Couples Who Marry Due to Family, Social Pressure 50% More Likely to Divorce: Study – reportage by Leonardo Blair

Couples Who Marry Due to Family, Social Pressure 50% More Likely to Divorce: Study – reportage by Leonardo Blair

And what do conservative Christians (who tend to be hyper-pro-marriage-and-pro-parenthood-and-pro-nuclear family) do BUT to highly pressure and shame single, childless adults into marrying.

I did a post here years ago about a woman who says she felt pressured to marry by her church, so she ended up marrying the wrong guy, and she regretted it, and she divorced (link to that is below, under “Related Posts”).

Christians and pro-nuclear family conservatives deify marriage (and parenthood and the nuclear family) to such an un-biblical, absurd degree that they end up alienating, insulting, and marginalizing any adult who doesn’t marry or have kids for whatever reason, and it needs to stop.

And by the way, for single adult women who had wanted to marry but remain single after the age of 30, 40, or older, getting married is not easy, but so many conservatives incorrectly assume that if you want marriage, it is easy-peasy, it’s a total snap, that if you want marriage, it will “just happen”,

(or, conservatives – and sometimes secular liberals, too – incredibly, insultingly, and unrealistically – expect single, adult women to “settle” for marrying stupid, abusive, weird, disturbed, sexist, ugly, fat, or idiot men
– of course, they hypocritically would not expect their own single adult daughter to marry a loser or weirdo (no, they advise their own single adult daughter to hold out for a quality catch),
but they feel fine advising non-family single females they run into to marry ANY GUY with a pulse who they cross paths with – it is so hypocritical and demeaning).

If one is a single, adult woman who desires marriage, it is not easy to find a decent, compatible man to marry – not on dating sites, bars, or in churches, either (most churches lack marrying-age single men, and some of the men who attend are abusive or are pedophiles who want to marry an adult woman to act as a “beard” to hide their sexual attraction to children).

(Link): Couples Who Marry Due to Family, Social Pressure 50% More Likely to Divorce: Study by Leonardo Blair

Excerpts:

Nov 2, 2022
by Leonardo Blair

Couples who get married due to family or social pressure are up to 50% more at risk of having a union that ends in divorce, according to a recent study from the Marriage Foundation in England and Wales.

The study, “Attitudes towards marriage and commitment,” published in October, asked 2,000 adults who had ever married how much they agreed or disagreed with each of 12 reasons presented by researchers for why they got married.

To ensure that the findings were relevant to today’s families, researchers then focused on 905 couples from the sample who married for the first time after the year 2000 when online dating emerged.

“What this research shows conclusively is that the reasons why people get married has a significant material impact to whether they stay together. While this might seem obvious, this has never been quantified,” said Harry Benson, Marriage Foundation’s research director, in a statement about the study shared with The Christian Post. “But the message is clear. Get married for love and your future together and not because it is either expected of you or because of family pressure.”

Candace Cameron Bure Says It’s ‘Not Too Much’ to Ask That Her Adult Kids Date People Who Love Jesus

Candace Cameron Bure Says It’s ‘Not Too Much’ to Ask That Her Adult Kids Date People Who Love Jesus

I am going to try to be nice about this. This is a topic that can set me off, and I can get mouthy, but my impression of Mrs. Cameron-Bure is that she sincerely means well and actually tries to live out the Christian faith consistently, which I respect.

So I will try to keep the tone of this respectful and not get too… how do the kids say it today, “salty.” I’ll try to keep sarcasm out of this.

I will paste in some excerpts from the page and below those, offer some of my thoughts.

(Link): Candace Cameron Bure says it’s ‘not too much’ to ask that her adult kids date people who love Jesus

Excerpts:

By Jeannie Ortega Law, Christian Post Reporter

Hollywood actress Candace Cameron Bure recently revealed that she has one specific desire concerning the people her children date, and it’s that they love Jesus.

The “Fuller House” star told Us Weekly that she has asked her three adult children, Natasha, 22, Lev, 21, and Maksim, 19, all of whom are actively dating, to bring home someone who’s Christian.

“When it comes down to it, I just want [their significant others] to love Jesus the way I love Jesus,” Bure shared in her video interview.

Awful Early-Marriage Promoting Editorial, ‘The Future of Christian Marriage,’ from The Christian Post that Actually Cites Deviant Mark Regnerus (December 2020)

Awful Early-Marriage Promoting Editorial, ‘The Future of Christian Marriage,’ from The Christian Post that Actually Cites Deviant Mark Regnerus (December 2020)

Below: another article (this time from The Christian Post) seemingly advocating for the good ol’ days when, supposedly, most women got married by the age of 21 and popped out 10 kids apiece and lamenting at how folks just aren’t quite into marriage now as much as they used to be.

