A lament for men

A poignant post from Instagram that resonates with a lot of young men.

A lament. NYC is probably the worst city to live in for mid-20s/30s evangelical Christian guys. Now I understand why more and King’s College guys are leaving the city a few years after graduating, esp. the Alpha types. After 14 weeks of reading approx 1800 pages, writing about 70 pages of critical thinking, and 42 hours of discussion about what contributes to men really thriving—studying circa 1800 to the present—the guys in my masculinity course last semester saw just how utterly deficient NYC churches are at building up the fellas. If you don’t read the history or know the data you probably can’t see it. But we’re in trouble. Ladies will ask, “where are all the good men?” Answer: wherever churches are providing unique opportunities for men to be sharpened by other men—for men, by men. And NCS doesn’t even come close to what we read in the books this semester. A proper group needs at least 3-6 hours per week. I actually felt bad for my students in my masculinity course at the end because there isn’t a church in New York that I could recommend for them to keep growing and learning about how to be better men and love well from other men.

I’ve been researching this topic for about 17 years and it all came together last semester. The best class on this I’ve ever taught. I was depressed when the semester ended. Haha. All of the women marrying guys in this class are going to have great lives. They have no idea! The data shows that a woman’s quality of life is significantly improved if the man in her life are been spending time with other men learning how to love well from other guys, esp. older guys. The best men’s groups in Manhattan and Brooklyn are all non-religious ones. Last Friday, I spent about 5 hours on the phone trying to figure out what to do about this with a theologian and a pastor. One Manhattan pastor, highlighting how pathetic it is for guys in NYC, ended with a deep sigh, “What are we going to do?” It’s taken me 17 years to get my head around some solutions so maybe one church may have some stuff soon, in the meantime most guys will flatline, increasingly become friendless, and cement themselves in domesticated passivity. Settling is just easier.

This is no surprise to us, but it seems that at least some Christian men are coming around to these ideas apart from these parts. It is still quite sad though as many men are still floundering.

There’s a good reason why Jesus took a core group of 70, 12, and 3, and 1 disciples for Himself, and building the fellowship, friendship, and camaraderie between men really does produce fruitfully via iron sharpens iron.

Single or married you should always strive to get some good and mature Christian men in your life and do life together.

Frame is no frame without a mission

Ran across this question on one of the RP reddits.

For example, a guy I know from college went into a STEM field. He is now married and working a steady 9-5 job that he likes. His wife owns a photography business, and he has become a significant partner in her business, assisting with shoots and stuff in his free time. Additionally, they are raising one biological child and several foster children, and any free time not spent with his wife’s business is completely consumed raising the kids. Unfortunately, I don’t know him well enough to get his honest opinion of the situation, but does this sound like a man with a solid frame? Or is he living in his wife’s frame?

To put it another way, what would have to be true for you to be the guy in this situation and not be living in your wife’s frame? Is it a matter of him making the choice vs her making the choice? (“You run your business and I’ll help out”) Or is being a “helper” of this sort not acceptable in any circumstance?

Frame is not what you do. It’s the meaning behind what you are doing. Frame is driven by mission and purpose.

If a man thinks it’s important in this stage of life to focus on growing multiple streams of income (one of which is growing his wife’s started business) and raising the kids in a godly manner to leverage that for God in both short and long term that’s a great thing.

If a man is pressured by his wife into doing stuff he doesn’t want to do but does it anyway, that’s a bad thing.

One is putting God first and being the head and the other is going against that.

If we want to understand this more thoroughly we can go back to some of Jesus’ analogies. It’s out of the heart the mouth speaks or that we do anything. There’s many people in Church that are there that “do the right thing” but their hearts are not in it or they are doing it for the wrong reasons (e.g. they are fearful of going hell and trying to work for their salvation). If we contrast this to a true believer, they would know that they are justified through their faith in Jesus and that God wants us to do good works to model His love for us (e.g. Romans 5:8 God shows His love for us in this, that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us).

Of course, we can generally judge a tree by it’s fruit, but it’s always a good thing to dig into the underlying motivations and desires of why we are trying to do something. Does it align with God’s Word or not? Are we living in fear or are we living in God’s peace and joy?

We always want to align with God and the right things for the right reasons. The right thing for the right reasons are always grounded in mission and purpose. Without those two things, you are going to be blown here and there by the wind as motivations easily change without that deep seated purpose driving everything.

Modeling is the primary form of headship

This isn’t a new thing, but it’s just one thing I’ve been realizing more and more when you see discipleship in action.

In general, most people only believe words when they are backed up with consisted and relevant action. This goes for a husband and father modeling for his wife and kids respectively. The same goes for any type of discipling young single and married men. They want to see that you practice what you preach and how effective it is in practice.

Even if you don’t say a word much of the time people are picking up on what you are doing and why. This especially goes for children of all ages when I see a lot of families interact at Church. You can tell which young men and women are going to likely be more serious in their faith and the ones that are just there because.

Now, to divert this back to the Bible, we can see that Jesus’ modeling for the disciples (Christ and the Church) was the primary way that He taught them. He modeled everything for them: explained and showed them how God was working through His life. He taught them. Then He gave them a chance to experience it for themselves by sending out the 70, and eventually when His ministry was coming to an end He send them out to do it themselves in the Great Commission. The same is true of a husband and wife and a father and children.

