Powerful piece. I'll shamelessly suggest that all -- not some, but all -- of the following are probably necessary if she wants to have a shot at marriage:
1. Lose weight.
2. Consider whether her standards for men are unrealistically high
3. Ask some good husbands she knows whether there are aspects of her personality that she should work on
4. Engage with some sort of "trad" community (e.g. church) where the men are more likely to be marriage-minded than cads
5. Don't put out until (at the absolute least) having a serious talk about marriage, or (preferably) having a ring and a wedding date, or (best of all) the wedding night
#3 -- How many married men would realistically give an honest answer to this? If one of my wife's single friends asked me that question, I'm very sure I wouldn't. The odds that it's a sincere request (not fishing for compliments or reassurance) AND that she'll take the advice to heart are remote. The odds that it will backfire on me are very high.
In any event, for a woman in her life stage, she's realistically looking at a man in his 50s or MAYBE late 40s who is divorced. Unless a woman is really a catch (and apparently, in the eyes of her dating pool, she isn't), a significantly older man is the normal way of dating by her age.
Given that she yearns for a child, maybe she finds a man with at least one young child that she can be a stepmother to, but better bet is to hope to be a step-grandmother who is happy to babysit frequently and otherwise be involved in the child's life. I've seen this happen and work out, but of course, everything depends on his relationships with his kids and how they view his remarriage.
In my mind, the big downside for a woman marrying a significantly older man when she's already sort of old is that odds are he's going to start getting sick and feeble in not very many years. There's a good chance she will have more years caring for a decrepit old man than fun and active years with a companion she can do things with.
Yes, good points all around. About #3 -- you're probably right, but there has to be some way she can get honest feedback about her personality from a male point of view ... maybe filtered through the guy's wife?
I don't know. I would guess the better bet is a grandmotherly figure who is wise enough to understand men and not entirely out of touch with what it's like to be young. Ideally, either your own mother or, if she's still kicking, your grandmother.
My wife also wouldn't give this sort of feedback to her friends. But her mother and grandmother both would give it to any young woman who would listen.
My impression is that, other than losing weight and otherwise improving their self-adornment, women aren't taught anything true and useful about *how* to land a husband. I wonder, what's the best source of good advice that would make a difference? I have a daughter now and am concerned largely for her sake.
Men are given plenty of useless advice about what attracts women, which Aaron has perceptively pointed out. But luckily the basic script that men are given for life is still a reasonable start: be athletic, get educated, get a good career. Plus men tend to naturally gain confidence as we age. And of course, men are inclined to seek out women, even if sex is sometimes the primary motivator, and men aren't receiving a potent, high-status message not to seek out women. And even if we were, men have a stronger inner compass in general and are less easily persuaded to follow society's script when it contradicts that compass.
Doug Wilson, his wife and daughters have some good material out on how women should approach getting a husband and how to be a Christian wife and mother. The Eve in Exile documentary they have on Canon Plus is good.
Just a general message rebutting the feminist push for women to pursue college, a career and promiscuity in their 20s would be incredibly helpful. Point out the lies and what the truth is and provide the evidence to young women. You will have more men interested in marrying you at 23 than at 33, this doesn't make them sexist pigs. Hormonal birth control is terrible for your body and can harm your fertility long term. Your child bearing years are much shorter than the years you can spend in a career, just because you prioritize having children at a younger age doesn't mean you can't ever have a career.
Thanks. I'll take a look at that Wilson material at some point.
Agree with your second paragraph and I don't think there's anything there that I wouldn't be teaching anyway. Except I'm not necessarily sold on the long-term effects of hormonal birth control -- maybe, but I think what you're saying is speculative and I'd have to see where mainstream science is suppressing evidence here.
But the truth is that I've known plenty of girls from very traditional Christian homes that, at least from outside appearances, basically seem to have adopted their parents' worldview and thinking. And many of them have struggled with dating and relationships. I think that, while they have been relatively virtuous in their conduct, they have also approached the matter of finding a husband *passively*. Which Aaron's comments about the church encouraging people to resign themselves to singleness certainly feed into.
I'll be honest that I don't really know wise ways for a woman to go about finding a husband *actively*. The truth is that I think my wife was rather passive about it; she didn't really have a battle plan for finding a husband the way I had one for finding a wife. It still worked out for her because I found out about her and pursued her, but it's easy to see why it doesn't work out for all women.
