Are there older Christian women challenging younger Christian women to stop cheating on their husbands? One of my hopes for 2009 is to go one year, just one year, without hearing of a Christian 20-or-30-something-year-old wife who is cheating.

Of course, not all young women cheat, and plenty of cheating men have hurt women.  But over the past 10 years, several young couples I’ve personally known have had theirmarriages end because of the wife’s infidelity. Oddly enough, none of the guys I’ve known have committed adultery. It seems that ”sex in the suburbs” is a new trend among young Christian women.

Is this the result of feminism breaching the church such that equality with men means sinning against men in the stereotypical ways that men have sinned against women? Is this the result of a divorce culture or women with unhealed “daddy issues?”

I’ve been talking to ministry leaders from around the nation and many have noted the same trend. No one can seen to put their finger on the root of the problem. Are women reacting to fact that the evangelical church generally raises boys to be passive? While it’s true that passive, ”nice guys” make great boyfriends because they are often servile and easy manipulated, passive men become the sad husbands that many women eventually grow to resent.

I wish I had less anecdotal, personal data other than the dozen or so couples I know of, as well as from discussions with others, but I don’t hear women being challenged about their sexual fidelity in marriage. Why is this? Why do Christian men need “accountability groups” and women simply need “fellowship” or “support” groups?

I have a seminary-graduated friend in the South who has walked through so many women-initiated adultery cases with his friends that he’s confessed to struggling with misogyny and absolute cynicism about the possibility of a woman being faithful.

Some might sarcastically suggest that maybe, in the future, the groom’s Mom needs to show the potential daughter-in-law her gun collection during a conversation about how much she would hate to see her son get hurt. What gives?

Last Sunday our pastor referred to a book’s title to make a larger point about Christianity. The book is by Gary Thomas, titled: Sacred Marriage. It’s the subtitle that grabs you, however: What if God Designed Marriage to Make Us Holy More Than to Make Us Happy?

That subtitle flies in the face of what the world teaches about love and marriage, which is that it is a matter of finding that special someone who was fashioned by non-judgmental cherubs to be your lifelong friend, supporter, and satisfying lover, all without requiring you to change anything about the wonder that is You. This is what prompts single people in their forties to announce at cocktail parties that they just haven’t found the right person, and which requires the rest of us to refrain from laughing out loud.

The truth is, of course, that so long as your own happiness is paramount, and so long as you remain in the temple of the Self, there will never be anyone who qualifies to be your soulmate but, well, you. And so we see the spectacle of aging adults who have gone through a string of relationships with partners who didn’t abuse or betray them, but who in the end “just weren’t a good fit.” This is frequently code, in my experience, for: “the neuro-chemicals began to fade, he/she stopped putting me on a pedestal, and I began to wonder if my fairy tale prince/princess wasn’t just around the next corner.”

The reality is that there is no prince or princess for any of us, because no royalty in his right mind would have anything to do with us. This prince/princess fantasy, in other words, is predicated on the assumption that we ourselves are princes and princesses. None of us are, we aren’t even close, which is one reason the Gospels ought to make us weep and laugh all at once, at the mercy and outrageousness of Christ.

And as far as marriage is concerned, Rick Warren’s admonition probably ought to be the first words uttered at every wedding ceremony — and marriage counseling session — in America. It’s not about you. It really isn’t, you know.

Which brings me back to the interesting angle my pastor was working, about how Thomas’s subtitle has something to say about Christianity in general. But I’ll leave that for next time.

I have several friends who live with their girlfriends.  They’ve been living with these nice ladies for a long time, and they consider themselves all but married.  They come from divorced families, and they feel no pressure - from their culture, their neighborhood, or even much from their families - to marry.  They see it as a good economic equation: Why make it so much of a hassle to split up in the future, which we both know is a real possibility?  Michael McManus, coauthor of Living Together: Myths, Risks & Answers, says cohabitation is neither good nor practical.  Nothing at all like a test drive for a new car:

Of the 45 percent or so who do marry after living together, they are 50 percent more likely to divorce than those who remained separate before the wedding. So instead of 22 of the 45 couples divorcing (the 50 percent divorce rate) about 33 will divorce. That leaves just 12 couples who have begun their relationship with cohabitation who end up with a marriage lasting 10 years.

In other words, the whole “This is like a test drive” argument seems to be just something people to say who are afraid of marriage for any number of reasons.  Because when you test drive a car, you’re supposed to find out if you really like it, and when you buy it, you’re supposed to be more confident in the purchase.  Not so with cohabitation and marriage.  The rest of this interview is worth reading, but be careful about how you present this to your cohabitating friends.  Love them, too.