In terms of rebellious wives and children, this is ultimately the way you will be able to positively influence them in a godly manner. The focus must be on sustaining your own Biblical roles and responsibilities first, to the utmost of your abilities. This removes any potential sort of hypocrisy from your life such that God can work through that. If they’re still rebellious then that’s on them.

Such good modeling is really built up in the small things. Be faithful with the small things such as getting in time with God, operating in the fruit of the Spirit at all times (even when it’s hard), running from temptation, and focus on doing the right thing (putting on the new), and that builds up into a consistent witness that can help to change others around you. Obviously, being discipled by those more mature in the faith does help substantially as they can more readily point out blind spots and areas to focus on.

For the single men, this is the foundation of any marriage, so it is important to develop these things while dating (or even before dating) as you are the leader of yourself first before you are the leader of a woman.

Disciplecord and general well being

Hope everyone is doing well!

A bunch of the guys on RPChristians and some other places have started a place for discipleship for both men and women on Discord, so if you need a place for iron sharpening iron during this COVID craziness there is a place to help you with it.

https://discord.gg/Z6wBMJD

This is mainly for people who are serious about discpling and being discipled, so if you want to participate you have to put in the work. Here’s some of the intro stuff you gotta put in  to be accepted:

Introduction Template: Personals?

• Name (first name is OK):
• (If you are from Reddit) Username:
• Who introduced you to DiscipleCord?
• Age/Gender:
• Location: General location, country, state etc.
• Relationship status
• What do you do?
• How are you taking care of your body? What are your health/fitness goals? Where are you in that journey? Are you willing to improve in these areas?
• Occupation/Education/Are you satisfied with your income and career?
• What you do in your free time: Why Disicplecord?
• Are you looking to be discipled? Or looking to disciple someone else with the support of this group?

Rate yourself in the following. This will be used to help appropriately place you in discipleship.
• How assured in your salvation are you? Has Jesus saved you? (X/10)
• Have you been trained in a particular method of studying and interpreting Scripture?
• How much quiet time/prayer do you spend with the Lord? (X/10)
• How successful are you at prioritizing scripture memorization? (X/10)
• How many unsaved people do you speak to about Christ in a week? (Less than 5, about 5, more than 5)
• How strong is your spiritual community? (X/10?)

Also, hope everyone is doing well. Been caught up with family stuff, but I should have some more time to make some more posts soon.

If you guys want to catch up on life in the comments be my guest!

No, your congregation does not preach “biblical headship”

I’m still here but have a lot of real life stuff going on.

The creator of the RPC recently posted on this, so I’m sharing a part of it. Definitely give it a read if you have time as it’s good.

“Headship” as a concept is given a lot of lip service, but few people actually practice it the way Christ does with the Church. I can’t count the number of people who tell me how “red pill” their church congregation is, or how “biblically grounded” the teachings are on marriage and relationships, while being exactly the opposite.

KNOWING THE STRUCTURES

I believe a large reason for this stems from inappropriately understanding the views on marriage expressed by different congregational structures. Here they are:

1. Headship: The view that the man is the head of his household. What he says goes.
2. Complementarianism: The view that God has given men and women different roles to fill. Among the man’s roles are the right to have the final say on disputed matters in the home.
3. Egalitarianism: The view that husband and wives are on equal footing with regard to all roles, including decision-making authority.
4. Feminism: The view that women should be empowered in the home to do as they please and that men should support them in the direction the woman chooses to go, unless it would otherwise amount to direct sin.

Very few congregations actually claim the title of “feminist” when it comes to discussing marriage roles, as they realize this cultural ideology is in direct opposition to Scripture, so most of them will take the feminist agenda and mask it in the form of egalitarianism or complementarianism. Egalitarian-feminists will push the notion that a wife’s equality with her husband prohibits him from exercising authority over her, empowering her to have an equal say, which is virtually always interpreted that her “equal” say should win because if he wins then he’s just a patriarchal monster. Complementarian-feminists will pay lip-service to male authority in the home, but instead redirect that authority in ways that serve the wife. If there’s a dispute, the husband would be “ungodly” if he were to exercise his authority in a way that displeases his wife or fails to give her what she wants. As such, the man’s authority in the home is merely that of a puppet figurehead, while the wife truly runs the show. Feminist structures incorrectly reflect to the world that the bride (Church) has authority over her husband (Christ) either by direct authority or obligational exercise of authority.

True egalitarianism (of the non-feminist variety) is still unbiblical and dangerous. Jesus directly preaches that no kingdom can have two leaders, or else it will be divided. Married people are meant to be ONE, not divided. The only ways true egalitarians can resolve conflicts are: (1) by compromising, which inherently means that even if one party is right, the right answer must be set aside for the compromised conclusion, or (2) taking turns (usually couched in “loving the other enough to let him/her have this one”). Egalitarianism incorrectly reflects that Christ and the Church are equal in authority in the relationship.

