Sunshine Mary linked to a post from Reddit by a 32-year old “progressive” woman who is surprised that 15 years of sleeping around with 18 different guys is not attractive to marriage-minded men.
Excerpt:
My parents are first generation immigrants. I have a younger brother and younger sister. In my family I was always the rebellious one; I would often challenge my parents. My family was very strict, when it came to dating and my siblings usually fell in line. However, I would challenge that norm.
My brother and sister were very repressed with their sexualities as a result, while I lost my virginity at 17 to my then boyfriend. While my brother and followed the traditional Indian path. My brother ended up not having any sexual contact with a girl until he got married at 25 (arranged marriage) and now they have a child together. My sister (too never kissed a boy) has recently gotten married too at 24 with an Indian boy she met at our Temple (both parents approved).
I live in LA, a city where both men and woman tend to marry a bit later in life, and yet I still spent the last years of my 20‘s feeling that somehow, I’d messed up. I had followed the wrong trail and thus, my “important-life-moments” timeline was off. Even with my more progressive friends it began slowly at first, when I was 27 … an engagement post on Facebook, an invite to a wedding—it was happening. People I knew were beginning the next stage of life and saying “I do.”
Throughout my whole life I never really dated any Indian guys; I exclusively dated white guys. However now I realize more than ever that the guys I dated never really took me seriously. They never really viewed me as someone they would eventually marry. I was always just some exotic fun. This part was definitely a realization that has hurt me to the core. I didn’t actually do it to spite Indian men or anything like that. I did what a lot of my white female friends did; I thought I was the same as them, but that could be farther from the truth. Most white guys I ran into wanted white wives.
I am now 32, and seems like everyone in my family has lapped me. I too want a family a marriage. However, now my chance of finding someone is gone. At my age getting an arranged marriage or finding another Indian man to marry me is out of the question. Majority of Indian guys usually get married pretty early. Often either to another Indian girl they meet here, or they go back to India for an arranged marriage. My parents have tried signing me up for a matrimony site, but of the guys I’d meet they would be turned off by my history (drink/eat meat/not a virgin).
[…]Most of my relationships have been long term I have only been with 18 guys and I have been sexually active since I was 17 years old.
She has only had steady sexual relationships with 18 guys in 15 years! That’s not a lot. Is it?
Let’s see what Sunshine Mary says first:
However, the more I think about it, the more it seems to me that articles like hers are a good thing simply because they expose the lie. Feminists have sold young women a bill of goods, that they can live like men, work like men, have sex like men, and then turn back into women when they feel like it. We laugh at a woman like this sometimes and make fun of her and say, “Didn’t she know that she’d end up like this?”
No, she didn’t know that. That’s because when you are 17 years old, you don’t know much, especially in this culture of extended adolescence. And when you have been told from a very young age that, as a girl, it is your destiny to Have It All exactly When You Want It, I’m sure it is very baffling to find yourself in your thirties with no husband and none in sight, with the dawning realization that your job and lonely apartment are not nearly as fulfilling as being a wife and mother would have been.
[…]Personally, I feel no joy in this woman’s pain. I don’t think a White Knight should ride in to save her because I think she should suffer the natural consequences of her decisions so that other young women may see and learn from her errors, but I take no pleasure in the fact that she will have this lot in life. However, what most of us don’t seem to understand is that young women make the terrible choices that they are making because they are told from an early age that these are actually good choices. Some girls are able to resist that message, which saturates every aspect of the media and schools, but most girls aren’t, and they don’t develop the necessary wisdom until it is too late.
Emphasis hers. And now my turn.
Let me tell you what awaits a man who marries a woman like that, who spent her 20s hooking up with hot guys who had no interest in marriage and no demonstrated ability to protect, provide and lead on moral/spiritual issues. She will have convinced herself that she is more attractive than she really is, and be constantly comparing a less-attractive husband to these other hot guys. I therefore do not recommend that any man marry this woman as she is now. What men need in marriage is respect, affection, affirmation and approval. A woman like her needs to work on building up her ability to trust and encourage men by choosing good men and supporting them chastely and unselfishly. That is the only way to fix this, if it even can be fixed.
