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Dating: Why is it such a nightmare for so many women? Whether it's safety concerns, boys looking for a mom-replacement, or pictures no one wants to see, women have dating rough. In episode 30, Bri is going to share her real-life experiences with online dating, screenshots and all. Then we'll ask some hard questions about our "Christian Dating" upbringing, including courting, kissing dating goodbye, and purity retreats. Is there a "right" way for Christian women to date? Should we have to lower our standards? As we tackle these big questions, we’ll also share a few laughs over the cringe-worthy messages Bri has saved. Single women, married women, happily never-want-to-be-married women, this one's for all of us!
We are Alyssa and Bri, two sisters who believe God wants more for women than we've been taught. Join us as we dive into the intersection of faith and feminism, learning together as we go.
Welcome to the We Are More podcast.
My name is Alyssa.
And my name is Bri.
We are two sisters passionate about all things faith and feminism.
We believe that Jesus trusted, respected, and encouraged women to teach and preach His
word.
And apparently that's controversial.
Get comfy.
Hello world.
Hello.
Mostly women.
Oh, I can hear your lungs.
I am still not better.
Like I'm on the mend.
Don't get me wrong.
I think you're faking it.
I think this is the end of week four, Brianna.
You heard my lungs.
Plagues last a long time.
They do.
It's not a great time.
Especially when you're a baby about it.
They said one to three months, but I was like, I'm young, I'm spry.
It's fine.
I'm sprightly.
Turns out I'm not.
And I don't really appreciate how that makes me feel.
You're old.
I'm old.
I'm old.
So today we're going to be talking about dating.
Yeah.
So much fun.
The wonderful world of dating.
Which is mostly going to be on Bre because I haven't dated in 12 solid years.
And even before that.
Did you ever really date?
I didn't, not really.
Dating sucks.
I'm just like, there's a whole crop of women out there who have just decided, not because
they necessarily want to be single, but they're just like, dating's too hard.
Forget it.
I mean, really, it sounds horrific.
Yeah, it is.
Nathan and I were, I was 19 when we started dating.
She was a child bride.
I was very, not when I got married, so when we started dating.
But I, because I'm old, because I'm elderly, prior to that dating apps had really just
come out.
Yeah.
And so I wasn't on, I didn't even have a smartphone at that point.
I was not on any dating apps ever.
So I don't even understand.
I know swipe right, swipe left.
And that's like the end of my knowledge of dating in the modern day.
The modern day of dating.
So Brie, for those of us like me that were child brides, tell us what it's like.
What is it like to date on the apps?
It is offensive.
It is terrible.
And it's horrible.
Those are my adjectives.
Those are great.
Good adjectives.
So I don't know if I'm like the, like, I'm not the biggest dater.
I'm not going out on dates every second.
So don't think that about me.
But I have experienced the dating apps, the Bumble, the Hinge, the Tinder, the what other
ones are there?
Girl, I don't know.
I don't know.
But it's really a truly terrible experience.
And you get a little glimpse into how bad the world really is.
It makes me, again, because I never had to deal with this.
I dealt with people face to face.
And it's amazing the difference what men will say to you face to face versus what you've
said they'll say to you on the apps.
Oh yeah, 100%.
I think there's people find so much power behind their phone.
Like you might be able to see their face on these dating apps, but they can say whatever
they want.
So the most experience that I have is on, and please don't go on the apps looking for
me.
Like just leave me be.
But Hinge, considering that I think most of our listeners are women.
I mean, they could still.
Don't come looking for me, ladies.
But I don't think that's how your profile is set up.
Unless you're very old and close to death and have a lot of money and you're interested
in a friendship.
But I'm on Hinge mostly and they have prompts that you can answer about yourself.
Like this is what I'm looking for in a person and here's two truths and a lie or whatever.
Just like different things that you can...
And those go in your profile?
Yeah.
Whereas Tinder I think is more like mostly pictures.
Back in the day with my experience with that.
Back in the day mostly pictures.
But yeah, guys will put on their profiles like these whole lists of stipulations.
Huge, huge lists of, I want a woman who loves the Lord and knows how to cook and is athletic,
but also she likes to be lazy, but also she wants 47 children.
But also she also has to have a career and be ambitious.
But she also has to listen to me because I'm the man.
Fun.
It's so hard to be a woman.
Whereas like, now I haven't looked at other women's profiles, but I know just from my
friends and myself, we're just looking for someone who isn't terrible.
The worst?
Just some of my fun experiences.
Just because we're in the first couple of minutes, here you can laugh at my sad tragedies.
One time I was talking to this guy and we had agreed to go out on a date and before
we went out on the date, he wanted to like talk on the phone.
I'm like, don't want to do that.
But I'll meet you in real life.
So we're talking on the phone and for some reason he's walking around his house and he's
like, wow, look at this.
I'm going to send you a picture real quick.
And I'm like, okay.
This is a painting that I did when I was in second grade.
Oh boy.
And it really is like that pointillism art in second grade.
Where it's just like little dots of like a leopard or something.
And I'm like, okay.
So he colored in one of those Lisa Frank drawings.
Exactly.
Cool.
