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There can be a number of reasons guys won’t ask a girl out.
What’s the number #1 reason? The fear of rejection.
There’s a rejection scale in every guy’s mind. Some guys only need to get to a 51% chance in their mind that she’ll say yes, and they will pull the trigger. However, most guys I talk to need to get to a point where they are 99% sure she’ll say yes before they put themselves out there and ask a girl out.
Now there are a few guys that don’t even have a rejection meter. These are the guys who see it as a “numbers game,” and they can walk up to a complete stranger and just ask her out. Again, these are few and far between. We’re not going to focus on the “numbers” guy. Instead, we’re going to focus on the vast majority of the passive guys you find in most churches today.
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The Frustrated Woman Epidemic
One definition of masculinity is: the ability to take the initiative.
Passive men, unwilling to take the initiative, have women frustrated everywhere – especially in the church. The majority of guys will do anything, but ask a girl out on a “real” date.
Guys, are you frustrating a girl by doing any of these?
- You spend months group dating a girl.
- You count texting, Facebook and Twitter as “pursuing.”
- You find loopholes in dating, like making a bet you know you will lose, and as a result you are “forced” to go see a chick flick with her.
Where does all this lead? A Frustrated Woman.
If you like the girl, tip-toeing around for months will only lead to frustration and eventually the Friend Zone that you can’t get out of. She’ll lose any interest she ever had, or worse, she’ll be shocked 3 months later when you ask her out since she thought you were just friends.
Let’s break it down like this:
Your life is a book, and there are different chapters your kids will read one day. Right now, you are writing your “Singleness” chapter (be careful what you write in it), and you’d like to write the “How I Pursued Your Mom” chapter next.
Do you want the chapter to include words like: “passivity,” “she asked me out,” “Friend Zone,” “scared,” “frustrating,” “dragged on and on.” Or, do you want the highlights to be: “initiated,” “pursued,” “boldness,” “courage,” and “clarity”?
The Power of Asking a Question
Let’s look at this in reverse order:
When will you get married?
Answer: When you propose to a girl and she says, “YES.”
When will you propose to a girl?
Answer: When you are in a healthy relationship where you love her and she loves you.
When will you say “I love you”?
Answer: When you are bold enough to look a girl in the eyes and say, “I love you” and await her response.
How will you know when you are ready to say “I love you”?
Answer: After you’ve asked her about a 1,000 questions about herself and listened to her responses (i.e. gotten to know her deeply).
How do you put yourself in a position to get to know a girl deeply?
Answer: By taking her on a date.
How do you ask her out on a date?
Answer: By gaining some courage, taking the initiative, and simply asking her.
If you look at the process above, there are two steps for each guy along each step of the process:
- Take the initiative
- Ask a question
So to start the process: find a girl that loves the Lord, gather your courage, take some initiative, tell her how awesome she is, and start pursuing her. Be clear with what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. She’ll respect this approach. One of her greatest desires is to be pursued by a Godly man who has vision, clarity, and direction.
I’ve never heard a girl say, “I like the fact that he’s really not sure what he wants.”
Is She the Right Girl to Ask Out?
That is a question between you and the Holy Spirit. Your first concern should always be to protect the girl’s heart. If you’re bad for her, you can do her a favor by staying away. If you’re good for her, she’s waiting on you to make a move.
In order to protect her heart first, you can pray prayers like this:
“Holy Spirit, protect her heart over mine. If we’re not good for each other, give me the wisdom to not pursue or her the wisdom to say no.”
“Holy Spirit, let us not date out of mutual loneliness but out of Your calling.”
“Holy Spirit, if I’m not her future husband, let me do nothing to damage or add baggage to her future relationship with her husband.”
“Holy Spirit, if I am supposed to be with her, guide me in every step of this pursuit. Let it be glorifying to You all along the way.”
“Holy Spirit, even if it’s only one date, give me the wisdom to walk away and not lead her on for selfish purposes. Show me how to encourage her and be an example of a Godly man in our short time together.”
Again, this is not directed to the guys that ask any and every girl out. This challenge is directed to the Godly man who has been sitting on the sidelines. It’s your time to initiate.
You’ve been watching her for a while, and she’s been waiting for you to pursue. She’s been trying to send you signals that she’d say “yes,” but they are very subtle. She doesn’t want to overdo it and feel as if she was the one who initiated.
Start your love story with an act of courage. She’s waiting on you.
Need a place to start?:
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Photo credit: micah_68
Women like being pursued, but don’t Men?
Wouldn’t it be awesome if women broke the stereotype that we should be the ones pursued and Men should take initiative?
I’ve asked Men out in the past, of course, I was rejected, but it was okay. I accepted it. I think so much pressure is put on Men to be the one putting forth the effort to pursue a woman. I think women should be pursue Men too, that takes courage because it allows us women to step out of our comfort zone of always being pursued.