I know that women will be surprised by this, but men can tell if you are a virgin or not based on how much you trust and encourage them in their plans. If you are constantly putting them down, calling them names, and making excuses for why you don’t have to care about their needs and feelings, then that’s just your past promiscuity showing itself. Virgins with good relationships with their fathers don’t put men down like that – they build men up. My recommendation for women who realize that they are making bad choices with men and being negative about the men they choose is to look in the mirror and acknowledge that they are the problem. The solution, then, is to find a good man and work hard at being submissive and supportive, but chastely.
In the church
My friend Ari, who is married with lots of kids, sent me a related article from Vox Day, about how church women are making choices about during their 20s and 30s.
Vox writes:
Women increasingly expect churches and church functions to be places of freedom from “unwanted” interactions. Translated, this means women expect unattractive men to know their place and not to ask women out or otherwise talk to them at church. They expect men either to avoid them completely, or to be eunuchs, existing to serve them. There have been reports in the manosphere of women actually complaining to pastors about “unattractive” men asking them out at church. It is as if women expect pastors and church staff to punish and rebuke men for “sexual harassment” at churches, merely because in a social situation they acted like men and pursued someone/something they wanted. Of course, none of this applies to attractive men, who are never the subject of complaint or sanction no matter what they do.
A friend of mine who has an engineering degree from MIT and a very high-paying job replied to that with this:
Heh. Sad, but good insight about the desexualized church. When I was single, I very friendly (not sexually — was very discerning and had very high standards) and some women found that very disconcerting. I was even had my behavior likened as “sexual harassment” at one point, so I asked if there were things like pelvic thrusts, hands in pockets pointing the wrong way, things that I said that were inappropriate. No, the answer came back. It was just that I was friendly. (Besides, I couldn’t see any of the women as date-material … one or two from what I could discern were nominally Christian, as in, one thought it would be cool to find a husband at a church but would take home guys.)
So I stated: I merely say hi and ask how the person is and if the person doesn’t want to talk, I don’t push the conversation. I am merely being pleasant especially to people I know. The answer came back that a certain group of women wanted me to just ignore them, not even wave, say hi, or acknowledge their existence. Really? Jesus died so we could just ignore each other? I mostly gaped … and wondered about John 13:34-35.
I was told “this was an unachievable ideal, don’t even try.” Now, who is still worshiping and still there? Not this group of women!
I think this problem of women wasting their lives on men who are attractive and entertaining, but not marriage-capable, is even more serious when it comes to the church, because I think there is a temptation that women have to be very secular in their standard for men, and yet the church affirms them by making it seem that their feelings are actually God speaking to them about which man to like. Every objection about the man’s unsuitability for marriage is met with “but he has a good heart for Jesus and he works hard”. Heart for Jesus = never read so much as a C.S. Lewis book in his life.
Where does the standard come from? Well it comes from TV, movies, music and pop culture. That’s where they learn what kind of man to like, and it’s reinforced by their peers. There is no effort to look at what a Christian man does in a marriage and then choose a man who is showing he can do that. A woman should always choose a man who gives her the tingles, because the tingles are the voice of God telling her that he is opening doors and providing signs for her to prefer the agnostic psychology student who lives in his parents’ basement and is 3 years younger than she is. But he is hawt, and the Holy Spirit told her to spend her 20s pining away for him. Her friends would be so envious, because he looks like that guy on “Mad Men”.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
Yeah, so turn it around, and imagine a woman trying to be virtuous and chaste and single. Guys who think she’s hot, date her once, and then say, but “You’re Catholic. You can’t have sex can you?” Duh, if I marry you I can. Then he never calls back. Said woman feels undesirable until Prince Charming showed up — also a virgin — and we’ve been happily married 30 years now. I’m so glad they all dropped me like a hot potato when they found out I wouldn’t sleep with anyone outside marriage! Those were the dead end dudes. Praise you Jesus!
God bless you. Susan Fox http://www.christsfaithfulwitness.com
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I agree on the standards applied by most “Christian” women. Double quotes because I know a fair few women who claim Christianity largely in the hope of finding a stable long term relationship.
I don’t know even one truly dedicated Christian man who is unattractive. The Christian men I know don’t necessarily meet WK’s definition of the benchmark standard for Christian marriage material (several have begun their careers in pastoral or ministry roles at young ages – as early as 19 – which has precluded their attaining tertiary degrees outside of the theological sphere) but they are certainly Christ-focussed and dedicated…I am constantly pushed to defend their sexuality to outsiders (usually women whose advances have been ignored) because it is considered strange that most of them have not dated since high school (if at all). The ones that have, are married. Every time, I have to explain that they are simply waiting to find a woman who lives to a higher standard.