And then he also sent me a picture of him as a toddler and he played a song on the piano
and sent it to me and it was truly terrible.
And I thought, no thank you.
I can appreciate that someday you will find a lid to your pot, but no thank you.
It won't be me.
It shan't be me.
Wasn't there a guy recently that, boys out there, if you talk to Bree, we're talking
about you on the podcast.
So prepare yourselves.
That said he'd like run over his grandmother or something horrifying.
Yes.
Let me pull up the screen shot.
So on Hinge, you can like like someone and you can send them a message, but in order
for you to chat back and forth, they have to like you back.
This particular person, I did not like back.
Let's see.
Michael.
Here we go, Michael.
Don't say his name.
I'm not saying his last name, but if you're going to be creepy, I'm going to put you on
blast.
He said, I would throw my grandma down a flight of stairs, crawl butt naked, and then throw
butt naked across broken glass and roll around in salt to take you out.
Keep in mind, there's no grammar.
I just, I want to understand.
I'm sure this is like a pickup line that he found somewhere on the internet, but I want
to understand what went through his brain that was like, this is going to get this girl
to talk to me.
Like what has happened here?
I don't know.
Cause I can't call this a man.
This is, I don't know what's happening here.
And what's even more frustrating is that they're like, they think that they are the moon and
the stars.
They think they're the greatest of all time.
And meanwhile, they're like, I'm in between jobs and I'm confused, but I also want a woman
who does this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this.
Right.
One of the things I've seen online a lot, and I am not a proponent of traditional living
and things like that, obviously if you've listened to the podcast at all.
But one of the things that I've seen online is that men talk so much about wanting this
traditional lifestyle and they're like, well, then you need to be the man from that story.
Now, again, I'm not a proponent of this, but if you're going to say, this is a lifestyle
that I want to live, then you need to be making enough money that her needing a job is not
necessary.
Not only not necessary, but it can afford you going on vacation and all your kids' many
sports that she has to tote them around to and her gym membership and all of this other
stuff.
Like, that's all on you, buddy.
And that's not a way that I'm saying that you should necessarily live, but if you're
as a man going to push for that, then there are actually expectations on you too.
You don't just get off scot-free.
But I feel like these kinds of boys feel like, well, yeah, I'm just going to get a mom.
I'm going to get a mom and she's just going to take care of me.
That's how it feels on these dating apps is these boys out here are looking for a housekeeper
or a mother.
And I'm just, I think a lot of the women out there are opening their eyes, you know, my
single woman out there, are opening their eyes and being like, no, you're not adding
any value to my life.
You are leaving.
Goodbye.
Well, I think, and if we put this in the Christian context, Christian women have this expectation
put on them in even a bigger way.
Not that non-Christian women don't have it put on them, because they for sure do, but
Christian women have it put on them as though if you don't want to live this way, if you're
not fine with this list of rules and you must be under this many pounds also, you know,
whatever, then God is pissed at you.
Then you don't get to go to heaven.
You don't get to be a good wife.
You don't get to whatever.
And I think that's where it becomes even more manipulative.
Not that it wasn't manipulative before, but where it becomes even worse.
I saw a TikTok of a girl, and I've been watching, because we've been planning on doing this
episode, I've been watching a lot of people respond to other videos.
So it'll be like, there's one, he calls himself Speech Prof, and he will go on and react to,
the best way I can describe it is like, bro podcast.
I don't know, he really reacts to a lot of stuff.
They're these self proclaimed alpha male garbage humans.
So he'll go on and respond to that.
Or there's another woman on here that I, she does a really similar thing.
She's always in her bathroom, and I'm not clear as to why.
She's got IBS.
Leave her be!
That's where she's, she's got to live her life there.
She's working from home on her toilet.
I mean, you gotta do what you gotta do.
But she did one, and she was reacting to this young guy, okay, like these are not all of
them, but a ton of them.
In their early 20s, I'm sorry, you think you have life figured out in your early 20s, and
relationships figured out?
You do not, just you wait.
You just super do not.
Even if you're in a healthy marriage, I did not have relationships figured out in my early
20s, but it was this man child, and he was on there and he had his laundry list of like
this is what I expect out of my woman, you know, whatever, because it's never a respectful
my partner, my spouse, my wife, my woman.
It's always that.
Like you have ownership.
Exactly.
And so he has his laundry list of whatever, and he's like, and this is how it's supposed
to be.
This is blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And she actually went through, because he said, I'm not looking for a mom, I'm looking for
a wife, and this is what she needs to do.
And so this woman reacting to it, she goes, actually, everything you just described is
what a parent would do, is what a mom would do.
And your brain is thinking back to when you were a child, and your mom made you dinner,
and it was comforting, and it was pleasant and lovely, and your mom tucked you in at
night and, you know, did all these things, and you woke up and the house was clean, and
you woke up and all the Christmas gifts were wrapped, and you didn't have to do anything
to make those things a reality, because you were a child.
And yes, for many of us, those are nice memories.
Yeah, absolutely.
Those are comforting moments.
But the reality is, you are now an adult.
