Tag Archives: Commitment

Commentary

Study explains why university women embrace binge-drinking and hook ups

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This study is from the Institute for American Values. Despite their name, they are not conservatives. It was done by Norval Glenn and Elizabeth Marquardt.

If you download the 88 page PDF, the first few pages are an executive summary.

There are a couple of things that really struck me about this IAV study on hooking-up.

First, this one from p. 15:

A notable feature of hook ups is that they almost always occur when both participants are drinking or drunk.

A Rutgers University student observed, “You always hear people say, oh my gosh, I was so drunk, I hooked up with so and so…” Perhaps not surprisingly, many noted that being drunk helped to loosen one’s inhibitions and make it easier to hook up. A number of students noted that being drunk could later serve as your excuse for the hook up. A Yale University student said, “Some people like hook up because they’re drunk or use being drunk as an excuse to hook up.” A New York University student observed, “[Alcohol is] just part of an excuse, so that you can say, oh, well, I was drinking.”

A Rutgers University student commented, “If you’re drinking a lot it’s easier to hook up with someone… [and] drugs, it’s kind of like a bonding thing… and then if you hook up with them and you don’t want to speak to them again, you can always blame it on the drinking or the drugs.”

Other women observed that being drunk gives a woman license to act sexually interested in public in ways that would not be tolerated if she were sober. For instance, a University of Michigan student said, “Girls are actually allowed to be a lot more sexual when they are drunk…”

A University of Chicago junior observed, “One of my best friends… sometimes that’s her goal when we go out. Like she wants to get drunk so I guess she doesn’t have to feel guilty about [hooking up].”

Some reported that drinking had led them to do things they later regretted. A University of Virginia student said, “My last random hook up was last October and it was bad. I was drunk and I just regretted it very much.”

And this one from p. 30 on the effects of hooking-up on their future commitments:

A few women did see an unambiguous connection between present relationships and future marriage.

[…]Many women either saw little or no connection between present and future relationships, or their understanding of this connection was curiously flat. A student at New York University said, “[The present and the future are] connected because I will still have the same values and principles that I have now, but I just won’t be single anymore.”A number of women said that the present and the future are connected because whatever heartache or confusion they experience now gives them lessons for the future.

A University of Michigan student said, “Early relationships prepare you for marriage because it’s like, oh, what type of person do I want to be with? Oh, I’ve had these bad experiences. Or, I’ve learned from this relationship that I should do this and I shouldn’t do this.”

A sophomore at Howard University said that “I am kind of learning from a lot of the mistakes that I have made.” At a further extreme, some women saw their future marriage as the reason to experiment widely in the present. A Rutgers University student said,“I think hooking up with different people and seeing what you like and don’t like is a good idea. Because eventually you’re going to have to… marry someone and I’d just like to know that I experienced everything.”

Although it is admirable to take risks and learn from one’s mistakes, these women would probably find it difficult to explain how having your heart broken a few or even many times in your early years — or trying to separate sex from feeling, as in hooking up — is good preparation for a trusting and happy marriage later on.

And on p. 42, we learn what women think marriage is and isn’t for:

For instance, in the on-campus interviews one student complained, “[With] marriage…you have to debate everything… Why do you need a piece of paper to bond a person to you? …But I know if I don’t get married I’ll probably feel like… [a] lonely old woman… If anything, I’d get married [because of] that.”

This student went on to say that she would be satisfied to live with a man, but added that, if the man was committed to her, he would offer to marry her, and that this was the kind of commitment that she wanted. A student at the University of Washington said,“I don’t want to get married right after I graduate from college. I just think that would stunt my growth in every way that there is. I would like to be in a very steady, committed relationship with a guy.”

And on p. 44, we learn that they like co-habitation, which increases the risk of divorce by about 50% (but they don’t know that):

In the national survey, 58 percent of the respondents agreed that “It is a good idea to live with someone before deciding to marry him.” This belief often coexists with a strong desire to marry, because it was embraced by 49 percent of the respondents who strongly agreed that marriage was a very important goal for them.

