Made to Lead

by Robert Cossins

  One marker to seriously reflect upon before even removing the reinforcement bar from the commitment gate is your prospective wife’s previous sexual partner count, or N, for short. The higher her N, the less suitable she is for making and keeping the marriage commitment. From a study with a sample size of ten thousand women, it was revealed that eighty per cent of women who married as virgins (or with no other sexual partners besides their husbands) were still in stable marital relationships after five years.[119] For women with just one sexual partner other than their husband, that number dropped to just above fifty percent. For women with five or more non-marital partners, the stable marriage number dropped below thirty percent! Think, men. Your risk of becoming a divorce slave increases dramatically if your wife has had sexual relations with just one other man. Just one! And the chance of enjoying a stable marriage continues to decrease inexorably as her N increases. Bottom line: Marry a chaste woman and you have an eighty percent chance of a successful marriage; marry a slut and you have an eighty percent chance of a failed marriage! For the few mathematically challenged who might be reading this book, marry a chaste woman and there is a four out of five chance that you’ll remain married after five years. Marry a slut, and there is a four out of five chance that you’ll be divorced. Do you want to roll the dice with your future (and your children’s future) against those poor odds? Do you wish to invite divorce slavery? By no means! Just look at the chart of this same data.

  I hope it’s been sufficiently demonstrated that if you are considering a woman as possible marriage material, you must understand her sexual history. In the best case, it’s a non-story or a very short story, and she’s a virgin. In case you were not aware, God provided a wonderful physical marker for a woman’s purity: the hymen. If her hymen is intact, it is virtually assured that she is a virgin, a new surgical procedure, namely hymenoplasty, notwithstanding. (That’s right, doctors are now conspiring with women to defraud their new husbands, allowing a busy woman to possess a reconstructed hymen to better perpetrate her fraud, providing iron-clad false evidence of her supposed virginity. One surgeon’s website invites women to: “Find out how you can reclaim your virginity through hymenoplasty.”) If she’s a virgin, your first sexual encounter will cause her pain and bleeding, and she will likely be a bit embarrassed about the entire act. If she’s not a verifiable virgin, your next step is to understand and verify her sexual history.

  Non-virginal women tend to rationalize and lie about their sexual history, especially if they see you as potential marriage material, and particularly once they discover that chastity is important to you. You would be well-advised to withhold expressing your desire to marry a chaste woman until after you understand your prospective wife’s sexual history. I once had a woman insist that she was a virgin even though I knew that she’d been having sex regularly with a friend of mine. Once called out, she admitted that they’d had sexual intercourse, but, since he’d always used a condom, it didn’t count. She was still a virgin in her own mind because she’d never had sperm in her vagina.

  More often women won’t be quite so open and silly in their rationalizations, but definitions are important, and many women won’t count sexual liaisons that end short of full intercourse or even full intercourse when such dalliances might be considered of an excusable nature. For example, she might not count sex as sex if she was drunk, or if it was a “mistake,” or if it was only a one night stand, or what have you. You see, twelve minus nine is only three and three doesn’t sound so bad in today’s LSR world. The woman who’s had a dozen partners in full sexual intercourse magically has had only three as far as her potential future husband knows: prom night with her high school boyfriend (I didn’t intend to get drunk, really), once at the beginning of her college freshman year when she was taken advantage of at a fraternity rush party by two men (this counts as only one partner since she will fail to mention the second man she had on the same night), and her long-time boyfriend in her junior year of college (and they were engaged!) There, that’s not too bad, is it? Know that if she’s willing to lie, it will be a very well put together lie.

  In a recent “Dear Bel” column,[120] the British equivalent of Ann Landers, a woman wrote:

  Dear Bel,

  When I met my husband 40 years ago I knew he was ‘the one.’ He had firm opinions on sex before marriage (outdated even then) and was a virgin.

  As I got to know him, it became clear that he’d never consider marrying somebody with ‘history.’ He thought sex special and wouldn’t want to imagine his wife having it with others.

  But, by 22, I’d been having sex for four years. Madly in love and wanting him to marry me, I lied.

  He was bound to realise I wasn’t a virgin, so I made up a story that I’d been in a long engagement, giving up my virginity under pressure only a month before my wedding day, then reluctantly had sex twice with my fiancé, who then dumped me, leaving me devastated and ashamed.

  He was very understanding and proposed soon after. We married and moved to his home town — a relief, as I’d worried we might bump into a friend who might speak out of turn.

  This woman enticed a man into marriage by lying (and maintaining that lie) for forty years, concealing a busy past that she knew would disqualify her from his consideration for marriage. This is fraud. But one day an old friend stopped by to visit and, thinking her husband was outside, “Inevitably, we talked of the past,” probably laughing about the good times had by all concerned. Unbeknownst to her, her husband was actually in the home reading and overheard the entire conversation. He’s filing for divorce. She defends herself, “He’s a man of principle, and I have hurt him, but not in a bad cause. I just wanted to spend my life with him all those years ago. I won’t be the only woman who ever lied about her sexual history.”