And so when you put all of this on someone else and take no responsibility yourself,
now A, you're a garbage human, and B, you're telling your partner she doesn't actually
have any value to you other than what she can do for you.
Right.
Yeah.
So you are looking for a mom.
You just don't want to admit to the fact that you're looking for a mom.
And I don't know about you, but I'm not in the business of being...
I got two kids.
I don't want to be anyone else's mother.
I'm not a mother currently, and I don't want to be anybody's mother right now.
I kind of think it's a lot harder to be a man child's mother than it is to be a child's
mother.
There's actually a really good show.
Now I'm only like two episodes in, so keep that in mind.
I don't know how it ends up.
But it's called, has the girl from S-Words Creek?
Ah, yes.
This show is called Kevin Can F Himself.
Oh, that one.
I wanted to watch that.
Yeah.
So I started it the other day.
And everything from the man's perspective, so she's supposed to be married, and her husband,
whenever it's from his perspective, it's a sitcom.
Everything is funny.
Everything is great.
But when it's from her perspective or she's alone, it's kind of like a drama.
And it's very interesting.
It's a good insight into...
Now it's dramatized.
I think that might be some people's reality.
I think it's an interesting show.
But something else I want to talk about with online dating for women specifically is the
safety issue.
So I've run into it a couple times where you just don't feel comfortable.
Especially online dating, you're going to meet someone that you have not met before.
Your friends don't know this person.
So you're always telling your friends a safe word or sharing your location.
I don't know how many men are having to share their location with their friends when they
go out on a date, but that's a woman's reality.
And I got a message from someone who was like, hey, do you drive a blah, blah, blah car out
of nowhere?
And I do.
I do drive that blah, blah, blah car.
And so I just wanted to keep tabs on this person.
You can only respond back if you like the person back.
So I did.
And I was like, just a casual question.
Are you stalking me?
And his response was just ridiculous.
He goes, no, one, I'm not like that.
Two, I haven't had a reason to go to blah, blah, blah since February.
So like in your area.
Right.
So he's just like immediately trying to justify, of course not.
Here's two reasons why I'm not.
Yeah.
Do you actually drive that question mark?
So frightening.
It was really bizarre.
Also for that to be the first message somebody sends you is wildly specific.
Yeah.
Now this could be nothing.
It could be just out of the blue.
I was trying to pick a blind or whatever.
Or you could have seen it in the back of one of your pictures or whatever.
A woman's reality is that you always have to be suspicious.
Of course, not all men are like that.
Not all men are stalkers, but there's enough men out there.
But there's a percentage.
Yeah.
Well, I think there was a survey that they did and they asked men, what is your biggest
fear when online dating?
And the overwhelming majority of them said something to the effect of, she won't like
me when she meets me, she'll reject me.
Okay, that's valid.
Rejection is a fair...
Yeah.
Yeah.
Not invalidating that in any way.
But when they spoke to the women, the overwhelming majority of them said, being murdered.
And that's so true.
I've been on dates where I'm like, yeah, I don't want to go on a second date with this
person.
But you almost don't want to tell that person right to their face when you're there.
Because you're scared of them.
Because you're scared.
Because we have to as women, particularly in the dating scene, and I'm saying this obviously
empathetically, but we have to be scared of you until we decide if we don't have to.
It's like the courtroom, you're innocent until proven guilty.
But the opposite.
You're guilty until I have a reason to feel safe around you.
And that might sound really extreme, but the reality is if we don't behave that way, we
will get murdered.
Yeah, there's a huge percentage of women that wind up as victims because men often don't
treat women with value.
And so we have to assume that you're one of those men until you give us a reason not to.
And that's a really tough way to live life.
I mean, October was domestic violence awareness month.
And some of the statistics on there, if you ever just like go and Google those are crazy.
A huge, huge percentage of the murders throughout the year, last year, are from women who are
trying to escape their abusers.
And more often than not, it's that they knew that person or they were romantically involved
in some way with them.
So you do have to be careful when you're going out on these dates with random people because
they can say whatever they want on their phones.
Oh, you can turn yourself into the King of England.
Oh yeah.
Whoever you want to be, you get to be.
And I do think women do that as well.
But again, the risk for women is very different than the risk for men because statistically
women don't murder men at the same rate.
Like it's just not happening.
So it's just a different game that you're playing.
You have different risks and I don't think you see these men get really angry when they
get rejected or whatever and it's like you don't understand what you're dealing with.
You're allowed to be sad.
And even maybe you're allowed to be angry if you feel rejected, but you're not allowed
to push that anger onto the other person.
They are allowed to reject you.
They are allowed to have their own feelings and they don't have to justify them.
Now one of the things I wanted to talk about because we're a religious podcast and Brie
and I have grown up seeing dating differently and being taught about dating differently.
I was given a book when I was 13, 14-ish, somewhere in there.
I was given a book called I Kissed Dating Goodbye.
Oh, I never read that book because I'm illiterate, but I remember that book.
So if you've never heard of it, if you were a Christian kid in the early 2000s, you absolutely
probably heard about this book.
It was every youth service, parents were into it, whatever.
The author has since totally turned around on it and said it was terrible, it ruined
his life, he feels like he's ruined other people's lives.
