woman because when you were watching some stupid reality tv show 7 hours ago you paused the DVR to look at some reality show girl’s big boobs. She says “wouldn’t it be just so AWESOME if you coul df-ck both her and I at the same time you letcherous pig monster! I know you want to f-ck all these other girls expecially your ex-GF! So lets go, I’ll just pick up the phone RIGHT NOW and give her a call because you don’t love me, you don’t want me, YOU WANT YOUR EX NOT ME!!!!! (Grabs phone, runs into the bathroom crying.)
………
(twenty minutes later)
…….
The police arrive. It appears BPD girl called 9-1-1 to report a domestic disturbance and she wants you OUT OF THE HOUSE RIGHT NOW (because you paused the tv looking at big boob girl) and now she is making up some story that you attacked her and there is blood all over the place because the whole time she was calling the police she was also cutting herself (her legs, her arms, her face) to show the cops where you just beat the living shit out of her. They put you in handcuffs and send you to jail and if you should be so unfortunate as to have married this BPD, now she will divorce you and collect her cash and prizes.
That is BPD.
You can’t cure a BPD. Can’t be done. BPDs are almost always women and the world is full of them (because as a society we tend to only incarcrate the men who are BPD.) So watch out, she might get you. 100 years ago the Rite of Excorcism might have been done by a Catholic priest to excorcize a woman who was BPD (because being possessed by the devil is the only possible explaination they had back that for women this f-cked up.)
Purposes of marriage
The Bible only listed three:
1. Companionship—-“it is not good that the man should be alone…” Genesis 2:18
2. Procreation—–“And God bless the man and his wife, saying be fruitful and multiply…” Genesis 1:28
3. Sexual release—-“If they cannot handle their sexual pressures, let them marry; it is better to marry than to burn” 1 Corinthians 7:9
Marriage (not wedding) more expensive
The biblical marriage implies that the man should be superior to and be able to take care of wife. This includes paying their debts (as Christ did for our sins); teaching the wife (“let them ask their husbands at home”; “wash with water of the word”). Christ went further to suffer capital punishment for His wife; we are not called to do so as husbands.
Now, tell me, which newly graduated kid just out of college is able to take on the debts of a former classmate who has now become his wife? Which girl will be attracted to Johhny who is drowning in his own school debts, has no money and earns less than $35k a year? When you throw children in the mix, you have no marriage.
Do true marriages still exist?
Here is the REAL heresy. There is NO marriage today. It doesn’t exist as an institution.
It amuses me when American writers assume that the world ends at the American border. May I remind my readers that the United States is a mere 4% of the world’s population? True marriages may not be all that common in America, but they sure are in many, many places on earth. Heck, there are true marriages here in the US, and a number of folks on this site can testify to that.
Yup
I don’t know about guys but its certainly geared towards PD females being excused (and more dangerously BELIEVED) and given every chance possible to create as much damage as they can – because the poor deeries.
Generally, one of the worst things these people can do is lie with absolute impunity, their ability to motivate others to destroy others is truly incredible. They can get others to do awful things who would normally never every consider it. They are very dangerous when believed.
Very accurate description you have some experience with this ?
I dont think they can be cured either , they can use DBT and learn to control emotions.I do know they are generally not welcome with counselling as they make no progress ever, like I remember, the same issues round and round, it never gets better, there is no resolution or progression to a healthier state. Iread one book where some BPD woman did make alot of progress, from being a complete nut to semi normal, she even wrote a book of her experience. Thats how rare a BPD recovery is. If it happens to you – you get to write a book.
@Boxer
His statement is cavalier, but it’s not unfounded. 1 Timothy 5:3-16
In practice, this will often be a widow returning to her father’s house; where he is master.
Marrying at university???
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=904109
I have truly stumbled.
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=903984
Frustrations with friendships and staying single
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=904029
“BPD doesn’t think there’s anything wrong. Witness an ex roommate. Completely cracked, crying on the floor because her bf didn’t call her, making me talk to her for hours because she wanted to kill herself because some guy wouldn’t take a walk with her etc.”
In a way, they are aware of their behaviour that’s its awful, but are not that it is wrong, as far as they are concerned their feelings are always correct and appropriate and must be acted upon.
In a strange way its like the emotional scales are flipped, tiny things (her bf didn’t call her or bag was too heavy etc) produce insane reactions, but huge things that normal people would crumble with can produce no reaction at all. Either its so large a disturbance they can’t can’t even begin to grasp it, or more probably, their emotional center is so immature (like a 2yo) they just can’t process it and just look blankly.
That is one way to identify PD’s, their abnormal reaction to normal outside stimulus just makes you think – WHAT ?? Its almost too difficult to fit into your own frame of reference, you just view their behaviour as odd and unable to be categorised.
Dear Cane:
Thanks for the reply. I read it carefully. If I understand the passages, they refer to older widows with dead husbands, rather than young divorcées. I still don’t see the allowance for a displeased husband to divorce his wife and return her to her father’s house.
Quoting Blue Pill Professor here:
If there is a piece of the Bible which states “Verily I say unto you, it is permissible for a man to dump his wife on his father-in-law’s doorstep, and find some new chick to shack up with… for hard dread is the way of the LORD” etc., please clue me in. (All fun ‘n games aside, I trust your interpretation more than most here).
Best, Boxer
Dear IBB, et. al.:
Cluster-B personality disorders are interesting, and their underlying causes are not well understood. There appear in many cases to be a constellation of factors: Childhood trauma, genetic predisposition, contributing psychiatric illness and organic brain damage often work in tandem to produce these specific symptoms.
Society has a way of sanding down our rough edges, and by the time they hit their mid 30s, most of the people who have these disorders settle into a normal life. This suggests (to my layman ass) that they may be symptoms of a particularly permissive society, or perhaps a lack of socialization.
A century ago, people weren’t inclined to throw fits in public for attention, or sit around crying and shaking. There was too much work to be done, and if you didn’t get up and be productive, you’d go hungry until your attitude changed. The really sick people got shipped off to mental hospitals. The personality disordered ones learned to control themselves through fear of going without food or heat.
Psychoanalysis has had some success, as has Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Mostly, I think these disorders are symptomatic of people being able to live as emotional children for too long. You can see the psychopath, the narcissist and the borderline, all in fine form at the preschool. The shit these people do is normal (albeit annoying) at three years of age. At twenty-three its self-destructive.
Best, Boxer
@Ra’s al Ghul
It was a combo of west nile, encephalitis, aneurysms, and neurological Lyme that did it to me. So many things going on at once that a proper diagnosis took a very, very long time. Heck, I even got to be a case study in a dissertation! Exciting!
The thing about hooking men, so true. Said women finally got her claws into a friend of mine. He went to our priest (a trained psychiatrist) for spiritual counseling, but she insisted on going to his private session (they had been dating for 3 weeks). Said priest told him to get rid of her and it wasn’t a healthy relationship. Guy didn’t listen, got married 1 year later, and at the wedding looked like a skeleton. He’s since dropped off the face of the planet. Poor bastard.
Minesweeper,
First fiancee was BPD. At 23 I could not have diagnosed what is so plain to see today. I had very little personal experience with mental health conditions. But I thought I knew everything. And because I loved her, I thought I was man enough to help her, to save her.
I. Was. Wrong.
I got out before any perminant damage to my life. I just chalked up all my personal losses (both social and financial) as write-offs, and in the grand scheme of things, I got out pretty cheap. About a couple thousand bucks and lost one friend. But I was close. I was sooooo close. If I had said “I do” to this woman…
Through me you pass into the city of woe:
Through me you pass into eternal pain:
Through me among the people lost for aye.
Justice the founder of my fabric moved:
To rear me was the task of Power divine,
Supremest Wisdom, and primeval Love.
Before me things create were none, save things
Eternal, and eternal I endure.
Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
You can not treat/cure Borderline Personality Disorder. Impossible. You must…. ignore them.
Truly the only possible way for them to come through their souls being possessed by the devil, would be for them to accept Christ, marry a Christlike man, and to truly submit to him, do absolutely everyting he says (and not what THEY THINK) for the rest of their lives. Maybe, one-in-a-million BPD women would do that. The rest are sucking Satan’s dick.
@innocentbystanderboston
Oddly enough bipolar is quite resistant to treatment, generally because they don’t want to lose the manic part (creativity, energy, etc). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGDl6-lyfMY
Borderline does seem to be a very extreme form of the female experience of emotion. Perhaps it is liked somewhat to the structural differences between the brains of both genders? The general borderline brain differences are: http://www.nimh.nih.gov/news/science-news/2008/emotion-regulating-circuit-weakened-in-borderline-personality-disorder.shtml If so, very little help for treatment.
Boxer,
Isa,
Yes. Just like I was saying about the mashed potatoes, they LOVE their highs. Love them! Absolutely love them. I had the unique experience of meeting two Rules Girls (from the Worldcrossing Forums) in Las Vegas for a weekend in 2000. Wow, 14 years ago. Anyway, one of them was in her “high” all weekend and let me tell you, she was a BLAST to be around! I loved it. She was happy all the time, doted on me, was a constant loving flirt, totally fun to be with.
Thankfully, I did not see her in her lows.
http://judgybitch.com/2014/08/20/zoe-quinn-can-go-fuck-herself/
female BPD behaviour exposed ! and of course her being defended by her idiotic white knights who lack even 1 iota of moral fibre between them
@Boxer
You are correct. In no way do I endorse BPP’s interpretation. If I recall, BPP once said St. Paul was wrong.
We even have the term “high-functioning BPD,” which refers to a person who’s able to hold down a job, even excel at it, to maintain friendships and professional relationships in her public life and generally impress people with how capable and sensible she is — and then be a complete basket case behind closed doors. So they do have the ability to control their behavior.
As Boxer said, they seem to be emotional toddlers. Some theorize that it’s as if some childhood trauma froze them at that emotional age, and they can’t mature past it. They learn to mimic the behavior of grown-ups, but inside they’re still 2 or 4 or 6 years old, and that’s how they act in their personal relationships when their emotions take them back to that state.
I read an interesting article somewhere that theorized that many of these people actually have a character disorder rather than a personality one. In other words, they’re just bad people — people who never grew up for some reason — maybe because a permissive and wealthy society never required them to — so they sank into bad habits and learned defensive techniques to allow them to maintain those habits. So the girl who’s addicted to drama is much like the guy who’s addicted to alcohol or porn. I think there’s something to that, at least in many cases, though I can see how childhood trauma could cause real personality problems that go beyond that in some cases.
IBB “But she did everything she could do destroy me in my running away. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”
Don’t feel too bad about it, she would have done the same when she left you your behaviour made no difference. The $k’s and friend you lost, consider them well spent. I’m probably about x100 that at the moment. They tend to have a habit of destroying all those who try to help them (husbands, parents, siblings, friends, councillors) , eventually they realise that this individual can’t do it, then they attack them with unbridled fury for their failure.
All you can do as I discovered is get as far way from them as possible and watch them destroy every single adult person that gets close to them and tries to help them.
IBB – ” I’m probably running at about x100 that at the moment” – to clarify, in both $$$, health, friends, family members and church connections permanently alienated now.
It.Is.Truly.Unbelievable.
It’s like they are the human equivalent of a neutron bomb – without any fail safes installed.
Its because in public they don’t have to use that part of their brain that handles emotional intimate relationships. I personally think its sort form of emotional regression to a previous state that worked. The brain has tried to advance in a environment that can’t support this development or actively impedes it, therefore it falls back to last known good. THe problem is because that part of emotional development will now never occur when it needed too, the emotional maturity into an adult can never take place. The sequence has been interuppted.
So you have an adult with the mental capacity and reasoning of an adult, but inticritly attached with the emotional neural circuit of a 2/3 yo and all the intensity of emotions that they display.
I don’t see any evidenge of that anywhere tbh. Wishful thinking, the only ability to resolve the original regression seems to be trauma so serious it will end the personality. At which point a reset occurs and the individual can resume with the original maturing process.
EDIT: *intrinsically attached with the emotional neural circuit of a 2/3 yo
Tendency toward partial or complete remission by middle age is part of the very definition of a personality disorder in the DSM V.
For more on what you’re talking about, see Cohen, Brown, Smailes, et. al. “Child Abuse and the Development of Mental Disorders in the General Population” Development and Psychopathology (2001)
Cail Corishev says:
August 20, 2014 at 5:10 pm
The serious trouble in my marriage coincided with my younger son starting kindergarten. Too much free time to wonder ‘what if’ and whatnot.
If that is stated somewhere I can’t find it in the DSM V, I also see no evidence of that in the population, of those that I know who are\were NPD or BPD, the disorder lasted their lifetime and I have witnessed this first hand with current\departed family members, old friends and my ex. And of others in middle age I don’t see it’s effects reducing, it can induce the opposite as they have less ability and opportunity to guide their life, which creates more desperation and increasing need to control whats going on.
Unless you can find evidence to the contrary of course. Everywhere I’ve looked seems to state the disorders are stable. I’ve not studied this academically, maybe you have along with your philosophy ?
The actual DSM-IV (as opposed to whatever web based synopsis you cut and pasted here) should be in the reference section at your local public library.
Read pp 661-685 for the actual definitions (far too lengthy to post here). Note that in the cluster-b disorders (Antisocial, Borderline, Narcissistic, Histrionic) there is criteria for diagnosis that the patient be at least 18-years old, and have symptoms which have lasted three years. Note also the caveat that if the disorder appears to have started post adulthood, the diagnosis is contraindicated. This is important, because the onset of symptoms later in life suggest a neurological problem (it’s possible the patient got hit on the head at work, or has a brain tumor, etc.) Finally, note the criteria about symptoms decreasing in severity with age, in all of these specific disorders. This is important for the same reason. Emotional dysregulation which gets worse in middle age is not a personality disorder, and is likely early onset of dementia.
The reference I posted last is a study which suggests that these disorders, which are often partially caused by trauma (abandonment, neglect, abuse, etc.) in childhood tend to be overcome as the patient matures, probably through conditioning rather than through the typical process in the common maturation process. Human beings have a remarkable tendency to heal.
I hope this is helpful.
Boxer
Isa writes to me, “That’s a pretty terrible thing to have happened to your wife. I find myself that few people really understand just how devastating unwanted infertility is to women. All the “well, maybe you aren’t trusting in the Lord enough” comments are quite cruel.”
Thanks, but it worked out great for all involved (except him and the woman he married – more on that later).
I really can’t blame the guy all that much: like most people, he wanted kids, and when he discovered that the person he was “supposed” to marry was infertile he probably just reacted without much thought… immaturity rather than malice, so to speak. Keep in mind that they were quite young, and he no-doubt believed all that “there’s only one person in the world for you” bit that people buy into. Christians tend to add a religious element to that by declaring that God has ordained a specific person for every one of His children who will be juuuuuust right. I disagree in general, although I believe there are individual exceptions.
Anyway, I met him a few times, and he wasn’t a bad guy, but his mouth had a tendency to write checks he couldn’t cash. In retrospect, he had a bit of “game” – since he tended to be aloof about her feelings, but he revealed a BAD case of oneitis when she dumped him for me. Anyway, when she finally got fed up enough with his insensitivity he told her to, “Date other guys and see how good you have it.” Bold move – very “red pill” – and utterly disastrous for him. Why? One of the first people she ran into after that was me. She was pretty much done with him after our first date – she wrote a letter to her mother about me the very next day. He took it pretty hard, but… oh well. He ended up marrying someone who looks a lot like her – I understand it didn’t turn out well, probably because HE was an alpha-widower, and his flesh-and-blood wife couldn’t measure up to “the one that got away” in his mind.
Anyhow, enough schadenfreude for now – back to your observation. People can be incredibly cruel about infertility, and the “hyperfaith” loonies can be the worst since they consider that anything bad that happens to you is due to your own lack of faith. It’s even worse if they are of the “quiver full” camp. For those unfamiliar with that, it’s a reference to Psalm 127: 3-5, which reads as follows:
Oops, I meant to end the blockquote after the scripture reference. The final two paragraphs are not supposed to be indented or italicized.
Dear IBB:
Jack Donovan has written about women hijacking the masculine tendency to overcome obstacles in order to play games with us. Berne’s old pop-psych “Games People Play” also alludes to this. The effectiveness of this nonsense is maddening.
In any event, while we can (and should) have sympathy for a rape survivor, we shouldn’t allow anyone to excuse present misbehavior by playing such a victim card. It’s good you finally opted out of your participation in that little dialectic. You have nothing to feel badly about.
If there is a God, I’m confident that he wants every man here to fulfill his potential for greatness. Being someone else’s emotional punching bag is not part of that itinerary.
Best, Boxer
A web search for “does bpd decrease with age” will also turn up many discussions about it. The consensus is that it does, and markedly, but there’s not much consensus on why. That’s not surprising, since we only have a vague idea of what causes it in the first place. Also, it would be more accurate to say that the symptoms decrease with age. But does that mean the person truly gets better on the inside, or does she only learn to hide or restrain the symptoms better? I’m not sure we know.
It’s not that there aren’t older women out there doing self-destructive things, harming others, behaving badly, and displaying some BPD traits. But they’re probably not really BPD. A problem with these personality disorders is that they’re hard to pin down and distinguish from each other and from just being a nasty person, unless you know the person’s private behavior very well over a period of time.
@Boxer, I’m probably not going to find that in my library.
No web reference exists at all ?
I forgot to include the link I used :
DSM-IV and DSM-5 Criteria for the Personality Disorders
© 2012 American Psychiatric Association. All Rights Reserved.
Click to access dsm.pdf
Do you have access to the study you linked to on PubMed ? Cause I don’t, if you can get hold of it I would be most grateful.
“Finally, note the criteria about symptoms decreasing in severity with age, in all of these specific disorders”
Again I’m sure I have seen something similar written down but I don’t see this in daily life, but most of those who I know have either BPD/NPD are not in any treatment. Sure its not middle age with long term treatment ? And decreasing symptoms is very subjective, maybe they drop 2% over 40 years when aligned to some internal scale of their feelings. I guess that would qualify, but its not apparent in their dealings with others.
I also believe humans have an ability to heal, but unfortunately certain injury’s and adoptions just don’t unfortunately. You strike me as a bit of an idealist, would that be correct ?
@Cail Corishev says:
August 21, 2014 at 9:02 am
A web search for “does bpd decrease with age” will also turn up many discussions about it. The consensus is that it does, and markedly, but there’s not much consensus on why.
That is great to know, but for the handful of female BDP’s that I know, do I not see it. A close female family member was BPD right to the end. She got markedly worse in middle age. Way worse. So if there is a generalised trend for severity of symptoms decreasing, its maybe not across the board. Is it caused by a lack of grey hair and wrinkles ?
I would love to meet one who is feeling better.
Dear Cail:
Indirectly related, people who are interested in the intersection between neurology and psychiatry should check out the popular work by James Fallon. Dr. Fallon’s work for many years was examining brain architecture in an attempt to find patterns in lifelong criminals and other antisocial types. His team found several markers which were widely published.
At one point, for a bit of fun, one of his assistants slipped in control test results from healthy people. Fallon himself marked several brains off as obviously fitting all the criteria for psychopathology. One of the brains was his own, that had been tested months earlier. He subsequently retested himself and sent the results off to colleagues for blind study. They all concurred that this was probably the brain of a serial murderer or depraved rapist.
The point is that the causes of such disorders are rarely isolated to just one aspect of our selves. Many of us are born with certain proclivities which we successfully suppress and then ignore, for the rest of our lives.
In the margins of many articles are these discussions. We see people going into remission, but how do they do it? The typical person manages to control their emotions by around 15 (again according to the DSM) through a defined maturation process. No one seems to know whether this process is delayed, or whether some parallel process develops in disordered people’s adulthood, but the suspicion is that it’s something different. Social forces and semi-conscious discipline may play a part. At some level, these people don’t like being dysfunctional, and eventually they succeed in finding some other way to get a handle on their behavior.
This is especially troubling in what’s termed Antisocial Personality Disorder (the brainiacs believe that this is the male version of Borderline). A fella in his early 20s has a pattern of minor theft, beginning in his early teens. How do we know that this guy is emotionally handicapped? He might just have found an easy way to get luxury goods without working for them, etc. To qualify as an actual personality disorder, one needs to establish the existence of a weird compulsion to steal, and an emotional inability to sympathize with the victim of the theft, and as you point out, that’s very difficult to do.
Best, Boxer
@lyn87
“My usual response is something like this, “Yes, God said, ‘Be fruitful and multiply’ – twice. Both times were in Genesis. The first time the world’s population was two, and the second time the world’s population was eight. Humanity has fulfilled God’s command to fill the Earth – Mission Accomplished.”
I laughed out loud. Good one.
As to the hyperfaith crowd giving you crap, a close friend of mine had a young child die, members of his church then descended on him and accused him of causing his son to die through his lack of faith.
It never ceases to amaze me what dicks people can be esp Christians who really should know better. We are meant to live by the spirit after all. I’m surprised he didn’t punch them out, I would have.
Thinking more about it, BPD or others decreasing with age still dosn’t click with me, for most of the BPD books that I have read, a consistent theme is that councillors tend to refuse to take them on as they condition is so stable and resistant to treatment. I’ve know of one to have 3 years intense therapy to be then shown the door by a frustrated councillor as not a jot changed.
This does not spell out symptom reduction long term, to me any how.
Hmmmmm.
@Minesweeper
https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2014/08/18/from-celibate-boyfriend-to-celibate-husband-true-love-doesnt-wait/#comment-137382
Beat me to it. The whole fallout is quite interesting to watch, considering the classic beta-male temperament of most “gamer”s
@Pro-Truth says:”considering the classic beta-male temperament of most “gamer”s”
You know I have never considered that, makes alot of sense, good input. You could just tell an Alpha\BDP feminist would eat them for breakfast, which she did.
@Pro-Truth, re: gamers
After all, we’ve been practicing saving the princess from Bowser.
Athor Pel says:
August 20, 2014 at 3:17 pm
Thanks. I stand corrected.
@Lyn: “You are telling people that God’s word condones fornication. Stop it.”
I appreciate the debate along with your education and Biblical instruction. I have prayed about this a lot and done my research enough to agree that God’s word does not “condone” fornication.
However, I really can’t find a strong condemnation of it. The Lord equated just looking at a woman in lust to adultery and the Apostles had a fit about the ‘hard’ instruction. He didn’t say just looking at an unmarried woman in lust is like fornication. Imagine the response of the Apostles if he had cast that broad a net! I am continually amazed at Churchians who tout the fornication thing like a get out of Sainthood card when many of the Saints were fornicators. St. Augustine prayed: “Lord make me pure…but not yet.” The same Churchians ignore male headhship instructions and work on the Sabbath and on Sunday without qualms. They take the Lord’s name in vain in one instant and condemn the gays and fornicators in the next. In my view fornication is not “good” nor is it condoned. However, it is not the same type of sine as eating shellfish, acting effeminate, playing X-box all day (i.e. idol worship) or lying to the religious leaders about your income! Lets keep it in perspective.