Honestly, sitting around waiting to be pursued is exhausting and discouraging lol. I’d be okay with rejection because at least I know I tried.
Great points Julie. Not sure why that rule was made, or why people think it still has to be followed.
“Honestly, sitting around waiting to be pursued is exhausting and discouraging lol.”
You’re right, it can be. 🙂
But here’s the thing about men taking the initiative. I don’t think it’s a stereotype. I believe that my husband is supposed to be the spiritual leader of our home one day and that leadership will overflow into our dating relationship, too. If I am the one that pursues and takes the lead, then I’ve already begun to lay a foundation that will be difficult to overcome if/when marriage evolves. The chances are far less likely that I’ll flip a switch and start letting him lead our relationship, family, and children if I am the one who set the roles from the very beginning.
I agree with Brandon (below) that it is important for us to let a guy know that we are interested and his risk level for asking us out will be low, but do so in an honorable way. (i.e. Keeping some dignity to our flirting!) 😉
In college, my typical strategy for flirting would involve dropping a fork in front of a girl I liked in the cafeteria and bending over slowly to pick it up. Problem with that strategy is that they never seemed to be impressed that I went back to eating my mashed potatoes with the same fork…I’ve since amended that strategy and am now dropping my keys or wallet but still attaining limited success at best…
Thank God we have more of a virtual friendship. I don’t think I could handle it.
I COMPLETELY agree!!! The Lord has really done a work in my heart in this area in the past few months. There’s this guy I am a little interested in, but he’s sort of…. passive. I had myself all geared up to ask him out. (The decision to ask him out started from a discussion we had in my Lit class around Leap Day… the day when it’s supposedly appropriate for women to ask out or propose to men.) I’m talking I had the conversation written out in my head, my girlfriends had encouraged me, and I was ready to go. And I prayed for guidance. And then the opportunity did not present itself. And I was… relieved. I knew that I didn’t feel it was my place.
I have just started a study on Biblical womanhood (True Woman 101: Divine Design by Nancy Leigh DeMoss and Mary Kassian… soooo good!). The first few chapters were on God’s design for male/female relationships and roles and then God’s design for men. And this whole Leap Day fiasco slapped me in my face again. So thankful I took the time to really look at God’s roles for our lives as men and women. I wholeheartedly believe it’s my future husband’s role and design to lead me both spiritually and in our home. You were spot on with this statement: “If I am the one that pursues and takes the lead, then I’ve already begun
to lay a foundation that will be difficult to overcome if/when marriage
evolves.” Truth. : )
Ah, pursuit! I’ve been that frustrated woman more than I have been the woman who has been pursued. What’s wrong with this picture? 🙂 Here is encouragement for the men- just ask us! Even if we are not interested, we will most likely be flattered. A good woman will tell you no in a respectful way that doesn’t make you feel emasculated.
One thing that I struggle with as a woman is this: How do I let him know that he won’t face rejection, but do it in a way that doesn’t come across as *ahem* needy? It’s a hard balance.
It IS a hard balance. One that your girl, Lore, is going to tackle in a SingleRoots article…soon! 🙂
Completely disagree (respectfully) with Julie. Men, be MEN. That IS what we want. Take heart, take courage, be brave, PURSUE. Thank you for writing this column. YES YES YES.
Amen! I’m ready for the guys to step up. So sick of passivity.
Sweet ladies, I completely understand your frustration and the desire to be bold where the men are not. HOWEVER… God gave men and women roles for a reason. We are equal, but different, and it is a good thing. But when we take the initiative ourselves, it is not encouraging the men to step it up. It is feeding the passivity. Please do not pursue. Be patient and trust the Lord with it. Pray for the men in your life that they would be growing in godly strength and boldness.
Thank you so much for those encouraging words. I don’t know how many times I have had people tell me that I need to pursue. It is very frusturating to hear those words when you are trying to do it God’s way
I agree. Men are both proud and much more scared than we would care to reveal most of the time. The fear of rejection for most guys is pretty scary. There are certainly some things a girl can do to flirt and make sure a man knows that his pursuit is welcome, but it still falls on a man’s shoulders to make that move. I’ve met intelligent, attractive women that under most circumstances I would be interested in taking out but because they were so agressive in pursuing me, the mystery was gone and I kinda felt like it all stemmed from insecurity.
It sounds really corny but it’s true – men are hunters. Deep down, we want to pursue that mystery…and yet, at the same time, it’s good to know starting out that we have a least a decent chance to succeed. So if you want a guy to notice you, spend a little extra time showing him that you notice him. Just don’t come off like you’re hoping he has a diamond ring in his pocket for you from Day 1.
Great post, AND it made me laugh. I’d be totally interest if this post wanted to ask me out.
