Why are we single? The male view

Before I get to the meat of this post, a couple announcements:

1. You can now pre-order Sexless on Amazon, though it won’t be released until Apr. 15, and I’m still working to get a couple things fixed in their description.
2. Attempting to make announcement #1 last night resulted in royally messing up the site template. Though I managed to restore almost all the settings, the links style hasn’t been fixed yet in some places (as you can see). Anyone have suggestions about the tag(s) I might be missing?

Now then: as promised last week (though I must admit the line between a promise and mere tease is hard to discern in this space lately), this week’s blog engages the email of a guy I know, who recently felt compelled to explain why “the godly guys aren’t hot, and the hot guys aren’t godly.” He writes:

It is an unfortunate thing that many of the guys who are the most serious about being in-line with God’s will are the most inhibited; Christian boys are taught from a young age, You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. and Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity.

Then, one day, the Christian boy feels physical attraction to a girl, and since nobody has delimited where physical attraction ends and where sinful lust begins, the whole thing is tainted with guilt. He sees no way he can express attraction or flirt with a “sister” with “absolute purity.” He then gouges out the portion of his masculinity that would make him a man out of fear that the whole of him will be thrown into hell for lusting after a girl (or if not the fear of hell, the fear that the words of his mouth and the meditations of his heart are not pleasing to the Lord). And finding that the feelings haven’t gone away, he approaches the girl in an unappetizingly timid fashion, or lurks at a distance, or approaches tangentially as if his obvious attraction isn’t noticed. He’s been convinced that flirting and dating are “sinful” or “manipulative,” and is embarrassed before himself that he even has physical attractions, ’cause all he’s ever been told is that character and godliness are all important in a mate. (Christian authors and preachers often won’t even acknowledge the aspect of physical attraction which initiates virtually all pursuits.)

So what often happens next is that the godly Christian guy goes to the Christian book store for help (I’m telling you, just about all of my friends have done this, and all of them are still single)–because God knows his dad is never going to teach him how to flirt, to read body language, or to practice proper dating etiquette, and what he finds is that all the books in the Christian book store on relationships only talk about the morals (in other words, more accusations of wrongdoing and wrong feelings), and not the mechanics of winning a girl’s heart. And God knows there aren’t any sanctified men’s magazines; while attempting to learn about style, grooming, fitness, and how to approach women from such a magazine, the reader is bombarded with images of bikini clad women, raunchy articles about sexual practices, and fixations on material wealth and worldly lusts. (Blessed is he who does not take the counsel of the ungodly. . .)

The result is that the godly guys aren’t hot, and the hot guys aren’t godly. And the rest are like parking spots; all the good ones are taken, and the rest are handicapped. IMHO, this is the reason so many Christian women are paired up with non Christians; non-Christian men don’t give a damn about whether their thoughts please the Lord and do whatever it takes to get what they want, while so many of the godly Christian men are often one yard short of cutting off their own balls for fear that they cause them to sin, which is probably totally un-sexy to Christian women. (Am I mistaken?)

And lest I object to certain oversimplifications, in a subsequent email, he clarified:

[Not] that character and godliness are not more important in the long run, but that they are not usually the spark that initiates a pursuit. Christian parents usually don’t ask about whether a new boyfriend/girlfriend is attractive; instead, the inquisition usually goes something like this:

• is he/she a godly Christian?
• is he a good man/is she a virtuous girl?
• is he/she smart? (a.k.a. “baby got brains?”)
  
• is he financially stable/are you sure she’s not a ‘gold digger’?

The consequence of this upon Christian men who are serious about their walk with God is that they tend fixate on becoming godly/virtuous etc. and neglect the physical and social aspect of their cultivation . . . and then they become a bunch of awkward weirdos unequipped to do anything but fail at pursuing Christian women. And even if character will carry the relationship in the long run, if the guy is a total turn off to the girls he’s interested in, the relationship he’s hoping for is not likely even get started to begin with.

I wish God would open up the Heavens and declare from on high to all the the preachers to temper their preaching against lust with the a declaration of the fact that all those passages in the Old Testament that talk about the beauty of the wives of the patriarchs and of various other women in the OT were not written by blind men. (It is written that Sarah, Rebekkah, and Rachel, as well as Ms. Anonymous Shulamite were all über-babes) Someone noticed that they were attractive, and making that observation is not the same as having committed adultery in one’s heart, and that single men need not feel guilty about making such observations; they’ll do so whether they feel guilty or not simply by instinct, but when they do so inhibited by guilt, they sabotage their ability to approach a woman confidently.