Emily Yoffe, writer of the “Dear Prudence” advice column at Slate, comes clean about marriage and children and the need for - go ahead, say it!  Say it! - two parents.  She says that, in her column, when she advocates marriage to her readers, the claws really come out.  They call her backward.  They call her insensitive.  Judgmental.  They say things like:

“Having a child will be stressful and life altering enough. Parents need to work on their relationship on their time schedule.”

“I feel that a baby is its own blessing. Have that blessing before you get married.”

“How dare you imply that an unexpected pregnancy should lead to marriage? You are simply out of touch with modern culture.”

Yoffe says she may be out of touch, but so are these readers.  Our culture is so self-aware, so aware that we all believe so many different things, so aware that we are a melting pot of worldviews, that we’ve forgotten how to call a spade a spade.

[P]erhaps in our desire not to make moral judgments about personal choices, young women wholly unprepared to be mothers are not getting the message that there are dire consequences of having (unprotected) sex with guys too lame to be fathers. There is a scene in the teen pregnancy movie Juno in which the title character, a 16-year-old who has decided not to abort her unplanned baby but to give it up for adoption, is having an ultrasound. The technician, thinking she has on the examining table another knocked-up teenager planning to raise her child, makes disparaging remarks about children born into those circumstances. We are supposed to loathe this character and cheer when Juno’s stepmother puts her in her place. But I found myself sympathetic to the technician. Why is it verboten to express the truth that growing up with a lonely, overwhelmed mother and a missing father is a recipe for childhood pain?

In a fallen world, single motherhood is sometimes unavoidable, and there’s no doubt that marriages are often broken and painful institutions, but commendations to Slate for having a columnist who can preach the gospel every once in a while.

Some Christians are sloughing off the Bible’s “one wife” injunction and practicing polygamy. Thanks to the Internet, their search for superfluous spouses is getting easier.

Mark Henkel, founder of Truthbearer.org, estimates that 50,000 Christians have become polygamists since the movement (unconnected to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) began around 12 years ago.

Sites such as 2wives.com and Christianmarriage.com feature resources for Christian polygamists and Biblical arguments for the practice. (Abraham and David did it and God never said not to, they claim.) Some allow members to post pictures and profiles and for a monthly fee of around $30, couples can search for a new “sister-wife.” One ad reads, “Loving couple seeks to share life with like-minded woman. We don’t care what color your skin is; we want to get to know your heart.”

Since polygamy is illegal, none of the search sites post contact information or identification of site managers. Christianpolygamy,com helpfully explains how to dodge the illegality issue, suggesting that men legally marry then divorce wives in succession, never give the wives the Bills of Divorcement and still live with all of them. The site claims that this upholds the Christian requirements for marriage: a celebration and a ceremony. (Never mind the singular use of the word “wife” at the first marriage ceremony.)

Don Milton, a somehow-ordained minister in Arizona, established many of the sites, including Christianmarriage.com, Christianpolygamy.com and Isaiah4vs1.com, beginning in 1997. Milton decries the “monogamist reign of terror,” attempts to link monogamy and murder, and makes the tortuous case that if polygamy is wrong then Jesus is an illegitimate child.

Milton hopes someday to start a church that welcomes Christian polygamists. Milton has only one wife but says he should be free to take more since, he asserts, God ordained marriage solely to sate male’s sexual urges: “It is not a sin to take an additional wife to ‘satisfy’ ones own needs. Marriage was invented by God in order to satisfy the needs of man.”

This month, Cato Unbound asks, Can marriage be saved?  True, true, the idea of that word, marriage, is in peril.  Not that people will stop getting married, and not that my marriage, or your marriage, is suffering, but the idea of marriage, well.  When the culture can’t agree on what a word means, the thing it represents will suffer.  That’s just the truth.  If Christians are going to have any reasonable input into this cultural discussion, we need to read essays like these, that follow.

The Cato symposium starts with The Future of Marriage, the lead essay by Stephanie Coontz, who starts us off with a history of marriage, and she suggests that, “Instead of trying to resurrect a bygone ideal of marriage, those of us interested in encouraging healthy families now need to focus on what makes unmarried co-parents, single parents, cohabiting couples, as well as contemporary marriages successful on their own terms.”

In The Marriage Gap, Kay S. Hymnowitz writes about the class differences in the marriage issue and how, “overall, children do better in life if they are raised by their own married parents.”  She also says that, “The de-linking of marriage and childrearing is a particular dilemma in the Unites States … [W]hat you have is a recipe for entrenched, trans-generational poverty, inequality, racial disparities …, reduced social and economic mobility, and - libertarians take note! - demands for government taxes to fund programs to correct the mess.”

In Marriage and the Market, Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers are economists who argue that marriage used to be about production and is now about consumption.  We tend to focus on spiritual and romantic ideas when we consider marriage, so it’s good to think about the practical realities of what used to necessitate marriage, versus what necessitates it now.  It is unwise to impose older economic practicalities of marriage on marriage today.  But this doesn’t mean marriages can’t still be good and theologically sound.