In summary – we as Christian women need to sharply reassess what we are looking for if we are too shallow to talk to anyone we perceive to be physically unattractive at first glance.
One of my best friends is a man that people tend to find physically unattractive, but after becoming familiar with him…well, he could have his pick of the young women at our church. On the flip side, I have also met men (and women) generally perceived to be attractive who open their mouth and reverse the visual impression. My experience has had the effect that I haven’t found it possible since I was about 15 to assess attractiveness based on physical appearance.
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“A woman should always choose a man who gives her the tingles, because the tingles are the voice of God telling her that he is opening doors and providing signs for her to prefer the agnostic psychology student who lives in his parents’ basement and is 3 years younger than she is.” This just made it into the WK Hall of Quotes! (But, you should have mentioned the video games the psych student plays while the engineering students are studying real stuff.)
Seriously, WK. Go volunteer at a pro-life pregnancy crisis center – one that shares the Gospel with every client who comes in. You will find serious Christian women there. (You won’t find many men there – we are too feminized.) Or, a serious pro-life sidewalk counseling station. Those women are braver than most men. And, gasp! – they know that abortion is anti-Christian, something many churchy women haven’t even apparently figured out. They may not score great on your exam, but they WILL score well on apologetics for abortion abolitionists! (So, that means they take logic seriously – one of your criteria, if I am not mistaken.)
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So my story goes like this. It’s probably 1999 or 2000 and I’m single, a youngish late 20’s-something, part-time seminarian + MIT engineering grad with a full-time high tech job. I was a Bible study leader and fairly involved at church including some random leadership stuff. There were four women involved, which I will give letters to. A is the leader of their small group/Bible study, assisted by K. Then there’s G and W. My mother has always encouraged me to develop a good sense of discernment not just about women but also to discern who is reliable, trustworthy, etc. and how can I figure that out? but also about women.
From getting to know all four of these women, I was not interested at all. G took home men (I didn’t bother asking if she slept with them) and had them over late, W was dating a non-Christian and didn’t care about their beliefs. I forget the other reasons about A and K. But anyway. K and I were in the same small leader training class, in the same membership class, and other stuff, so there was context to at least say hi to K. And I got to know all of these women through other things (parties, choir, same or similar ministries, etc.)
I emphasize I was only merely friendly. I’d just wave if I saw them from afar and/or I’d come up and say, “hi, (whatever their name was), how are you doing?” I never pushed the conversation, so if they didn’t want to talk, I’d go away. I just assumed I should be cordial to friendly if I knew them; it never dawned on me that I should just ignore them. Anyway, time passed by and eventually one day, I came up to A needing to pass her by from behind in the aisle of the pews. Not wanting to surprise her or run over her, I ever-so-barely put my hand on her shoulder and told her that I was I was passing by and got a snarl, “Don’t touch me! I told you never to touch me!” To which I was shocked.
A couple of months later, during communion, I went up to her and asked if we could talk about this comment (I still wasn’t sure what I did wrong). I told her she and I never had the conversation about not touching her. She said that we should have. I said, “I’m not getting where this is coming from.” She said we should talk about it some other time, it was important.
It was so important that it took another 3 months for us to get together at Starbucks. So she (A) then spilled the beans:
A: “You’re just too friendly.” I gaped.
“What do you mean… ‘too friendly?'”
A: “You’re too friendly.”
I was puzzled. “Do you mean I was too suggestive or too sexually overt or made people uncomfortable with my inappropriate gestures?”
A: “No. Just too friendly.”
Me (Still puzzled): “Did I thrust my pelvis, or have my hands pointing towards my groin, or make any rude, lewd, or inappropriate remarks or gestures?”
A: “No.”
Me: “So … help me out, since I still don’t understand. What would you like me to do?”
A: “I think you should stop being so friendly.”
Me: “Well, here’s my modus operandi… usually with people I know, I at least say hi or wave. I might ask them how they are, and if they don’t want to talk, I never push it. If they want to talk, I go with it.” (applying some Rogerian therapy here)
A: “Well, don’t.”
