(Still) Finding Purpose

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I grew up religious. I was taught by good parents to be the best man I could be. The church infused us with a sense of purpose. It was clear that God gave us families and that God, as our Father, expected us to participate in that, to marry, multiply and replenish the earth. Unfortunately, things didn't turn out so well. It was not however because I drank lots of booze and drove wild. It was not because I was a philanderer or addict. It was not because I was lazy or did some terrible dark thing. It did however lead people to think that either I was doing things wrong or that I was lying about my intentions. Not succeeding and not attempting may look the same in the end, but they take very different paths. All I ever wanted to be when I grew up was a dad, but that requires you to decide how you're ok with having kids and then, if you want to do it God's way, finding someone interested in having children with you. That's a more difficult proposition than anyone ever taught me. Here are some obstacles of which the prognosticators of posterity conveniently seem ignorant.

Dashed by divorce

I followed the plan. I married at 23 in the faith, in the temple to a woman I met a religious classes (Institute). We went on dates to church things. I'm convinced now that she's the most consummate actress I ever met, engaged in the most elaborate charade ever conceived against me. After only a few months, it was clear that her interest in me was near zero, and she opined ad nauseum that I was not what she built me up in her mind to be. Rather than build me up, she tore me down, because being a wrecker is so much easier than building. Eventually the church leaders aceded to permit me to get divorced and a court took 90% of my assets and gave them to her because she was an "oppressed minority" essentially (my words, not theirs). So, everything I built, including every shred of confidence that survived the hellscape of high school, was dashed to pieces and I moved away to start over from scratch. The church provided no safety net for me, but when she fell on hard times and accused me of not keeping my end of the bargain, they investigated me. I satisfied their concerns, so she turned to the court again, which ordered me to pay half of her graduate school debt, all of which she incurred after divorce.

Dashed by defeat

I moved forward. I found a job in my career field. Soon afterwards, I found that, whereas I had started at the bottom, others were hired at the top of the payscale. Since then I have clawed and scratched my way upwards while others had the skids of their careers greased in grift. Despite their best efforts, my wages rise because the legislature controls my base pay, and because legislators, who automatically assume that the professoriate is left leaning, keeps giving me the same raise as everyone else. Meanwhile, I tried to date, first at church, then through acquaintances, and finally via the internet. Obviously none of that worked out or you would have heard about it. In fact, ever since my divorce, I have watched in dismay as nothing I did bore any fruit I wanted.

Distracted by other endeavors

Along the way, other challenges arose, distracting my gaze and sapping my strength. I went through financial crises at work, false allegations, a pandemic, an oppressive HOA as well as a series of grifters who mostly unsuccessfully came at me. Eventually I lost taste in doing anything because no sooner did I start something I wanted to do than some complication arose and took me off course. I used to have a neighbor who chided me on a father's day for not having any children, as if he was superior to me because he managed to impregnate women for whom he did not care or provide, and I learned to go far out of my way to avoid certain encounters and conversations that painted me as antagonist and the sole arbiter of my fate. An enemy hath done this.

Knocked down but still standing

Fortunatley for me, the Lord has actually had my back. If I look back to where I was 20 years ago when I was married still, I'm happier, healthier, and wealthier, not to mention wiser. Without a mentor or any coaching, I successfully naviated the siren song of many pitfalls, refused to acquiesce to the grift of corporations or romantic incorporation, and gained some sense of self respect. I spent some time in Alaska alone reflecting and found that, although I don't like the way I look per se, I like the person that I am. I speak my mind and don't worry about if it helps or upsets others, and I'm blessed with parents who support me even when they think I took a bridge too far. They are pleased with their articulate son and the way that he is self reliant and stable, despite the best efforts of the world to crush me underfoot.

