In looking at the topic of single men and Christian marriage, the next item that caught my eye actually is from a secular dating site called YourTango, which is a site that is described as (take it for what it’s worth):
YourTango is a digital media company dedicated to love and relationships. As the thinking woman’s media brand, we are leading the conversation that is closest to women’s hearts.
The particular page at YourTango serves to address the popular meme of Churchianity to blame men for not seeking women to marry (or “man-up and marry the sluts” as you’ll see in the manosphere). These man-up rants have been brought up before, but the YourTango page brings up interesting points. It’s been stated in several way, but the basic theme is there.
The choice of marriage is up to the man, the man isn’t making the choice to marry for reasons that should be painfully obvious but aren’t, and he fully has the right to not marry out of his own wisdom and discernment.
This Focus On The Family article makes the point a different way, which while softer in tone is still equivalent to the “man-up” messages of Mark Driscoll, Kevin DeYoung, Bill Bennett and the like:
But many Christian men, Joel and Brian suggest, don’t take the initiative to find a wife.
“A common complaint I hear from single Christian women is that Christian men don’t do anything,” Joel says.
. . .
In short, both men agree that guys should get busy and initiate!
It keeps being repeatedly obvious as to why Christian men aren’t seeking single Christian women, but the answers aren’t being sought by the Churchian proctors (even when they’re right in front of them). The YourTango article is different than most in Churchianity because it seeks to answer the question in some way. The article asks “Why Won’t Christian Men Date Women Who Go To Their Church?”, and brings some truth to the table. This initial quote says it all:
“I’ve only gone out with a couple of girls at church, and I won’t do it anymore,” says Luke*, a 40-year-old Christian man living in Southern California. “At this point, I’m happily resigned to not ask a girl out at church ever again.”
Many (I’m sure) have taken the red-pill and gone MGTOW. Others however, are seeking outside of the church, maybe for women of the same values, but likely not. Given the existence of the man-up rants, the women are most certainly noticing, for reasons of reality or hypergamy:
When I was living in New York City, one of my female friends dropped a rather pointed allegation about the Christian male population: “They’re not pursuing us,” she said. “We’re all single, yet no one is being asked out. The men need to step it up.”
But as I mentioned, the author is seeking answers and speaking some truth. She begins:
They do want marriage. Their frustration with pursuing women at church has little to do with laziness, or indifference about dating. All the men I talked to were searching for love.
The fact is, most single Christian men really want to be married if the conditions are right. The problem is that they mostly aren’t. There are several factors that are unique to church situations, but also unique to what marriage has become.
Unique to church situations are the closed environment and the potential for gossip and the painting of the reputation of the man involved, especially when it comes to the white-knight defensiveness of the older men (some summarized into brackets):
The men from Bel Air Presbyterian agreed, and said they never want to be seen as “that guy”—the one who goes to church to prey on women.
If I find it doesn’t work out with that girl, then I can’t ask out any of the rest of [her friends] because they’re all off-limits.
[T]he men in New York complained of the potential drama and gossip that can occur when people either date or break up within their small church. Rather than voluntarily placing themselves in the center of it all, they learned over the years to avoid the gossip mill by dating women elsewhere.
To continue (can fit in the block of text above, but a different page):
“It’s not appropriate in a Christian environment for us to be human.”
…
The mere idea of flirting with someone, or of asking a girl for her number within the confines of the church walls was too “shady” of a prospect for them to even consider.
…
“It’s not guilt,” Mark answered, “it’s fear. There’s the fear of not only being rejected as a man, but shunned as an inappropriate Christian.”
The Churchian environment has in its place a huge magnifying glass on what people do, especially when it comes to dating situations. People do want to appear “Christian”. As well, they don’t want the gossip and drama that inevitably comes when trying to start a relationship with a woman. This is even without considering the nuclear rejection, which can be the death sentence for a man’s reputation in a Churchian environment. I’ve heard stories of tongues wagging even when a single man dares to talk to a single woman in any way. There’s always the other factors which are similar to the reasons why it’s not wise to date women in the workplace, which are equally applicable to those who are in steady church situations. It’s just not a smart thing to do.
Given the attitudes of people today, why is it that modern women realize that men are not interested in them, and then search for the flaw in the men to explain this? Why is it that the Churchian proctors can’t address what is really going on with dating instead of blaming the men everything, including scapegoating them for the problems the Churchian proctors created themselves?
When Churchian women are increasingly nothing more than entitlement princesses who believe that they are entitled to a husband, yet have nothing to offer a man other than anger and bitterness, and is unfit for Godly marriage is it any wonder why men don’t marry? And if these women and their Churchian backers throw up barriers and annoyances which discourage dating, is it any wonder that men don’t want anything to do with even trying to find a woman to marry under those conditions?
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