  Those men of principle are a dastardly lot, expecting veracity within the marriage covenant is too much to expect. Indeed. Though she lived a lie, her last sentence rings true. You would be absolutely stunned with the scale and sophistication of the lies I’ve seen put forth by women to secure commitment from a man: as a path to a green card, access to financial resources, or to secure long-term financial resources through false paternity. “I find more bitter than death the woman who is a snare, whose heart is a trap and whose hands are chains.”[121] Forewarned is forearmed.

  Also, be extremely skeptical of the rape story. As vile as actual rape might be, in the hands of a non-virginal woman wishing to present herself as chaste to entice a man to commitment, it represents the magical fairy dust that explains the absence of her hymen and simultaneously absolves her of any responsibility in the matter. Rape stories are very, very common when women are actively concealing a busy past. I personally know of a good man whose wife put him into divorce slavery after a twenty year marriage for the usual rationalizations (he was a very controlling man, don’t you see), and shortly afterward she began dating the man who’d supposedly stolen her virginity via “rape” during her college years. Odd that she’d seek out and date her rapist of twenty years before, isn’t it? I only hope her former “rapist” is not too “controlling.” Of course, only she knows how many other “rapists” knew her before she met her Steady Sam. It’s too bad this book wasn’t available at that time; Sam and his future children could have been spared tragedy.

  If a woman of some interest claims rape in her past, ask her who raped her. Ask her if she told her father about the rape. Ask her if she reported the rape to authorities. If not, why not? If she can’t answer these questions to your full satisfaction, there likely wasn’t a rape, only a rape story. Post-coital regret doesn’t transform consensual sexual intercourse into rape. Let her lies and proclivities ruin some other man’s life. If you’re interested in a woman who was genuinely raped, especially if sexually abused as a child, the crimes committed against her, though genuine and tragic, will still impact your marriage, so, before marriage, take due care to ensure that she’s worked through those past traumas to the exten
t that it’s possible to do so.

  You don’t have to be a private investigator to confirm her sexual history as indicators abound: If her friends are high N, she is likely high N. If they party hard, she is likely high N. If she belongs to a sorority or is a “little sis” to a fraternity, she’s more likely to be high N. If she gets drunk, she’s likely high N. If you hear a story of her sneaking out of her parent’s home at night, she’s likely high N. If she won’t take you back to her hometown or seeks to control to whom you speak while there, she’s more likely high N. I could go on. Use your common sense. As Ronald Reagan was famous for saying, “Trust but verify.”

  The corollary function is the higher her N, the higher the chance she’ll commit adultery, and the higher the chance she will become pregnant by another man during your marriage, leaving you cuckolded and unknowingly pouring your time, talent, and treasure into raising another man’s child. Known paternity in a social environment increases the commitment level of fathers. Conversely, the lower the confidence of paternity, the lower the commitment level of fathers. Tragically, the extremely LSR culture prevalent in the inner cities of the United States provides a living, breathing laboratory for this theory and these same destructive pathologies are now rapidly expanding within other communities as well. Though you may have limited influence on the greater population, you can at least take all measures to ensure that your own marriage is stable, producing healthy children of known paternity in spite of the nation’s LSR culture, propagating the remnant.

  The simple summary is this: The higher a woman’s N count, the likelier you are to end up in divorce slavery, as past behavior is an imperfect but good predictor of future behavior. The women who’ve bought into the feminist myth will have spent their twenties on career and playing the field (translation: having casual sex with many alpha men.) You now understand these dangers. Dismiss such a woman with prejudice; do not commit; divorce slavery ahead! This issue is significantly exacerbated when a low N man marries a high N woman. Though marrying a high N woman is risky for any man, a low N man should never even consider doing so.

  Now that you better understand the effects of partner count on a woman’s future family and marriage, let me encourage you to keep this in mind when temptation rears its destructive head. The successful man living in an LSR culture will face sexual temptations regularly, but the Christian man should give such temptation no quarter. Instead, he should seek to cultivate not merely long time preferences but, modeling after our Lord, eternal ones. For God’s sake, for your sake, for her sake, for society’s sake, do not defile another man’s future bride and thereby weaken his future marriage. As physically satisfying as it might be in the moment, she’s simply not yours to have. I repeat, she’s simply not yours to have. Fornication is a sin with eternal consequences. The man committed to sexual purity must keep in mind that sexual arousal diminishes self-control. It’s not difficult to understand that if you allow yourself to sexually advance with a willing woman, you’ll likely fail to control your sex drive. Don’t do it! God through Solomon provides specific warning regarding the adulterous: “Keep to a path far from her, do not go near the door of her house, lest you give your best strength to others and your years to one who is cruel, lest strangers feast on your wealth and your toil enrich another man’s house.”[122] These are the very consequences of marrying poorly, observably and reliably ending in divorce slavery.