Such articles inadvertently suggest that being single and/or childless are somehow “wrong,” immoral, dangerous for society, or “second best.” They are sometimes (Link): intentionally or inadvertently singles-shaming.

Seems that about once a year, every year, some secular conservative or Christian group or person releases some kind of editorial bemoaning delayed marriage.

You can count on these things appearing regularly. Just like death and taxes, or the sun rising in the east tomorrow.

Christians Who Marry Non-Believers Must Be Ex-Communicated, Says John Piper

Christians Who Marry Non-Believers Must Be Ex-Communicated, Says John Piper 

I have many problems with this view point of sexist John Piper for reasons I will explain below these excerpts, so stay tuned!

Those views will be expressed below the excerpt here:

(Link): Christians Who Marry NonBelievers Must Be ExCommunicated, Says John Piper

Excerpts:

December 2020
By Leah MarieAnn Klett

Christians who marry nonbelievers have “compromised” their love for Christ in acting in “open defiance of the teaching of the apostles and of God” and thus must be removed from church membership, according to pastor and author John Piper.

In a recent (Link):  blog post on his popular DesiringGod website, Piper replied to a reader who asked how the church should respond when a Christian knowingly marries an unbeliever.

The pastor first stressed the seriousness of such a situation, explaining that there are multiple “layers of sin” when a professing believer “rejects the counsel of the church elders and marries an unbeliever.”

Can We Stop Saying Singleness is God’s Will? by Anonymous via Sheila Wray Gregoire

Can We Stop Saying Singleness is God’s Will? by Anonymous via Sheila Wray Gregoire

A few weeks ago, Sheila Wray Gregorie, who maintains a Christian martial advice blog, shared (Link): this on twitter.

A woman who runs yet another blog (called (Link): “True Love Dates”) featured a post by a single adult woman who I guess posted under a pen name, or as anonymous.

This single woman explained in her comment that, no, it’s not God’s will for all single women to be single, and for so many Christians to keep mouthing this assumption or repeating it in their sermons, books, or blogs is hurtful and discouraging to some single women who’d like to be married but who have not met the right person.

I too have done several posts over the years attempting to correct some of the wrong, hurtful, or insensitive teachings and attitudes that a lot of Christians have about singleness –
– such as, (Link): God told you to marry your spouse;
or, it’s (Link): God’s will for most to marry;
or that (Link): single adults exist only to serve married couples;
or that (Link): unwanted and protracted singleness is a “gift” God bestows upon some. (There are so many Christian fallacies about singleness.)

Here is the featured content for this post, and I agree that Christians need to stop saying that singleness (especially unwanted protracted singleness) is “God’s will.”

(Link): Can We Stop Saying Singleness is God’s Will?

Excerpts:

[by Sheila Wray Gregoire]

If you’ve never been married, does that mean that it was always God’s will that you would be single?

I think we talk about that a lot–that people are “called to singleness”, as if God decides before you were born, “Oh, I’m going to make sure that Jennifer doesn’t get married,” or “I’d prefer Stacey never meet the man of her dreams.”

Now, I do believe that God puts on some people’s hearts to be single, and to dedicate their life to a singular purpose to serve Him, in which singleness is necessary.

But I don’t think that’s the majority of people who are single.

What Christians Really Think About the Church’s Relationship Advice by Anna Broadway

What Christians Really Think About the Church’s Relationship Advice by Anna Broadway

The following article (book review) from Christianity Today covers several topics about singleness and the church I’ve been pointing out on this blog for literally years now.

One big point it brings up that I have: there are more single Christian women in the church than there are single Christian men. This means if a Christian single female insists upon following the “equally yoked” rule (that states a Christian may only marry another Christian), she will remain single.

If you are a single Christian woman who desires marriage, it is imperative you ditch the ‘equally yoked’ rule. You must learn to judge men based on their character, not what their stated religious beliefs are.

(Link): What Christians Really Think About the Church’s Relationship Advice by Anna Broadway

Excerpts:

New survey research sheds light on how believers navigate the stickier matters of dating and marriage.

July 10, 2019

Over the years, Christians have produced and read far more books on how relationships and singleness should work than on how these things actuallydo pan out. Vicky Walker’s new book Relatable: Exploring God, Love, & Connection in the Age of Choice, based on a survey of more than 1,400 people, aims to change that.

Walker writes from a more-or-less Protestant British perspective, but American Christians will find much they recognize.

Over the course of 12 chapters and several appendices, Relatable covers everything from the history of marriage to typical teachings on gender roles to, of course, sex. But she also gets into stickier matters like the role of technology and the church’s significant sex-ratio gap—the latter a topic that raises questions of dating outside the faith.

