Originally posted on RooshV.com
A common lament from chaste Orthodox men I meet is their lack of experience in dealing with women who are more socialized than them. How can these men understand women, identify one with strong faith, and make confident decisions concerning marriage? As an unmarried middle-aged man, I stress to them how I’m not in a better situation, but they nonetheless feel that I can give them profitable lessons in their quest to enter an Orthodox marriage due to my excessive secular experience.
I have tried to be thoughtful about what I’m about to share so as not to interfere with God’s will in bringing together man and woman in one flesh within the Church sacrament of marriage, because most of my experiences with women took place sinfully outside of marriage, causing me to lose all manner of healthy child-like innocence when viewing the opposite sex. I do not consider myself bitter, but I am surely cynical from partaking in behaviors that went against the commandments of God for so many years. If you perceive undue pessimism or even anger in my words, it is due to the damage I inflicted upon myself, not because God made a mistake in how he constructed man or woman. If you participate in evil for a prolonged period of time, you will carry distorted views of reality even
long after repentance.
It could be possible that a secular woman you have feelings for will possess every negative trait I’m about to describe. When a woman lacks spiritual life, she does not struggle against her passions and sins, or even think they are wrong. On the other hand, the Orthodox women I’ve met and observed possess at least a basic desire for moral goodness, and will automatically be more suitable for marriage. However, some Orthodox women are more zealous than others, and they all swim in a putrid secular fishbowl. The tainted water corrupts us without our conscious awareness, and so it’s not uncommon for an Orthodox woman to possess deep-seated secular beliefs that can strain a marriage. You must be discerning when it comes to identifying any beliefs that would be detrimental to maintaining a Christian family home.
I will often use the secular word “game” in this article. Game is a collection of psychological and behavioral techniques to attract a woman physically and emotionally for the purpose of fornication and fleshly pair bonding. Game includes: approaching an unknown woman in a public place while play-acting as a confident man, optimizing one’s aesthetic so that it pleases worldly woman, using salesman techniques of rapport building and scarcity to make a fast “sale,” hiding flaws while showcasing strengths, deliberately pumping up a woman’s emotions, lying, omitting the truth, putting a woman in a negative state of anxiety or dread to modulate her attractive feelings, and exploiting a woman’s human weaknesses for selfish gain.
In the game process,
God is absent, and the primary goal of the man is to satisfy his selfish craving for positive female attention, worldly love, and physical pleasure. Even if you claim to desire abstinence before marriage, you can still be using game by implementing secular techniques to meet women, get their phone number, arrange dates, and so on. A sign you are
not using game is if you adhere to the old cliché “be yourself,” where yourself is a child of God who follows His commandments with the understanding that marriage is a sacrament whose purpose is to usher two souls into heaven. The Christian way is to trust in God to pair you with a woman who is on your social and spiritual level instead of pretending to be an alpha male to deceive a woman into liking you using mostly physical and psychological means.
That said, here is a list of general guidance for men who want to pick the right woman for marriage in an Orthodox courtship where the man clearly expresses to the woman beforehand that no intimacy can take place until they are united in one flesh through the Church sacrament of marriage.
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