My argument is that the Lord, Paul, Peter, and others were commenting on an institution that does not exist (in the U.S.) any more. Are you saying a “marriage” between committed people who go to church, study and (try to) follow the Bible and are exclusive, is somehow invalid but if you say a few words before a Justice of the Peace without any religious involvement while granting the woman de facto leadership of the home that makes it “holy” and pure. I call bull whiskey.
@Boxer: “That is the closest thing we have today- a “marriage” where the man is free to “leave” with little consequence. (in the 1st century the man could return his bride to her father in disgrace, and he could always take another wife- how’s that for the hard dread!).”
If there is a piece of the Bible which states “Verily I say unto you, it is permissible for a man to dump his wife on his father-in-law’s doorstep, and find some new chick to shack up with… for hard dread is the way of the LORD” etc., please clue me in. (All fun ‘n games aside, I trust your interpretation more than most here).”
Is there a place in the Bible where this common first century practice was ever condemned? In the same way Polygyny is also NOT condemned. Men in the 1st Century were pumping and dumping their wife’s and then throwing them on the streets to beg in poverty. THAT was what Jesus prohibited (except for grounds of adultery). He wanted to protect women at a time when they needed some protections. He did not intend to shackle men to the feminine imperative for all time.
A simple exercise demonstrates the folly of taking the allegorical statements and stories of Jesus literally. Consider this reasoning borrowed from the fems interpretation of Porn viewing: If looking at another in lust is like committing adultery, and you have the right to divorce your wife for grounds of adultery, then if your wife looks at another in lust you have grounds for divorce (the transitive property- if A = B and B = C then A = C). Further, since all have sinned and come short of the glory of God we can assume that all women have, at some time in their lives, looked at a man in lust. If she hasn’t, just turn on the movie 300 and watch her drool. Now you have your get-out-of-marriage card. The desire for holiness is more important than binding rituals that shackle one party and let the other do whatever they want.
Clearly this is NOT what the Lord meant. He was speaking about the desire for holiness and the ideals to strive for. Not giving explicit instructions on how to live every moment of your life. Read the Quran if you want that level of instruction. Christianity would not have done very well if all the men were celibate Monks and the women were all cloistered nuns so as to avoid all sinful thoughts.
@Dalrock
Here’s an interesting article:
Do YOU regret getting divorced? Astonishing 50 per cent of people wish they had never ended their marriage
A study found 54 per cent experienced second thoughts
Some realised they missed or still loved their ex-partner
42 per cent had considered giving their relationship another go
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2727716/Is-going-separate-ways-really-good-idea-Astonishing-50-divorcees-regret-breaking-partner.html
BPP,
I’m glad we’re talking again. I’d like to address your points, if I may. I’ll put your statements in blockquotes and mine in plain-text for clarity. But before I do that: we’re not using the same definition for the word “fornication.” In the KJV, the word “fornication” mainly appears in the New Testament, although condemnations of sexual activity outside of marriage are found in the Old Testament as well using different words*: Genesis 38: 24 (translated into English as “whoredom” – zanuwn), Deuteronomy 23:17 (translated into English as “whore”), and elsewhere. In those cases the condemned activities include sex between unmarried people. Keep in mind that the word translated as “fornication” is the Greek word porneia (πορνεύω), which encompasses any illicit sexual activity, including adultery – which is uniformly defined as sex with a married women other than one’s wife (although some would consider sex with a married man other than one’s husband to be adultery as well – I’m not willing to argue against that view).
* The KJV does contain the word “fornication” four times in the Old Testament, but it is only used to describe spiritual or political fornication (chasing other gods or forming alliances with ungodly nations), rather than sexual activity.
My response is that you’re not looking very hard. Fornication is universally condemned in the Bible. Every time is comes up, it is noted as being bad, and Christians are specifically told to abstain from fornication nine times in the New Testament. That seems pretty clear to me. I suggest pulling up Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible – http://www.eliyah.com/lexicon.html – and do a word-search for the word “fornication.” Then read the verses in context. There’s no possible way to avoid the conclusion that God is serious about it. Of the 26 times the word porneia occurs in the Greek New Testament, it refers to individual sexual sin 20 times – in each of those times it is condemned. Very few things in the Bible are as strongly condemned in the Bible as sexual sin outside of marriage, whether porneia in the New Testament, or zanuwn in the Old Testament.
Adultery (moicheuō – the word Jesus used) is a subset of fornication (porneia). You are drawing a linguistic distinction where none exists.
Fornication is a forgivable sin, and anyone who says otherwise is simply incorrect. The fact that some people hold it to be “especially” sinful are missing the point of forgiveness. But… porneia IS a special “class” of sin, for lack of a better term. I Cor 6:18 says, “Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.” So while is it a forgivable sin, it is different in that sense. Also, virginity is highly prized – for very good reasons – and virginity lost prior to salvation is still lost, often with the temporal consequences that go with it.
I’ll not defend the Churchian tendency to pick-and-choose between passages of scripture. Your argument is against people who are not present. As for the rest, eating shellfish isn’t a sin (the law was fulfilled and the ritual aspects are no longer in force (see Romans Chapter 10)… effeminate (I Cor 6: 9-10) refers to male homosexual conduct, not having a lispy voice or wearing a frilly shirt… playing X-box all day may be a poor use of time, but it is not idolatry… lying about ones income comes from Acts 5, and the context of the story is important.
No, I am not saying that. I have never said that. In fact, that is exactly the opposite of what I said. See my comment at August 19, 2014 at 1:06 pm.
I have to say that I agree 100% with what Deti write here
https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2014/08/18/from-celibate-boyfriend-to-celibate-husband-true-love-doesnt-wait/#comment-136967
Exactly! Repeat this to all the young people you know!
“However, I really can’t find a strong condemnation of [fornication]. The Lord equated just looking at a woman in lust to adultery…”
And that’s not a condemnation of fornication? Read Matthew 5 & context more carefully. The Pharisees argued much as you do today, that all they had to do to please God was satisfy the exact lettering of the law. “I didn’t commit adultery with her, I just watched through her bathroom window. It isn’t adultery so God is totally okay with this!” To that we have Christ’s reply, that the spirit of “no adultery” is just as binding as the letter.
This is the legalism Christ despised so frequently: “nothing I do is specifically and directly forbidden by God”. BPP, you are like a child who honors his 9pm curfew by “waking up” at 9:02pm. You want to keep the letter of the law while destroying its purpose and claim you aren’t rebelling when it’s obvious you are.
“The desire for holiness is more important than binding rituals that shackle one party and let the other do whatever they want.”
This is a common form of the suffering we Christians are promised. Our holiness is never greater than when we are punished for persisting in good behavior. Avoid marriage if you wish but God requires a sexless life if you do. Get married if you wish but God requires you to keep your vows. Do not seek a loophole or excuse. Seek God’s favor.
“Christianity would not have done very well if all the men were celibate Monks and the women were all cloistered nuns so as to avoid all sinful thoughts.”
Many of Christianity’s finest moments involved such monks and nuns. Hospitals, poor houses, orphanages, schools/colleges, manufacturing guilds, science, art, music… They never bred so “the future never belonged to them”, yet Western civilization owes them its very existence.
Has someone mentioned nuns and orphanages in a single sentence? What about these kids?
Apparently, the quality of care was rather lacking…
The typical person manages to control their emotions by around 15 (again according to the DSM) through a defined maturation process. No one seems to know whether this process is delayed, or whether some parallel process develops in disordered people’s adulthood, but the suspicion is that it’s something different. Social forces and semi-conscious discipline may play a part. At some level, these people don’t like being dysfunctional, and eventually they succeed in finding some other way to get a handle on their behavior.
I have noticed this with my own obsessive compulsiveness. It gets worse when life is very stressful and mostly goes away when things are humming along. Same with my facial tics which started the year my parents divorced.
I dated a woman who was functional in every aspect except to her intimate relationships. I was searching for answers to her peculiar behaviors and began to learn about BPD and other Cat5 disorders. She had pretty much all of the indicators. I don’t think it decreases but increases. It is just that women can hide it better.
Bluepillprofessor:
I have had many convo’s about the whole fornication thing. Personally I don’t see God condoning sex outside marriage to the extent of absolute death and hell. I think a man should avoid being a player, but I do not see a moral conflict when a man and woman engage in sex outside of marriage but in a loving committed relationship. We all know the argument about the hazards of marriage these days.
I do want to add that I have yet to find any passages that instruct men to be virgins when marrying.
The main point it that following the bible literally, and in terms of our shitty MMP, men should remain sexless and alone just because a man refuses to get involved with the marriage and divorce industry. I just see how that is holy.
GunnerQ,
In the past two days BPP has written something that questions the sinfulness or seriousness of “fornication-that-is-not-adultery.” Both times I responded with meticulous scripture references – including the Greek and Hebrew words… as if his objections were the result of an incorrect understanding of the scriptures. Both times you have indicated that you believe BPP is just looking for a loophole. The Lord works in mysterious ways.
BPP,
Although I offer reason (“Come, let us reason together”… – Isaiah 1:18), my inclination is to agree with BPP’s take. While I address the mind, I believe that he cuts to the heart of the matter – you seem to be looking for a loophole rather than a more perfect understanding. My posts and his are complimentary, not contradictory (perhaps hammer and anvil is an apt description). If you are truly looking for the truth, it’s right there in black-and-white, and I told you precisely where to find it. But if your heart is to follow your carnal nature (which we all struggle with), GunnerQ has called you out. I suspect both the approach he took and the one I took are important for you to see – I pray that you take heed.
To which I reply with the nine specific commands to refrain from fornication that I noted earlier.
Act 15:20 But that we write unto them, that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood.
Act 15:29 That ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well. Fare ye well.
Act 21:25 As touching the Gentiles which believe, we have written and concluded that they observe no such thing, save only that they keep themselves from things offered to idols, and from blood, and from strangled, and from fornication.
1Co 6:18 Flee fornication. Every sin that a man doeth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body.
1Co 7:2 Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband.
1Co 10:8 Neither let us commit fornication, as some of them committed, and fell in one day three and twenty thousand.
Eph 5:3 But fornication, and all uncleanness, or covetousness, let it not be once named among you, as becometh saints;
Col 3:5 Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry:
1Th 4:3 For this is the will of God, even your sanctification, that ye should abstain from fornication:
I hope that helps to clarify. As for this, “I don’t see God condoning sex outside marriage to the extent of absolute death and hell.” I give you:
I Cor 6:9 Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind,
Stop. Teaching. Heresy.
“Thinking more about it, BPD or others decreasing with age still dosn’t click with me, for most of the BPD books that I have read, a consistent theme is that councillors tend to refuse to take them on as they condition is so stable and resistant to treatment. I’ve know of one to have 3 years intense therapy to be then shown the door by a frustrated councillor as not a jot changed.
This does not spell out symptom reduction long term, to me any how.
Hmmmmm.”
There’s the old therapist joke “How do you treat a BPD?”
You send them to someone else.
You’ve got two different factors that have different impacts, as people grow older they tend to slow do and even the crazies slow down, but on the flip side of things it becomes more and more exhausting for them to keep the mask up as they age, its harder to keep the appearance of sanity up
monkeywerks @ 2:11 pm:
“I do not see a moral conflict when a man and woman engage in sex outside of marriage but in a loving committed relationship.”
There might not be a conflict. If the couple is sexually loyal to each other until death then they’re keeping Biblical morality. God does not require government recognition of a marriage for it to be legitimate; after all, God’s opinion is that He’s the one who creates the marriage bond in the first place.
The phrase “loving committed relationship” has become a red flag, however. It’s been used to justify sodomy, serial monogamy, statutory rape and other garbage. An unofficial marriage can be pleasing to God but our current situation has not lowered his standards of conduct.
“@Cail Corishev says:
August 21, 2014 at 9:02 am
A web search for “does bpd decrease with age” will also turn up many discussions about it. The consensus is that it does, and markedly, but there’s not much consensus on why.
That is great to know, but for the handful of female BDP’s that I know, do I not see it. A close female family member was BPD right to the end. She got markedly worse in middle age. Way worse. So if there is a generalised trend for severity of symptoms decreasing, its maybe not across the board. Is it caused by a lack of grey hair and wrinkles ?
I would love to meet one who is feeling better.”
As a word of caution there are a lot of BPD apologists out there and a lot of nonsense pushed (probably by disordered women) and one of the ideas is that “You should just be patient and stick it out, the bpd will get better and validate her feelings.” and even some sites saying the personality disorders are often temporary this is all pushing the men in their lives to tolerate the abuse and man up.
This is pure nonsense.
Boxer,
If a person is stealing from others, and it isn’t to survive, he is engaging in behavior that most people wouldn’t consider, It is a sign of a problem and probably a personality disorder if it persists.
Most of these people do not change. Ever. Their brain functions are different. The doctor that discovered he has the brain pattern of a sociopath confirmed it with family and friends that they thought he completely lacked empathy among other things. It can be compensated for, this is what BPD, NPD and ASPD people do, the compensate, they wear a mask, but they are not normal and never will be.
GunnerQ writes,
Agreed, as long as it’s an actual marriage it need not involve the state. To the extent that there’s a consensus here, it is that a marriage is a marriage with or without state sanction. It’s when we use “marriage” to mean “got a piece of paper from the county courthouse” that we run into problems.
As you also noted, “Loving committed relationship” is often fem-speak for other things. In this context it’s usually, “Sleeping with my (current) boyfriend” – serial monogamy, rather than anything any Christian would recognize as a marital relationship on the Biblical model.
Yes, that’s dangerous thinking. While it does seem to get better in some cases, it takes years. If you meet a 25-year-old girl who’s BPD, are you really going to sign up for 10 years or so of attacks on your grip on reality, bouncing back and forth between being fiercely loved and coldly rejected, being cheated on and lied to, being accused of abandonment one day and controlling abuse the next, in the hopes that by the time she’s 35 or so she’ll be able to handle a marriage proposal without losing her mind? That’s the kind of time frame we’re talking about, optimistically.
One counselor told me she’ll only have one ongoing BPD patient at a time, because dealing with them is so mentally and emotionally exhausting. And this is someone who would only be dealing with it for an hour or two a week, with no personal commitment beyond the professional one.
When they do get better, it’s such a long, slow change that it’s hard for a counselor to see it. Very few of them stick with a single counselor and do the work consistently for that long anyway. They frequently drop therapy until some sort of fear drives them back, or bounce to a new counselor every time one gets to know their tricks too well. So even if a BPD does improve and discard some of the symptoms over the span of a decade, it’s not like there’s usually someone there to document it.
“innocentbystanderboston says:
August 21, 2014 at 1:16 am
Minesweeper,
Very accurate description you have some experience with this ?
First fiancee was BPD. At 23 I could not have diagnosed what is so plain to see today. I had very little personal experience with mental health conditions. But I thought I knew everything. And because I loved her, I thought I was man enough to help her, to save her.
I. Was. Wrong.”
You talk to any man that has dated women and you’ll find at least one crazy girlfriend out there for about every three girls. (this does not necessarily mean that 1 in 3 girls are full on crazy because the crazy tend to get around, a lot). But I have watched several men dumb enough to marry women with personality disorders and the capacity these women have to destroy is amazing.
Careers, relationships, finances, health. They corrode all of it.
“One counselor told me she’ll only have one ongoing BPD patient at a time, because dealing with them is so mentally and emotionally exhausting. And this is someone who would only be dealing with it for an hour or two a week, with no personal commitment beyond the professional one.”
I’ve actually read that people in these relationships have a very distorted sense of time, time passes faster, probably because parts of the brain just shuts down over time when dealing with this kind of evil.
Cali,
From what I have read BPD is primarily caused by insufficient pair bonding between mother and child from birth – age 3 or so. This deficiency causes certain neural pathways’ to be improperly formed. These neural pathways control the empathy circuits. People with BPD have little to no empathy, which is required in order to form lasting and fulfilling relationships. This is a major contributing factor to the behaviors we associate with BPD and NPD, such as lying, infidelity, manipulation, etc.
Another core problem BPD and NPD people have is that they are empty inside. They have no inner self. This is where we see mimicking behaviors. Ironically this mimicking coupled with hypersexuality found in the more histrionic people, makes them awesome lovers.
A man can have a fulfilling relationship with these types of women but the man needs to be 100% strong inside, have excellent self esteem and be willing to ruthlessly enforce boundaries, as you stated. You must have a strong hand. Only the most dominate and alpha men can truly handle this type of woman. With a man like this, this woman would actually have a chance at a good relationship.
It is vitally important for every man in the SMP to be intimately familiar with the indicators of BPD. One study said that over 20% of US women have this in varying degrees.
Off topic but important news. New research shows that any significant length of time using the Pill impacts future fertility.
http://www.biosciencetechnology.com/articles/2014/08/%E2%80%98-pill%E2%80%99-shrinks-ovaries-cuts-egg-numbers
Dear Ra’s Al Ghul:
You are probably right, but only partially and by accident. The definition of APD in the DSM specifically rules out a primary motive of “gain”. The criminal steals for gain, plans his crimes, and usually has at least a secondary financial need. The cluster-b shoplifter steals because of some emotional compulsion, can often afford the item but steals anyway, and has no ability to sympathize with his or her victim. Moreover, it is thought that at least some of them desire the “drama” of being caught and the attention of the court system. Several washed up celebrities of stage and screen have been nailed for exactly this in the past few decades, and now you know their motivation.
It is not uncommon for criminals to try and fake a personality disorder, so that they can get sentenced to psychiatric treatment rather than jail. Malingering (faking illness) is indicative of another personality disorder (not a cluster b, though) so you are not technically wrong.
There is a huge difference between a careful criminal who, despite his best attempts, gets caught, and a mentally ill headcase who steals for the hell of it. The legal system in developed countries recognizes the distinction, and generally orders that one of them needs to be punished, and the other needs to be locked up in a treatment facility.
Best, Boxer
To which I reply with the nine specific commands to refrain from fornication that I noted earlier.
And may I add one more as an explanation:
1Cor 6:16: Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute* becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, “The two will become one flesh.”
* also translated harlot.
Wow. Just, wow. Talk about a target rich environment. Where do I even begin? I mean, I love the way the thread wanders, but rather than address this issue head-on, let me use a parallel issue near and dear to this blog.
The problem is people tend to read into the text what they want to see based on their cultural conditioning. I’ll use divorce as a simple example. Matthew 19 is the most commonly cited passage which Christians claim will allow divorce for reasons of infidelity. And virtually everyone gets it wrong. I’ve seen plenty of men I believe to be sincere (based on their erroneous schooling) claim that if a man’s wife divorces him he’s been sentenced to involuntary celibacy for the rest of his life. What utter bunk.
In Matthew 19 Jesus was asked about the grounds for divorce (“Can a man divorce his wife for any reason?”) His response was simple: “They are no longer two flesh, but one. What therefore God has joined together let no man separate.” In other words, no divorce for any reason. That got them going and they asked why Moses allowed it. He responded and said “For the hardness of your hearts, Moses PERMITTED you, but from the beginning it was not so.
What followed was based on Matthew 23:1-3. In His earthly ministry, Jesus was completely a man. He was under the authority of Moses, so in answer to the first question interpreted by the second (that’s important) He gave the strictest interpretation possible for the judgment of Moses. To claim that Jesus gave his approval of the practice of divorce for reasons of unfaithfulness is to claim that Jesus contradicted Himself within the space of 6 verses. Ridiculous. It also creates an antinomy with 1st Cor. 7:10-11.
Probably the strongest testimony to this exegesis is the commentary of the disciples, who said “It is better for a man not to marry.” They knew exactly what had just been said: no divorce for any reason.
Many do not like to see Deuteronomy 24:1-4 characterized as a judgment, but it only appears in Deuteronomy, not in Exodus, Leviticus or Numbers. It was not part of the Law as given to Moses by God, but rather a judgment of Moses sitting as the judge of Israel. Jesus pointed that out when He said “Moses permitted you…” This didn’t come from God, folks.
Some claim the judgments of Moses were inspired of God. That’s a lie. One has to look no further than Numbers 25 to see that. God gave the judgment and told Moses to crucify the leaders of the people before the entire assembly in response to the sin of the men chasing after the Moabite women. Moses didn’t do it and he ordered the men he’d been commanded to kill to kill each of their men who’d joined himself unto baal-peor. For that, 24,000 died until Phinehas manned up while Moses was crying. Within this context it is ridiculous to claim that Jesus permitted divorce because of the judgment of Moses.
With that background, Paul’s testimony in 1st Corinthians 7:10-11 takes on new meaning. Paul is careful to say the instruction to believers is not from him, but from the Lord. Wives are not to separate from their husbands, but if they do are to remain single or be reconciled to their husbands. Husbands must not divorce their wives. Period.
That is what the Bible says. We do notice that God does not regulate sin. He forbids it and condemns it. That’s why the churchian view that multiple wives is sinful fails. God regulated the practice. Yes, the marriage of Jacob to Racheal and Leah has been discussed, but notice that in the Law God specifically forbid a man to marry sisters. Or a mother and daughter. And that makes it the perfect lens through which to view the absolute hypocrisy of the church when it comes to divorce. God didn’t have a problem with polygyny, He regulated it. But He said “I hate divorce” and the Lord forbid it in 1st Cor. 7:10-11.
Polygyny is Biblically sanctioned dread-game. It isn’t that she’ll be left on the side of the road, it’s that she’ll be replaced. Publicly. And we all know how much women hate to be publicly shamed. And what about corporal punishment? Just another tool in the toolbox that allows the husband to maintain the dominance over his wife that she craves so very badly.
In partial response to some of the issues of judgment of fornication, I think there is a massive confusion about God’s judgment. There are three official “judgments.” There is the judgment of believers at the Bema seat in which the believer will be rewarded or punished (see the parable of the talents) based on their service to the Master. There will be the White Throne judgment in which everyone except those in Christ will be judged. But there’s one other one, and that’s the sheep and the goats judgment. At the end of the great tribulation, Christ will return and set up His kingdom for a thousand years (The Kingdom of Heaven). He will rule and reign for a 1000 years in Jerusalem serving as both king and High Priest. Temple Worship will be re-established.
The point is that the people who enter the Kingdom of Heaven after the tribulation are probably not going to be Christians. Yes, Jesus said “I am the way, the truth and the light, and no man enters into the Kingdom of Heaven except through Me.” However, giving a persecuted believer food, drink or shelter is not the same thing as making the Lord Jesus Christ the Lord of your life. A common fallacy of Christians is that Heaven will be our home. Not so. Heaven is God’s home. For believers, the new city of Jerusalem will descend from heaven and it will be the bride of Christ. This will be the home for believers. I have not seriously studied it, but it’s possible that the phrase “Kingdom of Heaven” might be translated the same but have different meaning.
Question: Are a Christian’s sins ALL forgiven, past, present and future?
So… is that a license for fornication? No. I think Lyn87 at August 21, 2014 at 2:33 pm has covered this nicely: fornication is a sin. As has been covered here before, sanctioned sex is within marriage. We see in the Bible legitimate marriages with one wife, multiple wives and both wife/wives and concubine/concubines. No condemnation, no prohibitions on any of these. Give me a hard time about that and I’ll link to the thread which shall not be named… You have been warned.