Ha, ha.
But seriously. Great post. It’s good for a man to pursue, and for a woman to wait to be pursued. I’d say God designed it that way, because it’s how He can best reveal more of Himself to each of the sexes. I’ve learned a lot about who God says He is in the waiting, for a lot of things, than I did in taking control. It’s so much sweeter to wait on the Lord. I would dare say, for a lot of men, they learn a lot more about who God say He is and who He has created them to be when they take risks, and courageously pursue what they are passionate about, whether it be a career, goal, or relationship. It’s always been sweeter to wait for a guy to ask me out, even if we didn’t work out.
Probably too late to comment, but I will anyway. The article does nothing to address nuclear rejections, which, sad to say, are in no way limited to the unchurched world. It doesn’t even do anything to address public rejections – and yes, if you say something to someone in a church group, and get rejected, it *will* get around. Add on to that the facts that, first, despite all the advances of women in the workforce, men are still expected to pay the ever-rising costs of courtship, and second, that marriage is an increasingly risky prospect – you’ll pardon us for thinking that running a 50% chance of losing half our lives, and more if there are kids involved, if you decide one day, for whatever reason, that you’re not haaaaaapy we don’t match up to Christian Grey, and …what do you expect? What did you think was going to happen? That we’d continue baring our hearts not just to you, but to the whole community, just for the lulz? No. We are not amused. What you call ‘passivity’, a lot of us are coming to consider just plumb good risk management.
Sorry, ladies: you can’t have it all. Either you mercilessly root out gossip and malice and all tolerance for divorce, as you are commanded by God to do, and thus make the risk/reward ratio a bit more palatable to ordinary men, or return to a more traditional (and decidedly less romantic and less option-filled) system of pairing off out of plain unromantic physical necessity, or learn to love having the choice between depressingly cautious men, the sunday-morning-nightclub players, and cats.
Either way, I’m thoroughly disgusted by the church’s insistence on placing all the blame for the sorry present state of affairs on men, pretending that women’s sexual and social impulses are one bit less corrupt than ours, and telling us that the solution to all our problems is to ‘man up’ and accept an increasingly rotten deal. You’re not even trying to see things from our perspective, and until that changes, we’re better off without you.
Perhaps you’re better off without women but don’t speak for the rest of us, my friend.
Where did I say anyone was ‘better off without women’? But I will stand behind the remark that a man is better off without a woman who cannot or will not try to see things from his perspective – that such a woman cannot, by definition, be a ‘helpmeet’. Do you really disagree? I doubt, after all, that you’d dispute that a woman is better off without a man who can’t or won’t try to see things from her perspective.
The article gave a woman’s perspective. It’s 100% about what she wants her suitors to be. There’s nothing inherently wrong with making that perspective known – everyone likes to make wishes. But reality is not a genie. The reality is that there’s another side to this – that the things that need to do the asking-out are not just objects for others’ amusement, but are people, with their own hopes and fears, and, critically, incentives and disincentives. The authors didn’t see fit to bother with such trifles. In this social context, that amounts to tickling ears with half-truths when people desperately need to hear the whole truth.
Hi Unger,
I think WBH was referring to your statement: “You’re not even trying to see things from our perspective, and until that changes, we’re better off without you.” Just an fyi.
Some clarification/thoughts/questions:
1. As it turns out, a woman did not write this post, a man did.
2. You said:
“Sorry, ladies: you can’t have it all. Either you mercilessly root out
gossip and malice and all tolerance for divorce, as you are commanded by
God to do, and thus make the risk/reward ratio a bit more palatable to
ordinary men, or return to a more traditional (and decidedly less
romantic and less option-filled) system of pairing off out of plain
unromantic physical necessity, or learn to love having the choice
between depressingly cautious men, the sunday-morning-nightclub players,
and cats.”
I agree with you. It has to be difficult for a guy to risk asking out a girl in the context of a church group because, let’s face it, people talk. And you’re right, we need to mercilessly root out gossip and malice within those groups and within our lives. Maybe I’m reading your comment wrong, but when it comes to divorce, it seems like you’re saying that divorces are caused by the wife’s fickleness and unhappiness? (It also seems like you’re saying gossip and malice are solely a feminine issue, too, but since they probably are a larger issue with women, then I don’t want to split hairs with you over it. 😉
3. You said:
“Either way, I’m thoroughly disgusted by the church’s insistence on
placing all the blame for the sorry present state of affairs on men,
pretending that women’s sexual and social impulses are one bit less
corrupt than ours, and telling us that the solution to all our problems
is to ‘man up’ and accept an increasingly rotten deal.”
