In the last few months, I’ve met 5 different Christian women in their 30s who all asked me the same question: where are all the good men who want to marry me?
Christian men’s rights blogger Dalrock had two different posts where he described the answer to this question.
Here is the first post from Dalrock that concisely illustrates the problem:
As I wrote in A very long season, feminists don’t want to waste a day more of their youth and fertility on their husbands than absolutely necessary. As if to prove this very point, 30 year old Mona Chalabi writes in the NY Times* I Want My 2.3 Bonus Years:
If I could prolong my time as a young adult by, say, 2.3 years, here is a list of things I would like to do:
• Go to more parties. Preferably wild parties that I can think about, years later, at mild parties.
[…]• Have more romantic partners.
[…]• Get a bit higher up the career ladder a bit earlier on. That would probably boost my earnings, giving me more financial security. I could use that money to go to more parties, get a membership to a fancy gym and maybe even meet a romantic partner on the ab machines.
To drive the message home, the image at the top of the article is a cartoon of a resentful Chalabi giving her future husband the side eye for her lost years of sampling penises!
Surely, this must be an isolated case just for New York Times feminists, right? It’s not widespread, is it?
Second post from Dalrock:
Margaret Wente at the Globe and Mail* asks where all the good men have gone. Wente comes to the conclusion that women need a sex cartel:
…it’s up to us to make the rules. “Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?” my father used to say. It drove me crazy when he said that. Now, it’s dawned on me that he was right.
Since the women’s cartel collapsed, women’s bargaining power has seriously eroded. That’s why so many single women hate Tinder, which has further commodified sex for the benefit of men. Women are just another consumer good in the shop window.
The apex fallacy aside, Wente is partially right. Women (as a group) have signaled to men that what they really want are exciting sexy badboys, not boring loyal dudes. It isn’t that women no longer want to marry beta providers, they just don’t want to waste a day more of their youth and fertility on their husband than absolutely necessary.
As a result, some up and coming boring loyal dudes aren’t knocking themselves out in their twenties while they wait for their future wife to tire of having sex with other men.
If you wonder why men are no longer performing in school, and exchanging careers for video games, the answer is simple. Men have realized that young women today, under the influence of feminism, are not interested in traditional husbands during their late teens and 20s. During these years, women are interested in travel, fun, drinking, hook-ups and cohabitation with amoral atheists. This is what I have personally observed. In the minds of young women, the highest value men are good-looking men who have no religion, and make no moral judgments, and are left of center politically – especially on abortion.
There are actually many other men who don’t meet this standard – marriage-minded men – who want to get married young and have children. But when these men see what young women really want, they just give up on school and work, since doing the traditional male roles has no value to young women. Many good men even give up on morality and Christianity, because they want a relationship with a woman so badly. They know that women don’t want marriage-minded men when women are youngest and prettiest.
More from second post:
What Wente doesn’t understand is that timing is everything. From an economic point of view, women are dividing up sexual access that traditionally would have been reserved only for their husband into two blocks. The first block contains their most attractive and fertile years, and it is dedicated to no strings sex with exciting badboys. Then, once women reach what Rollo calls the epiphany phase, they want to bargain sexual access in their remaining (older and less fertile) years for maximum beta bucks.
The problem with this strategy is (generally speaking) not that the previously overlooked beta men will refuse to marry the suddenly reformed party girls. The problem is that young men now look at the men 3-5 (and even 5-10) years older than them and don’t see an indication that signaling provider status will make them attractive to women. They also see a society that holds married fathers in contempt**. Most of these men are still working hard in their late teens and twenties to prepare to signal provider status in their 30s. But a growing minority of young men are no longer doing so. These men are instead working like women. Once the reformed party girls are ready to find Mr. Beta Bucks, there is a shortage of 30 something men who fit the bill. Even worse, no amount of complaining or shaming will cause the missing beta providers to go back in time and spend the prior decade preparing for this moment.
I’m one of the last men who followed the marriage-preparedness script for traditional men who wanted to marry and have four children and have a stay-at-home homeschooling mom to raise them from birth to graduate school. I find myself now in my mid-40s, with a 6-figure income and a 7-figure net worth. I never used my success to play the field with hot bad girls. I wanted to keep my sexual past completely clean for my eventual wife. However, what I observed in my late teens and 20s and even early 30s was a complete lack of interest in marriage ability, from non-Christian women and Christian women alike. Christian women aren’t learning to value early marriage from their married parents or their evangelical churches. None of the traditional husband skills are valued by young women, i.e. – chastity, gapless resume, alcohol abstinence, undergraduate and graduate STEM degrees, experience nurturing and mentoring others, stewardship of earned income.
