Support for my view of courting from… Jane Austen?!!

I get into a lot of trouble because I have this loooong list of questions that I pose to women during courtship in order to evaluate them for marriage, and to let them know how I want them to prepare for my plan for the marriage.   Basically, my view of courting is that it is the time for the man to present his plan to serve God as a married couple, and where he wants to be effective, and how he wants to be effective, and where the woman fits into to his plan. The purpose of the pre-marriage courting is for me to explain all of this, and then the woman has the opportunity to first decide if she wants to help with that plan and then demonstrate that she can help with it. My job after laying out the plan is to make sure that she has all the tools she needs and lots of affection and tenderness, too. I am auditioning for the roles of protector, provider and moral/spiritual leader. And she is auditioning for the roles of helper, motivator and nurturer.

Anyway, all of that is evil, if you ask any non-Christians and Christians today. The ladies in my workplace are always telling me that I am “too strict” and that I need to “lower my standards”. What they mean by this is that they resent me taking on the role of leader in the relationship and telling them what marriage to me will be about and what they need to be able to do to help. And they especially resent having to prove that they can do it. Men they’ve known in the past have been pacified with some earnest words of agreement, and maybe some hugs and kisses. But that doesn’t work on me. I want books to be read, and actions to be performed.

For example, I want public speeches defending marriage, presentations on abortion in church, apologetics book clubs, apologetics conference organizing, apologetics lectures and debates in the local university, economics degrees, law school degrees, and pro-family conservative political views. (These are all the things my current favorite lady and her predecessors have done / are doing). In short, if I am coming to the table with lots of evidence that I can do my roles, then I want to see evidence that she  can do her roles. I call this view of courtship the wisdom view, and the popular alternative to it I call the fairy tale view.

The funniest thing is that right now I am working together with a woman who is very very high up in her profession. Manages dozens of people, has her own receptionist, wins lots of awards. Her job is incredibly stressful. But the funniest thing is that she is actually the easiest one of all to lead. And that’s because she is a good listener and she reads a ton of books and then independently designs and executes operations designed to move the ball forward on the things that I care about. She thinks my vision for serving God is good, and she knows how to get the job done, without being micromanaged. Here is a close-up of some flowers that I sent her recently to recognize her. She is also the least attention seeking female of the ones I know. She doesn’t want public recognition for what she does.

And with that said, let’s take a look at a quote about my favorite British author, Jane Austen, courtesy of Reformed Seth’s blog:

[Austen] was committed to the ideal of “intelligent love,” according to which the deepest and truest relationship that can exist between human beings is pedagogic. This relationship consists in the giving and receiving of knowledge about right conduct, in the formation of one person’s character by another, the acceptance of another’s guidance in one’s growth. The idea of a love based in pedagogy may seem quaint to some modern readers and repellent to others, but unquestionably it plays a decisive part in the power and charm of Jane Austen’s art. And if we attempt to explain the power and charm that the genre of the novel exercised in the nineteenth century, we must take full account of its pedagogic intention and of such love as a reader might feel was being directed towards him in the solicitude of the novel for his moral well-being, in its concern for the right course of his development.

- Lionel Trilling, Sincerity and Authenticity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), 82.

There! I’m vindicated by someone who ought to know how these things work. When I was a young man, I read everything I could get my hands on from Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters. It’s nice to know that I wasn’t misinterpreting what they were telling me, and that I’ve applied it well. Just because it’s not “cool” today, doesn’t mean it’s not right.

Related posts

• Courting rules: how to respect a Christian man in the style of Ephesians 5
• Courting rules: what should a Christian woman be looking for in a man?
• Courting rules: how to tell if a woman is a committed Christian
• Courting rules: how men use self-control to make relationships count for God
• Are churches preparing women to choose real men for husbands?
• What is the meaning and purpose of white roses?
• Does being a virgin before marriage affect marital stability?
• How to communicate requirements to a Christian woman during courtship
• How Christian women can make Christian men marry without using sex appeal
• The rules for friendship and courtship between Christians
• What Christian men want from Christian women… in paintings!
• Should Christians marry non-Christians?

