In the 'swipe right' world of dating today I don't think my husband Sean and I would have ever fallen in love, gotten married and had 9 kids together //

Both Sean and I were cast and the very first moment we laid eyes on each other was captured on tape. Sounds romantic enough, except it wasn’t love at first sight.

For the next month, while Sean and I traveled together with other castmates throughout the U.S. and New Zealand, Sean invested a lot of his time flirting with me. Even after the show, when we parted ways, he continued to pursue me, racking up his long-distance phone bills and finding excuses to come to L.A. where he knew he would see me.

After five months, when he thought he was still stuck in the friend zone, we went out to breakfast. We spent three hours laughing and thoroughly enjoying each other’s company and at some point during that breakfast I realized that this conversation and Sean’s company was exactly what I wanted for the rest of my life.

When the waitress poured our last cup of coffee, I suddenly, and to Sean’s total shock, declared to Sean that I was going to marry him. The way he tells it, that was definitely way more than he was looking for, but we’ve been together ever since.

Had Sean and I met in 2023, I’m convinced we’d never be married. The disconnected and superficial nature of modern dating culture is killing romance and marriage. We need to bring back the art of flirting, and here are 5 ways to do it.

No one is arguing for marrying young for the sake of marrying young. Who you marry is the most important decision you will ever make, and must be done wisely with careful consideration of your potential spouse’s character and values.

What people open to marrying young are saying is that once you find someone you love, are attracted to physically and emotionally, and who shares your values, you should take the plunge and get married. You don’t need to “sow wild oats” or take your future spouse for a test drive before you make your vows. In fact, studies suggest that couples who do not cohabitate before marrying in their 20s have the lowest odds of divorce in America.

There’s no need to engage in the most depressing and debased aspects of modern culture. It’s not a rite of passage to get crossed and hook up with a guy you met at the bar. What is a rite of passage that stretches back centuries in human history is marriage, particularly marrying young.

Young women should ignore Marcotte’s “advice.” If you find a good person, don’t wait. Choose wisely, have faith, and take the leap.

My parents were married for 71 years. Even at the end, in their nineties, they held hands. My wife’s parents are past their 50th anniversary and are still close, inseparable in fact. So my wife and I had a good foundation in that regard. In that, and in my own marriage of almost 32 years, I have some ideas on what makes a marriage work,

at the end of your life, all your adventure and possessions and successes will mean nothing if your children hate you. Being “faithful to yourself” is not some kind of self-help victory. It is a surefire way to end up lonely and alone. Being faithful to others before yourself requires a measure of sacrifice. It costs you something on the front end, but on the back end, when you are old and weak and the world has sped past you, it will leave you with the most valuable type of wealth – the wealth of family.

My relative wanted his happiness on his timeline. He didn’t think he should have to pay for it. In the end, he paid handsomely. He found out the hard way that if you do not honor your family, happiness will not follow you to the grave. You will end your life in sadness and loneliness when you need faithfulness and happiness the most. //

I’m sure this Piqué character is having the time of his life and thinking that when he’s done with the hazy, heady days of youth, he’ll be there for his children and be there to reconnect.

But love is like a bank, and if you don’t invest (and investment means sacrificing something right now) in your early years, your account will be empty in your later years. You’ll have the perks of youth to distract you from your emptiness, but youth is fleeting. When you get old, the bank will be empty, and you’ll be left like my relative – old and lonely and despised.

Let your faithfulness to your family be your priority now, even if it’s not sexy or fun all the time. You will not live forever. You won’t even be young for that long. You will grow old and die, if you are so blessed. Think ahead. Plan for that retirement. Invest in love now, invest in self-sacrifice now, invest in the promises you made to your loved ones now.

Or suffer the consequences later. And don’t you dare complain.