I hear you, but where does male spiritual leadership factor into this? Well, provided that it isn’t in fact a “rotten deal”? I wouldn’t want anyone to knowingly enter into a “rotten” covenant marriage. 😉
In retrospect, I could’ve worded the ‘better off without you’ remark more clearly; consider the clarification made. And I suppose I now need to expound upon what I mean by ‘rotten deal’.
A man may have written the post, but the perspective was, nonetheless, an undiluted female perspective. The exhortations were directed entirely to men; the outlining of desires was entirely the outlining of female desires; the post was explicitly addressed to men; the post did not even acknowledge the existence of, let alone the validity of, any man’s concerns about the realities of modern courtship. If I had a signed and sworn affidavit that Mr. T himself wrote it and pitied the foo who didn’t man up and start asking out church ladies, I’d have exactly the same response. (Well…almost.)
First of all, let us note that ‘asking a woman out’, in the present sense of the term, is a very new thing in human history. Your great-grandparents, and probably your grandparents too, did nothing of the sort: couples grew up together and grew together – something like George and Emily in ‘Our Town’. Your parents probably did something superficially similar to what we do now, but it was in the context of a society in which few women were ‘financially independent’, few women were chasing careers into their thirties, and women were generally expected to quickly select a spouse from what was available – to wit, a society in which men almost could not help but lead and women almost could not help but follow, and thus, one in which to be asked out by one’s common acquaintance was to be given a very sincere compliment by a social superior. I do not intend to argue that these old ways were necessarily better in all respects, let alone that women ‘belong in kitchens’ or any other such red-herrings; here I need only to point out that, in the space of less than a century, there really have been tremendous changes in the social differences between the sexes, with correspondingly tremendous changes in their relations. Women are asking men to do something new, and so it is unwarranted to insist, without further justification, that men are obligated (especially divinely obligated) to do it. And I do not think further justification is possible. Why? Because men and women themselves haven’t changed. If, for instance, women are naturally turned on by leadership – which you certainly do not dispute – one practical effect of the change cannot help but be that most women will find most men less attractive than they would have a generation before. A man’s odds of winning the lottery go up if he buys a ticket, true – but that doesn’t mean it’s a smart idea to play.
It is not just ‘difficult’ for an unexceptional man, possessing neither six feet nor six figures, as they say, to risk asking out a woman in the context of a church group; it is playing Russian roulette with his reputation and chances of finding anyone at that church. If anything goes wrong – his fault, her fault, anyone’s fault, no one’s fault – his failure will soon be everyone’s business, though, charmingly, his heartbreak will remain his own problem, just something else he needs to ‘man up’ about. Worse: even if she does not air his dirty laundry, real or fictional, the phenomenon of preselection will strongly militate against the odds of another woman in that social circle ever saying ‘yes’ to him. I do not know whether Christianity could change that aspect of human social nature; what is important is that it does not now, does not even try, and does not now have any institutional constraints to mitigate its effects, and as such, the consequences for a man’s failure in the ‘meat market’ of a church singles’ group are heart-wrenchingly steep. If women are asking us to run every risk of publicly and quite possibly irreparably humiliating ourselves, on top of opening ourselves to the likelihood of heartbreak, and to top it all off, to pay for the ‘privilege’, they’d better be offering something worth the risk and expense, and if men are behaving as if they aren’t, some self-examination is in order before they charge out with the man-ups.
(Strongly suggested reading: Why Good Christian Men Don’t Ask Her Out, Single Christian Men Don’t Seek Wives #2)
And, in fact, statistically, women aren’t offering anything worth the risk. Quite the contrary. For many men now, in this economy and these churches and singles groups, and, as I’ll illustrate later, in this legal system, the options are so bad that the best analogy isn’t so much to a lottery as to Global Thermonuclear War: ‘the only winning move is not to play’.
You remember in Malachi where it speaks of ‘the wife of your youth’? That’s exactly what we single thirtysomething men don’t have to look forward to. Women are marrying later and later, which means that they’re giving up the best years of their lives in the name of ‘self-fulfillment’. Most of them chase careers – and when they get them, they still expect suitors and husbands to make more than their wives. Most of them aren’t spending their years in celibacy, either – by the time they finally decide they’re ready to marry, they haven’t just given away years of youth, but their virginity, often several times over, riding a carousel (the vulgar mental image is perfectly warranted) of primally attractive men. Assuming, for the moment, that it’s not flagrantly adulterous to marry a non-virgin non-widow: can you blame anyone for being reluctant to take ‘sloppy seconds’ (or thirds or fourths or nths?) The cold hard biological reality – I mean, beyond it just being gross to think about – is that sex is a pair-bonding activity, not just reproduction or consequence-free pleasure: if a woman has given herself to many men, she’s seriously impaired her capacity for bonding with the latest one, especially if he doesn’t give her tingles the way her previous flings did – which he won’t, for the simple reason that if he were dashing enough to win a woman who was younger and less used, he would, or more correctly, would have. There is no evidence whatsoever, scientific or respectably anecdotal, that conversion, let alone saying a few words in front of a church while wearing an expensive dress, magically repairs this damage.
