Man or Bear? - Out of this World #47

to appeal to. Because you know, I've been triggered by Twitter again and I have this hypothesis about the Biblical masculinity and submission posts, and if you'll indulge me, I'm going to try and make a case that this is really getting weird. Okay, So the whole alpha male phenomenon, I don't know if you all know this, probably not because you didn't spend time. I'm on four sean in

the two thousands like I did. But the verbiage that they're using, and anytime you see an account on Twitter with the words biblical or masculinity or any kind of like combination alpha male, this or whatever, it's gonna be whack. Okay, because this stuff came from corn and furries specifically. Okay, the whole alpha male, beta male, submission subdom. My idea is that we are being made to witness some kind of public display of fetishism with some of these posts

and these accounts. I know that's kind of like a big thing to say, but like I said, so the alpha male comes from Furries and from Korn and from for Cheon, and then you have a lot of accounts with very very young men like they can't even vote, and they're telling in what to do. They're saying you need to be this, and that they're telling them to

shut up right on air, being very disrespectful. And the submission language I'm hearing is also very fetishistic with I mean, everybody knows what BDSM is, right, So you have a dominant and a submissive person and a lot of the language in these posts is identical to the sexualization fetish And then you have the trad wife aesthetic, which is, you know, nothing too crazy, but it's blurring into the

lines of performative aesthetics. So I know that's a lot for the introduction, and I have about twenty questions from Twitter to ask you, and because my opinion is getting less and less valuable, I feel as time goes on as a woman, and that's a weird thing to witness also, so I wanted to appeal to male authority. I'm an Orthodox Christian. Obviously we are triarchal. I'm not a feminist, but I'm not a weirdo either. So that's why I brought you on. Because you're a nice, masculine, normal guy.

You have five sons, you have an incredible wife, you have a vibrant household. So welcome to the show.

I mean, the levels of delusion of having again. And with some of it, it's funny because you'll see a woman who has like one or two children and then she's like, oh, I'm a trad wife and I'm like, I watch me bake breakfast or whatever for my husband. And then you'll see a whole video on this right or there'll be like a three minute or two minute video.

And I saw one recently and it's like where are the kids, Like they're not in the video, so it's like we're So it's like either a they're watching TV or two you have a nanny because it if your kids are awake, they're with you. So that's not reality. So you're like, okay, that's first off, you're not making

traditional breakfast for your husband whatever else. That's nonsense. And then number two is a lot of times they only have like a couple of kids, and a lot of times will be like, oh, I'm gonna have a huge family. We're doing this thing, blah blah blah blah blah. And you're like, when you have five kids, like you're barely surviving, you know, you're not thriving, Like nobody's nobody has five kids, and it's like going, oh my goodness, it's like it's

just so it's so much bliss and wonderfulness. It's just not reality. You know, it's literally just a total grind and grueling experience, not in a bad way because you love your kids, but not in a way where you're quote unquote producing content. And then I think a lot of the other trad stuff, which is like you know, watch us homestead, It's like you're not homesteading unless you have a million dollars, Like you're not buying the land.

You're not building a house, or you're not buying something with twenty acres of land and setting up everything to try to get it running and operational with lessons. So this is like on every level, there are all these components that are working behind the scenes that are not reflective of reality. There are things that are just not feasible. They're literally not possible when you have a family and creating content to doing all that stuff is I mean

just totally frivolous. So I think when you talk about that aspect, I think this is what you said, very performative. I think when you get into the gender role as I see it being expressed, I think that there's a very very strong rebound. So we often see this, which is you know, the culture dives hard left where it's like it's all you know, I mean, you know, if you're what you know, if you want to have a happy marriage, have a happy wife. You know, happy wife,

happy life. Never have an you know your wife is always right, don't ever disagree. I mean, like all kinds of just absurdist statements that make women kind of like the center of the universe in your life, and you're there to be subservient to her emotional desires and whims and whatever else and curtail yourself around her to then rebounding on the other side, which is like it's all about male domination. So now the wife is just there

to serve and take care of her husband. And now the husband has become the center point or the focal point of the relationship. And he's the one who's the head of the family. He's in charge, he's the dominant one. Blah blah blah. All you're watching in culture is just rebounds. And so you know, when one thing doesn't work, people try to overcompensate by creating something else. But it's equally unbalanced.

It's kind of like and this is a critique from Saint John Maximovich where he is writing about the Mother of God, and he said, you know, the Protestants go so far where they're not even venerating her or showing her even any respect. And yet the scripture says like every generation will call her blessed. And then you have the Catholic side where it's like basically maybe even drifting into worship and she becomes kind of this deified or divine figure, almost fourth person of the treaty, which is

also unbalanced. And there's a middle path, and you know, it's what we taught. And oftentimes I actually, when I'm looking for answers on something, I'll notice the left and the right and the imbalance, and then I'll be like, hey, what's the what's the middle path? So if the culture for the last unteen decades has been going to this left path where it's like woman centric or woman dominant, and now we're seeing a rebound where men are like, no,

it's male dominant, and it's and it's about man. Neither one of these are correct. Marriage is about the marriage, which is both the husband and the wife. The goal of the husband's leadership is to create a secure environment for the wife so that she can thrive. You don't do that by dominating her, you know, And and I've preached on this numerous I mean, I've been married for twenty two years, and I'm one hundred percent like, uh, the husband is ahead of the house. The wife is

is in submission to him. But I'll tell anybody, look, there is maybe two or three three times a year where I actually have to tell my wife like, sweetheart, I love you and I value your opinion on this, but like this is what has to happen, and this is what we're doing. I mean, we're talking two three times a year. The rest of the time, I'm looking for her input, what works for her, how we can

work together on something, whatever else. Why, Because it's about the harmony, and the harmony and the integrity of the marriage is two people becoming one. It's not about one person becoming dominant over the other person. And the other person in kind of this quote unquote submission role where they're being they're not just being submissive, they're being dominated. You know, my wife is an adult woman. She doesn't

need me to tell her to do everything. I don't need to give my wife a schedule for the day or for the week or tell her what she needs to get done. She's an adult. Why would I have a relationship with it with a woman? With my wife specifically,

where I'm treating her as if she's an adolescent. And I actually see a lot of this language where the men are creating kind of a quote unquote and the men are not really men, but for the sake of conversation, the males are creating this kind of adult adolescent dynamic between the two of them where one is dominating the other. She she needs me to tell her to do she needs me to figure everything out and tell her to

do things and instruct her and all. It's like, I don't know, man, maybe you married like somebody who has, you know, developmental problems or something, because like a normal human being who's an adult can figure out what to do with their week. Well that's the daddy dom Yeah, And I think that it's it's hard to say because again, to be to be fair, I'm not as familiar with that aspect of the society, Like I'm just not I'm not very familiar with that content. So I would say, like,

I'm not familiar at all. I don't want to say very familiar. Yeah, I'm familiar with that content. So I don't know how that content feeds into this. I just don't. But I think that it's it seems to be it seems to be a rebound effect. Where again, since the beginning of time, there has been an attempt at whatever you want to say, authority. You know, even this is Saint Isaac the Syrian says that, you know, Eve's attempt to eat the fruit first was to usurp Adam's authority.

