There has always been a Marriage Marketplace (“MMP”). In days past it looked a lot different from what it is today. But it has always existed in some form or fashion. Why is this so? Perhaps it is because humans tend to be transactional and economic in their behaviors. After all, marriage is a contract of sorts (for a Christian that contract takes the form of a covenant), with an exchange of promises between the man and woman in what they will and won’t do during the marriage. Given the base transactional nature of marriage, it is hardly surprising that a marketplace would form around it. Whether it was families or the individuals themselves, bargaining of some sort went on and clearly some individuals were higher value than others. In the past titles, dowries and inheritance were the primary currency, while today things like youth, beauty, fertility, earning power and status can make someone high or low value.
However the Marriage Marketplace worked in the past, one thing is abundantly clear about how it works today: it doesn’t. The current Marriage Marketplace is broken, and is almost completely subsumed into the greater Sexual Marketplace (“SMP”) which has largely taken its place. This process has been a complete and utter disaster, whose consequences will be felt for generations. It manifests itself in many different ways, some of which I will explore in this post.
False Advertising
Free Northerner has recently taken upon himself the task of examining how well Churchians are marketing marriage these days. As you might guess, it is not a pretty sight. His post is in response to one of Dalrock’s latest, Brilliant Advertising. Here is how Free Northerner expressed his initial thoughts on seeing the video that Dalrock brought to our attention:
Instead of making marriage look like something men would want to pursue and would be willing to sacrifice for, they make it look horrible.
In the little skit in the middle, the man is the thoroughly henpecked, seemingly unhappy husband of a fat, dumpy, controlling wife. He’s so thoroughly beaten down that he’s afraid to have a little masculine bonding time with his son and the video implies that there’s something wrong with him wanting to do so.
Watching this, my main thought was ”is this really how they want to advertise marriage to men?”
My personal philosophy is that if you aren’t sure if someone is acting the way they are out of malice or stupidity, stupidity is the safer bet. More than a few in the manosphere have argued that Churchian leaders like Driscoll are actively malicious in their efforts to get men to “Man-Up and Marry those Sluts!” Others insist that they are just misguided fools, so blinded to feminist indoctrination that they don’t realize what they are doing. Myself, looking at this video, I have to agree with those who label Driscoll and his ilk fools. If their goal is to sell marriage, that video isn’t the way to do it. In fact, it is one of the best testimonies against marriage that I have seen lately.
So what is an effective marriage marketing ad? Here is how Free Northerner would go about selling marriage:
It starts with an average-looking man in a suit, someone most guys could identify with, coming home from a day at the office. He looks kind of worn-out and stressed. He parks his car, sighs a bit, then walks up to his house. He opens the door.
The first thing seen when the door opens is his non-offensively pretty wife dressed femininely. She looks up from working in the kitchen and sees he’s stressed, so she comes up to him with a smile on her face and gives him a hug and quick kiss on the lips. She takes his bag and says, “Dinner is almost ready, why don’t you sit down?” He gets into his recliner and leans back, his stress visibly fading away. She joyfully brings him a small plate of freshly made cookies and some milk. He thanks her with an expression of mingled gratitude and relief and takes the cookie. While he snacks she says, “How about later…” and bends over and whispers something in his ear while brushing her hand up his leg. The man responds with a large, expectant smile.
Cut to her calling out that dinner is ready. The man goes to the table to find a delicious home-cooked meal of steak and potatoes, his cute, happy children run up to the table. His wife wipes the dirt smudges off of one of the rascals as they sit down. The man looks on proudly as he sits at the head of the table. His wife sits to his right. She looks at him with an expectant smile, her hand on his arm, and he proudly says grace for the family.
During the prayer fade to black and end with the tagline: Worth being a man for.
The picture that Free Northerner presents is a far cry from the marriage conveyed in Driscoll’s video. As Free Northerner points out, a lot of men, Christian men especially, would sign up for this. So why don’t we see an ad like this? Martel explains it succinctly:
However, they’ll never accept it because it shows the woman being submissive, feminine, and supportive. This defeats the entire point of marriage as they see it.
That just about covers it. Driscoll’s ad showcases Marriage 2.0, which any man worth his salt can see is completely unappealing. It offers nothing to the man, and demands more than ever. What Free Northerner is selling is Marriage 1.0. A marriage where the man is the head of the household. Where he has a lot of responsibility, but the authority to back it up. And where he is respected and admired for his efforts. Driscoll and his ilk could never make an ad in the manner of what Free Northerner suggests. From them it would be false advertising. Because what they believe in is Mutual Submission, Female Spiritual Superiority and a non-covenantal marriage.
Predatory Practices
Of course, just like any marketplace, there are predators to be found. Those who prey on the naive and the vulnerable, hoping to fleece them of their worth and leave them penniless. In our current MMP, they can take on several forms. Two that I wish to briefly cover are the Former Carousel Rider (“FCR”) and the False Christian Player (“FCP”).
The FCR is a woman who rode the carousel while she was younger (aka a slut) and then upon hitting “The Wall” (or getting close to it) decides to “settle” and marry. So she seeks out a hapless “Beta” and gets him to marry her, despite the fact that she feels no attraction or respect for him. She plays upon his desperation and likely inexperience, and uses it to her advantage. Then, after several years and probably several kids, she divorces him and tries her hand at the SMP once again.
The FCP is a cad, a player who specializes in “robbing” young Christian women of their virtue. He hangs around in Churches and among Christian circles and preys on the pure and innocent. His goal is simple: to deflower Christian women (and probably make them Alpha Widows in the process). He knows the right catchwords and phrases to put them at ease and to convince them that they can trust him. The FCP relies on their innocence and inexperience to trick them into giving up their most valuable asset, after which he fades away to play the field elsewhere.