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A Dad: the tenth most popular gift requested by children at Christmas

Dina sent me this sad article from the UK Telegraph.

Excerpt:

A study of 2,000 British parents found most children will put a new baby brother or sister at the top of their Christmas list, closely followed by a request for a real-life reindeer.

A “pet horse” was the third most popular choice, with a “car” making a bizarre entry at number four.

Despite their material requests, the tenth most popular Christmas wish on the list was a “Dad”.

[...]A request for a “mum” reached number 23 on the list.

It’s sad. I think that there is a perception among many young women today that it is OK to have recreational premarital sex that may lead to having a child out of wedlock. Many unmarried women have an intuition (not supported by data) that a child will turn out fine without a father in the home. Some think (against the data) that fathers can be substituted with a government welfare check and that children won’t notice the difference. But the research shows that this is a false belief.

Excerpt:

Census data and the Fragile Families survey show that marriage can be extremely effective in reducing child poverty. But the positive effects of married fathers are not limited to income alone. Children raised by married parents have substantially better life outcomes compared to similar children raised in single-parent homes.

When compared to children in intact married homes, children raised by single parents are more likely to have emotional and behavioral problems; be physically abused; smoke, drink, and use drugs; be aggressive; engage in violent, delinquent, and criminal behavior; have poor school performance; be expelled from school; and drop out of high school.[19] Many of these negative outcomes are associated with the higher poverty rates of single mothers. In many cases, however, the improvements in child well-being that are associated with marriage persist even after adjusting for differences in family income. This indicates that the father brings more to his home than just a paycheck.

The effect of married fathers on child outcomes can be quite pronounced. For example, examination of families with the same race and same parental education shows that, when compared to intact married families, children from single-parent homes are:

• More than twice as likely to be arrested for a juvenile crime;[20]
• Twice as likely to be treated for emotional and behavioral problems;[21]
• Roughly twice as likely to be suspended or expelled from school;[22] and
• A third more likely to drop out before completing high school.[23]

The effects of being raised in a single-parent home continue into adulthood. Comparing families of the same race and similar incomes, children from broken and single-parent homes are three times more likely to end up in jail by the time they reach age 30 than are children raised in intact married families.[24] Compared to girls raised in similar married families, girls from single-parent homes are more than twice as likely to have a child without being married, thereby repeating the negative cycle for another generation.[25]

Finally, the decline of marriage generates poverty in future generations. Children living in single-parent homes are 50 percent more likely to experience poverty as adults when compared to children from intact married homes. This intergenerational poverty effect persists even after adjusting for the original differences in family income and poverty during childhood.[26]

And here’s a bit more data showing that having government replace fathers via higher taxes and more redistribution of wealth doesn’t take away the bad effects of fatherlessness:

Children from low-income, two-parent families outperform students from high-income, single-parent homes. Almost twice as many high achievers come from two-parent homes as one-parent homes. Source: “One-Parent Families and Their Children;” Charles F. Kettering Foundation (1990).

Children reared by a divorced or never-married mother are less cooperative and score lower on tests of intelligence than children reared in intact families. Statistical analysis of the behavior and intelligence of these children revealed “significant detrimental effects” of living in a female-headed household. Growing up in a female-headed household remained a statistical predictor of behavior problems even after adjusting for differences in family income. Source: Greg L. Duncan, Jeanne Brooks-Gunn and Pamela Kato Klebanov, “Economic Deprivation and Early Childhood Development,” Child Development 65 (1994).

After taking into account race, socioeconomic status, sex, age, and ability, high school students from single-parent households were 1.7 times more likely to drop out than were their corresponding counterparts living with both biological parents. Source: McNeal, Ralph B. Jr.”Extracurricular Activities and High School Dropouts.” Sociology of Education 68(1995): 62-81.

I think that these are significant in light of the recent shooting in Connecticut:

In studies involving over 25,000 children using nationally representative data sets, children who lived with only one parent had lower grade point averages, lower college aspirations, poor attendance records, and higher drop out rates than students who lived with both parents. Source: McLanahan, Sara and Gary Sandefur. Growing up with a Single Parent: What Hurts, What Helps. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994.