True complementarianism (of the non-feminist variety) is another beast entirely. Even up to 3-6 months ago I would have identified as a complementarian purist (meaning: the feminist expressions of it are eradicated). But I have since come to realize that it is flawed even in its fundamental ideology, which is that God has assigned certain roles for men and women to follow. While many complementarians will focus on the authority dynamic as the “hot topic” to discuss, and thus use the word “headship” to describe aspects of their theology, the reality is that the full doctrine of complementarianism insists on many other role distinctions that men and women must align with. These roles are often not found directly in Scripture as obligations; rather, they are cultural norms that have an imputed theology about them, such as the man going off to work his 9-5 job while the wife stays at home to cook and clean. The complementarian view looks at the way men and women are created and attempts to deduce what God must have intended for men and women to do with regard to the family unit and within the body of Christ, while ultimately having little Scriptural support for the conclusions reached.

There’s another 2/3rds that isn’t quoted, so go check it out.

Overall, I’ve been harping on this for a while. Complementarians are a covert hybrid of feminism and the Bible, while egalitarians are more overt. Complementarians think they are doing exactly what the Bible says, but in reality they are deceived. One only needs to actually look at the Ephesians 5 analogy between Christ and the Church which contradicts a lot of complementarianist beliefs. Christ is not a “final decision maker if the Church disagrees;” we follow Him in everything.

His post does a good job of explaining in a different way than I’ve done in the past which can be helpful for some.

Women’s attraction to men’s musculature

Since we were talking about this whole issue of generating attractiveness and meetcutes recently, let’s look at the practical side of things. A few years ago, I explored the way men used the numerical scale to estimate the attractiveness of a woman (going from a 3 to an 9 per most men).

I found this particularly enlightening because before that many of the women who were commenting did not think this woman moved so drastically on the scale such as maybe 2-3 points at max or laughably from one of the peanut gallery detractors from a 4 to a 5 (probably jealous).

One of the more important points to note is that this woman at 132 lbs is maybe a 6ish or so to a lot of men but it’s the last 12 lbs to the 124 lbs where she jumps to an 8. It’s basically an exponential increase once you hit a certain threshold.

I suppose it’s also time to explore the male side of things since we have been talking about how much a man can gain in attractiveness with certain amounts of muscle and body fat.

Example 1

Realistically speaking, when most men start working out for a few months they’re in the range of 20-30% unless they are a lot more overweight than that.

You only really start to see women’s interest start to pick up once you hit the 15% range and a lot more at the 10-12% range. Most men won’t hit the 3-4% and 6-7% in this picture so it’s not worth talking about, but like the example of the woman above you start to get exponential interest once the muscles start to “pop” out as you have a good about of muscle and low body fat.

Depending on starting point, your average non-overweight male can probably hit the 15% range after 6-9 months and the 10-12% range after 12-24 months. This requires dedicated effort to achieve which obviously most men will not see the results they are looking for unless they are committed. It usually also requires some amount of dedication nutrition toward gaining muscle and cleaning up the junk food from the diet.

Physical activity like cardio or hiking or any activity where you don’t actively lift to get muscles will generally not affect your overall attractiveness unless there are other factors like you are an expert in your field or sport or famous. Previously, when I said workout I guess some men seemed to take it the way that if they were physically active that it would increase attractiveness. It doesn’t. You must workout and gain muscle mass and lose body fat.

There’s a reason why most romance novel covers feature a somewhat shirtless muscular man with little body fat.

As an aside, men tend to like women in the range of 15-25 depending on the man in the above chart on the right, so there is a lot of variation. Most men tend to like 18-20% range the most so a little more lean than the 20-22. YMMV. For your average non-obese women lifting weights this takes only 6-12 months of lifting weights and good nutrition.

Example 2

Again, In the 13-19% range it looks like you workout some and you may see a little bit more interest, but you won’t see anything substantial until you’re starting to push in the the 11-12% and 8-10% range.

Part of this, and what I didn’t mention in the first image is that you’re almost never shirtless unless you’re at a pool. Therefore, unless you have a rather significant gain in muscle mass (10-20 lbs or more) and improved style (form fitting shirts and not baggy t-shirts or other clothes) then it’s unlikely that women are going to be able to see gains in muscle mass. It’s sort of like a woman that hides her figure underneath frumpy clothes. If she started wearing more form fitting dresses and skirts (though still modest) then she would draw much more positive attention from men.

Example 3

The previous examples looked at the differences at body fat with only one picture at a level, but there is a decent amount of variation in body types at any specific level. Here’s some examples of men at certain percentages.

16-18 is starting to work out and gain some muscle. Maybe a little interest.

12-15 is “Ohh, you workout seriously..” and they might start to feel your muscles.

10-11 and lower is where you really get the “Yummy” from women in my experience and talking to men who also workout. There is significantly more interest from the general population of women than any of the other two above.

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Conclusion

Most men would stand to gain at least 20 lbs of muscle and cut their body fat down to the < 15% range to start generating significant attraction in women if they are not naturally handsome. Unless you’re very naturally handsome like Scott and others, improving attractiveness via physical musculature is probably the best way to make a good first impression.