While it bothers me to read stories and see videos of people who are less worthy proudly proclaiming their parental privileges and ascribing that accuractely to the assistance of the Almighty, I know that's not necessarily the end of my roles and responsibilities. I learned since getting divorced that the real purpose of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is in lifting up our fellow men. For most of us, this applies in our families, where we have specific people for whom responsibility and affection are expected and obvious. If we don't love them, then our love for others is largely imaginary. However, for those who cannot have a family, either because of things that happen to them or because of things that don't happen for them, the real purpose is to love our neighbors. Jesus made that very clear when he explained which commandment is the second greatest. So, if you dont have a family, you can still succeed. I won't pretend that it's as rewarding to teach and train other men's kids. It's not. However, each and every one of them is one of God's children, and He has promised that whatsoever we shall do to the least of these our brethren we have done to Him. Consequently, even if I never see any fruits or know if I made any headway into their outcomes or even their thoughts, every worthy thing I do counts, if not for them then for the God I love to serve and to whom I am eternally grateful for all that I have and am. He feeds me by the Brook of Cherith and validates my words, and one day He may save my life again. I hope.

Good Men Don’t Spoil Their Wives

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We have all heard the cliché tripe “happy wife, happy life” because women like to use that as a standard for what makes a man good. However, women don’t understand that good men do not look for marriage in order to spoil their wife. They are looking for a partner, a help meet, and not just someone who hopes to mete his help. Most men are looking to start a family and not just to find someone to help them spend their money. Most men who are interested in marriage are looking to build a legacy that is not a business or a brand, because they know that 100 years from now almost nobody will remember who they were and what they were doing. What they’re really leaving behind is their family.

Modern women talk incessantly about princess treatment and about what men have to do before they will marry them. Those same women talk very little about why a man would want to marry them. Some of those same women don’t want kids or already have them with other men, and they seem shocked when men do not want anything with them long term. They have only to look at real princesses for their examples.

Real princesses are spoiled only by their fathers. Modern women demand a man who will spoil them and treat them like a princess. However, they have no idea how princesses were treated in antiquity. Historically, princesses were put into arranged marriages in order to advance a political or commercial alliance that advanced her family, her father in particular. Contrary to popular belief, men do not marry in order to spend lavishly on their wife. Some men will do this in order to woo a woman and lure her in, but that’s never been the actual plan.

Princes desire real princesses, not as means to burn through their wealth but as a way to extend the lineage. A prince doesn’t search for a woman, particularly a peasant, so that they can disburse their wealth to the lowly villagers. A prince may choose a peasant because he wants to have children with her. Compare Prince William versus Prince Harry. William wisely chose a woman who would one day make a potentially good queen and mother (and got several children from her) while Harry chose a woman who looked good in photos and has lost his title, his income, his position in the family and didn’t even get any children (yet). Say what you like about Henry Tudor, but his obsession with wives was not because he was a whoremonger. What did he want? He wanted a son to carry on his line, and the wife he spoiled the most and beside whom he was buried was Jane Seymour, the only wife he had who gave him a son who outlived him (although not by long).

There is only one man who is going to spoil a woman, and that is her father, because he is spoiling his DAUGHTER, which is the intent of nearly all men who reproduce. They work and slave so that their CHILDREN can have a better life and inherit what they build. In antiquity, a son was particularly desirable for purposes of inheritance, since male heirs carried the rights to land, titles, and responsibilities under the Carolignian system established under Charlemagne and propagated into the 1800s. If you didn’t have children, your estate was taken by the crown and divided, often amongst your enemies, and if you had a daughter, you strove to make a smart match so that, if you couldn’t keep all that lovely money in the family, you could at least keep it in a family of whom you approved. However, all too often liberated modern women eschew a suitable male companion of whom their parents approve and pursue the rapscallion furthest therefrom.

This does not mean that men do not care about the mother. Men care about a family, so if a woman gives him children, helps him raise them up well, and takes care of the estate, she will benefit from his efforts to elevate the lives of his children because she shares the household. She will benefit by association because she shares a household with her husband and the children that she gave him. Contrast that to the expectations of women in divorce who demand alimony. The court has to FORCE men to pay her money because she no longer shares the household, and men who pay do pay because they care about the children over whom she probably has custody.