It was a very detrimental book, particularly for girls, but it talks about courting instead
of dating.
That's what was presented to us from a lot of different avenues, from church, from family,
from the people around us.
That was the ideal.
As a good Christian girl, you should want to court, not date.
So I looked up courting versus dating so I can give you guys a quick overview of it.
Because if you're not from this conservative Christian world, you're like, excuse me, I'm
not back in the medieval times.
This is an infographic that I found and it says courting versus dating.
So I'm not saying that I agree with these things about dating, but this is what it says.
So courting.
Courting is like a promise to make a commitment to marriage.
If you're confused, there you go.
Essentially it's saying that courting is planning on marrying this person.
You go into the beginning of the relationship planning on marrying this person until they
give you a really good reason not to.
And then it says dating.
Dating doesn't account for readiness into marriage or long-term commitment.
Now that is not grammatically correct, boys and girls, but that is what it says.
So essentially when you start out courting, you're planning on marrying this person until
they give you a reason not to.
When you start out dating, you're not planning on marrying this person until they give you
a reason to.
So it's flipped.
So then courting is no physical intimacy.
And that depends on the severity of that.
Depends on what kind of conservative Christian you were.
It could go for anywhere from don't have sex before marriage to never hold a boy's hand.
Don't kiss until you're literally in your marriage ceremony.
Never be alone in the room with this person.
Right.
You have to have a chaperone anytime you go out.
Even if you're well into your 30s, 40s, okay?
That's the expectation sometimes for people that are courting.
It depends on the extremeness.
And then it says dating, not waiting until marriage is acceptable.
It doesn't say what, waiting until marriage.
Okay, courting, it says usually lasts up to a year.
Dating no timeline.
In my mind, I don't really know why.
Now we got engaged in eight months.
We got married eight months later.
It was very quick.
But I wouldn't prescribe that to other people.
That's not something that I would say, this is the ideal and everyone should do this.
Well, because everybody's different.
Everybody's relationship is different.
Everybody's relationship with relationships is different.
Now here's a big one that I, the next two ones are big ones.
So courting, family must give permission.
Red flag.
Yeah.
Red flag.
That to me just screams, again, someone has to be an owner of this woman.
She can't have any rights of her own.
She can't make up her own mind.
Exactly.
It's all about power and men desperately trying to keep that power.
Now this is usually, I'm going to say usually because obviously every situation is different,
but usually it's the girl's father giving permission.
No one's asking permission of the boy's mother or father.
Exactly.
He's making his own decisions, but then someone has to approve him for her.
So yeah, this can be incredibly abused.
Yes.
It's just extremely concerning because of course you want, not everyone, many people
want their family to like their partner or their significant other.
Many people do.
That's a common, I want my family to like Nathan.
Of course you do.
Unfortunately I don't.
You are weirdly similar.
I don't know what to tell you.
But the difference is I want you to like my partner versus will you give me permission
to court this person because it's not dating, courting.
That's a big difference.
Now if you were dating someone, and same with me, if I'm dating someone and my family notices
red flags on that person, please absolutely come to me and share those out of love and
concern.
But ultimately the decision is up to me because it's my life, it's my relationship, I get
to make the decisions.
You do not.
But in this world of courting, you don't get to make those decisions.
It would be dad saying, you'd bring whoever to dad and say-
Justin, record me.
His childhood crush.
We had a poster of him on our wall.
I called him my husband for longer than I should have.
Ages.
I think you referenced that fairly recently.
I still consider him my husband.
But you'd bring Jessi on in.
And dad could say yes or no.
A definitive yes or no.
And if it's yes, remember the expectation is that you are going to marry this person.
You haven't dated them.
Exactly.
I feel like it's just not good for women or for men.
It's really not.
Because you don't give each other a chance to get to know each other without that burden
of I need to marry this person right now.
And if there's something that I don't like about this person, is it enough to make me
not marry them?
I'm not sure.
Whereas when you're dating, you have the opportunity to slowly get to know this person.
There might be a couple of things that pop up that you might not agree with, but you're
like okay, move on.
Well, I think you create...
Christians always say having sex before marriage creates this bond between two people.
And then if you break up, it makes it so much harder.
So that was an argument that I always heard as a kid.
However, I think courting does the same exact thing.
You've created this extreme bond right from the get go.
We are going to get married unless you do something heinous.
Unless you murder some people and whatever.
We are going to get married, so I'm going to gloss over all these red flags and whatever.
And it's that same bond in a different way.
And now should you have to break up, you're now breaking up with someone you were going
to marry.
It's a bond that has no foundation.
Right, yes.
It's a bond that doesn't make any sense.
It's like building a house on sand, right?
Just when you're dating, you want to build that foundation first and then grow to marriage.
So the last point that they have is the same kind of thing.
So the man is usually the one to approach the woman and court her.
So I think that from my...
Now I never courted at all, but from my experience seeing other people do it, that's like 100%
of the time.
The girl is never going to approach the guy.
Now I think in dating now, oftentimes that's still kind of there.
The guy still is approaching, but it's not like you have to.
I think that's the one good thing with online dating and apps is it's kind of flip-flopped.