A 1988 Department of Health and Human Services study found that at every income level except the very highest (over $50,000 a year), children living with never-married mothers were more likely than their counterparts in two-parent families to have been expelled or suspended from school, to display emotional problems, and to engage in antisocial behavior. Source: James Q. Wilson, “In Loco Parentis: Helping Children When Families Fail Them,” The Brookings Review, Fall 1993.

72% of adolescent murderers grew up without fathers. 60% of America’s rapists grew up the same way. Source: D. Cornell (et al.), Behavioral Sciences and the Law, 5. 1987. And N. Davidson, “Life Without Father,” Policy Review. 1990.

The likelihood that a young male will engage in criminal activity doubles if he is raised without a father and triples if he lives in a neighborhood with a high concentration of single-parent families. Source: A. Anne Hill, June O’Neill, “Underclass Behaviors in the United States,” CUNY, Baruch College. 1993.

The shooter in Connecticut hadn’t spoken to his father in two years:

Peter Lanza, the father of Sandy Hook shooter, hadn’t spoken to his son for more than two years and his father is at a loss for what drove Adam to kill 20 students and six teachers at his old elementary school.

[...]Adam, 20, had not spoken to his brother Ryan or father for upwards of two years at the time of the shooting. Adam reportedly distanced himself from his father Peter when he started to become serious with his new girlfriend, and current wife.

Peter and Adam’s mother Nancy split in 2001 but did not formally divorce until November 2008. Court records made the split appear amicable as both parties agreed to put their sons needs above any bitterness, but Adam was apparently the one to cut ties with his father in 2010.

Women need to think ahead and realize that the little children will be impacted by her choice of man, as well of her choice of whether to have recreational premarital sex with a man. If she doesn’t test him adequately and makes poor choices, then the children will be deprived of a father in the home. I don’t think that the sentiment “he makes me happy and horny and my friends approve of him” necessarily translates into “he can do the job of protecting, providing and leading on moral and spiritual issues”. Those are two different sets of criteria, and often at cross-purposes in a culture that despises traditional male roles as “sexist”.

Filed under: News, Abortion, Abstinence, Adult, Biological, Bond, Chastity, Child, Child Abuse, Childbearing, Childhood, Children, Christmas, Christmas List, Cohabitation, Dad, Democrat Party, Family, Father, Fatherhood, Feminism, Marriage, Monogamy, Moral Leader, Out of Wedlock, Parenting, Pre-marital Sex, Proctor, Provider, Same-Sex Marriage, Sex, Single Motherhood By Choice, Single-Motherhood, Spiritual Leader, Stability, Stable, Union, Welfare

How do prostitutes stay in business in an era of hook-up sex?

WARNING: This is one of those posts that feminists and egalitarians should just not read. Stay away from this post, it will offend you. Also, if you read it, then know that when I talk about “women”, it is a shorthand way of saying “women who accept the tenets of third-wave gender feminism”. I don’t mean all women, I mean third-wave gender feminists. If you are a married woman, or if you are a chaste single woman who is prepared to care for and support her future husband, then I don’t mean you.

From Stuart Schneiderman, a reversal of expectations.

The sexual revolution pushed by feminists encouraged women to abandon traditional female goals (marriage and children) and traditional men (provider, protector, moral and spiritual leader) and to instead prefer anonymous hook-up sex fueled by binge-drinking – so that they can pursue careers.

He writes:

Here’s a question for the behavioral economists: How do prostitutes stay in business?

With the sexual revolution and the hookup culture and young women making love like porn stars, how can a hooker make a living?

If you are charging money for something that people can get for free, eventually it will impact your business.

In the old days nice girls didn’t. Without specifying what nice girls wouldn’t do, men who wanted “it” sought out prostitutes.

Nowadays, there is precious little that nice girls don’t do. Thanks to a certain social movement nice girls are liberated. They will do just about anything, and will refuse to allow a man to pay for them.

Many of them won’t even want to see him in the morning.