I presume you’ve all had your boys-and-girls-have-different-parts lectures. Do I really need to say anything about fertility?
Then there’s beauty. Let’s face it: American women are fat. Now personally, this doesn’t bother me – within reason. Maybe it has something to do with my being a pretty good cook – and in the South, there’s no such thing as good low-calorie cooking. Don’t have a weight that starts with 3 – i.e. don’t be a walking coronary case – and so far as I’m concerned, there’s more to love. But those of us who prefer somewhat cuddlier figures to stick figures are rather decidedly in the minority. Blame whatever you like for this; the fact remains that most men, not just now, but in all the history available to us, do have certain tastes in women, tastes which tend to exclude the ‘plus-sized’. This article demands that men cater to women’s taste in men, in spite of any personal cost, and no one here has said a word to suggest that perhaps the standards may be unreasonable, or need not be set in stone; is turnabout now unfair?
Very well, then. No youth? No beauty? And as I’ll suggest momentarily, no sweetness either? What’s in it for us? Especially since…
Yes, I was saying that most divorces are caused by the wife’s fickleness and unhappiness, and I’m right, too. The statistics on this are indisputably, appallingly clear. Women instigate separation more than men, and the vast majority of divorces – nearly 70% – are filed by women, and more still are driven by women. Few of these meet anything that could be spun into Biblical justifications for divorce. If there are children, the woman will get them, and the man will pay child support – which is not linked to the actual cost of child care, not indexed to his actual wages, not linked to visitation rights or alternating custody, not abrogated in the case of the woman ‘remarrying’, and thus, is virtually guaranteed to royally, life-changingly screw him over, in front of his children, in front of possible future mates, for her benefit. And if the state assigns alimony, he will almost certainly pay that, too. How is it that you wonder why anyone might not be leaping for the ‘opportunity’ not just to pay to risk immediate or near-term humiliation, but a very high chance of having most of everything he worked for taken from him, even if he does nothing to justify it, even if he is guilty only of failing to keep her in a state of perpetual bliss?
(Absolutely essential reading: Is Frivolous Divorce Overstated?, Updated US Custody and Child Support Data, 2009, Threatpoint, A Case for Anger)
What’s the church doing about this? Jack, that’s what. Nobody excommunicates divorcees or forbids their remarriage – no, we butter them up for their ‘courage’ in being single moms, try to hook them up with someone in the used-wife market, and meanwhile, tell the men to man up and do moar leading, because it’s all their fault, even when, Biblically, it ain’t. It’s very telling that among modern evangelicals, a piece of rot like ‘Fireproof’ should be considered a sound Christian movie: a wife begins by shirking her marital duties, then leaves a husband who’s merely ordinary – flawed, but by no means offering anything that could, under any stretch of Scripture, qualify as grounds for divorce, let alone remarriage: she leaves him, intent on whoring it up with a series of men, culminating in a rich and handsome doctor, and not only is the wife nowhere chastised for her plain shirking of her duties, her insubordination, but the poor sod has to grovel to get her back?
(Worth reading: Firebombed)
And practically, a lot of women, including a number right here, judging from the comments, aren’t offering much to sweeten the deal either. For instance: who in his right mind wants to spend the rest of his life with a wife whose immediate response to a perceived failing, whose preferred mode of ‘encouragement’, is emasculation? This article may have been written by a man, but it expresses the complete sentiments of a good number of women, as evidenced, again, by the bulk of the comments. ‘Aww, you scaaared of widdle wady? Man up!’ – instead of asking, as someone genuinely capable of following a leader would, if the leader might have good reasons for behaving as he did, and whether she might play a more useful role than just sitting there. You brought up male leadership, but how can a woman follow anyone if she’s not listening to him – a fortiori if it’s because she’s too busy thinking of how her ‘leader’ can fulfill her wishes?
Woman was created to be ‘an helpmeet’. Refuse to help and you won’t – and shouldn’t – meet. If you’re not willing to follow, complaining about a lack of leadership is just making excuses.
