Beyond the Stereotypes

Living the plural marriage way of life you cannot fail to learn something about women and female behaviour. Whatever expectations men have of women in marriage (and vice versa), or think women (or men) are, want, or the way they respond to the things you think are important to them, you can never be prepared for reality. I am speaking for the most part of Christian women and, even more so, of righteous Christian women. We each have our own preconceived stereotypes of one another shaped by the culture we were raised in and by our own hormones. What I want to share with you today is what I have learned being married to eight women, usually the hard way. Understanding female psychology is obviously rather important in plural marriage because God made men and women rather differently...

'What Did I Do Wrong?'

Picture this scenario, especially if you are a 'first-timer' in marriage, whether monogamously or polygamously. You did everything for her that you thought was consistent with loving her according to the biblical model taught by Christ. You were loyal, supportive and consistent. You gave her everything she said she wanted that was within your means but she still walked away. Result: you became confused, hurt and almost certainly asked yourself the wrong question: 'What did I do wrong? Why wasn't I enough?'

Loyalty for Surprising Reasons

Here is what I learned. Women don't stay loyal for what you do for them. They stay loyal to how they feel about who you are. If you are a loyal, faithful and loving husband and want to do right, then please understand this deep-seated instinct, impulse - call it what you will - that lies at the heart of female behaviour...what it is they were created to be loyal to, and how you need to understand the way to address that in a Gospel context.

When Trying to Earn Loyalty Fails

Understand this first of all: trying to earn a woman's loyalty through effort, gifts and sacrifice always fails when you, the man, lack this one thing: the ability to measure your value the spiritual way - not by the applause or appreciation we get but by who we are in Christ when everything else is stripped away.

A Mistake Men Commonly Make

One wise pagan Roman emperor and philosopher, Marcus Aurelius, understood that it is not death that a man should fear but never beginning to live. When a man acts towards his wife because he fears to lose her if he does not, he sends a signal to her that his wife picks up subconsciously. For one thing he has yielded power to her - the ultimate power a woman can hold if it is conceded to her - power that he is supposed to exclusively exercise in righteousness as her husband. Let's break this down.

Women & How They Feel About Themselves

First, women are loyal to how you make them feel about themselves. Like it or not, they were designed to be primarily feeling-orientated. Men are designed to be more logic-orientated. Men and women were created with hearts and minds but they're organised rather differently. That's not to say some women can't make superb intellectuals or some men superb empaths, it's just there aren't so many of them relative to their respective genders as a whole.

The Story of Zyta - a Female Intellectual

One of my wives, Zyta, was exceptionally intellectual, a craniac even, and used to beat me hands-down at chess every time. She was also an incisive theologian and apologist. But grace - undeserved loving kindness - did not come easily to her, something one of her female Orthodox countrymen once pointed out to her in a theological debate they were having in Zhytomyr after our separation. She always did have problems relating to others, and especially her sister-wives, and often mistook her own intellect for the Holy Spirit (which led her theologically astray, which widened the rift between us)...a problem many men have, incidentally. This theological conflict became an ever thickening wall between us that contributed in large part to our final estrangement. We used to have long, stimulating intellectual discussions, she understood the rational basis of plural marriage that none of the other wives ever did with perhaps the exception of Świętosława who was also a skilled writer and apologist, and was definitely the first to get a grasp of its mystical side (intellectually, but not emotionally). She was a wonderful companion in so many ways whom I still dearly love and miss. But there was an aspect of the 'feminine' that was distorted, caused in large part by dysfunctionality in her home growing up that created social difficulties for her in trying to relate to others. This could, given sufficient time, have been worked out given the time and opportunity for her to mature in this area, but events (as with Świętosława) conspired against us. You can read her story on her webpage. As far as I know, she is still single.