So, faithful readers, what’s your take? I am personally a bit skeptical of explanations that mostly fault other people (though at least he’s more creative for his implication of leaders instead of women), but I will admit his emails gave me more sympathy for some Jesus freaks’ predicament.

That, and an even greater measure of gratitude for my newfound contentment in leisure knitting and gardening, and slowly paying down debt. I’ve sure been a while learning not to race ahead of the beat, but now that I’m finally “in the pocket,” it’s mighty nice. Viva la present!

Reader Guest Blog: First-date bike mayhem

From time to time, a funny email hits my inbox that’s worth a broader hearing. So this week I am happy to bring you the following story of a disastrous first date, from reader Sam Edgar.

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I went on a first date last week.

He called and suggested that we bike to this funky little restaurant.

Biking. I am new to bike riding. I mean, I have a bike, a new one that I really love with a basket and a bell and this little computer thing that tells me how far I’ve gone, but for right now I can only figure out how to get it to tell the time. I was very clear about my novice bike riding and I told him this. Several times. However, I said that I would bike with him provided we take the easiest route. I mean, c’mon, I didn’t want to be the sedentary girl.

The thing is, at the moment, I have a bit of a rocky relationship with hills. The hills are there, no denying this, however, I can’t seem to get up them. I try, but am rarely successful. Rarely. When I do, it is with much heavy breathing, excessive sweating and all the symptoms of an imminent heart attack.

Despite my misgivings I had agreed, however, I was nothing if not clear about my skills, or lack there of.

This was a first date though, and I wanted to look cute. I didn’t want to look ‘athletic’, because this would be a complete misrepresentation of myself, but I needed something that I could bike in that wouldn’t make my ass look fat. So I wore yoga capri pants and a t-shirt. He showed up dressed in I-Am-Ready-For-The-Tour-De-France gear. I was clearly out of my league.

We started biking towards the restaurant. There were some hills, but I made it up them… with extreme effort. Thankfully there was zero conversation at this point, as there was absolutely no way that I could have formed words or sentences as I was concentrating on not breathing loudly.

We arrived at the restaurant, and he did this fancy dismount thing. I know, and when I say I know, I KNOW, that for me attempting this would end up with me in a heap on the ground. So I stopped my bike and climbed off of it, similar to the action someone getting in and out of a hammock. I am nothing if not graceful.

We locked up our bikes. Or I should say, he locked up his bike. I attempted to lock up my bike, but my lock wouldn’t lock. It has worked every single time, however, when I least need to look like an idiot it acts up.

I removed my helmet and suspected that the less than stellar haircut I had received earlier in the day had not been improved upon by helmet head. I didn’t want to seem high maintenance, so I casually excused myself to the restroom, where much to my surprise my short pixie cut hadn’t done too badly, however there was a red band from my helmet running the width of my forehead. I applied some lipgloss and hoped that the shine from my lips would distract him from the hair and what I hoped would not be a permanent red indent in my forehead.

We had great conversation, good beer and good food. He had some sort of meat sandwich and I had the edamame.

By now it was dark and after we had paid our bill it was clearly time to head towards home. We unlocked our bikes, fortunately mine unlocked because I’m not sure I could've balanced the whole way home on his handelbars. We biked besides one another, chatting, obviously the road was flat at this point. And then, there it was. Before me. Looming. The Biggest Hill Ever. My own personal Gray Skull.

There was absolutely no way that I was going to be able to do this. I had had alcohol. It was 11:30pm at night. I was tired and had bad hair. I told him, in what I hoped was a confident tone, that he shouldn’t wait for me and that I would meet him at the top. He rode up the hill like a gazelle, he didn’t even have to slow down. I got off my bike and pushed it up the hill like a tractor-trailer approaching the summit. It was a big hill and even walking up it made me pant and wipe my brow. He was at the top of the hill riding in circles waiting for me. I was cursing all hills known to man. At the top of the hill I got back on my bike and apologized for my sub-par biking skills. He didn’t deny this, but instead said that it was fine.

We biked the two, relatively flat, blocks to my house, at which point he told me that he didn’t think there was a lot of chemistry, but that the conversation had been great, and maybe we could hang out again.

Absolutely, I said, in full agreement. Secretly vowing never to bike on a first date again.

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Have a funny story of your own you’d like to share? Email your submissions for a future guest blog.