The Church is acting like one day, ‘suddenly and without warning’ as they say, men just decided en masse to become a bunch of xbox-playing pansies (or whatever). It is not so. The reality is that the world has changed, and women in the main now neither pull their weight nor follow: they want all the benefits of tradition, plus all the conveniences, choices, and – make no mistake – powers of modernity, and none of the unpleasant but necessary responsibilities. The Church has decided that You Go Girl fills collection plates better than telling the truth about the sexual and marriage markets and enforcing some Christian discipline on those who have the ultimate power of choice in courtship – meaning, women. As such, what women and, sadly, what now passes for Church leadership, sneeringly call timidity and unmanliness is, in reality, wisdom: making the best of a bad situation. Women have no right or reason to expect a man, especially a good one, to decide quickly, on no evidence but their cheery churchgoing, and against all probability, that they are a good use of his time and resources. Women have no right or reason to expect that the discovery process will sweep them off their feet. Women have no right or reason to expect to enjoy the sort of attractive qualities in their men their mothers and grandmothers did in theirs – among them, wealth and social status greater than their own. And this is all the more true the older they are, and especially the more ‘history’ they’ve acquired. Women are going to have to swallow some pride and meet men in the middle if they want to meet good men at all.
Ever heard the saying, if you want to be loved, be lovable? Being lovable won’t guarantee your chances of being loved, but it sure wouldn’t hurt them. Especially now. If, of course, love is what you really want. If you want Christian Grey, the Humane Society has plenty of cats, and they’ll let you name them whatever you please.
Single women: you’ve got a choice. You can dismiss this as the ranting of a bitter loser, if that makes you feel better – it is, as they say, a free country. Take the blue pill, go to sleep, and believe whatever you like. But the reality is that I’m not alone – that there are a lot of marriage-minded men, traditional in every way they still can be, who are disillusioned with modernity, disillusioned with the church’s downright heretical response to it, and – no denying it – disillusioned with you. You might consider taking the red pill and asking whether, perhaps, we aren’t all crazy after all.
If you care at all about the possibility, I’d strongly suggest reading three blogs:
http://societyofphineas.wordpress.com
http://dalrock.wordpress.com
http://cmd-n.org
I appreciate the fact that you read SingleRoots and obviously have dedicated a lot of time to putting together a long, thoughtful response. I would read the entire comment, but I only have 2 more hours until I have to be in bed. Based on perusing your statements, it sounds like you’ve already folded your hand without even seeing what the dealer turned over. We can whine until we’re blue in the face that something isn’t right or fair but the game goes on as is whether we choose to sit down and take a gamble or not. I don’t have the best cards but they’re all God gave me and I’m going to be a man and play them. Sitting back in the corner bemoaning social dynamics is just time wasted when I could be in the game, living the only life I have, and fighting with everything I have for what I want. When it’s all said and done, no matter the result, at least it will be said of me that I passionately gave it all that I had. Real men don’t take need to take a pill. Real men fight for what they want and eventually, the right woman will respect that, even if I have to wait until I’m an old man before it happens.
It hardly seems to be in good faith to openly NOT address any of the points that unger brought up, while still taking the time to use scathing language of shame about “manning up.”
Is it “manning up” to completely disregard all notions of risk assessment? You should address the points that the poster you replied to made.
You’re quite right that one shouldn’t just whine about social dynamics, the world bein’ agin’ us, etc., etc. That was the core point of my reply. But who is whining and who is adjusting to the new reality? On one side: ‘Men don’t ask us out! Men need to man up and ask us out!’ On the other: ‘If we value our livelihoods, family names, and families, this is how we must proceed.’
It isn’t as if men aren’t showing any interest at all, even in what they consider to be diminished options: if they didn’t want to meet anyone at church, or thought that all the women in them were definitely unsuitable, they wouldn’t bother subjecting themselves to the indignities of the meat-market. A lack of interest itself cannot be the problem. What, then?
The available evidence strongly suggests that the real problem is that the sort of men women want aren’t showing the sort of interest women want to receive. This article and comment thread is full of women’s complaints, and was hitherto devoid of any explanation of why men today might be as they are and behave as they do. Is it possible that there’s good reason why men aren’t the sort of men women want? Is it possible that there’s good reason why men aren’t showing the sort of interest women want to receive? If so, then telling men to ‘man up and ask women out’ may not solve anything, and may even make things worse.
Thus, if I’m whining about anything, I’m whining about a general refusal in the Church, and specially among those tasked to minister to singles, to ask those questions. If it gets anyone to think seriously about them, then the time spent whining will not be wasted.
In a normal exchange, if a seller isn’t selling the goods they start looking into what they are doing and whether it is handicapping them. Is the product bad? Is the service bad? Is the price too high? Is there something else that is causing people to not buy the product?
However, “covenant marriage” seems to be the only enterprise where it’s acceptable to blame the buyers for not accepting what the sellers have to sell.
Most Christian women aren’t worth dating. If a woman wants a man to ask her out, she needs to improve herself.
My heart deeply and genuinely hurts for a good man who has pursued, loved, and courted and been wonged and rejected. I’ve never been married, but I know what it is to elevate a woman on a pedastal only to have her beat me over the head with it when my back was turned.
Christ:church::man:woman
Many have and will reject Him, yet our bridegroom is erecting thrones for the very people that hurt Him in the wisdom and knowledge that some would accept His love.