Free love has come to mean giving it away for free. No one knows how prevalent the practice is, but nice girls are marrying later and are avoiding encumbering alliances. If we assume that they are sexually active during their twenties, then clearly they have crowded the market in non-committal sex.

Young women who are out making their way in the world today will avoid relationships, but they will happily engage in all kinds of sexual gymnastics… They do not want to be tied down, just yet. (At least not in the metaphorical sense.) No man’s man’s emotional demands will get in the way of their career advancement.

[...]The marketplace being what it is, prostitutes have now adapted. They continue to offer something that nice girls no longer offer, but it isn’t kinky sex. It is emotional attachment: love, romance and a maybe even a relationship, with a little sex on the side.

Nowadays it’s called the girlfriend experience. It’s the ultimate in sex work, considerably more difficult and better paid than common fellatio.

Strange as it seems, if you are a young man today you often have to pay a woman to act like she’s your girlfriend.

Even the term “escort” which is commonly taken to be a euphemism for prostitute, has traditionally referred to a woman who would accompany a man to a social or cultural event. She was a stand-in girlfriend.

In the old days prostitutes used to know how to do things that nice girls had never even heard of. Today, prostitutes know how to do things that nice girls do not know how to do: that is to conduct relationships.

Young women today are proficient at being sex kittens. Many of them become expert in the art of dating. Fewer know how to conduct a relationship with a man.

I grew up with a non-Christian mother who was very distant and focused on her career, wealth and health. So, I always expected a lot more from women in terms of affection, attention and approval. I knew perfectly well that what I wanted in a woman was someone to be involved with my education, career and hobbies, and most important of all, with my Christian faith. That is what I missed growing up as a visible minority in a predominantly white city. That’s probably one of several reasons why I am chaste. Sex is not the primary thing that I am looking for from a woman. Instead, I want to be the traditional man who is needed as a provider, protector and moral/spiritual leader, and who gets affection, attention and approval for fulfilling those roles (and only those roles).

There were a lot of times when I was growing up when it would have been easy for me, having hit six figures of net worth at age 26, to focus on getting sex in the quickest way possible. All I would have had to do was to stop being an open and authentic Christian. If I had stopped talking about objective morality and exclusive theological claims, and just made no demands on any women to grow into the roles of wife and mother, it would have been easy. But that would not scratch the itch that I have. I get a lot of joy from seeing a woman learn about my plan and my goals. I enjoy providing her with books, debates and lectures to learn about the things that I care about. I enjoy protecting her from lies and labor by building up her knowledge and character and performing acts of service for her. I enjoy leading her – through study and persuasion – to grow in her understanding of moral, theological and apologetic issues. And I enjoy when a woman makes an effort to be a supportive helper and a companion. Nothing is better than seeing a woman accept your goals as her own, preparing to achieve those goals and then achieving them. I would rather be a leader – that’s what men really want.

Women today use sex as a way of pacifying men who want them to grow into the roles of wife and mother. They want to focus on their careers, on playing the field and on having a good time. Marriage is something they fall back on much later, when they are in their 30s. In order to get marriage-minded men to pay attention to them during their 20s without having to commit, women offer men sex. Men take the sex, and they stop trying to perform the traditional male roles, especially the role of being the moral and spiritual leader. And it’s a very easy thing to see. Just take a typical woman and ask her to read “The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands” and “Stupid Things Parents Do To Mess Up Their Kids“, or similar books. They won’t do it, because they have been taught by third-wave feminism to be selfish and to avoid caring about others in relationships. But you can have all the recreational sex with them that you want (especially after they get drunk, so that they don’t feel responsible) as long as you are good-looking and fun. They have been told that they must always be having a good time, and to not prepare to care for men or children. They think that they can live happily ever after by pursuing their own happiness at every moment.