[…]Women we interviewed on campus reflected a similar range of attitudes about cohabitation. Some women thought that cohabitation was a good way to test whether one could spend a lifetime with a potential partner. In such cases, women often cited fears of divorce as the reason for trying cohabitation first. A senior at the University of Washington said, “I kind of don’t really see marriages work ever, so I want to make sure that everything’s all right before [we get married]. I don’t see how people can get married without living together because I know like I have a best friend and I live with her and we want to kill each other, like, every few months.”

Other women felt that, in an age of divorce, cohabitation was a preferable alternative to marriage. A student at New York University said, “You see so [many] people getting divorces… I just don’t see the necessity [of marriage].” She went on to say, “I think that I don’t have to be married to [the] person that I’m with…. You know like… Goldie Hawn [and Kurt Russell]? They’re not married.”

But let’s get back to the drinking and the hook-up sex…

Once a woman abandons femininity for feminism, then sex is all that she can use to get noticed by a man. Men are like hiring managers, and courting is like a job interview for the job of marriage and mothering. If a woman tries to get the job by having sex with the interviewer, he isn’t going to hire her for the marriage job, since sex has almost nothing to do with the marriage job. Men have to think about things like fidelity and mothering ability when they are choosing a wife. The problem is that thanks to feminism, women have stopped trying to show their ability to be wives and mothers to men, preferring to instead act like bad boys – no emotions, toughness, hardness, binge-drinking, promiscuity. Men may be happy to have sex with women like that, but they do not commit to them for life. They’re just looked upon as feral animals, to be pumped and dumped by every man who isn’t a Christian. And Christian men are disqualified for relationships with young feminists, because we have morals.

Moreover, if a man is constantly being offered sex from feminist women during his 20s and 30s, he basically loses all the time that he could be training for his roles as protector, provider and moral/spiritual leader. He will never take on those roles if he is handed sex before marriage for free. That is the root cause of the “man-up” complaint that women make. Why don’t men grow up? Because they don’t have to. They don’t have to do a thing to audition for husband roles, in order to get sex. They just have to be “hot” and feign liberal political views. Many (most?) teenage women are giving the bad boys oral sex on the first date now. Women aren’t looking for husbands until much later, when their effort to achieve self-esteem through slutty behavior stalls out, and they realize that the whole feminist project was futile and unsustainable.

In a previous post, I explained how feminist leaders wanted to get women to drink like men, have sex like men, and to abolish courtship and marriage. Under the influence of cultural definitions of what makes a good man and a good relationship, women began to choose men to have sex with without any consideration of morality, religion, marriage, etc. This results in a cycle of binge-drinking, one-night-stands, cheating, co-habitating, breaking-up, stalking, aborting, etc., until the woman’s ability to trust and love anyone – including herself – is completely destroyed. And yet these college women somehow believe this is is “fun” and “adventurous”, that it makes them feel “sexy”, and that the experience of being selfish and seeing the worst kind of men acting in the worst possible ways, point blank, somehow prepares them for marriage and motherhood. They are told this, and they are so unable to break out of their need to “fit in” with their peers and culture that by the time they realized they’ve been had, it’s too late to fix it. And yet, they themselves made those decisions. They are responsible, whether they intended the consequences or not. No one was stopping them from investigating what was likely to happen, if they decided to play the fool sexually.

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Why don’t men today talk to women about commitment and marriage?

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Painting:
Painting: “Courtship”, by Edmund Blair Leighton (1888)

I saw this essay from a young woman named Jordana Narin who is explaining how she feels about not being able to talk seriously to a man she had sex with. She is a radical feminist and has a non-STEM degree in creative writing.

The essay was published in the radically leftist New York Times.

First kiss:

I met [a guy] at summer camp in the Poconos at 14, playing pickup basketball by day and talking in the mess hall late into the night. Back home we lived only 30 minutes apart, but I didn’t see him again until 11th grade, when we ran into each other at a Halloween party in a Lower Manhattan warehouse.

[…]Under the muted flashes of a strobe light, we shared our first kiss.