Me: “I’m confused … I’m motivated by John 13:34-35, Christ commands us not to just like each other, but to love one another as he loves us…”
A: “That’s an ideal that will never be realized.”
Me: “So we shouldn’t try…?”
A: “You shouldn’t try. Now, promise to me that you won’t be so friendly.”
Me: “Uh … I can’t make that promise right now. I have some thinking (trying not to say praying as I didn’t want to ‘out-spiritualize’ her) to do.”
A (starts getting up): “What you are doing is akin to sexual harassment!!! You have to stop being so friendly AND PROMISE IT RIGHT NOW!”
Me: “Uh … right …” (more puzzled)
A left at this point.
A left a cryptic letter to the pastor in charge of the 20’s-somethings ministry that just said something like “I know someone who is doing something inappropriate.” I asked some seminary friends and at least one said that I needed to preempt the situation and speak to the pastor in charge and explain my point of view. So I did. Very fortunate. The pastor went up to A and asked what was going on. A said that I was inappropriately friendly and that they would just like me to ignore these four girls. I am dead serious. He asked me what I would like to do. I said, “I can ignore them … sheesh.” The situation blew over. All four women aren’t members at my church.
(I will note for posterity that many Christian men have commented since that I have the most female friends that they know, and I tended to be good friends with the ones in ministry leadership positions… and besides, I’m married to a wonderful Christian woman and a great servant and mother.)
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Thanks for sharing that, mysterious MIT engineer.
The biggest problem I’ve had with unmarried Christian women in college and in church is that it is impossible to impress them by being a competent, effective Christians. Every skill and ability that seems to me to be useful and effective for the kingdom (or for marriage) seems to cut no ice with them. I had women in my youth group, in IVCF and in Campus Crusade have told me that being an engineer is bad, being chaste is bad, not drinking is bad, talking too much about apologetics is bad, and especially trying to get them to learn apologetics – that is really, really bad. They hated that. And forget trying to talk to them about abortion and homosexuality. They were very proud to be non-judgmental. It was a badge of honor, saying “I don’t judge” as if they were saying “I am good person”.
Everything that you might think makes sense for a man to be into from a marriage point of view is viewed as creepy and weird by these church/campus-club unmarried Christian women, in my experience. I am a colored guy, so I always put their messed up standards down to the fact that I was colored and therefore was not allowed to talk to them, period. I was also surprised to see how little the command to “love your neighbor” was implemented by the unmarried Christian women. Here I was, struggling through a tough engineering program, and obviously coming from an unchurched background, yet these woman never had a supportive word for me. My interests in theology and apologetics and moral issues and politics were viewed by them with suspicion.
In retrospect, I would say the biggest argument against God’s existence I ever faced was the complete disconnect between what these women professed and how they treated others.
There was one exception. When I was a teen, I had an older college student mentor me and she helped me pick up my grades – especially in English. She eventually fell away from her faith (she was a cradle Catholic). But other than her, I basically was in my mid-30s before I met a Christian woman who had any respect for me because of the things that I could do as a Christian. And that was after over a decade of donations, organizing, training, mentoring, apologetics, etc. By that time, I had my BS and MS and a boatload of savings, and yet up till then, no unmarried Christian woman had ever given me the time of day. I was sort of stuck looking to white Christian women for validation, because most colored girls are liberal. But what I found is that they had no standard in their worldview that I could be graded against favorably, other than physical appearance.
That was the scariest thing for me, to find out that there was no worldview there that distinguished between William Lane Craig and Jim Wallis, for example. There was just the outward appearance – that was the sole criterion that unmarried Christian women were using to decide whether a man had value or not. And their agenda for men was never a mentoring/discipling agenda. It was the standard secular boyfriend agenda. And very often, they chose standard secular boyfriends for that agenda. I later found out that they found men with definite moral positions and definite apologetics ability intimidating. Any man with fixed, entrenched positions – either about truth or moral issues – frightened them.