Everyone complains that men are no longer interested in marriage, but the truth is that there are very few marriage-capable women left to marry. Most women today are just not ready for marriage, because they are often neither chaste nor supportive. Men and women have to be chaste, because it is a guarantee that you offer to your spouse that you can be faithful. So, marriage-minded men are being forced to choose between selfish, promiscuous feminists and prostitutes. That’s no choice at all. And that’s why men who start out with noble aims of life-long married love and self-sacrificial commitment quickly learn to settle for recreational sex from a series of temporary partners – and sometimes very temporary partners in the case of hook-ups on college campuses.  Marriage is just not there for us to achieve anymore, because most women haven’t made the right decisions that will allow them to be supportive and faithful to their husbands. They aren’t ready to step into the roles of wife and mother.

Filed under: News, Abortion, Binge Drinking, Career, Chastity, Children, Chivalry, Contraception, Courting, Courtship, Dating, Divorce, Family, Feminism, Friends With Benefits, Hook-Up, Leadership, Marriage, Men, Moral Leader, No-Fault Divorce, Promiscuity, Prostitute, Relationship, Selfishness, Sex Roles, Sexual Revolution, Slut, Spiritual Leader, Traditional Roles, Women

UK police knew about Muslim child sex gang but refused to prosecute

First, the facts of the case from the UK Daily Mail.

Excerpt:

A sex grooming gang targeted white girls because they were not part of their ‘community or religion’ said a judge as he jailed them for a total of 77 years yesterday.

Detectives are now preparing to make more arrests after they revealed they suspect up to 50 mainly Pakistani-born men took part in the abuse.

But despite the judge’s hard-hitting comments, police in Greater Manchester continued to insist that the men’s race and religion were not factors in their crimes.

Yesterday senior politicians clashed over the case – with one former Labour MP claiming police and social workers ignored complaints because they were ‘petrified of being called racist’.

With experts on paedophilia insisting street grooming by Muslim men was a real problem, Judge Gerald Clinton made it clear he believed religion was a factor.

He jailed the 59-year-old ringleader for 19 years and eight other men for between four and 12 years, telling them they had treated their victims ‘as though they were worthless and beyond all respect’.

He added: ‘I believe one of the factors which led to that is that they were not of your community or religion.’

But he branded outbursts by some of the men claiming the prosecution was racially-motivated ‘nonsense’, telling them they found themselves in the dock because of their ‘lust and greed’.

The gang raped and abused up to 47 girls – some as young as 13 – after plying them with alcohol and luring them to takeaways in Heywood, near Rochdale.

Detective Inspector Michael Sanderson, of Greater Manchester Police, said none of the convicted men had ever shown ‘the slightest bit of remorse’.

The keeping of sex slaves is sanctioned by the Qur’an.

What’s interesting about this case is that the police knew about the ring years before, but refused to prosecute:

A victim of the ring said she was ‘let down’ by police and the Crown Prosecution Service because the issue of Asian gangs grooming young white girls was ‘unheard of’ at the time.

The girl, who was 15 when she was targeted by the gang, reported the abuse to police in August 2008 but the CPS decided not to prosecute because they did not believe a jury would find her ‘credible’.

After reporting the abuse she suffered for four more months at the hands of the gang and continued to be forced into having sex by her ‘friend’ – a teenage girl who was acting as a pimp for the men.

She said the problem got ‘worse’ after telling the police.

‘I felt let down. But I know that they (police) believed me… but… because they said to me at the end that something should have been done but the CPS just would not – what’s the word? – prosecute is it?

‘It’s like, then, in 2008 it weren’t really heard of… Asian men with white girls.

‘It was just unheard of. I’ve never heard of it. Now it’s going on everywhere. You think of Muslim men as religious and family-minded and just nice people. You don’t think… I don’t know… you just don’t think they’d do things like that.’

The girl, now 20, only escaped the gang in December 2008 when she fell pregnant and moved away. She was then made to wait until August 2009 for the CPS to tell her they were not taking the case to trial.

She called the men who abused her ‘evil’ and said she hopes they pay for their crimes.

‘They ripped away all my dignity and all my last bit of self-esteem and by the end of it I had no emotion whatsoever because I was used to being used and abused daily,’ she said.

‘It was just blocked out, it was just like it wasn’t me any more. They just took everything away and I just think hopefully they’ll pay for what they’ve done.’

