Tag Archives: Courtship

Commentary

Commenter Rose accepts male leadership in marriage

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Recently, I decided to write again on the question of whether women should be willing to have sex with their husbands when they are not in the mood for sex. Commenter Rose wrote a passionate statement recognizing that men need to be the leaders in the home. I kept reading the comment expecting to find some point where we disagreed, but I could not find one. I was especially pleased to see that she was very careful about qualifying her view so that she was not coming across as a doormat. Men need to be leaders, and it’s the woman’s job to make sure that they can be leaders without opening up the door for men to abuse the power that they are entrusted with.

Anyway, here is the comment by Rose. (I broke it up into paragraphs)

Thank you for posting this blog.

What I have to say is more than likely, not going to be very popular with the other women who have posted, and I want to give a brief bit of background information. I have been married twice. In both marriages, I was the leader. I was the leader spiritually, financially, emotionally, intellectually (and that isn’t saying a lot), and physically. Both of my ex-husbands wanted me to be the one to always initiate the sex and they had this desire for ME to be in charge. I am a very independent woman and in every area, I took the lead, except (as much as either of them would have enjoyed for me to) in the bedroom.

Now that I am not in either marriage and I have had the opportunity to look back, I can safely tell you that being in a leadership position is NOT where I was created to be. I honestly feel that God created woman FOR man. In Genesis 2:20-22 we see these words: “ But for Adam no suitable helper was found. So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man’s ribs and closed up the place with flesh. Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib[l] he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.” It is very clear in that scripture that WOMAN was created to be MAN’s helper.

Before I go any further, I want to state for the record that I know that above all, our purpose is to glorify God and to build God’s Kingdom, and I do take that very seriously. I do not worship the man in my life, but I feel that my purpose, after the Kingdom work, is to please the man God has blessed in my life.

I am in a new relationship that is above and beyond the answers to all of my prayers. I have taken a vow of abstinence and that vow is not only honored, but expected of me. This man is a wonderful Christian man and has the need to be the leader in the home. For me, having a man who leads is not just a want or desire, but a NEED. We have discussed the very topic of your blog and I strongly feel that there is NO reason that after he is my husband, he should be told no to sex. My greatest pleasure, as a woman, is making him happy, pleasing him, and I feel more alive, more cherished, more protected than I have ever felt in my life. Paul gives us very clear on how we are to treat each other, as a married couple, sexually and why. (1 Corinthians 7:3-5: The husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife’s body does not belong to her alone but also to her husband. In the same way, the husband’s body does not belong to him alone but also to his wife. Do not deprive each other except by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.) This scripture relates in clear understanding that the ONLY reason either husband or wife should “deprive” each other is when it is mutual (meaning both agree) and for devoting yourselves to prayer. This doesn’t say that we deprive our husbands because we aren’t in the mood. Perhaps if a woman isn’t in the mood, then she should explain this to her husband and they could take time to pray that together for understanding and for an agreement.

Sex is an emotional thing for both men and women, but our emotions are different. As maturing Christian adults, we should be able to recognize that about each other and communicate with our spouses what we feel and think. I am so glad that, in our relationship, we are taking the time, before hand, to relay those feelings, those insights about each other. We have found ways, even before we are married to practice and discuss him being the leader. Some of the things we have incorporated (even in our different homes) are:

  • I discuss decisions with him before I make them. He listens to what I have to say, we discuss it, and he gives me his opinion. I have not found a time, yet, that I didn’t see things his way after we discussed them and prayed about them;
  • I know what his tastes are as far as clothing and even though he has not “insisted”, I find myself wearing the things I know he would like or approve of, and it makes me feel wonderful to know I am doing something to please him;
  • We discuss financial matters and have begun to set up our future budget to have the same goal of paying off debts in our sights.
  • We are both teachers of God’s Word, but he still teaches me so much and helps me keep my focus on the woman God has created me to be. Likewise, he expects me to respectfully let him know if he is making decisions or acting in a manner that is not glorifying God.

As I see Eph. 5:22-33, A man may not always “feel like” submitting to God’s will, but it isn’t an option, it isn’t a request, it is a command. Husbands may not always feel like loving their wives, but again, it is a command. Wives may not always “feel like” submitting to their husbands or the Lord, but it doesn’t say “submit when you feel like it.” This again, is not given as an option, it isn’t a request, it is a command, “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.”

