Ah Grace… From a man’s POV (well, not a Man’s, but a Boy’s), it used to be “You don’t keep run­ning after you caught the bus”, which means you wine and dine until you get the girl. Now it is why run if the bus comes to you? Des­per­ate or women with low expec­ta­tions or will­ing­ness to set­tle for chaff are Female’s own worst enemy. Boys will do as lit­tle as pos­si­ble to get laid if they know they can get it with no effort. Yes, I agree, there are damn few Men around any more, but I think there are few Women left too. I wouldn’t want to be either a sin­gle man or a woman in this day and age. I think the media and cul­ture has sys­tem­at­i­cally scorned and dis­man­tled respect, integrity, and gen­til­ity between the sexes. I don’t know what it will take to turn the boat around, but it is on the wrong course.

Man’s POV wel­come! (Greg wasn’t ticked off by the entry, so I know I wasn’t being too mean.)

I absolutely agree that there are a lot of girls and less women. And so it’s a chicken and egg thing, and it doesn’t really mat­ter which came first. As you say, it’s more impor­tant to know how to stop it. And I haven’t a clue about that.

Dare I inter­ject that there is also no sense of “sin­gle­ness”? Even in the Church. Our Bishop wasa asked by a young at our parish (inquirer) if the Church expected young women to get mar­ried. Bsp. THOMAS essen­tially said that in the Church the options are mar­riage or monas­ti­cism, thats it. He went on to say that we all need a cross to bear, and if a sin­gle per­son isn’t sure which one is theirs then they need to fol­low the Virgin’s exam­ple and tie them­selves to the Church until it’s made clear.

The cor­re­lat­ing point I’m draw­ing is the Cross to be born and the lack of it among our culture’s sin­gles. It’s not even on the radar. I’m prob­a­bly not doing a good job of it, though… Any­way, per­haps I’ll inflame some­one with that com­ment and you’ll get a nice dis­cus­sion going.

BTW, that young, pes­simistic, fem­i­nist girl shortly became a cat­e­chu­men. I don’t think she was accus­tomed to some­one speak­ing so directly and assuredly to her.

The only prob­lem that I have with the bishop’s com­ments is that it doesn’t pro­vide for the sit­u­a­tion where a woman wants to get mar­ried but can’t find a guy. (and of course it hap­pens to men too, but not as much, it seems). In that case, they are nec­es­sar­ily sin­gle, but not voli­tion­ally, and I’m not sure there would be monas­ter­ies enough to hold them all. But say­ing that you’re either mar­ried or celi­bate is totally on-target, and it’s light-years away from the world’s con­cep­tion of “singleness.”

On the whole, I try to take it easy about telling unat­tached men and women to be joy­ful about the cross that they have to bear, since it’s not mine. But I know it’s impor­tant for all of us to strive to do the right thing in our situation.

First of all, I love “Muriel’s Wed­ding” because in the end she gained self-confidence. This plays to my long-standing the­ory: you have to love your­self before you can let some­one love you. Every­one has inse­cu­ri­ties, of course, but I am refer­ring to the “in the end, I’m okay” kind of self-love. And the guy she couldn’t keep — totally hot.

Sec­ond, as one of the nice Ortho­dox girls you could (and have) set up, I find the cat­tle call highly amus­ing! Greg threat­ened, but I didn’t think you would actu­ally do it. Have you been speak­ing to my mother?

Inter­est­ing stuff. I know both men and women who are sin­gle, nice peo­ple, want to be mar­ried but can’t find some­one. If “faith­ful Ortho­dox and nice” was the only cri­te­ria I think we could hook them all up if peo­ple accepted arranged mar­riages, but unfor­tu­nately it just doesn’t seem to be so easy. Celibacy is in some ways I think is self imposed, albeit per­haps not con­ciously, because sin­gles have bought off on our culture’s media indoc­tri­na­tion of romance, love and pas­sion. Just a sta­ble, faith­ful, nice per­son won’t do, espe­cially if they are pack­ing a few pounds or a bad hair­cut. I agree with Grace, the “monas­ti­cism or mar­riage” par­a­digm doesn’t work for those who desire mar­riage but have some issues that keep them from fuli­fill­ing the desire.

In the Bishop’s defense — and I prob­a­bly shouldn’t argue for him, esp. since he was first gen­er­al­iz­ing and then speak­ing specif­i­cally to the girl who asked– I think his ‘tie your­self to the Church’ is a work­ing answer for the sin­gle who can’t find some­one self­less enough to marry them. Which is a lit­tle harsh, but it leads me to another point.

I think per­haps we’re a lit­tle too self reliant as a cul­ture, not just Amer­i­can cul­ture but the ‘con­vert cul­ture’ and eth­nic cul­ture col­lid­ing in the naves of this coun­try every week. In addi­tion to hav­ing the putrid and vac­cu­ous ide­al­ized view of romance and ‘love’ handed us by the media, we often appear to think that we really don’t *need* any­one else, espe­cially in the area of sal­va­tion. Just last night my five year old daugh­ter asked me if peo­ple who love each other get mar­ried. I said, “yes, many times peo­ple who love each get mar­ried; but that’s not *why* you get mar­ried. You get mar­ried because you’ve real­ized that you can­not be saved with­out that per­son.” (I know that’s a large con­cept for a lit­tle girl, but when she hears it reg­u­larly for 20 years with expla­na­tion, it will sink in at some point!) Of course I unpacked that a bit with her.