However, Paul clearly said that when you join yourself to a whore you become one flesh with her and how can you join the parts of Christ to a whore? If you want something on the side, pick a good one, move her in and make it official (use a contract). If she decides to leave later, that’s something she’ll have to answer for, not you. If the fembot landwhale wife decides to leave, so be it. We answer to God, not men, in the end. Access to the pussy requires commitment on your part, not necessarily hers.
I just wanted to point out that the wedding photos site linked in the comments above has been taken down or at least rerouted so that the links posted are now invalid. Too bad as I would have liked to been able to post the evidence to a youth minister who was a bit upset about the original article as it made its way through cyberspace. It would have been helpful to be able to post to screenshots or some such and show that the professed Christians were NOT living what is commonly understood as a Christian lifestyle or having a Christian dating experience as claimed in that article.
May I suggest that in the future posters always screencap before posting links? This will prevent evidence of lying from disappearing the next time uncomfortable reality gets in the way of a good narrative.
–happy one
@ Dalrock
I was sent this report. “Before “I Do” What Do Premarital Experiences Have to Do with Marital Quality Among Today’s Young Adults?”
Galena K. Rhoades and Scott M. Stanley, The National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia
I would take a look at the findings. Quite interesting overall.
Click to access NMP-BeforeIDoReport-Final.pdf
JDG, no worries, no harm, no foul.
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I do agree that the bible states that sex was only sanctified in a marriage. The problem is that only men, such as the Christians ones here, play by such rules. As we know, or should know by now, most women, Christians included, will follow their tingles and modify their morality as necessary to justify whatever action they decide. Think Jenny Erickson. I think she really believes she is a Christian. So does my self-righteous ex wife who nuked our family. I have been playing dread game with her for the last year. I have to do this so she will act right. Its stupid, it sucks and I don’t get to see my kids, but it works. That’s what is important.
Now the quandary. When men are negatively affected by their wives nuking their families, cheating, withholding sex, etc., where does our needs come into play?
What I hear from Christian red pill men is that men should always sacrifice their needs and goals and follow the rules completely when women only follows these when it fits their goals and the church only subjectively teaches the rules. You cannot play a game when only one side is playing by the rules. So you choose to either play as dirty as your opponent or choose not to play at all. Most Christians just seem like white knights to me with the whole self sacrificing BS.
Maybe I am more pragmatic that Christianity will allow, but I think my goals should take precedence over the oft debated interpretations of modern Christianity.
Lyn87,
I do appreciate your response. However you only listed fornication not a directive explicitly directing a man to be a virgin. Even in the NT a woman is required to be a virgin upon marriage and for men there was never, OT or NT, any such requirement. There was only admonitions to not commit sexual immorality, which somewhat defined in the bible it is still pretty vague. When you have to start looking up the meanings of words from a dead language to make a point I thinks its lame. The bible should stand on its own in plain language. The other day I was discussing the different rules regarding married sex between Catholics and Baptists. From what I understand Catholicism prohibits certain sexual acts even if done in marriage like masturbation, pulling out, anal and oral. The Baptists have an attitude of anything goes, between husband and wife. Which is right? This same debate can easily spill over into the rest of the sexual immorality question. What is actually immoral? Adultery(obviously), anal, cunnilingus, fellatio, having sex before the actual wedding but with the woman you marry? I can go on and on here.
I wax on about the women single men can expect to find in church. You have the sluts, frivolous divorcees and the few virgins with 463 point lists who already have so many sexual hang-ups even before having sex. So what’s the choice for men? I know there are like 10,000 cool virgin women who will get freaky with their husbands, but lets face it most are not marring us older divorced men. And even if they were, there is simply not enough of them. So I have to marry a slut or other damaged woman? See if you follow the logic, it all ends up to men risking everything and compromising our own goals and integrity.
Let’s look at divorce and remarriage. Under what circumstances a man or women can even remarry is a hot potato item debated among Christians and denominations. Did she leave, did he look at porn, what is abandonment (def is real hot issue), did she cheat emotionally, did he cheat physically? How about the Catholic only practice of annulments. That’s nowhere in the bible. There is so much crap floating around that is not in the bible. Yes I know Rome had more docs by other eyewitnesses. I’m talking about t catechisms and this and that and whatever the protestants come up with.
There are no hard rules. The bible is wrought with areas that actually do leave quite a bit of room for different interpretations depending on your starting view point, cultural upbringing, premise and overall objectives. It was said that the holy spirit will guide a readers understanding of scripture. I actually believe that. That said, the debate over the meanings of words is often unnecessary or should be. People who know me for real are amazed because I learned how to memorize and comprehend almost everything I read. I see the argument about fornication in my mind as a picture. There is just so much that is added to that picture by humans.
Faith requires reason. It requires scientific study and certain verification. Christianity does satisfy a lot of that. However the negatives of Christianity are more apparent after the red pill considering the state of the church and the hypocrisy of most Christians.
I have to conclude that biblical sexual morality is unworkable in our current environment and system because only one gender (primarily men) seems to actually follow it. Because of this I cannot in good conscience recommend marriage to any young man and I will certainly never recommend being in a relationship with a Christian woman. Too many are fake or become hypocrites when the tingles happen. And almost all of the rest, save but a very tiny minority, are sexually dysfunctional and will always be that way regardless if they happen to still have their hymen.
There is no longer any more “till death do us part or, for better or for worse” in modern marriage. None, zilch, zip. For the moralists how do you deal with that? Although I can I choose not to run around at present. But I may want to later. Maybe I’ll have a relationship with a woman I love. Because I make love to her and we love each other, I just don’t see the bad, nor do I see how some guy saying some words will change the fact that men and women have no obligation and little incentive to stay together if they tire of each other.
When does the magic happen, when I give a woman a pagan symbol of commitment (the ring), is there a time in the ceremony, can state marriages even be considered holy and sanctified? We want to believe that marriage is still as relevant as it once was. Marriage used to be about God and sanctification and moral sex in Christian terms, but marriage itself is a custom. Most societies do have similar customs recognizing a couple’s commitment. But marriage in the US is a custom that has changed not only in its significance, but in the risk, rewards and benefits expected, which is different for the genders.
Sex is moral if it feels right and if your committed. I realize how chicky it sounds, but lacking better words right now. Men of conscience will follow their hearts, as they have always done. Like anything else there are minimal standards and extreme practices. Swinging is extreme while frigidity is minimal in a marriage. In the middle is the happy medium.
I think traditional conservatives are just as bad overall and I include the modern Christian operating under a bible only morality.
AT gave me some food for thought.
I have been pondering these issues for the last couple of years. I am still working on it.
Ra
What I read and seen is BPD worsens with age. Any man in a relationship with such a woman should rum. They will sap your strength away and may kill you. You will not be happy if you stay.
“People don’t change, they only become better versions of themselves” Me
Monkeywerks –
The problem is that only men, such as the Christians ones here, play by such rules.
We have to, and we should want to if Christ truly is our Lord. The problem I often see is that we are often lied to about what those rules are. That’s why Christians (especially Christian men) need to study the Word of God daily. Keep your swords sharpened.
John 14:21 ESV
Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”
1 Peter 3:17 ESV
For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil.
Most Christians just seem like white knights to me with the whole self sacrificing BS.
If someone is a Christian, then self sacrificing isn’t BS, it is essential. It’s hard, but nothing worthwhile is easy.
John 3:16 ESV
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
John 12:25 ESV
Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
It totally sucks what she has done for you and your kids. I pray that God intervenes and gives you wisdom and strength to guide you through this.
Typo again. It should read – It totally sucks what she has done to you and your kids. I pray that God intervenes and gives you wisdom and strength to guide you through this.
@ Artisanal Toad
In Matthew 19 Jesus was asked about the grounds for divorce (“Can a man divorce his wife for any reason?”) His response was simple: “They are no longer two flesh, but one. What therefore God has joined together let no man separate.” In other words, no divorce for any reason.
Your error is in choosing a weak translation. A better translation of the question in verse three has it: “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all?” In other words, “is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for various and sundry reasons at a husband’s whim?” This is what Moses allowed. The question is not “Is there any reason for which a man may lawfully divorce his wife.” Christ limited the reasons for which divorce is lawful and asserted his authority as being greater than Moses.
How To Shrink Your Church In One Easy Step
Every major American church that has taken steps towards liberalization on sexual issues has seen a steep decline in membership.
http://thefederalist.com/2014/08/21/how-to-shrink-your-church-in-one-easy-step/
Moving To Sweden
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=904322
Interesting, in light of:
http://www.the-spearhead.com/2013/01/25/scandnavian-men-leaving-feminists-to-themselves/
http://www.daddys-sverige.com/daddys-blogg/the-truth-about-swedish-feminism-do-not-watch-this-film
@IBB
Thanks for the analogy and definitions of BP & BPD. Priceless! I have met many women like you described in your post.And you are SOOOOO correct when you state that “the world is full of them”.Actually,I believe that about 50% of modern wimminz meet the criteria that you described.
Also,a few threads back you mentioned the “Toronto Cop”….the one that was reprimanded for telling the girls “stop dressing like a slut and you will avoid rape”. Guess what? I met him on Tuesday afternoon.Fluke accident. Myself and two co-workers decided to grab a coffee about 11:00am,take a walk,have a BackWoods cigar.We were walking about a block away from the office and chatting among ourselves.We came upon a “beat cop” standing beside a building.My friend says “good day officer.Nice day to be outside”…..He replied ..”Good day gentlemen,it sure is”….No big deal. My friend says to me..”that cop…he is the one that was all over the papers for his comments to those sluts during the skank walk”……I replied…”Are you sure”?…..POSITIVE!…I want to meet this guy! So we eventually turned around to walk back to the office.This time he was on the other side of the street(writing a ticket to a bicyclist).We went over and introduced ourselves.I asked him if he was the cop from the News articles and he said that he was(but not indignantly).I said “I want to shake your hand”.(Which is something for me as I am no fan of Toronto cops).Anyways,I got talking to him about the incident.He said he was “blackballed” and is now relegated to walking the beat.We conversed on the subject and I let him know that “what do expect from TO Police?…the left wing PC thugs!”….He quietly agreed! I asked him if he has ever heard of the Manosphere. He said that “he had not”.I explained some things to him that I was sure would catch his interest.It did! I exchanged cards with him and wrote Dalrock’s Blog address on the back of the card.I am keeping my fingers crossed that he shows up.I have not seen him for a few days.At least he is in the financial district(Bay St. area).I told him that if he needs anything,go into the front of the building to the Security Desk,show my card,Security will call me upstairs(34 & 35 floors cannot be reached by elevator unless you have the ‘magic key’ to take you to those floors) and they will send you up in the elevator.That made my day meeting him! I felt sorry for the poor SOB.He seems like a descent guy and cop…who works in a VERY VERY bad environment(PC’s,Liberals and Fem-Tards)…..Welcome to Toronto!
Artisanal Toad says:
August 21, 2014 at 7:32 pm
Its amazing how few actually see this. You might find Twice Married Always Married interesting:
http://oncemarried.net/twice-married-always-married.html
And thats while happily married, expect the end of your world in a divorce.
@Cail:you sure its not 55 when the slow down is rather than 35?
monkey:
BPDers have empathy, its just wired wrong, like a 2yo screaming that her doll’s dress is the wrong size, they will have extremes of empathy for things, just nothing normal.
@Lyn87,
I hope you know that there is some disagreement to what fornication means – it could be far closer to the use of prostitutes (temple or otherwise) than just fooling around with someone outside of a marriage agreement.
Its abit like the word lust, we think it means sexual desire, its actually means destructive coveting.
Our bibles have been translated to not cause offence particularly in regards to sexual matters. Sometimes you need to take a new look at what it says to understand.
On the subject of whether PD’s can ever resume normailty.
NPD’s can recover, particularly after being involved with a BPD, as they are stripped bare after the experience, this forces them to evaluate their life and get help. And as NPD is a survival mechanism, with the failure of their current existence, the brain no longer holds onto it’s faulty belief system.
BPD’s can learn to control emotions via DBT.
No, that was just an example. I don’t think they all slow down at all, and some get worse. But in general, they seem to slow down, and my guess is that it tends to happen when they stop getting away with it. Two examples from my own experience:
The girl I mentioned before , whom I lived with. After she bailed out on me, she went back to her ex for a while, and was generally pretty crazy for a few more years, broadcasting her drama on Facebook and the like. Then she started seeing a much older guy, and gradually seemed to settle into domesticity. It took a while, but now they’ve been married for a few years, and she seems to have stopped picking fights with family and friends, stopped trying to flirt with me (and presumably other exes), and acts pretty normal. It just so happens that about the time she met this guy was when she really hit the Wall and her looks declined drastically within a year or two. If she drove him away, it’s quite possible that she couldn’t get another guy.
Girl #2 I met several years ago, but never dated, because I’d become wary. For the first few years, she really seemed to be doing better. She was aware of and honest about her issues, and though she had some rough patches, it seemed to be “two steps forward, one step back” most of the time. Then she had a traumatic event — the kind of thing that would make a normal person sad for a few weeks — and it sent her into a near-suicidal tailspin. For the 2-3 years since then, she’s been digging herself deeper and deeper into a hole, driving away all her strongest friends (keeping the superficial ones that won’t challenge her) and generally acting so erratic that everyone now just shrugs and says, “What a shame.” Occasionally she shows a hint that she may want to get out of the hole, but she won’t ask for help or admit that she did any of the digging to get herself there, so nothing happens.
Thing is, girl #2 is still attractive enough that she doesn’t have to shape up yet. People still try to help her, and there are still plenty of guys who will take her out to dinner or more if she lets them. When she hits the Wall, will she suddenly “get better” like girl #1, snag a man, and settle down? I don’t know, but I have my suspicions. The thing about the high-functioning ones is that they can control it when they really have to.
But even if girl #2 shapes up, like girl #1, she’s not going to end up with any of the guys who tried to make it work when she was crazy. She’ll go start fresh with some new guy who wasn’t there to see all that, who won’t have that to hold against her. So even if a guy falls in love with a BPD and thinks, “Well, this is painful, but I’ll stick it out until she gets better,” he’s wrong — if she does get better, she won’t end up with him anyway.
But leave the BPD and age out of it: if you met a girl and wanted to marry her, and she told you she was determined not to get serious about anyone and marry until ten years hence, would you stick around? No reasonable guy would do that; he’d just figure, “Well, that’s a shame, but I guess it’s just not going to work out.” But when her reasons for delaying are emotional, especially something that can be diagnosed as an illness, that brings out the White Knight in many of us, and we don’t want to hold her illness against her. But that leads many guys to sign up for an open-ended stint of hand-holding — when she’ll let you hold her hand — while waiting for her to decide she’s better.
That’s why boundaries are so important with BPDs. You don’t have to choose whether to kick a sick person to the curb or sacrifice yourself for her crazy. You set your own boundaries, make them absolute, and don’t accept any behavior that violates them into your life. It really is like dealing with a toddler: you can reward good behavior, but bad behavior has to be shut down instantly; and you can never waver, or she’ll pick away at your resolve trying to get you to make exceptions. The problem with that is that it’s exhausting, and not what most guys want in a relationship. As someone said above, it can be done by a 100% confident, extremely dominant man, but how many of us are that? How many of us even want to be that?
@Cail, its not like any of these chics come with a manual, I would say 99%+of individuals have no idea at all to what is going on, including the BPD’s themselves.
And as for super confident alphas, well if your alpha, your not going to be suppin on the dregs of humanity are you no matter how attractive they are? If a BPD’s disorder is exposed only very low rent individuals would be interested in them long term, if they have a choice in the matter.
An Alpha won’t stick around some chic who would make his life hell. That is not what an Alpha is about.
Minesweeper, exactly. The kind of man who could handle a BPD normally wouldn’t get into a relationship with her. That advice would be more for men for whom simply removing them from your life isn’t an option: a father dealing with a daughter who was taken away as a little girl by divorce and has now been sent to him because her mother couldn’t handle her anymore, for instance. Or your boss hires one to work in your office, and you’re trying to keep her from destroying the place and getting you fired — that kind of thing.
It is noticeable that you don’t tend to get BPD males, at least if you do they are not, being men, able to bask in endless female indulgence. Men who are manic depressive (the old term) have to stew in their own juice when low and tend to be avoided when high.
It does seem to be the case that oft times a crazy girl meets an older man and that tends to settle her. For those of us stuck with youthful good looks that man won’t be with us.
Sorry, this is going to be long – lots of unpacking to do since I was here yesterday.
_______________________________
@ Monkeywerks,
Wow, that’s a lot of text. Let me address some of it:
Fist of all, it would be more accurate to say that the Bible defines sexual immorality broadly rather than vaguely – that CERTAINLY includes what we now call fornication. And since men (and women) are required to abstain from it, men must be virgins upon their first marriages as well. There is absolutely NO way around that. We can discuss whether male or female promiscuity generally has greater temporal consequences, but to pretend that male promiscuity is somehow “okay” is nonsense, and you know it.
The entire Bible is was written in languages that nobody speaks any more. Every single word in whatever version you use is the result of the translators looking up the meaning of those words from dead languages. What’s your point? The scriptures that require men to be virgins (you can’t NOT be one if you have avoided fornication all your life), stand on their own in plain language. I quoted nine of them yesterday.
Reason number 295,603 why people should refrain from making doctrinal statements in the absence of unambiguous scripture. “Flee fornication” does not fall into that category – it is utterly unambiguous.
There is no shortage of unsuitable women in churches. There is also no shortage of unsuitable men in churches. There are also suitable men and women, and there have always been wolves in sheep’s clothing. There is also the matter of discernment. Nobody is telling you that you HAVE to marry anybody. And yep, if you chose to go that route you risk losing in the temporal sense… but losing your integrity? Nope: the only way to lose your integrity is for you to give it away.
See Matthew Chapter 19. This really isn’t all that complicated.
Again, building doctrines outside of scripture is hazardous, and the fact that Catholics have been doing it since the founding of the Roman Catholic Church in the 4th Century doesn’t make it okay. Annulments are bogus – period. Matthew 19 needs no papal “help.” Why bring it up?
Just because the Bible doesn’t spell out everything – and believers are to be guided by the Holy Spirit – does not mean that there are no hard rules. There are plenty of them… “Flee fornication,” for example.
Faith does not require anything that God does not supply (Romans 12:3). I’m a big fan of reason, study, and verification: I have taught apologetics – but those things buttress faith, they are not foundational to it. And whenever run across anything that conflicts with Biblical Christianity, it’s the other thing that is defective – even if that thing is something from the “red pill.” The “red pill” can be useful, but don’t make an idol of it or put it above the word of God
Then you have consciously chosen illicit sex over righteousness. That’s your choice, since God gives us free will, but don’t pretend that you know something that God doesn’t know, and don’t be surprised when it doesn’t work out well.
If you don’t want to recommend marriage, then don’t. I’m no fan of the legalities we have now, either, but understand this: No marriage equals no sex. And if you’re so concerned about hypocrites, you might start with men who think “Flee fornication” applies to women more than to men. Something tells me you won’t have to leave your room to find a guy like that.
It’s not “some guy” saying words, it is GOD who requires marriage for sex, and GOD who laid out the obligations and incentives. Take it up with Him if you think He’s wrong. And just because you don’t see anything wrong with fornication doesn’t make it okay. The act that you describe with the weasel-words “make love” is F-O-R-N-I-C-A-T-I-O-N, and it is forbidden.
I have already addressed this several times up-thread, please stop asking questions I have already answered. God established marriage, and the state has nothing to do with it. Also, marriage is not a “custom” – it is an institution established by God in the Garden of Eden, and endorsed by Moses, the prophets, Jesus, and the apostles.
So-called “men of conscience” who defy God’s word will “follow their hearts” straight to Hell. I’m not exactly sure what you mean by “traditional conservatives,” but since you include “people whose morality is dictated by the word of God, then you’re wrong to slam them. God is always right, and whenever you find yourself in disagreement, it is you who need to adjust.
Artisanal Toad says:
August 21, 2014 at 7:32 pm
monkeywerks says:
August 21, 2014 at 10:50 pm
AT and MW,
Pretty much agree with your comments above,
which I know is a minority viewpoint around here,
but that’s okay.
Off-topic, perhaps, but FWIW, I posted this yesterday on another thread.
https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2014/08/09/what-is-modern-marriage-for/#comment-137461
“@Opus says:
August 22, 2014 at 8:25 am
It is noticeable that you don’t tend to get BPD males, at least if you do they are not, being men, able to bask in endless female indulgence. Men who are manic depressive (the old term) have to stew in their own juice when low and tend to be avoided when high.
It does seem to be the case that oft times a crazy girl meets an older man and that tends to settle her. ”
I know a couple of a couple of BPD males, both unstable emotionally (as usual) with drug\alcohol addictions , BPD isn’t the old name for manic depressives, the old name for BPD was “Partial Insanity”, manic depressives are now BiPolar.
What I have seen is that BPD females will marry a (much) older man sometimes from another country – she will move there. They go much older as they need that stability (he has less options to leg) plus a much older guy is far more likely to give latitude to a much younger sexier female.
Also the switch country trick, this is done as it hides the crazy i.e. she’s not so crazy she is just from xyz and the culture is so different plus has a different native language so you only get to hear what she translates! Plus it erases her past also which is important for BPD’s as they need to bury the past always, as its usually a complete disaster and no-one would accept them if they knew them from before.
They are chameleons and because they lack a personality adapt well to new environments and languages. Merely absorbing and reflecting what is around them, they also know that obtains immediate acceptance.
Which is always a worry when you marry from abroad (no matter how hot they are) as its far more difficult to understand their personality, plus you don’t get to interview her long time friends or understand what her family chatting away is all about.
Lyn87 is right. Just pay for hookers and pray for forgiveness. It’s more moral than unsatisfied marriages and divorce.
Lyn87 is right. Just pay for hookers and pray for forgiveness. It’s more moral than unsatisfied marriages and divorce.
For the record, that’s not what I said at all – don’t go to hookers and then you won’t have to pray for forgiveness for going to hookers.
Unfortunately, every married man has to pray for forgiveness for adultery whenever their dick moves from the sight of another woman. We’re all sinners in one sense or another.
Lyn87 is correct. I don’t see why non-Christian men are having a problem with Christian men trying to live a holy life. Jesus never promised us a Christian life would be problem free, in fact just the opposite.
Romans 3:23 ESV
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
1 Corinthians 6:9-10 ESV
Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God.
Minesweeper:
This took a whole five seconds to find in a web search:
Why do people with borderline personality disorder (BPD) tend to feel better as they get older? What is the relationship between BPD and age?…
http://bpd.about.com/od/faqs/f/whydecline.htm
Post a peer reviewed journal article that supports this novel treatment model.
Were you locked up in a mental hospital with them? The prevalence of these disorders is quite limited. The chances of knowing all these people with different diagnoses, as you claim to do, is almost impossible, outside an inpatient facility.