I recently caused an uproar on my Facebook page by saying that even if the perfect woman showed up right now to marry me, I would not pursue her because the critical time where the woman could have applied maximum youth, beauty and fertility as a wife to make an impact on my education, early career, health, and finances has passed. A younger woman develops value to her husband precisely by applying herself to him and to her family in these critical early years. Men who have experienced this self-sacrificial love and support are loyal to their wives even after their wives lose their youth and beauty. Why? Because the men know that they are much better than they could have been, having enjoyed that early investment of value made by their young wives.
As Christian writer Matt Walsh notes in a recent article at the Daily Wire, this “follow your heart” focus on happiness in women is lethal to marital stability, and men know it.
Excerpt:
There was an article in Cosmo this week with a title that summarizes all that’s wrong with Cosmo and modern society as a whole: “I eloped at 25, divorced at 26, and dated my way across Europe all summer.” Of course, by “dated my way across Europe” she means that she slept with half the continent.
The author, Elise, says she “started fighting” with her husband and within a few months they both decided that their differences were irreconcilable. Despite counseling, she says, “neither of us was happy.” So, exhausted from 12 whole months of marriage, Elise embarked on a voyage of self-discovery and STD cultivation. She met random dudes in half a dozen countries and had sex with them, learning quite a lot as she went, though she can’t really explain what exactly she learned or why sex was a necessary component in learning it. Finally, she came home and started dating some other guy. The end.
Well, not really the end. 20 years from now I’m sure we’ll get the follow up article: “I’m alone and miserable and it’s everyone’s fault but mine.” After all, you may be able to fill the emptiness in your soul with frivolous sex when you’re young and physically desirable, but that phase is fleeting. People who don’t want to “waste” their beauty and youth on a spouse, so they waste it instead on strangers who don’t love them or even care what happens to them tomorrow, will be shocked when a tomorrow comes where even strangers aren’t interested anymore. This is where the single-minded, utterly selfish pursuit of “happiness” at all costs inevitably leads: to rejection, despair, and a quiet, unnoticed death on a lonely hospital bed.
As Elise helpfully demonstrated, “do what makes you happy” is poison in a marriage. Many a vow has been broken because one or both partners decide to chase “happiness” instead of commitment, fidelity, and love. “I deserve to be happy,” reports the legion of serial divorcees, as they drift on to the next spouse, and the next, and the next, and the next, looking for the one — the one, finally — who might cure the misery they’ve inflicted on themselves. Increasingly unhappy, yet increasingly convinced that they deserve to be.
And this follow your heart to happiness situation is alive and well in the church today. Marriage-minded Christian men who have prepared for husband roles are surprised to find that there is often little or no difference between Elise and the Christian women the church produces. Christian men who desire to invest in a marriage that is stable, productive and influential have nowhere to turn for a wife who is able and willing to help. In my experience, the problem with happiness-focused women who delay marriage is never discussed in churches from the pulpit. The “good men to marry” that today’s 30-something women are looking for were plentiful back when those same women were in their early-to-mid 20s.
WINTERY KNIGHT 
“I recently caused an uproar on my Facebook page by saying that even if the perfect woman showed up right now to marry me, I would not pursue her because the critical time where the woman could have applied maximum youth, beauty and fertility as a wife to make an impact on my education, early career, health, and finances has passed.”
That’s what we call “wisdom.” Because any woman young enough to have children who approaches you now is always going to make you wonder if she is just a gold digger.
Why would ANY truly Christian man want any woman but a virgin? What man wants to take the risk of possible STDs, even AIDS, by engaging with a woman who spent her 20’s playing the field? Not to mention that a woman with a history of sleeping around has obviously herself shown no ability to commit. And today, we don’t even KNOW if the “woman” who approaches us has XX chromosomes!
I’ve noticed that single guys who age seem a LOT happier than single women who age. This is a feminist thing. Gals need to clean up the mess that they made. Get busy, gals! Get those “Feminism is Rot!” and “Abortion is Murder!” and “Whores Go to Hell!” and “Put Some Clothes on, Gals!” signs out on the street corners and preach it from the pews in the “churches.” (Because your cowardly “pastor” sure won’t!)