Six Essential Truths Husbands Must Quickly Learn

I mention Zyta because she was the exception rather than the rule. All my other wives better fit the default category of women whom I am trying to describe in very general terms. Here's what I learned gradually from Marcus Aurelius, psychologists and philosophers, and, importantly, my own personal experiences in plural marriage. This understanding did not come to me all at once for I began married life unprepared for it in many ways. If I were to distill all of this into six critical points, success in marriage (monogamous or polygamous) crtically depends on men understanding these things from the very beginning, something which their father and mother ought to have taught them:

• 1. It's not about how much money you spend on her, how much time you give her, or how often you say, 'I love you' to your wife, it's about how secure she feels in your presence - how centered, how feminine, how 'seen/visible';

• 2. If your love comes from your neediness to be fulfilled by her love, she won't ever feel peace - her experience becomes one of feeling pressured; and

• 3. Don't think in terms of how you can be an emotional support for her (a big mistake that Westernised men make because of the crippling influence of feminism) but rather become emotional gravity for her that will draw her into orbit around you as her head: stay centered on Christ, be who you are in Christ, forget your 'neediness' (give it to Christ to fix - it's not a wife's job but your parents' - if they failed, then you need mentors), and be unshaken and unshakeable in Chrisr. Your eyes must be on Him. Be the leader you were created to be in the heart-life - lead from a position of strength, not personal need. That is the price you must pay for being a head. You have to be her strength and refuge as her protector.

Those are the first three most important points

Wives Want Husbands on a Mission

• 4. Women are loyal to men on a mission - men who know God, know who they are, know where they are going in life, know what their calling is, and know how to lead by Christian example (something you learn at home from your father as a son growing up) - if that is what you want her to be attracted to, rather than your biceps, sex-appeal or your willing submission to the deliberately cultured macho-femininity that feminism expects of 21st century men - if you want to lead by the attractiveness if a well-rounded, purpose-filled character, then you will succeed if she is a spiritual women.

  Take care of that first, before you start courting, and the 'chemistry' will follow all on its own. Don't imitate the ways of the world which are the opposite. The moment you make her your mission (your object of conquest or consciously assign her to her a rôle to fulfil your needs or heal your heart issues) she will lose interest because godly women don't want you to be your focus - they want to feel your focus on something higher, something she has to rise to meet, namely, GOD. When she sees you independently build, grind and grow without her permission, that's when she remains attracted and stays, not because you need her, but because she feels blessed and safe to be near your purpose - your calling. She needs the assurance of such constancy and steadiness, one that's not going to be swayed or knocked off course by her emotionalism.

The Importance of Boundaries

• 5. Godly, Scripture-oriented women are loyal to divinely established boundaries, not your attempts to please or seduce her. 'Seduction' is what you do to each other after you are married...for the rest of your lives! That's how romance stays alive. In general men make the mistake of believing that by giving more to the woman or women of his desires, by tolerating her controlling or manipulating behaviour for fear of losing her, by 'keeping the peace' at all costs by compromising with her ways that would divert you from your mission and calling in Christ, that this is the way to preserve a relationship. It is not. Your life mission to Christ and His Kingdom is your priority, hers to be your helpmeet in that mission (which includes raising a godly family to God). And this understanding needs to be clearly in place before any kind of marriage committment is made. If a man can't, or won't, do this, he is not ready for Christian marriage, and he will progressively cede headship to his wife or wives until he becomes a shadow of his himself. Then he is better off serving as a single man and she as a single woman until they have got their priorities right.

  A man tolerating more and more unscriptural behaviour from either a woman he is pursuing or one he is married to will lose her respect, because she cannot respect weakness, indecision or vaccilation. She was created to be led, not followed. Yes, they can reverse rôles and make them function, but it will not yield the desired spiritual and emotional fruits. Deep down in her heart a woman wants not a man who will tolerate more and more to keep the peace, but one who cannot be moved or controlled by emotional manipulation save for a higher purpose greater than both of them. She wants a man who chooses truth over comfort, principle over approval. She needs - and wants - boundaries. She wants you to enforce them and for you to either discipline/disciple her (if you're married) or walk away (if you're not) if she won't comply - not to hurt her but to protect your own peace and therefore, ultimately, hers too.