Under the policies of the UK Labour Party, the police had all been fully trained in multiculturalism and political correctness. Some groups favored by the secular left are above the law and cannot be persecuted, even when they rape little children. We can thank Harriet Harman and her ilk for this. We can even thank her for the immigration policies that created isolated communities that do not respect the laws and values of Western civilization, and Judeo-Christian values in particular.

But that’s not all. Think about what the feminism promoted by the Labour Party achieves. The feminism embraced by the Labour Party under Harriet Harman had one goal. To destroy the institution of marriage and eject men from the home. Men were to be replaced with government handouts and welfare payments. Under the rule of the Labour Party, illegitimacy has skyrocketed while marriage has declined. The UK government literally pays women to have children out of wedlock – children who will grow up fatherless. IVF is taxpayer-funded under the NHS.

When women do not have to care about whether a man is a good provider, they can have sex with any man – which ever one they like, based on the approval of their peers and the standards of the culture. But men who have not been carefully picked by women to be husbands and fathers do not stick around. Who is left,then, to protect the girls who are born without fathers to raise them? No one. This is the end result of feminism’s attempt to destroy the traditional roles that men play in the home: protector, provider and moral/spiritual leader. Government programs, politically correct social workers and welfare checks are not a substitute for a father.

Filed under: News, Abuse, Britain, Child Abuse, Family, Father, Fatherless, Fatherlessness, Harriet Harman, Islam, IVF, Koran, Labor Party, Labour Party, Man, Marriage, Moral Leader, Moral Relativism, Multiculturalism, Muslim, Out of Wedlock Birth, Pedophilia, Political Correctness, Protector, Provider, Quran, Sex Trafficking, Single Motherhood By Choice, Single-Motherhood, Social Worker, Socialism, Spiritual Leader, Taxes, Tony Blair, UK, Unwed Motherhood, Welfare, Welfare State

Courting rules: how to respect a Christian man in the style of Ephesians 5

I have been thinking a lot about Christian women and respect lately, and reflecting over some of the things that I have experienced with different ones that either worked or did not work. Unfortunately, it is crunch time at work, so I might not be completely coherent in this post, but I thought I would write something out anyway.

There are times when the Bible suggests a way that Christians ought to behave, and one of those cases has to do with wives giving respect to husbands in the marriage:

Ephesians 5:21-33:

²¹ Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

²² Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord.

²³ For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.

²⁴ Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.

²⁵ Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her

²⁶ to make her holy,cleansing her by the washing with water through the word,

²⁷ and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.

²⁸ In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.

²⁹ After all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church—

³⁰ for we are members of his body.

³¹ “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.”

³² This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.

³³ However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.

I think it’s important for us to think about how to implement the specification that the Bible sets out for men and women in marriage. The Bible sometimes sets out rules and goals for expected behaviors, which become moral obligations for anyone for follows Christ. It is up to us to convince ourselves through study that the Bible has authority to speak to us. And it is also up to us to decide the most effective way to achieve the goals that the Bible sets out. This post proposes some tips for women who want to learn how to respect men, based on my experiences of what makes me feel respected as a man. I think this is beneficial for single women, as well, because it allows them to arouse the interest of a man by performing good actions.

A bit about me

There are some things you need to know about me before we can talk about what what women do to me that causes me to feel respected.

Here are some things that I want to accomplish:

• Be able to have a stay at home mother to raise our children so that they will know God, be moral and achieve great things for God in areas that matter
• Be able to fix the problem of anti-intellectualism in the church by training more and more Christians in apologetics and worldview, including politics, economics, etc.
• Be able to have a presence at the university, e.g. – by being a Christian professor, or by supporting Christian scholars, or by sponsoring Christian scholars to speak and debate at the university
• Be able to speak, write or teach about apologetics and worldview to the general public, for example people who read my blog or my co-workers, so that they either learn how to do it, or become more respectful of Christianity and its founder

I am actually working on all of those things, and many of the decisions and sacrifices that I’ve made so far have been to achieve those things at a higher level.

