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Marriage really is a gift, a bit of earthly unmerited favor. How miraculous it is that out of billions of people, you can find one that actually chooses to spend time with you, to live with you, to put up with you and the glorious mess that you are.
Ha! And that’s just my husband’s side of the story.
In the world today there are so many negative messages about marriage that permeate our culture. Kind of interesting, we’re always focusing on how people must make sure they’re ready, they must wait until the time is right, as if marriage is this really scary thing, this potential disaster that people must delay as long as possible. It’s the oddest thing, when you turn 18 our culture says you’re old enough to go into combat, to go to war, to risk your life.
Marriage however, is perceived as requiringย much more preparation than combat, you must finish your education, delay marriage, become independently wealthy, wait for just the right one, sow your wild oats, establish yourself. So you should be just about ready for marriage….once you’ve survived the first 50 years of your childhood.
I empathize with individuals, marriage is a big decision and it can be scary. Also, some people have had a hard time of it, so if you are frustrated or grieving, it is understandable that you would be gun-shy or even bitter about the whole idea. However, as a collective culture in general, we’ve got some really negative stereotypes going on.
Marriage really is a gift, a great blessing. We as people do have a way of mucking it up, but that does not mean we should scratch the whole idea entirely and start speaking of balls and chains, serving 20 years to life, or obsessing over how hard it is, how much work it is, until no one in their right mind would ever pursue such a thing.
Of course it can be hard, probably the most challenging thing people are ever called to do, and it changes you, but that’s not all bad. Marriage can make you a better version of yourself, it can nurture and give birth to some of your best qualities. You really can get to know yourself through some elses eyes, and you can learn how to relinquish pride, develop empathy.
There’s a spiritual path to be discovered within marriage, treasures waiting to reveal themselves if we can stick with it. It’s no accident that Jesus Christ often used marriage as an example of His relationship with the church, as a metaphor for who and what we are to Him, about the nature of our relationship with God Himself. Often these things are hard to understand until you’ve been married for a long time, the nature of sacrificial love, what relationship really is, how to build intimacy, the power of forgiveness, the meaning of true love.
I read some real slugs in the gut yesterday, things like, why would any woman want to throw her life away and be “just” a wife? I got that little twitch that always pops up when people relegate me to the rubbish heap and imply my world is small and limited.
Just a wife who truly understands that love conquers all and we really can walk hand in hand with God in cool of the evenings, and that some fairytales are quite real. I can’t imagine a better place to bein life, although I have heard that some good things are beyond even my imagination, “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.”
kimberlyharding said:
๐ Marriage requires awareness….I think that is why it becomes so difficult. It is one of the greatest opportunities to grow.
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OKRickety said:
IB,
Of course it can be hard, probably the most challenging thing people are ever called to do, and it changes you, but thatโs not all bad. Marriage can make you a better version of yourself, it can nurture and give birth to some of your best qualities. You really can get to know yourself through some else’s eyes, and you can learn how to relinquish pride, develop empathy.
It’s my perception that you and your husband have committed to your marriage and chosen to love each other. Unfortunately, your experience is much less common than it used to be. Marriage rates are much lower than they were, and divorce has impacted the vast majority of people, most significantly through their own divorce or that of their parents. Personally, I think getting married now is extremely high-risk and I would advise strongly against it. (I would even more strongly discourage cohabitation and sex outside of marriage.) I believe that society and Christianity would benefit if marriage had its intended place, but I would not encourage it until the situation has changed.
Thereโs a spiritual path to be discovered within marriage, treasures waiting to reveal themselves if we can stick with it. Itโs no accident that Jesus Christ often used marriage as an example of His relationship with the church, as a metaphor for who and what we are to Him, about the nature of our relationship with God Himself. Often these things are hard to understand until youโve been married for a long time, the nature of sacrificial love, what relationship really is, how to build intimacy, the power of forgiveness, the meaning of true love.