Abusers Hide In Churches – Equally Yoked Does Not Help Single Christian Women Who’d Like to Marry

Abusers Hide In Churches – Equally Yoked Does Not Help Single Christian Women Who’d Like to Marry

The “equally yoked” rule really makes no sense for single adult Christians, especially Christian women who’d like to marry, since (Link): so many self professing Christian men – even ones who read their Bibles daily or attend church weekly or work as pastors – are sexual deviants, wife abusers, or adulterers.

My parents taught me to seek out good mate material at local churches, because they felt the quality of people would be better at a church, as opposed to going to a bar to get dates with men.

However, I’ve seen far too many news stories of self professed Christian men who beat their wives, molest kids, or have been arrested for soliciting sex with animals, to think that Christian men are any more quality or safer than Non-Christian men. I also fail to see how churches are any safer to meet dates than a bar.

The whole post by Deborah Brunt is very good, but I only wanted to quote from part of it in my post:

(Link): Be wary of churches breaking the silence by Deborah Brunt

Excerpts:

[How churches and typical Christian preachers deal with sexual abuse in their churches]

Pastor-Man offers simple solutions for sexual abuse.

He calls men to be pure. He makes no distinction between the temptation to sexual sin, which both genders face, and the lifestyle of strong deception, sexual domination and violence that male abusers deliberately adopt.

Maryland Pastor Pushes Equally Yoked Doctrine – Which Only Promotes Unwanted Protracted Singleness

Maryland Pastor Pushes Equally Yoked Doctrine – Which Only Promotes Unwanted Protracted Singleness

This is a nauseating page by a pastor in Maryland, named Sean Nolan, for the “Desiring God” web site. (You can see the link below.)

I will comment more about this guy’s essay BELOW it. So please scroll down for some of my commentary – most of which you can already guess if you’ve been to my blog before and have seen my previous posts about this “Equally Yoked” stuff.

(Link): Letter to a Friend Engaged to a Nonbeliever by Sean Nolan

Excerpts from the page:

Dear Kelly,

I was surprised by the recent news of your engagement. While I wish I could celebrate with you without reservation, I admit I have some. My greatest concern is that your fianceé does not know or love Christ. Because I love you and care about your future, I feel compelled to speak now rather than to hold my peace, knowing full well how you might receive my “peace.”

…As I have watched people walk down this road, I have noticed several common ways people justify marrying a nonbeliever. I want to address them…

Alpha Females Part 1 – Nothing New Under the Sun. Conservative Women Keep Issuing Same Sexist, Unhelpful Dating And Marital Advice to Women

Alpha Females Part 1 – Nothing New Under the Sun. Conservative Women Keep Issuing Same Sexist, Unhelpful Dating And Marital Advice to Women

This commentary will be divided up among a few posts. Here is part 1.

Visit Part 2 | Part 3 |  A Response to Venker: Re: Personal Experience

Part 4

Introduction.

For those new to my blog:

I am a right winger. I was a Republican until recently. I am now a conservative Independent.

I was a conservative Christian for many years (I am no longer sure about what my religious views are), and I (Link): Am A Former Gender Complementarian (someone who believed in and lived out traditional gender roles, views which are based in large measure on incorrect interpretations and applications about gender in the Bible).

I sometimes agree with secular left wing feminists on some topics, but not always. At times, I disagree with secular and religious left wing feminists and have written several blog posts critiquing some of their views.

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This series of posts is addressing author Suzanne Venker’s relationship advice, as I have seen her advocate for, in behalf of her book “The Alpha Female’s Guide to Men and Marriage.”

I myself am not, nor have I ever been, what she terms an “Alpha Female.”

I have always been what she refers to as a “Beta,” and guess what?

Being a Beta did not land me a spouse, dates, or make my life easier, more peaceful, less stressful, or rewarding, as Venker tries to reassure her female readers that it will. More on that in a future post.

As a conservative who is in her 40s and still single (though engaged at one time), I have been seeing these sorts of attitudes about gender and marriage that are discussed below in an article by Venker advanced by secular and religious conservatives since I was a teen in the 1980s.

There is an annoying, recurrent, and yes, sexist, motiff by conservatives to say the reason society has problems with marriage, dating irregularity, high divorce rates, and other relationship problems – is that women are at fault.

Women are always blamed for relationship trends and problems – and at that, usually by other women – and at that, by women who tend to be conservative and who publish books or articles about dating and marriage.