I think a lot of you guys are casually diagnosing the assholes or quirky people in your lives with a lot of medical terms you don’t even understand. By definition, a personality disorder makes a person’s life pretty much unmanageable. Everyone has some atypical psychic artifacts (a/k/a a personality). The fact that you don’t like someone doesn’t mean they are insane.
Best, Boxer
“@Phillyastro says:
August 22, 2014 at 10:11 am
Unfortunately, every married man has to pray for forgiveness for adultery whenever their dick moves from the sight of another woman. ”
lol
Indeed, a set of righteousness blinkers should be fitted to each male following baptism.. Along with 2 sizes too small c0ck ring when out-with of the presence of his new owner following the ceremony of heavenly matrimony.
You joke about holiness and righteousness at your own peril. God is not mocked. We all will reap what we sow.
You’re missing the point of Matthew 5: 27-28. It reads:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
Jesus was pointing out that we all have a sin nature, not that an involuntary response to physical beauty was literal adultery, and since we have a sin nature we cannot be redeemed by following the law – salvation by works. If He meant that lust was literally adultery (in the “justification for divorce” sense), he would have left out the last three words and the scripture would have read:
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her.”
I John 3:5 also equates hatred with murder, in the sense that it is murder in the heart. Most everyone understands that this is figurative (although still sufficient for damnation), but for some reason a lot of people want to take the “lust” reference literally.
____________________________________
It’s that sort of thinking that led to a situation I found myself asked to comment on by a pastor I used to know. He said that a woman asked him for his advice (he always counseled women with his wife present). Her problem was that her husband used to hang out in bars a lot. She had no indication that he was committing adultery, but wondered if she would be justified in divorcing him. The pastor’s response was that loose women hang out in bars, and even if he didn’t commit actual adultery, it was probable that he had felt lust for some of them, and because of Matthew 5: 27-28, he was therefore guilty of adultery and thus she was justified in initiating divorce because of Matthew 19.
THAT was the thread upon which he hung his pastoral advice to a woman in his congregation to detonate her marriage.
@Lyn87 – I agree with your interpretation completely. Nothing would make sense if we were all literal murderers and adulterers. Thus, I understand why you’d be upset at the pastor you knew.
I don’t mean to mock anyone’s Christian marriage here. I just think that marriage is so far removed from the responsibility that marriage meant 2000 years ago that it’s difficult to match up the words of St. Paul and others to the institution today. Both he and the OT mention you shouldn’t marry a harlot. But, how can any man in the U.S. avoid that? Making everyone in the country celebate won’t help.
Congratulations, you still havn’t delivered the previous article that I requested on pubMed. If you have read the previous comments, even though there seems to be some online web references, not many are buying that, nor does the DSM seem to mention it.
Now obviously I will have to defer to your superiour experience. Which I don’t think you have any, just academic knowledge. Care to identify your field reports ? You have live examples of a regression ?
Dr T Palmer, stated this recently on AVFM going mental (and good the vids are too), also I have seen this once in practice (its rare). Of course if you wish me to setup a double blind study on this – I will need some funding, and some blindfolds.
Now we understand one another.
Bit of an arragant statement no ? Considering the prevalence in the population of PD’s ranges from 10%-20%.
Maybe come down from your ivory tower that you live in, hit ground level, you will soon discover them, I’ll give you a hint – CEO’s, politicians, drunken bums…
@Monkeywerks
I do agree that the bible states that sex was only sanctified in a marriage. The problem is that only men, such as the Christians ones here, play by such rules. As we know, or should know by now, most women, Christians included, will follow their tingles and modify their morality as necessary to justify whatever action they decide… Now the quandary. When men are negatively affected by their wives nuking their families, cheating, withholding sex, etc., where does our needs come into play?
If you start at the beginning, God said that it’s not good for man to be alone. Enter sin… the fall… and the curse of Genesis 3:16. Biblically, the curse of Genesis 3:16 is still in effect and it didn’t go away just because she got saved. ‘Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.’ The word that’s translated as desire is only used in two other places in the Bible. In Genesis 4:7, ‘sin is crouching at the door and its desire is for you, but you must master it.’ In the Song of Songs 7:10, ‘I am my beloved’s, and his desire is for me.’ Bible scholars have long argued about how the word desire in Genesis 3:16 should be understood- as a desire to control such as used in Genesis 4:7, or as a possessive sexual desire as in the Song of Songs. I think the answer is that it isn’t an either/or proposition, it’s both. I think the meaning of Genesis 3:16 should be understood in this way:”
Monkeywerks said “You cannot play a game when only one side is playing by the rules. So you choose to either play as dirty as your opponent or choose not to play at all.”
The problem, as I pointed out, is the church invaded the family and imposed a bunch of rules that God never imposed. Why they did it is irrelevant in the same way the rules are irrelevant: This did not proceed from God, therefore it’s illegitimate. We’re in the same boat in a lot of ways, but the point is if your wife (and if she’s a believer and you’re a believer, she’s still your wife) separated herself from you she’s to stay single or be reconciled to you. You, however, are not required to stay celibate. You can legitimately take another wife or a concubine. She, on the other hand, cannot legitimately re-marry.
Monkeywerks said ” From what I understand Catholicism prohibits certain sexual acts even if done in marriage like masturbation, pulling out, anal and oral. The Baptists have an attitude of anything goes, between husband and wife. Which is right?
What does the Bible actually say? I wrote an essay about this, The Bright Red Line. I had a great deal of curiosity about why the Bible has only two restrictions on the marital bed (no sex during menstruation and no sex for 40 or 80 days following childbirth, depending on whether it’s a boy or girl) but the ancient church imposed a lot of rules. Brundage’s book and the work of other historians is quite enlightening in this area.
Monkeywerks said “Let’s look at divorce and remarriage. Under what circumstances a man or women can even remarry is a hot potato item debated among Christians and denominations.
Let’s reduce this to its essence. God created marriage as a covenant entity (meaning God is a party to the marriage), gave it a mission (Genesis 1:28) and gave them His rules for marriage (For Christians, the major passages are Ephesians 5, 1st Corinthians 7 and 1st Peter 3). One guy altered things, his name was Moses, but I already discussed that. The problem we have is with the invasion of the family, by the church, as a means to gain power over the nobility in the middle ages and the tremendous effect that had over the culture that carried over into today.
As Rollo has stated, game has evolved and our understanding of socio-sexual dynamics is much greater than that of previous generations. Yet, those same observations lead us straight back to the Bible. Spinning plates and dread game? The Bible calls that polygyny and God regulated it. Polygyny isn’t forbidden anywhere in the Bible. Women’s hypergamy? God said the daughters were to be under the absolute authority of their father and when they married they passed to the absolute authority of their husbands. I don’t want to open the “do women have agency” can of worms, I’m just pointing out what the Bible actually says. Did you know there are more verses about corporal punishment of adults than children, and they aren’t gender specific? I’ve yet to have a white knight explain why the husband, commanded to love his wife as Christ loves the church, doesn’t have the authority to spank her given Revelation 3:19 (Those whom I love I rebuke and chasten, be zealous therefore and repent).
The church, for political reasons, invaded the family, imposed regulations God never did, called that which God never had a problem with sin and over time robbed the husband of the ability to be the dominate masculine man his wife needs. Women achieved sufferage and the rest is history. Feminism invaded the church and now we have “mutual submission” and “servant leadership” being taught, which causes the wives to seethe with contempt for their husbands. It’s all about transferring power from men to women.
Monkeywerks said “There are no hard rules. The bible is wrought with areas that actually do leave quite a bit of room for different interpretations depending on your starting view point, cultural upbringing, premise and overall objectives.
Wrong. There are hard rules. “A wife is bound to her husband for as long as he lives.” 1st Cor. 7:39. “Wives submit to your husband as unto the Lord, for the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church” Ephesians 5:22-23. If a man wants more than one wife, God gave his rules. Of course, women don’t like this, but God said “Shall the pot speak back to the potter?” So, they try to redefine what things mean. The preposterous argument that Ephesians 5:21 is the “context” for what follows was shot down by God in Numbers 16, but nobody studies their Bible any more. The point is that the hard rules are boundaries, the rest is left up to the individuals.
Monkeywerks said “I have to conclude that biblical sexual morality is unworkable in our current environment and system because only one gender (primarily men) seems to actually follow it.”
No, I have to disagree with you. The only marriage that truly tames feminism in this environment and offers protection from the interference of the state is a polygynous marriage. The state cannot recognize it as a marriage and with a tightly written cohabitation contract the state would have a very difficult time dealing with it, especially if it had a well-written disciplinary clause. With multiple income earners the women would have a higher standard of living they’d otherwise be able to obtain, the competition for the husband’s attention would make him more dominant and they can get their emotional needs met from each other (allows the husband to stay aloof). With multiple wives there’s no way he suffers from sexual starvation. It’s all about arranging the incentives in favor of staying in than getting out of the marriage.
The problem is that after a certain age, most all of the desirable women in the church are legally divorced from a believing husband (c.f. 1st Cor. 7:10) but as far as God’s concerned they’re still married (c.f. Matthew 5:31-32) because God won’t accept an illegitimate divorce. Discernment is necessary more so than ever today. Widows are still a good bet, but be careful with the never-marrieds.
“@JDG says:
August 22, 2014 at 10:35 am
You joke about holiness and righteousness at your own peril. God is not mocked. We all will reap what we sow.”
Was that sent to me ? little old me? Who is mocking God here, I would never do that and anyway in my experience with him he has a great sense of humour (where do you think we get if from ?).
And we do reap what we sow unfortunately and we also reap what others sow in our lives, even generationally, I’m sure Boxer could pop in here being a lapsed Mormon and all. They are big on the generation thing, and I think that is true as well, I can trace alot of dysfunction back several generations and see where the root occurred.
Numbers 14:18.
Don’t judge a joke that was made to others as an insult against God. Now you are reading far too much into this, as I suspect you also are doing the same with scripture. And don’t judge a joke I make against you as an insult against God, unless you are one and the same of course.
Do not judge or you will be judged.
Dear Minesweeper:
What page in DSM IV or DSM V are you reading? I have access to both. I’ll explain whatever you’re confused about, if you’d like.
From where do you get this strange statistic? I’m sure you’ll post a credible source, right after you post the peer reviewed journal articles supporting all your other tenuous contentions… Real soon now.
Regards, Boxer
I think part of the problem is that most people in the US are fine with the average female being a sexually empowered slut. Those of us that are not down with that, and still want to marry, must either forget about what we want and forego marriage (celibacy for Christians), marry a slut (not an option for many of us), expat, or vet very carefully (and prayerfully for Christians).
With one exception, I can not remember one single woman before I did marry whom I would consider marriage material that was not already married (and there were few of those). There was one woman who I would have married, but her father would not consent to our marriage because I was not a virgin (she was), and she would not disobey her father (nor I in this).
I did eventually encounter an available woman whom I considered wife material, but not in the US.
Dear Boxer,
I did answer your previous statements, now where is that article ?
I did ask in a previous message (keep up) can you post a web link to the DSM IV or V that you can reference online showing BPD regression. Shouldn’t be too hard nowadays. Failing that a pic of your book will do, image upload sites abound.
If you have the full DSM in front of you, then since it is so convenient why don’t you add up the PD’s and tell us all the prevalence.
Where else – the font of all knowledge, the fountain of youth and the key to everlasting existence:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personality_disorder#Epidemiology
Wiki’s upper scale(apprx 10%) to Dr T. Palmers (recently stated max) of 20% that she see’s. But then she is probably biased in dealing with male clients who’s ex’s are head cases.
I cannot verify the upper figure myself, it was just a range after all. Do I need to set up a double blind study again ?
Best MS
Minesweeper:
Wikipedia is a good place to start, but it doesn’t help much in cases like these. What one needs, to support these sweeping declarations, are peer-reviewed sources. Peer-review is everything, you know? Otherwise, we’re living in a world where we make important decisions on the basis of “four out of five dentists recommend…”
Who is “Dr. T Palmers” anyway, and why would you take him or her seriously? My sister got her MD a few years ago. I love my little sister, but I laugh thinking about all the silly things she believes. Being a “Doctor” (assuming “Dr.” isn’t the given name of Mr/Ms Palmers) doesn’t mean you’re not immune from silly ideas. Hence peer review.
Best, Boxer
And don’t judge a joke I make against you as an insult against God, unless you are one and the same of course.
If you made a joke against me, I don’t see it. Of course that doesn’t mean it isn’t there. Could you point it out to me?
Do not judge or you will be judged.
We all have to judge.
I think you are referring to this:
Matthew 7:1 ESV
“Judge not, that you be not judged.
But context is critical:
John 7:24 ESV
Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.”
1 Corinthians 2:15 ESV
The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one.
Out of context, a verse can be used to say anything.
Still, I wasn’t judging anyone (as the word is used in Matthew). I was warning those who make light of God’s word that there will be recompense (when God judges them – in the way you are using the term).
My statement was quite correct and still stands.
@Lyn87
1) If a man is married and goes to court for custody of his childen against the wife divorcing him, he will likely have to pay her legal bills as well as his own. If they are not married, she will have to pay all her own legal bills. Facing that reality, she may just give up and let him have the kids. I think I read an example of the latter in the comments of this blog a year or so ago.
2) Not saying I think sex outside of marriage is acceptable in some cases, but pushing for a better argument on fornication. Your arguments sound a lot like a circular reasoning fallacy. I agree that fornication is a sin and the Bible confirms that. However, what exactly does the Bible define as fornication. There is a list in Leviticus which does not mention two unwed/unbetrothed individuals, unless between certain family relatives. It does mention bestiality. You mentioned whore/whoredom translations (similar to Paul’s statement about uniting with a prostitute). And the vague term “sexual immorality”. To me, your statements sound a lot like “All sex between two unmarried people is sinful because fornication is a sin. Fornication means sexual immorality. Therefore, all sex between two unmarried people is sinful.” There is an assumption that sexual immorality includes ALL sex between unmarried persons. But I do not recall reading any Bible verses that provide that definition. If able, please list them.
Dear Boxer,
You obviously have access to p2p research, those without have to make do with with inferior material. Lets not pretend that over time a moderate amount of p2p material has been found to be crap (particularly involving medical drugs). It’s not the Holy Grail. It tends to re-enforce bias, rather than expand our horizons.
For instance I became seriously ill through a benign medical treatment, but but large numbers of p2p studies conducted stated no evidence of harm….well b0ll0cks, they couldn’t find their arse with their elbow unfortunately. So yeah I’m living proof that a huge amount of it is sh1t. If I was only the 1 in a billion or say an internal cascade failure has occurred to cause this, but i’m not and I know many who are affected.
But I guess if you lack the experience of those with PD’s (consider yourself blessed), well then you can learn from us. Ask away, we will educate you – FOC, we paid upfront with our lives.
As for Dr T.P. see below and also avoiceformen.
http://www.shrink4men.com/
Where have you been ? They just had the world’s 1st MRA conf and she was a speaker.
Also have you ever done a myers briggs test ? I would be interested to know your type as you remind me of a close friend, you could be one and the same apart from the ex Mormon credentials.
Best MS
Dear Minesweeper:
You have access to it too, as I have posted it for you, repeatedly, for two days now, in this thread. You just didn’t read or pay attention to it.
Is this the “Dr. T. Palmer” you mentioned earlier? Her name is Tara Palmatier, and she’s not an MD. Hence she isn’t authorized to diagnose anyone with any of these disorders you claim that she talks about. Not that I would accuse her of any such thing. I can dispense with the notion that you can paraphrase her with some degree of accuracy, since you don’t even know her name.
Regards, Boxer
@JDG
You stated : “You joke about holiness and righteousness at your own peril. God is not mocked. ”
Well unless you were just making a general statement that wasn’t directed towards me in any way – yes ?
You can judge for your own benefit, but passing judgement on others will lead to your own judgement. Now granted I can understand you being offended by my joke, that is different. If God is offended he will surely let me know. I have worked out my salvation with fear and trembling, have been at that stage with him where I felt I was being crushed on all sides and close to death.
So yeah I know what he can do.
Your offence does not mean Gods.
Dear jsr:
πορνεία is an interesting word. In its classical context, it used to just mean something like street prostitution. there’s an important distinction in Classical Antiquity between πορνεία and ἑταῖραι, who were something like Japanese Geishas. The latter were authorized prostitutes who were well educated, regulated, and often worked at various temples of Aphrodite and Eros. The former were more like modern street prostitutes, who will take you in a back alley for a couple of rocks of crack.
By biblical times, the lexical range of the word seems to have broadened considerably. Slumming it with street hookers is an easy analogy to blasphemy and idolatry, in that it signifies the departure from civilized behavior in favor of a life of general debauchery. Strong’s suggests (to my uneducated ass) that Biblical “fornication” includes more than banging sluts. It’s a psychological shift away from striving for higher things, into looking for cheap thrills, even if those thrills don’t necessarily include sexual intercourse.
http://biblehub.com/greek/4202.htm
This lines up well with Lyn87’s exegesis above, where he explains the “adultery in the heart” quote that radfem Christians like to quote when divorcing their husbands.
I hope this has been helpful. Thoughts?
Best, Boxer
Dear Boxer says:
“August 22, 2014 at 12:11 pm
You have access to it too, as I have posted it for you, repeatedly, for two days now, in this thread. You just didn’t read or pay attention to it.”
I have the link, I do not have credentials to download the document, I tried 2 days ago when you 1st posted it, it won’t allow me to download with out a user account that can only be obtained once you have published your own research.
Unless I read it wrong – which is a possibility, there are several research sites, sometimes I can get access, sometimes not, maybe you can fill me in on this.
Well, she is known as Dr T, in the sphere, no need to disregard her because she didn’t hit your credential bar. I think she can diagnose – as can anyone, (if you have a runny nose – can I not tell you have a runny nose), probably not prescribe meds though.
I don’t really feel this conversation is productive, I’ve tried to explain every point and give examples but you don’t seem to address my questions nor move towards any points that I bring up. If you want to honestly question our experience and gain from that then I will be happy to help.
But you seem to be taking the tact of : not a MD ? then shut the hell up foolish oaf.
Best MS
So, feminists want marriage?
From what I remember πορνεία is a Greek translation of the Hebrew word zanah. The Hebrew does mean sexual immorality, but primarily also means adultery.
I always assumed “fornication” had a rape or child molesting connotation to it when refering to the unmarried. If you look at the early Irish penitentials, the hardest penalties were given for those who “seduced virgins”, not simple intercourse.
St. Paul said you shouldn’t “unite” with a harlot, which can mean marrying one. So unless you haven’t married a virgin or widow, aren’t you going against the words of Paul?
Minesweeper
Now granted I can understand you being offended by my joke, that is different. If God is offended he will surely let me know.
It really doesn’t matter if I am offended or not. I am nothing. People say a great many things here that I find distasteful and offensive, and I hold my tongue.
My concern in this is for those who claim to know God, yet mock His teachings. God knows our minds and our hearts, and we will be held accountable for every word we utter.
I am glad to hear that you have worked out your salvation and have the fear of the Lord.
@MarcusD says:
“August 22, 2014 at 12:39 pm
So, feminists want marriage?”
That is truly dreadful, ahh the future that awaits us all.
There is no longer any more “till death do us part or, for better or for worse” in modern marriage. None, zilch, zip. [False – slightly more than half of all legally-married couples stay married for life.] For the moralists how do you deal with that? [By denying it, since it’s not true.]
Lyn – a 50% success rate does not make my point wrong.
Most single church men are much more sexually pure than their opposite numbers. It’s the beta conditioning and man up crap and all. A lot of these single guys in church can’t get laid if they wanted too and the church girls think they are dorks. So no, the rate of young men and women marrying in church is very low and seems to happen in any number in only certain environments and subcultures. This has been covered and substantiated ad nauseum. So no there are not HUGE numbers of available women for good Christian men to marry. I believe that men outnumber these good women by a significant margin. So what you are saying is that these men should live a life of quiet desperation. Cool.
I have watched successful and failed couples for all of my life because my parent failed and I ended up failing. The couples who did not believe in all of this Christian stuff and who did not go to church were much happier overall and more successful (still married) that the ones that did. That led me to see the problem. It’s the belief system that failed. Now the question is why is that?
“Faith does not require anything that God does not supply “
God gave me my mind so I may question all that I see and hear.
Broadly = Vaguely. With a broad brush many an action is covered. It’s that actions are added and subtracted as per the (oftentimes) whims and cultural indoctrination of the proponent.
I never mentioned male promiscuity, ONS, banging sluts, etc. I have consistently questioned about a man in love with a woman who loves him having sex in a committed relationship without marriage because marriage for men sucks. Your saying I will go to hell because I refuse to get involved in a state run scheme that has, get this, over a 70% rate of failure. The church has nothing to do with modern marriage. It’s just the building where the paper gets signed. That is about how much the church has to do with modern marriage.
As for hard rules, our divorce culture conflicts with the bibles instructions, as does are marriage culture, yet you instruct that we should follow the bible when there is no foundation to enforce those beliefs, and you yet still call state sanctioned marriage biblical or a Christian institution. That’s hypocritical and it’s wrong. Our divorce and marriage culture are tied together, inseparable.
As for the divorce/remarriage issue it is hotly debated by all the denominations. Who is right? I have my own opinion about it but what I believe is not the issue. The issue is I could be wrong or the other camp is wrong. Or we are both wrong. The point is that I think a lot of Christian teaching may need a second look in light of what is pragmatic, especially in regards to sex and relationships.
I get it; sex outside of marriage is unbiblical and wrong from the Christian POV. I have always known this. This does not need to be debated any more. I believe the typical Christian POV is just unworkable and unreasonable. I realize where my own beliefs are in conflict with one another and my overall view of morality. I am working on that as I pointed out.
Lastly, you avoided my admonition about all of the conflicts that spew from human mouths about what fornication is, broadly of course. You also stand on the opinion that I should risk all of my temporal happiness on oft debated scriptural interpretations and Christian doctrines.
This is why I will never attend another church and I refuse to promote marriage and marriage to Christian women. I also do not condemn men from having sex outside of marriage. Celibacy is unnatural and unhealthy.
jsr asks,
There is an assumption that sexual immorality includes ALL sex between unmarried persons. But I do not recall reading any Bible verses that provide that definition. If able, please list them.
Deuteronomy 22: 13-21. Also, verses 28-29 of the same chapter lay out the very real consequences for a man that has sex with an unmarried woman. He is considered to have committed an offense against the girl’s father (has to pay him the bride-price for a virgin even though she isn’t one) and against her (he’s not allowed to divorce her for any reason – ever).
This really isn’t all that complicated. But I’ll provide definitions from a couple of Bible dictionaries anyway – with the caveat that they aren’t scripture. In any case, the Bible clearly speaks against it, and nowhere does it condone it.
Nelson New Illustrated Bible Dictionary defines Fornication as: Sexual relationships outside the bonds of marriage. The technical distinction between fornication and adultery is that adultery involves married persons while fornication involves at least one person who is unmarried. But the New Testament often uses the term in a general sense for any unchastity.