Even now, I find this such a weird thing, because in my own life, I act as a mentor to younger Christians regardless of their appearance or other such criteria. I mentor about a dozen promising young Christians (women and men) in different countries. On a given night, you’ll find me reading something they asked me to read, sending them links to evidence to help them argue, proof-reading their essays, buying them books, hearing about their school assignments, picking their elective courses, or ordering them not to take the summer off and to work instead, etc. Right now, I have two of my experienced pro-life friends helping one of them take over a pro-life club at a university. Another of my friends who does Internet consulting is helping another friend start his web site. And so on, with me or my friends mentoring other Christians just for the sake of honoring that command to love others upward. It doesn’t even matter how great the person is right now, because we mentor Christians at all levels of ability. No one is left out, and no oneis turned down.
But this idea that other Christians have value simply because they are Christians was NOWHERE to be found among unmarried Christian women when I was in university and in my 20s. It’s totally foreign to them that Christianity imposes those mentoring/discipling obligations on them, regardless of appearances. They are feelings-driven, not obligation-driven. They are concerned with their own agenda, and not looking to God to see what he wants them to do for their fellow Christians.
I was always the same Wintery Knight back them as I am today, just at an earlier stage of development, and yet no unmarried Christian women in the church or in a campus Christian ministry gave me so much as an affirming glance while I was working out my plans. In fact, church women often stood in the way of things I tried to do, like bring in professors to speak at IVCF or show William Lane Craig debates at Campus Crusade. Focusing on evidential issues was deemed “too divisive”. It was prayer walks, hymn sings and testimonies by postmodern relativists every week. I learned not to count on unmarried Christian women for support of any kind for the things I was trying to do. No matter how good they were, they always had a reason why I wasn’t allowed to do them.
I am always surprised when I meet a woman and she wants me to read the Bible, or read a book, or do anything like that. (That actually happened to me again last week!) I’ve had a handful of women do that to me in my whole life. Unmarried Christian women are, in my experience, running a very secular playbook, making decisions about how to treat others from their feelings. And then if you question them about it, they attribute their feelings to the work of the Holy Spirit. You don’t really see how bad it is until you hear them tell you that God told them to move in with the atheist guy, etc. It’s striking to me how far the Holy-Spirit-wrapping of their feelings goes, and yet they don’t see a problem with it. I think the answer to this problem is that we really need to help women to think through their worldview and think about how to act on Christian convictions with other people, and men in particular, and men who are committed to building the Kingdom effectively and intelligently above all others.
Here’s a good example I’ll be blogging about at some point:
http://sunshinemaryandthedragon.wordpress.com/2013/11/24/god-never-tells-a-woman-to-violate-his-commandments-not-even-if-she-is-really-really-unhappy/
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I think the problem is that women have been totally liberated. They have their own jobs and incomes, and don’t really need men for that (until they want to quit and have kids). And since they have been sexually liberated, they can sleep around and have sex with all the ‘hawt’ guys they want. A normal church-going guy is not going to be attractive to them. A strong faith is not attractive to most modern Christian women because they are tingle oriented and sexually experienced.
I also definitely don’t think it’s a very good idea to be super friendly with young women at church. It does no good, and why would you want to be a friend? You should be friends with guys. The girls are running a secular playbook, like you say. If you find a good girl, just ask her out and see where it goes.
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I have lots of friends who are women (even married now — although I draw some very strict boundaries, including not doing anything that looks like a ‘date’ and filling my wife in on things we do or talk about). Including ones from the time I was single. Men AND women reflect the glory of God; both are made in His image. It impoverishes us when we’re not able to relate with one another as merely friends. (Of course, another interesting topic for Wintery to talk about is the coarsening and sexualization of male/female relations over the last century and especially last couple of decades.)
Female friends are great for numerous reasons. In fact, at least three female friends were instrumental for getting married. One was a girl with whom I went out a couple of times but the chemistry wasn’t there but I treated her with honor and respect and she gave my wife a very high reference for me (this was my wife’s best friend from high school), another female friend gave me her analysis on women I’ve been interested in and dated in the past.
I’m not saying “Don’t be super-friendly.” I think it’s good to be a little friendly in general and friendly with the right people. I was quite friendly with seminarians and single women who were ministry leaders and many are still friends today. (Of course as I got older, I realized many finesse techniques and wish that I could have taught them to a younger version of myself. SIgh.)
