Posted on 07/20/2003 7:59:11 PM PDT by Archangelsk
Marriage, Horror, And Susan Reimer
Take Horror. It's A Better Bet.
July 21, 2003
Were I to offer thoughts on marriage to young American men today, in these the declining years of a once-great civilization, my advice would be as follows: Don't do it. Or, if you do, do it in another country. In America marriage is a grievous error.
And why so? Because of The Chip. The Attitude. The bandsaw whine of anger, anger, anger that makes American women an international horror. It's there. It's real.
You, a young man, may not recognize the Chip if you have never seen normal, warm, happy women. If you are twenty-something and haven't been out of the US, you haven't seen them. They exist by the billion-in Latin America, Singapore, Taiwan, Malaya, China and, last I looked, France and Holland. And of course not every woman in America carries the Chip. None of them think they do. Yet it is the default, the usual, what comes out of the box.
The following is a perfectly ordinary, everyday, bulk-lot example, suitable for poisoning a cistern:
"Other than a 29-inch waist and a full head of hair, there isn't much to recommend the twentysomething male…He is living an extended adolescence -- an adult-olescence -- and every immature, irresponsible, self-absorbed thing he does is reinforced by the latest issue of his favorite men's magazine." (Susan Reimer, a columnist for the Baltimore Sun. I bet she goes out a lot.)*
Hers is the Attitude -- and what they think of you. It is the defining trait of American women. Exceptions exist, and they have my apologies, but they are few, and no, sport, your Sally probably isn't one of them. They're coiled to bite. As soon as problems arise in the marriage, they turn into Susan.
Susan Reimer is what is out there, guys: bitter that no one wants her (as who in his right mind could?), sure that no one is good enough for her, never having grasped that those who would be loved must first be lovable. Understand this: Susan is America. Some hide it better, springing it on you after the ceremony, but Susan is the rule.
The Susans do not like men. Sometimes they actually take courses in disliking men ("Women's Studies"). Yet they want to marry one and have babies. For them, the contradiction actually makes a kind of sense, because (and they know this, believe me) they will get the house, the children, and the child support.
For you, it makes no sense. You will get raped in the divorce courts. You don't know how bad it is. Don't do it.
A prime effect of marriage is backbreaking financial overhead: the excessive house in the prestigious suburb, the pricey but boring cars, all that. But if you don't fall into the trap, keeping your expenses down means you can live in Alaska or overseas and enjoy existence. There is more to life than debt service. Yet, although these are bad times for marrying, they are extraordinarily good times for being single.
Now, children. This is sticky. You may want them, or think you want them, or think you may want them. She wants them. My advice is to move to almost any country where English isn't spoken and women don't want their husbands to be the mothers of their children. Any country inhabited by the Chinese would do nicely.
Incidentally, remember that it is never now or never. Your prospects improve with time. At thirty-five or fifty you will be perfectly able to find a good woman if you know where to look. See above list.
Remember also that these are not good times for having children in America. It is almost irresponsible. The schools are scholastically poor, drug-ridden, given chiefly to political indoctrination, and hostile to male children. The universities are little better. Divorce is hell on children and their fathers, and nearly universal. The country lunges to police-statedom and isn't, I suspect, as stable as it might be. Worse, worst, there is Susan Reimer. Her name is legion, and she seeps everywhere, like the effluvium of unwashed socks.
Further, there is no social duty to have children. Some argue that the white population is in decline. Tough. If the country chooses to make having kids undesirable, then let it decline. It is not your problem.
Now, you might well wonder, why are American women carrying the Chip? Practically, it doesn't matter: They do carry it, and will continue. Still, it is partly because from birth they are fed the notion that they have been oppressed, battered, cheated, deprived, harassed, used as sex objects, not used as sex objects, on and on. Being rational, you are perhaps inclined to point out that never has a female population been less any of these things, but don't bother. It will have no effect. The Chip is an emotional artifact to which they respond emotionally.
The bedrock of The Attitude is that everything is the man's fault. Wonders Reimer, "What is the answer, especially if the 20- and 30-year-old male is such poor marriage material?" She does not wonder, "If I am such a grindingly awful termagant that men on three continents are crossing their legs and feeling queasy over my mere column, and won't come near me except in a Kevlar bathysphere with a disinfectant system, maybe I'm doing something wrong. Gosh. I wonder what?"
Yet something more is going on, though one does not easily see just what. Note that in recent decades we have seen the invention by women of bulimia and anorexia, which no one had heard of in 1965. Men made them do it. At roughly the same time women began getting breast implants, which men also made them do, and then suing about it. In the same period they began having induced memories of being raped or satanically abused by their fathers. Men again. The psychotherapy racket grew like kudzu, a sure sign of deep unhappiness over something.
All of this is recent. You have to be fifty to remember women who were resilient, sane, psychically strong and, within the limits of an often sorry existence, content. But whatever the answer, guys, the problem isn't yours.
Spend a year overseas, however you have to do it. For smart, classy, just plain glorious women who often speak English, try Singapore. Argentina is splendid. Many places are. You would be amazed. See what's out there before you marry a gringa with her Inner Susan, who will one day burst from her chest like one of those beaked space-aliens in the movies, dripping venom. They're death.