Harper’s Bible Dictionary defines Fornication as: Any type of illicit sexual activity. Included in the realm of sexual misconduct in the OT are seduction, rape, sodomy, beastiality, certain forms of incest, prostitution (male or female), and homosexual relations. The specific sin of adultery, related to marriage, was considered more serious than the others, however, so that a special set of laws governed it. In the NT, almost any form of sexual misconduct (that is, sexual activity outside the marriage relationship) could be designated as fornication or “immorality”
Again, this really isn’t all that complicated unless someone is looking for an excuse to do it. I’m reminded of a certain “slick” politician who kept questioning what the meaning of the word “is” is. Is the meaning of “Flee fornication” really that hard to understand, especially since it takes (at least) two to tango?
Mustard – good catch and it’s a 100% accurate assessment. The church creates sexual dysfunction in the very women who save their virginity until marriage. It’s does this in men also by teaching them to be pussies and led by their wives. This makes men afraid to teach their wives what they want and need in bed. Their wives see every part of sex as dirty and then they feel shame so they stop having sex. This leads to the denial of sex (which was lame anyway) and porn use and divorce and all of this other crap.
So where is the problem? It’s the church and Christian doctrine in general that makes sex bad and shameful over all.
Pagans do not have these problems (as much anyway) and their sex lives are far more interesting which leads to better bonding to their spouses or partners.
Most marriage problems could be solved with good sex between husbands and wives. That is one reason the entire ‘sphere exists is because of the problems in relationships witch could all be solved by a better attitude about how we use our damn genitals.
Dear Minesweeper:
This is an excellent example of the common misconception around here. A runny nose isn’t a disease. It’s a symptom, and further tests are indicated to figure out the cause. You don’t want to give someone decongestants, if they have a raging sinus infection that will turn into encephalitis without antibiotics.
These personality disorders have specific criteria to be met. You (and not just you, mind you) seem to think a few symptoms is an obvious diagnosis of Borderline Personality Disorder, or whatever. In fact, it’s a medical term, and these things need to be diagnosed by a team of medical professionals.
A Ph.D. (Ed.D., Psy.D.) just means you’ve done some research and kissed some ass. The clinician in question probably collaborates with MDs in her practice, and helps treat these people once they’re diagnosed. Personality disorders display social and emotional factors that someone like “Dr. T.” is trained to help with.
The people you’re labeling as “Borderline” and “Antisocial”, etc. are more likely just assholes. They have some of the symptoms of the personality disorders, but they’re really motivated by angst, malice, or irresponsibility rather than a legitimate psychiatric disorder. Many women are unpleasant bitches, and they shouldn’t be given the pass of claiming “I’m medically handicapped” when it’s more appropriate to just call them what they are, and hold them accountable.
OK. Take Care.
Boxer
MarcusD – Maybe there is a plan to eliminate the Swiss gene pool altogether.
So where is the problem? It’s the church and Christian doctrine in general that makes sex bad and shameful over all.
No, it is people teaching false doctrines in the name of God. Christian doctrine in general makes for strong and moral families and societies. What you are stating is as false as what the churchians are teaching.
JDG : Thank you for your concern. I won’t mock his teaching ever, I will mock feminism, churchianity and wrong or far too rigid teachings.
Wrong teachings can do far more damage than good and place heavy burdens on those unable to carry them. Woe to those who teach falsehood – which seems to occur quite alot.
Indeed we will be help accountable for every careless word. And I will admit, my language and sense of humor is not what it was, for better or worse.
@JDG
I don’t believe most men are honestly not bothered by marrying a slut. Christian men are fortunate in the sense that they have theological doctrine to site for reasons why they shouldn’t marry a slut. Non-Christian men just have their gut reaction. This reaction could be naturally hardwired into our brains, or it could perhaps be a vestige of Western enculturation. Either way, the reaction exists.
It isn’t so much that men are fine with and down-to-marry sexually empowered sluts but that they see no viable alternatives. The strategies you list are valid but really how many men would agree to a life of celibacy, or even to moving overseas? Vetting carefully may turn up no results at all. So, out of desperation men are manning up to marry those sluts!
I found a non-slutty woman to marry. But the process was as much dumb luck as vetting. There was probably higher odds of me not finding her and having a menagerie of less-marriageable women to chose from.
It’s amazing how many women are ruled out after three qualifiers:
1- Low n count
2- Not mentally ill
3- Prioritizes having children/family
Monkeywerks continues to lie about my position:
That is exactly the opposite of what I wrote in this thread in the following posts:
August 19, 2014 at 1:06 pm
August 19, 2014 at 3:56 pm
August 19, 2014 at 5:10 pm
August 21, 2014 at 4:19 pm
August 22, 2014 at 8:36 am
STOP LYING ABOUT MY POSITION. Is that really too much to ask?
And by the way, you wrote the following:
Uhmmm… Yeah, it does make your point wrong. Most marriages last until one spouse dies. You said that “til death do us par” doesn’t exist. Not only is your statement wrong in absolute terms – it is wrong most of the time.
The rest of your walls of text are mostly rationalizations for the fornication you want permission to commit. I’m done trying to convince you otherwise. You’re a grown man: if you want to get your freak on, go right ahead. But don’t say you weren’t warned.
http://libertyviral.com/woman-downloads-child-porn-to-frame-her-husband/#
I meant to mention that I did no research to see if the story is true or not..
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/jury-woman-downloaded-child-porn-frame-husband-25068424
Yep, here is a more “reputable” news source.
The Brass Cat –
Non-Christian men just have their gut reaction.
Yes I agree in a universal moral sense. I think that this is what Paul is referring to in Romans 2:
14 For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law.
15 They show that the work of the law is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness, and their conflicting thoughts accuse or even excuse them
16 on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.
The reason I think that most people are fine with sluttery is because if they weren’t, they would do something about it. What I see instead is folks making excuses as to why we are stuck with sluttery (present company excluded), folks arguing to take advantage of sluttery (and thus contributing to the problem of sluttery), and folks outright in favor of sluttery (because women need their ‘sexual freedom ie: sluttery’).
Laws are passed to encourage sluttery, and few people dare speak against it. When someone dares speak against it, the opponents of sluttery are overwhelmed by a tsunami of tirades from the “you can’t judge her” camp.
I’m sorry to be the one to repeat this, but if enough men wanted feminism (and by extension sluttery) to end, it would disappear within a month, probably in a week, maybe overnight. But we all know this already. I’m just ranting here.
It’s amazing how many women are ruled out after three qualifiers:
1- Low n count
2- Not mentally ill
3- Prioritizes having children/family
Sad but true. My list ruled out even more.
@Dalrock
Why did the links on my last comment get deleted? (at 11:02 AM) Has something changed?
@JDG
A lot of men are in complete denial, especially the middle age and older men. My father, who doesn’t use the internet, was completely divorce raped (including a trumped up domestic violence arrest!) and he still doesn’t understand the scope and depth of the systemic problems in the justice system. He sees everything that happened to him as an isolated incident. So it’s hopeless trying to convince him that young women today behave any differently than in the 1950s/1960s… they just dress differently and go to college more. And it’s always the man’s fault, you see (except in his divorce).
The young men of today are brainwashed in Feminist training camp for 12 years, then go to college for more reinforcement. Most of them become manginas, white knights, and pedastalizes. They’ll fight for women’s right to be sexually uninhibited because they’re trained to do so, like Pavlov’s dogs. But this is only suppression of their true feelings… and they have their own rationalization hamsters. I’m sure when their “free-spirited” girlfriend admits to having slept with only 10 other men (not counting oral) it turns their stomachs, then their training kicks in to suppress those feelings. The hamster runs wild after feeding on 12+ years of Feminist propaganda!
And of course many men are desperate and are willing to swallow their pride and “man up.” They are condoning sluttery even though, if they are being honest, they don’t like it. Then there are those who take advantage of it, as you mentioned. I think of pickup arts as slut enablers.
But here’s me making excuses about why we’re stuck with it for now:
I’m sure many men would like to see the end of Feminism but are afraid to stick their neck out and risk losing their head. How many are really willing to risk their careers (HR departments are notoriously feminized) to fight for change? The reality for men is quite often: “doing something about it” = losing his job = not being able to take care of his family. This is going to change (slowly) as more men become aware that they aren’t alone in their opinions.
@Lyn87
Deuteronomy 22 is primarily about married or engaged people, not truly single ones. Verses 28-29 are about rape.
“This really isn’t all that complicated. But I’ll provide definitions from a couple of Bible dictionaries anyway – with the caveat that they aren’t scripture. In any case, the Bible clearly speaks against it, and nowhere does it condone it.”
If it’s not complicated and the Bible is clear, why did you choose to cite dictionaries and inapplicable Bible verses?
It appears you are suffering from etymological, appeal to common sense and ad hominem fallacies. I expect someone with the IQ level you have claimed to do better.
jsr and others of similar though,
Having eyes, see ye not? and having ears, hear ye not? – Mark 18: 8a
There is simply no way to read the passage I noted in Deuteronomy and come away with the idea that sex outside of marriage is ever okay. By your logic, any argument I make is circular in the sense that all definitions are circular – a dictionary defines words with other words, which are themselves defined elsewhere in the same dictionary… therefore, all explanations that rely on definitions are tainted by the Fallacy of Circular Reasoning. Nothing means anything.
Sorry, but I don’t buy it. Everyone who’s not searching for a loophole knows that fornication includes screwing sluts – let’s not mince words here: that IS what we’re talking about – and that fornication is a sin. Therefore…
I’m done with this. I’ll just repeat what I wrote to monkeywerks:
You’re a grown man: if you want to get your freak on, go right ahead. But don’t say you weren’t warned.
Lyn87 – Lets get real. Marriage without a church and pastor/priest is just cohabitation with conditions and a verbal contract. It is not state recognized and thus does not exist. Because it cannot be enforced except before God, either party can end it without consequence or condemnation from the community or the state.
Now I agree that the state should have no part in marriage and only recently has this been so. A marriage license was nothing more than the marriage bonds to satisfy the notification requirements of scripture. The state changed the scope of its involvement about 60 or 70 years ago.
So what makes that more moral than making love to a woman you are committed to? Sure you commit before God and all of that in your marriage model, but don’t they do that in the fancy buildings too? Yet we have a divorce rate of almost 70%. The church rate is the same.
You keep saying that most marriages last until death. When did less than half start to mean most? Most is 90% and that’s not reality. You have a better chance of your marriage ending from divorce or abandonment than you do of success. And the ones who do stay married, a significant number of these couples suffer from sexual dysfunction. You can read any Christian or marriage site and most the site’s articles talk about sex in one way or another.
Marriage, however a man chooses to participate is a bad deal overall for men.
When you sit down and strip away all of the indoctrination and false pretence of Christian morality and the self righteousness, you have only one answer. And it is not a repeating of the same mantra that that led our country to where it is now. The same morality you espouse is what feminists have used to control men for years.
No I am not trying to make promiscuity moral. Sex outside of marriage is not promiscuity if done in love, or based on commitment. That is because the biblical model of marriage is dead and gone and will never return because the biblical model is absolutely unenforceable in real life, in the here and now.
monkeywerks says:
August 22, 2014 at 3:57 pm
Lyn87 replies,
I’m done trying to convince you otherwise. You’re a grown man: if you want to get your freak on, go right ahead. But don’t say you weren’t warned.
___________________
I’m not going to respond, point-by-point, to another wall of text that just reiterates things I’ve already answered. Anyway, in just the past 24 hours you’ve gone on record declaring your stance that Biblical sexual morality is not binding on men:
I provided the time stamps so anyone can confirm that I’m not taking you out of context. These are not just “Churchian” practices you object to, but Christian doctrine. So since I’m no longer going to try to convince you of something that you have denounced at least four times in the past day, my question to you is this…
Why do you care what I think about Christian doctrine, since you do not feel it is valid?
I know why I’m writing here – I don’t want anyone to think that screwing sluts is “just peachy” with God. I’m not sure why you’re writing, because the more men believe as you do, the more women will become the Churchian sluts you complain about (while reserving the “right” to have sex with them).
Sleeping with sluts is fornication (unless you married her – good luck with that), and fornication is sin.
The Brass Cat –
I think your explanation makes sense.
monkeywerks, just my 2c, I doubt you can convince these guys, are you looking for their approval ?
God tends to frown upon seeking man’s approval, its probably a sin somewhere
I’m sure we will find out in a shortly
instead stick close to the Lord, find out what he wants then do it no matter what anyone else says
he may give you the desires of your heart
now that is an easy pat answer, he may also crucify you through the process, so not easy
Who knows, the main thing is go with him and let him lead you.
Monkeywerks,
90% is not most. 50.000000001% is most.
I can’t promise what will happen tomorrow, but my wife and I go against your claim.
I have not kept up with the whole conversation, but the idea that sex outside marriage is ever consistent with Biblical commands is idiotic. Even the claim a man can freely take another wife or concubine lacks an understanding of what marriage is.
The difficulty of following God’s Word doesn’t negate the need to do so.
Note too that the Disciples asked Jesus why they should marry at all when He spoke of divorce. They clearly didn’t have the idea they would “just get another one” or they would not have been so shocked. You really need to meditate on the core principles more rather than just thinking of your own current lusts.
> he may give you the desires of your heart
He will not give you fornication partners if that is your goal. The enemy may do so or you may find them on your own, but blaming God for that is as bad as the many other things we blame God for.
He doesn’t violate His Word.
@BradA
Where in the Bible does it say that a man, who is not a leader in the Church, may not take another wife?
Hi guys I’ve enjoyed reading this discussion and I thought I would just add my 0.02c.
When Joseph discovered that Mary was pregnant he assumed she had been fornicating. IMHO This is the best New Testament example of what Jesus meant when He said “except it be for fornication”. i.e. pre-marital sex. This is usually referred to as the ‘betrothal view’. If you are interested please have a look at Once Married Always Married:
http://oncemarried.net
@ Don Quixote
“Yes, the marriage of Jacob to Racheal and Leah has been discussed, but notice that in the Law God specifically forbid a man to marry sisters…”
Its amazing how few actually see this.
I realize that this isn’t necessary for the main point, but Jacob died long before the Law was given.
monkeywerks @ 10:50 pm:
“The other day I was discussing the different rules regarding married sex between Catholics and Baptists. From what I understand Catholicism prohibits certain sexual acts even if done in marriage like masturbation, pulling out, anal and oral. The Baptists have an attitude of anything goes, between husband and wife. Which is right?”
Christianity allows churches a lot of leeway. Like any group of Christians, a church can do as it wishes unless it contradicts Biblical teaching. For example, the Bible allows divorce for adultery but Catholics don’t allow divorce at all. That is acceptable because the RCC is holding its members to a higher standard than the Bible. A couple could switch denominations in order to obtain an adultery-driven divorce because the new denomination is also obeying the Bible. (Of course, other Christians are free to have an opinion about such conduct. The RCC would certainly be under no obligation to welcome them back.)
For another example, various churches have prohibited dancing or alcohol, or limited membership to a specific ethnic group, or believe tithing is best done by automatic payroll deduction. The Bible neither requires nor contradicts these behaviors but, if you are a member of such a church, the Bible requires you to obey your leaders.
To answer your question, both the Catholics and Baptists have an acceptable teaching. Which one is binding depends on which denomination you are a member of.
This does not permit fornication because that’s a lower standard. A denomination that teaches free sex until one makes a marriage commitment is in blatant violation of the Bible and therefore not Christian. The freedom God allows us is never an excuse to disobey.
The ultimate authority is the Bible. The important parts of it are easy to understand, if perhaps not accept. You can quit the additional teachings, traditions, rules and habits of any particular group of Christians but if you quit the Bible then you quit Christ.
monkeywerks @ 12:53 pm:
“Most single church men are much more sexually pure than their opposite numbers. … I believe that men outnumber these good women by a significant margin. So what you are saying is that these men should live a life of quiet desperation. Cool. ”
I say it too, that a man should endure lifelong celibacy if he can’t find a decent wife, and I have lived it as well. It’s tough but possible and, because God is real, worthwhile.
Artisanal Toad @ August 21, 7:32 pm:
“Question: Are a Christian’s sins ALL forgiven, past, present and future?”
Yes, all future sins are forgiven. To believe otherwise is to believe salvation depends on good behavior as well as trust in Christ. The catch is that Christ does not forgive without repentance.
This is one of the greatest benefits of Christianity, that our salvation is certain. No other religion guarantees salvation without good deeds; in Christianity, we do good deeds BECAUSE we are saved.
@Gunner Q
Christianity allows churches a lot of leeway. Like any group of Christians, a church can do as it wishes unless it contradicts Biblical teaching. For example, the Bible allows divorce for adultery but Catholics don’t allow divorce at all. That is acceptable because the RCC is holding its members to a higher standard than the Bible.
No. In Matthew 19, the Lord was first asked if a man could divorce his wife for any reason. You can literally turn this around and say the Lord was asked if there were any reason a man could divorce his wife. It’s the same thing. Notice what He said, please. He said Have you not read? They are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together let no man separate.
STOP. Full Stop. The Lord just said “NO DIVORCE FOR ANY REASON.”
That must have been a shocker, because the Pharisees then asked a SECOND question, why did Moses command us to do so?
Jesus said “For the hardness of your hearts, Moses permitted you, but from the beginning it was not so.”
We see three things there. First, this was a judgment of Moses, not something of God. Otherwise Jesus would never have responded as He did. Second, Jesus knew exactly what the Law said, but when asked about divorce He didn’t turn to the Law, He went instead to the creation story. Third, He twice expressed both His disapproval and rejection of divorce.
THEN, we see a sudden change. After rejecting the idea of divorce for any reason, He said And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.
Six verses ago He said no divorce. Now He says it’s OK if she’s screwing around on you. How does one make sense of this? Compare to 1st Corinthians 7:10-11 and work it all out. The only way it makes sense is if Jesus is saying Moses got it wrong (like in Numbers 25). In His earthly ministry He wasn’t in a position to correct this, but He did later in 1st Cor. 7:10-11. Between believers there is to be no divorce. Period.
Jesus notes that divorce leads to adultery (assuming either party remarries), and you take that as approval of divorce in the case of adultery?
@Toad, if that’s a fair demonstration of your reading comprehension, you’re not going to make sense of any writing beyond Curious George.
Of course, you’re not the only one. Most people see in the Bible exactly what they want to see.
@Splashman…
I’m not the one with a problem with reading comprehension. If you’d read my previous comments, you’d realize that I’m pointing out a major problem with the idea that Christ endorsed the idea of divorce for immorality.
I do not and have never stated that I approve of divorce between believers, because I believe that’s the clear message of the NT. Many Christians view Matthew 19 as endorsing divorce in cases of immorality This is not the case, just the opposite, when put in context. There can only be adultery if the individual is married. Think about that. They got divorced and God is talking about adultery, so obviously they’re still married. Lot’s of people think they’re divorced but they aren’t. That piece of paper they got from some state court judge is about as authoritative as a piece of paper from a priest of Baal.
“Christianity allows churches a lot of leeway. Like any group of Christians, a church can do as it wishes unless it contradicts Biblical teaching. For example, the Bible allows divorce for adultery but Catholics don’t allow divorce at all. That is acceptable because the RCC is holding its members to a higher standard than the Bible.”
Adding to the standards in the bible is unbiblical and thus contradictory. Furthermore I will not obey a leader if he is found to be incorrect. If there is not direct prohibition stated CLEARLY in scripture it is allowed. So the RCC prohibit behaviors that the bible does not is extra biblical and wrong. What you are saying is that Gods standard is not the highest and the RCC can make hold men to an even higher standard. That does not jive with scripture. I can blast on the Protestants too when it comes to divorce and many churches adding equally as nefarious garbage. I’m equal opportunity here.
Deuteronomy 4:2 “You shall not add to the word which I command you, nor take anything from it”(also Deuteronomy 12:32). The reason God is so adamant on this is because “The entirety of Your word is truth” (Psalms 119: 160).
Proverbs 30:5-6 ESV / 109 helpful votes
Every word of God proves true; he is a shield to those who take refuge in him. Do not add to his words, lest he rebuke you and you be found a liar.
Revelation 22:18-19 ESV / 160 helpful votes
I warn everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book: if anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described in this book, and if anyone takes away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life and in the holy city, which are described in this book.
Deuteronomy 12:32 ESV / 50 helpful votes
“Everything that I command you, you shall be careful to do. You shall not add to it or take from it.
2 Timothy 3:16 ESV / 7 helpful votes
All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness,
Either way my point was made. There is zero consistency in Christianity. And if you really don’t want to live life to the fullest you will follow the bible and whatever your church boss tells you.
Lyn87, I just wanted to thank you, after I read all these comments, for standing up for Biblical marriage. I can’t help but think of all these comments attempting to justify a man’s ability to just pick up a woman if he’s “committed” and “in love” as a glaring example of hamster-wheel spinning and a wholesale adoption of “romantic feelings” as the moral place for sex rather than the formal commitment of marriage. Biblical marriage might be difficult in today’s legal and moral climate, but it is certainly not impossible!
And I am not impressed by the scorn heaped upon Christians who hold to more restrictive interpretations of moral rules. Aren’t we warned not to put stumbling blocks before weaker believers? Just because you think that polygamy is permitted, or sleeping with a “committed” lover without making a formal covenant with her in marriage is fine, doesn’t mean you should be recommending this behavior to those who believe that such behavior is sinful. Even if you are fully convinced to your own satisfaction that it’s not a sin.
@Toad, sorry ’bout that. You’re right, my reading comprehension sucked.
There is zero consistency in Christianity.
This is blatantly false and logically inconsistent. Disagreement over certain bible passages by various persons does not equate to zero consistency in Christianity.
Mark,
Most welcome. And I think its great that you met that cop in Toronto.
So many interesting comments and dialogue about Christianity. Lyn87 – I totally agree with many things you say. Fornication is wrong. I still find it hard to condemn people – warning them and making them aware of the verses is your responsibility as a Christian. Still, I understand Monkeywerks’ point of view as well – and he definitely states truth when he says this line:
“Most marriage problems could be solved with good sex between husbands and wives. That is one reason the entire ‘sphere exists is because of the problems in relationships witch could all be solved by a better attitude about how we use our damn genitals.”
If parents in church could collectively teach their children about sex and how it is meant to be – and how it should be like in a marriage, we would have much less divorce. The entire sphere seems to be centered on sexual issues… they really are what makes or breaks a society and culture. When even Christianity gets sex messed up, the culture is extra “doomed” because it has no good example to look to – or to uphold the society. We’re in a very strange and evil time… and you can bet a lot of it stems from the simple issue of sex.
The core of the problem isn’t sex, it is sin. Sin infects everything that involves human beings, including sex. Even if society could get sex right without dealing with sin (not possible), there would still be a multitude of other problems to deal with.
Found this site via MMSL, and am happy to find a Christian viewpoint in the “manosphere.”