At any rate, my point is that we’re often either so *uncon­cerned* with our sal­va­tion that we can’t see past our­selves to the per­son in front of us who is capa­ble of effec­tu­at­ing that sal­va­tion with us, or we’re *so* con­cerned with *our* sal­va­tion that we can’t see past our­selves to the per­son in front of us who is capa­ble of effec­tu­at­ing our sal­va­tion with us. IOW, we either aren’t lov­ing our­selves appro­pri­ately, or we’re not lov­ing our neigh­bor appro­pri­ately, or both, as I think they are sym­bi­otic (?). In essence, we need to change the way we view love. Love is a cross. A cross is suf­fer­ing. Suf­fer­ing love is exactly how the Father approaches us, and we should learn to approach each other that way.

At any rate, I think we’re going to have to pur­posely cre­ate parishes where we’re in each other’s busi­ness enough to know that Jan and Bob really need each other to be saved. The priest knows, the par­ents know, the com­mu­nity knows, etc. And that’s not going to hap­pen, I don’t think, until we throw off these damnable, iso­lated, com­fort­able lives our cul­ture shoves down our throats. Nobody achieves holi­ness through a com­fort­able life, said one of the desert fathers (in the M sec­tion… I just read it the other night). Per­haps we’ll have to act like we actu­ally need each other before we begin to real­ize that we need each other.

I’m ram­bling, so per­haps I should sum up: Sin­gle­ness and Mar­riage are bet­ter han­dled by the com­mu­nity as com­mu­nity issues, not by the indi­vid­ual as an indi­vid­ual issue. Why? Because in the Church, the indi­vid­ual is always ref­er­enced to the com­mu­nity. How unAmer­i­can! If the local parish doesn’t have the kind of com­mu­nity to sup­port such a thing, then we need to cre­ate it, or recre­ated it as the case may be. The monas­tics do already (how well they do it may be another story). And the monas­tics are keenly aware of some­thing I think we ‘in the world’ often for­get or ignore: they absolutely NEED each other to be saved. They under­stand that because their ref­er­ence point is the com­mu­nity, not the mir­ror. In such a com­mu­nity the sin­gle can find whole­ness while wait­ing. How do we know? Because the monas­tics have been prov­ing it’s pos­si­ble since Apos­tolic times. The local parish needs that ethos, methinks.

Rant over! Sorry G, didn’t mean to hijack.

I know so many Ortho­dox women look­ing for a nice Ortho­dox boy.

I also want to see Hitch but Hubby so far hasn’t put it in the queue.

Jim,
Naah, hijack as needed. It’s not my band­width.

I was pretty sure that Bp. Thomas wasn’t say­ing it exactly the way I read it — I’ve seen him at a sem­i­nar and he’s a pretty cool guy. I just wanted to make sure it was clear in case any­body else read it the same way.

Boy, I love the idea of peo­ple under­stand­ing when they get mar­ried that true love is always “suf­fer­ing love.” Or — if that sounds too harsh — “sac­ri­fi­cial love.” I did hear some­thing about that in our priest’s pre-marital coun­sel­ing, but I was too much in La-la Land to pay atten­tion. And com­ing up on 17 years together, I can say that things have worked out the way they’re sup­posed to. But I might have saved myself some hand-wringing at the begin­ning if I hadn’t been quite so sur­prised to find out that the dynamic at any given time tended to involve one or the other of us sac­ri­fic­ing what we wanted for the other … or else sac­ri­fic­ing for the union of both of us, the “Us” that was more than just him and me.

As for the com­mu­ni­ties where we have that kind of close­ness, I’m not as sure about that. When I got into Ortho­doxy, I was with a very tight band of “jour­ney­men” and “jour­ney­women” who were on a sort of pil­grim­age. It was a very unique sit­u­a­tion, and that was prob­a­bly the most focused, most com­mit­ted bunch I’ve ever been with, and I’m not sure they could have man­aged to be so much a part of each other’s lives with­out some prob­lems. But maybe I’m not under­stand­ing how you mean it?

Mimi:
Yep, rent it (or look on the cable chan­nels, if you have cable. It seems to be mak­ing the rounds right now). I wanted to make sure that peo­ple didn’t take my “pet peeve” issue with it as some gen­eral put-down. It looks cute.

Hi Jim and Grace,
I know a com­mu­nity that does prac­tice “match­mak­ing” along the lines Jim is talk­ing about. I don’t know how suc­cess­ful they are yet, but the pas­tor dis­cour­ages casual dat­ing and encour­ages peo­ple to look to their elders for wis­dom about another per­son and the pos­si­bil­ity of mar­riage. How­ever, Grace’s point is well taken… we can all TALK about sac­ri­fi­cial love and even truly believe the prin­ci­ple, but when it comes down to it, some peo­ple can’t/don’t/won’t sac­ri­fice. I’m the poster boy for that…totally com­mit­ted Chris­t­ian and divorced.
Not that we give up the ideal due to fail­ure, but it is dou­bly dif­fi­cult as Jim notes when the entire cul­ture runs counter to what should be our foun­da­tion for marriage.