  Masculine Energy

• 6. Finally, godly women are loyal to divinely created masculine energy, not masculine emotions. That's not to say a godly man should be emotionless - quite the contrary! An emotionless man is a heartless man, without proper love. What she doesn't want to be loyal to is an emasculated, feminised man - indeed, she will grow contemptuous of him for being weak. I made this mistake many times, unconsciously conditioned as I was by, first, the communist values of the time and then the secularised Western ones after 1989. I had to learn to 'man up' ('become a man'), be masculine even though I thought I already was. An effeminate man will tend to be attracted by defeminised women which leads to complete rôle-reveral in marriage. That is a recipe for misery for both of them because they will both feel the biblical pressure to be the opposite of what they have chosen to settle with. I am reminded of the Polish TV series, Miodowe lata ('The Honey Years') that featured a sharp-tongued, domineering wife and her loud but easily pushed around, henpecked husband, though there are plenty of better examples coming out of Western media. Double dysfunctionality leads to double misery and unstable, oppressive marriages. That doesn't mean I needed to become an 'alpha-male' or even a 'beta-male' - these are all secular constructs that encourage men to self-isolate and identify in different, non-Christian ways - I needed to become a 'Christ-ian man'. But what was that actually look like in a marriage relationship, given, we are told, Christ was never married to give us a literal marriage rôle model save indirectly as the allegorical husband of the Church?

The Lion-King & Lamb-Priest -
Two Sides of Authentic Masculinity

Irrespective of what you believe about that issue, we do have a spiritual rôle model in the way He conducted Himself in His brief three year ministry and we have the revelation of how He will conduct Himself when He returns as the Resurrected King. We have to understand, therefore, two sides of authentic masculinity as both 'Lamb' (gentle and meek) and 'Lion' (tough, aggressive when necessary, and fiercely protective of the pride), 'Priest' (ministerial) and 'King' (ruler). Men may be born and raised as carnal, fleshy 'alpha' or 'beta' types but they're not supposed to remain that way. (Women have their fleshy equivalents [1]). And by the way, the secular world has invented all sorts of other carnal male archetypes for men named after the letters of the Greek alphabet to make it sound like serious science (it isn't) - sigma men (introvert, independent, lives by his own rules, despises rules and group validation); gamma men (adventurous, creative, individualistic, etc.); delta men (hard-working, blends into the backround, cynical, etc.); omega men (introverted, eccentric, nerdy, outside the mainstream), zeta men (indifferent to traditional societal expectations, dating rules, etc.) and so on. God does not recognise any of these as legitimate types - these categories are the inventions of men and describe various admixtures of carnality and dysfuntionality.

A Warning

Let me end this with a piece of advice that's also a warning: your girlfriend or wife is not your mother! If you open up to her too soon, explain too much to her about your problems, and turn to her for advice, you turn her into a therapist. That is NOT a wife's calling! That's what mothers are supposed to do. And if your mother failed you in that job, then turn to an older, experienced sister in the Gospel. If you throw open your heart to your girlfriend or wife and let everything pour out (a huge temptation for men in love), you cede power to her in a realm that she is more naturally disposed to understanding and she becomes your emotional authority. She becomes your mother, not your wife and lover. Once you let the male-female dynamic flip, the polarity dies.

Conclusion

Understand this. Masculine energy doesn't mean silence, it means clarity, certainty and direction. Yes, be emotionally aware but don't hand her the steering wheel of your soul. She's not loyal to the man who did the most. She's loyal to the man who made her feel the deepest, the safest, the most feminine, and the most alive. That man - a true man - doesn't chase, beg or perform: he leads, builds and becomes. So stop doing everything (not 'anything', everything) for her and start doing everything for Christ because once you become the man who needs nothing from her in order to be validated, she will give everything freely. This is what Paul meant when he said, "as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything" (Ephesians 5:24, NIV). Love her, give freely to her, but need nothing from her in return for your own validation - the male is the provider, the female the helper. Yes, we men have needs - Adam needed Eve for companionship, but not in place of Yahweh as his head in any area. Choose strength, purpose and inner peace in Christ over validation from a woman...or indeed anyone else. Should she validate you? Before others, yes. That's the critical difference. Our identity and validation come from the Saviour. That's really the main point here.

For examples of what I am talking about, read my plural marriage novel, Bouquet of Roses!

Endnotes

[1] See the Founder's in-depth presentation of this topic, The Fallen Female & Carl Jung

Author: SBSK