My husband and I had a quick engagement –3 months(and rather dismayed to find the pastor who married us suggest we wait another 4 months because of some wedding planning hiccups, after my then-fiance had told him we were having trouble abstaining). I think the pastor assumed if we were “really Christians” this wouldn’t be so hard (he is Reformed Baptist). BUT WAS IT HARD.
Now I’m trying to figure out how to help my kids not go through the same torture we did (they are 7 and under, so I have time).
Thanks for your work.!
[D: Thank you, and welcome.]
Help with marriage issue
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=904484
Marriage is fizzling out just after seven months.
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=904579
Embracing the single life.
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=904648
@Toad
“There can only be adultery if the individual is married. Think about that. They got divorced and God is talking about adultery, so obviously they’re still married. Lot’s of people think they’re divorced but they aren’t. ”
Good point, but what Jesus was saying to Jews was if you give your spouse a divorce certificate (which in their eyes was sinless and fulfilled the requirements of law, they had done no wrong and couldn’t be held accountable) you caused them to sin and to commit adultery, which would have horrified them, considering adultery could be a capital offence.
Its like us forcing someone to commit murder, would we be blameless and without sin in that situation?
What he is saying there is no divorce without sin/adultery, and the same nowadays, even with the legal law of the land being followed, sin will occur.
Of course the other argument is that the bible states he installs governments so you follow their decrees, so if you do divorce under the laws of the land and commit sin ? Who is at fault ? the government or you ?
It probably helps to understand that there are many levels to a marriage, from law to sex to emotions to assets etc. Each level goes through its own separation. And divorce is horrific.
And I think those arguing for “once married always married” is just plain nuts, can you imagine the internal torment you would put someone under who is divorced, their spouse remarried for you to condemn them into the state that they are still married to them while they are having a full relationship with someone else. I mean come on people.
There is a huge problem with lack of understanding and mistranslation with our bibles,and also the even bigger issues that we barely do what we are told at the best of times. When was the last time most of us loved our neighbours ? How often do we break bread, drink wine and remember him?
I don’t think it would be unfair to say if we have got it right 20% of the time, we are doing astoundingly well most of us are way below that. We are broken vessels, some more than others after all. And I won’t hold someone’s sin against them, that’s Gods job.
@ BradA
“the idea that sex outside marriage is ever consistent with Biblical commands is idiotic. Even the claim a man can freely take another wife or concubine lacks an understanding of what marriage is.”
Please enlighten us with Bible verses that do not merely state that fornication is a sin without defining fornication; that would be circular reasoning. As for the claim of idiotic … that statement is basic shaming language. Something that is fit for feminists, liberals and tyranny, not the androsphere.
When a man realizes he has been lied to, manipulated and conned, even by churches, it is only natural to have some doubts about what else might be lies. If the Bible doesn’t really say what christian men have been taught by churches regarding love/sexuality in marriage, what else has been corrupted? Perhaps the morality of polygyny or sex with unmarried/unbetrothed women? Instead of shaming and attacking men who have had their worlds shattered regarding something as basic and important as love/sexuality between men and women, how about walking them through a biblical exegesis that sexual morality is really what you (and most of churchianity) claim it is. Or even one “smoking gun” bible verse.
Phillyastro,
[Mat 19:5-8 KJV] 5 And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh? 6 Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. 7 They say unto him, Why did Moses then command to give a writing of divorcement, and to put her away? 8 He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.
Note that God made Even for Adam, not Eve, Sue and Edna.
How do you become the “one flesh” covered here with many wives.
No “you cannot marry multiple women” Scripture exists, but the clear optimal is for a single man and a single woman for life. That is why polygamy is wrong. It may be tolerated, but that doesn’t mean it is ever good.
AT,
Moses didn’t “get it wrong,” what was written (with God’s leading” allowed for the hardness of man’s heart. It was still impossible to fully comply with, but God allowed things that were not the intention.
JSR,
You are clearly ignorant of the Scriptures if you don’t know that sex is designed for inside marriage, not outside. You are free to pretend that theme is not woven into the Scriptures if you wish, but it is idiotic.
It would be casting pearls before swine to note Scriptures that demonstrate that since your post indicates you have already discounted the ones that speak of fornication.
I would ask you: Exactly what do the Scriptures that refer to fornication mean?
[Act 15:20 KJV] 20 But that we write unto them, that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and [from] fornication, and [from] things strangled, and [from] blood.
What fornication were they supposed to stay away from here?
[1Co 5:1 KJV] 1 It is reported commonly [that there is] fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father’s wife.
Note that this one indicates the man having sex with his step mother was a subset of fornication. What is the superset in this case?
[1Co 5:1 KJV] 1 It is reported commonly [that there is] fornication among you, and such fornication as is not so much as named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father’s wife.
What are they to not “burn” with? Why is marriage better?
@jsr says:
“August 23, 2014 at 2:07 am
@ BradA
“the idea that sex outside marriage is ever consistent with Biblical commands is idiotic. Even the claim a man can freely take another wife or concubine lacks an understanding of what marriage is.”
Please enlighten us with Bible verses that do not merely state that fornication is a sin without defining fornication; that would be circular reasoning. As for the claim of idiotic … that statement is basic shaming language. Something that is fit for feminists, liberals and tyranny, not the androsphere.”
(applause)
plus as well, lets not forget that if your a happily married man with all the benefits of that, you will not be able to see someone’s else viewpoint who does not have your privileges.
Hmmm…
I might be throwing myself under a bus here, but.. I’ll preface this by saying that I do think Mrs. Pugsley is an incredibly troubled individual and I was frankly disturbed by her article. It’s so strange to me the way she had pedestalized her own virginity and purity and couldn’t see how that was simply a phase in her life and now that she’s married she’s becoming a wife and (ideally) mother instead, a truly wonderful thing in its own right.
However, and I do understand this might not apply to Mrs. Pugsley, it is possible to be a Christian woman, married, bisexual, and not an adulteress. I happen to be one myself. There have been many times I’ve wished I was not attracted to women as well as men, but the orientation is there and it’s not going away. I haven’t had sex with a woman (or anyone besides my husband, for that matter) but I’ve been in love with one before I met my husband. I haven’t acted on those feelings or attraction and I don’t intend to in the future.
My husband knows this, of course. He also knows that he is the only person I’d ever want to be with and that I love him with all my heart. Moreover, he’s the one I chose.
Just wanted to put that out there. I’m a frequent reader though I seldom comment here, mainly because this is a male space and I want to respect that. Also, I’m extremely non-confrontational by nature and although I don’t mind following debates now and then, taking part in one gives me the hives (and right now, with me being 4 months pregnant, would probably activate some epic waterworks to boot).
Oh, and though I do not respect her opinions, I actually liked Mrs. Pugsley’s photography. *ducks down and takes cover*
[D: Welcome Rainey.]
Minesweeper says:
August 23, 2014 at 1:59 am
Please consider the words of John the Baptist to Herod: “It is not lawful to have your brother’s wife.” The divorce apologists among us will quickly point out that the Law forbade this marriage because it was incestuous, but did you ever wonder what made it incestuous??? It was because Philip [Herod’s brother] was still alive, that makes it adulterous first and incestuous second.
Not convinced?
Please consider when King David was approached to be king over all Israel he refused until his first wife was brought back to him. David forced the separation of her second marriage. 2nd Samuel chapter 3.
Still not convinced?
Please consider the ill fated marriage between God and Israel. In Jer.3:8 God gave Israel a certificate of divorce because of her adulteries. And then in verse 14 says: “Turn, O backsliding children, saith the LORD; for I am married unto you…”
The other red-flag is the word “spouse”, you will notice that this is not used as such in the Bible. It is once implied in 1Cor.7 but the actual word isn’t there, why? Because the Bible always is gender specific when dealing with this subject.
Note to readers: If ever you see a document [statement on divorce and remarriage] that uses words like ‘partner’, ‘spouse’ or ‘party’ you know that it is bull$h!t.
Its better to discover the difficult truth now than later.
Once Married Always Married check it out:
http://oncemarried.net
@Don Quixote says:
August 23, 2014 at 5:03 am
I’ll just answer one of your quotations.
even in 2 Sam3 ALONE David had SIX sons from SIX different women (inc 1 wife),
AND he wanted the original back as part of the deal that he had betrothed himself with for the price of 100 foreskins.
So with this example what are you saying ? for men with wives and concubines – don’t agree to be king unless you get the lot ?
Unless you are saying sex outside of marriage is fine with your concubines, and ensure even if you have a wife at the time, if you purchased another previously (through slaying your enemy) make sure she is part of the deal, I mean can’t have you deprived of female company and all.
You are trying to create an impossible burden for those who are divorced. Impossible.
BradA, JDG, GWADT, Pancakeloach,
Thanks for taking up the cudgel. I have the definitive answer to the objections below.
It’s pretty obvious that a lot of guys who condemn female promiscuity in the harshest terms wish to believe that their own promiscuity is acceptable to God. To say something along the lines of, “Okay, okay, God doesn’t approve of sleeping around” one day, and then “I can have sex with a woman I’m not married to if I really, really, like her,” the next day, shows what they think. According to them, God would never wish an unhaaaaaaaaapy man to suffer through a period of celibacy, but demands that unmarried women do so as a matter of routine – their entire lives if necessary. So… God designed a moral system that makes things harder on “the weaker vessel”: yeah…. that makes sense, especially since the only way an unhaaaaaaaaapy unmarried man can have sex is if he does so with a woman he’s not married to (which is sinful for her). To buy into that is to indict God as cruel, inconsistent, and irrational. I may commit the sin of being cocky once in a while, but I know better than to lay such charges against God Almighty.
But some have declared that since the Bible doesn’t define the exact contours of the word “fornication,” that the word has no meaning. I could list hundreds of words that the Bible doesn’t define – because the Bible isn’t a dictionary, but we don’t argue about what those words mean, probably because nobody is looking for a loophole in those cases. In the absence of some reason to think that a word had a different meaning in Ancient Hebrew, Chaldea, or Greek than it does now, there’s generally no reason to search for alternate meanings – unless one is looking for an excuse to do something wrong.
We have no problem saying that an unmarried woman who screws around is a slut – and the women who do so are sinning, and often ruined in the temporal sense. Yet some wish to say that the act of screwing them is okay because – although it is crystal clear from the context of multiple passages of scripture – the Bible doesn’t have a dictionary section attached to it.
But it’s really even simpler than that – MUCH simpler. Here’s the “smoking gun” they keep asking for:
Since we all agree that it is sinful for a woman to have sex with a man she’s not married to, and Christians are commanded to not do things that would cause another person to sin, a man who has sex with a woman he is not married to is in violation of at least two passages of scripture: Romans 14:13 and I Corinthians 8: 8-13. Note that the highlighted portion below (I Cor 8:12) declares that causing another person to sin is itself a sin against Christ – so even if the act of sex was was not sinful for the man in itself – it would still be a sin because it requires the woman to sin. So if female promiscuity is sinful, then any man who enables that sin by having sex with such women is also sinning. The scriptures read as follows:
Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way. – Roman 14:13
But meat commendeth us not to God: for neither, if we eat, are we the better; neither, if we eat not, are we the worse. But take heed lest by any means this liberty of yours become a stumblingblock to them that are weak. For if any man see thee which hast knowledge sit at meat in the idol’s temple, shall not the conscience of him which is weak be emboldened to eat those things which are offered to idols; And through thy knowledge shall the weak brother perish, for whom Christ died? But when ye sin so against the brethren, and wound their weak conscience, ye sin against Christ. Wherefore, if meat make my brother to offend, I will eat no flesh while the world standeth, lest I make my brother to offend. – 1 Corinthians 8: 8-13
There simply is no way around this – having sex outside of marriage is a sin for both men and women.
@JDG “The core of the problem isn’t sex, it is sin. Sin infects everything that involves human beings, including sex. Even if society could get sex right without dealing with sin (not possible), there would still be a multitude of other problems to deal with.”
Maybe you didn’t completely understand my point… sin IS the core of the problem, and the entire reason we have a manosphere is because of how sex in our culture (and especially in marriage) is distorted or used improperly (it all boils down to sin). Feminism boils down to sin… anything in culture that stems from evil and messes up the way things should’ve been – the way God intended for them to be – comes down to sin. So my point still stands that sex definitely is the problem. There are of course other sins that affect the world, but for marriage, singles, and divorcees, etc.
And it would be naïve to think that all churches have sexual teaching down right – or more importantly, the correct attitudes towards sex. Monkeywerks is right when he calls out Christianity for its making the problem worse at times – not all churches fail in this, but many still do. Church sermons aren’t usually trying to teach men how to be men (to embrace their masculinity, and how they should lead their families) anymore than it teaches women how to be good wives. You can say that people should understand that from the Bible, but many people still wouldn’t get it if they’re baby Christians. The church has really failed in this way. I think I’m lucky, my church actually did an entire sermon series on sex, and it helped A LOT of people. I already knew everything that was preached because of my parents having really healthy and biblical views on sex, but even my close friends didn’t know much of what was taught. So I actually taught a lot of my friends in our early 20’s the purpose of sex. A lot of them had mothers that had NEVER talked about those things with them… can you imagine what happens when a sexually ignorant Christian virgin gets married? It opens the possibility to all kinds of disappointment and sexual failure in a marriage. This is what Monkeywerks is trying to educate ya’ll on. Its really happening… and still happening. And until the church takes more responsibility in educating its congregation on these very crucial issues for our society, we will continue to have very messed up marriages, unhappy and unproductive people (and Christians), and divorced people who feel they have no other choices in their dilemma.
It really is the core of the manosphere, as all issues I’ve seen have to do with sexual issues.
GWADFT,
I’m in general agreement with you, but I have two points of contention. The first is probably just semantic. You wrote, “Monkeywerks is right when he calls out Christianity for its making the problem worse at times…”
No, Monkeywerks is NOT right about that. There are problems with many (most) churches, but there is absolutely nothing amiss with Christianity. It is very important to differentiate between Churchianity and Christianity. The former attempts to reconcile the Gospel with the fallen world – the latter is the unadulterated truth. Which brings me to my second point: you are giving Monkeywerks far too much credit. Monkeywerks is on record – multiple times – as someone who believes that the problems we face are the result of God being wrong about human sexuality. I provided four quotes of his where he says that in my post at August 22, 2014 at 4:27 pm:
https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2014/08/18/from-celibate-boyfriend-to-celibate-husband-true-love-doesnt-wait/#comment-137625
Monkeywerks – and several others who have risen in his defense – sings the same song as women who frivolously divorce or slut around, “That can’t be a sin because God wants me to be happy.”
I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again now:
I see nothing in scripture to indicate that God wants us to be unhappy, but when our desires conflict with His will, God cares a lot more about our holiness than our happiness.
Otherwise, we’re in general agreement.
The church teaching about sex is like urinating on a forest fire at this point in a macro sense. Every church Ive been a part of, combined with any churches or evangelists Ive ever paid attention to on TV, in print, online, etc., have all had teaching on sex. It varied from OK to good, but all did it.
I disagree that all (Christian) manosphere issues are sexual issues. One thing about marriage sexual issues however is that the solution is so simple. It doesn’t even require, or shouldn’t, in-depth biblical teaching to convey the simple truth. Sex is a component of marriage, not a feature or benefit, or icing on the cake. All that needs to be said is that sex is there, its present, its a part of spouses comportment like being charitable and kind and sacrificial and patient….add sexually available… and done.
Issues in the sphere begin with mate selection, available potential mates, attitudes to marriage permanence, etc. As much as I say that sex should not be considered a result of marriage so much as it should just be considered a part of it, I will say that the sexual problems in Christian marriage ARE a result of the sphere focused issues I mentioned, like mate selection etc. As trite and obvious as it seems, the issues are gender/spiritual fundamentals, which manifest in sexual and marriage permanence problems, two things that are tangibly linked.
In the spirit of “giving credit where credit is due,” I will second Monkeywerks’ post at August 22, 2014 at 9:21 pm, where he points out that adding man-made restrictions and requirements to those laid out by God is forbidden. His references to Deuteronomy 4:2, Proverbs 30:5-6, and Deuteronomy 12:32 are definitive… Although his reiteration that, “There is zero consistency in Christianity” is still nonsense-on-stilts.
Lyn
Not to mention there very last verse in the bible.
Parents and other adults can give children a misunderstood version of Christian morality: that sex is a form of wickedness that suddenly becomes sacred upon marriage. This was noted for women in earlier comments. It also applies to men:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2730692/Evangelical-virgin-men-pledge-abstinence-left-confused-married-struggle-new-sex-lives.html
My 2¢: even if the parents are mostly teaching correctly, 10% of children will either misinterpret their parents because they occupy a different place in the spectrum of OCD or Asperger’s, or they will pick up on their parents’ own insecurities because these cannot be completely hidden. A small fraction of children will be screwed by well-intended teaching. Perhaps this is true regardless of what is taught.
Empath,
I deliberately left out Revelation 22:19 because it could be argued that that particular scripture applies to John’s prophetic Revelation, as opposed to the entire Bible.
And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book. – Rev 22:19
The other scriptures noted – and others besides them – are sufficient to make the point that adding stuff to scripture is bad.
Lyn, yes….fair enough.
James K, nah, 10% of kids are not Asperger. Asperger has been curve fit to apply to 10% of kids.
Lynn –
There simply is no way around this – having sex outside of marriage is a sin for both men and women.
Absolutely, sex is for marriage (life long commitment). Marriage (life long commitment) makes sex legitimate.
Everybody –
for·ni·ca·tion
ˌfôrniˈkāSHən/
noun formal humorous
sexual intercourse between people not married to each other.
synonyms: extramarital sex, extramarital relations, adultery, infidelity, unfaithfulness, cuckoldry; premarital sex; informalhanky-panky
“the nuns warned us about the spiritual price one pays for fornication”
Even a secular lexicographer knows what fornication means.
I can’t believe that this can actually be debated among grown Christian men. Words have meanings.
http://jar.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/08/13/0743558414546718
I think that’s explainable by extroversion. Why do people spend so much time on unimportant symptoms?
girlwithadragonflytattoo says:
August 23, 2014 at 9:58 am
” And it would be naïve to think that all churches have sexual teaching down right – or more importantly, the correct attitudes towards sex. ”
Mustard says:
Yes to this.
Minesweeper says:
August 23, 2014 at 6:17 am
My point in using this example is to show that the marriage continued after all those years apart. King Saul [re]married off his daughter to another man, but the first marriage continued. As all the other examples show.
Divorcees [like myself] need good information, not politically inspired divorce apologetics. The churches are desperate for members and much prefer to recycle divorcees into adultery than say things like Luke 16:18 “Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery; and whoever marries her who is divorced from her husband commits adultery.
And very few want to open this can of worms. I wonder if Jesus will open this can of worms when our works are tested by fire?
GWADFT –
Monkeywerks is right when he calls out Christianity for its making the problem worse at times
Lyn87 covered this, but I would like to re-emphasize that Christianity is not the false representations that people give. You judge a religion by it’s teachings, not by it’s follower’s failures.
… anything in culture that stems from evil and messes up the way things should’ve been – the way God intended for them to be – comes down to sin. So my point still stands that sex definitely is the problem.
I would amend it to “sex is a problem”. Again, I don’t think you can fix the sex problem with out fixing other problems first.
I agree many Christians are neglecting there duties and are ignorant in what to teach their children. I agree many “churches” are contributing to the problems we have by becoming more indistinguishable from secular society. What I think is being over looked here is the fact that many “churches” have bought into a false narrative of Christianity. Sex is only one aspect of the false teachings that are being disseminated among church attenders. I contend that some of these other aspects are directly effecting the sexual problems that are prevalent on blogs like these.
For example egalitarianism, by not recognizing, teaching, and enforcing male headship, potentially can do damage to the attraction a wife may have for her husband (among other things), which in turn can directly effect a couples sex life. Egalitarianism is directly linked to the princess pedestal, which makes marriage all about the woman, and reinforces her selfish and sinful behavior.
Another problematic teaching is slut acceptance. It is not biblical to encourage young men to marry women who have given their virginity away. Yet here is another non-Christian teaching that is being pushed as Christian. This teaching can directly affect a couples sex life as well as their entire marriage, and it fails to discourage other young women from following the ways of the world in regards to purity.
There are many other false teachings that are very popular which encourage sin (and IMO are effecting the problem of sex), but even more problematic IMO is the heart that is hostile towards God.
A wife that is hostile towards God will in all probability be hostile towards her husband. It is unlikely to matter if she is aware of ‘red pill’ fundamentals or not because 1) she will be unlikely to believe they are true in her hard hearted, me first, state of mind, and 2) even if she does believe them, she will seek to please herself regardless and her hamster will make an excuse for her selfish decisions. But a wife who knows God, and is known by God, will want to please her husband because she wants to please God.
So to sum it up, I agree that churches need to teach sound doctrine and hold people accountable for their actions, but we should not confuse false teachings with Christianity or the Church. Also, IMO in order to fix the problem of sex in a relationship, the core problem of sin in the individuals will have to be addressed.
No, Monkeywerks is NOT right about that. There are problems with many (most) churches, but there is absolutely nothing amiss with Christianity. It is very important to differentiate between Churchianity and Christianity.
Yes this, thank you Lyn87.
I see nothing in scripture to indicate that God wants us to be unhappy, but when our desires conflict with His will, God cares a lot more about our holiness than our happiness.
Exactly. We tend to think it is all about us. It is not. And happiness is deceptive to begin with. Contentment is what one will find when living a holy life. Contentment beats happiness hands down IMO.
As trite and obvious as it seems, the issues are gender/spiritual fundamentals, which manifest in sexual and marriage permanence problems, two things that are tangibly linked.
Yes.
As a matter of fact, yes to the whole post at 10:26 am.
I’ve checked out long enough to not see what’s going on here too specifically, but it does seem there’s a bit of wrong on both sides. The problem we have in one camp is the mistaken idea that what the church is doing has nothing to do with the representation of the truth. In short, Lyn87 would have us separate what is Christian truth from what the churches are doing. In reality, this can not be done. The command to be light of the world and salt of the earth is not suspended. The Christian follower can not be blind to what is going on – most of what causes these things to stand is that a significant portion of people who should know better are living in the Land of ShudBe rather than the Land of Reality.
It is sinful on the parts of the people (majority) that claim that Biblical marriage still exists, and try to separate these things to deny it. The Scripture even addresses this point (Titus 2:5; 2 Samuel 12:13-14; Jesus talks about the issue tangentially in Luke 6:39-42). In other words, the representation of teachings is communicated by actions of the followers. When the followers fail to uphold those teachings, those observing will either push back, accept silently (the majority), or enthusiastically follow. The follower’s failures are conveying teachings. These teachings are what Monkeywerks is speaking against, and a significant group here assaults him for it. What Monkeywerks speaks is the reality of what Christianity is presenting itself to be. You can’t excuse such observations – to do so is to excuse those “follower’s failures”, and lead to the sin of “the word of God being blasphemed.” And to use the Churchianity / Christianity dichotomy as an excuse only enables this sin. (Ephesians 5:11)
This leads to the other issue. When you realize that Biblical marriage is dead, and the counterfeit has taken its place – when you realize that marriage is an abomination against everything God has laid out, what do you do? I think this is where Monkeywerks comes from in what he is writing. What is the proper response to all of this? Does the rampant existence of sin allow me to sin myself? Definitely not! Fornication is a sin, and has been proven over and over again as such. As Lyn87 points out, God’s more concerned with our holiness than our happiness. So, do you accept this sheer wickedness standing in the guise of “marriage” just so you’ll be “happy” with a woman and have the outside chance of getting your dick wet? Or do you distance yourself from the wickedness? Anyone with a slight understanding of holiness should know the answer to that. But the answer continues to be to offer yourself into the fire, instead of turning from evil and doing good (1 Peter 3:11). Is it not better to suffer for doing good than for doing evil? (1 Peter 3:17) Is it better to gain the whole world than to forfeit your soul? (Matthew 16:26) Or rather, is it better to have Marriage 2.0 and suffer for its wickedness than to forfeit your soul as well?