In Against Family Fatalism, Norval D. Glenn says there’s nothing wrong with wanting to reclaim some traditional idea of marriage, so long as we discard the bad and keep the good.

In this hysterical video from the Marriage Resource Seminar, a conference speaker explains the difference between men’s brains and women’s brains.

You have to watch it — it’s only five minutes long and just too funny to miss. Then come back and tell us: What is something your spouse or significant other does that you absolutely don’t understand?

…and vice versa.

HT: krm

After 20 years, it’s splits-ville for Spider-Man and his wife, Mary Jane. The latest twist in the superhero’s saga has left fans shocked:

Which is exactly the point, says Joe Quesada, editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics. It was time to shake things up in the life of Peter Parker, the nerdy New Yorker who upon being bitten by a radioactive spider attained the ability to transform himself into a web-spinning world savior. And it was easier to do that, he said, if Parker wasn’t married.

Such tends to be the case in much of the entertainment world, which seems to mark marriage as the end of all things exciting. Ever notice how many television shows (dramas and comedies alike) peter out (or get really lame) once the main characters have settled down?

I guess that’s all we can expect from the likes of Hollywood and company, but I take issue with the stereotype that marriage is boring. My biggest adventure began three and a half years ago when I said “I do,” and while life isn’t always movie-script material, it’s far from dull. Perhaps I am only a hopeless romantic–or perhaps the entertainment world has the story all wrong. What do you think: Is marriage boring? Why or why not?

Cohabitation before or instead of marriage–it’s a common trend in today’s “progressive” society. But why are so many unengaged to the idea of marriage? Newsweek columnist Bonnie Eslinger shares her reasons:

Last year Jeff asked me to marry him, and I willingly gave my heart to the intent of his question. We are committed to spending our future together, pursuing our dreams and facing life’s challenges in partnership.

Yet I do not need a piece of paper from the state to strengthen my commitment to Jeff. I do not believe in a religion that says romantic, committed love is moral only if couples pledge joint allegiance to God.

I don’t need a white dress to feel pretty, and I have no desire to pretend I’m virginal. I don’t need to have Jeff propose to me as if he’s chosen me. I don’t need a ring as a daily reminder to myself or others that I am loved. And I don’t need Jeff to say publicly that he loves me, because he says it privately, not just in words but in daily actions.

Her bottom line: “I don’t want to send a message to anyone, including my daughter–who may someday choose a same-sex life partner–that the value of her relationships can be determined by law and the affirmation of others.” What do you think about her conclusions?

The New York Times ran a story about the recent exponential cost increase for birth control on college campuses. Because of a change in federal law, young women are now paying much higher prices for their formerly subsidized prescription contraceptives. Get me a violin.

Planned Parenthood, however, has opened its doors to encourage promiscuous, dehumanizing sexuality on college campuses. At Tufts University in Boston, for example, the contraceptive NuvaRing rose in price from $8 to $50. The nearby Planned Parenthood facility offers the contraceptive for $27.

“The potential is that women will stop taking it, and whether or not you can pay for it, that doesn’t mean that you’ll stop having sex,” said Katie Ryan, a senior at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, who said that the monthly cost of her Ortho Tri-Cyclen Lo, a popular birth control pill, recently jumped to nearly $50 from $12.

Ms. Ryan, 22, said she had considered switching to another contraceptive to save money, but was unsure which one to pick. She has ended up paying the higher price, but said she was concerned about her budget.

“I do less because of this - less shopping, less going out to eat,” said Ms. Ryan, who has helped organize efforts to educate others on campus about the price jump. “For students, this is very, very expensive.”

Here’s a crazy idea: What if college women stopped having sex until they established, with their male cohorts, a committed, whole-life partnership for the good of each other and for the rearing and education of children, cultivated in an ancient institution called marriage? The intimate commitment of life and love which constitutes the married state is the best context for human sexuality, even for college students.

By not having sex at all, however, the high cost of contraceptives can by-pass college women altogether. Wounded, narcissistic college men use young women for personal gratification, disguised by manipulative phrases like “I love you” and “you’re so beautiful,” but the men have no interest in living out the full implications of human sexuality, namely, a life of love committed to one woman and to nurturing children. Wounded, narcissistic women willingly participate in the premarital sex factory that ultimately produces nothing but emotional, physical, and spiritual pain.

Some will welcome the cost increase in hopes that the expense may retard the injurious practice of narcissistic sex and raise awareness of the great divorce of sexuality from its marital intention to produce children and cultivate life-committed love–a divorce, many argue, accelerated by the introduction of artificial contraceptives.