However, it does require usually at least a year or more of dedicated time and effort. But the good part is that lifting weights is not only about looks, it builds good habits, a healthy body, and discipline and mental fortitude which help in a lot of other areas of life including spiritually. They’re all interconnected.

I won’t claim to rate how these men change from say 4-5 on a 10 scale to a 7-8 or something since I’m not a woman, but it would be nice to hear from the few women who read the blog what they think of the various changes in body fat and attractiveness (ignoring the face, obviously).

Generating and handling attraction from the opposite sex

Generally speaking, 9 times out of 10 if a single man or woman is hanging around another single of the opposite sex they’re definitely attracted and interested in a relationship. Some are more obvious than others (“get a room” comments ensue), but this is generally true even if they are afraid to say it or acknowledge it. It doesn’t matter if they’re pre-teens, teens, 20s. 30s, and older. It’s all the same.

Lest we get caught up in the apex fallacy, one has to be attractive in either looks and/or personality to generate such interest in the first place. For men it’s almost always only looks though feminine personality sometimes plays a role. For women, it’s a combination of looks and personality.

To summarize:

• Men’s attraction is primarily based in a woman’s looks (symmetrical face, long hair, low blemishes, clean and youthful looking skin, hourglass figure, etc.) and feminine dress (dresses, skirts, etc.). Personality is primarily a disqualifier (masculine, in your face, brash, ball-busting, etc.) though in rare cases can be an attracter (very feminine personalities like very encouraging, pure hearted, and such men will start to gravitate to, especially if they don’t have any in their life).
• Women’s attraction is based in a man’s looks (tall, muscular, strong jaw line, etc. facial hair can be polarizing in a good way) and his personality. Personality can be an attracter (confidence, charisma, humor, etc.) or a disqualifer (weak, feminine, no backbone, unmasculine, wishy-washy, etc.).

I was watching a show with my wife the other day, and there were 2 men on the screen. One was very confident in his personality and posture and the other was sitting like he was nervous and when he spoke he also came off as nervous as well. My wife noticed the confident one as attractive, but when they came up again did a double take because the nervous one was actually more physically handsome to her.

Unlike men, this is one of the things where for women personality can make a man more attractive to her.

To dig a little deeper, I think we need to get into the minutiae from a couple comments on Sigma’s post. First, mine:

“women always have sex on the brain” – this is a variation of the apex fallacy.

Men always have sex on the brain.. for women that are attractive to them.

Women always have sex on the brain… for men that are attractive to them.

The vast majority of men don’t have sex on the brain with obese women. Same for women with the unattractive man: they’ll call him a creep and avoid him.

If a woman is hanging around a man and giving him any type of one-on-one or intimate attention she’s definitely interested. But that also assumes a man can get such attention in the first place.

Second, Scott’s:

Yep. If you have never heard something like this:

“The first time I met you I couldn’t stop thinking about what those hands were going to feel like all over me” then I am really, truly sorry.

This is the crux of the direction I am trying to take my stuff, for what its worth. I have like 159 twitter followers. About 50 some odd you tube watchers. I’m a nobody.

I WILL NOT sell Charles Atlas style “how to pick up chicks” crap. I just can’t bring myself to do it.

My interest is in men who have given up their natural masculine traits and been smothered by a lifetime of blue pill conditioning. Rollo’s advice is right about SO MANY important things. Including “you cannot negotiate desire.” And then goes on to try to teach men to attract women using a monkey dance. Which in my opinion, is a form of negotiating desire.

I think this is key. This is where things went wrong. All the stuff about the MMP is correct in that is artificially skewed buy factors in the environment. (Dating apps, messaging from the culture, etc). Wrenching back to rationality is going to take as long as it took to get here, with a ton of collateral damage.

I both agree and disagree to some extent.

There are some things that just naturally generate more attraction that comes with being excellent.

I’ve noticed in myself once I started to ingrain the Biblical marriage roles and responsibilities into my head even before I was married, I obviously came off as a more strong, masculine personality because I was doing what God commanded and not backing off on it unlike many of the Church husband who says with a nervous chuckle “gotta ask the boss” while his wife is starting or already a harpy.

Once I started taking working out and becoming much more muscular seriously, I started generating a lot more interest from women just because. Once I started taking my dress and style more seriously I generated more interest from women as well. No man who has worked out and gained 20-30 lbs of muscle and/or lost a similar amount of fat has not seen a difference in interest from women. This is just something that obvious.

Likewise, I think the goal has to be removing the femininzed and chivalric lens from our world view. Learning pick up lines and how to jump through hoops is obviously going to fail in the long run. A woman will start to pick up that your personality is not congruent with how you normally act.

However, a man that has removed the feminized and chivalric world view will not bend toward trying to be a people pleaser or try to jump through hoops to try to garner a woman’s interest. Ironically, this ability to not care (e.g. be outcome independent) is what helps to drive at least some natural attraction.

In other words, be the best man you can be to serve God and see how much interest you get from women. This is a fluid process as one can almost always gain more muscles or be a stronger leader. For the majority of men they will be able to at least generate some interest, though how much at first sight is debatable.

