Marriage gets criticism, but it's easier than friendship with same sex

I seem to be in a minority with this view and experience, but it's very much been the case with me.

When I was in my teenage years, I figured I'd probably have to get married. While I wanted to be the Apostle Paul's ideal and remain single (1 Corinthians 7:34), I found out I couldn't really do it. I'd see good-looking guys and want to touch them all the time. The only way to deal with that, and avoid fornication, was to get married to one.

I've read and heard so many negative things about marriage in both secular and Christian culture. You see things like angry feminists and angry MGTOW incel types, and it amazes me how much animosity there can be between the sexes (usually the women complain about the men being distant or violent, and the men complain about the women hating sex or not being submissive). I also see people mock marriage, say it doesn't suit the 21st century or some nonsense, or I hear about horror stories of bad marriages. But meanwhile, you always see things like motherhood get put on a pedestal. Not wifehood, but motherhood. Even friendships seem to get more respect than marriages.

But I've never had an especially close female friend. And I haven't had the bad experience with marriage that I read and hear about so often. I spend far more time with my husband than any other person. But we also spend lots of time doing our own things alone at home. We've mastered the art of togetherness while also carving out our own spaces.

The few friendships I have somewhat maintained with other women, I notice these women are all very systematic. I don't make friendships readily with more traditional women. They find me very difficult to understand, and I find them difficult to understand. Best just to remain distant.

Marriage is better too because the rewards are better. A handsome husband is exciting and makes me tingle all over. No female friendship can replace that. There are things that go on (or are at least supposed to go on) in marriage that simply cannot happen between same-sex, heterosexual friendships. So those kinds of friendships will never be as interesting or rewarding as marriage.

Such has been the case with me throughout my adult life. Since this is not the typical case, it's hard for me to see the perspectives of other women, who usually don't see things the way I do regarding these matters.

Nothing's changed since I posted this. Marriage remains easy. Yet trying to understand my own sex and gender, remains difficult. I will always be a weird woman who loves logic and sex and will never fit the stereotype of emotional sex-hating women in American culture. Being a helpmeet to a husband is infinitely easier than being a friend to another woman, and nothing your stereotypes and experiences say changes my own. I will always love the male body, mind, and sex, and no matter how weird and abnormal this makes me in your eyes, it remains true.

Paidiske said:

I don't think terms like "weird" or "abnormal" are helpful here. Diversity and difference is part of God's gift to us in community.

I'm not an American, so maybe I don't really recognise the stereotype to start with, but the "emotional sex-hating women" isn't really a thing I encounter much either.

Having said that, we just moved house, and I was struck more than once in that process how much easier some parts of life would be if I lived alone!

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You're possibly correct it's more of just an American stereotype; I can't speak for other cultures. But it definitely exists here; sexual attraction to men is considered abnormal in our culture:

My Wife Has a Huge inappropriate content Addiction

I might also add it's more of a thing in conservative circles especially. Every once in awhile I will come across someone of more liberal background who gets irritated when I address this topic in such a way. Happened on a subreddit yesterday.

snoochface said:

Female sexual attraction to men is most definitely NOT considered abnormal in American culture. I just don't even know where an idea like that comes from. I also don't see how it has anything to do with the difficulty that comes with making and keeping female friends, especially as we get older in life.

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You must not have a background in very conservative circles. I already shared one link above on this very web site where a man said women having sexual desire for men was abnormal. It's right there! You can't deny it:

My Wife Has a Huge inappropriate content Addiction

Here are a couple more where sexual desire and lust are dealt with as exclusively male topics:

My journey through purity culture and Christian worship music – Baptist News Global

The Mailbag: Is lust a sin for women, too?