So we know that this is a temptation for women. This does not mean that every woman gives into this. We just know that it's a temptation for women to try to usurp the authority of their husband. But the counterbalance to that is that the husband is so loving, kind, nurturing, manly, stable that she finds security and peace in his leadership. Thought that he basically manipulates her or stuffs her into submission and all these other things. Again, and I saw

this quote on Twitter recently, which was this guy. He didn't even have facial hair. He was like in his early twenties or something, which no knock and I got married. I didn't have facial hair. I was twenty years old, but he was so young, and he was like, yeah, my job as the husband is telling my wife basically what to do. And then she's supposed to do it, and then if I'm wrong, she needs to kind of

like live with the consequences or whatever. And I was like, that's just bad leadership, Like that's not even like that has nothing to do with biblical marriage. You're just immature and don't understand good leadership. Good leadership in marriage is good leadership in any facet of life, which a good leader as a servant leader. A good leader is somebody that people around them say, that person is looking out

for my best interest, not their own. They're not selfish, they're not self centered, they're not ego to they're actually leading because it's the best use of their abilities in this dynamic. But they make everybody a winner. And I look at a lot of these things that guys are saying, and I'm like, these guys are losers. So they're trying to dominate somebody as a validation for the fact that they don't really have it together and don't really know

what they're doing. And that's not how you have a marriage, at least that's not how you have a marriage that

lasts long. And in fact, there's a lot of information on I'll I'm sorry if I'm going a little bit long on this, but there's a there's a person who started coming to my church and she was sharing with me some of the dynamics that happen within this kind of reform tradition where a lot of this is being promulgated, and some of the stories that she was telling me about people's marriages and the way that this is you this is a it's it's they're taking something that is biblical,

but they're I would say, they're using it really in an abusive way. It's abuse of the power because the use of the power becomes self serving for the husband,

it's not for the wife. And that's one of the things I would say, is like, you know, I had I mean not to go down at Tangent, but like, there was a guy that I knew and probably this is probably one of the nicest compliments anybody's ever said to me, which he said, he's a married guy, had had several children, doesn't go to church, but he were family friends and he said, like, what do you do? He's like, your wife looks at you with a lot of respect, like she genuinely like how do you get

her to do that? And that really stuck with I mean, that's probably one of the best compliments anyone's ever paid me. But I really thought about him. Like one facet of that is the fact that like my wife knows that she is the center of like my world. And that doesn't mean that I she knows that I don't feed into every whim, desire, feeling, emotion. I mean, it's just

not my personality. It's not what I do as a leader because it's not healthy, right, But she knows that the things that I'm doing in the family, my work ethic, and the decisions that I make are one hundred percent to her benefit and the benefit of the children. So she can see very clearly that the leadership model is not a pyramid scheme where everybody at the bottom is feeding the person at the top and they do the

least and they get all the benefits. It's the inverted triangle right that we see in the church, which is the leadership is actually you know, we have that inverted triangle like this right in the church, and the leadership is actually at the bottom, and the leadership is taking all of the pressure and all of the weight to carry everybody weaker than them, and they're utilizing all of their strengths, gifts, and abilities to be a stable, resting

place for everybody else in their life. So in twenty two years of marriage, I mean, I don't go to my wife with my problems. My wife's not my best friend. I never use that language, not my best friend. I don't go to her with my problems. Why because I want her to know I'm always available for her with whatever she has going on. I don't. I don't unload on her emotionally. I don't complain to her. I don't

tell her when things go wrong. You know, there's a very much a distinct role that we have in the relationship where she knows if I have an issue, I will take it to another man to help me resolve it. So that I'm always available emotionally for her to rely

on me. Those are some of the dynamics so that she sees and then she's like, oh, he's basing his life around you know, the good the wellness and the good fortune of the family, and the family comes first, right, He's not like sending me out to get a job so he can buy a boat, or he can have an extra vacation every year, or like, you know what, I mean, like she sees me working seven days a week so that she can stay home with the kids, and all those different things, all those components are that

build the love and the admiration is because a good leader loves and sacrifices himself for the people that are under his care, and they know that he works harder than anybody else. And I just I see so much of what's being touted as leadership. It's like it just doesn't even meet the criteria. If they were in the corporate if they were in the corporate world and they espouse some of these ideas about leadership, it would never

even fly. People would see right through it and just say that just sounds like somebody who's selfish and self centered.

level up. And that's why you see people extending getting married for a long time, because you know, they they call him Bob the builder, like, build my life with me, and then once I, you know, become what I want to be, then I will get a new woman along with my new status and everything like that.

that that comes from the pornography culture. That's what that culture does. It creates, It creates, Uh, how do you want to put it? Females are an object for my own gratification and basically, you know, you know, sexual fulfillment. They're not human beings, they're not persons. It's they don't have thoughts and feelings. And I think that I think some of that out of just the fact that there's

two things I would say on that. Number one is if a man conditions himself to watch a bunch of performative things that are dehumanizing to women and only see women as one thing, then they're just going to dehumanize them all the time and all kinds of different context because of that, they're not going to be able to understand that. Number two is women are radically complex, vastly more complex than us men like, vastly more complex, and that complexity is dignified in the fact that it's created.

It's how a woman is expresses that she's made in the image of God. It just is nothing there's nothing wrong about the ways in which a woman is created. Now that can be manifested in the wrong way. Right, So women can be emotional. They have much much more

sensitive hormones I talked about than the recent video. I mean, we're talking on the magnitude of literally hundreds of times the hormones that men have, and when it comes to estrogens and other things that create very vibrant, almost technicolor experiences of life in a way that they kind of soak things up in a much deeper way than men do.

There's nothing negative about that. That's not bad. Now, have we all known women who manipulate the people around them because of their emotional fragility and because they utilize their emotions and their cunningness in a negative way? Yes, we've all known people like We've all known women like that. We've all known women who marry the most passive man on the planet so that she can do whatever she

wants with him. And it's totally unhealthy and dysfunctional. But the core of womanhood is not bad because of that, right, and how women express being creating the image of God is a good and beautiful thing. It can get out of whack, but it's the same thing with being a man. Right, we know that men are strong and can be and can be strong leadership types. And yet we know lots of men who have utilized their power, influence, and position to manipulate and subjugate other people. It's the misuse of

what was created in the image of God. So the core facets of a woman are not they're not bad, they're not malformed. They're made in the image of God. They're beautiful and wonderful. The problem is most men really cultivating, loving, nourishing and bringing along a woman is literally beyond their skill set, and they don't know how to handle it. And they don't know how to handle a real woman. They don't know how to connect with them while correcting them,

without without validating them, without you know, subjugating them. You know that there's this love and this trust that happens in marriage, even to the point where you know, I you know that, even to the point now at twenty two years of marriage where my wife is like, just please help me to understand this and what I need to do now. Did my wife do that in the first year or two of marriage. No, of course not.