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Putting it together

Ideally, the hierarchy for men on going out with women would be something along the lines of:

1. See who is attracted to you
2. Apply godly selection criteria (e.g. true Christian, humble, teachable, etc.)
3. See who is the most attracted to you both physically and personality-wise after those criteria
4. If there are only women that are somewhat interested and not potentially all-in for marriage, then you have a hard choice to decide whether you want to stay single or go with it.

The interest you generate from women can change over time you change. As was said before, you can become a stronger, more confident, masculine (and godly man) and gain more muscle.

The caveat to that which I agree with Scott to the extent that the man you are when you meet a woman is likely the interest that she will perceive in you almost perpetually. In other words, having good pick up lines or jumping through hoops won’t work. She’s either attracted or not, and it’s very difficult to change a first impression unless you drastically change over the course of knowing her (e.g. gain 20 lbs more muscle and she notices it).

Thus, if a woman is not interested or only marginally interested it’s not worth your time to talk to her much at all. Keep focusing on being a better man so when the next woman comes around you are potentially more attractive and can generate a stronger initial interest.

Jumping back to meet cute scenarios

Previously on meet cutes, we looked at the commonness of having women be initially attracted to you. In general, I think that it’s not that common for the majority of men, though there are always some percentage of the population that would be attracted.

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Scott posted his stance on Sigma’s blog and I think some of it is true and some of it isn’t (my responses in regular, then some analysis).

I recently tweeted my final position on this, which I suppose might lose me some support. I have been beating around the bush on the topic for a while, trying to be gracious, trying to sugar coat it.

I believe that the red-pill content creators (the big ones, Christian or not) are full of crap if they believe that true, visceral attraction can be created in a woman who never had it for you in the first place. Like within the first meeting.

Some of them have a conflict of interest in trying to create this fiction, because they sell books and have monetized youtube accounts. It is in their best interest to make this seem possible.

But I have never seen a woman go from being luke warm about a guy and then become [truly] hot for him. She may settle and convince herself that she is attracted to a man who is the best she can get, but hot crazy in love–no.

If you are not getting really obvious IOIs right from the start, move on. If that makes me “black pill” so be it. I want men to find women who cannot keep their hands of them, otherwise they risk terrible destruction later on.

This is generally more true for men who are primarily attracted based on physical appearance. Getting to know them better will not increase any visceral attraction toward them for the most part, except if they are capable of very seductive behavior.

I think the real question is how many women for that matter are marrying men that they don’t have any attraction at all for?

There are certainly both men and women who are marrying with varying levels of attraction, but very few have absolutely no attraction. These are probably the ones where you have the wives cringing away from physical contact with their husbands in wedding photos. There are a few, but they’re definitely not even a big minority.

If we’re using a 0-10 scale where no attraction is a 0 and crazy love at first sight is a 10, there’s a big range. The real question isn’t if we can take a 0 to a 10… it’s if we can take a 3-4 to a 7-8 in most cases. The “sort of maybe attractive when I’m ovulating” or “relatively dead bedroom but once were attracted to each other” to “I want to do him at least several nights a week.” You don’t have to be the 10 of “I want to bang like bunny rabbits all the time.”

In reply, Scott says:

At first glance, the idea of a spectrum of attraction (woman—>man) strikes me as wishfully ascribing male thinking processes to women. This is understandable, and tempting. I am guilty of it from time to time. I just don’t think if you (a guy) are placed in the “meh” file you can ever get out. So I have never actually tried.

I’m not sure I agree with that.

There are definitely some reciprocal indications in terms of attraction itself. For instance, women can pick out attractive features on men just like men can pick out various attractive features on women. If they have particular unattractive features that knocks them down. Most people are not models so they have a relative mix of attractive or unattractive features.

In general, male sexuality operates on some lines of physical attractiveness: “would bang but wouldn’t date” to “would bang and date” to “would bang and marry.”

As we know though, female sexual strategy is relatively dualistic: AF/BB. Ideally, a man has both AF (dominant, handsome, charismatic, masculine, high status, successful leader,) and BB (money). Women’s hierarchy is AF+BB > AF > BB > None. Or if they are their own BB with a good job then it’s AF+BB > AF > None > BB.

It’s a spectrum and not a yes or no. Women who can’t marry an AF+BB or AF will try to get a man who has some AF with a lot of BB.. and so on down to only BB. But they will be less and less happy about it.

Admittedly, one problem I have is looking through the lens of my own lifetime of experience, an N of one. In that myopic view, I have never seen this happen. In any relationship I ever developed, be it a ONS, a FB, or an LTR that lasted years, her attraction was always obvious and unmistakable, from the first few seconds save for my obtuse lack of sensing it. I have been told “dude, she is REALLY into you” on more than one occasion before I noticed these signs.

An example from real life would be something like, I went to a party one time at a friends house and there was a girl there. I immediately found her really cute and started talking to her. There was ZERO indication from her that she was interested, so I moved on within a nanosecond. At that same exact party, I met another girl who would become my longest relationship to date at the time (it lasted about 2 years) and she made it really obvious that I had a green light. So, what I see from women is attraction that actually leads to something more is a dichotomous variable. “On” or “off.” Nothing in between. And you cannot slide along that scale like on a slide rule with them.