I don’t know if you have read Gary Thomas’s book “Sacred Marriage: What If God Designed Marriage to Make Us Holy More Than to Make Us Happy”, but it appears you are thinking along the same track. Unfortunately, few people today have interest in becoming more holy, but there is a huge desire to be happy.
Note: As much as I think your paragraph is generally true, I am reasonably certain that it is the Apostle Paul (and maybe others), not Jesus Christ, who compared the marriage relationship to that of Christ and the Church.
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Eric said:
“How miraculous it is that out of billions of people you can actually find one who chooses to spend time with you, to live with you, to put up with you…”
That’s assuming that you can and that miracles happen to everybody.
I heard on the radio this morning that in the Exceptionalist country called the US that a plurality of 12-15 y/o’s now identify as ‘bisexual’. Not surprising. The last census showed that less than 1/4 kids under 12 live with both their biological parents. No wonder 20% of US kids are on antidepressants.
If a man wants anything like a traditional marriage, he has to look outside of this cesspool of culture the US has produced. The odds of even getting a happy and stable marriage get exponentially worse by the day.
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exanimo7 said:
I don’t necessarily share your pessimistic view of life in the US. I like to think we are much smarter and much more capable than you give us credit for.
And no, I’m not walking around with blinders on. I know many of my fellow Americans are hurting, broken, lost, looking for anything to make them happy. I know that many marriages don’t work out — I’ve witnessed divorce and infidelity happen in my own hometown (and within my own extended family). But I know of many, many more marriages that do work and that have lasted for years, decades even.
You’re free to express your opinions, as am I. But your persistent condemnation of the country I live in and love is getting a bit old.
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Eric said:
“We are much smarter and much more capable than you give us credit for.”
Why do you think so?
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exanimo7 said:
I choose to have a more positive view of people and life in general. I think that, with God’s help and by his grace, people have the potential to improve themselves and their circumstances.
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Eric said:
“With God’s help, and by His Grace, people have the potential to improve themselves and their circumstances.”
I agree. But I also don’t see very many especially willing to exercise that potential, and especially not with anything involving God.
“I choose to have a more positive view of people and life in general.”
I once did too. I’ve spent my entire adult life operating on that idea and trying to improve myself and make the world a better place. What good has it done? None whatsoever. If I hadn’t tried at all, it wouldn’t have made any difference. And the same is true of most of us.
That’s the point here. As we’re told, we are engaged in a Spiritual Warfare. But I see the cultural/spiritual war in this society a lot more like the Vietnam War than WW2 or Korea. Win or lose the next battle, it amounts to the same thing.
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insanitybytes22 said:
Eric, I often say that the problem is we keep declaring war on things, war on poverty, war on drugs, the culture war. These are wars we cannot win in the traditional ways of war and battle, in fact we make them worse when we approach them that way. You are right, win or lose it amounts to the same thing because we are fighting all wrong.
It’s counter intuitive, but the way to win at spiritual warfare is to surrender all, to let go of the rope like in a game of tug of war. You can’t win, we are outnumbered, so what you have to do is drop the rope and let everyone else fall on their behind. When we surrender all to Christ, He steps in and fights those battles for us. When we don’t we become battle weary, filled with despair, because we are trying to achieve victory on our own against an enemy that is much bigger and badder than us.
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Eric said:
IB:
True, Christians aren’t called to wage aggressive wars; but even before the Garden of Eden Satan declared war on God and came to Earth to cause the Fall and destroy God’s Creation. Before the Fall of Man, Adam was commanded by God to ‘maintain the Garden and defend it” (the commandment he broke by succumbing to temptation).