To understand why they are marketplace predators, it is important to understand what gives men and women value in the MMP. For men, besides their attractiveness or SMV value (as determined by their LAMPS attributes), they also bring something very important to the table: commitment. For women, they bring their attractiveness/SMV value as determined by their youth and beauty, but also their character and virtue is a component as well. Both women and men are looking for as much attractiveness from a spouse as possible, but they are also looking for something completely different from the opposite sex. Women look for commitment from men, both in how much a man has to offer now and how much he will be able to offer in the future. Men look for sexual access and sexual fidelity from women; these are both heavily impacted by the N count of the individual woman. In many respects a woman’s virginity is the most valuable asset she can possess, because nothing else adds as much to her Marriage Market Value (“MMV”).
With this understanding, we can see why the FCR and the FCP are both predators: they both seek to steal what is most valuable from men and women in the MMP. The FCR, in marrying and then divorcing a “Beta” male, destroys his financial standing and thereby reduces his ability to offer commitment in the future. Essentially this cripples the man’s MMV. The FCP, on the other hand, by sleeping with a Christian woman takes her virginity and with it a huge and irreplaceable part of her MMV.
In the past these kinds of predatory practices were not accepted in respectable society. Divorce theft was nigh-well impossible, and cads were not only kept far away from most good women, but faced the prospect of a “shotgun wedding” for their actions. Sadly, neither is punished anymore. Men and women both can get away with behavior that would have been considered reprehensible a century ago. Yet another sign of a market failure.
Supply and Demand
For a while, after I had taken the Red Pill and into the first few months of this blog, I was convinced that the current MMP heavily favored chaste women. I based this opinion on what I believed to be a simple supply and demand situation. They were a limited supply, and the demand for them was much greater than the supply. Surely chaste women would have no trouble finding a husband. But now I appreciate the difficulties that such women, especially chaste Christian women, face in the current MMP.
Predators
For one they have to contend with the dangers of market predators like the FCP. There are Pick-Up Artists (“PUAs”) who specialize in going after virgins, and some of them are very, very good at it. So chaste women have to take steps to protect themselves. And those steps often restrict when and where they go, which reduces their chances of meeting a good, marriage-minded man.
Bad Programming
There is also the fact that most women these days aren’t taught how to find a good man. Like men, they are given awful advice, usually along the lines of how men want strongandindependentgirrrrrrlpower women. All of which will send a good man running far away in the opposite direction. The fine ladies at Girls Being Girls have been trying to offer advice on how to go about finding a young marriage-minded man, and I salute them for their efforts. Of course, my admiration is not entirely selfless, as I could potentially be the beneficiary of their advice to a marriage-minded young woman out there.
Abandoning the Market
But one problem that has become more apparent to me of late, and that represents a significant obstacle to chaste young women, is that many formerly marriage minded men are checking out. The cumulative effect of the divorce culture, unjust laws against men, the inequitable nature of the SMP, Nuclear Rejections and the generally unfeminine nature of most women these days has convinced a lot of men that marriage is not worth pursuing. They are disappearing from the dating/courtship scene, and probably won’t ever return. Twenty years ago my assumption about the supply/demand situation was probably correct. Men back then hadn’t quite wised up to what was going on. But things have changed; thanks to both the internet as well as everyday experiences, more and more men are giving up on marriage. Unfortunately for my Christian sisters out there, many of those men are Christians. Some have become players and PUAs themselves, while others simply go their own way in an effort to avoid as much female contact as possible.
Ultimately their motivations don’t matter. What matters is that the MMP is massively distorted when a large chunk of the remaining male population there just up and leaves. And worryingly enough, this distortion seems to be getting worse and worse. This is yet another example of a massive market failure.
End of Part 1
This post was getting long, so I decided to break it up. I should post part 2 in the next day or so.
Donal Graeme 
Another thing that makes it very difficult for chaste Christian women to find a good Christian man is porn. Most of those good chaste Christian men consume buckets of it while justifying it or even thinking of it as barely sinful. It messes with male beauty expectations. It makes them content in their singleness because they have a virtual harem. And it too, is a robber of something valuable to their future marriage…
Ellie touches on something really big. Of course, my husband is older (40), but he has always had a deep disdain for pornography even as a young single man. It wasn’t as available at the click of a button like it is now, but it was readily available. I remember clearly when Vanessa Williams was dethroned as Miss America. Our high school was awash with Penthouse magazines. Seems like every boy had one in his backpack or knew someone who had one.
The unrealistic beauty standards are nothing new, but they are more prevalent. I’ve always worked to maintain a healthy weight (a cursory reading of my blog makes that obvious), but I’ve never felt any need to be obsessed or unhealthy in my pursuit of fitness.
It isn’t just porn, though. It’s that girls are taught not to value chastity and parents look the other way when it’s clear that relationships are heading in the wrong direction. They are often complicit in their kids’ casting away of sexual restraints.
I am curious about this FCP. How prevalent is this, really? I don’t know that I’ve seen it that often and I’ve been in and around church my whole life.
Ellie,
You are mostly wrong about that.
There are other, very good, reasons why Christian men should avoid porn, but the reasons you list aren’t correct. Porn does not raise a man’s standard of beauty, it does not make them content to be single. It does, however, effect their motivation to go out and seek a mate.
The effects of pornography will fade after just a few months of not consuming it, unlike a woman losing her virginity to an Alpha Cad. Abstaining from pornography will not suddenly make ugly girls beautiful or attractive.
Ellie I agree with your comment. They are not hurrying to find a wife any time soon because they are watching this, and it also puts unrealistic expectations on us that we must look like that.
I am not saying the women are not without fault, there’s a lot of women in the Church who are leading double lives, and when some of the Christian men find out about this they don’t want to get married anymore, understandably they lose hope and become weary about if they will be able to find a decent Christian woman.
But even for some of the Christian men who have had past experience with many beautiful women, it makes me feel inadequate that I will not be able to measure up to these women, in his eyes.
Regarding the “FCP”, this is really bad news for Christian men, because even for the women who don’t succumb to his advances, we have to learn to be more cautious with ALL men, because of men like that. This unfortunately means we may question a man’s motives and intentions with his even if they are pure.
Donal:
Re the Driscoll video (which is actually by a Christian ministry called FamilyLife), I think the intent was for the portrayal of the mom/dad marriage (nagging, fat frump and henpecked layabout) some comic relief. If that was the intent, it fell flat.