No communication:

We stayed in touch for the rest of high school, mostly by text message.

[…]Every time his name popped up on my phone, my heart raced.

Still, we were never more than semiaffiliated, two people who spoke and loved to speak and kissed and loved to kiss and connected and were scared of connecting.

Where is this relationship going? This boy has no job and no savings and no proven record of steady work – and therefore he cannot marry anyone. Why is she even talking to a man who cannot afford to marry her – who has no proven record as a provider?

More:

Two years after our first kiss, we were exchanging “I’ve missed you” messages again. It was a brisk Friday evening in our first semesters of college when I stepped off a train and into his comfortable arms.

He had texted weeks earlier on Halloween (technically our anniversary) to ask if I would visit. We had not talked since summer, and I was trying to forget him. We had graduated from high school into the same inexpressive void we first entered in costume, where an “I’ve missed you” was as emotive as one got.

Long gaps in between text messages – they have nothing to talk about, and there is no goal. Nevertheless, they are away from their parents, and so she had sex with him, losing her virginity to a man she was not married to.

And then:

Naïvely, I had expected to gain clarity, to finally admit my feelings and ask if he felt the same. But I couldn’t confess, couldn’t probe. Periodically I opened my mouth to ask: “What are we doing? Who am I to you?” He stopped me with a smile, a wink or a handhold, gestures that persuaded me to shut my mouth or risk jeopardizing what we already had.

On the Saturday-night train back to Manhattan, I cried. Back in my dorm room, buried under the covers so my roommates wouldn’t hear, I fell asleep with a wet pillow and puffy eyes.

The next morning I awoke to a string of texts from him: “You get back OK?” “Let’s do it again soon :)”

So my question for you is this: should a woman who has recreational sex with a man she barely knows expect to have real relationships, including a marriage relationship?

There’s an interview that goes with it on the radically leftist NPR web site, but I saved a copy of the MP3 file here in case it disappears.

Rod Dreher comments on the interview:

I wouldn’t have understood the full scope of what this young woman is saying in her essay without the interview, which is short. In the segment, Narin says that men and women in her generation don’t have actual romantic relationships anymore. It’s all casual, non-committal sex. “

[..]She tells the interviewer that there’s lots of making out and sex, but nobody wants to be emotionally vulnerable to anybody else.

[…]“Everyone in college uses Tinder,” she said, referring to the wildly popular dating and hook-up app. “You can literally swipe right and find someone just to hang out for the night. There’s no commitments required, and I think that makes committing to someone even harder, because it’s so normal, and so expected even, to not want to commit.”

“In a different time, my grandparents, my great grandparents, they might have thought they were missing out on casual sex,” she says. “But since my generation has been saddled down with that, we kind of look to the past and say well, wasn’t that nice. I think both are optimal. I’m a huge feminist, and I think women should be able to do whatever they want to do. If a woman wants to have tons of casual sex, she totally should. But I think that there should be the option. And they shouldn’t be gendered, women and men. But there should be the option of being in a relationship.”

Right. Young women like her who have swallowed radical feminism hook, line and sinker don’t want to “miss out” on casual sex right now, but they want to get married “some day” – after they have a lot of fun traveling and doing exciting, fun things. Today, they want to choose to have sex with hot guys, but tomorrow they want the “option” of a man committing to them, even though they have a repeated pattern of putting recreational sex above commitment in their own lives. Basically, they don’t want to pick a man now who can actually do marriage. Right now, they want to pick a man who has no interest in marriage. Later, they want a man to pursue them for marriage.

Consider this story from the Ottawa Sun about a woman who didn’t want to say no to sex right now, but wanted to get married “some day”:

A New York woman is facing charges after police say she lied about being raped by two football players at a party to get sympathy from a prospective love interest.

Nikki Yovino, 18, has been charged with falsely reporting an incident and tampering with or fabricating physical evidence.

Last October Yovino reported that she had been sexually assaulted in a bathroom by two Sacred Heart University football players at an off-campus party.

The men, however, said it had been consensual.