For me, and I know that most women will not agree, I think the idea of being available to my husband whenever he wants me is a very sexy, very exciting, very natural thing. I also believe that if I am available to him anytime he feels the desire for me, then when I have a desire for him, that need will also be fulfilled. According to WintryKnights reply, in today’s society, I am a minority. I go against the grain, and that is where I know I belong. I AM pro-life, pro-family, pro-guns (and I hunt and fish, too), pro-male, accept sex roles, focus on raising children, am chaste, court on substance, (and I must respectfully disagree on the fun statement because we have had a blast getting to really know each other), am very serious about the challenges to marriage posed by socialism and secularism, study apologetics (we actually do this together and discuss it, I am for small government, small business, small education, small taxes, males teaching males and females teaching female, and so on.

In the past, I think I have wanted that Prince Charming or Knight (no offense, Wintry) to come riding in to save the day. The more I have grown and thought about it, I am under the impression that arranged marriages are not such a bad thing. I feel like my Father, the King of all Kings, has arranged a marriage for His princess. He has let me know that I don’t need a prince or a knight, but I need someone with KINGLY characteristics, someone who can lead, someone who can rule, someone who can follow HIS lead and be an example to me and our family.

In submitting, to my “future King”, he has made it very clear that he does not want a doormat. He wants a woman who has an opinion and doesn’t mind sharing it, and he has to know that I can make the right decisions for our family on a whim when he may not be there to help in those decisions. He has to know that he can trust me to be a portrait of what a Christian woman looks like, to his children. His sons need to know what God’s word says about submission and so does his daughter. What better way to teach them than through our example.

I have found so much freedom in submission. I am truly happy in a relationship for the first time in my life and I look very forward to our future together as his wife to bring him all of the desires of his heart, his mind, and his body!!

In Christ,
Rose

Now when I read that comment, I immediately cautioned her to test this new guy severely and to be certain that he could be trusted with this much authority, and that he was capable of doing his job as the husband and father.

I wrote:

Now obviously you are going to have to vet this man like crazy before giving the lead role in the relationship – so please make sure you do that. But I have a feeling that you know this and are willing to take the responsibility for making a good decision. The time to check the man to see if he can handle being the quarterback is before the marriage. Test him every way you can – insist on seeing evidence that he can do the job of protecting, providing and moral/spiritual leading. Don’t marry someone who hasn’t demonstrated that he can fulfill his obligations.

And I hasten to add that I think that submitting to a man should never be done when the man is committing one of the four As: adultery, assault, abandonment or addiction. But honestly, I think she provided enough background there to see that her basic bias is in favor of submitting to male leadership because she understands men. Men like to get involved with women and start homes when they feel like they have a special role as leader of the home.

Having said that, there is nothing in the idea of male leadership that says that a women can’t make the man spend a year of his life completely abstinent in a courtship with her where the focus of the interactions is on the man proving that he can do without sex for two years while he is courting the woman. Courtship is the time to make sure that the man has self-control and will not be a brutish beast. That’s why we have that “no sex before marriage” rule.

Women: Make the man prove himself before you decide whether to give him the leadership of the home. Look at his resume. Look at his portfolio. Interview his former girlfriends. Interview the fathers of his former girlfriends. Be thorough. You are responsible for making a good choice. It’s your JOB to read everything, understand everything, and choose wisely. Making a wise choice is how you serve God. Choose what’s right. Don’t choose what you like. Don’t choose what makes you happy.

Commentary

MUST-READ: Dr. Leon Kass on the end of courtship

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This essay has 3 parts, and it was sent to me by ECM.

Part 1 of 3.

Excerpt:

The change most immediately devastating for wooing is probably the sexual revolution. For why would a man court a woman for marriage when she may be sexually enjoyed, and regularly, without it? Contrary to what the youth of the sixties believed, they were not the first to feel the power of sexual desire. Many, perhaps even most, men in earlier times avidly sought sexual pleasure prior to and outside of marriage. But they usually distinguished, as did the culture generally, between women one fooled around with and women one married, between a woman of easy virtue and a woman of virtue simply. Only respectable women were respected; one no more wanted a loose woman for one’s partner than for one’s mother.

The supreme virtue of the virtuous woman was modesty, a form of sexual self-control, manifested not only in chastity but in decorous dress and manner, speech and deed, and in reticence in the display of her well-banked affections. A virtue, as it were, made for courtship, it served simultaneously as a source of attraction and a spur to manly ardor, a guard against a woman’s own desires, as well as a defense against unworthy suitors. A fine woman understood that giving her body (in earlier times, even her kiss) meant giving her heart, which was too precious to be bestowed on anyone who would not prove himself worthy, at the very least by pledging himself in marriage to be her defender and lover forever.