I think the approach these Christian ministries take is well intentioned but simply doesn’t work in today’s day because the incentive isn’t appropriate. Christian men are hammered with “you have to man up and marry, man up and work, man up and be a father because it’s the right thing to do”. That approach used to work because such a man had the full authority to do that “right thing” and the full backing of government, police, church, school and, most importantly, his wife.
It doesn’t work now because those incentives are completely gone now. It’s still “the right thing to do”. But even the biblical writers recognized that incentives matter.
My one disagreement with slumlord over at The Social Pathologist when he says essentially that there are a lot of “sh!tty men” out there; and that men should undertake self-improvement for its own sake, is that men just aren’t going to do it unless there’s at least some semblance of a return on the investment. It just isn’t worth the years and years of effort, time and money without there being some promise of an opportunity for a reward later.
Example: I went to 4 years of college and 3 years of grad school. I did it because it was interesting and there was at least an opportunity for a good paying job at the end of it. As it turned out, there was a good job, and the chance to make good money; and I make a very good salary now.
But suppose I was told “You need to go to 7 years of school and earn two post-secondary degrees. You need to do this because it’s the right thing to do and it’s good for you and other people expect it of you. However, you’ll have no opportunities to use the knowledge you get. It will be of no tangible benefit to you. It will only benefit other people – your clients, your parents, and your taskmasters. You will consume 7 years of your young life working your fingers to the bone and suffering all manner of stress and worry, essentially because other people think you should.” Of course I would not have put myself through that punishment for nothing.
This is what Driscoll and FamilyLife are telling men about marriage. Men need to do this because God expects it, but God will punish you anyway by giving you a fat frumpish shrew who won’t have sex with you and who will nag and fitness test you within an inch of your life. Your life exists solely and only to serve others; and there is no enjoyment in it for you at all. Your sole satisfaction will be, and should be, for your wife and kids (who hate you and don’t appreciate you).
Embracing:
You and ellie are incorrect. Ar10308 is correct.
Christian men who use porn know what they’re doing is sinful. But most of them use it because they have no other sexual release. They use it because they’ve tried to date within the church and are rejected over and over again, and they have no other alternatives.
Porn does not raise male standards for women. Men do not expect their women to look or act like porn stars. Porn does not make men content to be single. Men who use porn do so because they have learned, the hard way and painfully, that they have no other alternatives. They don’t want to use it but do so because the women have made it clear they don’t want those men.
Once again, this points up that most women simply do not understand the male sex drive. Especially in a young man, if that drive is not satisfied, it literally sends him into madness. Men need sex. Sex is a need. A NEED.
“I am curious about this FCP. How prevalent is this, really? I don’t know that I’ve seen it that often and I’ve been in and around church my whole life.”
Yeah, my guess is these are rare, but growing in number. I think they were rare when you and I were growing up, but are becoming more numerous now. My sense is FCPs fly under the radar and are pretty good at doing so.
The more common thing in my experience are the hot Christian girls rejecting all the men they attend church with, but instead have sex with the nonChristian hot men (so as to avoid detection and rumors in church) or with men at church camp (who are from out of town and won’t damage her pristine squeaky clean Good Christian Girl reputation).
I’ll second what ar10308 said. Men resort to porn when they can’t get a woman (or when the woman they have doesn’t make herself available enough). When I used to watch porn, if a girl had called me in the middle of it and invited me over, I never would have said, “Nah, I’m good here.” Real girl is always better than imaginary girl, no matter how hot imaginary girl is. I think very few men are actually “content” with porn as the extent of their sex life, though some who have failed utterly in the real-life sexual market may eventually convince themselves they are.
Porn does have an effect on the way a man responds to stimuli, because that part of our brain doesn’t really distinguish between reality and imagination, so images on the screen are real for it in a way. But ridding yourself of it does realign the stimuli pretty quickly. I’m not saying it’s not harmful, and it’s most definitely sinful, but it doesn’t typically cause long-term problems in the way that promiscuity does for a woman, because a man doesn’t bond that way. (I said “typically” there to leave open the possibility that some people with addictive personalities may become truly attached to it in that sense.) Most men can leave it behind and be content with a real woman, just as most women can read romance porn and still be content with a good man even though he doesn’t look like Fabio and isn’t a glittery vampire.
Perhaps you are right that that is what makes them use porn in the first place, I understand that.
But do you not think that porn could act as a substitute to the need for sex, and so men decide they are fine without a wife as porn is meeting their needs?
“The effects of pornography will fade after just a few months of not consuming it, unlike a woman losing her virginity to an Alpha Cad.” I respectfully disagree. Sexual tastes are cultivated through porn. Sexual images are stored. Sexual seductiveness expectations are made. Wives then have to compete with this. You simply have no idea how big of a problem this is in Christian marriage AR, because you do not want to see the destructiveness. I know many, many Christian wives who are torn over this; their husbands think it is barely sinful because they are not actually touching anyone real. I know several wives whose husbands are so into porn that they are barely know their wives exist as sexual beings. It is not a tiny problem. Any sexuality outside marriage in any form whatsoever is destructive. Porn does not get a free pass. With any sexual sin, the consequences are felt by both spouses.
But do you not think that porn could act as a substitute to the need for sex, and so men decide they are fine without a wife as porn is meeting their needs?
I actually know a guy who says exactly this, EOF. So yes, it can happen. I suspect it’s not very common (because real is always better than substitutes) but it does happen.
That comment was to Deti.
Slightly off topic, but I also I have heard of situations in troubled marriages where the husband prefers to watch porn and doesn’t have sex with his wife. I’ve heard of this situation more than once, and it made me think that men prefer the women in porn. And I guess I could understand why it was happening to a degree if the women in question didn’t take care of their physical appearance and also want to have sex with their husbands, but that hasn’t been the case.
I think maybe it has something to do with the type of porn, maybe they are seeing something in the porn that they wouldn’t want to do to their wives. And that’s really a big problem, and a common one here, it is like this odd complex that allows men to see all the other “bad” women in this sexual way, but not their own wives. I don’t know if it’s common over there, but here it seems to be pretty normal. It’s sad for the husband and the wife.
