Unrealistic expectations lead to disappointment.

Readership: All; Singles especially;
Theme: Risk Assessment
Length: 3,400 words
Reading Time: 12 minutes

Introduction

If you think about it, men and women have diametrically opposite expectations of a spouse in marriage.

  • Married men expect their wives to maintain the domestics and care for children.
  • Married women want their husbands to work hard, earn more, and be successful in their careers.

Marriage tends to enable these endeavors.

  • Married men expect their wives to wag their @ss, not their tongue.
  • Married women want their husbands to wag their tongue, not their @ass.

Marriage tends to reverse these behaviors.

  • Married men often complain that their wives changed after they got married.
  • Married women often complain that their husbands DIDN’T change after they got married.

Also,

  • Married men expect their wives to be fully content with monogamy.
  • Not so with women! In this video, Kevin Samuels notes that many women actually like it when their man receives sexualized attention from other women, and for a multitude of reasons (e.g. confirmation of status, drama, Dread, etc.). (Women can’t have this pleasure if they don’t bag a HSMV man.)

Obviously, there are some wildly divergent expectations at play here.

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Foolish Expectations

People have no idea of the menagerie they’re getting into when they get married.

The common notions that single Christian young men have about marriage, is that it will (1) immediately assuage their sense of entitlement concerning love and romance, and (2) grant them unfettered access to guilt-free and shame-free sex on a daily basis. (3) Some men marry with the intention of establishing a domain of influence (e.g. conservation of wealth, a family legacy), but outside of the upper class, this is extremely rare in the West.

Single young women’s expectations are even farther off the mark. Thanks to feminist egalitarianism, Chivalraic norms, and Disney, they have a fairytale-like notion of marriage that is far removed from reality. In addition to the pricey, ego drenched vanity fair of the wedding ceremony, they expect marriage to produce a sense of inner security, and instant access to regular, unearned income. Some women expect marriage to bring instant bliss, but this is becoming rarer as marriage is postfornicated into their late 20s and 30s. Slightly more mature women think marriage will increase their influence and relevancy, often without even realizing how their sexual conduct and femininity fit into this scheme. All the while, they remain ignorant of the larger purposes of marriage and how they might contribute to that. Christianity doesn’t seem to figure into their matriculations at all.

All of these false notions contribute to the impression that “something changed” after marriage.

If it weren’t so sad and so common, it would be comical.

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Case Studies

Here’s a sad example. After my sister got married, she came to me immediately after the ceremony and said,

“That’s strange. I don’t feel like I’m married!”

I smacked my forehead and breathed out a long sigh, because I knew right then, that her marriage would fail. Sure enough, after four years, it did.

I too had a wakeup call with reality when I first got married, but it was nothing like my sister’s experience. For Blue Pilled me, it was when I soon realized that my wife didn’t share my vision of marriage and was my enemy in many respects, someone I would have to fight against on a daily basis just to keep peace and order in the home. After a couple years of this, I lost hope and became depressed, and after five years, my marriage failed too.

Under Men’s Fantasy of Emotional Intimacy (2021/6/23), Red Pill Apostle and Jack described how things changed for the worse after they got married.

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8 Sources of False or Changing Expectations and how these lead to Disappointment

Moreover, it goes for granted that everyone has some expectations for marriage. These expectations for marriage are uniquely different for each person, but are largely based on…

  1. Ego fulfillment (i.e. what is colloquially called “pride”).
  2. The intense and deceptive lure of personal desires.
  3. How marriage was modeled to them while growing up.

Of note, parental divorce tosses a monkey branch into Point (3).

When two people get married, these sets of expectations are put to the test, and specific expectations are bound to lead to deep disappointments on both sides.

In addition to the sudden wakeup to reality, marriage itself introduces a few life changes and identity changes that can be difficult to roll with.

Putting all this together, the resulting upheaval poses severe challenges that can even be fatal to the marriage.

The remainder of this section collates eight reasons why getting married induces an apparent shift in one’s meta-reality, and why this can lead to disappointment and hardship. It should be noted that these eight reasons are complex and interdependent, which explains why it is difficult for newly married couples to figure out what is going wrong.