As for the churches, you already know my opinion there, but when you have weak soyboy “pastors” who are “seeker-friendly” (ie, sin-friendly), then church girls are going to misunderstand what it means to be a man. The men have already figured this out – that’s why real men long ago left the Western churches. But the women are going to look for a guy who maybe knows the Bible well, but never really puts it into practice (except for the prosperity “gospel”), or is big into “praise and worship,” where you tend to find a lot of atheists honing their musical talents for their “departure” from Christianity. That’s a prescription for disaster.
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Great article with great points. I am just wondering about your “perfect woman” because where in the Bible does it mention the things you did? The Bible doesn’t mention beauty but rather a woman who fears the Lord shall be praised. As for fertility, there are several miraculous births from once barren women.
Your articles tell me you are looking in the wrong places for a biblical wife and I wondered what your standards are for being a husband due to the high standards (as you should) you hold for her.
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I’m not answering for WK at all, just for me. I don’t see many “women who fear the Lord” in the West. Maybe in the house churches of China? I see a few on the sidewalks – in front of the murder mills and some fantastic female street preachers too – but very few in the churches. I would definitely want to see somebody outspoken on the evils of our age. Shining her Light for the Lord.
If I was looking for a godly woman (I’m not – I’m trying to convert the “christian” women around me to Jesus Christ, as I suspect WK is) and saw some women outspoken on the topics I mentioned and calling out feminism in the churches, etc – then I would say “now THERE is a woman who fears God and not man – or woman.” I would want them to model their lives after great heroines of the Faith like Harriet Tubman, Corrie ten Boom, Irena Sendler, Sophie Scholl, etc. – just to name a few. They are out there – don’t get me wrong. But, exceedingly rare.
WK has made clear his obligations of Christian men – same as the Bible – protectors, providers, spiritual leaders. That is what he has modeled in his own life. This is you gals’ mess – please clean it up. I’m trying my best to help you out by calling out the Jezebels in the pews and resisting feminism – publicly. Hopefully you are doing the same.
PS. I’ve never heard WK refer to looks as a discriminator – other than not dressing like whores, and he puts it much more nicely than I ever could. :-)
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Looks aren’t a discriminator. My plan doesn’t require it, although I think fitness is fair to ask for since it conveys self discipline to the people I’d like us to influence.
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Right! I see a neat-looking woman walking my neighborhood all of the time. She is lean and clearly takes great care of her body – just through walking I am sure – not that a woman HAS to be lean to take care of her body. She has a VERY homely face, totally unattactive from a worldly standpoint. But she always seems to radiate the Holy Spirit and the peace that surpasses understanding. I said to myself “I’ll bet she is a godly woman.” Not physically pretty, but spiritually beautiful. Very attractive in the Christian sense, not that much at all in the worldy sense.
One time I ran into her by accident and said “Hi, Neighbor.” She replied “I really like your buttons. (I always wear buttons witnessing for the unborn.) Tell me how you save babies from abortion.” She didn’t even say “Hi.” She didn’t say “Hi, Handsome.” She didn’t say “Beautiful weather, isn’t it?” She went straight to the core of who I am, based on the apparent fruits that she saw.
If circumstances permitted, I could pursue her in a heartbeat. She passed the initial test. I’ve never seen you emphasize anything but apologetics and Biblical virtues in your articles. You DID mention “beauty” above but I took that as “spiritual beauty.” If not, you would need to revisit that.
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“Not everyone who says to Me Lord, Lord will enter the kingdom of Heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven”
American Christianity is a problem and people are drawn to it to because it tickles their ears. Both men and women are getting what they want by fulfilling their lusts and not living by the spirit.
But, God’s sheep hear His voice and follow Him. The churches are starving the true sheep in order to grow their numbers and fill the seats with carnal people.
Greedy prosperity “pastors” are teaching uninterested people and everyone is “happy” but not godly.
True Christians are a light wherever they are whether they are obedient to where God has placed them in a job or circumstance. Not everyone who goes to church is a Christian or Christ’s sheep, but we will know them by their fruit.
Ruth is an example of quiet obedient serving God by serving her mother in law … not mistaking meekness for weakness.
Christians are seed planters and can’t open eyes. Only God can do that.
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I agree with that wholeheartedly!
I would just add that when almost ZERO women speak up, or when women fail to speak up even in small intimate gatherings when they should speak up, that’s a problem. Not every godly woman needs to take to the streets, but way too few do.
Meekness is definitely NOT weakness and is a strength. But, there are times when you MUST speak up – when it is the devil silencing you and not your desire to be meek. Too many women are afraid of what other women think of them. It doesn’t matter if you are a man or a woman – continual silence CAN be evidence of lukewarmness in a culture that is circling the drain. And the churches of America are lukewarm at best.