Culture analyst and YouTuber Misha Petrov gathered some of these responses from American women, noting that these Western feminists are actually insulting these foreign women by claiming they’re uneducated and weak-minded due to their lack of feminist mentality and that these feminists who see themselves as being better than men are also seeing themselves as better than other women.n

Petrov brings up an excellent point and her entire video about the paradox of feminists hating men while still focusing their entire lives around them should be viewed in its entirety (and possibly written about in a separate article) but for now, I want to address the accusations about men being “predatory.”

The idea that men are taking advantage of “dumb” foreign women is wholly out of touch with reality, and it’s a take born out of the ignorance modern women seem to have about men. As I’ve written before, too many young women are taught all their lives what to expect from men but never taught what to deliver in return. This can have a nasty side-effect of dehumanizing men, making them seem like tools meant for the convenience of women than people with their own emotions, hurts, wants, and dreams. //

Men — whom I can personally report are, in fact, human — see this and vacate the very toxic Western dating pool, abandoning Western women to the life of isolation from men they’ve been asking for all along to the chagrin of these women. //

A man desires a partner, not a Queen to serve. He desires stability, and to give and receive love in a relationship that works both ways. He wants to earn for his family, and have the appreciation of his wife as he appreciates her for tending to the home he provides for her and their children utilizing basic homemaking skills. There’s nothing wrong with these desires, in fact, they’re incredibly wholesome.

Then the feminist woman must step back and ask herself what she brings to the table. If the answer is nothing but “me” then what use is she to a man? If that makes her angry, then she should ask if she would be okay with being in a relationship with a person who continues to be useless to her by her own definition.

If you treat grocery shopping like a chore, all you will notice are the bruised apples, long lines, grim yellow lighting, and bitter chill of the frozen aisle.

But a grocery store is only as tedious as you make it. Disneyland also has long lines and a hellscape parking lot, but you probably don't treat your visit like a chore — you go in wide-eyed and open to the magic.

Think about it. Your grocery store is a place made up of fresh fruit, birthday balloons, Skittles, live lobsters, flower arrangements, and hot-n-ready fried chicken. It's kind of the perfect place for a date. //

You can learn a lot about someone from what they add to the shopping cart. Does your date consider a protein bar to be a treat? Do they opt for the generic cookies or scoff at anything below the Milano shelf? Do they pair an energy drink with a can of spray cheese? This information can save you a lot of time sifting through potential partners. //

But the most important information that you can glean from a grocery store date is whether this person is willing to bring their energy and excitement to something very ordinary.

Congratulations!

You are about to get married and begin the adventure of a lifetime!

Together, you are deciding which Method of Natural Family Planning (NFP) or Fertility Awareness Method (FAM) best suits your values, lifestyle, and gives you the confidence you are looking for in avoiding pregnancy (and for achieving pregnancy when you’re ready).

Finding the right method is key for becoming confident in practicing NFP and enjoying everything this lifestyle has to offer you as a couple.

At Natural Womanhood we have supported thousands of couples in this journey. We understand your questions and needs, and we want to make this important decision easier for you.

“Many people in their 20s and 30s see matrimony as something one does once life has reached stability,” the magazine noted. “But Bieber, who wed at 21, sees it as only the beginning: You don’t figure things out and get married but rather get married and figure things out.” //

But there’s another part of the point that Bieber at least appears to be espousing. It’s not just a lackadaisical “figuring it out as you go” approach that doesn’t take marriage seriously, but rather one of taking marriage so seriously that every other life circumstance to be figured out is secondary. //

In the Harper’s feature, Tashjian is right that many in Bieber’s (and my own) generation see marriage as an afterthought to “getting your life together,” the joining of two successful, finished, polished people who have already “found themselves” and therefore do not need each other but simply find the partnership pleasant, convenient — and often dispensable.

For a woman to take her husband’s name is a statement of confidence, not just in herself but in her husband and in her marriage. //

When a woman gets married, her identity changes in the sense that being a wife to her husband becomes part of who she is. The same thing happens to a man, taking on the identity and responsibility of being a husband to her. What Richards is reacting so viscerally to is likely not the tradition of a name change so much as the giving of oneself that marriage demands from both parties. It’s a foreign concept to our self-promoting society, a disconnect she admits when she broadly concludes that “marriage is rooted in misogyny.”