About the community/marriage thing, I wasn’t advo­cat­ing that the com­mu­nity make the deci­sion for a per­son, rather that the com­mu­nity would be the kind of com­mu­nity that already knew Jack and Jill belonged together. IOW, when Jill decided that she couldn’t be saved with­out Jack, nobody was sur­prised. On the con­trary, they were more like, ‘oh honey, you’re *just now* see­ing that?!’

Frankly (looney alert!) I’m all for arranged mar­riages in the Church, but I don’t think that will fly just yet in Amer­i­can Orthodoxy.

Arranged mar­riages: I’ve heard some peo­ple who felt the same, but I’ve also seen a group that came close to that sort of thing and it went badly. They had been a super-tight com­mu­nity and when it was high-time to get mar­ried, it was just assumed that they’d all marry each other. Fast for­ward 20 years to when I saw them — some good mar­riages, some just non­cha­lant (which seems like a bad mar­riage to me), and some that were a bit of a dis­as­ter. And when a cou­ple of them ended in divorce, the ENTIRE com­mu­nity got involved just as they had with the mar­riages, and so it was worse than if they’d have all just minded their own business.

Not that I think they’re always a bad idea, but I think it takes a whole com­mu­nity with an extra­or­di­nary amount of self-discipline and focus. Iron­i­cally enough, I think it’s pos­si­ble to *roman­ti­cize* this less-romantic option and imag­ine that one good idea will enable you to nav­i­gate all the stormy seas.

(By the way, in case you’re some­one who knows me per­son­ally, the above exam­ple isn’t taken from any of the churches I’ve been in. Just thought I should make that clear.)

I think it’s pos­si­ble to *roman­ti­cize* this less-romantic option and imag­ine that one good idea will enable you to nav­i­gate all the stormy seas.

I agree with this.

I don’t get cable, but maybe if I make some puppy dog eyes and hubby, he’ll rent it for me.

I’m not sure. I used to roman­ti­cize the arranged mar­riage idea. But I real­ized that you just need to keep your eyes open! What both­ers me is that there are sev­eral good option of men at my church and I hear the girls whin­ing about “never being able to find any good Ortho­dox boys.” Some women are hon­estly look­ing. Some are just hop­ing it’ll come to them. From my own expe­ri­ence, if I had just kept admir­ing Sean from afar (or if I had gave up on him) he and I would still not be together.

There is an ele­ment to how men and women get together that is really a mys­tery, maybe one of the last ones that the world acknowl­edges. What is it that Proverbs says?

Three things are too won­der­ful for me;
four I do not under­stand:
the way of an eagle in the sky,
the way of a ser­pent on a rock,
the way of a ship on the high seas,
and the way of a man with a maiden.

I have seen both men and women doing what you say — sit­ting around in an envi­ron­ment where there are eli­gi­ble bach­e­lors and bach­e­lorettes and act­ing as if there wasn’t a soul around. But I also remem­ber hav­ing peo­ple at work not under­stand why I wouldn’t be mar­ried if there were young unat­tached men of roughly the same age in my church, and I thought that was a bit much. Rela­tion­ships and mar­riages don’t hap­pen between dis­in­ter­ested par­ties, and some­times there’s just no explain­ing who you’re attracted to and who you’re not.

And since I started out by being a lit­tle harsh towards the type of mod­ern man that just doesn’t ever seem inter­ested, I’ll at least offer that point: that it’s hard to man­u­fac­ture attrac­tion when it isn’t there. I just think that some­times there’s a basic ele­ment of moral­ity and spir­i­tual whole­ness that is miss­ing, with the result that the men and women both have cloudly vision which makes it hard to expe­ri­ence these things in a nat­ural way. I con­fess that I like watch­ing reruns of “Sex and the City” (though I would never let a young daugh­ter watch it), but the level of con­fu­sion, lone­li­ness and sick­ness of the soul that exists in that kind of sup­pos­edly care­free sex-saturated world is patently obvious.

Side note: thank good­ness you spoke up to Sean — you guys are too cute of a cou­ple; it would have been much too tragic if you hadn’t got­ten together!

I had to be a lit­tle brash with Greg as well. Though we met at work and there was a def­i­nite attrac­tion, he had work duties that kept him from fol­low­ing up in any way. I even­tu­ally did one of the hard­est things I’ve ever had to do: walked in to his news­room and asked him out to lunch. I later found out two things:
1. When I walked out every reporter within earshot was mes­sag­ing him.
2. He fig­ured he had missed his win­dow of oppor­tu­nity, so if I hadn’t done that, we might not be together.

Moral: Occa­sion­ally a real woman has to be a lit­tle for­ward. But, y’know, in a lady­like way.