Right. I haven’t seen the FCP myself, but then I don’t go to a Churchian church, where I assume they mainly ply their trade. The more common phenomenon I see is what you describe: the good church girl who rejects the single guys at church (who, to be fair, are quite frequently boring because they’re following the blue-pill, nice-guy, momma’s-boy script to the letter), and instead hooks up (sexually or dating chastely) with a pagan or fallen-away guy. This has some major advantages:
As a non-church-goer, he’s by definition a rule-breaker and risk-taker, which automatically makes him more attractive to her (even if #1 on her list of desirable traits is “must be Christian”).
She gets to be a missionary, bringing him into the church. This gets her attention and praise from others in the church and makes her look sacrificial and caring. She gets to do the “I see something in him that no one else sees” thing that girls love to do, because it makes them seem more perceptive and sensitive than anyone else.
As the one who is already part of the church, bringing the other in from outside, she gets to be his spiritual leader, teaching him how to pray and what to believe. This gives her an advantage going into marriage, and reduces the chance that he’ll try to take over as the head of the family later. The guys already at church might have some ideas about headship that might be fine for other, weaker girls, but she doesn’t need any of that.
If it doesn’t work out, she has a built-in excuse — he wouldn’t convert — and he’s not still there in the church causing awkwardness. She just stops bringing him one week, and she gets to tell her own side of what happened without contradiction.
Cail, I didn’t read your reply before posting so I’d like to address it… stimuli may align quickly within a man (I assume you are talking about dopamine levels), but expectations don’t. This is the problem with premarital sex of any sort. It is best when it is just the husband and wife figuring out what works for them together without the influence of other women’s (or man’s) sexuality in the marriage bed. His impression of her sexuality is judged by his what other women have offered him. There is a small but significant group of Christian wives who want their husband’s sexual attention but who never measure up and cannot compete with porn- and who are denied. These same husbands thought that they would be able to say no to porn when married- that lust would not be able to compete with steady fun sex… but porn appeals to selfishness. And the sex their wives offer just simply does not fill the appetite they have developed.
Married men consume as much porn as single guys. Maybe more. Men lie to themselves if they think that men only resort to porn if… the woman… it is the original excuse used in the garden of eden.
Why is it that men who spend their time dreaming about the world’s most beautiful 18 year olds think that it will not affect their appreciation for their really normal and generally much uglier wives? You develop an appetite for extreme beauty…. it is like eating at 5-star restaurants all the time and then going home to potato and turnips. I know for a fact that it has an effect- my husband completely changed when he stopped the porn. It was like another man- less selfish, more appreciation, more gentleness.
Ellie,
“I respectfully disagree. Sexual tastes are cultivated through porn. Sexual images are stored. Sexual seductiveness expectations are made. Wives then have to compete with this. You simply have no idea how big of a problem this is in Christian marriage AR, because you do not want to see the destructiveness. I know many, many Christian wives who are torn over this; their husbands think it is barely sinful because they are not actually touching anyone real. I know several wives whose husbands are so into porn that they are barely know their wives exist as sexual beings.
You are wrong. And if you are only getting the wife’s story, which is severely Hamsterised, so you aren’t getting the full story. They don’t tell you, maybe because they don’t realize, what they did to damage their husband’s sexual ego, which is much more fragile than women realize.
What did those wives do or NOT DO in order turn their husbands away from them? How many times did they refuse their husband’s sexual advances? Did they decide that oral sex was somehow demeaning to them (who is supposed to be submissive and obedient)? WHO did they have sex with before marriage that was more attractive than their husband, which caused them to reject their husband or make them refuse to do certain things with their husband (and worse, she did them WITH the man who wasn’t her husband), because their husband isn’t as attractive?
Ellie,
You don’t get to tell men why they do what they do. You haven’t the experience or ANY authority on the matter.
Deti and ar10308 are correct. As deti said, women simply don’t understand the male sex drive.
The male sex drive is exactly like being hungry. Sure, you can distract yourself from it while you’re working or doing other activities, but it constantly naws at the core of your being like a deep unsatisfied hunger that gets worse and worse the more you delay it. The reason why men lust and fall into the trap of either porn or other outlets like that is because it is a way to satisfy that hunger.
This is why the church is so foolish. A man starts to have these constant hunger pangs for sex when he enter puberty at 12 or 13 years of age. And the average age of marrige for men is now 28. 15 years of constant nawing hunger. Like that’s going to work out well…
It has nothing to do with “unrealistic standards of beauty” that women delude themselves into thinking there are.
As we’ve discussed before, men have fairly wide attraction filters. If you have body type there are men who like that. There are even men who are extremely attracted to obese women, though that doesn’t represent the majority. Men are looking for someone who is attractive *to them*, and have a personality of a keeper.
Throw up a picture of a model on facebook, and there’s going to be tons of guys saying she’s too thin. Throw up a picture of an athletic woman on facebook, there’s going to be tons of men who is saying she doesn’t have enough fat or is too muscular. These men speak the truth for what they find most attractive. The parody of a guy in a basement saying a model’s elbows are too pointy is just that — a parody. Yet, women seem to think of that is truth.
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/210-would-not-bang
All men know that models in magazines are airbrushed. We don’t expect you to look like that. We do expect you to take care of your body and appearance within reason; we don’t expect perfection. The only people who are placing unrealistic standards of beauty on women are other women.
That’s putting the cart before the horse. First the man doesn’t have sex with his wife. Maybe she refuses fairly often. Maybe she uses sex as a weapon or a bribe, and he’s sick of it. Maybe one of them got fat and gross, and the other can’t stomach it anymore. Maybe she’s terrible in bed — I don’t mean she fails to meet porn-star standards, but that she just lies there and complains and tells him to hurry up. Maybe they just hate each other, and are staying together for the children.