“When I got married in 2009, I changed my last name to my husband’s,” Richards continues. “But it never felt right. It never felt like ‘me’. And how could it? I’d had my name, my identity, for 30 years. Yet overnight, I was expected to become someone else.”

Yes, Victoria — husband and wife alike are expected to “become someone else,” though in most ways not overnight. Marriage is not simply a transactional arrangement in which two self-sufficient people engage in a trade-off that is always instantaneously profitable to both of them. It requires self-sacrifice, on some days with no immediate or equivalent return. It is a lifestyle of dying to self out of love for another, giving yourself to the other person — and in a healthy marriage where both spouses give such love, both spouses receive it.

The beautiful paradox of a loving marriage is that you don’t lose yourself, even though you give yourself away. //

Taking your husband’s surname is a reflection of your respect for who he is and for his leadership of the new family your marriage begins. It’s a commitment to your newly pledged unity. That respect and unity, in all their many forms, are vital to the process of “becoming one” — husband and wife coming together to submit their own sins and selfishness to the sanctifying covenant of marriage. That act of becoming one is an act of loving submission, on both sides. //

While there are legitimate, practical reasons for a woman not to take her husband’s name in some circumstances, many times that name change is a declaration that “I am not so insecure in my own worth or so vain of my own perceived image and independence that I’m unwilling to mark my commitment with this external symbol.” It is a statement of confidence, not just in herself but in her husband and in her marriage. It communicates the willingness to give, serve, and love that healthy marriages demand from both spouses, albeit sometimes in different and complementary ways.

In our individualist society, both sexes are bombarded with the lie that living for your own pleasure is the most fulfilling thing you can do. //

In a 2018 interview, Ginni Thomas — who has been married to the Supreme Court justice for more than three decades — asked her husband about the best part of being on the bench.

“It’d be impossible without you. It’s sorta like, how do you run with one leg? You can’t. It makes it whole when I have my wife,” was his touching reply. //

Contrary to the deranged voices suggesting this clip is any kind of dunk on the Thomases, Clarence’s praise of Ginni reflects a beautiful truth about marriage. When two people become one, they are both part of something greater than themselves — and living for someone outside of themselves (even more true for parents of children!). Marriage and family are no substitute for finding purpose and meaning in one’s relationship with God, but they are institutions designed to reflect and complement the eternal.

While cultural, political, and career investments can all be gainful, rewarding, and even necessary — and often have meaningful human impacts — investing in another eternal human soul carries infinitely more reward (though they are far from mutually exclusive). This isn’t limited to marriage; it’s the reason parents, teachers, mentors, pastors, friends, doctors, missionaries, counselors, and anyone who serves their fellow man sees so much worth (and finds so much satisfaction) in what they do. It’s the invested time and energy that people on their deathbeds never regret.

For men and women alike, there is a deep dignity conferred by knowing that someone else lovingly looks to you and depends on you. Good men take pride in protecting and providing for their families and pleasing their wives. Good women take pride in similarly serving and loving their families, knowing that they are cherished and that, as Clarence said so adoringly of Ginni, their husbands’ lives would be “impossible” without them.

The number one reason cited by singles for not getting married was what they perceived to be the difficulty in finding the right person to marry. //

Unfortunately, with the societal breakdown of the family and the lack of marital and parental role models available to young people today, many singles are finding potential spouses with these traits harder to find.

These role models are found in churches, strong families, and community organizations. Without these institutions, which provide the nurturing environment that produces healthy, responsible, and stable adults, young men and women are finding it more difficult to find a suitable lifelong mate.