Once female modesty became a first casualty of the sexual revolution, even women eager for marriage lost their greatest power to hold and to discipline their prospective mates. For it is a woman’s refusal of sexual importunings, coupled with hints or promises of later gratification, that is generally a necessary condition of transforming a man’s lust into love. Women also lost the capacity to discover their own genuine longings and best interests. For only by holding herself in reserve does a woman gain the distance and self-command needed to discern what and whom she truly wants and to insist that the ardent suitor measure up. While there has always been sex without love, easy and early sexual satisfaction makes love and real intimacy less, not more, likely — for both men and women. Everyone’s prospects for marriage were — are — sacrificed on the altar of pleasure now.

Part 2 of 3.

Excerpt:

The ubiquitous experience of divorce is also deadly for courtship and marriage. Some people try to argue, wishfully against the empirical evidence, that children of divorce will marry better than their parents because they know how important it is to choose well. But the deck is stacked against them. Not only are many of them frightened of marriage, in whose likely permanence they simply do not believe, but they are often maimed for love and intimacy. They have had no successful models to imitate; worse, their capacity for trust and love has been severely crippled by the betrayal of the primal trust all children naturally repose in their parents, to provide that durable, reliable, and absolutely trustworthy haven of permanent and unconditional love in an otherwise often unloving and undependable world. Countless students at the University of Chicago have told me and my wife that the divorce of their parents has been the most devastating and life-shaping event of their lives. They are conscious of the fact that they enter into relationships guardedly and tentatively; for good reason, they believe that they must always be looking out for number one. Accordingly, they feel little sense of devotion to another and, their own needs unmet, they are not generally eager for or partial to children. They are not good bets for promise keeping, and they haven’t enough margin for generous service. And many of the fatherless men are themselves unmanned for fatherhood, except in the purely biological sense. Even where they dream of meeting a true love, these children of divorce have a hard time finding, winning, and committing themselves to the right one.

[…]That the cause of courtship has been severely damaged by feminist ideology and attitudes goes almost without saying. Even leaving aside the radical attacks on traditional sex roles, on the worth of motherhood or the vanishing art of homemaking, and sometimes even on the whole male race, the reconception of all relations between the sexes as relations based on power is simply deadly for love. Anyone who has ever loved or been loved knows the difference between love and the will to power, no matter what the cynics say. But the cynical new theories, and the resulting push toward androgyny, surely inhibit the growth of love.

On the one side, there is a rise in female assertiveness and efforts at empowerment, with a consequent need to deny all womanly dependence and the kind of vulnerability that calls for the protection of strong and loving men, protection such men were once — and would still be — willing to provide. On the other side, we see the enfeeblement of men, who, contrary to the dominant ideology, are not likely to become better lovers, husbands, or fathers if they too become feminists or fellow-travelers. On the contrary, many men now cynically exploit women’s demands for equal power by letting them look after themselves — pay their own way, hold their own doors, fight their own battles, travel after dark by themselves. These ever so sensitive males will defend not a woman’s honor but her right to learn the manly art of self-defense. In the present climate, those increasingly rare men who are still inclined to be gentlemen must dissemble their generosity as submissiveness….

The problem is not woman’s desire for meaningful work. It is rather the ordering of one’s loves. Many women have managed to combine work and family; the difficulty is finally not work but careers, or, rather, careerism. Careerism, now an equal opportunity affliction, is surely no friend to love or marriage; and the careerist character of higher education is greater than ever. Women are under special pressures to prove they can be as dedicated to their work as men. Likewise, in the work place, they must do man’s work like a man, and for man’s pay and perquisites. Consequently, they are compelled to regard private life, and especially marriage, homemaking, and family, as lesser goods, to be pursued only by those lesser women who can aspire no higher than “baking cookies.” Besides, many women in such circumstances have nothing left to give, “no time to get involved.” And marriage, should it come for careerist women, is often compromised from the start, what with the difficulty of finding two worthy jobs in the same city, or commuter marriage, or the need to negotiate or get hired help for every domestic and familial task.