For whatever reason, the sex slows down or dries up altogether and doesn’t meet his needs anymore, so then he resorts to porn. Now at that point, after having been beaten down by the lack of sex and having given in to his urges in a way he’s not proud of (no man feels good about himself after watching porn), he may not be in a big hurry to give it up and go back to a disappointing sex life just because the wife doesn’t like the alternative. He’s like a guy who started stopping at McDonald’s every day for lunch because his wife refused to cook, and then one day she tells him she doesn’t think he should eat fast food anymore because it’s bad for him and wasting their money. Well, yeah, that’s true, but how quickly can he trust that she’s going to happily cook all his meals, after she refused before? Maybe she’ll cook like crazy for a week, and then taper off again. He doesn’t know, but he has reason to be hesitant about giving up his other outlet.
Note that I’m not denying all the problems that porn causes once it becomes a habit. It’s a very bad thing. But the vast majority of women who are complaining online that their husbands prefer porn to sex aren’t innocent victims. It’s not like they were properly sexing up their husbands every night, showing some enthusiasm and ingenuity, and then one day the guy said, “No thanks, I’m just gonna go watch some people screw instead.” I’m not saying that never happens; it probably does in some cases where the man has some sort of mental illness from past abuse or something. But that’s not the norm. The norm is what all the men in this thread are telling you, if you listen to them: men don’t prefer porn to sex; they resort to porn when sex is unavailable or not worth the cost.
AR, I will use myself as an example – the answer to each of your questions is no- I never said no, never denied him anything, tried to be respectful, was into him, virgin when married, took good care of my appearance, and it made absolutely no difference. None. It was his sin, and I bore no responsibility for it- it started long before he met me. Just because we got married, I did not suddenly become the cause of it. No one causes another to sin- we simply do not have that power. We can tempt others to sin by our sinfulness. There are wives who are blameless whose husbands are choosing porn. Men would like to believe otherwise because they think it justifies their sin.
“You develop an appetite for extreme beauty…. it is like eating at 5-star restaurants all the time and then going home to potato and turnips.”
Why isn’t a Christian wife willing to offer her husband more than potatoes and turnips? Why should a man even want a wife if all he’ll get is potatoes and turnips? What is the point of a Helpmate that won’t help or mate?
“I know for a fact that it has an effect- my husband completely changed when he stopped the porn. It was like another man- less selfish, more appreciation, more gentleness.”
Boom. There you go. Perfect example of a few months away from porn changing the behavior of a man.
It is 100% different than a wife refusing a husband certain things because he isn’t attractive enough to deserve them, unlike her previous lovers she did them for.
@ EOF:
“Slightly off topic, but I also I have heard of situations in troubled marriages where the husband prefers to watch porn and doesn’t have sex with his wife.”
In those situations, I will bet the farm that nearly 100 percent of the time, the husband resorted to porn because the wife has repeatedly, firmly, consistently and heartlessly rejected his sexual advances, and has made it very, very clear she does not want to sleep with him.
Men will take duty sex, but they don’t really like it. They want to sleep with a woman who wants to sleep with them.
The main allure of porn is the woman is sexually available, and is (or at least acts like) she is into the sex and wants the sex.
Ellie,
How old was he when you married?
There is an awful lot of projection taking place here. The truth is that there are situations where the wife bears greater culpability, and others where the husband bears greater culpability.
There are far too many women who let themselves go and/or are sexually unavailable to their husbands, creating a moral hazard. Conversely, it is utter foolishness to suggest that every married man who engages in porn does so because of something his wife did or did not do.
Re unrealistic beauty expectations
When a man marries a woman in her prime and they have a relatively smooth marriage with a decent sex life over the duration, wife goggles goes a long way to diminish the effects of youth culture on their relationship. As my husband and I married when we were quite young, I don’t know how it works when a man and woman marry in their 30’s.
I imagine if they have both been chaste up until the marriage, it’s the same as it was for us. But how common is that?
It just occurred to me that at one point or another I’ve written a post somewhere on these topics:
http://traditionalchristianity.wordpress.com/2013/04/19/its-you-not-him-its-not-you-its-him/
@ Cail
Exactly. God gave men logic, and we use it for discernment. Everything is weighed at a cost. This is what Jesus talks about in Luke 14 about weighing the cost both as being a Christian but as an analogy to everything in life.
This is why many men are MGTOW now. Marriage is not worth the investment for them.
If a man is not willing to have sex with his wife over images, then there is without a doubt something wrong in the marriage to where he doesn’t even want to associate with the wife. There are only 2 possibilities which Cail sort of alluded to:
1. He is not attracted to her anymore. Typically, the reason for this is she has become fat.
2. He doesn’t want to associate with her because she is unsubmissive and unrespectful. This can be in the form of nagging, weaponizing sex, not wanting sex, or whatever. If she has a toxic personality he is going to want to avoid her.
I am going to bow out of the conversation because this is really not a good thing for me to be thinking about anymore. All I can say is that my personal experience contradicts what the men are saying. For women who are pretty ordinary looking, the effect is worse. (And I weighed 125# at the time this was all going on- but otherwise am rather plain). A man grooms his tastes… when his budget doesn’t fit, he may settle for a plain girl, but the lack of appreciation for what he has can soon become evident. Thankfulness is something that must be cultivated- in both men and women. How can you be thankful, truly, deeply thankful if what you have spent your time dreaming about is 100x better? In the end, Christian women- this applies to you too- romance books do the same mind trick.
“Perfect example of a few months away from porn changing the behavior of a man.”
I’m sorry- just read this… no- it was more like 2 years.
What has been fairly consistently observed in the Manosphere is that the happily married men stay married and have a lot of sex with their wife. These men could certainly get sex from other women, but they choose not to. Now, if these high-drive, attractive men with options can stay sexually satisfied only with their wife, why wouldn’t an average Christian Beta be able to do the same?
There are even women in the Manosphere who admit that their husband has had several full-blown affairs, but say that they have stopped once they, their wives, stepped up their game.
Ellie:
“AR, I will use myself as an example – the answer to each of your questions is no- I never said no, never denied him anything, tried to be respectful, was into him, virgin when married, took good care of my appearance, and it made absolutely no difference. None. It was his sin”
Ellie, I’ll take at face value that that’s your experience. But I believe it’s a minority experience.