That’s the duty of men as I understand it: we’re commanded to maintain God’s Creation and protect God’s world from Evil. It’s defensive war that I mean here. But today, society doesn’t allow men to defend it. All the defending of it we did before hasn’t amounted to anything. When I was a teenager, the men in our community used to drive out gangs, drug pushers, and perverts if the authorities had their hands legally tied. If you look at stories from Missouri recently: the Ferguson Riots; the school riots over unisex bathrooms; UM Administration getting overthrown—this is the same area I grew up around 30 years later. What good did it do us to sacrifice, contribute and risk ourselves keeping the place safe and sane for everyone? Obviously nothing.
In the city I live in today, they named a children’s playground named for a homosexual pederast; the local school board officially has apologized to former teachers they’d fired for homosexual recruiting and we have drug pushers posing as school nurses and social workers, paid off by Big Pharma, to sell dope in the schools. And if a man dares so much to lift a pinky in protest, he’s subject to all kinds of petty harassment and social sanctions.
The duty of the New Adam is to follow the example of our sailors in Iran: cry, bow, and apologize to Evil for getting in its way.
I was taught by my older mentors to ‘do the right thing regardless’; ‘knowledge is power’; ‘love conquers all’; ‘don’t be afraid to take risks for a good cause”—-what good does any of this advice do a man today? Everywhere we go, we’re met with “No Dogs or White Men Welcome” “You ain’t one of them Bronze Age Bigots, is yous?” Such values are met with the cynical sneer and the rolling eyes, and a big ‘Ho-Hum’ because the REAL men in society are the crackheads with cardboard signs and sex perverts who ‘boldly come out’. The rest of us just need taken down another peg or two.
So, I don’t know if it’s actually ‘battle fatigue’. The reason I drew the analogy to the Vietnam War, is because it feels today like following God’s commandment to ‘maintain and defend the Garden’ in our culture is expending a lot of time, effort, men and material into a conflict that has very little chance of success.
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insanitybytes22 said:
I hear you, Eric. You are not alone, I listen to so many men speak of similar things. It’s the very a nature of men to protect and defend and it’s very frustrating to watch the world fall apart in spite of the efforts of so many good men.
Hope is hard to hold onto, it’s hard to understand that it matters, that it means everything that men have tried, that they have fought the good fight.
It’s hard too for men today to know that they truly matter, that even in the midst of all the chaos and confusion they can walk in victory, in Christ’s victory. These are not battles any man fights alone.
I hear you, I have poverty all around me and despair, discouragement, drug addiction, frustration over politics, economics. I feel the worst for the men around here, because it is hard for them, they feel as if they should have been able to prevent it, to stop it. They do everything right but it just doesn’t ever pay off. It’s not easy but we all have to place our eyes on better things, to trust in the Lord, to understand that we matter far more than we realize.
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Eric said:
Besides having an instinct to defend and protect, men also have an inborn fear of insignificance. Note that in civilized countries (at least until recently) men laid ground rules for competition—from sports, courtship, business and even warfare; men hold to boundaries. Win or lose is alright as long as do your best in a fair fight. ‘May the best man win’ we used to say. It didn’t make one a Loser to try and fail. Men acknowledge the better man won, and tried to improve for the next challenge.
Today, those rules are gone. In fact, the general way of thinking is that winning at all costs is everything; and those who cheat, use unfair advantages and commit other acts of injustice are entitled to lead better men than themselves and look down upon us as losers and inferiors.
That’s a point that really irritates men; and because it’s so closely tied to male psychology, I don’t think a lot of women understand it. Most men see doing things like defending and protecting as their duty and don’t really look for much reward or entitlement (except for really immature men like the Churchian Gamers). A firefighter may save 20 lives and say it’s just part of his job; but when he sees medals getting awarded to people like Bruce Jenner and sees clipped-haired, mean-faced Lesbians who can’t lift a firehose getting the promotion he wanted; the message it sends to normal men is that Society values this trash far more than it values your sacrifices and contributions.
This is a reason too why female thug-chasing hurts men so much. Women may not intentionally choose thugs to hurt other men; but how men typically read their actions is something like: “I value you, as a man, so little that I’d even rather be with this worthless thug. That’s how much I respect you, as a man.”