You can like a person, they can like you.
On some of the apps, like I think it's Bumble, the girl has to initiate the conversation
within a certain amount of hours or days.
Otherwise, that match goes away.
I'm not an expert on dating, but I'm on there.
Yeah, I just remember, and I don't know if you remember this, but there were all of these
purity culture and I'm not going to go all the way into it.
But the amount of seminars, and I don't think they called them seminars, but you'd go to
youth group or not kids church, but youth service or whatever.
There was so much pressure particularly put on the girls of this is how you need to date.
The courting is the ideal way that you need to date to find a good Christian husband that
will lead you and make you spiritually sound and blah, blah, blah.
Just a poor little lady.
There was so much of that even in what I would say were pretty modern churches.
Oh yeah, we went to a purity retreat.
Oh yeah, what a funny phrase, a purity retreat.
I remember specifically them talking about girls and every time you have sex with a different
boy or kiss a different boy, imagine that a piece of your heart goes away with everything
or here's a vase full of little marbles and every time you hold someone's hand, you give
someone a kiss, you take away a marble.
And then by the time you finally get around to meeting your perfect husband, you're going
to be an empty vessel and nobody will want you.
And you'll have nothing to give him.
The same is not said to boys.
Not even a little bit.
These are said, they're told you just can't control your emotions.
It's okay if you go and rake your way across the nation.
That's just an expectation.
But when it comes down to settling down and finding a wife, you want to find that perfectly
pure snowflake.
I just feel like it's so dangerous to girls to be constantly compared to anything other
than a human being person.
Oh, it's constantly objects.
Your value and worth does not, it does not matter if you've done the deed or whatever,
held hands or kissed or whatever it is.
You are enough.
You are perfect.
And if you decide to take a spouse, that won't matter because they're going to see you for
who you are.
Kat, for more than just your physical history.
Exactly.
Like women get compared to used cars all the time.
I've heard it been said, oh, you wouldn't want to buy a new car without test driving
it first, right guys?
Yeah, but then think of- I'm not a car.
Think of the opposite of that.
You do see people say that, but then now she's a used car.
And now you don't want her anyway because she's a used car.
Who would buy a used car when you could buy a new car?
Women are just people.
We're just people.
We're just people.
Just normal humans.
We have emotions too.
Yeah, we have urges too.
Thank you for that.
You're welcome.
Did I make everybody uncomfortable?
Sorry about that.
Sorry about all the family.
I'm really against purity culture in general.
I think we should be teaching both men and women about a lot of things.
I think we need to teach people to value each other.
Exactly.
And not to be so incredibly, horrifically judgmental.
Value each other, but really also value yourself.
I think that is what I'm seeing a lot on the dating apps is just people struggling because
they think that they're not enough.
Yeah.
And if we could just teach people that it really doesn't matter if you're in a relationship
or not.
You just have to find that fulfillment in yourself.
And then we'd have a lot more single people out there.
But we'd be very happy.
I've had this conversation with even my husband often.
And again, we've been together a long time.
But to find value in who you are as a person.
And I think in dating, if you could do that, if you could say, I'm valuable enough to say
my needs are this.
Not to have a laundry list of qualifications for your person, but to say that as a person,
I need someone who loves me unconditionally.
I need someone who finds value in this.
In our case, I need someone that will go to Disney with me a minimum of once a year, potentially
more, and just be fine with that.
Or is okay with us having a very aggressive feminist podcast.
Also that and never leaving each other.
We have this pact, okay guys?
I have said a million times, should Brie decide to take a husband, I will have a long, long
lecture with him that he is not allowed to take her any more than maybe a 10 minute drive
from me and frankly, I'll be bitter about that.
If you're more than down the road, I'm going to be bitter.
So men out there.
If you want a date Brie.
Potential suitors.
Here are the rules.
Hey, I do have, well, I don't know if he's stalking you or me, but we did have a stalker
on the TikTok.
Oh, we did.
I ended up blocking him.
Yeah, probably for the best.
Hey Stalky.
And that's another thing I think is interesting for women.
And this is a little bit of an offshoot, but on social media, when women jump into men's
comments and say like, oh, you're so hot.
I would love to date you.
You know, whatever, whatever the comments are.
It's not necessarily threatening.
Now I'm maybe it is to some men, I don't know, but it's not necessarily threatening.
Whereas we had somebody hop onto our TikTok and comment on quite a few things wanting
to talk to us.
And again, I don't know who he wanted to talk to, but it felt very threatening because of
what women experience online.
There's a really good movie out right now.
It just came out on Netflix called Woman of the Hour.
I think.
That sounds right.
Anna Kendrick.
It's her directing debut, but she also stars in it.
And it's about, that's the dating game killer.
His name is pause for dramatic effect.
His name was Rodney Alcala and he was a serial killer.
Kind of happened in the seventies, late seventies, but he is most well known for showing up on
one of those dating game shows.
Which the boldness, I mean, I know, crap.
I know.
Well, that's the thing is like most serial killers are narcissists and they think that
they can get away with anything.
But I really like how Anna Kendrick directed it because a lot of those shows or movies
about serial killers try to get deep into the mind of the serial killer.