  It’s worth repeating that the Apostle Paul brings special emphasis to sexual sin: “Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a man commits are outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body.”[123] It’s not an unforgivable sin since Jesus Himself explicitly forgave a woman caught in the very act of adultery: “Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more.”[124] Jesus ministered to women who’d fallen to sexual temptation. Indeed, God will forgive those who seek forgiveness and repent from their sins, for “as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.”[125] He even forgets our transgressions: “I, even I, am he who blots out your transgressions, for my own sake, and remembers your sins no more.”[126] If you’ve sinned, seek God’s forgiveness, and sin no more. His forgiveness doesn’t necessarily remove the wake we’ve created through our sins, their natural consequences, but He will help us navigate through our own mess, even redeem our mistakes in others’ lives if we’ll repent. If you’ve had a baby out of wedlock, you still have the baby, but, if you repent, God will not hold your sins against you and will welcome you into eternity. That’s the reason He came, to save sinners like me and you and the Apostle Paul: “Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners – of whom I am the worst.”[127] Thanks be to God! If He can save the “worst,” He can save you.

  Career and Credentials

  Negative feedback is the process of coupling the output back in such a way as to cancel some of the input.[128]

  — Paul Horowitz

  Most women today are trained to value career over family and the more your wife values her career, the higher the chances she’ll divorce you. According to a British study, “Working women are more than three times more likely to be divorced than their stay-at-home counterparts,” and “the longer hours women work, the more likely they are to be divorced.”[129] Of particular interest, a separate study estimates “that having the wife earn more than husband increases the likelihood of divorce by 50 percent.”[130]

  Feminist teachings are core to women chasing their careers since stay-at-home wives and mothers are deemed foolish and unproductive, the feminist equivalent of an Uncle Tom, selling out her sisters. The feminist focus on career has encouraged women to delay marriage, which naturally delays family formation. The later she marries, the fewer children she’ll conceive. The smaller a man’s family, the higher the chance he’ll have no sons, thus reinforcing the negative feedback loop generation-over-generation since fathers without sons tend to press their competitive nature onto their daughters, her increased competitiveness amplifying her focus on credentials and career in the next generation, further exacerbating already falling birth rates. This self-reinforcing negative feedback loop has resulted in a fertility rate barely one-half what it was in the late fifties.

  Some years ago a female vice-president of a regional bank, in her mid-fifties, requested a sales meeting to discuss my company’s banking business. As we became acquainted, the conversation took a turn that I’m sure she wasn’t expecting when, prompted by an off-hand comment she’d made, I asked her why she’d been so consumed with business during her life. She admitted that her father pushed her hard to excel, to compete with the boys, to win, and she spent her most fertile and attractive years hustling for the bank. Surprising even herself, she told me that she was living a life of emptiness and regret. How different her life might have been if her dad would have shared the motherhood imperative with his young daughter instead of sending her out to compete with the boys. Knowing no better, he became “That Dad,” much to his daughter’s future chagrin. Such stories are legion. Don’t be That Dad; don’t let your daughter live a life of regret out of youthful ignorance and certainly not at your bidding.

  Having likewise focused on career during her peak SMV and now age forty-six, Claudia Connell explained her story, “I grew up in Sussex then moved to London to pursue my job as a journalist, where I threw myself into a heady social life.”[131] During her fertile years, she’d “shudder at the thought of a living room clogged up with toys,” but now joins her barren sisters in lament, their wombs empty by choice: “In my 30s, I really didn’t want [children]. It’s only now, as the choice is removed, that I begin to wonder what my life would be like with a family.” She’s is coming to terms with the results of her decision, but too late, “I accept that my opportunity to have a family has gone,” and has rightly observed, “A woman over 45 on an internet dating site is made to feel as welcome as a parking ticket. The sites may be full of single men
in their 40s, but they sure aren’t looking to meet women of the same age!” Her most potent observation is that not one of her single friends “is truly happy being on her own. Suddenly, all those women we pitied for giving up their freedom for marriage and children are the ones feeling sorry for us.”

  I know the capable daughter of a very competitive man who has imprinted his competitiveness upon her. She excelled in her studies, resulting in her having recently been accepted into a prestigious medical school. This is quite an accomplishment, but there is a looming problem ahead as her self-identified most important life goal is to become a wife and mother. Her occupational training is simply incongruous with her stated life goals, the demands of medical school keeping her all but out of the marriage market past her peak SMV. Furthermore, the servicing of her medical school loans will keep her fully occupied past the end of her high fertility window.

  If your daughter is naturally competitive and wants to express her competitive desires through athletics or other outlets, that is to be commended and encouraged. But just as the very best coaches tailor their coaching style to each player, so fathers must seek to observe and understand each child’s gifts, encouraging each child, son or daughter, to develop their natural strengths, helping them become what God created them to be instead of what you wished they might become. Though your hopes and desires will often align with God’s and your child’s natural abilities, you must be open to the idea that this isn’t the case and adapt accordingly.