On the other hand, men I think can do the spectrum thing. I have had several LTRs that developed over time with women for whom I had almost no regard for in the first place. Its usually a coworker, or someone you see on a regular basis for whatever reason. She could be flashing giant orange flags that read “here I am come and approach. I will say YES” and I just move along with my life as if nothing is happening. Then, one day the thought flashes across your mind “I never noticed how cute her smile is.” And then you are toast. All of the sudden she is all you think about from the time you get up to the time you go to bed. You now have a crush on a girl who up until this point was just somebody you see as part of the scenery at work.

This is not strictly true. From what I’ve seen it depends on fairly specific circumstances to set men up to be successful when there is not a lot of initial attraction. We discussed some way back when here: understanding the friend zone and escaping it.

Lemme give you another example. I’m maybe average attractiveness (not unattractive but not attractive). A couple of my friends have called me a 6. I don’t normally get women to look at me twice. However, I’ve TAed a few classes where there are multiple TAs working together with a large group of students. What usually ends up happening is that a lot of the students (including the women) start to gravitate toward the more attractive men first. However, I know my stuff down pat, and I usually challenge the students and tease the girls. My professor later told me that a large majority of the students told me that I was their favorite TA. I was getting IOIs from the women whereas I had none before and even asked some out later and said yes.

This is the power of being in a position of relative authority and being charismatic with the students. I think it’s also true that first impressions are the most important, and it’s relatively rare(r) that a woman will like you sans not being attracted at first impression, but it’s been my experience that there are chances to subvert that notion but it has to be in specific circumstances.

YMMV. But I’ve had that happen several times throughout my life like I described in the meetcute article on my site (don’t know if you read that one, but this is not an isolated incident). Some other commenters chimed in saying it was the case for them too.

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I think part of the issue is that Scott is very naturally attractive while many of the other men may not necessarily be that attractive. His experience is that he can just move onto women who are naturally attracted to him without understanding the various scenarios where women may not be attracted at first but may be more attracted over time under various scenarios.

Like I said in the other meetcute post, I could count on one hand the amount of women who were attracted to be naturally. However, I do generate some interest from women based on my relative position or status (TAing, when I was leading Bible studies, teaching others, etc), occasionally based on my personality (humor or charisma in certain areas), maybe some based on my physique (decently muscular but not overly so… it does increase as you become more and more muscular), and other common attraction factors like this.

Possible conclusion: Might be more common for your average joe to have more interest generated post-first meeting than someone who is naturally physically handsome. Most of my attraction from women seems to have been generated after the initial meetings. That said, overall interest is much more for someone who is naturally physically handsome so they have way more options.

In general though, I think the talk about extremes isn’t too useful. For the most part, if you’re single you want to work on the various areas (especially becoming muscular, style, etc.) to make good first attraction impressions and the rest builds from there. From here it’s selecting the women who are interested and not wasting your time on the ones who aren’t or somewhat interested. You shouldn’t really deal with the ones who aren’t anyway because it’s too much investment for little results.

Most marriages there was at least some semblance of attraction (2-4 at minimum) and probably higher in the 5-8+ range at maximum (if a husband has gotten fat and lazy for example and dipped down into the 2-4 range then). Building that back up is a much easier task than someone who was never attracted. But again, it seems to be extremely rare that women would marry a man to whom they were never attracted.

Revisiting dread in the Bible with an anti-chivalry lens

In the previous (long) post on dread, I outlined several concepts surrounding dread in marriages.

To define dread, it’s generally a disconcerting feeling that results in a woman/wife when her husband becomes more sexually attractive (often interpreted in a bad manner). Thus, when a husband becomes more sexually attractive (to his wife that was previously depriving him) she often has bad or disconcerting feelings because she was denying him and also often seeing other women having sexual attraction for him which can make her jealous.

In many cases, there are times when there are rational fears and irrational fears.

Rational fear — fearing the consequences of when you do evil — is a healthy fear. This is the fear of God that we all have in our hearts. We should fear and tremble when we commit sin because God is Righteous/Just and abhors sin. Rational fear is an encouragement to do what is right, and to avoid doing what is wrong.

Irrational fear — is unhealthy and to be eliminated. This is when you fear/worry about necessities as Jesus talked about with clothes and food or have an irrational fear about what “may” happen to you in marriage. Irrational fear is a discouragement. It is often to avoid doing what is right and to do what is wrong (such as [being afraid to speak] out for your faith [when in a crowd of people]).

In the case of a husband who understands he has shirked his leadership role knowingly or unknowingly, he begins to act as the head and taking responsibility for his own well being in accordance with God’s mission for us.

• Spiritual (getting deeper into the Word, understanding and applying God’s Biblical marital roles and responsibilities, prayer, meditation, fasting, making disciples, evangelizing, using gifts of the Spirit, etc.),
• Physical (working out to build muscle, losing fat, style, grooming, etc.), and
• Emotional/mental (having your mental and emotional state under control and not blurting things out, focused on exuding fruit of the Spirit in any interaction, not DEERing when leading (defend, excuse, explain, rationalize), etc.).