Capt. Brian Fitzgerald tells WABC-TV another student informed authorities of explicit text messages between the three. He says one man also recorded some of the incident on his cellphone.

“She admitted that she made up the allegation of sexual assault against (the football players) because it was the first thing that came to mind and she didn’t want to lose (another male student) as a friend and potential boyfriend. She stated that she believed when (the other male student) heard the allegation it would make him angry and sympathetic to her,” said an affidavit, according to the New York Post.

Two. Football. Players. At the same time.

Nowhere in society is there any man who tells women like this that they should not pursue pleasure right now if they want marriage some day. No father. No pastor. No one has the courage to tell young women that following their emotions leads them to abortion, single motherhood, divorce, infertility and missing marriage completely.

Do women prepare themselves for the self-sacrifice and self-control required in marriage?

Here’s what many women think of marriage:

Look at the lyrics:

You got that 9 to 5
But, baby, so do I
So don’t be thinking I’ll be home and baking apple pies
I never learned to cook

After every fight
Just apologize
And maybe then I’ll let you try and rock my body right
Even if I was wrong
You know I’m never wrong

And know we’ll never see your family more than mine

Even when I’m acting crazy
Tell me everything’s alright

Women today expect to be pursuing their own interests before, during and after marriage. They don’t want the constraints of relationships with a husband or children. I think this will work to get attention from certain men for a while, but when she loses her youth and beauty, it will dry up pretty quickly. Who is there telling women that they need to pick a marriage-minded man and focus on marriage earlier, rather than later?

Will anyone talk about marriage to these women?

Most men are not interested in committing to, or discussing commitment with, women who put pleasure above self-control. Most non-Christian men will have sex with a hedonistic women, but they are too smart to ever commit to them. Why would a man commit to a narcissist? If a man’s role is just to please the “huge feminist”, then there is no reason to commit to her and be the slave of her selfish impulses for the rest of his life. Radical feminists believe that relationships are about their plans and their needs. They are not interested in responsibilities, expectations or obligations to men or to children. Most men, even secular men, understand that they must not marry a woman who rejects moral obligations for fun. Especially with the looming threat of no-fault divorce.

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How parents and churches can make better women than the Bachelorette Hannah Brown

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Do young women understand how to get to a stable marriage?
Do young women understand how to get to a stable marriage?

My friend Carla sent me a video from a TV show called the Bachelorette, in which a woman named Hannah Brown explains why she thinks that having recreational premarital sex is compatible with Christianity. In this post, I wanted to explain to Christian parents and churches why serious Christian men do not consider women like Hannah Brown to be appropriate candidates for marriage.

First, if you haven’t seen the clip, you can watch it here:

So I just wanted to go over what I think marriage is for, and then try to judge whether Hannah Brown’s view of men, sex and marriage offers me any value. I think this will be useful for parents and churches, because I think a lot of Christian men see marriage the same way as I do.

So, when I think of marriage, I’m looking for a partner who can help me to achieve goals that are consistent with the character of God revealed in the ministry of his son Jesus. So, what did Jesus do? Jesus demonstrated the existence of God by showing people evidence (miracles). Jesus taught people about what moral choices they should make and how to treat others. Jesus taught people that marriage is for one man and one woman, and that children should not be prevented from knowing God. And Jesus taught that people who sin can be forgiven, but that they should “sin no more”.

So, let’s take a look at what marriage-minded Christian men are looking for, and then decide whether Hannah Brown is doing a good job of preparing herself for marriage.

I’d like to model a successful, fruitful marriage to non-Christians, e.g. college students, neighbors, co-workers

A lot of people these days aspire to be married with children, and I want my marriage to be an advertisement to them for how Christianity provides a moral framework for that. So, a marriage candidate should demonstrate that she is good at making and keeping commitments, and investing in other people’s lives self-sacrificially, with a goal of making them grow in their knowledge and influence as Christians. She should also be good at tasks that are related to being a wife and mother, like cooking, cleaning, caring for children, managing money, and so on. She should be a virgin and demonstrate self-control when it comes to things like drinking alcohol, frivolous travel, and managing money. Regarding sex, men are aware of studies that show that the number of premarital sex partners that a woman has is related to her contentment in her future marriage. The more no-commitment hawt bad boys a woman has sex with before marriage, the less content she will be with the “loser” she has to “settle for” when she hits 30. Marriage-minded men understand that women who “settle” for them later on were never attracted to commitment skills. We don’t want to deal with sex-withholding, porn usage, emotional affairs, adultery, and divorce.

