Made to Lead

by Robert Cossins

  It is generally no sin for a woman to work outside her home, but know that it’s quite difficult for your wife to be the best wife and mother when distracted by professional duties. This is not a difficult equation to solve; the hours she’s working outside the home are not available for nurturing her children. Many people do not believe one income sufficient to meet their financial objectives, but a well-chosen helpmate will be capable of supporting you sufficiently well that your advancement will more than make up for any monetary income lost by her staying at home. In my own business, I found those men with highly supportive stay-at-home wives were significantly more productive and, on average, commanded a significantly higher income over time. They also appeared to live lives of lower stress and greater happiness.

  Just because a woman is working when you meet doesn’t necessarily mean she’s a career woman. As I was getting acquainted with my bride, she was successful in her chosen career field but made it clear that her highest and best goals were becoming and being a wife and mother. Though talented in her work, she was in her profession to support herself only until she married (or in case she never married.) She hasn’t spent one hour earning an income since the day we exchanged our vows and, even at this very moment, she is teaching our younger children in our home school, her efforts being counted to the good for all eternity. Dear God in Heaven, how I love that woman!

  One additional nugget for thought: Your wife is commanded to respect you just as you are commanded to love her. A career woman is professionally accountable to respect her boss as part of her duties, a person almost assuredly of higher income and stature. If her boss is male, these circumstances possibly set her up for temptation since respect naturally drives attraction in women. Perhaps in small ways or perhaps in large, her submissive work role may well have a deleterious effect on her ability to maintain her respect for you over time – the lower your relative SMV, the higher the risk of infidelity.

  A woman’s career goals (or absence of such) are simply one more variable to add to your marriage calculus, one with more ramifications than you might initially surmise. To survive and prosper, society does not need women in business, the military, science, or any other place outside of having and raising children. I submit to you the entire history of the United States before 1920 as evidence. Dedicated wives and mothers have a far greater impact on society than women spending their time playing office or writing prescriptions for acne control merely to service their medical school debts. This does not make such activities sinful, just deleterious to the health of marriage, family, and society at large. For a society to thrive and remain stable over time, the one thing that women absolutely must do is birth and raise children. Once women’s primary goals en masse exclude mothering, the society is simply doomed, particularly when its most capable women are having the fewest children. The womb is simply irreplaceable, and demographics are destiny. This is not hard math, merely inconvenient.

  Let’s now briefly consider the importance of credentials in regards to female hypergamy. Remember Karen Cross, the hypergamous woman who dumped her blue-collar husband to spend her last years of high SMV servicing unfaithful musicians, now alone and probably shopping for her third cat? The hypergamous Karens of the world want to be married to the best man possible and, in the feminist orthodoxy, credentials are critical. Female hypergamy all but demands that a woman marry a man who possesses credentials at least equal to her own and the Karens have a bleak future before them. According to an interesting and well-done study,[132] undergraduate men outnumbered women at a ratio of 2.3 to 1 in 1947, that peak primarily driven by the GI bill, but that ratio has been steadily shifting since that time, reaching parity in 1980, and, by 2005, it stood at 1.30 women for each man. Given these long-term trends, many future Karens holding their various credentials and their attendant debts will find themselves married to men who work “fitting tires and exhausts” or other “demeaning” work that merely keeps the country functioning. This does not bode well for the future divorce rates at large. If you find yourself attracted to a woman holding credentials “superior” to yours, take due care.

  Beyond hypergamous considerations, obtaining credentials is very expensive, both in time and money, with many incurring substantial debts to obtain them. This debt often becomes a veritable millstone around her neck (and her future husband’s), especially for those who incurred large debt to obtain credentials that don’t translate into high post-degree incomes. The debt incurred often forces women to focus on their careers, even if they later decide they’d prefer to direct their full-time efforts towards their family. Know that if you marry a woman carrying large debt of any kind, it will take significant time and effort to service and clear that debt at the same time you’ll be needing money to establish your home and perhaps your business. Student loan debt is particularly malevolent because, just like tax debt, it is not dischargeable in bankruptcy; therefore, if she has student loan debt, it must be retired. Don’t forget that such debts must be retired with after-tax dollars, a precious commodity in a high-tax era. Funding an education with debt is volunteering for a modern form of indentured servitude. If you marry her, you marry her debt. If she possesses a degree named with the suffix of “studies,” understand that her ability to contribute to the family’s income to retire her student loan debt will be limited, particularly in a time when the supply of degrees outstrips the demand. The ever helpful law of supply and demand enlightens us yet again: Just talk to a newly minted law school graduate from anywhere other than a top-tier law school. It’s hard to service a six-figure law school debt by processing mortgages or waiting tables.