Aside from the most important aspect of obeying God, as a husband focuses on these things one of the biggest side effects we see is that this husband will often become more attractive to women, both his wife and other women. Single men and men in relationships become more attractive to women too.

When this happens, women or wives start to exhibit several rational fears that crop up. For instance,

• There is a rational fear of authority that is rooted in his position as the head. The rational fear of leadership from her husband results in increased sexual desire for him.
• There is another rational fear of breaking trust of the dysfunctional trust relationship. While breaking trust is normally a bad thing, breaking trust in a dysfunctional relationship pattern is a good thing. This naturally results in additional fear as she “feels like she doesn’t know who her husband is anymore.” However, this broken trust must also be rebuild if you want unity in your relationship.

There is also rational fear that often manifests in the form of jealousy as other women tend to find a husband has his stuff together attractive (unlike their own in many cases).

One clear example of this is in the Scriptures where God’s salvation to the Gentiles is to make Israel righteously jealous for Him.

Romans 11:7 What then? What Israel is seeking, it has not obtained, but those who were chosen obtained it, and the rest were hardened; 8 just as it is written, “God gave them a spirit of stupor, Eyes to see not and ears to hear not, Down to this very day.” 9 And David says, “Let their table become a snare and a trap, And a stumbling block and a retribution to them. 10 “Let their eyes be darkened to see not, And bend their backs forever.”

11 I say then, they did not stumble so as to fall, did they? May it never be! But by their transgression salvation has come to the Gentiles, to make them jealous. 12 Now if their transgression is riches for the world and their failure is riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their fulfillment be! 13 But I am speaking to you who are Gentiles. Inasmuch then as I am an apostle of Gentiles, I magnify my ministry, 14 if somehow I might move to jealousy my fellow countrymen and save some of them. 15 For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? 16 If the first piece of dough is holy, the lump is also; and if the root is holy, the branches are too.

Indeed, if other women are attracted to a wife’s husband that is a good thing. If she is taking him for granted, being disrespectful or rebellious, she should be uncomfortable with that because she is doing wrong. These rational fears should be heeded and she should repent and change her behavior.

To be clear, I still personally do not advocate for going out and flirting with other women. But if you’re attractive other women will start to gravitate to you, sometimes even if your wife is there. Whatever is not born of faith is sin (Romans 14), and it’s almost always the case that intentionally flirting with other women when married is not born out of faith but revenge.

I made the connection the other day with the post on Why We Are Here that the reason why I think that even the Christians who know about intersexual dynamics still have a lingering sense of discomfort with dread is that they’re so in-grained with chivalry that it feels bad or evil to make a woman “feel bad.” Per the RPC founder:

“We don’t put on an “RP Lens” to Scriptural interpretation. We take off the “Feminized Lens” that everyone else is wearing, then interpret Scripture without that bias.”

By taking off this feminized/chivalrous lens, we now see that dread / feeling bad is one of the necessary steps to repentance of sinful behavior. We have to recognize that we have done wrong and with that comes feeling bad and guilt. Then we have to give this wrong to Christ to repent and not do it again.

This also scares me because the feminist/chivalrous lens easily flies under the radar to even men who know about intersexual dynamics. It’s also why Dalrock’s observations about chivalry and game’s anti-chivalry effect flew under the radar for so long.

To summarize: If you are focused on God’s mission and obedience to God in all you do, any type of dread or feeling bad that a wife experiences is normal and good because it pushes her away from the comfortable feeling of doing wrong: denying her husband sex. It is the type that is necessary to hopefully help her to repent and change her behavior.

Why we are here

I initially wrote this as a comment for reddit, but it’s worth a post since many men don’t understand the various interactions with lots of the different men’s blogs.

1. Over the past 100+ years (or perhaps 1000+ years as Aaron Renn’s Masculinist newsletter investigates), much of western Christianity has incorporated a lot of secular beliefs into their sex/gender perspectives. Christianity has been increasingly feminized while male masculinity has become more demonized. Fake perspectives like Christian egalitarianism and complementarism have arisen.
2. Many in the Church espouse typical cultural phrases like “happy wife, happy life” or “gotta listen to the boss” which is direct contradiction to the Bible (e.g. Ephesians 5). Likewise, as divorce and brokenness in homes has increased by liberal policies, men and women are not fathered and mentored as much as they used to which has resulted in much dysfunction. Not that conservatives are any better because they’re not. Like Christ, Christians should not be concerned about changing politics but about changing hearts with the gospel.
3. Most dating advice follows an untruthful bent, especially in Christian communities. “Just be yourself” is one of the common ones that doesn’t help, and in the Christian community “focus on being godly” or “just pray and God will have it all in His time” are some of the common ones. This is unhelpful to Christian men who are unsuccessful with women.
4. During the late 90s, 00s, and early ’10s, the pick up artist (PUA) community was all about discovering what worked to get laid. This slowly morphed into discussion boards on the internet. During the late 00s and early ’10s, this group started to pick up steam on the Internet and started fracturing into various groups: PUAs, secular red pill, red pill women, men’s rights, incels, etc. Probably the most prolific Christian blog (Dalrock) on exposing the false beliefs of the culture and how they have been incorporated into the Church started around 2010 or 2011.
5. Many Christians who were bad with women ultimately saw that some of these concepts worked, which had been contrary to the typical advice they had been preached to when they were teens or young adults in the Church. Many of these Christians get sucked into the secular RP and lose their faith.
6. Since God created man and woman, the Truth in the Scriptures about male and female relationships is clearly true. Much of this lines up with what the secular RP has come to conclude through trial and error (man should be the head of the family, have a mission bigger than himself, wife is helper and shouldn’t be put on a pedestal, etc.). Some high profile secular RP leaders like Roosh and Victor ultimately see that hedonism and sex is all worthless in the end without God.
7. As far as the reddit RPChristians goes, the founder started it with the intent to understand and apply what the Bible actually teaches about marriage and relationships and to minister/outreach to the secular RP (much like organizations like XXX Christians which minister to porn stars). Since there are not a lot of spaces where Christian men and women can discuss sexuality without fear of reprisal, this is one of those spaces.
8. We don’t incorporate RP philosophy into what we do because the Bible is the ultimate Truth, but we may use RP terms to communicate concepts that the Bible teaches.