For every virgin woman who becomes a sexual athlete, there are 1000 men who marry women they love, the sex dries up immediately after marriage, she had premarital sex with hot alpha men for whom she was willing to do anything, the sex with those men was sooooo hot and she fantasizes about it; she consistently refuses sex or makes it clear she hates sex with him by telling him to “hurry up and let’s get it over with”; leaps up from the bed to expel the icky beta semen that was just ejaculated into her; and refuses oral sex because “it’s yucky” (but gave her premarital alpha lovers the BJs of a lifetime).
Cail Corishev, thank you for answering my comment.
I feel a little bad because I’m taking this off topic from Donal’s post, sorry Donal.
But I have to say this, it’s something that I see or hear ALL the time and it’s really upsetting to me. I don’t know who is at fault, if it is the culture, or wrong teachings in the Church, I am unsure. If a man turns to porn or is unfaithful because his wife is unwilling to submit to him, if she doesn’t take care of her appearance, if she is unwilling to submit to him sexually, then it is understandable. I’m not saying it’s correct, but from considering human nature it is of no surprise that some men react in this way, because the wife is sinning in her actions in the first place. Of course it would be nice if the man resisted temptations, but this is denying our very human nature, I have no illusions about the sex drive of men, I know that men need sex, this is why they should marry and this is why the wife should submit.
My point is that I know of men who cannot view their wives in this way. They have sex with their wives only to pro-create, and then they are neglecting their own needs, so they seek to fulfill them elsewhere. These men view all the good Christian women like angels, who they cannot defile or corrupt, and all the other women as something less than favorable. The wives cook and clean and take care of how they look and their husbands treat them very well, they just don’t have sex with them often. I heard of this many, many times from other women, who complain that their husbands don’t touch them but go with prostitutes and watch porn instead. And it’s also personal to me because I was interested in a man before, for marriage and he told me he “didn’t know how he was going to bring himself to touch me because I am like an angel”. It was obviously disturbing. It’s deeply upsetting because it is disregarding that women also want to have sex in their life, and when they marry of course they expect it, and if a woman is ready to submit to her husband and make sure she stays looking her best for him it’s sad that he has views that cause him to be unable to view her in a sexual way also. Like I said, this may be purely a cultural phenomenon that doesn’t occur over there, I think it is the result of false teachings in the Church.
@ Ellie
Sorry, but you’re incorrect. The responsibility you bear is that you married him without having properly vetted him.
This is why Christians are commanded not to be unequally yoked because it will be a very hard life.
That said, there are some wives that are blameless when their husbands choose sin. See: Abigail and David for an example from the Bible as well.
However, given the state of western culture these seem to be exceptions. There is fault on both sides in most cases; the wife is unrespectful and unsubmissive and the husband chooses to lust.
Polls show that the average married couple has sex once a week. That means about half are having it even less often than that (I know mean and median aren’t the same thing, but it’s close enough for the point).
This may come as a surprise to many women, including married women who think their husbands are satisfied, but that’s not often enough. Once a week isn’t nearly often enough. I’m in my 40s, and if I were married, I’d want it at least nightly. At 20, morning and night was a good start. Talking to other guys, I’m convinced I’m not some kind of sex machine; that’s pretty much normal. Unless a guy has unusually low libido, his need for sex is at least daily, but daily would satisfy him.
But you have millions of women out there who are throwing their husbands a good time on Sunday afternoon and maybe a quickie one day during the week, and they think they’re doing their duty because that’s twice as often as the average and hubby never complains. Then they can’t figure out why they find porn on his computer. Well, it’s because he was starving, to use the hunger analogy, but because of what he’s been taught about being ashamed of his needs and never, ever pressing for sex, he never told her how hungry he was.
Is that partly men’s fault for letting ourselves be silenced that way, and letting women think once a week on her terms is acceptable? Maybe so. But that’s the reality of the situation now: most married men are starving for sex, and porn these days is a less risky, less costly outlet than affairs or prostitutes, so that’s where most turn (to tie this back to the original market concept, which applies here too).
EOF,
“I heard of this many, many times from other women, who complain that their husbands don’t touch them but go with prostitutes and watch porn instead. And it’s also personal to me because I was interested in a man before, for marriage and he told me he “didn’t know how he was going to bring himself to touch me because I am like an angel”. It was obviously disturbing.”
Interesting. Good thing you avoided that one.
This might be some effect of White Knighting. Wanting to keep his wife pure in his mind, so he degrades other women.
This could also have something to do with regards to not wanting to put his wife into proper submission, which would establish himself as the leader.
Just out of curiosity, what have these women tried to do in order to seduce their husband?
“I heard of this many, many times from other women, who complain that their husbands don’t touch them but go with prostitutes and watch porn instead.”
That’s only half the story, and as ar10308 said before, probably heavily hamsterized. Did those women take care of themselves physically? Keep their attractiveness up? Keep from getting fat? Act submissively and respectfully to their husbands? I’d be willing to bet those wives were falling down somewhere in there.
“And it’s also personal to me because I was interested in a man before, for marriage and he told me he “didn’t know how he was going to bring himself to touch me because I am like an angel”.”
One of two things there:
(1) the man was feeding you a line because it was what he thought you would want to hear and was trying to get you into bed with it.
(2) The man really believed this and told you that because he thought you would never want sex. He wanted to convince you his attraction to you was loftier and more noble than sexual attraction. Pure pedestalization of the absolute highest order.
Ellie and Elspeth,
Porn is harmful in its own right, true, but realize that it is more of a symptom of other failures than a root cause. You won’t make much headway attacking it, apart from opposing general lasciviousness and moral decay. Specific thoughts to keep in mind:
“[Porn] makes [Christian men] content in their singleness…” Um, no. Men in general will not be content with a virtual sexual partner, much less Christian men, who should recognize the broader implications. Porn cannot provide much value as compared to a decent woman. It is an immoral and inadequate coping mechanism, at best, but not a real substitute, at all.