A close long-time Christian (male) friend described the situation as I entered my late 30’s: “Your stock is going through the roof as you are now dating someone seriously, you’re a ministry leader but now you’re also a public speaker and have a prominent and regular visible role (I was one of the ministry leaders for the singles ministry and enjoyed doing announcements … the preaching classes in seminary do wonders for public speaking). The irony is that you’re finally getting recognition which you should have gotten a long time ago and too bad you are no longer able to cash in on your stock.” Heh. I chuckled. I think I did cash in on my stock, in other ways.
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I think that getting references from women that you have ben a brother to in the past works well. Sometimes, if you build up a woman, you can ask her to help other people with the things she is good at even apart from relationships. I am doing that for two of my friends now.
I think that for me the problem was thinking that church or campus groups are the places to find Christian women. They’re not. Nothing useful or serious happens in churches, and in fact what goes on there (the spiritualizing of emotions as if they were the voice of God speaking to you) is actually counterproductive for any kind of serious enterprise, in my opinion. To find good women you have to meet them at apologetics conferences or the like.
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A: “You shouldn’t try. Now, promise to me that you won’t be so friendly.”
Me: “Uh … I can’t make that promise right now. I have some thinking (trying not to say praying as I didn’t want to ‘out-spiritualize’ her) to do.”
A (starts getting up): “What you are doing is akin to sexual harassment!!! You have to stop being so friendly AND PROMISE IT RIGHT NOW!”
I’m tempted to say that this is a piece of fiction, but I believe it’s true.
This is just so sad and ridiculous. I’m just so glad that you found a good woman.
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As a woman I would like to offer the following explanation. The girl who said you are too friendly seemed to be very emotional about it. So she was either repulsed by you and thought she was too attractive for you to be friends with her or she was extremely attracted to you and angry, that you didn’t ask her out or flirt with her. Perhaps you didn’t pay her the attention she thought she deserved and that made her furious.
Or she heard negative rumours about you from other girls, perhaps that you have sexually harrassed someone even if you didn’t. Girls can work themselves quite up when they gossip about someone, so I believe they have talked about you and drawn some strange conclusions, and she was determined to act on these conclusions.
However, I am very sorry this happened to you.
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Another explanation might be that she has been sexually harrassed or abused in the past and now educated herself on sexual harassment through some feminist book, that went totally overboard with the definiton of harrassment. Perhaps she got it from a college lecture in womens studies or the likes.
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I’m good now (married to a sane woman). This happened something close to 20 years ago when I was more idealistic. I talked with an older, wiser, then-single Christian male friend about it (I forget what he did, but he was a layman who went to Westminister Theological Seminary and did his Master of Divinity). He said, “Your experience isn’t unique — unfortunately. You just have to learn to identify the early warning signals especially to sense if there are ‘issues.'”
I took his advice to heart.
One of my good still single male friends posited that theory too — that either 1) the girls thought I was a nobody and not even worthy of talking with or 2) that they were attracted and that I wasn’t flirting or asking them out like they wanted me to.
Honestly, I don’t miss the single life or being misunderstood when I was single. When I was single, my guy friends and I might trade “war stories” and some of them were incredulous about some of my stories. I mostly shrugged it off and said, “Yeah well … some women, even Christian women, have issues, even significant ones. Just have to figure out the right response.”
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Dear Poor Young Men, May I apologize for these women — as a woman that is. Those are the saddest stories I ever heard. But listen to World Gone Crazy. I met my husband in ministry (Catholic evangelization booth at the Maryland State Fair). It was an apostolate with a lot of single women in Northern Virginia and a lot of single men in Baltimore. So until we joined forces at the Maryland State Fair we didn’t know there were any young people of the opposite sex in the organization, the Legion of Mary. I always told God I was never going to do the bar scene, and if He wanted me married he had to find me a husband in what I was doing, which was door-to-door evangelization and nursing home visitation. He did. So a shared ministry is a possible place to meet decent young women.
Also I didn’t marry until I was 30 years old. Being single and not dating was a little discouraging, but my mother also said you only need one, husband that is. Really don’t need to date anyone else. It will save a lot of heartache. But good friends of the opposite sex are always welcome.
God bless you. Susan Fox http://www.christsfaithfulwitness.com
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18 guys is not bad. Most her age are well above that. Very well above that.
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The women whining about “unattractive” men speaking to them (!!!!) are the same ones kvetching that no one will “man up” and marry them. Am I the only one suffering from dissonance?