If it’s therapeutic to talk through pain, then you should do so. However, banding together in spite or anger or regret only inhibits you, it doesn’t educate or help anyone else. Take up your mantle of masculine leadership. Bandage your wounds and scars. Be wise in choosing your bride. Emerge from the tomb. Pursue, love, court, commit, and risk. She can and will hurt you or there would be no risk. But stand up and lead, learn, heal, and move on. There is no other choice.
I’m gonna weigh in here and side with Unger almost entirely and say that he may not speak for Brandon but he does speak for me and I believe many, many others. If you are male and been thru a divorce in the last 10 years you will probably side with him too. To begin, his criticism of the original post he is correct and in fact Jake Harvey authored a series of articles here on “Single Men in the Church” about why so many men in general have left or are dissatisfied. Jake was spot on as to why; it is the feminization of the church. All I have to say to Brandon is that your article right here, is an example of what he was talking about. You viewpoint is pro-feminism and anti-male. That is what got Unger all riled up; and rightly so.
This is not a problem of men having to “man up” or being afraid of rejection; this is a problem with the Church, the attitudes of women and most importantly the use of the law to destroy men.
Why any man under the current circumstance would choose to get married is beyond me. It is way beyond a losing proposition. Any allegation by a woman towards a man ends up with the man ruined, in prison, or both. Many never make it out of prison alive. Why would any man take a chance asking a women out when there is a greater likely hood of getting imprisoned than in getting married? Does anyone care for statistics? I can provide some. Here is a quickie; for every women in jail in the US there are 20 men. Yes the number of men and women in our society is approximately the same (50/50). That is a 2,000% bias in favor of locking up men.
The level hate towards men by women in our society is unreal. And their use of the Law to persecution men and the media’s attitude towards encouraging it is beyond appalling. Nancy Grace and her “man hate” shows are perfect examples. That women is evil incarnate. I refer to Divorce Courts as “Male Rape Centers” which is an accurate description. This article tries to make it out like there is a problem with men; there is a problem all right, but it is men who are the victims.
My pastor said something awhile back in a sermon about Human Trafficking and about how the Church was opposed to it in Africa. I was highly offended because if he wants to see Human Trafficking in action all he needs to do is go down to the county courthouse and visit the local Male Rape Center. Every single day men are threatened with prison time unless they sign over their entire life savings as well as the money they will make well into the future. Its called extortion. Pay up or go to jail. The most outrageous is when Children are used as weapons to make men toe the line. Want to see your children again … then pay up ! They will deny visitation or even take the children away and put them in foster care. Its called Kidnapping; the court will steal your children and you (as a man) will only get to see them again when you do what the court wants. And women regularly brainwash their own children to hate their own fathers. All with the encouragement and help of the court, lawyers, GALs, etc. Why don’t we arrest these women and charge them with hate crimes? They won’t of course because they are women, men who tried the same thing would be in prison for decades. Men who go thru divorce quickly learn …. open your mouth to say anything, including insisting on your own rights, results in one thing: you go to jail. Is it any wonder why post divorce, men are too timid to ask women out. The worst of course is the use of false allegations of abuse up to and including sexual abuse. Want to get labeled a “sex offender” and get sent to prison to be raped and tortured? Only way to avoid that is to pay your extortion money and do what the court wants. There is Human Trafficking going on all right, right here in America and nobody does anything about it. Instead the Church is concerned about what is going on in Africa? Seriously? Our Church leaders are cowards; that’s what it comes down to.
I guess we shouldn’t be suprised. In WW-II the Catholic Church stood by and watched 6 million jews be killed. Now they stand aside and watch 800,000 men get raped in American divorces each year. And then people wonder why men are so timid. (800,000 is my estimate 80% of men come out on the losing end and their are approximately 1 million divorces each year).
Brandon, on your last comment I hate to say it but you are wrong. Sorry dude, but you are. The first choice is to not play; which is what men are doing. If courting women puts my life at risk I will stay home and watch porn. Easy choice and apparently millions of men are doing just that. Second, “Law and Order” is a TV show and is fiction. If I actually stood up and tried to demonstratrate against the corruption going on inside the courts, I would as a minimum end up in prison and probably end up dead. That is NOT fiction; that is reality in America today. If you don’t believe me you need to step outside the Church and look at what is going on around you; here are more statistics – the U.S. has 2.3 million people in jail. This is more than the rest of the world combined. Seriously. And almost all of them are men. In fact, 1 out of every 30 men in America is either in jail or on parole. For those who got out, wanna go back? Getting involved with a women is a sure fire way to do it. Is it any wonder men are scared to death to open their mouths. The most reasonable choice would be for the Church to step in and call for some changes because they would have a lot of power/money behind them. But as I indicated, our Church leadership is composed of cowards and refuses to do so. Instead the Church offers women “Divorce Care” and counseling and supplies housing and food for “single mothers”. Where are the fathers for these single mothers? Getting the same sort of attention? Nope. Nobody cares about them because they are in jail. And nobody cares when they get out of jail either.