“The unrealistic beauty standards are nothing new…” Again, this assumes that a respectable [Christian] man will be more inclined toward a remote, surgically altered contortionist with a ridiculous voice over, than a warm, virtuous woman, purring in his arms. Um, again, no.
Porn does not distort the social mating ritual as much as demonstrate that it is thoroughly broken. Don’t waste time demonizing porn (already done) when the real damage is occurring elsewhere. Our rotten culture will gladly see you distracted. Don’t fall for it. You touched on the real problem, but need to adjust the perspective as follows:
“They [We] are often complicit in their [our] kids’ casting away of sexual restraints.”
This hurts, I know. It focuses the battle right at me [and you] in a very uncomfortable fashion. I have to choose my battles wisely or risk being spread too thinly, so I don’t choose a convenient enemy like porn, upon which to vent my righteous anger and frustration. I keep refocusing my efforts on training my kids and pressing my moral judgment outward to encompass their potential suitors and their families and any Christian willing to listen. It’s a tough job.
My insistence on proper social interaction makes me uncomfortable in this era of, “You have no right to judge.” Nonsense. I have learned to reply, much to my kids’ discomfort, that, “Yes, I do have a right, and an obligation. You can accept my interference in your life or join the ruin all around you. Some choice.”
I could sit at home keeping watch, ensuring that no pornography enters my home, feeling content that I’m doing my duty. Unfortunately, from such a comfortable vantage point, I would still see the sewage rolling up to my front door. I recommend going out to meet the real problem head on.
I can’t effectively govern what happens in solitary corners, but I can enforce proper social restraint, so far as it involves my own offspring.
Junior may have a dirty magazine under his bed, but he won’t drive up to my house, honk the horn and then expect my daughter to come running out to meet him, ready to speed away to points unknown. I will corner him, question his plans and intents, and do the same with my own kids. I insist on meeting their families and knowing that someone responsible is chaperoning their activities.
You guessed it, the kids hate me for getting in the way of their freewheeling fun, but so what? I am not here to be their friend; I am their parent, faced with a cesspool of ruin. I have to choose my battles wisely or I will lose the fight.
Most times, after the shock of meeting such a dinosaur, people warm up to me and appreciate my involvement. They see it as a sign of respect that I want to know them and be involved. This is a better use of my time, shining a light on sloppy social behavior, while shielding my kids from predators and trying to weave society back together.
More kids suffer due to inadequate daily supervision than from any dirty magazines hidden under the bed.
One woman told me she was desperate after 1 year without her husband wanting her so she went to him with exotic lingerie but it didn’t work.
He told her you know I don’t like you to dress in these things, he said some other worse things that upset her but I feel uncomfortable to repeat them.
I don’t think it is the case that they don’t want submissive wives, they expect submissive wives. I think it is more that they want to keep their wives “pure”.
@ Cail:
There really are women married to men with low sex drives. These women are a distinct minority, and their plight is often overlooked, but they exist. And not all of them are fat or shrewish.
http://traditionalchristianity.wordpress.com/2013/06/10/getting-over-not-getting-any/
As for the original topic, a lot of these issues are why people (including Christians) aren’t meeting up and getting together. Sexual distractions largely caused by the emergence of the SMV over the MMV.
Athol Kay just wrote some very good advice to men about using porn while being married. http://marriedmansexlife.com/2013/08/high-fructose-porn-syrup/
“What did those wives do or NOT DO in order turn their husbands away from them? How many times did they refuse their husband’s sexual advances?” -ar10308
This. This. This.
As for porn effecting male beauty standards there was actually recently a study done that disproves this. I can’t find it, though. Basically men do not have the same rigid standards of beauty towards women that women do of themselves regardless of porn or the media. Men are pretty much okay with saggier boobs, stretch-marks, and a bit of extra meat, etc. Women are projecting in this, thinking that because *we* have issues reconciling our bodies with that of porn stars and models that men must be judging us the same way. But, ladies, let’s remember that men are far more logical in general and far less concerned with the “little details” when they are in the mood.
“Sexual tastes are cultivated through porn. Sexual images are stored. Sexual seductiveness expectations are made. Wives then have to compete with this.” -Ellie
This isn’t exactly true. Sexual tastes are supported by porn meaning a man or woman has a taste for something and they find porn that satisfies that. If porn cultivated sexual tastes it could turn a person gay or make men like something they don’t. It simply does not have that power. As for wives having to compete- I have watched quite a bit of porn. If it’s “impossible” for a wife to compete with being into it and giving her husband a show she simply isn’t trying hard enough at all. Basically women don’t want to have to try to please their men so they come up with whatever excuse they can. “I can’t compete with that.” Oh, but yes you can. First of all you already come out ahead because you’re actually physically there.
Ellie, I’ve tried to be clear that there are always exceptions. You may have married a guy who had some deep-seated issues you weren’t aware of, and there was nothing you could do to fix that. I’ll take your word for it, and that would be truly unfortunate. But try to understand that your personal experience isn’t everyone’s, and may actually be quite rare. Also, let me be clear that we’re not trying to justify anything; we’re trying to explain it. A man is never justified in using porn, because it’s a sin. But there are many things that married people can do to help each other avoid sin.
I would say that, if a woman marries a man who doesn’t appear to have any sexual hangups and is clearly attracted to her, and she stays approximately as fit as she was when they met with age-appropriate adjustments, and she enthusiastically sexes him up every night, the chance that he’s going to develop a porn habit is about as good as the chance that he will sleep with her uglier sister who lives next door.
Could it happen? Absolutely, because sin exists, and some guys might just get a thrill from the taboo nature of it or whatever, and bang the ugly sister for no explainable reason. But it’s not likely, because he’s not going to be that hungry, and he’d be taking a huge risk that he might lose the satisfying sex life he already has.
On the other hand, if the wife has put on 30 pounds, started wearing sweats all the time, and has cut him back to once a week, then the uglier sister isn’t going to look as ugly anymore. Would he be justified in turning to her? No. But it would still be a consequence of the lack of sex in his marriage. He would be wrong for the adultery, and his wife would be wrong for withholding the marital debt.