You’re right, it’s hard for men to keep up in this environment that continually depreciates and disrespects us. Even moreso, because it’s like were not even capable of earning respect.
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insanitybytes22 said:
You’re really very smart, Eric, and I appreciate your words. You are absolutely right, so many of us women do not understand male psychology at all. It can be like trying to learn a foreign language or a completely different culture.
There are some of us who have learned to empathize and I must tell you, it can be very painful, absolutely heartbreaking to know and to feel what men are feeling, even just from the outside looking in. I sometimes speculate that God keeps women wrapped in a bubble of bliss for a reason. No matter what modern women say, we lean on men for protection, we depend on them, so for us to truly feel what they are feeling can be distressing. It rocks our world, it pulls the foundation out from under us.
Men fear insignificance, you are right. Women’s greatest fear is actually being feared by men. So now we live in a culture that is trying very hard to render men insignificant and to create women that men will fear.
I was thinking of this recently in terms of how ISIS and some of the others are now sending women out as terrorists and how we are now sending women into combat. So culturally we are being attacked on two levels, men are being taught to fear women and men are being taught they are insignificant. I think many of us don’t understand how dangerous that is, how damaging to all of us it will be.
You are right too, respect is so important to men and we’ve made a mess of it in our culture. Something a lot of women have a hard time understanding is how important respect is for men. It took me forever to get this because it just isn’t my world, I could not relate. I didn’t even see it. I think men need to understand that, that most women don’t intend to be so disrespectful, we just don’t always speak the language, we aren’t even aware there is a language being spoken.
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Fromscratchmom said:
I think there are some answers to some of these concerns. Focusing on your own smaller corners of the world may help as an antidote to watching society at large crumble. The hardest things are when our own small corners are crumbling. And I’m not sure I have any answer for that since I’m just learning to survive being dumped, adultery, etc, after 18+ years.
But I still intend to move forward and hope to build up a new small corner of the world away from the ungodly man who turned on God and on everything else that matters most. Unfortunately, generally speaking, the more we are personally and deeply impacted by such tragedies of ungodliness the more we end up impacted by fear, which makes us potentially more likely to,screw up in future. So I’m in damage control mode wondering how I’ll make choices even in totally non-romantic contexts of which men are trustworthy when the world appears to hold so many more of the opposite.
And I’d venture to say that Eric apparently has the same problem in reverse. It’s sad. But he and I might never trust each other and therefore never enjoy fellowship as fully as people need in their social and emotional life because I’ve just sat here and declared my trust issues. And even that is with great trepidation and after intentionally avoiding engaging him for quite a time after I noted a few weeks ago where he declared that all the women in our culture are some specific brand of bad thing and that the only hope was to abstain and maybe bring over foreign women. So I’m at once in sympathy and at the same time completely at odds with him. I do live in this culture whether I have any safety or comfort level or agreement with where it’s gone or not. It is the culture I gre up in and it’s the the only one I know intimately. And I have my own issues from the perspective attempting to be a godly woman beset by ungodly men who simply did not ever learn how to love well within a godly structure of being a husband or father. Life is hard all around.
But what can you do but pray more and lean on God all the more in every aspect of life and experience? I think we are each obligated to continue on with the blessings God bestows on us and the curses he allows us to endure trying to grow and improve and have whatever positive impact we can have on the culture around us. I’ve been greatly struggling. But I’ve also been greatly blessed in the midst of it, even by some internet discussions.
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insanitybytes22 said:
I love this comment and your wise words. It is hard sometimes to “let not your heart be troubled,” in a world that is often nothing but trouble. It is challenging too, to keep our hearts soft and to not sink into despair or bitterness.
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OKRickety said:
IB,
I’m surprised that you did not respond to my comment on April 15, 2016 at 7:56 am, primarily on the question of “Jesus” or “Paul”.
