You Can Keep Your Skinny Jeans

I have wonderful news about my relationship with Rhodah. It turns out we agree about two very important things.

1. Wives should be slender and toned at all times.

2. It’s fine for a husband to be old, fat, flabby, and useless.

I’m holding up my end of the bargain. No one can accuse me of shirking.

Like Mel Brooks said, it’s good to be the king.

Of course, I am going to make an effort to do better. But she really did say no one cares if a man is fat, which is not far from the truth.

Today my friend Mike, who has appointed himself marriage coach, said I should ask Rhodah why she loved me. Rhodah said that was the wrong question. She said I should ask why she chose me. She said that if you can point to reasons why you love someone, the love isn’t real.

I have to agree. If you choose your mate based on one or more known criteria, what happens when he or she no longer measures up? What if your rich man becomes poor or your pretty wife balloons up, which most of them soon do? The thing you actually loved will be gone.

I was thinking about it while she talked, and I realized I don’t have a set of reasons why I love her. I just do. I can think of many wonderful things about her, but I can’t say I love her for this or that reason.

Here’s something God showed me today: if a man and his betrothed have disagreements, it’s not necessarily a sign they shouldn’t marry. Why? Because the Holy Spirit tells everyone the same things. If both of you are connected to him, and you listen to him every day, eventually, any disagreement will be resolved. It depends on how much time you spend with him and whether you’re too proud to listen.

I think contentious marriages are sick. It sets my teeth on edge when abrasive couples grin and talk about their “healthy” arguments. But disagreements about trivial things shouldn’t discourage couples, as long as they stay connected to God.

Our relationship is not contentious. One reason: Rhodah is not high-maintenance or entitled. Many American women have gone insane with feelings of entitlement, which is odd, because they sell themselves more cheaply than ever. A man’s chance of sex on a first date, or even before a first date, is at its historic peak, and continual sex prior to engagement is almost guaranteed, yet increasingly, American women demand insanely expensive weddings with ridiculous requirements.

Why are brides so crazy now? I think one reason may be that they feel they’re being repaid for sex.

Women often complain that men expect sex after paying for expensive meals. Men often complain about spending three figures on food and going to bed alone. Maybe this, along with the bridezilla entitlement syndrome, shows that modern marriage is more about self-interest than love.

I can say I’ve experienced this. I had an improper relationship with a completely unsuitable woman, and on one occasion, she talked about what I owed her, and she said I knew what she was talking about. I didn’t, but I suspected she was referring to a particular sex act she had been providing. I felt she was saying that if she was willing to yield to that extent, it meant I was obligated to marry her.

As a man, I had never thought of things I did for her behind closed doors as services or favors. I was just enjoying myself. Maybe I was the only one who saw what we did as recreation. Maybe she saw it as a paying job.

If a woman believes marriage is a set of transactions that comes with a ledger of credits and debits, then it makes sense that an irrational woman would feel owed after advancing marital services for months or years. The problem with this attitude is that where there is no contract, there is no debt. If you give someone something and pretend you’re doing it out of love, you can’t come back later and present a bill. Free samples are just that. Free. If a lady at the grocery store gives me a free egg roll on a toothpick, she can’t chase me down in the parking lot and make me buy a whole box.

The bills seem to keep coming, though, all over America and other parts of the First World. You can go to Reddit and give yourself eyestrain, reading about insane women tormenting grooms, relatives, and friends with demands that would make Caligula seem reasonable.

“If you want to be a bridesmaid, you’re not allowed to talk about your pregnancy, because it would take attention away from me.” “My bridesmaids can’t wear makeup, because I have to be the prettiest one there.” Actual quotation, about gifts: “Any clothes OVER $400 from Calvin Klein, Moschino, or Nora’s.”

One viral bride demanded $1500 from each guest so she could fly everyone to Aruba for a wedding.

The most I recall spending for a wedding gift is $140 (law school friend), and I thought that was ample. Vogue says $99 is fine unless you’re a close relative.

The weird thing about bridezillas is that so many go after innocent parties. If you sold sexual services to your boyfriend, why would you charge your sorority sister?

Another big problem American husbands complain about is a sudden end to sexual activity after marriage. Here’s the truth, plain and simple: if you don’t want intimacy with your husband, you don’t love him. You can’t stay away from a person you really love. Even at times when you’re not in the mood, you’ll show some consideration because you want to be good to someone you care about. If your husband were an invalid, you wouldn’t refuse to change his diaper because you weren’t in the mood. If he had cancer, you wouldn’t refuse to take him for chemotherapy because you weren’t in the mood. Somehow, sex is different?

Don’t claim you can’t have sex when you don’t feel like it. I can do it, and so can anyone else. It’s a simple courtesy.