This one kind of put it in perspective of more of the victims, more of the female experience
with that.
So a couple of things that I really liked with it was Anna Kendrick played the contestant
on the dating game.
And at first all of the people were telling her what questions to ask and change her personality,
change her dress, make sure her hair is perfect, whatever.
And then finally her hairdresser and makeup dresser came up to her at some commercial
break and was like, just ask whatever questions you want.
So then she started getting a little feisty and she started calling out these three guys
for who they were, which was one was stupid.
One was inappropriate and the other one was a murderer.
She just didn't know it.
That sounds about par for the course for online dating.
So one of the questions she asked was what are girls for?
And I thought that was really powerful.
And all three of the men kind of struggled with the question.
And then she asked her makeup artists at another break, how do you think I'm doing?
And she's like, oh, you're doing good.
The question, the underlying question is always the same.
She goes, what's that?
And she goes, which one of you is going to hurt me?
And that is the underlying question with, I would say most women in the dating world
right now is which one of you is going to hurt me?
And we're not just talking emotionally here.
We're talking physically.
Which one of you is going to put me in danger?
And I think that men just cannot wrap their heads around that.
Like when we've said we would choose the bear over a man in the forest, they're like, why?
Not all men are like that.
But it doesn't matter because a lot of men are and now we have to be wary of all of you.
And the ones that are not dangerous don't take us seriously.
Well, I think that's the sad thing is there are plenty of good men out there and we're
actually going to do an episode on what makes a good man soon.
I'm excited about that one.
But there are plenty of good men out there.
The simple reality is that I can sit and tell a man my experience.
I can tell him I've been disrespected by men in this way.
I've been talked down to like this.
You can say I've been made to feel unsafe in dating like this.
I can say I've had to run to my car in the dark with my keys in my hands.
We can explain all these things.
But the simple reality is I can't make you understand it because you've never experienced
it.
Exactly.
So trust and believe when I say I have experienced this and I would choose the bear.
Have enough value of me as a person to say you're telling me the truth.
So even though I can't empathize, I'm just going to take it at face value.
Stop arguing with women about their own experiences.
Exactly.
For heaven's sake.
Exactly.
One of the things that happened in the movie was one of the girls in the audience was sitting
there and recognized the guy who was the killer and said I think that he killed my friend.
Wow.
So she went to-
I wonder if that really happened in real life.
I know.
I think it might be a dramatization.
Dramatization?
Yeah.
Sure.
So she runs crying out to her car and her boyfriend comes out and he's like what's going
on?
She's like I know that guy and I think he's a killer.
And he patronizes her and it was like it's fine.
I'm sure it's not.
You're just overreacting.
I know that was hard for you to go through but it's fine.
And she's like get out of my car.
Get out of my car.
So then she does the best that she can do and tries to go talk to the security guard
at the studio.
And he doesn't believe her either and he's like whatever.
Yeah, I'll have you talk to whoever's in charge of the show.
Come with me.
He'll be in here soon.
And she's waiting and she's waiting and she's waiting.
And he lied to her and gave her the name of the janitor.
So the last part of the movie was this Rodney guy got a hold of this runaway girl who was
young.
And he tried to kill her out in the desert.
Wasn't super successful but she did the best that she could do in that moment and said
it's okay.
Can you just not tell my friends about this?
I just don't want them to know.
And so she kind of acted like she was the girlfriend to try to get herself out of that
situation.
So she's driving to a gas station, he gets out to go to the bathroom, she runs away and
calls the cops and that's how they ended up catching him.
But that's how women have to survive.
And I've seen you do this too.
No fault at all but that you have to say to the guy, oh yeah I had a great time, it was
so nice, whatever.
And then knowing full well that you don't want to go on another date.
And men will look at that and say, oh she's terrible, she's lying to me, she's a liar,
she could have just told me to my face, blah blah blah.
But again, you don't understand what, and you and I haven't been through major violence
in this scenario like many women have.
But even within that, I mean I've had inappropriate comments from the cashier at Meyer.
I've been afraid in many scenarios, just live in a normal life.
Not an overly violent life, not a life where I'm gonna point at things and be like, oh
look at this massive trauma.
And even so, even within that, there's still all of these little microaggressions against
us just walking around as women.
Just trying to live life for heaven's sake.
And then if you are too nice too, you have to be careful about being too nice because
now those guys are gonna think that you're flirting with them.
That's definitely happened to me where they mistake just being kind as, oh they must love
me.
Well I think it's because women have had to be so standoffish, so when the occasional
woman is nicer, it's like, she's being attention to me.
What an unhealthy way to view women as well.
The moment that any kindness is shown, it's, oh she likes me.
Or the moment that you have a conversation alone with any man, really, you're like, oh
I feel like this is inappropriate.
Because he's going to think something and I can't control it.
I can't always walk away.
So just dating is hard.
Dating is hard.
This is again a little bit of topic, but kind of on topic.
When we talk about men wanting these traditional marriages, first of all, I want to make the
point that traditional doesn't actually mean anything.
What you want is a 1950s marriage.
Exactly.
