What is the main transaction of marriage? Men provide money, security, resources, stability, and safety. Women provide children, sex, caretaking, and partnership. That is the Biblical transaction of marriage. Men and women are different, they have different needs, and they provide different things to each other. You cannot have sex outside of marriage.
Now enter dating. It’s a concept that’s barely 100 years old, where instead of arranged marriages or men and women marrying in courthouses on the spot, now it takes 1, 2, or maybe 3 years of dates, gifts, traveling together, and doing things together… until you’re finally married.
But especially for Christians, the women won’t let you have sex with them when dating. They won’t give you children. There is no caretaking. But the men still need to provide money and pay for dates and gifts and vacations. Men should still provide security and resources. It’s lopsided. Women don’t fulfill their wifely duties, but men are socially expected to fulfill their husbandly duties at all times. That happens for up to 3-4 years until you’re finally married.
And even if men do get married after all those years of dating, women still don’t have to give him sex or have kids because that’s her choice. Women don’t have to be caretakers, it’s 50/50. This is all fine, but women shouldn’t act surprised when men (especially Christian men) opt out of dating and marriage altogether because there’s nothing in it for them.
Am I saying we need to have arranged marriages back? Yeah kind of. I still think both the man and the woman should have a choice in the matter. At least it would solve a lot of these problems I just discussed. It wouldn’t solve no-fault divorce, alimony, or men paying half their money. That’s a whole different beast.
Call me misogynistic all you want for that previous statement. Those are my beliefs, and if I’m sexist for having these beliefs, then I’m sexist. I don’t hate women, but in current culture, 2024, dating gives men zero benefits. Especially Christian men.