A stirring article. I liked your advice to pastors at the end. I wasn't married until my late 20s, and while I accept some responsibility for that, it was not voluntary to wait until then. Pastors who married at 22 often come across as clueless.
“My impression is that many single women in Key’s age bracket are far more unhappy about their status than they are letting on”
The really frightening, almost incomprehensibly cruel aspect is that so many of these women, rather than open up about their pain like she does, instead lie to young women and tell them girlboss lies about fulfillment in career and meaningless sex, instead of encouraging them to have a family and experience the joy that these older women long for. It seems the denial and self-justification is so deep they’d rather destroy another generation while pretending to be happy than do the right thing and warn others from their fate.
As for the real reason for so much misery, I wrote about that (and how coffee beans don’t cause epidemics) today, courtesy of Augustine:
“you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
I keep thinking back to the words I overheard from my wife's one real remaining single friend (incidentally, very close to Ms. Key's age): "You're the only woman I know who isn't on antidepressants." Again, this stuff is everywhere, largely invisible to those who would never think to take them, and women take them at roughly 2x the rate of men.
Now, I try my best not to cast judgment on those who feel they really need SSRIs to make it through the day. But I do think it can only be an error to rely heavily on them for life advice.
The fact I married a woman who isn't on SSRIs is itself no coincidence; once I entered "wife-finding mode", I made a point of asking women what prescription drugs they're on by the second date or so. Which offended some of them and might not work for everyone, but happily I only needed to find one wife.
it really isn’t a judgmental, anti-SSRI stance to suggest that, once a quarter of the population is on them (with certain demographics at even higher rates like you say), it may be a sign of some deeper problem going on, one that can’t be fixed by drugs alone but that is probably being masked by their widespread use…
I wrote a First Things piece about it, which i elaborated on here, inspired by Walker Percy’s novel accurately predicting our mass drugged state…
Powerful piece. I'll shamelessly suggest that all -- not some, but all -- of the following are probably necessary if she wants to have a shot at marriage:
1. Lose weight.
2. Consider whether her standards for men are unrealistically high
3. Ask some good husbands she knows whether there are aspects of her personality that she should work on
4. Engage with some sort of "trad" community (e.g. church) where the men are more likely to be marriage-minded than cads
5. Don't put out until (at the absolute least) having a serious talk about marriage, or (preferably) having a ring and a wedding date, or (best of all) the wedding night
#3 -- How many married men would realistically give an honest answer to this? If one of my wife's single friends asked me that question, I'm very sure I wouldn't. The odds that it's a sincere request (not fishing for compliments or reassurance) AND that she'll take the advice to heart are remote. The odds that it will backfire on me are very high.
In any event, for a woman in her life stage, she's realistically looking at a man in his 50s or MAYBE late 40s who is divorced. Unless a woman is really a catch (and apparently, in the eyes of her dating pool, she isn't), a significantly older man is the normal way of dating by her age.
Given that she yearns for a child, maybe she finds a man with at least one young child that she can be a stepmother to, but better bet is to hope to be a step-grandmother who is happy to babysit frequently and otherwise be involved in the child's life. I've seen this happen and work out, but of course, everything depends on his relationships with his kids and how they view his remarriage.
In my mind, the big downside for a woman marrying a significantly older man when she's already sort of old is that odds are he's going to start getting sick and feeble in not very many years. There's a good chance she will have more years caring for a decrepit old man than fun and active years with a companion she can do things with.
Yes, good points all around. About #3 -- you're probably right, but there has to be some way she can get honest feedback about her personality from a male point of view ... maybe filtered through the guy's wife?
I don't know. I would guess the better bet is a grandmotherly figure who is wise enough to understand men and not entirely out of touch with what it's like to be young. Ideally, either your own mother or, if she's still kicking, your grandmother.
My wife also wouldn't give this sort of feedback to her friends. But her mother and grandmother both would give it to any young woman who would listen.
Aaron, enjoyed these thoughts.
My impression is that, other than losing weight and otherwise improving their self-adornment, women aren't taught anything true and useful about *how* to land a husband. I wonder, what's the best source of good advice that would make a difference? I have a daughter now and am concerned largely for her sake.