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1. Ignorance of Headship

I will posit that out of all the reasons for marital confusion and disappointment, the top contributor to marital instability is the apathy toward, ignorance of, or rebellion against, Headship.

Σ Frame Axiom 33: Headship is God’s prescription for marriage.
Corollary B to Axiom 33: Any marriage that does not fit either the Headship or Tingly Respect structures is doomed to dysfunction and/or failure.
Corollary C to Axiom 33: The fact that Headship is not taught and modeled makes the transition into married life soooo much more of a shock and a hardship than it has to be.

This is because…

  • Many people never even realize that Headship is how marriage should be done.*
  • People don’t conscientiously choose partners based on the Headship structural model.
  • Most people don’t have any idea how to act according to this model.
  • Most women tend to resist Headship rather strongly (unless they are of the Tingly Respect variety).
  • Corollary D to Axiom 33: The implementation of Headship is confusing and difficult because of the Church’s incongruence between the converged doctrinal position of headship and headship in action (i.e. practiced as a form of moral authority and masculine sexual authority).

* I’m including myself here too. Even though I grew up in the church, I never learned about Headship until I came across the Christian Manosphere, especially Dalrock’s essays on Headship.

Furthermore, implementing Headship is difficult and intimidating because women actively work against Headship due to the Curse of Eve. As Deep Strength wrote,

“Women have no trouble submitting to their boss at work or their teacher in school or other human authorities because it is normal. But God forbid they submit to the husband to whom they committed their life to, who loves them the most, and the one they vowed to be with before God.”

So if a new husband doesn’t already know that women are like this, and he doesn’t know exactly what he’s doing, the wife will invariably upset the marriage.

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2. A Fundamental Change in Self-Concept

Deep Strength’s post, “That all changed after we married…” (2021/6/28) describes a few scenarios in which people might come to think that the other person changed after marriage. These scenarios are briefly summarized here.

  1. Infatuation wears off.
  2. A rebalance of power based on differing levels of attraction.
  3. Normalization of non-submissive and disrespectful behavior on behalf of the wife.
  4. The husband gets lazy about correcting the wife’s disrespecful and sinful behaviors.
  5. Either one or both individuals were posing / faking / hiding their true character.

DS’s post addresses the traits and habits of the individuals in the relationship, and DS’s point is that good behaviors need to be learned / taught, and bad behaviors need to be corrected.

To augment his brief statement, marriage requires a good deal of emotional maturity and for both couples to grow in Christlikeness, especially honesty, humility, and patience. After we marry, we quickly learn the limitations of our fleshly selves and that our naïve concept of “love” is insufficient for taking up the slack. Thus, married couples must utilize the will and rely on the Holy Spirit when the will is insufficient. It takes faith and daily engagement to learn how to demonstrate agape love and Christlike behavior in marriage, and to grow into the respective roles of husband and wife. All this takes time, and for most, it is far from easy.

So when people say “the other person changed”, it may very well be because their concept of the other person changed. The idealized person they thought they were marrying is suddenly revealed to be a faulty human being with eccentric desires and seemingly unreasonable wants and needs, someone who fails much more frequently than what was perceived while courting / dating, and who requires much more love than what they’re giving back. In this sense, marriage is a perpetual “ministry” of daily needs to one’s husband or wife (c.f. 1 Corinthians 7:32-35). Father Spyridon even described this as being responsible for the spouse’s salvation (viz. sanctification)!

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3. A Fundamental Change in the Interaction

However, there is a more fundamental reason for why people say, “that all changed after we married”. Whenever people say this, they are subjectively (and usually somewhat ignorantly) talking about a shift in the interaction between the two individuals that came about with marriage.

As it happens, when a young married couple realizes that making marriage work is not a 50%/50% effort, but rather 100%/100%, then many of their false expectations of love and feelings of inspiration disintegrate. IOW, Point 1 in DS’s list occurs. As a result, the couple doesn’t see one another through rose colored lenses any longer, but more along different lines, ranging from an investment of love at best, to a responsibility, or a burden, or a constant annoyance, or a pain in the @ss. At worst, individuals withdraw emotionally and build up walls of psychological self-defense mechanisms, such as apathy, displacement, projection, revenge, stonewalling, and so on. In response, faith in the other person, and in the relationship itself falters and flounders, and a whole new set of problems and difficulties emerge.