Plenty of men who I personally didn’t find attractive (we all have our ‘types’) spoke to me and I was happy to chat back, because one never knows. During high school, I’d had a terrible crush on a good-looking guy who turned out to be such a jerk that by our senior year, he was flat-out hideous to me, physically and otherwise. What a blessing that was—it taught me just in time that personality makes or breaks someone’s looks (as many men have, no doubt, learned over the years). At the same time, physically unattractive men or not-my-types (such as blondes—and I married one!), upon my getting to know them as nothing more than classmates or even as friends, became more attractive because of their tremendous quality of character: kindness, intelligence, hard-working, love of family & country, dedication, etc. I didn’t throw myself at them or anything, but I couldn’t help noticing these shifts in my perspective as time went on.
There is no reason to be rude to these men—for one thing, they have the guts to approach these women, and that counts for a great deal, particularly these days when women are apparently so brutally cruel to men! Even if I wasn’t interested I’d be polite and kind. Being nice is just plain good manners and it never hurt anybody.
Good gravy, I just don’t understand my own sex anymore.
Sorry, WK, but that part just ticked me off. Are pastors supposed to fence off the hot single ladies? Herd the “unattractive” fellas away from them? I’m tempted to say such women deserve to be single. How silly. Give a man a chance. So often a heart of gold lies beneath a surface that needs a little polish (gentlemen, neat dressing goes such a long way!) and a knight can be concealed by less-than-noble appearance. The experience of Jesus Himself should teach us this.
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And this is why church is not the place to look for a wife, gents. Eh, Paul said it’s better not to marry anyway, yeah? ;)
Though, what does that say about Christianity today?
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It says that although the church is so charmed and enamored by the outward appearance of women, they are doing next to nothing to counter the influence of a culture that makes those seemingly nice women capable of marriage.
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I think that what is often neglected in these conversations is the fact that most men are not worthy of good wives themselves. They are not godly men, and therefore are not entitled to godly wives. People in the world do as the world and pair up with others who are in the world. Her marriage problem now actually has much more to do with her race and much less to do with her past. That is, from the world’s perspective. If anyone wanted to help her, they’d reach out with the Gospel of Christ.
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The tenor of the New Testament is love, but that of agape, unconditional love. And I think that is how I generally approach all relationships/friendships in the generic regardless of sex. With a woman when I was a single bachelor, I never assumed something romantic but assumed it would be platonic unless otherwise. And I did evaluate / discern (avoiding the word ‘judge’ in the negative connotation here) whether someone was a friend (meaning that there is some give and take) or someone is a ministry (meaning that there is mostly giving on my part).
People of the opposite sex who fall into “ministry” make for poor romantic partners :) But yes, it is important for a strong Christian man to edify all around him, regardless of gender …
Discerning a good romantic prospect is a long conversation that I should charge money for. Yes, dating coach, that sounds like a nice new title … if the “Christians Don’t Date” camp don’t burn me as a heretic.
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Vicious circle.
Many women complain that they can’t find a good man. Men have to wonder whether simply saying “Hi!” can land them in trouble as a sexual predator, and is guilty until let off by technicality. Never innocent.
If a man brings this up, he is a hater. Christian women need to deal with those who are giving them a bad rep.
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Who the hell would.
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Agree with Verysad. i would never marry a girl that slept around.
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Why would they? Oh hell no.
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After reading this, I felt like saying that “You are now getting what you deserve.” As an Indian man, born in a western society, I have maintained my morals all my life. I had one relationship in the past in my 20s with a westernized Indian woman but it didn’t work because she wanted to be a career woman rather than a mother. That’s the only relationship I’ve had. I’m now 45, but I’m glad that I didn’t sleep around and get any STDs. I’ve now concluded that I’m going to marry someone from my own ancestral background in India. It’s the only way I feel that i can reconcile being raised in America but having traditional Indian values. White women in general are too stuck up. I hate to say that, but that’s what I’ve seen. They are also super feminist. This is what is destroying society. I recently met a 29 year old white girl, who liked me, but she told me she has herpes. She’s probably been with 20 guys in at least. Needless to say. I’m not doing anything. But, what does this behavior say about morality in 2016? It tells me that society is deteriorating. America is the culture with no culture, and that’s why I prefer my homeland over the U.S.A for a relationship.