  You should now possess a better understanding of the primary risk factors to consider before unlocking your commitment gate: the age dynamics of sexual market value; the effects of female hypergamy in an LSR culture; the effects of her sexual partner count on stable marriage; the effects of disparate credentials, vis-à-vis female hypergamy; debt effects; and the likely effects of her career aspirations on your marriage and family. The more risk factors she possesses (and the more severe), the higher your risk, and the more scrutiny is warranted. A heavily indebted, high N count career woman with two abortions, three years past her MED, holding a Ph.D. in women’s studies, and coming from a broken home, would make for a horrible risk, no matter how much attraction you might have for her rapidly declining SMV, but unwise or ignorant men still marry such women.

  This cannot be overstated, so I shall state it again: Past behavior is an imperfect but good predictor of future behavior, and, remember, you won’t be having sex with your ex-wife! As Dr. James Dobson has stated many times, “The key to a healthy marriage is to keep your eyes wide open before you wed, and then half-closed thereafter.”[133] Most do precisely the opposite! True Christian marriage is a lifetime commitment that changes eternity and, even in the feminist world, you are the gatekeeper of commitment. By all means, for yourself, your future wife, and for your future children, be a worthy gatekeeper.

  I shall close this chapter with an important aside: Once you locate a virtuous woman and make her your bride, thank her loving mother and her good father for raising such a woman. You are more indebted to them than anyone on earth beyond your own parents.

  She Really Does Think Differently Than You Do

  Together, these findings support the view of a sexual dimorphism that manifested in the recruitment of gender-specific neural resources during the successful deployment of self-control.[134]

  — Esther K. Diekhof

  Men and women think in profoundly different ways.

  A few years ago my family and I visited the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs on the first day of rock climbing after a temporary prohibition due to nesting raptors. It was a beautiful day, and climbers were everywhere, enjoying the magnificent heights. One particular group was assisting a newbie, an attractive young woman who was clearly distressed by the thought of technical climbing, but peer pressure prevailed, and up she went with assist
ance and encouragement. Not too far into her climb she became paralyzed by fear and faced a dilemma. I learned a bit about women (at least about that woman) on that day. A man in fear and not willing to proceed would generally have just stated the obvious, “Hey guys, I was nuts for trying this. Heights do not agree with me, and I need to come back down.” He would have taken his ribbing but all would have remained friends, and he would have preserved a modicum of respectability. Not this poor woman. She could not, would not, admit her obvious fear, but could not make herself go one foot higher, so she lied, and poorly: “I can’t take any more altitude. The air is thinner up here and I just can’t breathe. Let me down. Get me down so I can breathe again!” She was less than twenty feet off the ground. An athletic basketball player might have been able to touch her feet. At first I thought surely she must’ve meant the altitude of Colorado Springs didn’t agree with her but, no, once she was back down on terra firma she stated with relief, “I’m better now. The dense air is helping me breathe.” I still chuckle when thinking about her.

  Though this is an extreme and silly example, your wife (or future wife) really does think differently that you do, and you must understand the difference. The observant man has known throughout all history that men and women process stimuli and react in dissimilar manners, but the mind has always been what software developers call a “black box,” meaning we can observe the behavior and draw some conclusions but don’t really understand the causes of what we observe. Alas, technology has advanced, and we’re now getting at least a peek into the “black box” of the human mind. In a recent study led by Professor Ragini Verma out of the University of Pennsylvania, a team examined nearly a thousand human brains using a technique called diffusion tensor imaging. The result is a “neural map of the brain.” The map of the male brain versus the female brain, what the professor calls the “connectome,” is striking. She stated, “In women most of the connections go between left and right across the two hemispheres while in men most of the connections go between the front and back of the brain.”[135] Male brains are quite literally wired differently than female brains.

  In separate research, Esther K. Diekhof and Oliver Gruber performed a fascinating experiment using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology to better understand how the brain “mediates the balance between proximal reward desiring and long-term goals.”[136] In layman’s terms, they wanted to better understand what happens in the brain when faced with a conflict between short-term gratification and long-term goals, what they termed a “desire-reason dilemma.” Examining gender as a variable was not part of the original study; however, at some point during their work, they began noticing differences between how men’s and women’s brains appeared to function when faced with a desire-reason dilemma. To more fully explore and verify this observation, they designed a subsequent experiment and found that when faced with a desire-reason dilemma men had “an increased frontostriatal coupling” which “helped men to control immediate reward desiring” while “women showed the reverse frontostriatal connectivity.” Additionally, they observed that, “during self-control men showed a stronger decrease in some limbic regions than women.”[137]

  Summarizing, when faced with a desire-reason dilemma men tend to actively suppress their emotions in favor of reason and logic while women tend to take the opposite approach. Yes, she really does think differently than you do, so don’t get upset when she’s being what you deem less logical than your computer. It’s just the way she’s created so, just as I never suggest men should pretend they don’t have a strong sex drive because they were created that way, don’t expect her to be a female version of Mr. Spock. Who would want to be married to a female Spock anyway? Lead her with full consideration of her emotions but, just as a man’s strong sex drive doesn’t excuse his inability to control himself, a woman’s natural tendency to rely on her emotions doesn’t excuse her either.