Besides these greater conflicts of time and energy, the economic independence of women, however welcome on other grounds, is itself not an asset for marital stability, as both the woman and the man can more readily contemplate leaving a marriage. Indeed, a woman’s earning power can become her own worst enemy when the children are born. Many professional women who would like to stay home with their new babies nonetheless work full-time. Tragically, some cling to their economic independence because they worry that their husbands will leave them for another woman before the children are grown. What are these women looking for in prospective husbands? Do their own career preoccupations obscure their own prospective maternal wishes and needs? Indeed, what understanding of marriage informed their decision to marry in the first place?

[…]This brings me to what is probably the deepest and most intractable obstacle to courtship and marriage: a set of cultural attitudes and sensibilities that obscure and even deny the fundamental difference between youth and adulthood. Marriage, especially when seen as the institution designed to provide for the next generation, is most definitely the business of adults, by which I mean, people who are serious about life, people who aspire to go outward and forward to embrace and to assume responsibility for the future. To be sure, most college graduates do go out, find jobs, and become self-supporting (though, astonishingly, a great many do return to live at home). But, though out of the nest, they don’t have a course to fly. They do not experience their lives as a trajectory, with an inner meaning partly given by the life cycle itself. The carefreeness and independence of youth they do not see as a stage on the way to maturity, in which they then take responsibility for the world and especially, as parents, for the new lives that will replace them. The necessities of aging and mortality are out of sight; few feel the call to serve a higher goal or some transcendent purpose.

The view of life as play has often characterized the young. But, remarkably, today this is not something regrettable, to be outgrown as soon as possible; for their narcissistic absorption in themselves and in immediate pleasures and present experiences, the young are not condemned but are even envied by many of their elders.

Part 3 of 3.

Kass used to be on the President’s bio-ethics council when Bush was the President and they had pro-lifers on the council.

Commentary

Are we all married to the wrong people? Does it matter?

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Here’s a neat post I found. (H/T Doug Geivett)

Excerpt:

“My basic philosophy is we have to start with the premise when we choose our partner that we aren’t choosing with all the knowledge and information about them,” says Dr. Haltzman. “However, outside of the extreme scenarios of domestic violence, chronic substance abuse, or the inability to remain sexually faithful—which are good arguments for marrying the wrong person on a huge scale, and where it is unhealthy or unsafe to remain married—we need to say, ‘This is the person I chose, and I need to find a way to develop a sense of closeness with this person for who he or she really is and not how I fantasize them to be.’”

That choice to work on the relationship can lead to a more profound, meaningful experience together. Dr. Haltzman offers the following tips to help us reconnect or improve our bond:

  • Respect your mate for his/her positive qualities, even when they have some important negative ones.
  • Be the right person, instead of looking for the right person.
  • Be a loving person, instead of waiting to get love.
  • Be considerate instead of waiting to receive consideration.

To underscore the last couple of points, Dr. Haltzman says many people will put only so much effort into a relationship, then say, “I’ve done enough.” But very few of us will do that with our children. “Instead, we say despite their flaws, we wouldn’t want anyone else; yet, our kids can be much more of a pain in the ass than our spouses.”

Finally, he advises, “Have the attitude that this is the person you are going to spend the rest of your life with, so you must find a way to make it work instead of always looking for the back door.”

Doug writes:

Fourth, we should commit to having a successful marriage, and let go any idealistic notion of being married to just the right person and having a perfect marriage.

Fifth, we should welcome a different conception of the values and rewards of marriage than what is so widely assumed today.

I think this is important, because really marriage is not about having fun every minute of the day. It’s about making a commitment to love someone else self-sacrificially for the rest of your lives! You’re not marrying someone to have fun with them. You’re marrying them to be miserable amidst many trials together. Be wary about picking someone who always wants to go out and have fun. That person is not going to be reliable in a difficult situation.

A good way to test a person prior to courtship is to give them difficult things to do – ask them to support you in your work, or to help you with your other responsibilities (pets, car, taxes) or to do research for you on a problem or to guest post on your blog (or edit a post).  Try to see if they are a giving person, whether they are sympathetic with what you are trying to accomplish for the Lord. Remember that you are not just picking a spouse, but a parent for your kids.

I think that we all need to realize that the point of marriage (and the point of courtship) is not to be made happy by someone else – it’s to make someone who is trying to serve the Lord more effective and more comfortable doing that. You pick someone you think 1) is effective and 2) needs your support. It’s a positive and negative thing. If the person is not effective, then you will feel used when you serve them. If they don’t need you, then they won’t appreciate you.

UPDATE: She’s got more here.