Things that women do that make me feel respected

1. Work

The first thing that really works is listening. I really feel respected when a woman listens to me explain my thoughts and feelings. This is especially true when I am talking about my work and my work day. When it comes to my work, I feel respected when a woman listens to me explain what I am doing. This allows her to be able to support me more because she understands what I am saying when I talk with terms like “unit tests”, “web services”, “source code repository”, etc. The more time she invests in understanding software engineering (what I do for money), the more supported I will feel. I feel a lot better making sacrifices (studying hard things, working weekends, volunteering at work) when those sacrifices are understood, encouraged and supported. For example, I felt respected recently when I was working on the weekend and could not speak to a lady I really wanted to speak to. Instead of getting upset about my absence, she started making suggestions on how I could be more effective at work, by bringing healthy food so I don’t go to the vending machine or my co-workers’ candy dishes, by asking me about my progress every few hours. I feel respected when I can talk about my work and then be encouraged and supported in it.

2. Plan

Another area that is important to talk about is my plan. I like it when I can tell a woman the specific experiences that I had that cause me to have the plan that I have. For example, my struggles getting apologetics into the churches that I’ve attended have really soured me on church leaders. Another thing I like to talk about are the Christian scholars who are my role models, and how I try to emulate them, and I want my children to emulate them, too. One lady I was speaking to has been studying areas that I care about on her own through books, lectures and debates and then going out into the world and engaging with the people around her. Sometimes just a few people, and sometimes with large groups. Recently she told me that she would like to start a group in her church to study useful books with them. This made me feel very respected. My goals matter to her, and she is trying to help with them on her own initiative, and with her own strategies. Note that women who want to respect men may find that it is useful to learn certain skills in order to be more effective at helping men with their plans. For example, she might study investing and start investing her own money, or she might study science apologetics and then engage her co-workers and friends with scientific arguments for Christian theism. She should find out what areas matter to him with respect to serving God and then come alongside him and help him.

3. Roles

A final area that is important is my roles as a man. I have been a Christian for a long time now, and I have noticed that many Christian women in the church are basically secular in the way that they choose men. Many Christian women are guided by their emotions, by pop culture notions of romance, and peer approval – even the approval of their peer group. According to the Bible, men are supposed to be the main provider for their families. So, I made the decision early in my life to prefer work to academics – so I have actually been earning money since the time I was 12 years old. My grades were As, but I was always working part-time, and in the summers. The money I earned went straight into investments, so that I would be able to afford two degrees in computer science (BS and MS) and have a nest egg saved for marriage. I had $9,000 before undergraduate school and $16,000 after, with no debts and a car. I chose computer science over English literature, because I knew that computer science was a more reliable way to earn a living. Marriages run more smoothly when money isn’t a concern, so I had to take practical steps in order to avoid a known risk factor for divorce.

But women also have a role related to providing. Their role is to prefer men who take that provider obligation seriously. I feel very respected when a woman takes the time to ask me about my education, research, employment, and investments. Our culture today doesn’t value men taking their provider roles seriously. Instead, many women prefer men who will not be able to exercise the authority in the home that comes from being a competent provider. They sometimes prefer to see all choices in education and work as equal, so that no man is more respected than any other man based on education, earning and saving. I see a lot of Christian women going after men who are much younger than they are, with non-STEM degrees, who have no savings, and no practical plan for financing a marriage – much less a homeschooling stay-at-home mother. That is disrespectful of the provider role, and I believe it stems from the desire to not acknowledge male leadership. When a woman minimizes the education, career and savings of the man, it diminishes her regard for his ability to navigate the world and take responsibility. Many women want to be swept along by impressions of confidence and superficial indicators of success. But this is not wise: a man who has a gap-less resume and an investment portfolio is a good provider, and a man who lives with his parents at age 30 is not – even if he is confident, has a deep voice, nice shoes, big shoulders, and a square jaw.