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insanitybytes22 said:
You are right, I did not. I don’t know what to say to Christians who advise against marriage, who are bitter towards the world, but who speak endlessly about the need for women to submit. Well, I do know what to say but it isn’t particularly kind, so my first instinct is to just call you a bunch if ideologically driven red pills who aren’t really interested in following Christ at all.
So, besides the blessings to be found in marriage, the fact that it is good to go through life with someone to hold your hand, there is also the fact that “God said.” If you don’t like Paul’s words, there are many others like how it is not good for man to be alone, like how male and female he made them, like how for this reason a man shall leave his home.
Not everyone is called to married. There have always been people who are not. May they be blessed, that is good. However, I think the bible makes it clear that marriage is a Christian concept that the bulk of us are expected to pursue. The approved alternative involves either becoming a eunich or remaining celibate all your life, in which case whether or not wives submit is really going to be none of your business.
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OKRickety said:
IB,
[Luk 6:36-38 NASB] 36 “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. 37 “Do not judge, and you will not be judged; and do not condemn, and you will not be condemned; pardon, and you will be pardoned. 38 “Give, and it will be given to you. They will pour into your lap a good measure–pressed down, shaken together, and running over. For by your standard of measure it will be measured to you in return.”
You always think you have all the answers, don’t you? And you’re always certain that no one you have judged to be red pill, bitter, or otherwise flawed could possibly be correct, at least when it contradicts what you know to be the truth.
You regularly hammer on “Christian red pills” claiming that they aren’t really interested in following Christ. Who are you to judge their heart? You regularly claim they are endlessly speaking about the need for wives to submit (which is absolutely what Paul and Peter teach) and they have a constant urge to punish and control all women. That is so false as to be laughable! I know you believe it is true, but I wonder if you (and others, including some wannabe “red pills”) could see the truth if it hit you in the head like a 9-pound hammer.
It is true that many of them have negative attitudes toward many women, responding emotionally rather than logically. You make noises about mercy and grace, yet you display the identical negative attitude toward all “Christian red pills” when you make your generalizations about them. You are not alone as I see many women have negative generalizations about men, and respond emotionally rather than logically.
If you will read my comment on “When Submit Feels Like A Dirty Word”, you will see that I think both sides are wrong sometimes and both sides are right sometimes, but there is no progress being made. To me, the most important question now is: “What if both sides are partially correct, but they are too busy screaming, whining, complaining, berating, denouncing, denigrating, misunderstanding, mischaracterising, etc. to see the truth?”
“If I don’t like Paul’s words”? Ha! I think you may like them less than you think you do. Here is what Paul says in 1 Cor. 7:
[1 Cor. 7:1-2, 7-9, 26-28 NASB] 1 Now concerning the things about which you wrote, it is good for a man not to touch a woman. 2 But because of immoralities, each man is to have his own wife, and each woman is to have her own husband. … 7 Yet I wish that all men were even as I myself am. However, each man has his own gift from God, one in this manner, and another in that. 8 But I say to the unmarried and to widows that it is good for them if they remain even as I. 9 But if they do not have self-control, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to burn with passion. … 26 I think then that this is good in view of the present distress, that it is good for a man to remain as he is. 27 Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be released. Are you released from a wife? Do not seek a wife. 28 But if you marry, you have not sinned; and if a virgin marries, she has not sinned. Yet such will have trouble in this life, and I am trying to spare you.
It would be difficult to claim that Paul was strongly pro-marriage from this passage! He allows marriage if needed, but repeatedly says it is better to be unmarried.
[Gen 2:18 NASB] 18 Then the LORD God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.”