And there are so many historians, including our best friend Beth, who have looked at this
and said, okay, traditional to these people, to this subsect of people, the men that are
looking for a mom or a traditional housewife, they're looking at, like you said, the 1950s.
This was a period that was kind of an anomaly in history.
So it wasn't even all of the 1950s.
I think it was about eight years in there somewhere where this more stay at home wife,
hardworking husband that comes home at five and kicks his feet up and she has her pearls
on and makes dinner.
It really was only the reality for some people for a span of eight-ish years.
Traditional shouldn't mean you get to just pick a time period and say, this is what makes
sense because then you have to keep going back further.
The further you go back, women are expected to have jobs.
There was a small blip in American history where that was maybe not the case, but the
further back you go, women have to have jobs to support and help their families.
Also people of different demographics, people of different races, people outside of the
United States all had to do these things.
They weren't expected to just be there and making dinner and raising their kids and whatever.
So I thought it was really interesting.
Someone I read said, if someone tells you they want a traditional marriage, ask them
why the 1950s are traditional.
Like why?
And then I had another thought.
I know we did like a, do we do a two-parter on submission?
It was two or three, I'm not sure.
It was a hot minute ago, we talked about submission.
And if you haven't listened to those, go back after this and listen to them.
It'll kind of inform this.
But the concept of submission within conservative Christianity is that the woman will submit
to the man.
So what he says goes.
Master of the house.
I don't know the words.
I cut that out of the last episode.
Well, it's coming back around.
So I had this thought on submission and the boys on the dating apps, that's what they're
asking for.
They're asking for someone that will do their bidding, because of their faith, because God
said so.
And I don't know if you can hear the sarcasm absolutely dripping out of my mouth.
But I was thinking about it and I was thinking about it in comparison to the Israelites.
So in the Bible, the Israelites are finally free and they're living in their own land
and whatever, and they ask God for a king.
Because everybody around them has a king and they want to be like everybody else, as many
people do, as humanity does.
They were weird because they didn't have a king and who was going to lead them?
They needed someone to tell them what to do.
And God said, no, I am your king.
I've got you.
You don't need an intermediary of a king between you and me to tell you what to do.
I will tell you what you need to do.
I'll tell you where you need to go and I'm perfect.
So I will never lead you astray.
But the Israelites really struggled.
They really struggled.
As we all do.
As we all do.
Let's not hate too much on the Israelites.
And they said, no, we want a king.
Give us a king.
Because everybody else has a king and we feel weird.
And so finally, God said, okay, because if you fight God hard enough, he will give you
usually what you ask for.
Not necessarily riches.
I'm not saying riches and whatever, but something like this.
They fought God and finally God was like, all right, I'll give you a king.
I will give you an imperfect human king.
And I'll give you a lesson too.
And it went incredibly poorly.
Historically, this did not go great for them.
They had a lot of bad kings.
Even the kings like David that you would look at and say, overall, maybe wasn't the worst.
We just did three episodes on Bathsheba on a portion of his life where he was horrific.
So this is not a good decision, right?
This was a human decision that the Israelites made in spite of what God wanted for them.
Not that we all wouldn't have made the same request of God, but that's what they did.
And so I started asking myself, if God looked at his people and said, I don't want to give
you an intermediary.
I don't want to put a person, an imperfect person between you and I.
Why would he create marriage like that?
Why would he look at women who are just as much his people, who are just as much made
in his own image, and say, you aren't valuable enough to me to speak directly to?
You need someone between you and I, and I'm going to stick your husband there.
He's not perfect.
He's going to screw up.
He's going to lead you astray.
But for some reason, I'm going to put him there.
Now compare those two things.
It's the same story.
Yeah, exactly.
God is not going to put someone between you and him.
When boys on dating apps say, I want a submissive wife, or I want to be the head of my household,
or I'm an alpha male, or whatever garbage language they want to use, ask them, why would
God put you, little boy, between him and I?
God will talk directly to me.
He will tell me what he wants of me.
He will tell me what I should be doing with my own life.
He's not going to tell you first, and then you get to tell me.
That doesn't make any sense.
Because a game of telephone is always going to end poorly.
Yes.
See Adam and Eve.
I was thinking a lot about that, and I thought that was really interesting to think about,
to compare those two things.
I would love if you guys, those of you out there that are dating, if you come across
a boy on one of these apps that's saying things like this, I beg of you, ask him that question,
and then message it to us on TikTok, because I want to hear about it.
Because that's what I've been doing.
Not necessarily that, but I've been, okay, if you're going to act like a creep, I'm
going to take a screenshot of it, and I'm going to save it and tell my friends about
it.
You're going to tell the world about it at this point.
Take your screenshots of your terrible dating experiences.
Yes, we would love to do a part two eventually of this, and weave in all of your experiences
and see what you have to say.
Side note, yeah, I did have a guy tell me that he wanted a traditional life, and he
wanted to be the head of his household.
I was like, tell me more.
What do you mean by that?
And I went off, and then we broke up.
Darn.
I don't know, I think it's so interesting to watch men have to defend that point too.
And then they backpedal.
Oh, they do.
They're like, oh, no, no, no, yeah, I do want a partnership.