Uhmmmm, hasn't been my experience. It makes a lovely dream, finding one of like precious faith and all, but, like others have posted, women who are regular church attenders are predominantly those who have been wounded and crippled spiritually and are really not any better equipped emotionally to be a loving spouse than any other woman from the general population.
No woman can hurt a man like a nominal (small "c") christian can. They get trained on how to use very personal weaponry on the most vulnerable spots of a guy's soul.
You'd be surprised. I often wondered how a two-time loser with more tattoos than the illustrated man could end up with the head cheerleader. But it was more the rule than the exception.
Any woman who would contemplate marrying some of the guys you describe as part of your congregation are probably pretty tough cookies before the marriage and might have been around the block a few times.
See my comment above. Before I witnessed this phenomenon, I was inclined to dismiss out of hand the notion that women like bad guys, that they like to be abused, that somehow it's a turn-on for them. After my years as a lay counselor, I'm not nearly so dismissive of this as before.
I think you have to admit that your church is a little unusual.
We have all ethnic, religious, social and professional backgrounds in our congregation. Anyone visiting our church would believe in the melting pot again. And wasn't it Jesus who said "Those are are not sick have no need for a physician."?
It's my hope that the average Christian guy who goes to a large church with a submitted spirit and persistent prayer is going to find a worthy mate, sooner or later--if, that is, it's the Lord's will.
And here I thought the Cross was the great equalizer, the practical answer to multiculturalism. Unfortunately this notion that some Christians are more typical than others is the new hot trend in the 21st century church. It might explain a lot of the turmoil I saw in the troubled marriages that came my way.
Of course, I never saw the successful ones, so what do I know.
As far as your church being unusual: you did give the impression that most of the people there were those who had been through the criminal justice system. I had the image of a group of thirteen thousand ex-cons, ex-addicts,and other very troubled types. It's good to hear that your church is also a real melting pot, as ours is.
Your last line seems so on-target. If you do couples counselling, you're not going to see the happy marriages, the ones that have gone on for 25 years. It's clear that if you do enough counselling you can get awfully sore-hearted and burned out. I'm glad you're getting a chance to rest from those wars.
You know, not everybody who goes to church does so because they're driven there in emotional agony! Millions of people go because they were raised in the faith.
Maybe Christian women aren't better equipped emotinally to be loving spouses. But in their marriages they have an Resource that the unchurched woman don't have. Would you really rather marry a woman who doesn't believe in anything bigger than her own ambitions, desires, self? Do you really want someone who thinks that, since there is no God, anything is okay?
A lot of what he writes in this article is true. However, only someone who has no children -- and makes it a priority to justify this decision with a whiff of superiority -- could hold the above view.
Some elements of our society are undesirable, but having children is the greatest thing in the world. In fact, being a Dad has made me put morons like Susan Reimer in perspective and helped me not to get so worked up over them like this guy does. There will always be stupid people in the world, but they can't hug my kids or read them a bedtime story.
I win...
Absolutely not. That's why I've never married.
LOL, somehow I knew you would ping me to this. The author failed to mention our favorite country. My long range plan is to go live there. Tell your lady, and join us there. The cost of living is low, everyone speaks English, and they say the beaches are nice this time of year, and I can still watch my sports on satellite TV.
Damn straight! :-) Visit Montreal dude, you're not far....the sheer number and sacale of hotties is jaw-dropping.
And if any of them bats her eyelashes at you and wants to marry you, it will be for yourself alone and not for a meal-ticket to the U.S. where she'll go "native" and dump you as soon as she can do it without getting deported. But I'm sure you'll be able to spot a Ukranian gold-digger alot faster than an American one.
American women will "contaminate" your pure specimen once you get back, unless you keep her away from them. Unless...you're willing to live in Kiev for the rest of your life.
You'll score more points if you don't use "Ukraine" and "Russia" interchangeably. Happy hunting!
I think the dynamic is a little more complex than that. In the vast majority of cases I was involved with, yes, she wanted a rough tough bad guy. He was exciting. He was dangerous. He was sexy. And she was drawn to the danger. But in almost every case, she wanted to, and thought she could, control him.
In almost every case, the violence came as no surprise to the wife. He roughed her up before they were married. Guess what? He roughed her up after they were married. Throughout all this, I kept thinking of the old saying -- "A sure-fire way to fail is to keep doing what doesn't work, expecting different results."
As far as your church being unusual: you did give the impression that most of the people there were those who had been through the criminal justice system. I had the image of a group of thirteen thousand ex-cons, ex-addicts,and other very troubled types. It's good to hear that your church is also a real melting pot, as ours is.
My bad. Again, I was trying to keep on topic. But we are pretty diverse. We have a local vetrenarian who gave $30 million cash to our building fund, and owns 1/3 of all the available raw land left in California. We also have a children's minister who has some nasty scars on his shoulder from taking five 00 buckshot pellets in the back during a gang shootout in some East L.A. barrio. And everybody in between. The true diversity is the real thing, not some lip service paid by liberals which really translates into some sort of government control.
It's clear that if you do enough counselling you can get awfully sore-hearted and burned out. I'm glad you're getting a chance to rest from those wars.
Me too. -:)
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