You know, that's not what happens in marriage. In fact, I probably need to make a video at some point. But there is a whole process in marriage really where a woman grows in her trust and love and admiration for her husband. And it takes time, it really does. We live in a fallen world where there can be a distrustful element that kind of seeps its way into marriage that women are concerned about. The point being with all of that, which is back to this issue of

coorn and how that affects people. You know, when a man does not when a man is not able to enjoy and interact with the woman and she cannot express herself as a normal woman with the kind of technicolor experience of what it is to interact with the woman, he's trying to turn her into somebody that's black and white.

M hm. So she cleans, she cleans, she up keeps, and then she gives them, you know, sex, and that's it, and that's what she's good for, and that's you know, it's it's it's incredibly dehumanizing, is what it is, which is what corn is. Corn Is is dehumanizing. They take somebody who's creating the image of God, who could become a saint, who could become deified with the Holy Spirit, and makes them basically, you know, an icon of the devil and a means by which the passions of lust

are are fed and fermented into a person's soul. It's atrocious.

where would man be without woman? Without women? Question mark? And then another a guy had come up and wrote in another marker the garden.

that's Adam's whole problem twofold. According to the fathers, number one is that he blames Eve, so he doesn't take responsibility. And then number two, the father say he doesn't repent. In fact, when Christ initially the preincarnate logos in the garden questions Adam and Eve, the fathers as they say, it's a period of time before he returns, and they

actually get expelled from the garden. They said, if in that time Adam and Eve had repented, they would have remained in the garden, but they failed to repent, and in fact Adams Adam's response is this all happened because you God gave me the woman. So if you notice this is the distinction between a good leader and a bad leader, right, A good leader takes responsibility for their decisions. A bad leader pawns those decisions off on another person

or blames another person. So is it surprising that men today are still blaming women for everything that's wrong. No, because that's that is that is men, in their weakness, failing to take responsibility for their maturation who they are. It's an interesting thing because men are like, I've we don on this recently. Men are like, we are the most powerful. But then they also go, well, but women are subjecting us or subjugating us, Right, who's the most powerful?

is to say men are the most powerful. The men today are terrible at leadership and understanding and leading women, and so because of that, we've created a dynamic where women are usurping men's authority because men are pathetic. So men are supposed to be here, but they're and women. So if you look at objectively, men are supposed to be here. Women are supposed to be here more in their roles, not in their worth. There's a difference. Men and women are both creating the image of God and

have equal value. But men are created to have this particular role of leadership. Women are created to have this particular role of following. But because men are poor leaders, they they end up subjecting themselves to the leadership of women. And why does that happen? This is the number one thing.

Why does that happen? Because men don't follow God. If men follow The number one thing that you see probably in relationships, right, this is a little off the cuff, but a little number one thing you kind of see is you see women manipulating men. Women are more are in when it comes to psychological conversations, the use of emotion and the use of words, women are vastly more

superior than men. They have a better vocabulary, they have a better grasp on their feelings, they have all these different things that they have like a whole tool chest at their disposal, right when it comes to communication, and they tend to be superior communicators in this realm of interpersonal dynamics. Okay, men are superior when you're communicating about war strategy, chess engineering, or whatever else. But when it

comes to interpersonal dynamics, women are far superior. Men do not know how to engage that in a normal, healthy way and still remain a kind of in their position as the leader. They don't know how to do that because they don't subject themselves to God. They don't have that grace from God in order to be a good leader. The thing is, a man cannot be a good man

without the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. And so men think that they're going to be men and leaders and all this without the grace of the Holy Spirit, and it doesn't work. They can't do it because they because they become intimidated, they become afraid, they don't know what to say, they don't know how to control themselves, They overreact emotionally, they don't know how to communicate well. Right.

All of those are a byproduct of the fact that they are They are underdeveloped in the primary areas that they're underdeveloped with God. If their relationship with God was in the right place, their relationship with their wife would be in the right place.

from the negative experience. A good healthy man has an emotional stability that's on his own. He's already locked in, and so he's able to kind of weather the storms sometimes of what maybe his wife in a more vulnerable state or given over to an emotional at temptation will throw at him. How do men become like that? Well, they have to have a relationship with God. They have to become stabilized. They have to become normal and healthy men.

If not, then they then they're just they're they're tossed to and fro. You know, I've experienced this so many times as a priest. I mean, I'll have a woman who comes to me. Typically it's it's women whose husbands don't come to church, and they'll ask me to do something or want something or whatever else. And sometimes it's reasonable and I can say yes, and sometimes it's unreasonable. It's just it's a request, it's not that's not going

to be able to be fulfilled. And they will try to hold it against me emotionally, as if they're upset with me, and as if I should care that they're upset with me, And that usually is hard for them because, as they find out really quick, I don't care if they're upset with me. I'm like, look, first off, my wife doesn't manipulate me like this. Second off, you're using a manipulation that you use on your husband because it works.

And third, you need to be an adult and we need to have a normal adult adult relationship where we can agree and disagree on things. But I have to remain the priest. So there's times where I have to tell you things that you know, I simply cannot do or they're practical or whatever else or not within my

purview as a priest. That's it. But this manipulation that women do, which is a default, right, women kind of default to it is very hard for men to combat unless they have, you know, a kind of an emotional integrity that is separated from them. Right. Men default to a passivity. This is a problem with men, which is they become intimidated and they and they and they default a passivity or they or they overcompensate to super aggression, right,

and they get kind of wild on either way. Either way they're like, Okay, just tell me what to do, honey, or they're like, you're not going to tell me to do anything. I'm crazy. Right, And there needs to be that center point, but you don't get there without God. You can't get into that centered place as a man without God's grace. You're just not going to get there. It's not going to happen like it's just not going to happen.

want a healthy relationship. Is romance faith? I mean, when you go into an Orthodox church, that's a very romantic place, right, It's adorned with gold and jewels and pictures of your loved ones, and there's candles, there's flowers, you're kissing everything. I mean, how can it get more romantic than that?