Anyway, American women have a reputation for narcissism and selfishness these days. It’s very pleasant not to have to deal with that, especially in the time of coronavirus, when arranging a wedding with a foreigner is very hard.

Rhodah doesn’t care if we have an online wedding. She doesn’t care if it’s just us and a judge or preacher. She isn’t concerned about gifts. Why should she be? My kitchen is stocked with equipment, and we’ll be furnishing the house when she gets here. We don’t need a collection of doodads from Pottery Barn.

Rhodah never says I haven’t shown that I love her. She hasn’t asked me for all of my Internet passwords. She doesn’t tell me I have to eat what she eats. She never says I don’t do enough for her. She doesn’t fish for compliments. She doesn’t say things to make me feel bad about myself, in order to manipulate me. She doesn’t hang up or run away to punish me for disagreeing with her. She has never given me what modern men call a “sh__ test.”

I have written about this kind of test before. A cleaned-up version of the phrase is “poop test.” A poop test is deliberate mistreatment intended to determine exactly how much abuse a man will put up with. That’s not a complete definition. It’s also a way to establish dominance. It’s a way of making a man understand that if he wants sex, he will give up his self-respect and his integrity.

Women like this turn marriage into a game. A game is a competition. You can’t compete with someone if you’re on the same team. Aren’t you supposed to be on your husband’s team?

“Running hot and cold” is an example of a poop test. One day, a woman is all over a man. He’s the man of her dreams. He can do no wrong. The next day, she ignores his phone calls. She lets him drift for several days. Then she turns the hot water back on. She calls and asks where he’s been. He’s her dreamboat again. Then the pattern repeats.

Ultimatums are poop tests. “If we can’t agree on this, we may have to break up.” The last time a woman did this to me, I took her up on it, and her world was destroyed. I was more important to her than she was to me. She was expecting me to do anything to keep her, but I was already thinking about cutting the cord, so she picked a bad time. She should have been looking at herself and trying to make herself a better candidate.

Rhodah doesn’t have a list. “We have to live here, in a house that looks like this, with that kind of furniture, and we have to have this many kids, and we have to have them before I’m this old, and you have to be this tall, and your eyes have to be that color, and we have to have this kind of car…” None of that. Many, many American men have wives with lists. The men are just list items. They’re not leaders. They can be replaced.

In law school, I ran around with a girl who had a list. She said she was looking for a German man, which sounds crazy, but she meant it. A German man, in Miami. If not German, then maybe Scandinavian. Like she was picking out a couch.

She had other requirements. She would be about 46 now, and a quick Google suggests she’s still single. If so, it’s a shame. She was generally a very pleasant person, and I’m sure she could have landed a good man. She was very selfish and spoiled, though, and she could not accept correction.

She wasn’t a looker, but she wanted one. That’s a hard requirement to fill, for women. The world is full of happy couples in which the woman looks better than the man, but men generally marry women who look at least as good as they do.

She said she would consider me if she didn’t get what she wanted by a certain time. That was not an offer I could accept. I spent time with her anyway because we really enjoyed each other’s company, and I rarely ran into anyone I wanted to date. I got fed up with her selfishness one day and decided I didn’t even want to accompany her as a friend while I looked for someone else. I sent her an email explaining this. That was in 2004, and there has been no communication between us since.

I’m not saying she should have dated me. That would have been a disaster for me. But I think her entitlement made her a permanent spinster.

I would have dated her had God opened the door. I’m so glad he looked out for me. I was not capable of choosing a good wife. I didn’t know what a good wife was. Now that I have Rhodah, it seems obvious. God had to show me.

I didn’t know what a good marriage was. I had never seen one. Not one. Not in person. I had seen lasting marriages, but not good marriages.

My parents had a terrible marriage. All of my aunts and uncles had bad marriages. My grandparents had two bad marriages, and then my widowed grandmother married a man who was good to her but not a soulmate. My sister could not get a man to stay near her long enough to marry. Among my 6 cousins on my mother’s side, I can think of 6 divorces, with some multiples. I believe a 7th is in the works. One husband died very young, so it’s impossible to know how the marriage would have worked out.

Actually, I do know two marriages that don’t seem too bad. I had forgotten about them. They’re charismatics, though, and they try to stay close to God.

If you want compatibility, both man and wife have to have the Holy Spirit, and they have to let him order things. That’s the key. Even most Spirit-baptized Christians don’t listen to him, though. I hope Rhodah and I will always listen.

I am continuing to research marriage and immigration. More and more, online marriage looks good. It’s not as pretty as conventional weddings, but there is a certain romance to it. Two people faced with enormous obstacles abandon convention and use the Internet to elope electronically. Then they jet off to a beautiful location for a long honeymoon with no distractions. It would make a nice story for the future.