Men are not looking for a wife or a partner or a woman to spoil. Men desire a family. A wife and mother is part of that, but that’s not the ultimate goal to provide her with a lifestyle after he dies. The ultimate goal is to pass on what a man has, what a man is, and what a man acquires to elevate the lives of his children when he is gone. Even a poor man tries to leave some “legacy” to his children, even if it’s just a compass (Albert Einstein) or some other token. In the movie “Hook” Robin Williams’ version of Peter Pan reveals that his happy thought was when he became a daddy. It was not when he became a husband.  Scripture also reminds us that “I have no greater joy than to know that my children walk in truth” and that “children are an heritage of the lord and happy is he who hath a quiver full of them”.

Even biologically speaking, the entire purpose of life is the perpetuation of life. From single celled organisms up to and including man, everything that happens in cells occurs so that, when the time is right and situations favor it, you can make a copy of yourself and preserve life. When organisms come into opposition, the preventive measures most develop was to preserve them against their greatest predator. However, in humans, the greatest predator seems to be the unrealistic and skew expectations of what makes a man worth marrying and all the women who bear children with men who don’t stick around and who make poor fathers. In fact the greatest bane on modern society may be the absolute deluge of fatherless children, not to war or disease that made them orphans, but to abandonment because the men who sired them didn’t want children and because the women didn’t want men who wanted to have and raise offspring.

If you want a good man, you have to understand what a good man really wants. He does not want to become a husband. He wants to become a good father. A good man will sire children within the bonds of marriage for moral and practical reasons, because a family is best served when two parents love each other and are committed to the success of the family. Good men will eschew most modern women for this reason, because too many modern women seek only their own success. Go read the dating profiles and watch their tiktok videos, and you’ll just hear laundry lists of what women demand and almost nothing if anything at all about what they bring to the man. It’s just assumed that a man’s life is made better because a woman is in it, as if Delilah never made Samson low, as if Jezebel never led Ahab into an ignominious death. Most modern women are not even interested in finding out what a man wants let alone providing it. They are strong independent women who don’t need no man.

Ironically as the world becomes more radical, some men are becoming more traditional. The men avoid dating and marriage, not because they don’t want it, but because they can’t find women who would make suitable MOTHERS. Ultimately, a man who marries is looking for someone who will be a good mother to his children, because only rarely when physically coupled do man and women not create new life. A man who decides to keep a woman has decided he wants to have children and raise them with the woman. A good man will sacrifice whatever it takes for his family. However, modern women will sacrifice their family for whatever it takes to get attention and validation in the era of likes, comments and subscriptions. And men are done.

A spoiled woman is not a good thing. Most things that are spoiled are avoided. Spoiled bananas are discarded. A girl spoiled by her father all too often expects to move from her parent’s house to her husband’s with no diminution in her standard of living, and if a man cannot do that, he is considered unworthy and undesirable. A woman who has been spoiled by previous relationships or by a codependent relationship with government largess typically punches far above her weight class and finds ways to disqualify all men. The modern world is a pandemic of spoiled brats, and the women in almost every living generation have been rendered poor wives by years of unbroken success for women.

So what’s the solution? First off, women need to understand what men really want out of them. Secondly, women need to become what men would want so that men will commit to them. Finally, women need to behave in a way that women will believe that they will stay. No fault divorce, inequities in custodianship, and unbalanced alimony/child support have made even men who would like to have a family cautious of taking the risk. “Just have faith” rings hollow to those divided by zero in a divorce proceeding, and with the assumption being that divorced men deserve it, men walk around with black eyes earned by other men. Until and unless women behave like women that men would want to keep, the birth rate will continue to drop, marriage industries will collapse and women will find themselves over 40 and unwanted.

The worst thing is the notion of “recreational use” for women. Too many men, unwilling to risk any commitment, will lie to women, use them for fun, and then discard them, thus committing the crime for which all men now serve the sentence. Most men are not players; but most women seem to assume that most men only want one thing. We do. We want something that outlives us; we want children. Because at the end of the day, while there’s no guarantee that your children will mourn your passing, tend you when you’re old, miss you when you’re gone or pass on what you were to their children, there is a 100% guarantee that nobody will if you don’t have any children. We remember Henry VIII because he did have children. We remember him because he was obsessed with having them. We may not agree with his methods or mania, but we can understand the desire he had and the excitement he had for Edward VI. As Christians, we can all understand a Father’s love for His Beloved Son. That’s the title that most good men truly desire: Daddy.