it's not a good or bad. It's very much subjective to who we are creating the image of God. And that's not a bad thing. Right. So like when we talk about romance, it's like, I'm not really a romantic person, like most men are not, like the majority of men are not. But I want to do things for my wife because I love and adore my wife, and they speak to my wife in that way, right, So so

we express it's very very very very clear. We express affection for each other in ways that we want that same affection be expressed to us, but we're so different that we don't really do it, right. I mean, this is why so much of the confusion around the genders happens is because I think what happened in our society is like one we've been constantly trying to dominate each other and not exist harmoniously. But for us to exist harmoniously within the church, we really have to allow each

other to be ourselves. And so you know, an example of that when you talk about romance is unlike any man who's been married for more than a minute knows that his wife loves romance. And that's an expression of who she is as a woman. It just is. And that's a fine thing. There's nothing wrong with that. That's a beautiful thing. That's like, I mean, you know, to this day, there was a there is an anniversary. I

hope my wife doesn't see this. There is an anniversary where I like planned this trip, I like created a map and we went to all these different places and did all these different things. To this day, she still remembers the anniversary. She doesn't remember any of the other ones right because it was like, oh my goodness, that was just we did this and we did that, and we'd like there was so many different things that we did and that was like, you know why, because that's

that speaks to her soul. Do I remember that as being significant? No, No, it's just why I'm not really romantic. I just don't care about those things. It doesn't speak to me at all. Is that a bad thing, No, it's just it's it's uh, it's just who we are, right like the other For instance, I'll give you another example. The other night, we were lifting weights in the garage and my wife brought the baby out front and we were,

I don't know, doing something. We were deadlifting and she had to bring the baby upfront to get to the car or something like that, and I said, hey, watch me hit this deadlift. And I hit this super fast deadlift and was just like all amped and the guys were like, everybody's pumped up. She's like, that's great, And then she sent me a text She's like, good job on the deadlift. That looked great or something.

be shown to her. That's fine, that's fine. I think that this is the thing that I that I look at with a lot of what the men are talking about is they're like, oh, these things about women are preposterous, and it's like they're not. They're just women. There's nothing abnormal or weird about them. Like and like I love women, so like, you know, like they liked the chit chat. Like for instance, I work out three days a week

with two of my godsons. I mean we probably have you know, we probably use sub five hundred words the whole work out for two hours. You know what I mean. If there is something that's said, it's probably maybe hypothetically to make fun of somebody or whatever else, or to like tease somebody or to like push somebody right to do something. Why is that? Because we're men and we're just being men doing man stuff and that's what we enjoy,

you know. And then on Tuesday nights the women will come over to our house for the women's group, and you know there's times where we just chitchat for like an hour straight on just whatever, and it's just small talk, conversation whatever else. Why is that women love that stuff if they just do nothing wrong with that? Just nothing wrong with that at all. And I think that's what

I think. The part that irritates me today is that like people are trying to create all these hard boundaries of like I don't know what's acceptable based on their own gender, and it's like, oh, like what men are doing is completely normal for men, and what women are doing is completely normal for women. That's why we see so many similarities in what people are doing, right, like it because it comes natural. It's not a fake thing. So anyways, romance is one of those things. It's just

women love it. They love it, you know.

a marriage. The purpose of the marriage is that it would be transformative for the two of you to make both of you more into the image of Christ. And so all of the disagreements, all of the hardships, the asceticisms of self denial, all of the facets that go into marriage are the training ground for making you more like Christ. That's why we have the crowns of martyrdom. I mean, it's an ironic thing, right, we have the crowns of martyrdom and then I just did a wedding

yesterday actually ironically. But you have the crowns of martyrdom that you wear during your service, right in your marriage service in the Orthodox Church, when people are like, oh, it's king and queen or prince and princess, and it's like romantic, it's not. It's crowns of martyrdom. Well, the next question is who's martyring you? That's the person standing right all right? Why? Because they get impatient with you, they get selfish, they do this, they say something unkind.

You've got to turn the other cheek. You've got to forgive them seventy times seven. You've got to love them. Right. All of the beatitudes get into all of the Gospel of Christ and all of his teachings, and the beatitudes come into play in the marriage when you love that other person who at times feels like an enemy, and that's normal. That's like a normal marriage where those things happen. And in that process you learn to love God and you learn to love them more than you love yourself.

And the marriage and that's what the marriage is complete in and of itself, that's what it is now as it comes to creating a family, which we know is one of the primary aspects of the marriage service. Even right when we read all yesterday I married a couple in their I want to say their late forties or so. But they're not having their past having children maybe early fifties. Okay,

they're not having kiddos anymore. And they've already been married for a couple of years and they're not having kiddos. All the prayers in the service are still about having kids. You know, there's hunting prayers in the service about having children. What is the purpose of having a family again, it's to expand on that asceticism that's self denial in whatever else. But what else does the service talk about? The service also talks about whatever rich bounty you experience in the marriage,

that you would take care of other people. And so for this couple yesterday, when I gave the homily at the end, I said, look, the two of you are like pillars in our community. We can rely on you. You're trustworthy. They have God children in the church, you know what I mean. They have an example to set by their marriage. Right. So, some people within marriage are blessed with the family, and sometimes for various reasons, people

are not blessed with the family. The point is is that the marriage is still about deification, and the marriage is still supposed to be a platform or a springboard for blessing the people around us. So if we're not we if we're not raising children because that's not a part of our marriage, we should still be working hard to raise the other children in the parish. We still should be offering help to the people in the parish who have kids. We should be volunteering our time to

babysit or to do this or to do that. Or we see somebody struggling financially, going well, hey, we don't have kids, we'll help them out financially. We'll do these different things. Right, So, when somebody has kids, all of their energy and to focus and attention goes to the kids within the marriage, and all of that is for their salvation. But fundamentally, with or without children, the marriage is about blessing the family of God. That's what it's about.

The two of you are supposed to become even more rooted and grounded in your faith. In fact, there's even that beautiful story. I can't remember who it was, but it was a saint who had I can't remember how many children. She had, five or ten children or something, and then a plague came through everyone in her family died, all of her children died, and then she adopted all of the children that were lost after the plague, became

the mother to all of them. And then there's also like Saint Ea in Ireland who is called the Mother of Saints because she was a monastic at a at an orphanage, and then a number of the boys and trusted to do her care became saints. She became a saint. Also Ida e Man I can't remember, but she's an

Irish saint. The point is is that like in whatever place that we find ourselves, in marriage with or without children, with or without a family, everything about the marriage is to sanctify us, to make us less concerned with ourselves, more concerned with the church family, and to take care and to bless the people around us. That's what marriage is about. And the irony is all of our teaching in our society is the more that you make life about yourself, the more fulfilled you'll be. And the and

this is a complete contradiction of the Gospel. The more that you make your life about Christ the more that your life is fulfilled, the more that you make your life about other people, the more fulfilled you are. The most selfish people are one hundred percent the most miserable people, the most selfless, giving generous people in the church one hundred percent are always the happiest, best adjusted, most wonderful to be around people. It's just the way that it is,

you know. It's like Christ says, whoever loses their life shall gain it. So the person who's trying to keep their life compartmentalized and tucked away and meet and tidy and all to themselves, those are the people who always struggle with the most with neuroticism and OCD and and you know, self love and selfishness and fear of finances and all this. And the people who just give it all away are the people who live with the most

freedom and the most joy and the most love. They are always the people you want to emulate in the church.