Obviously, you ARE speaking up here, so that is great! Just keep it up when it is necessary. And it is more necessary now than ever to be a voice against feminism and all of the other abominations destroying our culture right before our very eyes. It’s a way of loving our neighbors as ourselves. Remember too that a time will come when it will be illegal to use your voice. And if you don’t use it now, you will regret it later. Keep up the good work, and continue to resist the world in every manner possible!
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WK,
You asked the question about marriage from say, a mid-40’s never-been-married male’s point of view.
I wasn’t quite mid-40’s and never married (I met my wife in my mid-30’s and got married in my late 30’s … our engagement was a year to our first date):
You are right to think you have a lot to lose with the wrong person so a lot of my questions, early dates, communications and analyses were largely to eliminate the wrong kind of woman. (I never wore expensive clothing or expensive watches to church or drove a luxury car, for instance.)
I also knew that my critieria (very similar to yours),
Very serious Christian, preferably Evangelical although open to other traditions,
Smart intellectual Christian woman, serious in her devotion,
Strong academically,
Feminine but definitely NOT feminist.
Did not see it as male vs. female.
(definitely and decidedly pro-life, etc.)
(could be influenced by me)
Preferably a virgin (if not, could make a mistake but have repented),
Wanted to have a family,
Open to interracial marriage if not was very open minded (same race as me),
Understood her role as wife and mother (and also coregent in God’s creation and the cultural mandate)
Highly preferable, a Republican (Independent or apolitical also acceptable) (cannot have people who are Progressive or Leftist or are uncritical on their worldview)
Highly preferably STEM oriented
For marriage, I also needed some other things like:
We are better together than we are apart,
We support each other and respect each others’ work and ministry, (likelihood was we are different)
We respect each other’s life story (conversion, what we went through, etc.)
She is emotionally strong and resilient, also character-wise she is strong and resilient.
We have a lot of similarities and our differences complement each other well
There are those unicorns — it is very rare — but they do exist.
I’ve matched with lots of reasonable people with the above critieria, and not surprisingly:
seminarians
pastors’ daughters (a.k.a., PKs)
mission kids (MKs)
a seminary professor’s daughter was one of my girlfriends
church leaders
I had a good friend who pointed out that certain ministries will not be venues where I’d meet my future wife (because certain ministries attract certain types of women) — so you do have to look at your traffic patterns.
Now, granted, from a Christian woman’s point of view, it is very different, although there are some things you can do that are similar.
30’s somethings Christian women who are looking to marry should think careful about what they have to offer and are considered marriage material. As you’ve indicated, using your body as a petri dish to cultivate STIs and STDs … that dosn’t communicate “marriage material.”
I got married a bit over a decade ago and as I’ve said to you,
it hasn’t been perfect and both of us would say we would have liked to have been married earlier in life, but it is what it is, and we’re both happy.
She understands my love of apologetics and that once every other year or so, one of the campus ministries asks me to be a speaker and she’s very supportive of that. Or that I do my Christian counter cult stuff and she highly values that.
I would say that one of the biggest things by your early 30’s:
You have to know what you want and why it is important,
You have to know how to appropriately pursue and know how to communicate interest.
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If we put God first in our lives and patiently put our faith in Him, if it is God’s will, He will give us a wife or a husband. I believe it is that simple. When the Lord gave Eve to Adam, Adam wasn’t looking for a wife. It seems like most people want to be married some day, but we must be content in being married to the Lord Jesus Christ first. Seek the Kingdom of Heaven first.
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Hey, I decided to substitute “money for retirement”, “children to remain Christian” and “a law that bans abortion” into what you commented, so people can understand it better.
I know why people say things like what you said, even though this passive, fatalistic view of life is not Biblical. People say it because they don’t want to take responsibility for making plans and carrying them out. They want to do what they want to do, and never have to work. But it doesn’t sound good saying “I’m lazy, and I don’t want to make plans or achieve goals”. So, they couch it in piety. That way, they can be lazy and not have it look bad, if their audience is gullible enough.
People like you are the reason why Christians lost our children and the culture to the secular left.
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That post reminds me of one of my fave quotes:
“I prayed for 20 years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs.” – Frederick Douglass
I’m not sure if Tim was going full passive above in his post or not but it sure does seem like so many church attendees do. Even Francis Schaeffer noticed this decades ago in his famous quote that all abortion mills needed signs on them that say “Open by Permission of the Church.”
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Putting faith in God first is not being passive.
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