Moreover, when two people marry, the way the individuals interact with each other may undergo a seismic shift.

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4. A Fundamental Change in Perspective

After marriage, the woman shifts from “man hunting” mode to “nesting” mode. She stops viewing her husband as a game quarrior, and starts to see him as a workhorse that needs harnessed in.

After marriage, the man begins to focus on building and consolidating his domain. He shifts from renegade “wife hunting” mode to Patriarchal “family man” mode. After he becomes familiar with her body and her antics, he stops pedestalizing the wife as a nubile sex goddess, and starts to see her more genuinely. If she doesn’t have her act together, he may start to view her as a contentious annoying burden.

Thus, in some respects, what one values in a mate changes after marriage.

For example…

  • Women who were strongly attracted to funloving Chadwick before marriage, and who managed to secure his commitment, are then faced with constant jealousy and the possibility of his indiscretion.
  • Men who were strongly attracted to Saucy Stacy before marriage, and who managed to lock her down, are then faced with the reality that she’s not actually that great in bed, she can’t cook or clean, she’s a careless mother, and she spends all her spare time on social media.

As you can see, a lot of what one is attracted to is related to one’s maturity.

All this surfaces as Points 1 and 2 in DS’s list.

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5. A Fundamental Change in the Power Structure

It gets worse. When the way two people view each other changes, and the way they interact changes, and their perspective on life changes, then the power structure may change as well.

Σ Frame Axiom 7: The natural interaction defines the relationship structure according to which model it fits best — not what we think it is, or hope for it to be, or try to force it to be.

Likewise, true power is determined by a relationship’s ontological construction of unique identities being manifested, and less so in the motivations or behaviors of the participants.

What this means in many cases, is that there is a slow drift away from Headship, which emerges as Points 3 and 4 in DS’s list, and that spells catastrophe for the relationship.

6. A Fundamental Change in the Desires, Needs, and Motivations of the Individuals

After marriage, the wife becomes less concerned about her own financial solvency, material comfort, and security, as these things are provided to her by the man. Thus, her psychological energies are freed up to focus on micromanaging the home and the activities and behaviors of the husband and children. This can be wonderful as long as she is diligent about providing value to the family. But it’s also easy for her to get bogged down in her own little world and become bored and persnickety about her personal preferences. This can lead to point 3 in DS’s list.

After marriage, the husband becomes less concerned about obtaining sexual congress and maintaining the relationship, and he begins to focus more on his career, earning income, and building a home, as he should. As a result, he gives the wife less attention and less moral feedback, and finds it easy to leave certain areas under her supervision. This can lead to point 4 in DS’s list.

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7. Cultural Mythos Works Against the Knowledge and Practice of Headship

It gets even worse. The common cultural tripe about gender equality does a d@mning disservice towards one’s psychological preparation and readiness for marriage. Worse, feminism actively dismantles the trust and fidelity necessary to achieve sanctification in marriage, and ruins the MMP for marriage minded Christians.

The importance of God ordained relationship structures (Tingly Respect / Headship / Peaceful Unity), and the inherent power structures are summarily concealed, dismissed, or demonized as “misogynistic” in many cases. Instead, progressive liberalism amplifies, broadcasts, glorifies, and popularizes relationship structures that do not conform to God’s order.

To wit, before marriage, a woman only has her feminine wiles and her püssy power to attract his love. After his commitment in marriage, a woman has many other avenues of control at her disposal, all of which are largely due to the perverse, gynocentric culture in which we now live.

In addition to a long list of control tactics that can destroy his sense of peace and rest, she can deny sex, threaten divorce, hold his wallet and children for ransom, and ruin his reputation, and he has little recourse to address such grievances. These tools of manipulation are easier and ostensibly preferable (to women) over the more spiritually obedient methods of submission, entertaining his honest speech (and being agreeable about it), and tolerating indefinitely whatever she perceives as his weaknesses.

This lopsided power structure has the strong potential to disrupt the natural interaction and the relationship structure, as described in Σ Frame Axiom 7.

Click on the links in this section to read more about how Western progressive cultural mythos destroys marriage and family, and even the church. Also, see Dalrock’s essays on Attacking Headship.