I know you say wives should voluntarily submit to their husbands. Now let’s suppose that most women of today are not suitable helpers for men, because Satan has managed to convince them that they should not always, if ever, submit to their husband. And suppose their husbands do lead in their marriage as they are commanded to do, but these women still choose to NOT submit to their husbands. In that case, who is at fault? The husbands, or the wives? No matter the answer, I maintain that wives failing to submit to their husbands is a common situation today, and thus we live in a time where marriage is in a “present distress”. This is also supported by the number of divorces of Christian marriages today, and the rates of sexual activity outside of marriage by Christians.
In the same way that Paul taught that marriage is not good “in view of the present distress” (but is acceptable if you will “burn with passion” otherwise), I believe that recommending Christians today avoid marriage is equally valid (with the expectation they they will remain celibate outside of marriage).
As to whose business is wifely submission, I am reasonably certain that you have taught that wives should submit to their husbands. What business is that of yours? Does your married state give you the prerogative? If so, then logically any Christian red pill husband should have the same right to teach that wives should submit to their husbands. I would think that elders, whether married or not, have the right to teach that wives should submit to their husbands, too.
It seems that Paul was single and celibate. He apparently considered the submission of wives to husbands to be his business. I see no reason why being single would remove the right to teach God’s will for marriage. I have my suspicion that the reason most women object to a single man teaching wifely submission is that they don’t want to submit. Actually, many women object to any man or woman teaching wifely submission. However, I don’t know that I have ever seen a man (or a woman) object to the corresponding teaching that a husband is to love his wife. Perhaps it happens, but I would hazard a guess that the rate of objection is extremely low compared to the rate of objection to wifely submission. What is the reason for the difference?
I believe that it is the business of the church (every member, not just the leaders) to be concerned about wives’ submission to their husbands (and husbands loving their wives), because the success or failure of Christian marriages will always be extremely significant to the church and God’s Kingdom.
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insanitybytes22 said:
“Who are you to judge their heart?”
A follower of Christ who spent two years studying the red pills? One who possesses a brain bigger than a gnat? Able to discern false teachings, outright hatred, and endless venom?
“You are not alone as I see many women have negative generalizations about men, and respond emotionally rather than logically.”
Not at all. I never make negative generalizations about men nor do I respond emotionally rather than logically.
You are so busy trying to force me to fit into your own red pill ideology, you can’t even see me.
“I see no reason why being single would remove the right to teach Godโs will for marriage.”
You in particular are unqualified on account of the fact that you harbor bitterness towards women and you have stated you wouldn’t advise anyone to get married.
Also, you’re either lying about not being able to see the problem with Dalrock or you’re breathtakingly stupid. Either way, your own biases disqualify you.
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Symona said:
“I read some real slugs in the gut yesterday, things like, why would any woman want to throw her life away and be โjustโ a wife? I got that little twitch that always pops up when people relegate me to the rubbish heap and imply my world is small and limited.”
When comments like that are directed at my mother, me and my siblings laugh. Because we know how hard she works. ๐
Put me in mind of this Family Circus comic. XD
https://safr.kingfeatures.com/idn/cnfeed/zone/js/content.php?file=aHR0cDovL3NhZnIua2luZ2ZlYXR1cmVzLmNvbS9UaGVGYW1pbHlDaXJjdXMvMjAxMC8wMy9GYW1pbHlfQ2lyY3VzX2h0LjIwMTAwMzI4XzkwMC5naWY=
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atimetoshare.me said:
You said it perfectly. I’ve been married for almost 52 years to the same man. It isn’t easy, but eventually you become extensions of each other. Sounds like you’ve got a good thing going!
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Paul said:
I’ve had a few long term relationships (10-15 years) but I’ve never gotten it right and have never been married. That said, when I start to ponder life deeply it feels very obvious that the concepts I follow go, in part to shall we call it, a concept harness that dead ends and is obviously designed to plug into another.There is also the lower to higher connection as well,but that feels very different. It is obvious to me that we are built to live together in a long term relationship = i.e. marriage.
