Reddit reviews The Biblical Masculinity Blueprint: A Christian Man’s Guide to Attraction, Relationships, and Marriage in a Messed-up World
We found 3 Reddit comments about The Biblical Masculinity Blueprint: A Christian Man’s Guide to Attraction, Relationships, and Marriage in a Messed-up World. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Sorry to hear all this, brother. I have incredible empathy for you because this is EXACTLY what I went through in my early marriage. Except my issues went on for 8 years and you've got a chance to figure this out at year 3.
My advice is not popular in mainstream church culture, but it is, if nothing else, biblical. I firmly believe that the best advice is that which is produced directly from Scripture and is not merely consistent with Scripture. Most of mainstream church culture does not agree with this and follows a model of scriptural consistency rather than scriptural compulsion. With that said:
Marriage Counseling - Your first big problem was going to marriage counseling. Counselors, on the whole - even so-called "Christian" or "biblical" ones - follow secular approaches in their underlying model. That's what they were educated to do, otherwise they could not be board certified. Those secular methods are founded on the research of the American Psychological Association - the same organization that recently concluded that men are, essentially, defective women and need to stop acting like men because it's harmful and dangerous. Surprise, surprise: heterosexual women are attracted to men, not men who act like women. It's important to note here that most people who go into therapy are women and therapy is itself founded on emotional strategies - a highly feminine way of engaging. Jesus discipled men and I believe his model is far more effective at producing healthy life changes for men.
Attraction - After 8 years of an incredibly dead bedroom my wife finally admitted: "I'm just not attracted to you. I never was. Even when we were dating and you were in the best shape of your life, I still wasn't attracted to you. I only married you because my church and family told me to find the most mature Christian man I could and marry him. So that's what I did." Ouch. Let me note: I had plenty of girls who were interested in me. When we were dating I was benching 275, had a 6-pack, etc. Didn't matter.
A mere 12 months after she said that, we're screwing like rabbits and breaking sexual boundaries that I previously believed she would never be willing to cross. She started initiating with me more often than I was initiating with her. The pain she experienced during penetration that happened 100% of the time we had sex for the first 8 years of our marriage "magically" went away (hint: it wasn't magic).
Building Attraction - The reason traditional marriage counseling doesn't work is because it focuses on building emotional connectivity. This makes sense. Counselors focus on creating an emotionally safe space. Their strategy is to get you to emotionally open up. Their effectiveness depends on the emotional bond you build with them. Emotions are all they really know how to work with. But what if they're wrong about emotional connectivity being the pathway to sexual arousal?
It won't take you long to notice among young couples that women have a split attraction. On the one hand, they want to be with the nice guy who has a lot to offer them. She says she wants a guy who is funny, charming, has a good job, is responsible, and would make a good father. On the other hand, she can't help but get aroused by the bad-boy who has no respect for her or any other women, does whatever he wants without regard for others' feelings, and has rock hard abs that he flaunts mercilessly whenever he gets the chance.
The former guy is what she considers good relationship material. The latter guy is what she considers a good sexual partner. I spent 8 years of my marriage being the first guy, thinking that respecting my wife, loving her to death, doing everything possible to please her and make her happy, and undermining my own happiness all along the way - that somehow this would show her how much I value her, and therefore she would value all of my hard work and signs of affection in return. Makes sense, right? When it didn't work, instead of realizing it was a bad strategy I assumed I just wasn't being nice, loving, respectful, serving, etc. enough. I doubled-down on my bad strategy. Know what it got me? Double the result: even less sexual interest leading into an 18 month dead bedroom with no sex at all.
I became so bitter and resentful to her at that point that I just gave up. The relationship was extremely one-sided with me doing everything in my power to keep her happy and her giving nothing in return, and I had 2 different pastors acknowledging this, one who after speaking with her directly told me plainly: "I won't blame you if you were thinking divorce." The irony was that the harder I tried to make her happy, the less happy she was. I eventually learned that supplicating myself to her only reminded her that I was a weak husband who was beneath her - not the kind of guy she would be proud to show off to her friends and be excited to follow to the ends of the earth.