Without strong families, it is difficult to find strong and secure adults. It is these institutions that promote the common good and personal responsibility – the very traits that most singles say they are looking for in a spouse. //

The delay in getting married, or not getting married at all, also has profound consequences for our society. The longer marriage is delayed, the less likely couples are to have multiple children, or any children at all. The result will be an increasingly aging society that does not have enough young taxpayers to support the entitlements of a rapidly growing older population. This is a scenario for economic disaster for all.

Finally, marriage is a stabilizing force for men, women, and children. As the survey points found, the number one trait people look for in a spouse is responsibility. When two people get married, their focus, hopefully, becomes on one another and the children they produce, rather than on themselves. Self-gratification fades away as one sees beyond their wants and instead concentrates on the needs of others.

For these reasons, it is essential that we encourage and strengthen the very institutions – families, churches, and community associations – that will produce healthy young adults who will become responsible spouses and parents.

After years of learning lessons the hard way, I can say confidently that with the help of three simple principles, my husband and I have learned how to keep the peace and build our wealth as a team.

The 3 rules we follow to keep the peace

1. Honesty
   Yes, honesty is the foundation of good relationships in general, but when it comes to money, it becomes more nuanced than choosing not to message an ex behind your partner's back. When two people are trying to share money, the struggle usually stems from good, but opposing, best intentions. //

2. Mutual respect
   Once, in the heat of a nasty battle over whether we should buy a mattress secondhand, I called my husband "Scrooge McDuck." While it was a spiteful and silly dig, it also summarizes how I felt about his frugal tendencies. He, on the other hand, felt I had the financial acumen of a 7-year-old in a candy shop with $100 to burn. //

This is why the most important change we made in our approach to sharing finances was recognizing that our spender/saver dynamic didn't need to be a battle of opposites, but could instead be a balance of strengths.

Being a saver means my husband is always wary of potential financial hardships. //

But being a spender means I am open to taking financial risks that on his own, my husband would have been too scared to take. By pushing him to sell our house at the top of the market, I made us $120,000 //

3. Humility
   But mutual respect requires more than recognizing what the other person has to offer. It also means recognizing that one financial style isn't necessarily superior to another.

ABC’s Steve Osunsami asked the Carters about the secret to the longevity of their 75-year marriage. If you are engaged to be married or have yet to find that special someone, please pay attention to President Carter’s words here and write them on your heart. You will receive no better advice than this.

First of all – choose the right person.

This may seem like simple advice. Even easy advice. Do not let the stark truth of this get lost in the simplicity. //

Loving someone is what happens when the clips of the dress bust, and the glamorous exterior falls away, revealing undergarments that don’t seem nearly as attractive as the original dress. And then you choose to keep loving that person anyway.

Being in love is not a good enough gauge of whether or not to marry someone. It costs nothing to fall in love and wallow in that bliss.

Love is a choice.

That choice has to start at the start — to put it as simply as the Carters frame their own marriage. You don’t choose who you fall in love with, but you can choose whom to marry and too many people make bad choices when it comes to the start. A marriage based on a bad choice is going to be a tough road to travel. It can be done, but it will be painful and costly. If you can learn to be discerning before you walk down the aisle, you will spare yourself a lot of heartache down the road. //

Is your partner patient? Does he treat you and others kindly? Is she arrogant or boastful? Is he honest? Is she often selfish or does she anger easily and treat others poorly? Does your partner hold a grudge? Is he able to rejoice in the successes of others or does he instead get a kick out of when bad things happen to successful people? Does your partner choose trust, choose hope, choose perseverance?

These are the simple but foolproof measures of a love that can survive a 75-year marriage.

Oh, but what about sex? Well, there’s an app for that. Another byproduct of modernity is the widespread feminist ideal of “sexual liberation” which, in truth, actually made the sexual value of women decrease by leaps and bounds. If Girl A won’t give it up then Girl B probably will, and technology has made finding her easy.

It’s the perfect recipe for bachelorhood. A man can avoid marriage, keep his money, save himself the stress, have more time to accomplish goals, and avoid involving himself in the crushing weight of emotional slavery.