I’d like to facilitate discussions with students and faculty about whether the claims of Christian worldview are true

I would like my wife to be familiar with how to discuss and defend the claims of Christianity using evidence. For example, God’s existence, Jesus’ resurrection, etc. I do not mean that she should share her feelings and experiences with non-Christians. I do not mean that she should give her opinions or quote Bible verses to non-Christians. I mean that she should be able to appeal to mainstream scientific and historical evidence when making her case for the core claims of the Christian worldview. Being familiar with the work of people like William Lane Craig, Lee Strobel, Sean McDowell, J. Warner Wallace, etc. is sufficient. She should also be able to defend against objections to the Christian worldview, e.g. – suffering, hiddenness, pluralism, postmodernism, etc. I’m really looking for evidence that she is aware of areas where the culture is challenging Christianity, e.g. – abortion, natural marriage, socialism, border security, environmental stewardship, etc. and that she is able to be persuasive against the secular left with reasons and evidence.

I’d like to raise many effective and influential children who promote the Christian worldview and conditions that allow the practice of Christianity to flourish to society as a whole

In order to have many children, the woman has to be serious about making herself ready or marriage early, and pursuing marriage-ready men early. She should not be spending her late teens and 20s using her finite supply of youth and beauty trying pursuing temporary relationships with men who have superficial qualities. It eats into the “honeymoon period” that she could be giving her future husband, and it reduces the time available for making more children. Regular sex and emotional support are huge gifts that a woman gives to a man, and they should be reserved for a man who commits to love her, lead her, and provide for her and her children. Since she is busy in her 20s riding the carousel with not-her-husband men, she won’t have any effect on her husband’s early career, which means that her husband will have less money to support having more children later on. I’m also looking for evidence that she is investing in relationships with other people that causes them to be more competent and effective in their Christian lives. For example, she could be getting people to be better with money – leading them by example to study hard STEM subjects, get real jobs in the private sector, avoid student loans. Something that shows that she is able to navigate the real world successfully, and isn’t just wasting her time chasing fun and thrills.

I’d like to have an influence on the laws and policies in my community so that behaving as a consistent Christian is not subject to interference from the secular left

I’d like her to demonstrate that she’s going to keep the Christian worldview that she has in the face of pressures from the secular left culture. So, I’m looking for her to be aware of where Christian values are impacted by laws and policies. And I’m looking for her to have strong convictions herself and also to be persuasive to others in debates and discussions. It’s very easy for women to tell men what they want to hear when it comes to issues like abortion, gay rights, definition of marriage, socialism, environmentalism, border security, national debt, etc. Opinions are easy. What’s not easy is having conversations where arguments are made, and supported by factual evidence. I would definitely want to see her taking pro-marriage and pro-family views in her conversations, but also in her writings, and in her activism. A man needs support and understanding when he is engaged in providing for a family, being a spiritual and moral leader, and protecting his family from outside threats. Many of the laws and policies that young Christian women find attractive are incompatible with what a Christian man does as a father and husband.

Conclusion

So, I think it’s pretty clear when you look at Hannah Brown that she has none of these things. But she is a perfect example of what I see being produced by Christian parents and Christian pastors today. She really is not exceptional in any way, she is the normal Christian woman. On the one hand, she hollers Jesus, reads the Bible, sings praise hymns, attends church, and knows just enough about Christianity to satisfy parents and pastors that she is serious about her faith (until she throws the mask off on the first day of college). But to the Christian men who evaluate her for marriage, she has nothing at all that we want in a wife and mother.