Again, I’m not saying this was your situation. I’m talking about the norm here, where sex has dwindled over time to weekly or less, and the husband has a porn habit, and the wife can’t figure out why.
Ok, I see what you are saying now. You are providing more insight than refused wives or wives with husbands who delve into porn usually provide. Most of the time, we never hear what the husbands in these situations have to say on the matter.
This may be a culture difference, but it may not be. Is the idea of “Pure” very closely connected to motherhood in your area? If so, I would say that it is due to the historical influence of the Church and the veneration of Mary, Mother of Christ. Does this describe the culture at all?
I’ve heard of the Madonna-Whore Complex, however it never made sense to me since I wasn’t raised Catholic. I also would have them be the same person, a very sexual wife in private with me her husband but have her be pure and chaste in public.
Edit:
“Most of the time, we never hear what the husbands in these situations have to say on the matter, at least aside from being refused by the wife.”
“One woman told me she was desperate after 1 year without her husband wanting her so she went to him with exotic lingerie but it didn’t work.
He told her you know I don’t like you to dress in these things” -EOF
The problem with retellings like this is that they are so low on the details and meant to side with the woman that you don’t really know what was going on. I have had women say things like this to me and I press them: “What were you wearing? Does he like *that particular* style on you or was it something *you* found appealing? Did you approach him with the idea that he *should* want you or with the aim to please?” Most of the time, though to be fair not all, the woman put on a display *she* found attractive and didn’t think of what *her husband* wanted out of it. He wasn’t aroused and rejected her and she took to the classic “I’m trying everything, this is his fault!” route to justify her lack of attention and care to her husband. I can’t blame her, though. I can’t say she is being selfish and unreasonable, full stop, because she is simply doing what she has been told to do to please her man. This has been so ingrained in women, that we know what is best and that men are just along for the ride, that even the most submissive of wives fall prey to it more often than not, *especially* when it comes to sex. “He should want you” is something we hear all of the time and we feel it is our *right* as wives to be wanted. It’s not, though. He is under no obligation to *want* us. It is impossible for him to make himself want his wife.
This is not to say it is always the wife’s fault, of course, but we wives and we friends of wives need to be willing to be far more objective about this than we actually are.
Absolutely. If the man has low libido, perhaps for some medical reason, or no interest in sex with women, it probably doesn’t matter how hot or fun his wife is.
However, if I’m giving advice to wives whose husbands seem to prefer porn, the best advice I can give is, “Put on some lingerie, go straddle him, take his d— in your hand, and tell him to turn the computer off. Repeat application nightly until condition improves.”
Now, if she does that for a few weeks, and he still seems like he’d rather she left him to his videos and Rosie Palmer, then maybe he has a real problem like Ellie’s husband and they need to look into that. But for most women who honestly want their husbands’ sexual attention back — as opposed to those who are just grossed out and want him to be a eunuch, and those who are preparing a justification for divorce — I think that prescription would fix the problem. Put aside the justifiable outrage and disgust over what he’s doing, and go show him he has better right there at home.
On the other hand, I get the feeling that on these websites where women commiserate with each other about their husbands’ porn addiction, that advice is nowhere to be found. It seems like it’s all about shaming the man and trying to get him to give up porn, go through some therapy, come crawling to his wife, and then, maybe he’ll get rewarded with some grudging sex.
That’s like trying to get someone to give up candy by suggesting that he fast for a week. It’ll work a lot better if you give him something healthy and tasty to eat instead.
“There really are women married to men with low sex drives. These women are a distinct minority, and their plight is often overlooked, but they exist. And not all of them are fat or shrewish.”
I get that. This is going to come off as sounding heartless and uncaring, but frankly, I don’t consider that to be a significant problem contributing to much of the market failure we see. Those women should have vetted their husbands more carefully and married men with more compatible sex drives. And don’t tell me they couldn’t do that, because I don’t believe it for one minute. Young women of marriageable age are the rock stars of both the SMP and the MMP. Their power in both marketplaces is immense and literally unmatched by all but the very top men.
A young woman is literally by definition a woman with options. I saw over at Cail’s place that there are polls showing that 70% of all women admit to having P in V sex by age 19. That means women of even below average attractiveness can at least get a man for sex. If she can get a man for sex with an SMV of 3, she can pull her SMV up to a 4 or even 5 and extract commitment from a guy of equal or even a little higher value.
I don’t believe for one single, solitary minute that any girl who puts her mind to it can’t snag a good, kind, sexually compatible man for marriage. Do. Not. Believe. It. For. One. Second.
Ar10308 Yes purity is very closely connected to motherhood among Church goers. Women can end up just feeling only like the “mother” type, and completely nonsexual and unattractive. When men who are not devout approach women and make it obvious they find them attractive, it can be like a shock for a Church-going woman, because all her life she has only ever felt the “bad girls” can be sexually attractive, and she is the good girl for the kitchen. We need to learn to be comfortable to combine both, for a wife to be both to her husband. I even considered to write a post about this, but I felt uncomfortable speaking so openly about it, certain men will see this and think if a woman admits she has sexual desire she is like a harlot. In a culture that is very much conservative, which even though times are changing and many are changing with the times, Church goers are still generally very conservative. I think this problems arises in marriage when the husband feels he must carry that conservatism into the bedroom also. And the Christian wife is this good girl who is put on a pedestal which denies her sexual needs, and all the other women are not. This is from my point of view only from my own experience with how the men from Church treat me, and how some of the wives just close their eyes to their husband’s extra-marital affairs.
That’s pretty much it. It’s not a Catholic thing; that’s just where the word Madonna comes from. But it basically means that a man wants a good and pure virgin, but wants her to fulfill all his nasty desires in the bedroom. Feminists insist that this isn’t possible, that a girl can only be a “whore” in the bedroom if she’s accumulated lots of experience, so that justifies serial monogamy, among other things. You’re supposed to want your wife to have had at least a few lovers, so she’ll know how to please you. They don’t consider the possibility that a couple can teach each other what they like and develop plenty of experience without additional partners.
I hope the men who have this complex can get help with it by the way, it’s damaging for them too