I could collect links all day showing this discrepancy, including on fundamentalist recovery forums like Free Jinger, etc. It's VERY common in conservative Christian circles. And if women can't relate to it, it makes you ostracized in the culture. These links, and many more, make that VERY clear. Just because you aren't part of these cultures, and therefore haven't seen it yourself, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. For those of us who have been through this kind of thing continually, I frankly wonder how many more links I have to show to prove it exists. It gets tiresome trying to explain a clear reality to people who are outside of these kinds of circle, and don't understand how ingrained the idea is that women are asexual robots in conservative circles. Reformed Calvinists, Baptist types etc. go on about it endlessly. That's why places like FreeJinger are around in the first place!

I linked to several topics -- including one here on this very forum! -- that prove beyond a doubt that women's sexual attraction, indeed, is often completely doubted in conservative Christian circles -- even described by a poster here as "abnormal" -- and you refused to address any of them.

Again, I will link to them for people to actually read them and acknowledge once and for all that this PROBLEM DOES EXIST:

My Wife Has a Huge inappropriate content Addiction

My journey through purity culture and Christian worship music – Baptist News Global

The Mailbag: Is lust a sin for women, too?

Just because your experience is different, doesn't mean that there isn't a very clear, indisputable trend in many conservative Christian circles that deny women are sexually attracted to men. I have posted incontrovertible evidence indicating it exists. It's actually such a common thing that there are countless threads and articles addressing such topics online.

Did you read the letters sent to C.J. Mahaney from men who claim sexual attraction is exclusive to men only? Did you not read that letter Michelle Lesley got from a woman who had been explicitly told that she couldn't lust because she's a woman, and women don't get sexually attracted in that way to men?

If you had read them, you would have addressed them, and come to the realization that -- yes -- indeed, there is a significant circle of conservative Christians who believe such things. We even have a poster among us who said so on a thread I linked.

Denial of reality is not helpful to anyone, much less someone who has been through many of these things, and who is viewed as "abnormal" for having such desires in these communities.

Here's yet another one from popular fundamentalist blogger, Lori Alexander, lecturing women on withholding sex from their husbands (which, by the way, we have at least two threads on the front page of this subforum currently, from men going through the same thing):

Withholding Sexual Intimacy From Husbands

Lori writes,

"And speaking of hormones ladies, if it were not for abundant testosterone and the sex drive that God put into men making them attracted to women for sex, I personally don’t believe that the vast majority of men would choose to have anything to do with women at all. Women are, in so many ways, different than men and are so confusing, emotional, irrational and so much trouble that without the sex drive, the vast majority of men would not give a woman the time of day."

See, yet more undeniable evidence of the common American stereotype of women hating sex and being emotional. I'm almost 36 and have encountered it time and again. Most men have, too, they just sit back and chuckle and laugh at women who pretend it doesn't exist.

Aaaand here's yet another from Focus on the Family, famous conservative Christian organization:

5 love needs of men and women

"Men think of intimacy in physical terms (S-E-X); women think of intimacy in emotional terms (T-A-L-K)."

From a question addressed to John Piper, famed Calvinist conservative teacher:

Does the Bible Portray Women as Emotional and Men as Rational?

"“Hello, Pastor John! It seems there’s a constant narrative in our culture here in the West that women are hyperemotional, irrational, crazy, incomprehensible, and almost intrinsically unreasonable."

Also note the results from a 2001 Gallup poll:

"In a 2001 Gallup poll, respondents were asked to attribute the description “emotional” to one of the two sexes. Was “emotional” truer of men or women? And 90% said “emotional” was truer of women."

https://www.reddit.com/r/DeadBedrooms/comments/9r0jx1/women_dont_want_sex/

"My wife told me last night that women don’t like sex, only men do. ... Do women really not like sex? I know it’s a stereotype only men want it."

Link after link after link confirming the stereotype. I'm done. Case closed. Anyone attempting to argue the stereotype doesn't exist, has nothing. It's clear this stereotype is common in Western culture, and the only people I can understand being unaware of it, live elsewhere.

Yes, it is, and you could probably tell.

It's difficult to fit into a milieu of Lori Alexander types if you're a woman who likes sex, has autism, and possess a whole host of other traits that don't match up with the June Cleaver cult.