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I really wonder if this woman is going to break the all time Record which wouldn’t surprise me at all.
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Your post needs to be printed on a card and handed to every 13 year old boy in the nation.
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While I don’t agree with the tone spoken towards the women who originally posted the Reddit post (could be a little more gentle and kind to author, she doesn’t need Christians judging her, she doesn’t appear to have Christian faith).
I eventually came to similar terms to many guys in this comment section (which is interesting seeing my issues shared amongst so many men). I have gone to Christian school, helped start a ministry, and tried being tight knit with a bible group for a while… all while praying for a wife and hoping to meet somebody special to share this life with. Several years and a bunch of rejections later, even after considering girls whom I was attracted to because of their maturity and faith but not blown away by looks, I finally just realized. I don’t want a Christian wife. They all have these sky high standards and weren’t willing to be in a relationship with a guy whose faith didn’t involve yelling at god during prayer meetings. It certainly hurt my faith over the years and I feel so bad, now I pray god forgives me of my sins but I’m not signing away my life to another women like this: who want a skinny; attractive, well dressed, well paid (but not a programmer because they’re “boring”), musically talented, preaching, tons of free time, always doing quasi ministry guy. I want somebody who admires me for who I am now but encourages me to grow in my faith and isn’t joining me to force me to change.
I happened to meet a beautiful girl who meets that all overseas. She has values and self respect and doesn’t buy into western feminism. I know how adamant Christians are about the unequally yoked verse but I feel the weight of the other verses talking about the goodness of marriage overweigh it. She isn’t a Christian, I don’t plan on asking her to convert. I’m sure that comes with challenges. But at least I don’t have to worry about her leaving me over my looks, or because I didn’t yell at the ceiling loud enough.
I think the future of American Christianity is somewhat dependent on devout believers getting married. Many devout Christians are marrying outside the faith because of experiences listed in the comments section here.
“Christian ladies” – if you want a “Christian husband”, give the dorky guy a chance. You can help him dress nicer. He can probably pay the bills well. And if you can’t find something you both like about each other in a few dates, at least you tried. That’s what the future of the American Christian family and religion are going to need
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From statistics Indian males marry out more than Indian women in America so I’m assuming they’re going for white women mostly.
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This indian woman is obviously not a christian, she talked about a temple, so I guess she is of hindu or sikh faith.
There are plenty of christian women who have gotten saved later in their life, like me, and who aren’t virgins simply because they were unbelievers in their 20ies and lived a typical secular lifestyle.
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I’m a little late to this party, but “Disgruntled at Dating” hit the nail right on the head. I agree with his analysis and commentary, that is, Christian men may need to look to both foreign women (especially younger foreign women if they are older men), and even non-Christian women as a viable alternative to the willy-nilly pool of Christian women out there today. I’ve met a few (not a lot) non-Christian women who actually had some semblance of respect for a man who has a faith base, and at least believes in something outside of himself. I’m 60, never married (thank god), and back-in-the day it was just as bad as it is now. I too faced the same bad behavior as many others here. I’m glad the dating/women thing is in my rear view mirror. One of the things I noticed were the singles groups. Christian women (often the better looking ones) would date and marry “unbelievers”, drop out of church, then return years later as now divorced single mothers with their broods of children after the jerk Chads had dumped them for yet another sucker. The Christian men (rightfully so) wanted nothing to do with these damaged goods. Or you had the angry frigid spinsters who snarled at you like rabid dogs. I remember a young man back then who had just graduated from a seminary. He asked a young woman out on a date to a baseball game. This girl went to the pastor and elders complaining the guy was a “creeper”, and made her “uncomfortable”. The young man was hauled before the elders and harshly reprimanded. Shocked, he left the church, never to return. Some evangelical pastors like to preach the “man up and ask the single women out”. But the women are looking for Christian Gray to come in and give them the tingles. The average Joes are shot down in the harshest degrading manner, or are branded “creepers” because they are simply unattractive or unacceptable (been there, done that). 20 years ago, I walked away from evangelical Protestantism and converted to Eastern Orthodoxy. In 20 years, the encroachment of popular culture and feminism on evangelical Protestantism (IMO) has been mind numbing and a bit alarming from what I experienced growing up in that faith. I feel for young men today.
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