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PARTNERING WITH EAGLES said:
“…the first 50 years of your childhood”. Ahh, satire. (suppressed laughter)
Thank you for the like on my latest post. I received three notices in my e-mail from you all in regard to it. PC hiccup?
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insanitybytes22 said:
Yes, PC hiccups, indeed. Not sure what the problem was, but it wouldn’t let me “like” your post, so I got rather persistent about it. Apparently it worked ๐
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KIA said:
i agree. marriage is a gift. a gift that my wife and i give each other each new morning.
-KIA
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superslaviswife said:
Nobody is ever “just” anything. It’s a strawman used by those who are jealous of our decisiveness, our good fortune, our hard work or our relaxed attitudes. They wonder “why does she get someone now, when she’s young, and get to be happy when, for all my years of hard work, I am yet to become happy myself?”
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ColorStorm said:
I kid you not ib22, a man told me he would rather have cancer (apologies to anybody going through this) than be married. This was in person, and I thought for an instant he was not serious. He was serious. Talk about bias, or preconceived notions of how all marriages must be to miserably shred an institution as old as time for no doubt a lousy upbringing. What, you have only seen one marriage in your lifetime? Geezo.
People don’t wake up and say ‘I long for a terminal illness than to be yoked with the opposite sex.’ Yeah, I would guess this man would have loved to have a spouse to be with him through better or worse, in sickness and in health, to nurse his wounds, if in fact that day arrived unannounced.
Is marriage work? Of course. Ha I’m laughing at some who say ‘give me proof of God.’ How opposite sexes can co-exist is pretty darn good. Sounds impossible ๐ But I’m reminded of your oft pics of Morticia and Gomez, or the tango two, in that oneness of dance that speaks so well to marriage. Bring in the spiritual component, and bam, you got the makings of beauty and the beast.
And oh btw, it is a wonderful life. ๐
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insanitybytes22 said:
Ha! Very well put. If marriage and our ability to come together is not proof of the miraculous nature of God, I don’t know what is! ๐
I have a friend who was married twice, eventually swore off marriage forever, in his late 50’s. He was quite content with his decision. I didn’t see him for a couple years and than suddenly he had a wife. Really funny because he was more baffled by it than I was.
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ColorStorm said:
I can hear Mr. and Mrs.Adam talking out by the garage, you know the one, east of Eden….’You know honey, do you think someday our ancestors will appreciate the goodness of God as seen through marriage, in spite of mankind’s poor choices?’
(boy do I have a doozy of a next sentence ๐ But zip the lip.
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Fromscratchmom said:
Wow, I almost hate to reopen a can of worms knowing that under some odd circumstance my comment might be seen even coming so late to thread. BUT I am astonished that anyone could ever claim that no one ever objects to the command for husbands to love their wives. That like the craziest willful blindness I’ve ever seen. I know of many many groups that barely abide to have that brought up and they certainly never explore it and teach it and elaborate on it. Plenty of people in churches pretend like a man is a great and godly husband if he does X. Whatever X may be for the pet partial role of a husband may be in their minds. Sometimes it is a single loving act once in a blue moon. Often it’s something outrageously deficient of love, such as ruling his house with an iron hand, forget not stirring your children to wrath and loving your wife and living with her in an understanding manner, just be domineering enough that they all submit even if out of fear and call that love, giving the terrible unloving husband credit for the good deeds of those he mistreats!
It’s a common occurrence that men turn their backs on God, on their vows and on their wives because they have failed to nurture love in their hearts and in their actions and then they just walk away from everything that matters most blaming her for their sin! Who thinks that those men had no objection to be COMMANDED to love their wives?!
Ugh!!! That’s just about the craziest thing I’ve seen on the Internet in a long while and I saw a couple of Wild humdingers just this week!
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insanitybytes22 said:
Ha! I hear you about those humdingers. Just when I think I’ve heard it all, something even crazier pops up.
Don’t let the turkeys get you down. There’s some very sweet and honorable men in the world ๐
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