I do want this.
I do agree with you until we get married and things get flipped around.
Because if you can get, I guess tricked is what I want to say, because if you're going
to lie about that ahead of time, you're tricking someone into marrying you on false pretenses,
and if they can manage that, now it's much harder for you to leave.
Not that you can't, and I certainly encourage if you feel that you're being abused in a
situation like this, I certainly encourage you to leave, and I believe God encourages
you to leave as well.
But it's harder, and they know that.
Yes.
I mean, we've said this before, and we'll say it 10 times over again, God cares so much
more about you than he does about marriage.
Or dating.
Or dating.
Or X, Y, Z. He cares so much more about you.
You are God's child.
The institution of marriage is not.
Dating is not.
Your ideal position in life as a woman is not to get married.
If you find someone and you want to get married, if you want to take a husband, that's great.
Do it.
But that is not your ideal station as a woman.
Also, look for someone who is going to add value to your life.
Please do not settle, and if people are telling you to lower your standards in any way, shape,
or form, I would say raise them even higher.
Keep them sky high.
Keep them so high that only the right person is going to be able to climb that wall.
Because if you're being the best version of yourself, and you're really trying hard to
just be happy and content with yourself, you should be able to find someone who is bringing
that same level and value to your life.
Not someone who's going to bring you down.
Not someone who you have to settle for.
That's been said to me so many times.
Like, I know he did this, and he was inappropriate this way, and he was kind of, you know, that's
a little bit of a red flag, but maybe you just go out one more time.
It's okay, just try one more time.
No, if he's going to act that way on day one, or day 20, it doesn't matter.
Leave him!
Well, because the concept is a woman is not worth as much if she's not married.
So that's where it's coming from, is people are like, well, no, you have to be with someone
to have value.
It's, you don't.
It is, I think, harder for people to relate to single people in some ways.
I've had so many people say, you know, when are you getting your MRS degree when you're
in college?
That's the only reason you went to that school, right?
Or just, are you dating anyone?
Are you talking to anybody?
Are you liking anybody?
Is anybody liking you?
I can't wait till the day you get married.
Yes.
Or you're just so beautiful.
You're just so beautiful.
How has no one found you yet?
Those are all things that have been said to me, but particularly the beautiful one.
Yes, I'm delightfully beautiful.
But it will be okay.
You don't have to find a man.
Or if you want to, I don't have any advice.
I think we've given a lot of advice over the last hour.
But one thing I did want to end on, and this is definitely off topic, we're, but timely.
So, this episode should come out right after the election.
And I wanted to say, and I don't know, this is, we're recording this several days ahead,
so I don't know who won.
I don't know what happened.
I know how I chose to vote.
And I'm not going to share that because you don't need to know.
But I also know how I vote.
I do not even, I don't think it's like a secret.
I just wanted to say, as, I don't know if all of you out there are people of faith,
but for those of you that are, and even for those of you that are not, whatever happened,
I know some of us are scared right now.
I would say the majority of us.
Many many people on both sides are going to be afraid of whatever happens.
And as people of faith, I hope that we can just sort of remember that God knew what was
going to happen.
This is not surprising.
God knew what was going to happen when he created the world in the election of 2024
in the United States.
And he's got this.
Well, like we were talking about earlier, we really only have one true king.
And he is perfect.
And he's going to take care of us.
And hindsight is 20-20, right?
So when we look back on these years, a million years from now, because we're going to all
live till a million.
Oh dear.
We're going to see how God carried us through.
I have to live to a million?
Yes.
I am already going crazy.
What will happen?
Science and technology is going to preserve us until the year one million.
All right.
I'm sorry.
No, but I just I just wanted to make that point of whoever, whichever side is feeling
afraid, even if you're kind of in the middle ground and you're feeling afraid, God has
us covered.
He always has.
He always will.
He knew what was going to happen.
He knows what's going to happen tomorrow.
He knows what's going to happen through whatever presidency this is.
And I think we're going to be okay.
I think we're going to be okay.
Is there a song there?
I just don't know.
Now Bree's just going off the cuff.
All right.
So we'll see.
No, there was a song.
Every little thing is going to be.
Yeah, that was a song.
That was a song.
You can't yell at me.
You didn't know.
Goodbye.
All right.
So next week, ideally, I will be slightly better.
I'm doubting it.
Me too, man.
Anyway, we're going to do an episode on the concept of being still.
I'm very excited about it.
I'm being still right now.
It's going really poorly, guys.
And just talking about what it's like, because there's a verse, if you aren't familiar with
it, be still and know that I am God, and it gets thrown out all the time.
It is on all of the Christian merchandise.
Just walk into a hallmark.
Walk into a Hobby Lobby.
Oh my gosh.
And just stop.
Because I told you to.
But we're going to talk about that.
And the context of it biblically so that it's not just a single verse that we're throwing
at you.
Yeah.
And what it means as a Christian, as a person of faith.
A POF.
To be still, what that commitment is.
We'll just go into it.
So we'll be excited to see you for that.
Yay.
Yay.
All right.
We'll see you guys next week.
Bye.
Love you, bye.
How are you?