you see them advocating for large age gap relationships. So this is a hot issue that they've been talking about. So a lot of the manuscript people are pushing for overseas relationships, they call it passport bros. And large age gap relationships up to you know, twenty twenty five years. And so I wanted to get your opinion on that. I have my own opinions on those things, but I know those type of marriages can be blessed, but they also have their unique challenges too.

ages that people had children. Right, Well, if the husband is sixteen years older than the wife, technically he's old enough to be her father. So I mean, this stuff doesn't really surprise me because man's hearts are wicked and they're warped, you know, and they're not looking again, they're not looking for people. They're looking for a scenario or something idealized. But it's very divorced from humanity. It's divorced from realction. So in that way, I'm like, it's just

it doesn't surprise me. I think it's just I think it's just part of the kind of illness of the society. It's a manifestation of the illness of like again, trying to find your happiness or this or that or whatever in something like this again, this kind of quote unquote traad lifestyle. Wait, people have three kids, and then there'll be all the people saying, you know, you're better off

not having kids. Like trust me, Like the five years down the line when people start having kids and they realize how much work it is and how brutal it is and everything else and how hard it is. These people are trying to escape responsibility, not embrace responsibility. So they're going to find out pretty quick that, you know, having kids is not the solution. And we see that actually is funny enough. We see that with the boomers. The boomers had kids not because they wanted kids, They

had kids because they thought they should have kids. Now you have kind of a different pelum where people go, oh, if you have kids, it's going to make you happy and fulfill you and do all this, and it's like, that's that's not human beings don't fulfill you. They just don't. They're wonderful. I mean, I love all the people around me, but they don't fulfill me. They don't make me feel complete, you know what I'm saying. Like I was complete as complete as I am now before I ever had kids.

you complete, they don't do whatever. They're an absolute ton of hard work and you can never spend enough time with them because you've got all kinds of other especially as a husband, you've got all kinds of other engagements that you have to participate in in order to make money for the family. So you spend periods of time with them. But they're humans, and they have they have exaggerated faults at times, you know, overly dramatic. They're exceptionally

needy and all these other things. It's all good because if you're there to serve them and love them, it's fine. But they're not there to serve you or make your life better. You know, someone when a kid wakes up at two in the morning and their bed sheet is like covered in vomit, like, they're not there to make you feel great about your life. You're there to get them out of bed, not wake your wife up because

she's got a baby or whatever else. You're gonna clean off the blanket, You're gonna get them showered, you're gonna fix the bed, take care of them, and then put them back to sleep. And then an hour later they're gonna wake up and vomit and do the whole thing over again. And then you're gonna do that three or four times in a night. Then the next night the other kid is gonna start throwing up, and then you're gonna do that for four or five nights at a time.

That's not like, oh man, this is the beat. I love being a dad. It's the best experience ever, you know, Yeah, it's live. I love my kids. And I think that that's where it gets weird is that people are like, it's so divorced. I just think it's so divorced from the person that it's all become everything becomes an idea of you know what I mean. And I think the other thing is too, where goes like, oh, I'm gonna

have a huge family. I always like pump the brakes, wait till you have your third kid and then we'll like, we'll see what really happens, you know.

seed before you die. And that's where they get these ideas that you know, you have to have as many children as possible, as soon as possible, and the child bearing years for men and women is different, so like it's okay for a forty five year old to marry you know, a twenty year old because he can still

reproduce and she has you know, a shelf life. But then this goes into their ideas about you know, infidelity, adultery and cheating too, because they are still in that evolutionary mindset, which you agree.

the culture probably understands that. But it's one worse than the other, or more damaging to the relationship then the other. I don't think so. I mean, the whole premise of a wife's relationship with her husband is that the husband has to be the one man that she can trust. So if a man cheats, the relationship is dead in the water. She knows fundamentally she can never trust him. Now Likewise, a husband has the sense with his wife that she's the one person in the world that's devoted

to him. And if she cheats, then obviously that destroys that narrative for their marriage and for their relationship. So both are equally catastrophic.

It's not healthy, it's not good, it's not attractive. I likewise don't think that it's that it's that, you know, again, if the sub context to all this is that we love each other and that we're trying to do the best for each other, then I think it's a no brainer that a wife should strive to maintain a similar

physique to what she had when she got married. Within reason, right, Like, my wife has had five kids within the last ten years, and obviously there are physical changes that take place just based on the fact that you've had five kids and ten years and I'm very very attracted to her, and she's done a phenomenal job, you know, staying very similar to how she was when we first met. I think

that's important. I don't think that you can. Attraction is something that's very important in a marriage, just is it's very important that you're attracted to the person that you're married to. I think that we create a false narrative when we say, oh, you know, we should just be you know, accepting of I don't know whatever, you know one.

I mean, think about it this way. If somebody goes and gains let's say seventy five pounds, well they've done that because they've been un self controlled, they've not exercised, they've not taken so right, so they've kind of neglected themselves. And then the response to that is we should just accept it, and it's like, well, you should still love them.

The love and the nurture should be paramount. Obviously, you want to be in a marriage where if somebody does put on some extra weight, which can happen, you converse about it in a healthy, normal way and say, hey, you know, this is kind of what's happening, or maybe

this is kind of a direction that we're trending. Let's work on this together so that we don't, you know, go down a pathway where it's unmanageable, right, I mean, you're not going to marry a girl at one hundred and twenty five pounds and then after humpting kids and twenty years later she's going to be one hundred and twenty five pounds and that's just not human bio. I mean, that's just very very unrealistic.

I can't remember. Fifty years ago or something, they did a study and the average woman was five foot five, right in one hundred and twenty five pounds or something, and today the average woman is five foot five and like one hundred and eighty pounds or something like this. So obviously diet, lack of exercise, and other things have contributed to a general move towards obesity within our culture, which is not healthy. Right. Obesity is not good for anybody.

So I think that again, it's every couple is different. Every couple needs to I think, have that conversation. But I do think that there is some justification that's happening in the culture, as if like because you have children, you know you're gonna just suddenly miraculously put on fifty pounds or something. That's not realistic, Like you're gonna put on weight when you have the baby. The baby's gonna come off, and then there's gonna be a process of

nursing and you know, getting back into shape. That's normal and healthy. I don't think that it's I mean, again, if somebody said, you know, father, my wife is sixty and she's wrinkly, it's like that's what happens to everybody, Like that's normal, that's normal. I think that when we get into specifically something regarding weight gain, weight gain is within our control everybody is subject to the laws of thermodynamics, so every single human being unless the laws of physics

do not pertain to a person. Now, people may have slower metabolisms or this or that or whatever, but the reality is is that all of human weight on some level has to do with calories in and calories out. Not gain weight in a caloric deficit. It's an impossibility. But we live in a society where people are eating fast food two times a day. They don't realize it's twenty five hundred calories a meal, and then they're eating a dinner at night, and now all of a sudden

they're over three thousand calories for the day. They just don't understand how calorie rich our food is. And so it's not to point the finger, but to say, look, if you eat according to what the society kind of offers you, it will tend to obesity. Because we as a nation, I think, are the still I think, the most obese nation in the world. Somber one. Yeah, so this is not a genetic abnormality, but actually the byproduct

of what we're eating in our sedentary life. So again I think within and I think the thing that I said earlier is true too, which is I think each couple needs to talk about it. And you know I would if you know, if I stopped working out and got way over out of shape and my wife came to me and said, sweetheart, you know, like this isn't attractive,

I would strive to get back into shape. Like I owe that to her because like she married me when I was in shape, and she married you know, she had an expectation that I would do things to the best of my ability to maintain my physique. I don't think there's anything weird or wrong about that. I think it goes both ways.