Some Q&A on why we may use RP terms. Personally, I try not to use RP terms anymore since they’ve become loaded words. They don’t effectively communicate what you’re trying to say much like hash tags or liberal/conservative catch phrases.

How would you categorize your philosophies/theology to someone unfamiliar with RP?

We teach what the Bible says, but we may use RP concepts to explain it as many men from secular RP understand the terms in that way.

Many men even here may think it’s about incorporating RP beliefs into Christianity, but that’s false. You can’t incorporate other beliefs into Christianity and have it still be Christianity. It’s just your own pet version of Christianity.

Would you simply say you’re an RP Christian? Or is there another overarching name for this type of theology. Personally, I had never heard of RP and it’s hard to find online resources or commentaries on your interpretations of scripture.

No, I’m just a Christian who believes what the Bible says about men and women and doesn’t get caught up in what the culture teaches which is mostly false. Men and women are not the same. They have different traits they look for in the spouses. Each have a sin nature that they need to resist.

Most Christians who are not familiar with the sub think that we are trying to incorporate RP philosophy on top of the Bible but that is furthest from the case. Because we use the term RP in the name and thus are “associated” with the secular RP, we’re often biased against for stating the truth in other subs for just posting here.

Is this isolated to reddit? Do you meet up with groups or attend churches with those who adhere to these same beliefs?

There’s associated Christian blogs.

As far as I know, there are no groups or Churches specifically, but individual men may go back to their churches and start teaching actual Biblical truth in their small groups and ministries and even pastors. In some churches, some men have gotten kicked out or asked to stop.

And one good answer from the reddit founder about why it’s not putting on an RP lens but taking off the cultural feminized lens.

That’s because very few believers have delved into the Bible’s views on sexuality enough to produce content exclusively focused on it that aren’t tainted by serious cultural baggage. This, of course, makes a lot of sense when you consider how it was culturally inappropriate to speak openly about explicit sexual matters for all but the last 75-ish years of the world’s history. It is the feminization of the world that brought on the sexual revolution, so it’s not surprising that the content that’s been generated on the topic is feminized as well.

To go from a different angle, if I were to write a “red pill commentary” on the Bible, it would look extremely close to a blend of many other commentaries already in existence. I’m not going to read the book of Nahum or Daniel and try to force some “RP lens” into how the book should be interpreted. But there are some passages where a proper interpretation has been lost on those who have been conditioned by culture to have a butterflies-and-rainbows view of who Jesus was and feminized notions of marriage and sexuality. That is:

• We don’t put on an “RP Lens” to Scriptural interpretation. We take off the “Feminized Lens” that everyone else is wearing, then interpret Scripture without that bias. This leads to many similar conclusions, but a few extremely significant different ones too.

To be abundantly clear: there are MANY commentaries that will preach the same things we do. But again, one of our principles is relevant here: Watch what people do, not what they say. This is a twist on the “Do as I say, not as I do” motto that’s become a popular joke about churches – because many pastors will not live out what they preach. In this sense, you may READ many commentaries that preach proper principles of marriage, sexuality, headship, etc. – but good luck finding a body that actually practices them. Congregations will pay lip service to Scripture, but conform their behaviors to culture.

The author deleted his post eventually, but our comments are still up. Also, some of the mods and regulars have started some roundtable video series on YouTube. Subscribe if you can, as YouTube only allows livestreams if you have 1k subscriptions or more, and I think a lot of Christian men and women would like being able to interact in real time.

Overall, I think it should be abundantly clear that the reason why we are all here is that the Church is conforming too much to the culture. That’s why the majority of the New Testament was written to tell the Church to stop doing that. We are in this same boat.

My goal as a Christian is to lead by example to show single and married Christian men that doing what God says (in the Bible on the topic of marriage) is the right thing to do, and that it will produce good fruit. Real effective change is made through godly discipleship.

For instance, if you have any shame or discomfort talking publicly to Christians or non-Christians about the gospel then that may be an area to work on. But sadly, maybe a harder thing to do is to tell those same people that you’re the head of your marriage and that your wife submits to you and why that is good.