The solution to the problem is easier said than done. We’ll need a complete societal rework of how women and men are raised as well as portrayed. Men not only need to be taught how to treat a woman but how to be treated and what to expect in order to achieve a solid, stable relationship. Women should, likewise, be taught how to treat a man as well as what to expect.

We also need to leave behind the idea that men and women are the same. We’re not. Everything from our brain function to our bodies is built differently. More accurately, we’re built for different tasks. From the way we process information to the way we interact with the physical world, we are two different entities that belong to the same species.

We should be taught to be mutually beneficial to one another in our own capacities as men and women, not fall prey to these modern ideas. Women shouldn’t be taught that in order to be happy, they must be childless go-getting ball-busters and not waste their life and potential on marriage and children where they become subservient to men. It’s a narrative that sells well in youth but breaks down quickly as women get older, desire children, and wish to leave the workplace to do it.

Men want to feel welcome in their own relationships. Right now, they aren’t. They feel like passengers, or maybe even more accurately, chauffeurs. If women want men to marry them, then women will have to become marriage material and that means leaving behind the mainstream pop-philosophy and looking into the idea that maybe the feminists were wrong. So very, very wrong.

No matter how much advice you get before getting married, nothing can quite prepare you for what it’s really like. Over the years I’ve been married, I’ve learned a few things I didn’t expect about what life after the wedding would be like. Here are the things I think everyone should consider before they get married.

After controlling for demographics, the study found, 'young adults who attended Protestant schools are about 70% more likely than their peers who attended public schools to be in an intact marriage.'

Candace Cameron Bure and her husband did a good thing.

A nineteenth-century humorist once warned that a bigger problem than knowing little is “to know so many things that ain’t so.” Well, Americans know “many things that ain’t so” about cohabitation and marriage.

A new Pew Research Center study shows Americans both cohabitate (“live with an unmarried partner”) and find cohabitation acceptable more than before. But other research shows this is unwise. Here is what the Pew Research Center found.

More young adults have cohabited than have married. Pew’s analysis in the summer of 2019 of the National Survey of Family Growth found that, for the first time ever, the percentage of American adults aged 18-44 who have ever cohabited with a partner (59 percent) exceeded the percentage of those who have ever married (50 percent).

It should be noted, however, that the current living arrangements of adults of all ages still show a strong preference for marriage: 53 percent of American adults are currently married, while only 7 percent of adults are currently cohabiting (although cohabitation has risen from only 3 percent in 1995). These findings may either reflect that many people cohabit first and then marry, or that cohabiting relationships are less stable and thus much shorter than marriages.

The weekly advice column no one asked for //

after twenty years of marriage, I can tell you that no thriving relationship comes without a cost, without compromise. Despite modern sensibilities, it is actually a very good thing to marry young. You grow into each other’s lives together, at the same pace. The older one gets the harder it becomes because you are being asked to clear out space in your life that has been occupied by other junk for a long time. //

Your girlfriend isn’t willing to make space for you in her life. She won’t even make it for you in her bed. Is that the type of person you can see yourself settling down with? //

The woman is the one who is creating boundaries where none need exist. She is not so much choosing her cat over you, but rather her independence over you. Independence is a great thing, but healthy relationships are made when two people decide to depend on each other. Your girlfriend doesn’t seem to be ready for that. //

You’ll know a woman is right for you when she not only makes reasonable compromises for your comfort and happiness, but finds joy in doing so. Likewise, you will also find joy in making her life better for her even if it means giving up some comfort on your end. It won’t be a battle or big negotiation, it will evolve reasonably because that’s what happens in mature relationships.

The Virtue of Chastity
Now that we've covered many of the errors and mistakes that Christians have made, we're going to start looking at our positive case: How should Christians teach and inculcate Biblical sexual morality in our congregations, our families, and our communities? It would help if we can begin thinking in terms of virtue.