  By all means let this knowledge inform how you interact with her, knowing that your mind will gravitate toward reason and hers toward emotion when solving problems. This apparent conflict can work powerfully together as her views inform your own. Just as the very best coaches adapt themselves to their individual players, you will be most effective as a leader when you tailor your leadership style with consideration of those whom you lead. I hope by now you understand that by “tailoring” I don’t mean abdicating, not by any means. Still, a man who makes important family decisions without any regard to his wife’s thoughts on the matter isn’t strengthening his marriage and isn’t taking advantage of all his resources. That understood, most substantive decisions are best made using logical analysis, not emotion. As the head of the family, the ultimate responsibility of your family’s decisions lands squarely at your feet. The buck stops with you.

  God knew what He was doing, for the logical brain is certainly not the best brain for all situations. A single-tasking man immersed in a project might completely forget about his two-year-old son who has wandered off to the neighbor’s house, completely unattended. (Not that this has happened to me. I lost one of my daughters instead.) Mark Gungor has his usual humorous take on these differences:

  Researchers have discovered that men do, in fact, have the ability to think about absolutely nothing and – get this – still breathe. Neurophysiologist Professor Ruben Gur of the University of Pennsylvania showed that 70 percent of the electrical activity of men’s brains shut down when they were in a resting state. Think of that: 70 percent! Women’s brains, on the other hand, maintained a full 90 percent of their electrical activity. This demonstrates that women are constantly receiving and analyzing input from their surroundings. Women with children are completely aware of how those children are feeling, what their emotional states are, who their friends are, what their hopes, dreams, and fears are, and if they are plotting any mischief. Contrariwise, men maintain only a vague knowledge deep in the back of their minds that they have a wife and some shorter, nondescript people wandering around.[138]

  A good marriage is established by a man and woman, loving each other, committed to each other, and depending upon each other’s strengths to balance out their respective weaknesses. When it works well, it’s a beautiful relationship that accomplishes much good and greatly pleases God.

  Attracting Quality Women

  At the end of the day, the best proof of your credibility comes when those who are closest to you and know you the best, love and respect you the most.[139]

  — John Maxwell

  To be able to choose well, you must first have a choice, making yourself attractive to quality women being the prerequisite that provides choice. Know that living on a mission makes you attractive to women in ways one might not initially surmise. Seek to live a serious mission, strive towards fulfilling it, and you’ll naturally have a choice among women. But such complex topics can hardly be adequately summed up in a single paragraph, so let us more fully explore what women genuinely find attractive in a man.

  Rule #1: Unless you’re happy with loneliness, never bother asking women what they find attractive in a man. You will simply hear what they think they should find attractive, rather than what they actually find attractive, a phenomenon known as social acceptability bias. Instead, it is much more effective to carefully observe what actually attracts them. You won’t be surprised by some of what you discover: after all, women have been attracted to tall and handsome for ages; however, your observations might surprise you a bit when you discover that, while most women publicly pine for the “Nice Guy,” they never end up actually attached to such a man. It’s not because Nice Guys are rare, far from it. We are surrounded by them. Many of them even profess their willingness to live in an equalitarian marriage - happy to cook, clean, and do half the dishes – only hoping for an attractive and loyal bride, but they are summarily dismissed and ignored by attractive women as those women chase that which they profess to loathe, the bad boy, Karen Cross’ “musician.”

  Rule #2: The good news for the C
hristian man is that one needn’t be bad to attract women, for women aren’t generally attracted to a bad man’s nature but, rather, they are attracted to some of his qualities: primarily strength, boldness, and confidence, even irrational confidence. These are good characteristics for every man to possess in measure. The higher your confidence, the wider your influence, the stronger your leadership abilities, the bolder your actions, the more attractive you’ll become to women. Though we can speculate as to why women are attracted to these traits, such an understanding is much less important than the simple knowledge that they truly are attracted to these traits.

  Kristina Durante[140] performed a very helpful experiment designed to measure women’s attraction to bad boys or, using her preferred term, “Sexy Cads.” In the experiment the subject women were introduced via video to sets of male “twins” (actually a series of single actors posing as twins), each man introducing himself as a potential date. One brother was the classic Nice Guy that Durante termed the Reliable Dad, “socially reserved, not charismatic or adventurous, and explicitly desiring a committed relationship and a family.” The Reliable Dad’s twin brother, the Sexy Cad, “acted socially dominant, charismatic, and adventurous, while also coming across as unreliable and undependable.”