To treat unequals as equals in this important area is disrespectful and unBiblical – it disrespects the Bible’s mandate that the man be a good provider and instead substitutes an emotional/pop culture/peer-approval standard of what counts as a good man. Additionally, women need to have an understanding of the external conditions that strengthen a man’s ability to take on the provider role. To respect a man acting as a provider also requires voting for policies that support a man’s ability to work (e.g. – less regulation on business, lower corporate taxes) to keep what he earns (lower income tax, lower inflation) and to spend it the way he sees fit (privatization of health care, education, etc.) – and these issues need to be studied, not checked off on a checklist as “we agree”. Studying economics and politics in depth, and being political active, are ways for women to respect men in their provider role. Women need to take action to enable policies and laws that promote liberty and prosperity. They should not be supporting policies that promote the redistribution of wealth, or reward irresponsibility and dependence. They should not support policies that punish men who work hard at being providers while rewarding men who refuse to be providers.

It also helps when a woman studies hard topics on her own – math, science, engineering and technology – and builds up her own investment portfolio. It helps her to be able to be respectful to a man because she understands exactly what he studies and exactly how hard work is and exactly how hard it is to save money in a society creeping towards socialism. A woman who experiences sacrifice and hardship herself is more likely to respect a man who does the same in order to be ready for marriage, even if she eventually gives up work when there are young children to raise. And this works for other male roles. For example, men who guard their chastity in order to protect women from infidelity should be respected for making that decision. It’s important for women to study marriage research, e.g. – how factors like chastity and church attendance and cohabitation increase or decrease marriage stability, so that they have reasons and evidence to prefer men who choose to make that sacrifice.

Men also study moral questions like abortion and marriage, as well as spiritual areas like apologetics and theology, so that they can advocate for the victims of abortion and marital breakdown. Again, women must study the research on these issues so that they are able to prefer men who can do this over men who can’t. Christianity is not a checkbox and you cannot equate someone who understands these issues with someone who doesn’t because both attend church. When a woman puts in the effort to study apologetics, moral issues, economics and foreign policy, then a real man feels respected – because he knows that she has a standard for judging him that is a true measure of his ability to be a husband and father. It is important to treat a man who takes his male roles seriously differently from other men who do not take those male roles seriously.

Conclusion

One of the best ways to respect a man is to speak highly of his abilities in all 3 of these areas to others. If women are careful about the man they choose, then they should be able to speak highly of him with others. When a woman praises a good man, it is a signal to other men about what they should be doing in order to impress women. To change the culture and to encourage men towards marriage, women must be intentional about who they celebrate and why they celebrate them. It also helps if they understand what policies make marriage a more realistic undertaking for men, and then advocate for those policies. Again, this requires reading things like economics and law to understand what challenges a man will face from government and ideologies (feminism, socialism) should he choose to marry, and making sure that those challenges are reduced. A man feels respected when a woman has developed a detailed understanding of what marriage is about and how society needs to change to support and respect men who choose to marry and become fathers. The Bible says that divorce is morally wrong, so it is up to men and women to make decisions that reduce the risk of divorce. We can’t just float through life relying on our emotions and thinking that God has a secret, mysterious plan and there is nothing for us to do. Usually, that attitude will just make us avoid learning and avoid making hard decisions to prepare for marriage, and that will not do – we are responsible to avoid divorce, and we have to make an effort in order to achieve that goal.

If any of my female readers are interested in learning about men and what men need in order to act competently as protectors, providers and moral/spiritual leaders, you can take a look at Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s “The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands” as well as Gary Chapman’s “The Five Love Languages“. To understand the connection between marriage and policy, try Jay Richards’ “Indivisible“. And don’t merely read the books – put it into practice by advocating for men and marriage from church to university to workplace to courtroom to government. Make plans to show that you respect Christian men who know what they are doing and why. Don’t rely on your emotions to guide you – this is more of an obligation requires training, recon, planning and execution. (The same way that a man prepares to love a woman and then loves her – because women need love just like men need respect). Men pay attention to women who respect them, and it’s much better for women to get attention from men by learning about them and helping them than by trying to bypass respecting the man to get attention by leveraging appearance and sexuality to get attention. And, of course, some men cannot be respected, so don’t choose one of those.

NOTE: Please post improvements for this post in the comments, as I may be posting this elsewhere if it gets a positive response. Please share it on Facebook and Twitter if you find it useful.

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