Cortisol and stress and overwork can lead to weight gain in women, not so much for men. But not having proper rest leads to weight gain in women a lot. Have you seen that?

Another example of that that could be your metabolism. Certain foods affect certain people a certain way. Like some people can eat really high carb diets and be fi et a high carb diet and it's great for me. Other people eat high carb and they have their body does a really good job of storing that as fat. Right, they have that conversion process that takes place. But there

are some. Again, there's still fundamental laws that govern the universe, which is, if you are burning two thousand calories a day and you're eating twenty one hundred calories a day over the course of sixteen days, you're going to put on a pound. Essentially. It's just that's what's going to happen. So you have to have that basic metabolic understanding of how your body works, what foods are good for you, what foods aren't. Like, we don't eat a lot of protein.

I mean, I can't tell you. Many times I talk to women, like how much protein do you eat? And people say they go, oh, I'm eating like fifty grams of protein a day. And it's like protein does not ever basically convert into fat. It is super dense. Right. So you can get a steak and I was talking about this the other day. You can get a steak

that's like this big, that's six hundred calories. Then if you eat those six hundred calories, you will be completely full and satiated and not want to eat anything else. You can go to McDonald's and buy a big Mac which will leave which has very little protein, has tons of carbs, tons of process basically sugars in it and is nine hundred calories and you'll still be hungry at

the end of it. So there are aspects to which our bodies respond to certain foods, but fundamentally the law of thermodynamics cannot be you know, how do you want to put it violated? Right? You burn a certain amount of calories every day, so you need a certain amount of calories to stay at that weight. If you eat less calories, your body will dip into the fat stores and start to burn excess calories and you will start to lose weight. That's how it works for everybody. There's

nobody who's exempted from this. This is this is this is, this is how God created the universe. Right. But I think the problem is is that we have very very bad portion control, huge problem, huge, huge problem. We have very very bad food selection, huge problem. We have low protein, high carbon harb high fat diets, enormously bad problem. We have processed foods that are full of sugars and other things, right, that are not calorically dense, so you can eat a

little something and it has a huge caloric return on it. Right, So all of those things are within our abilities to change and to modify our eating habits, our exercise and the things that we're doing. I don't think in a marriage your wife gaining weight right in the whole, even in that even in that analogy or in the comic right, there's no point at which the husband's actually talking to

the wife or even engaging her. He's like watching TV or something, right, So they're not putting anything together, they're not exercising together, they're not having a conversation about it. Like, if somebody were to ask me, what is probably the number one problem in marriages? One both people lacking a lot of spiritual depth, lacking very strong relationships with God

would be number one. Now, if you said, what do you think it is on the human level, I would say, and I've talked to lots of couples over the years, I would say, you know, really, number two falls into the violation of Saint Paul's commandments. Wives honor your husbands and husbands love your wives. So most often I find in a marriage that a wife is not honoring her husband, she's not respectful to him, she doesn't treat him with deference, and the husbands don't have love for their wives. When

a husband doesn't love his wife. It is catastrophic. Women know when they are loved, and when they're being loved, they can sense it with their whole being. They you know, women have that super sense to know when they're loved, when they're valued, when they're cherished and are And if the husband does not put that out for whatever reason, it's not because of her weight. It is one hundred percent because he feels emasculated. He doesn't have a good

relationship with God himself. That's huge. He doesn't know how to communicate, He is exhausted from life right and is not being refilled by the Holy Spirit. All of those things factor into that. But never, ever, ever, ever, in a marriage pretty much have I ever looked and said, oh, you know, that woman is like, is really struggling and she's got a great husband. I just I mean, I can't even recall one marriage where I said, oh, she's

really struggling, but her husband's just like a plush. The majority of the time with the husband, it's like, buddy, like, your wife knows what's going Like. The problem is, it's like for men to open their heart up, they have to open their heart to God. They have to find their worth, their value everything in God. They have to find who they are in God so that they are completely rooted and situated and solid in who they are.

And then they can open their heart up to the people around them and they can take you know, they can they can bring other people into themselves. So when a man's heart is malformed because he doesn't feel loved by God, he doesn't open his heart up to God. His heart is always kind of is retarded, it's not formed correct, and so he does doesn't have You know, you never look at a bad marriage and go, man, that guy just loves his wife, right, you know, You're

like he resents her and and she does. She knows that he resents her. Like how many marriages have I talked to? Where I go, the wife resents the husband and is disrespectful, and the husband can't stand the wife, and she knows that. And because she's being rejected by him, even if she's done things that have hurt him, wounded him, whatever else, the fact that she's being rejected by him

makes just throws her out. She just wives just tend to just spin out because it's like a core aspect of who they are is wanting to be loved, right, And the other thing is too. I have to tell people this. Like, look, in twenty two years of marriage, I've never thought like, oh, my my wife doesn't love me enough. Men don't think like this, like he don't. Now hypothetically, there's been some times where I'm like, ah, she could change that tone of voice, you know what

I mean. But in our marriage have there been times where my wife has been like you, you're not loving me enough. And then when I'm really on, I'm like, man, she's right, I'm frustrated about this or on this or that or whatever else or these things are you know, coming into you know ahead, I'm overworked, I'm stressed, whatever. She's right, I don't have I'm not I'm not giving her enough of my heart. And that's like, dude, that's

that's a life force for your wife. Is that you're just constantly like pumping a love, attention and affection her way. I mean it is. It's like I mean, I it's like if you could, if if you, if I could just teach guys how to get into that, Like so many times even with guys where I'm like, you know, how often do you tell your wife she's beautiful? How often do you tell her that you love her. How much do you compliment her on her her parenting or

whatever else. So often guys are like, well, like, I don't know, like and I'm like, this is stuff you got to be doing every single day and it's and people are like, oh, this is the work you put into marriage, Like, this isn't work, this is this is a normal aspect of having a healthy relationship. You spend time listening to your wife every day, talk about her day, the struggles that she's having, the things that are overwhelming her.