Sorry for all the negativity but you opened a can of worms here. It was only a matter of time until some guys started stopping by and dropping clues about what is really going on. My recommendation to you? If you value your life then don’t get married. If you are interested in dating, you are taking your life in your hands so be very careful. Here is a warning, any woman who insists on “safe dates” from the outset can and will have you thrown in prison if she ever decides that she doesn’t like something you did; so if you ever break up be very, very, very careful.
That my friend is the situation today and yes it is very ugly; far worse than you think it is. I encourage everyone that reads this to step outside the church and get involved with prisoner’s rights and/or men’s rights groups. I guarantee you will be very disturbed by what you find. Hopefully enough to help fix it.
My name is Ryan. I am a guy, and I wrote this article when I was single (I’m now married).
The article was targeted towards men that respect and appreciate women and simply needed an encouragement to get in the game.
I have been disappointed to see the disrespectful comments towards women within these comments. Actually, they are disgusting.
To the disrespectful commentors:
Why are you generalizing, accusing, and bashing “Christian women” in a effort to convince yourself to never marry?
If you don’t want to marry — then don’t.
But do not create a crusade here on SingleRoots to bash one of God’s greatest creation.
I’m not sure what to say in reply to this. To denounce how easy and common it is for couples to divorce, lament the Church’s near-silence on the epidemic, and insist that what God has joined, neither men nor women should break apart, is bashing marriage? To tell men that they must do things nowhere even suggested by Scripture is encouragement, but to tell women that they must do things explicitly commanded by it is disrespect? John 11:35.
I’m very sorry you feel that way. I don’t see where anyone has said the slightest word bashing marriage. I don’t see where anyone has said anything in disrespect of women qua women, and what has been said against some women is at least as worth evaluating on its merits as what you’ve said about ‘passive’ men. (I note in passing that thus far, one woman here has acknowledged that at least some of the criticism is valid. If she does not immediately conclude that we ‘disrespect women’, why do you?)
You’re not doing anyone a service by glibly dismissing men with ‘if you don’t want to marry, then don’t’. We do want to marry. You and I merely differ in our diagnoses of what inhibits that goal. But my diagnosis explains what yours does not. That it suggests that today’s Church and many of its women are not blameless is true – but it surely shouldn’t be ruled out for that reason alone.
To set the record straight, I said that I agreed with you that it could be difficult for guys to ask out girls in the context of a church setting and that gossip and malice were sinful and should be “rooted out.” That was after your first comment and before so many others were added.
As a woman who rarely gets offended by things people type on the Internet (or in person for that matter), much of what has been written here about my gender is offensive to me. I’ve read that divorces are all our fault because we put our own happiness above that of our families; I’ve read that Christian women aren’t worth dating unless they make improvements; I’ve read that we’re brainwashers; and I’ve read that if we’re single, we must be sexually impure. I’ve read sweeping generalizations with “data” to back it up.
Not to mention that marriage has been equated to a prison sentence, and the Church–the Bride of Christ–has been slandered.
When I read these comments, I keep coming back to the same question over and over: Where in the Gospel does self-preservation trump dying to ourselves?
If you choose not to marry (for whatever reason), that is your choice. But this conversation has gone on long enough, and we’re going to have to agree to disagree. In an effort to root out all gossip and malice (per your advice and that of Scripture), I’m going to close the comments on this post.
I’ve never done that before, just so you know. But the overall tone and disrespect shown to both women and men is one that I believe warrants closure. I think it’s poor stewardship of all of our time to belabor this topic any further.
Ryan, you are either misunderstanding or deliberately misconstruing what people have said. No one here is going on any dark crusades to bash half of one of God’s greatest creations.
The commenters that you are referring to DO respect and appreciate women. Women that are respectable, that is; they are an increasingly rare commodity in this day and age. Why should one respect someone who is base and conceited? Who Didn’t guard her purity for her husband (likely several times over with different men, for that matter)?
Furthermore the commenters you refer to are not trying to “convince themselves not to marry.” ‘Sour grapes,’ I think you imply. I, for one, am married, although I met my wife overseas far, far from the culture of worldliness that has rendered so many Christian women unmarriable and at entitlement critical mass. All of the articles (I believe) that unger linked to were written by married men. Just because I’m married doesn’t mean I fail to see what a bleak state marriage is in within America/western civilization.
Again, I encourage you look actually respond to the CONTENT of unger’s thesis, rather than just denigrating him as a “disrespectful commenter.”