Men are given plenty of useless advice about what attracts women, which Aaron has perceptively pointed out. But luckily the basic script that men are given for life is still a reasonable start: be athletic, get educated, get a good career. Plus men tend to naturally gain confidence as we age. And of course, men are inclined to seek out women, even if sex is sometimes the primary motivator, and men aren't receiving a potent, high-status message not to seek out women. And even if we were, men have a stronger inner compass in general and are less easily persuaded to follow society's script when it contradicts that compass.
Doug Wilson, his wife and daughters have some good material out on how women should approach getting a husband and how to be a Christian wife and mother. The Eve in Exile documentary they have on Canon Plus is good.
Just a general message rebutting the feminist push for women to pursue college, a career and promiscuity in their 20s would be incredibly helpful. Point out the lies and what the truth is and provide the evidence to young women. You will have more men interested in marrying you at 23 than at 33, this doesn't make them sexist pigs. Hormonal birth control is terrible for your body and can harm your fertility long term. Your child bearing years are much shorter than the years you can spend in a career, just because you prioritize having children at a younger age doesn't mean you can't ever have a career.
Thanks. I'll take a look at that Wilson material at some point.
Agree with your second paragraph and I don't think there's anything there that I wouldn't be teaching anyway. Except I'm not necessarily sold on the long-term effects of hormonal birth control -- maybe, but I think what you're saying is speculative and I'd have to see where mainstream science is suppressing evidence here.
But the truth is that I've known plenty of girls from very traditional Christian homes that, at least from outside appearances, basically seem to have adopted their parents' worldview and thinking. And many of them have struggled with dating and relationships. I think that, while they have been relatively virtuous in their conduct, they have also approached the matter of finding a husband *passively*. Which Aaron's comments about the church encouraging people to resign themselves to singleness certainly feed into.
I'll be honest that I don't really know wise ways for a woman to go about finding a husband *actively*. The truth is that I think my wife was rather passive about it; she didn't really have a battle plan for finding a husband the way I had one for finding a wife. It still worked out for her because I found out about her and pursued her, but it's easy to see why it doesn't work out for all women.
A stirring article. I liked your advice to pastors at the end. I wasn't married until my late 20s, and while I accept some responsibility for that, it was not voluntary to wait until then. Pastors who married at 22 often come across as clueless.
Moving and poignant piece. Thanks.
“My impression is that many single women in Key’s age bracket are far more unhappy about their status than they are letting on”
The really frightening, almost incomprehensibly cruel aspect is that so many of these women, rather than open up about their pain like she does, instead lie to young women and tell them girlboss lies about fulfillment in career and meaningless sex, instead of encouraging them to have a family and experience the joy that these older women long for. It seems the denial and self-justification is so deep they’d rather destroy another generation while pretending to be happy than do the right thing and warn others from their fate.
As for the real reason for so much misery, I wrote about that (and how coffee beans don’t cause epidemics) today, courtesy of Augustine:
“you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
https://gaty.substack.com/p/americas-mental-health-crisis-does
Good thoughts.
I keep thinking back to the words I overheard from my wife's one real remaining single friend (incidentally, very close to Ms. Key's age): "You're the only woman I know who isn't on antidepressants." Again, this stuff is everywhere, largely invisible to those who would never think to take them, and women take them at roughly 2x the rate of men.
Now, I try my best not to cast judgment on those who feel they really need SSRIs to make it through the day. But I do think it can only be an error to rely heavily on them for life advice.
The fact I married a woman who isn't on SSRIs is itself no coincidence; once I entered "wife-finding mode", I made a point of asking women what prescription drugs they're on by the second date or so. Which offended some of them and might not work for everyone, but happily I only needed to find one wife.
Congrats on finding the one!
it really isn’t a judgmental, anti-SSRI stance to suggest that, once a quarter of the population is on them (with certain demographics at even higher rates like you say), it may be a sign of some deeper problem going on, one that can’t be fixed by drugs alone but that is probably being masked by their widespread use…
I wrote a First Things piece about it, which i elaborated on here, inspired by Walker Percy’s novel accurately predicting our mass drugged state…
https://gaty.substack.com/p/walker-percy-pharma-and-the-end-of