That's normal, that's being a husband. You love her, you encourage her, You are affectionate to her in a non forgive me, but in a non sexual way. You're you're because women love a lot of that, just being touched and being loved in a way that is just I just love you for you. When you do all those things, you know, there's no problem with affection in the marriage. But so often, so many guys are not doing any of those things, and then they're like, oh, my wife

doesn't want to again. This is again one of those constant things that you see on the Oh my wife doesn't want to sleep with me. Oh, we don't have normal marital relations whatever else. And I'm like, I feel like now you of the time, Like, dude, I know I could diagnose this marriage, but I was around them for like thirty minutes during a dinner and see everything that

they have, all the dynamics they have going on. But fundamentally that husband is not feeding his wife the love and the attention and the affection that she needs and the leadership and the leadership that she needs.

It has not been a hinderance, but it has become a hindrance because men are oversaturated with sexual desires that are perverse and that are not reasonable, and that are not they're not going to find them within the bounds of marriage. You know. Saint John Chris Awsom talks about this almost you know, seventeen hundred years ago. He says, the couples get together because of basically of lust, because of physical what does he say, physical attraction? He says,

at most that attraction will last one year. So I think that's actually what you see more than anything, which is men get into these relationships, are attracted to this woman, but they're not attracted to her in a godly way, and the relationship is not based on a godly foundation, and so they lose interest and they lose for her.

It's very strange. So women are modeling a lot of masculine behavior and a lot of masculine energy towards their partners, and then they wonder why the man doesn't want to be with them, and it's because men don't want to be in a sexual relationship with another man. That's really what it is. And women have lost a lot of the sweet, tender femininity, caring, nurturing love, et cetera, et

cetera that they have. And again, a man can love a woman who's like that, But if a man tries to turn a woman like that into a sexual object, which is again what we see why pornography is listed as the number one reason for failed marriages, they're trying to turn the woman into a subhuman and so they don't love women for being women.

women are better at is relationships. And they know fundamentally, like, look, this guy's not meeting my needs. He's not going to meet my needs, he's not going to change, and like he's toxic to be around. And so women are quicker to pull the trigger on that. Men are willing just to suffer it out in silence. The fallacy that like

women are initiating eighty percent of the divorces. There certainly is a lot of women who have masculine energy, who are academically changed, you know, formed and whatever else and are and and really are insufferable to be around. There are that is a reality in our culture. Forgive me, but the reality is is that women are also quicker to realize like a sinking ship and get off. Men are more apt to go down with the ship. It's

just it's just our nature. So but I but I think one of the things, like again it's it's the

whole chicken in the egg. Women are really good at being women and being soft and gentle and nurturing and kind and adoring and all of those wonderful womanly like just absolutely majestic qualities when they feel safe, when they feel when they feel that their husband is devoted and that he loves them and that they're the center of his universe, you know what I mean, Like not when he they usurp Christ, but you know what I'm saying, in terms of his life, they are that they are

in They are the most important person outside of God in their life. Women know that they know that, and so then they feel safe and then they can be feminine. So men in our society, they don't create that safety with women, you know what I mean through and one of the primary ways is through lust, because a woman knows. Look, if a guy is looking at porn all the time, it's not a big first off. He's yeah, he's not really being faithful to her, he doesn't really value what

is unique and special and precious about her. Right, she's not giving she's not quote unquote giving him something that he's not going and taking other places as well. And then it's obviously not a hard continuance to see that. You know, there's a very strong possibility that, given the opportunity, he would then violate the bounds of their relationship. So they don't feel safe. So what does that do. It creates a scared environment where women tend to be hostile

towards men. And that's what we see a lot in our society. Women are very hostile towards men in our society. And as a response, you know, again, men have not created an environment where women can be women and that they love and enjoy women for who they are like. And this is the thing. I genuinely have next to nothing in common with my wife, and I genuinely love and enjoy being with her she's like my favorite person

to be with because she's a woman. She's the energy is different and like she has feminine energy and when she's in that, you know, when she's just being herself. A really it's a relief for me. It's a relaxation. I feel calm, I feel I can't describe it. I just I'm like I, you know, I it's where I want to be at the end of my day. I want to be with my wife at the end of

the day, you know. I carve out like we probably spend the last typical we spend at least the last hour to two hours of our day together every day, just the two of us, every day. And it's like, why, well, we like being together, right, So I mean, why do you do that? It's like you enjoy the feeling of being with that person. It's not you know, we're not

talking about world politics or anything particularly stimulating. We're just being together doing whatever, talking about her day, watching a part of a movie or whatever.

not commit. And it's getting even worse and worse, and so it's going around now that if it's a secular marriage, you might as well not even do it at all because now the support is well, I don't know about that, because there have been many, many studies proving that being married is beneficial in every single way to men, as far as longevity, health, stability, finances, just every area of your life is improved by being married, no matter if

it's a secular marriage or not. But now they're like, the core system is so bad that we're just not gonna get married at all. We're just gonna, you know, sleep around or do whatever we want to do. And I just don't think if you're waiting for the core system to be fixed, that's never gonna happen. So if you're boycotting marriage until that day, that's just.

you die, because there's nothing. But if Christ did rise from the dead, then you should deny yourself, pick up your cross, and follow him. But yes, I don't think that marriage makes logical sense for people who are not going to live a life of martyrdom. Okay, I just don't think it's I think it's an aesthetical feed. I

think it's like having kids. The church fathers even say that that one of the reasons that marital relations are so pleasurable is that it was God's way of basically incentivizing men to have more children, because if men did not enjoy being with their wives, most men would cap off having kids at like one or two. Why because it's very hard and they all come to realize this, like,

it's way harder than you think it is. So the reason that we're incentivized to have more children is because we enjoy the bond of marriage, right, and we allow and we open up our marriage and specifically the wife's womb to the will of God. If somebody is not a Christian, I'm not going to tell them have a bunch of kids, right, because like why, Like I'm gonna tell them you need to repent. Now, if you repent, you'll end up having a lot of kids, right, potentially, right,

But you know what I'm saying. So I think it's the same thing with marriage. I mean, I don't think that you're going to make the argument that living a virtuous life isn't better. Living a virtuous life is better. But all of these things that are virtuous have to do with self denial, and for the man that's of the flesh, as Saint Paul talks about, the virtuous life is foolishness to him because his main objective is to acquire pleasure, not to acquire virtue.

store for me. So why do you think that women feel so unsafe in society right now?

If they don't get the attention in affection from God, they have an unnatural amount of desire from men that men will never be able to satisfy. And so they'll continually be looking for that high from different men that will never satisfy what they're looking for from God. That's number one. So they hate that aspect of themselves as craving and yearning for something that makes them vulnerable and weak. And then number two, because we live in a fallen world,

it says men will lord it over them. So men will utilize the weakness of women or their desire for them against them. And all of the dating culture today is predicated on men manipulating women into, you know, sexual relationships that are beneficial for themselves and not beneficial for the women. Most dating today is renting with an option to buy right. That's what we call it. When you're having marital relations before you're married, the man is renting you.