In other words, the representation of teachings is communicated by actions of the followers. When the followers fail to uphold those teachings, those observing will either push back, accept silently (the majority), or enthusiastically follow.
In other words, the problem is with the communication, not with the teaching. And followers that do not uphold the teachings of the one they claim to be following are not good representatives of the teacher.
The follower’s failures are conveying teachings. These teachings are what Monkeywerks is speaking against, and a significant group here assaults him for it.
And these are false teachings, not Christian teachings. Anyone can buy a hammer and say he is a carpenter.
What Monkeywerks speaks is the reality of what Christianity is presenting itself to be. You can’t excuse such observations – to do so is to excuse those “follower’s failures”, and lead to the sin of “the word of God being blasphemed.” And to use the Churchianity / Christianity dichotomy as an excuse only enables this sin. (Ephesians 5:11)
Sorry I’m not buying this. If the whole world were to go apostate and represent itself as Christian, it would not change what real Christianity is and is not. Also, Christianity doesn’t stop at the US borders. There are Christian churches all around the world. Some of them are genuine (just like here). We are to test the spirits, for there are many who would pervert the gospel.
When you realize that Biblical marriage is dead, and the counterfeit has taken its place – when you realize that marriage is an abomination against everything God has laid out, what do you do?
We should look to the teachings of Jesus and His apostles (Christianity) to see what is wrong. Test the spirits, verify, apply sound doctrine, expose every false teaching, and obey God. One thing we shouldn’t do is start blaming Christianity.
monkeywerks @ August 22, 2014 at 9:21 pm:
“Adding to the standards in the bible is unbiblical and thus contradictory.”
You’re reading too much into what I said. There are Bible standards and there are local current standards. It’s just group dynamics. Every church inevitably has its own habits and rules separate from God’s principles. None of those churches I used as examples could say “the Bible prohibits dancing” or “the Bible requires direct deposit for tithing”. But they could still require it of you if you chose to join that church.
“Furthermore I will not obey a leader if he is found to be incorrect.”
If the leader violates the Bible then yes, you’re right to not accept him as a leader. You cannot serve two different masters. If the leader merely does something you don’t agree with, however, then Biblical standards on submission require you to either obey him or peacefully quit following him entirely. Before you quit, however, understand you’ll never find a church you agree with 100% all the time… and the practice of submission is a critical element of Christian maturity for men as well as women.
“If there is not direct prohibition stated CLEARLY in scripture it is allowed.”
I recommend studying how Paul addressed the issue of food sacrificed to idols. The Bible allows eating such food–those false gods are, of course, false–but if doing so hurts the conscience of a fellow Christian then it’s prohibited even though the Bible would otherwise allow it.
“What you are saying is that Gods standard is not the highest.”
Yes. God’s standard is only the baseline for human conduct. He tried the legalistic, comprehensive route with the Mosaic law. The OT records in great detail what a disaster that was. The Bible is to a Christian what a rifle is to an airsoft player–indispensable, yes, can’t go without it for a moment, but if you stop at range practice then you’re missing out.
Jeremiah 35 contains a useful example for the interested.
But the answer continues to be to offer yourself into the fire, instead of turning from evil and doing good (1 Peter 3:11). Is it not better to suffer for doing good than for doing evil? (1 Peter 3:17) Is it better to gain the whole world than to forfeit your soul? (Matthew 16:26) Or rather, is it better to have Marriage 2.0 and suffer for its wickedness than to forfeit your soul as well?
You tell me, is it better to suffer for a little while, or for eternity? We ALL must suffer. Is it not better to suffer for doing good? What exactly are you advocating here? Are you suggesting that Christians should embrace yet another false teaching to counter the churchian ‘focus on the female’ teaching?
Are you saying that Christians must now accept as Christian teachings that are clearly not Christian simply because the overwhelming majority of church goers claim their teachings are Christian? What about “churches” that have homosexual and female pastors? Are you suggesting that these must be viewed as Christian teachings now as well?
What Monkeywerks speaks is the reality of what Christianity is presenting itself to be. You can’t excuse such observations – to do so is to excuse those “follower’s failures”, and lead to the sin of “the word of God being blasphemed.” And to use the Churchianity / Christianity dichotomy as an excuse only enables this sin. (Ephesians 5:11)
If you are saying that ALL Christians must except responsibility for false teachings, there is a case to be made for that. However, we still do not refer to those false teachings as Christianity. I think the churchianity / Christianity dichotomy is quite apt for pointing out differences between wide spread false teachings and genuine teachings. We aren’t letting the false teachers off the hook by not referring to their teachings as Christian. It’s just a way for us to point out the differences.
When the followers fail to uphold those teachings, those observing will either push back, accept silently (the majority), or enthusiastically follow.
I recommend the book “The Battle for the Bible” by Harold Lindsell. This book clearly documents how the major denominations became apostate. The faithful did push back and fight. Still they were out maneuvered and possibly out numbered. Many eventually left the mainstream denominations for more conservative environments or sadly stopped attending church altogether.
Most of those mainline denominations are now PC social clubs who have lost millions of members. These “churches have basically become ‘liberal’ social clubs that don’t even acknowledge the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Now the evangelical churches are being attacked. Rinse, repeat, and apply. The true Christian Church is made up of believers who follow Jesus Christ. Anybody can pick up a hammer and call himself a carpenter.
When considering “Churchianity” vis-a-vis Christianity, you could perhaps do worse than check out a recent book review by “ballista74”, who occasionally posts here (see a few posts above this one). I checked “ballista’s” website, “The Society of Phineas,” (which Dalrock links to) and found a thoughtful review (some approval, some criticism) of the book “Mere Churchianity” published by Michael Spencer in 2010 (the same year that he passed away). You can then follow the book reviews at the Amazon site for the (mostly favorable) reaction of others.
Michael Spencer was best known for his long-running blog, “Internet Monk,” which has continued under the general direction of “Chaplain Mike.”
My own knowledge of Michael Spencer and his viewpoint is very modest — some reading at his blog a few years ago, just before his death, so I am in no position to pass approval or disapproval on his life’s work. But you may find this readily available material helpful if you want to study the comparisons that we here are trying to make between Churchianity and Christianity.
I left out the specific link.
http://societyofphineas.wordpress.com/2014/08/18/book-review-mere-churchianity-by-michael-spencer/
Thank you mustardine. Apologies to ballista74 if I was over the top in my replies.
I think Ballista is saying that entangling yourself in marriage as it is represented today is to continue to exacerbate the problem. That the”suffering” of accepting celibacy as your lot in life is the more holy way to go than to join yourself in “marriage” to a woman in this current social, legal, and religious climate.
And that the few men here who are in what they feel are happy marriages need to be careful not to sell other men a false bill of goods.
That’s what I think he is saying. From reading his blog, anyway.
@BradA
Proper exegesis of Scripture cannot allow an antimony. Paul wrote that in order to avoid the sin of fornication, people should marry. That within marriage neither husband nor wife is to deny the other except for periods of time mutually agreed upon for fasting and prayer. But what if your wife refuses to have sex within the marriage or frivorces you? Nowhere in the Bible is a wife given the authority to divorce her husband because no woman has the authority to initiate a marriage, only a man (c.f. Genesis 2:24),
Monkeywerks was frivorced. There are some here who teach a Biblically incorrect position that because his wife divorced him he cannot remarry. But sex is a physical need for him, so, does he violate the church’s teaching that he is forbidden to remarry and take another wife at the extreme risk of being frivorced once again or just fornicate in relative economic safety?
Let’s start with the issue of divorce. Some here claim it is allowed because of what Jesus said in Matthew 19:9. The problem here is fairly simple if one closely examines the text. He was asked “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any cause at all?”
Look carefully at the answer Jesus gave and ask yourself whether Jesus knew what Deuteronomy 24;1-4 said and then consider His answer. “Have you not read, that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said ‘For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh’? Consequently they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.”
He said (paraphrasing) no divorce for any reason. He made no reference to Deut. 24:1-4. That’s all the answer He gave them. Some claim that He made a blanket statement and six verses later provided the exception to the rule. No. Had that been the case He would have provided the exception in His first answer.
That got him a second question. Notice that He already answered the first question about divorce by saying “let no man separate.” The second question is not about the justifications for divorce.. “They said to Him, ‘Why then did Moses command to give her a certificate of divorce and send her away?”
Again, they are no longer asking about the justifications for legitimate divorce. The question is why Moses allowed it. So, Jesus answers their question “Because of your hardness of heart, Moses permitted you to divorce your wives; but from the beginning it has not been this way.”
Please observe there is no mention of a certificate of divorce in all the Law that God gave to the people through Moses. We don’t see that until the final sermon preached to the people by Moses, who was also the judge of Israel. That makes it a judgment of Moses and as such it became part of the Law. Some claim that Deuteronomy 1:3 means this particular judgment was from God because “Moses spoke to the children of Israel according to all that the Lord had commanded him to give to them.” The problem that could be read to say everything in Deuteronomy was what the God gave to him, but it also supports the interpretation that yes, he did do that, but not mentioned is he also included a few things God did not specifically command him.
One has only to take a look at the judgement God gave to Moses in Numbers 25 to see that Moses didn’t always give the judgments God told him to… and in that case it resulted in over 24,000 people being killed.
So, back to the two questions Jesus answered. If God had given that judgment to Moses, why did Jesus say no divorce and point out that from the beginning it was that way, but Moses changed it? Second, why did Jesus specifically single out Moses as the source of this and not God, if God commanded Moses to make that judgment? The word “permitted” indicates this wasn’t from God because if it was from God, Moses wasn’t permitting anything, he was carrying out the command of the Lord.
After first saying no divorce (let no man separate) and then blaming the certificate of divorce thing on Moses, Jesus then made a seemingly contradictory statement: “And I say to you, whoever divorces his wife, except for immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”
So, either Jesus is contradicting Himself within six verses in the same passage and with what He said in 1st Corinthians 7:10-11, or something else is going on. Some claim “look: He said it, right here! He said divorce for reasons of immorality is allowed!” Look at 1st Corinthians 7:10-11 But to the married I give instruction, not I, but the Lord, that the wife should not leave her husband (but if she does, she is to remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband) and the husband should not send his wife away.” Other translations say the husband “must not divorce his wife.”
During His earthly ministry Jesus was a man under the authority of Moses, the scribes and Pharisees (c.f. Matthew 23:1-3) and He had to say what He did in Matthew 19:9 because He had to uphold the judgment Moses gave at that time. He told the truth in His first two answers and then supported Moses in his last answer by giving His interpretation of the judgment of Moses. Matthew 19:9 can’t be used as support for divorce because the only way this isn’t a case of Jesus contradicting Himself is He gave the answer on justification for divorce saying there isn’t one. Then He answered the question of why Moses had allowed it, interpreted the judgment at Matthew 19:9 and overturned it at 1st Corinthians 7:10-11.
@BradA said
the clear optimal is for a single man and a single woman for life. That is why polygamy is wrong. It may be tolerated, but that doesn’t mean it is ever good.
On the one-flesh thing, check 1st Corinthians 6:16. Polygamy, which means “many marriages” is also serial monogamy with illegitimate divorces, which is exactly what we see today. Polygyny, which means “many wives” is not “wrong” because God does not regulate sin, He condemns it and prohibits it. You use the word “tolerated” but the better word is “regulated.” There are Biblical guidelines for different trades a person may engage in. Some are condemned, such as being a prostitute or a thief. Some, like farming, are regulated. Not everyone was a farmer, as there were a great number of trades. Yet, we don’t see anyone use the word ‘tolerated’ when talking about farming because God chose to regulate it. And what about all the problems with people planting vineyards, getting drunk and doing things like passing out naked or getting their daughters pregnant while blacked out?
It appears your argument boils down to “I don’t like it so I don’t think anybody else should be able to do it.”
The crux of the problem is fornication is sin. Yet, as Paul says, it’s better to marry than to burn. My argument is that for believers, divorce is forbidden unless the unbelieving husband or wife leaves. So, what happens when your believing (her claim anyway) wife leaves and divorces you? Matthew 5:31-32 makes it clear God will not accept an illegitimate divorce, so since you both claim the name of Christ, you’re still married as far as He is concerned. She is commanded to remain single or be reconciled to you, but nowhere in the book does it say you can’t take another wife. Or two, or three. And, just for the record, my understanding is a concubine is a wife whose children don’t have inheritance rights. A wife does not have the right to sentence her husband to involuntary celibacy either within the marriage by cutting him off or by leaving him. She sentences herself to celibacy in leaving him (if she is obedient to the Word) but he can take another wife.
This is a doctrinal matter. As soon as you can say “It’s not forbidden and you have freedom in Christ, and while I don’t believe it would be right with me, if your faith is strong go for it” then you’ve opened a can of worms. Very few men are alpha enough to pull multiple women into a harem and keep things running smoothly, but recognition of the Biblical validity of a polygynous marriage removes a lot of the problems divorce is causing. However, this is something the women most likely to divorce their husbands will scream loudest about, because it significantly reduces their real-world power in modern day marriages. No more denying the husband sex, ’cause he’s got it right down the hall. The Old Testament specifically cast polygyny in two separate lights: One, in the case of a man who hates his wife and brings in a rival wife. The other, in the case of men with large appetites, Alpha enough to be a cat-herder. Think King David. In the case of a rival wife it was public shaming of the first wife, and we all know how much women love to be publicly shamed.
I believe God’s Word is sufficient for all people for all time. There are some things God doesn’t have a problem with and polygyny is an excellent example of a marriage that practically eliminates many of the issues and problems feminism brought upon us. I have only heard one reasonable argument for why polygyny might be wrong in terms of adding a second wife, and that’s if the husband vowed to forsake all others.
This brings us to the churches. There are so many doctrines on the subject of divorce and remarriage that it’s no wonder it’s so confusing. What does the Bible say about marriage, divorce, remarriage, polygyny, complementarianism, the headship doctrine, etc.? You’d be amazed at how plain the Word is, as well as the back-flips people have been going through for hundreds of years to get the text to say what it doesn’t say. I firmly believe the whole fight over the divorce issue was caused by the church essentially banning the practice of polygyny. For over a thousand years the church was at odds with the nobility (c.f. Brundage) and their policies restricting sexual activity within marriage while at the same time restricting the reproductive choices of the nobility was all to their advantage. The prime directive of nobility is to produce an heir. Polygyny being banned, wives that couldn’t produce an heir had to go and somebody had to come up with a way to biblically justify divorce.
This is the legacy we deal with today, which can be traced back to church leaders who prohibited what God regulated, who spoke where God was silent and took authority over that which God never gave them authority. Those little flies caused the perfume to stink over time until today the stench is overpowering.
Well said Artisanal Toad!
I notice that your definition of polygyny is equivalent to my use of the word polygamy. No big deal I will do some checking.
Elspeth @ 5:39 pm –
From ballista74:
But the answer continues to be to offer yourself into the fire, instead of turning from evil and doing good (1 Peter 3:11). Is it not better to suffer for doing good than for doing evil? (1 Peter 3:17) Is it better to gain the whole world than to forfeit your soul? (Matthew 16:26) Or rather, is it better to have Marriage 2.0 and suffer for its wickedness than to forfeit your soul as well?
Maybe your right. I thought he was saying with the above statement that Christianity is pushing people into marriage 2.0 and telling them to suck it up. Apologies again ballista74 if I misunderstood.
While many folks who call themselves Christians are doing this, we don’t know if these people are Christian or not. They certainly are not following the teachings of Christianity. This is another reason I like the term churchian. Another description I will use is church goers. They are church attenders, but they may be wheat, tares, or wolves in sheep’s clothing. Either way the teachings are not Christian.
@JDG “A wife that is hostile towards God will in all probability be hostile towards her husband. It is unlikely to matter if she is aware of ‘red pill’ fundamentals or not because 1) she will be unlikely to believe they are true in her hard hearted, me first, state of mind, and 2) even if she does believe them, she will seek to please herself regardless and her hamster will make an excuse for her selfish decisions. But a wife who knows God, and is known by God, will want to please her husband because she wants to please God.”
Well when you say it that way, I totally agree with you. It is a heart issue more than just a “sex” issue. I can think of many examples I’ve seen to explain this, but yes, if a woman or man has a hard heart towards God, it will mess up many things in their life – including their sex life.
So you’re right… a heart issue.
@Empath… “It doesn’t even require, or shouldn’t, in-depth biblical teaching to convey the simple truth. Sex is a component of marriage, not a feature or benefit, or icing on the cake. All that needs to be said is that sex is there, its present, its a part of spouses comportment like being charitable and kind and sacrificial and patient….add sexually available… and done. ”
I forgot about your blog… I stopped following you after you supported Matthew Chiglinsky (a bullying cyber harasser/atheist who has expressed extreme hatred towards random women). I think your blog is one of the extremely few exceptions of the manosphere, yet even your blog has many posts I would consider stemming from sexual issues. I don’t think that just saying that sex is there… that spouses should just be sexually available to each other, would fix all the problems seen in Christian marriages (that seems incredibly hopeful and not realistic in the least!!!!). It goes WAY deeper than that. The sermon series that my church did a few years was very in depth, and centered around the correct intentions God had for it, the attitudes that different people bring to it (that aren’t biblical at all), it was really eye-opening for a lot of couples that I suppose just didn’t know or understand.
And you’re also wrong when you assume that just because you’ve seen all churches cover the sex topic, that of course all the other ones you’ve never experienced also do. LOL There really are churches out there that simply don’t cover sex… it’s odd to me that you would think otherwise.
Sexless Marriage: A Negative?
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=904748
Elspeth says:
“I think Ballista is saying that entangling yourself in marriage as it is represented today is to continue to exacerbate the problem. That the”suffering” of accepting celibacy as your lot in life is the more holy way to go than to join yourself in “marriage” to a woman in this current social, legal, and religious climate.”
“continue to exacerbate the problem” it could also be said that when men continue to voluntarily sign up for what is a raw deal (socially, legally, religiously) for them they postpone the solution to the problem. The solution being men refusing to do business’ until the deal gets a whole lot better. As long as women, Christian women, political and churchian leaders have men putting themselves at their disposal, why would any of the aforementioned groups be motivated to change the current arrangement? Its simply too convenient as things are. Why change as long as the volunteers tirelessly, selflessly clean up the mess, take the bullets and throw themselves on the grenades. Yes, of course, NAWALT. Marrying women who are the exception, or hoped to be, is worthwhile for the individual but it still only delays the solution. Christian men in significant numbers refusing to marry and making their reasons known for example would force Church leaders and ultimately Christian women to at least face the mess they’ve contributed to.
Why would Christian men accept the “suffering” of celibacy and stay single?
One obvious reason to me is that the suffering of accepting celibacy or near celibacy as his lot in life is reputedly the fate of many a married man.
As for men who are non-believers, I have no idea why any secular man with options would even bother with marriage. Women aren’t denying them sex, cohabitation or even children at this stage. Take away the moral context of biblical marriage and the legal security men once had, what’s the point?
Remarriage as polygamy/polygyny:
http://oncemarried.net/twice-married-always-married.html
@Don Quixote
I read some of your website. I’d recommend you stop reading books about the Bible and learn how to actually study the Bible and then do so. I don’t say that as an insult, I have simply noticed that those who study their Bible will cite the Bible and those who read the works of others who may or may not have studied their Bible’s, will cite those works.
In terms of Christianity, the only definitive standard is God’s Word. The problem is everyone has blind spots (yes, this includes me). Every great preacher, evangelist and otherwise wonderful man of God had blind spots. We need go no further than Moses (Numbers 25) to see this. Thus, we are not to place our faith in men, but rather in God’s Word.
LisbethSalander (dragon tattoo)
Two misunderstandings
1. I made no suggestion that fixing sex would fix any of the other overarching problems. Quite the contrary, when I suggest that there are deeper root issues than sex, and that the sexual issues are an extension of those, that i am not suggesting….fix the sex fix the issue. Sex is easily solved, meaning we are born equipped for it and designed to do it, men and women. Compare that to the thing that the church teaches as the offset, the emotional needs and communication thing. men are NOT born equipped to communicate like women. Yet we are taught that in order to get one of these supposedly opposite but equal things right, men must learn and do something alien to them so that women are able to do what they are born able to do.
2. I did not make the assumption that all churches teach sex. I do not make anecdotal extrapolations as a rule, ever. I shared the anecdote to express a different correlation. Amongst all the people who DO sit under decent sex teaching, the issues persist. I simply expressed that Id seen sufficient ones that do teach and an associated concentration of ongoing relational issues to support my overall point which is simply that the sexual issue is not the root issue. The teaching I refer to in 1.) above, expressed as the microwave and slow cooker analogy, is generally a flawed part of sexual teaching even in the most well intended churches. And that is an outgrowth of the root problem i refer to as gender/spiritual
@ girl WADFT
Sex is at the heart of marriage: “The two shall become one flesh.” It is the thing without which there can be no marriage in the biblical sense. If a couple has sex four times a week, spending an hour each time, then they are only spending 3% of their waking hours on sex. But that’s just sooo much to expect, hah!
(It would be an error to read anything into this about my own sex life. I’m just following up on an ongoing theme of mine.)
Brings to mind the aphorism that for a typical man, sex is 10% of a good marriage, but too infrequent sex or none at all is 90% of a bad marriage.
@Empath… lol you assume wrong again! Dragonfly tattoo does not = Dragon tattoo… you seem incapable of not making assumptions. And we’ve already established that it is more of a heart issue than just a “sex issue,” but which still affects the way women treat and respect their husbands. I’m actually using sexual issues as more of a broad term of female/male communication and relation to each other… you know, feminine vs. masculinity… sex is also at the core of that.
@theasdgamer – lol yes, I think couples should make it a priority… every night if they can.
You could get really graphic in explaining how sexual issues are at the root of the “marriage problem”… the feminine sense of submitting and being open to a man, accepting him (into her body), inspiring him to be hard (pun intended) and courageous, inspiring masculinity in him through her being a simply feminine woman. The man being drawn to a woman’s passionate gentleness, her tender yet girlish qualities, her captivating vulnerability & humility….
Of course, it doesn’t solve all issues, but embracing being a woman or a man and the sexual overtones that go with that would fix many issues in marriages, even society.
