It is the Women’s fault.

And the men’s fault, and the father’s fault, and the pastor’s fault.

Stop Blaming Women For Adult Men's Loneliness

The problem with the word ‘fault’ is that it can so easily be sidetracked and confused. One can point to the wrong problem, include too many things in the set of problems, or include too few. Or somehow manage to do all of those at once.

So before we can ask if ‘it’ is the ‘women’s fault’, we need to decide and define what ‘it’ is. Is ‘it’ one thing, a dozen things, these things, or those things? Because that kind of makes a difference.

We also need to realise that ‘fault’ is not a binary thing. A wife who hires a hitman to kill her husband is at fault. But so is the hitman. They don’t split the fault 50/50 either. They are both completely at fault. 100% at fault.

So let me define the problem as ‘Men aren’t getting married’. Not enough men, not young enough, and not long enough. Too few men are marrying, men are marrying too late, and their marriages aren’t lasting.

Now, that is not ‘one’ problem; it is a dozen. It may be a million, since for each man, there may be a reason he didn’t marry, married late, or got divorced.

Let’s take the man who never got married. It might be his fault. He might never have asked anyone. Or he might have asked a dozen women and been turned down by all of them because he was a lazy bum, or addicted to pornography, etc etc.

But being his fault does not mean it isn’t the women’s fault… too. It isn’t actually written in stone that the guy has to ask. And it certainly isn’t written in stone that you can’t send your brother over there to kick him. And it isn’t written in stone that lazy men, or men with or without any particular merit or deficit, can’t marry.

What is written in stone, the stone of mathematics and the stone of God’s Law, is that it is not good that the man is alone.

And it is not enough to merely ‘not do wrong’. We have to ‘do right’. In a culture where there is a marriage deficit, it is not enough to sit and commiserate; it might be necessary for you to get up and do something. To do something uncomfortable, even.

False Doctrine

A large number of women (and men, another post) hold false doctrines concerning marriage. These false doctrines, held by women, keep men from getting married young, getting married at all, and/or getting divorced. That is the women’s fault (and the men, and their fathers, and their pastors).

False Standards

A large number of women (and men) hold false and unBiblical standards regarding marriage. Which is a false doctrine, but specifically they hold to false standards as to who they should marry. Who is good enough? Who is a ‘good match’. That is the women’s fault (and the men, and their fathers, and their pastors).

False Apathy

Ok, that’s a weird title. What I actually mean is that apathy is a false, unhelpful, and unBiblical way to approach this issue. If Scripture teaches the importance of marriage, and we see the dearth of marriage in our families, churches, and larger society, then we are called to get up and do something about it.

And this includes the women. There is not any actual Scriptural teaching that says that women need to sit around waiting for men to propose to them; and there is even less idea that they have to sit around and do nothing! Even outside of an outright proposal, there are dozens of things women can do!

And if nothing else, they can at the very least talk to their father (or talk to their mother who can talk to their father) about the false doctrine, false standards, and catastrophic lack of marriages.

Hidden Standards

Well, I guess I'm off my 'false' kick. One real problem that I have seen, both for the women and their fathers, are 'hidden' standards. Caleb, when he had both a daughter and a military problem, used the one to solve the other. 'Anyone who takes this city', he said, 'can marry my daughter'. Now, most of us don't have cities we need taken, but my point here is that Caleb's standards were clear. Take city -> get girl.

But most of our girls and their fathers don't have clear standards. They have standards (false ones, see above), and those standards are getting in the way of marriages, but they don't post them. They don't list them. They don't even seem to write them down in their heart of hearts.

The only time we see these standards is when one of them is trotted out to deny a marriage.

In any other area of life, we would realise how damaging this was. It is damaging to the overall marriage rate, but it is also damaging to the men themselves. Imagine if every time you went to WalMart, you had to give the clerk some money for each item to find out if it was enough. That is the position we put our men in: come to the father or the daughter and find out if you meet their hidden, false standards.

If the men knew what was what, they could sort themselves out. If the standards were actually published,  written down, talked about, announced. And if we actually published the list of standards, there would be peer pressure on unrealistic and unBiblical standards. ‘Where,” people would ask, “Do you get those standards?”

Conclusion

The dearth of marriages in our families, our churches, our community, our nation, and our world is the women’s fault. And the men, and the fathers, and brothers, and sister, and aunts and uncles, and pastors and even the pianist. But it is the women’s fault that our men aren’t married. They cannot sit in their chairs with their arms primly folded and deny responsibility.