He does not own you, he does not take any responsibility for you, he doesn't even really love you. It's just lost. So if you look at society today and you see it how men have created a society where they are continually taking advantage of women. Women are not valued in our society for their expressions of womanhood, which are beautiful. It gives you, I think, a pretty I think that the test gives you a pretty clear example

of what people think today in our society. I mean that, I think it's a I think it's a kind of litmus test about what's going on. I think you gave that test fifty years ago, or in the sixties or even the fifties. I mean, women would say men at any day, why because men had virtue. So today this is the irony is that men today hear this this being said by women, and they go, oh, women are so dumb. They don't realize that the bear will kill them.

What they don't realize is that sixty years ago or seventy years ago, women would have chosen men, and that the sad part today is that it's actually more of a reflection on how bad men have become and how little virtue is actually valued in our society. Men do not value virtue in our society, right, I mean, this is why the consumption of internet content, illicit Internet content is absolutely through the roof because men have no sense of value or valor or virtue. They have no understanding

of what is beautiful versus what is disgusting. They have no concept of the value of a woman or who she's supposed to be. Right, women have been subjugated to this kind of role of inferiority in our society, and I would say even kind of almost a general animosity and hostility for men today. Men don't know how to win over women today. That's one of the biggest things.

good virtue in our society. You notice that, like a big turning point in our society was women were like, hey, we want to be equal to men, but we want to be equal in a way that subjugates us basically in the sex industry, right, and men said, okay, sure, like the society, men in the society did not raise up and say, there is no way that we want this to happen to the women of our society. This isn't right, this isn't honoring to God, this isn't beautiful,

this is not what we want whatever else. So men created this dynamic where women in our society are devalued. They said, we're fine with that. And then in the midst of devaluing women, they're like, why don't women value us? It's like, you don't value women, Like it's very clear dynamic, Like you're the man. You're supposed to lay down your life for her, as Christ lays down his life for the church. You're supposed to do all these things. You

don't want to do all those things. Men have fundamentally ran away from the responsibility of martyrdom. And then in the process, women are like, well, I can't trust men because they don't love me more than they love themselves. And then men are like, well, we're not the problem. It's like, clearly, if we are the head of the culture, yes we are the problem, and we don't seem to be creating a culture where it's even normal for men

to hold each other accountable. Look at all them them manosphere man influencer guys, Like what is what is the product that they're selling? Like the product that they're selling is like, look at the biggest guys Dan bil'sarian I would say, Wes Watson is fairly big. The fit and fresh guys, I don't know what their names are, Andrew Tate and his brother, and the other guy who wears the tiny suits and whatever else, all those guys. Right, you look at all those guys and cumulatively they're What

they're selling is basically the exploitation of women. Become an uber male and then sexually exploit as many women as you can.

He even says that he built his empire because I watched some of these quotes taking women who were quote unquote in love with him and then basically pimping them out to other men through chat rooms in order to create revenue. Like, that's a pimp. That's not a man like that, that's not a man.

I know we're out of time now, but it's like guy will string a woman along for he'll have an entire life in a family with her ten years and three kids, and they're still not married, and he gives her a shut up ring or something, you know, at the ten year mark, but he still won't commit to her. And it's like, you got to stop dating and having families with someone who doesn't even love you or want to have you at their wife.

my spiritual sons. They have a very clear understanding that in order to be in good standing with the church, I need to live a pure life, and they're committed to that, and that our goal is to marry women and to have families. And I think women forget that they can't hold men accountable. It's just the wrong dynamic. That energy doesn't work, and so women are trying to like in a sense, they're trying to like, I don't know, bridal kind of like unbridled men, and it doesn't work right.

So if a woman was saying, where's the number one place that you would look for a husband, I'd be like, go to an Orthodox church, because all of your concerns about men are that you can't trust him, And it's the number one place where men are actually dealing with those things that are untrustworthy about themselves and they're being

held accountable by another man. And so the dynamics there within the society of the church create healthy marriages because the wife knows that the husband has accountability with the spiritual father who is guiding and directing them, and a whole holding the man to a higher standard that he

would not necessarily normally hold himself to. So that is the one way in which I think in all of these things that the actual practicality of living in the church is what plays itself out to create healthy dynamics and healthy marriages because all of what you need is there to create a healthy marriage, which it takes more than just the two of you, right, You need somebody who's a confessor, You need somebody you go to confession with.

You need somebody who's basically a coach for your marriage and helps the two of you out, which is the role of the spiritual father. Like, you actually need those things to create a healthy marriage and a healthy dynamic.

of dating is courtship towards marriage. And not only that, you know, we have standards Like for my guys, you know, I'm very clear, like you know, don't be kissing before marriage. Never seen anything good come of it, you know, So I actually, you know, it's it's for a guy to hear that from an older man that they respect, who says, listen, like I understand everything you're going through, but just don't do these things because they're going to lead you in

the wrong way. It's so much easier for a man who's in his twenties to listen to me. And because we have a relationship, they know I love them, they know I want the best for them, and I care about them. I'm a fatherly figure to them. They see my own life, they see my own marriage, they see

my children. All of those dynamics is like they can get on board with it because they know where they want to go and they understand that I want to help lead them there, and so they're able to follow that direction and instruction and in the process they end up you know, you create these guys that are they're a phenomenal catch for women. You know, I have a few guys in my church. I'm like, these guys are

great catches for women, you know what I mean. I'm like, they're handsome, they're in shape, they take care of themselves, they take care of their spiritual life. They're responsible, they come to the services and pray, they go to confession regularly, you know, all of these different dynamics. I'm like, this is a this is the type of guy that you can have a whole family with and have a really wonderful, beautiful life with. You're not going to find that in

guys outside of the church. It's just not going to happen. All this nonsense about high value, like in all the ways in which our society defind side values. Whether I don't care who it is, from Pearl to whoever else, it's all nonsense. It's it's like ninety percent of his financial It's like that is not it. That is not what makes someone high value exactly. Yeah, character and love and all the other things attentiveness.

only certain way. I don't know, it's just it's so strange, like it's you know, like it's it's weird.

that have nothing to do with Christ. You could literally take Christ out of their orthodoxy and they would remain the same because they're not actually worshiping the God Man Jesus Christ. They don't really have love for Christ. They have love for this mutilated religion that they've created that they think is Orthodoxy. That's not Orthodoxy at all. Orthodoxy is the worship and the love of the Holy Trinity. And that's why these people don't talk about the Trinity.

They don't talk about Christ, they don't talk about the Incarnation. They constantly talk about race, interracial marriages, nationalism, inferiority of women, whatever else. It's just it has nothing to do with what we're living in the Orthodox Church in a life of repentance. It's completely divorced from that. They're just looking for something that is is some kind of based religion, which is not what Orthodoxy it is at all.