Feminism, in a figurative sense, is a woman rejecting her sexual role… submitting and being open to a man, accepting him (into her body), etc. is directly against what she wants.
(I should’ve added)…because it would mean her giving up control. Wasn’t that woman’s curse? To want to control her man. Submitting and inviting him into her (mind and body) require a vast amount of vulnerability… something that feminists hate because they think its beneath them to be this feminine.
But that’s of course obvious right? We are lol … on a manosphere blog.
@ gwadt
Ok, so, I’m switching to your on-topic idea about sex as a metaphor for how men and women relate in marriage. Celibacy in marriage for other than a short time for prayer is unbiblical, assuming that there are no health constraints. So, being on topic, celibacy for an extended period before marriage while in a bf/gf relationship would seem to create:
1. wrong expectations for marriage about relating since their initial patterns would have to change once they were married,
2. bad relationship habits between the couple,
3. bad prioritizing of sex by the woman after marriage,
4. communication problems between the couple since there would be one appropriate communication protocol before marriage and a very different protocol after marriage; e.g., appropriate flirting before marriage is very different than appropriate flirting after marriage, and
5. a weird frame would be imposed on the man before marriage (quite possibly the woman’s) which might very well cause him dominance problems after marriage.
Comments?
Sometimes one need not take themselves, therefore others, so seriously. I read your usename clearly Lizbeth. I was obviously making a joke. I won’t continue the topical discussion as it seems tedium is order of the day.
Honestly, I was under the impression that you were using that name judgmentally… another disgusting judgmental Christian.
@theasdgamer – I’m not sure how long a period you are thinking before marriage… 1 to 2 years is a long time, I agree with the other commenters, particularly Lyn87 on the topic 🙂
Honestly, I was under the impression that you were using that name judgmentally… another disgusting judgmental Christian.
Yep that’s me too. I make judgments all the time and everyday. I’ve finally just accepted that I am a disgusting, judgmental, homophobic, racist, sexist, bigot.
I’m disgusting because I’m male.
I’m judgmental for pointing out when people are sinning.
I’m homophobic because I believe sodomy is a sin.
I’m racist because I disagree with just about everything our current president stands for.
I’m sexist because I think women shouldn’t vote and wives should submit to their husbands.
I’m a bigot because I think Jesus is the only name by which men can be saved.
There you go, a disgusting, judgmental, homophobic, racist, sexist, bigot – a bible believing Christian.
No JDG… those are personal convictions of yours… you are not calling someone a name.
Empath was using the name “Lisbeth Salander” because my blog sounds like that book. Her story is definitely one that someone like Empath would look down upon, if you just google her name you can see the character’s pictures… and draw conclusions as to how he as using that name. Her story is so sad… it’d be like me addressing him by her uncle’s name (the man who tortured and repeatedly raped her brutally when she was a child). I’m sure Empath would be offended by that. It was a little offensive to be addressed by her name, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt that he was just making assumptions and not reading clearly. But he WAS reading clearly, he just wanted to refer to me using her name.
Artisanal Toad has referred me to this post in regard to a discussion we were having on my blog. He re-stated some falsehoods about divorce and remarriage which have already been debunked in our conversation.
His omissions, selective readings and repeatedly false claims concerning scripture become apparent to anyone interested. It’s disgusting for him to come on here and throw out statements like, “In terms of Christianity, the only definitive standard is God’s Word” and turn around and ignore it.
One major falsehood he’s maintained is Deuteronomy wasn’t an actual command of God(which is clearly stated in verse 1: 3) but simply a “judicial ruling” undertaken by Moses on his. There’s so much falsehood in my interactions with him that his writing is quickly reaching the level of lies.
FYI: If you go to my blog, know that I’m using the free version of WordPress and I have nothing to do with any adds you see.
girlwithadragonflytattoo –
Isn’t she a fictional character in some books and movies? Isn’t your blog name based off the name from those books and characters? I haven’t read the books or watched the movies, but I immediately connected you with the “dragon tattoo” enterprise when I saw your first comment some time ago (I think at SSMs). I just figured you were a fan of the “tattoo” movies.
To be honest, when I first saw your name, I figured you were most likely a feminist (because of the “dragon tattoo” connection). Now I have strong doubts about that. But that’s what people do. We take the info we have and make evaluations.
Just for clarification, I don’t look down on feminists (but I detest their ideology) or anyone else. I realize my own potential for pathetic behavior is as great as anyone else’s.
I guess I’m trying to say that just because Empath connected you with the book/movie enterprise doesn’t mean he is looking down on you. Maybe there is more to the story, but Empath doesn’t strike me as that kind of guy.
By the way, I heard that the story is terribly sadistic, and the “heroes” are just as sadistic as the villains. I don’t like stories where the good guys are just as bad as the bad guys, and I especially don’t like stories where the “good guy” girl is basically wonder woman on steroids. Maybe I’m weird, but I liked when the girl in black ran for her life from the Hulk in the “Avengers” movie. To me that made a lot more sense than a 90 lb woman going toe to toe with a 250 lb man. But then, I’m not a girl.
I keep thinking of things to add 🙂 … maybe you’re offended that I used the words “disgusting Christian.” Sorry, JDG, but even Jesus referred to the Pharisees as vile (disgusting/repulsive) in the way that they acted, the way they touted the Christianity above others like Lisbeth, and looked down on others – even other Christians who were earnestly trying. Empath used her name in a derogatory sense, and now wants to back track saying he’s just joking.
There are different kinds of “Christians” … there are Pharisees that get pleasure in looking down on others (making derogatory jokes), and normal caring Christians that are just trying to live their life and grow in God’s word. There’s a huge difference… Jesus was the first one to really point out how disgusting the judgmental ones are.
No need to apologies, but I think you’re right about the “disgusting Christian” term. I guess I don’t like it. It sounds judgmental.
If a woman is running the sexual show before marriage, she’ll be running it afterwards. Smart men make *women* wait for sex. Until marriage. And even then, they know to keep the ball(s) in their court.
s/b – No need to apologize…
I’m in a brain fog and I don’t know how to get out.
Smart men make *women* wait for sex. Until marriage. And even then, they know to keep the ball(s) in their court.
Yes this was good advice about 50 or 60 years ago, now smart men just won’t marry women from the US or the UK (some exceptions may apply).
A happy marriage:
Submission, sex, and sammiches.
@JDG: I understand where you’re coming from, but universal marriage is the only solution.
http://demarkate.com/index.php/14-relationship-realism/73-trickle-down-marriage
BHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Kate – thank you for the link. I’ll check out the blog.
I’m going to assume that when you say “universal marriage’ you don’t mean this:
http://www.bilerico.com/2008/02/a_call_to_universal_marriage.php
because a marriage requires a man and a woman.
I’m all for marriage, but what passes for marriage in the US or the UK isn’t really marriage at all. It’s kind of like living together only with the state as a third party to the arrangement. And that third party has a history of actively encouraging and subsidizing the destruction of relationships that it is a part of.
You are much more optimistic than I am. I don’t think there will be a solution (at least until until the Lord returns). If one comes before then, it will most likely involve much poverty and possibly bloodshed (though I truly hope not).
Kate,
I read your “Trickle Down Marriage” article and it’s okay as far as it goes – although you make the usual female mistake of over-concentrating on what the top men are doing – at least you didn’t make the usual follow-up error of ignoring the other 80% of men.
But you didn’t deal with the incentives and disincentives of your idea. Why in the world should men – especially the top men who can drown in a sea of estrogen if they want to – marry in the Western World today? If we’re talking about old-school marriage – the kind that’s required for civilization to exist over time – sure… but that’s not an option. Marriage will be a crap shoot (and a sucker’s bet for most men), until women lose the power to initiate “no-fault” divorce and be awarded cash and prizes for doing so, AND the current generation of carousel riders have aged out of the market. The only way to make marriage work on a societal scale is for women to be chaste and NOT have the power to dominate-or-detonate their marriages at will. The law simply will NOT force women to fulfill the terms of their marriage contracts – although it has NO problem forcing men to do so, to the point of subsidizing the destruction of their families and themselves under threat of prison. Dalrock’s article “Threatpoint” explains the issue in far greater detail than I’m going to do here – just check that out if you haven’t read it.
Until that happens, a married man is legally at the mercy of his wife. For naturally-submissive women who have great integrity and/or fear of displeasing God (NOBODY does “Dread” like Him), things tend to work out well. But if she decides to go rogue, she’ll have a literal army at her back: wearing blue suits and black robes. For marriage to work, that MUST end.
No rings for sluts, and no cash-and-prizes for divorcees.
Marriage will be a crap shoot (and a sucker’s bet for most men), until women lose the power to initiate “no-fault” divorce and be awarded cash and prizes for doing so, AND the current generation of carousel riders have aged out of the market. The only way to make marriage work on a societal scale is for women to be chaste and NOT have the power to dominate-or-detonate their marriages at will. The law simply will NOT force women to fulfill the terms of their marriage contracts – although it has NO problem forcing men to do so, to the point of subsidizing the destruction of their families and themselves under threat of prison.
This is an excellent summarization of the situation.
… she’ll have a literal army at her back: wearing blue suits and black robes. For marriage to work, that MUST end.
I’m thinking the most likely scenario (aside from supernatural intervention) is one where black robes and blue suits are unable to enforce unjust decrees upon fathers. For this to be the case it is also likely that they won’t be able to enforce much of anything else. I’m thinking of Bosnia in the mid 1990s.
No rings for sluts, and no cash-and-prizes for divorcees.
Yep!
Every time we liberate a woman, we enslave a man.
Kate,
In order to get “universal marriage” you need to get buy in by all the males, and it is not in the interest of the top men to buy in to this.
The only other alternative is by some kind of force. You have to force men to marry. Rome tried that and it didn’t stop their decline. You can raise taxes on single men, but you can’t tax what they don’t have and that’s the direction men are slowly going.
And considering what a financial net negative it is for a man to be married (even before divorce) any taxes are probably better paid then marriage.
And I mean that last part.
So the other alternative is an over arching religion that demands marriage, punishes adultery and fornication out of marriage and at least does a better than token effort on enforcing this on the elites as well.
And there isn’t a religion in the west that has the ability to do this anymore on a scale that would be necessary.
There is only one way to save marriage and that requires in the interim that it be destroyed utterly, just as the political, legal, welfare and social structures that currently exist have to be destroyed and here’s the thing:
Men don’t have to do anything for this to happen, these things are already crumbling under their own weight.
It is only when a woman and her children’s survival depends directly (not indirectly as it does now) on a man will marriage work, only the will it be restored and its going to be a long brutal while before it comes back.
“I’m thinking the most likely scenario (aside from supernatural intervention) is one where black robes and blue suits are unable to enforce unjust decrees upon fathers. For this to be the case it is also likely that they won’t be able to enforce much of anything else. I’m thinking of Bosnia in the mid 1990s.”
This is correct. A horrible, but inevitable outcome.
Empath,
Huge raging forest fires are put out by lots of little changes. The alternative is to sit back and let them destroy everything. We are likely to see much destruction come about because of our foolish modern sexual behavior, but small firebreaks and such can still have value.
Elspeth,
Ballista is basically standing for perfection in Christians from what I was finding on his blog. I got myself banned there for standing for what is true and not bowing to his interpretation of it a long while back. Very little room there for discussion or true learning.
The problem is that most marriages are not the failures that many claim. Yeah, the system is biased and it is very difficult today, but so what? That is life. We will not have a perfect society until Jesus returns to run it.
> And that the few men here who are in what they feel are happy marriages need to be careful not to sell other men a false bill of goods.
I don’t know if you would say I am in that category, but I do not believe I have ever done that. I have a relatively happy marriage (26 years this week), but it is far from perfection. We just had some major issues come up on the way home from Church today, for example. We relatively resolved it, but I realize that I ultimately have little overall control over what happens. I just set the tone and keep working so I am doing things properly and let God work on my wife.
(We have weathered not being able to give birth to children and having our 4 adoptive children all decide that we were nothing more than foster parents in their eyes, if that. The feminist issues are almost trivial compared to that.)
Claiming that we can nuke marriage because it isn’t perfect is idiotic at its core. The modern environment is not great, but successes do happen. We must always focus on what God’s purpose for marriage is and push for that, whatever the cost.
The grass is not greener anywhere else since humans live in all those places.
AT,
Not sure what antimony is. I don’t think you meant a kind of metal.
> It appears your argument boils down to “I don’t like it so I don’t think anybody else should be able to do it.”
You don’t read very well if you are going to make that assertion. Go back to the beginning and see what was made. Can you name even one positive example of polygamy in the Bible? “All things are lawful, but all things are not profitable.” That is a good Scriptural idea to keep in mind. Go for your multiple wives if you really want them, but I would be a bit more watchful preaching that as a good path given that nothing in the Scriptures says that.
> This is the legacy we deal with today, which can be traced back to church leaders who prohibited what God regulated
BS. The situation we have today is because we have humans on this earth and we are not yet into the heavenly Kingdom. Bad stuff will happen. People will enable it, but the modern situation is not caused because men couldn’t marry multiple wives in the Church. Talk about stretching things….
JDG, My wife and I got a good chuckle out of that poster.
A bit OT:
I was thinking on the way home from Church today that the Scriptures only have a command on how women can behave and possibly win their husbands to the Lord. We have no mirror command for men. Does anyone know of a Scripture that tells us that a man doing XYZ will have a chance at winning his wife for the Lord?
One other general comment about marriage: I am not sure what I would do about marriage if I was much younger and single. I can almost guarantee I would not remarry now should I find myself single in the future, but I suspect I would end up being more like a MGTOW than would be right, largely due to the environment.
That would be balanced with my firm will that I will do what is right regardless and live with the consequences. I have done so in my own marriage and many don’t think highly of me (to put it mildly) because of that. I am not perfect at it, but I largely don’t worry about what others think about me, so it can work.
I do see why many push ideas at odds with the Scriptures. I would at least like to see people admit that rather than performing some justification loops to claim they really are not wrong. I would admit my wrong if I did choose a MGTOW and was not fully focused on the Lord’s work. (Wouldn’t that not be MGTOW by definition though?)
I am not trying to start a MGTOW argument, just respond to the claim that some of us are whitewashing things.
It is interesting that this discussion brought up some things lurking behind my personal motivations that I had not considered consciously when writing my previous comments. As many can relate I have had to face a church teachings and doctrine head on that were quite unbiblical that in turn affected my family directly and negatively. Suffice to say, the bible did not win the day and it usually never does when faced with female solipsism and hypergamy. Most of what I state is motivated by these events, the subsequent fallout and my observations and knowledge about how women work, thanks in large part to sites like this.
I still stand on my statements that biblical marriage is dead and gone and it will never return. It is still my sincere and well reasoned belief that no man should ever marry nor should he ever consider a Christian woman if he does indeed choose to marry. These statements really bother most Christians on a visceral level because it shows the hypocrisy of modern Christian teachings in general. Most people in the church do not want to see the reality of the problem, because doing so, they will have to acknowledge the probability that little Suzie will most likely be doing things with little Johnnie in the back set of some car. This ties directly into the inherent white knightery of most bible thumping Christian men. We all want to protect our daughters after all. However by protecting your daughter (and by ignoring reality) the whole concept of the family and marriage continues to be sacrificed.
Little Suzie will most likely not be a virgin when she marries, regardless of what she proclaims. However, it will be negotiated that she marries little Henry who remained a virgin. She will not have genuine attraction for him and will leave him eventually taking his children and money. And them Henry will come to these forums and say with pride at least I only had sex in marriage and the rest of you are going to burn, when it was his virginity and lack of experience in handling women that caused his marriage to fail in the first place. This is a foundational issue.
This discussion then begs the question of what is the point of even being a Christian when in reality (for over 50% of men) there is no joy in marriage, no joy in sex (because you have to celibate after all) and frankly going by some of the guidance in the preceding comments and my own observation of incels, life would just kind of suck until I die and receive some future benefit. A Christian man wants to have sex but it is his peer group and his ideologies that pressure him not to. Couple this with little Suzie getting finger banged by the alpha bad boy because Henry is lame and is not attractive to any woman, in church or out of it. This causes his celibacy to be in many ways involuntary.
I found a blog written by a guy who is a 29 year old virgin. He hates it and his failures at getting laid have had a negative impact on other parts of his life. That’s all too common for these men. And his failure to get laid became a part of his ID to where he will continue to fail until he learns hard game and dark triad skills, loses the betaness and kills off the white knight. What I described is the typical Christian male virgin because they are really the same thing as a non believing Incel at this point. Christian men being virgins until married will generally have the effect of emasculating him and cause his future wife to control the entire frame (sexual and otherwise) of the marriage, which in turn leads to an unbiblical marriage and eventual unhappiness and divorce.
Then the church goes on its tirade of “man up” and “men must lead” BS. That is the essential underlying message from anti fornication people.
I just don’t see a lot of unplugged or red pill men being converted to Christianity. It seems like most, if not all Christians in the ‘sphere were believers before they came to learn red pill truths. Then I see many men and some women try to merge these truths with their faith. Dalrock actually does a pretty good job of this but in general he does not hammer on the whole male virgin or male celibacy thing, but I think he realizes how hypocritical and damaging that would be overall. Many of the proponents of marriage are in fact married themselves, and have been for some time. They are then using their exceptionality as the rule in defiance to what is really happening in the SMP and MMP. That’s a very arrogant and narrow minded approach to these real issues.
So it was not like my faith was being tested enough because my ex wife’ church was actively complicit in our marriage blowing up, I see men giving advice to other men that all of us fornicators will go to hell because we want to have sex with a woman we care about and marriage is such a bad deal, so we choose sex outside of state marriage. There are no other options. Celibacy is not an option it’s a curse. For many of us who actually like the company of women ans especially one that we can love MGTOW is also not something we would choose to do. One thing that’s really closed minded is this notion that every man who has sex without being married is committing some awful sin. I don’t buy it. Christians seem to want to conveniently ignore the base impulses and needs of our human sexuality. This is foolish. This causes Christianity to lose whatever little credibility it may have had left as a valid belief system.
The original topic was about this average young Christian couple who were taught the generally promoted spiel about sex, virginity and marriage. The end results of this were 2 extremely sexually dysfunctional individuals. I believe this is the normal result in regards to how the bible is taught and its values promoted, not the exception.
I think Dragonfly stated this in the recent past, sex with your spouse should be natural like eating or breathing. A couple should not have to make a big production out of bringing their bodies together in love and/or passion. Why should a couple not come together every night before falling asleep? We eat every day don’t we? The sad thing is that for a couple to do this and feel totally natural doing it requires such a positive attitude about not only sex in marriage but sex generally that can only be learned from ones parents when young. Older men and women trying to change their attitudes in order to save their marriages are really not all that successful. I would attribute this to the thirst that the average American man has for just a little sexual attention and affection that he will accept and praise a small incremental increase in his wife’s sexual availability. In the end she is still FUBAR’d as is the marriage.
The sad thing is that a lot of men who share my experience can tell you that we have experienced what sex should be like and what it is about more outside of marriage with a unbeliever that inside.
The church is taken already dysfunctional people, in most cases, and made them even more screwed up.
@mustardnine Thanks for the vote of confidence.
@JDG No problem, especially if the writing wasn’t too clear. In fact, it’s going to lead to a post in the future, so it’s not all for waste. I was saying something quite different than you seemed to think I was (though reading the Scriptures I put in should lead you there). That I forgot a “not” in what you quoted: “Or rather, is it better to not have Marriage 2.0 and suffer for its wickedness than to forfeit your soul as well?”
The point I was trying to make is that even if what people are putting out there is false teaching, you have to recognize that it exists, and is represented in the minds of most as Christianity. Remember that Scripture even states that the church will be fully apostate when Jesus returns. Most all of them are now, thinking they are really following Christianity. And people are drawn into it thinking they are finding salvation through Jesus, when they find something quite different.
Even worse, there are those on the outside looking in seeing this. In other words, you can’t stick your head in the sand with regards to what is going on. Perception is reality. You can’t just dismiss what people are seeing when you deal with them. You can tell them that what is going on isn’t true Christianity, but the examples set before them will stand a lot more than what you can ever say. That’s a quandry of my own blog. How do you get some one to look past what they see with their own eyes and experience so they’ll hear that those things are wrong? Answer, you really don’t. But you have to acknowledge the truth of things before you even go any farther. See Daniel’s prayer of repentance for the sins of Israel (Daniel 9) as an example.
The very real problem is that you have people with the perception that “Christianity” is pushing people into Marriage 2.0 and telling them to suck it up, because the ones they see are indeed doing that. Even some parties here, as Elspeth writes in her second paragraph, will do this, and will bring out the shaming epipteths for those that see what is going on. Of course, the problem you get is one of selection fallacy – it’s like a lottery winner giving financial advice. “Just go out and win the lottery like me and all your problems will be solved.” It’s just not practical.
@Elspeth was right about the third paragraph, but that was the rest of it. The “outside looking in” folks see this, and see this as the very representation of Christ. To many men, there’s a Mark Driscoll waiting inside every church on Sunday morning. It keeps them from looking at Jesus and seeing Him for who He is. The ones that are doing this are causing others to blaspheme the Word of God instead of see that these “Christians” are counterfeit. You can just come out and say that until you’re blue in the face and it won’t mean anything. This reality has to be acknowledged and dealt with before these people can begin to see the true Jesus.
@embracing Reality
The book I’m reading now talks about a lot of the reason wicked things exist and perpetuate is that people don’t know their rights and aren’t using them. You don’t use your rights, you lose them. If anything, that’s been one of my consistent messages on the blog – men do have the right of choice. Furthermore, they have the right to push back on all these false teachings. But so many are limp-spined anyway, so if they did know, they would just accept. Or they’re so enamored with having a woman that they fall into the sin of Adam even before they have a woman to worship in their lives. Or so many that have the red-pill knowledge still want to play the lottery in hopes that they’ll win the jackpot. So many of the “Christians” can just read numerous blogs and get the answers to every one of these problems, but double down on the same garbage. There’s a reason for this, which is why I pushed back on Dalrock’s idea of denial two or three posts ago.
There’s no forceful resistance – so why should there be any change? Good comment.
Domestic Violence Toll (This is going to be one of those threads that gets closed)
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=904864
I hurt my husband (“Please try not to beat yourself up!”)
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=904855
Never dated.
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=904912
@BradA
Lies like this are no surprise from you. I’ll clear the air since you brought it out publicly. You got binned for rather vociferously protesting my ban of another person who was vomiting some rather disgusting hate-mongering filth into the comment boxes. I’ve long since deleted the comments so I can’t link there. But the real reason BradA was banned at the time was this: He decided to go play white-knight and fell on his own sword.
Marriage? Should I support it anymore? (This one practically exploded…)
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=904856
Adulterous Wife (?)
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=904955
Confused: How will a first marriage impact our future plans?
http://forums.catholic.com/showthread.php?t=904861
By the way, BlueEyedLady gets into a fairly typical feminist angle in the “Marriage? Should I support it anymore?” thread.