From that point on, I determined to stop focusing so much time and effort on keeping her happy and just made the great commission the focus of my life. If she wanted me to help her with something, or do extra chores around the house, or rub her feet, or cover the kids, or anything - if it conflicted with what I had scheduled the answer became no. I wasn't going to play that game anymore. I inadvertently shifted from the first kind of attraction (Mr. Nice Guy) to the second kind (Mr. Bad-Boy). There was a LOT more to this transition than I've laid out here, but it's far too much to type out here.
Suffice it to say I became a jerk and it turned her on. She got really mad at first - furious even. But the sex was great. Women like feelings. It doesn't even matter if they're bad feelings. Negative emotions are better than no emotions at all. Of course, being a total jerk was still a recipe for disaster long-term. So, I had to learn to balance both relational and sexual attractiveness - which is a difficult concept because the increase of one inherently decreases the other. It's like those logic games where you press one button and it turns 3 lights on but one light off, so you press another one and it turns that one back on and two more, but then turns 2 more lights off. And you keep playing that game until all the lights are on.
I haven't turned all the lights on yet. But I do know that over the past 3 years my marriage has grown to be a model that other people have aspired to have - both affectionately and sexually. As I said, there's a lot more to the story than I can put here right now, but there is hope. Just don't expect to find it from a pastor or marriage counselor. They're trained all wrong. They look to cultural views of what marriage dynamics should look like, but if you look at the way Christ treats his bride, the Church - not only in the loving ways, but in the harsh ways as well - then you will find the answers you're looking for.
I recently discipled a pastor of mine who was going through serious marriage struggles, including the same sexual dysfunctions you're talking about (pain, size issues, etc.). He and his wife swore off sex altogether because it was just a source of stress between them and was leading him into other sexual sins. I shared with him my story and he took it to heart. He began exploring for himself how Jesus actually interacts with his bride. Surprise, surprise - sexuality returned and with greater affection on a relational level than she'd ever showed before as well. Of all the things I told him, this is what he said had sold him on the idea the most:
> When you get to heaven, let's assume you'll have to answer to God for both the way you led your marriage and your participation in the great commission. There are two things you can tell him:
> - Father, I did everything I could to keep my wife from divorcing me and I succeeded! Yes, it got in the way of making disciples, but I saved my marriage.
> Or would you rather tell God:
> - Father, my marriage was falling apart and I didn't know how to fix it, so I just focused on doing what Jesus did: make disciples and treat my bride the way Jesus treated the church - in both the pleasant and difficult ways. It didn't work and she left me. But in the absence of a better plan, all I knew to do was what Jesus did.
> Obviously neither of these are great options, but which one do you believe God would be more receptive to? Which one would he respect? Which lifestyle is more likely to produce eternal fruit for his Kingdom? Which one is more likely to evoke sympathy as compared with contempt?
From that point on, my pastor started noticing things in Scripture about how Jesus interacted with the Church:
In short, Jesus had a mission. He pursued it and took along with him anyone who would follow, leaving behind those who wouldn't. Following the same model with my wife saved my marriage. This is attractive leadership in the home - not the foolishness that traditional counseling models peddle to whoever will listen.
I've about hit the character limit, so let me end by saying: you asked for resources and the best one on the market I know of right now is a book by /u/deep_strength titled The Biblical Masculinity Blueprint. Also, a guy I know runs r/RPChristians, which is where I learned everything I needed to know to fix my marriage. Best wishes, brother.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1948252074/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_E6.UCbPFP2TXW
Awesome news about the new job. Hopefully that gets you out of the house and into your own place soon. Don't worry about what your step-sister says - keep locking your door. Are you talking to any other girls?
Good job making it to small group.
Have you asked your pastor about working out with him? In your askRPC post you mentioned that he's pretty jacked. Sounds like he'd be a good dude to workout with.
Where are you at in terms of the recommended reading? Have you read u/deepstrength's book?