“‘I Kissed Dating Goodbye’ [Book] Told Me to Stay Pure Until Marriage. I Still Have a Stain on My Heart” – Regarding: Dating Book by Author Josh Harris (with other related links about the IKDG book) and Criticizing “Purity Culture”

“‘I Kissed Dating Goodbye’ [Book] Told Me to Stay Pure Until Marriage. I Still Have a Stain on My Heart” – Regarding: Dating Book by Author Josh Harris (with other related links about the IKDG book) and Criticizing “Purity Culture”

August 24, 2016 update: I added a new link at the bottom of this post: people continue to attack the idea of sexual purity by publicizing backlash against the Harris IKDG book.

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I myself have never read the IKDB book, which was written by Harris. I have read about the book on other sites in the past, and it is my understanding the book discussed how to date, and other such topics, and is not strictly about sex or virginity.

The author uses this review of the IKDG book to bash “purity culture,” and in so doing, touches on the topic or staying chaste until marriage.

I am in the middle of this debate. I cannot completely agree with all the critics of “purity culture,” depending on what they are criticizing about it and why.

I believe that the Bible teaches both male and females are to sexually abstain until marriage, so I don’t believe in tossing out this teaching all because some young women feel they have been hurt or oppressed by it.

On the other hand, how some Christians have taught about sexual purity has been lop-sided – males are typically not addressed, only females – and Christians could do a better, or more sensitive job, in how they present the concept of remaining a virgin until marriage.

With that introduction, here is the link, with some excerpts (and note, I am not in complete agreement with all views in this piece; however, I’m not a supporter of a lot of Christian dating advice. Christian dating advice tends to act as an obstacle to singles who want to someday marry):

(Link): “‘I Kissed Dating Goodbye’ told me to stay pure until marriage. I still have a stain on my heart“

Excerpts:

By Liz Lenz

July 27, 2016

In 1997, Joshua Harris published “I Kissed Dating Goodbye,” a book that was in part a warning about the harm that relationships before marriage could cause. Harris evoked images of men at the altar bringing all their past partners with them into the marriage to reinforce the point that love and sex before marriage took pieces of your heart and made you less.

At the time, Harris was just 21, but he was already a rising star.

…He [Harris] was what we, as young evangelicals, wanted to be. And so we strove passionately to attain the ideal of premarital purity he laid out for us. Now, almost 20 years later, even Harris appears to be questioning whether his advice did more harm than good.

…But Harris’s book was hugely influential.

…On the surface, I am a purity-culture success story: I am a heterosexual woman, a virgin until marriage, now with two small children and a husband I deeply love. We attend church. We believe in God. And yet, for me, the legacy of purity culture is not one of freedom but one of fear.

Purity culture taught me that I ought to be passed down from father to husband, more an inheritance than a human.

 I was taught that men are my cover and my shield, when for the most part they have been the ones causing damage through molestation, rape and abuse.

I was taught that my holy calling was to open my legs for one and only one and bear him children. Barring that, I was to keep them closed and never express desire or lust or fear or longing.

So many women in my life cracked under the untenable pressure, often giving up on God all together. Others were forced into marriages with men who hit them and hid their abuse behind another message of the church borne from purity culture, that God hates divorce.

Women, Stop Listening to Sexist Relationship ‘Experts’ by D. L. D’Oyley

Women, Stop Listening to Sexist Relationship ‘Experts’ by D. L. D’Oyley

If you are not already aware, Steve Harvey, whom this author discusses, is a Christian. He is sometimes a guest speaker on Christian network TBN.

(Link): Women, Stop Listening to Sexist Relationship ‘Experts’ (page 1)
(Link to Page 2) by D. L. D’Oyley

Excerpts:

Feb 2016

She Matters: If they’re men who hold shoddy views about sex and women, it follows that their advice to women will also be shoddy.

…It’s a common theme among men, including many so-called relationship experts. And that’s a huge problem.

It should be obvious why that’s an issue, but in case it isn’t: You have men who hold screwed-up views about sex and women telling women how to be better women to land a man.

If the perspective with which they view women is shoddy, then it follows that their advice to women will also be shoddy.

Complementarian Churches and the Single Adult Woman by J. Dyer

Complementarian Churches and the Single Adult Woman by J. Dyer

This is a page by a woman in her mid 30s who thought she would have been married by now but still finds herself single. She describes how the gender complementarian churches she has attended don’t minister to adult single women properly.

She also notes in this page how following all the usual Christian dating advice has not worked – she’s tried it all and is still single; this is a phenomenon I’ve blogged about before.

(Link): Complementarian Churches and the Single Adult Woman by J. Dyer

Excerpts:

• …But it [meeting a spouse at church] didn’t [happen]. Well-meaning friends told me all manner of things about how God must be teaching me something (it appears I’m a slow learner). Or–my favorite–if I could just delight in the Lord, when I least expected it, God would bring “the man” into my life.
• Churches often try to tell women how to be women without considering the whole range of God-inspired possibilities. There will always be outliers to the model they create.