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8. Spiritual Infidelity* and Marital Fraud**

* Here, Spiritual Infidelity is loosely defined as any behavior that strays from God’s ideal order of Headship.
** Marital Fraud is when a person is unwilling or unable to fulfill the Covenant prerogatives of marriage. The presence of premeditated deception or willful intentionality of fraud is not necessary for fraud to bring destruction, misery, and heartache, but it will certainly amplify the perdition thereof.

If people get married, and then the natural interaction suddenly changes, it is possible that it probably wasn’t really very natural to begin with. Much has been written here about how premarital sex defiles humility, destroys trust, debases the sexual authority of the husband, and changes the power structure of the relationship. It all spills out in the crucible of marriage.

Marital Fraud is obviously linked to DS’s Point 5, but in fact, it affects all the Points on the list. To further augment DS’s list along this vein,

  1. One or both parties were operating in the flesh, and not in the spirit.
  2. One or both parties were not permitting a natural interaction. (For example, the wife was feigning attraction; the husband was only after sex.)
  3. The wife was only keeping her worst nature in check just long enough to secure a marital commitment, and then stopped doing so after marriage (which is when it really counts).
  4. The husband was unprepared to deal with the wife’s disobedience because he had never had to deal with it before.
  5. One or both parties were not presenting their authentic selves honestly to the other. (For example, the wife lies about her N count; the husband relies on Game too much, or not enough.)

Furthermore, marital fraud is perhaps the worst case scenario of a marriage with the worst chances of success, because the entire relationship is built over deception, distrust, and sin.

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What DOES NOT Change?

It would be helpful for young people to become well aware of what does NOT change after marriage.

Here are 10 Red Pillish Truths to remember.

  • Women are hypergamous. AWALT!
  • Women chomp at the bit to assume power and control over their husbands (viz. The Curse of Eve). AWALT to varying degrees!
  • Women’s SMV will always go downhill after the age of 25 or so, and more so after bearing children. This will not change.
  • Men are always scoping for fresh, hot, young T and A. This will not change.
  • Men supplicate their wives and will always prefer to take the easy way out (viz. The Curse of Adam.)
  • Men’s SMV/MMV increases as they age. A man has to be an exceptionally lazy bum for this not to happen.
  • The person you were before you married is the same person you will be after marriage. Marriage does not change the core of who either of you are. However, your attitudes and habits will become more like your spouse’s.
  • If your partner doesn’t inspire you to grow closer to God and/or to be a better person before marriage, then this won’t change after marriage.
  • If you are not in the regular habit of conforming to the Headship structure before marriage, then Headship will not magically materialize after you exchange vows. In fact, it will be more difficult to implement.
  • If you don’t genuinely love each other in the spirit before marriage, then you won’t “find God” in your relationship after marriage.
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Epilogue: Fleshly Nature and Spiritual Disposition, as well as Core Values and Purposes Become Evident in Marriage

As you can see, both husband and wife, as individuals, have their own sets of emotional luggage, peculiar desires, intransigent values, implacable expectations of norms, pet sins, and socialization hang ups.

Before marriage, these traits are typically underestimated, and are regarded as superficial, cute, or even endearing. But living together through the daily grind of marriage will magnify even the slightest incongruency between the man’s and the woman’s core values and life purposes. As a result, the blinders come off, and the individuals are forced to face the day to day reality of two people sharing the same house and bed together.

If more attention were given to these matters before marriage, then marriage would not be so shocking and difficult.

Working out the business end of being married involves a complicated mish mash of challenges that are difficult to sort out. It usually takes newlywed couples 2-5 years to figure out what “works” for them, and those who can’t, don’t, or won’t, either break up or else endure years of pain and strife in marriage. However, placing an emphasis on Headship and being obedient to Christ in one’s daily walk will quell much of the storm and speed up the adjustment curve.

Headship is the model that we should be striving for, or rather selecting a partner for. Anything less will be fraught with difficulty and heartache.

According to the Headship model, the onus is on the woman to align herself with the man. If she drags her feet about this at all, this will create much friction in the marriage, possibly leading to its demise.

Σ Frame Axiom 34: Every argument in marriage is caused by a contentious unsubmissive wife.

It is the continual work of love to accommodate the other’s needs and foibles in a loving manner.

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