Jane Eyre is such good example. This also makes me think a bit of Jane Austen's Sense & Sensibility, which is in part about the dangers of being carried away by passion, untempered by virtue or reason (or just plain common sense).
I had a visceral reaction to the original article, so this was such a breath of fresh air.
“There are many reasons for the modern divorce rate, but the idea that women should be allowed emotional free rein and that men should love them for it is surely one of them.” +100
While we were still dating, my now-husband pointed out that my default mode of requesting attention and care from others was putting myself into crises.
He asked me, “Do you think people would love you less if you weren’t bleeding?”
I hadn’t noticed it before, but he was dead on— from getting drunk, to getting stranded on a bike during a storm, to playing up an old boyfriend’s anger issues to have the guy I was actually interested come save me (neither of whom I ended up marrying, thank God), my whole life was a series of manufactured emergencies designed to solidify my relationships by having my friends and love interests swoop in and rescue me. Rinse and repeat.
Without ever really examining why I did these things, I assumed it was my right as a woman to be a Goshdurned Beautiful Disaster™️, and that this somehow endeared me to other people.
The “desirable” paradigm as prescribed in the original article makes you utterly useless to anyone. Even if you did actually give a man a sense of purpose — congratulations, you have “helped” one person by being a thorn in his side, I guess.
I’m grateful that my emotional experience is no longer my god (at least to the degree it was), and that I can put down all the strings I was pulling to make people love me. The original article was a nasty reminder of what my life looked like before Christ redeemed that broken part of me; your article was a reminder that there is a better way.
Thank you so much for sharing! That sounds a lot like me in my early twenties, and thank God I also had a boyfriend at the time who similarly pointed out my continual self-sabotage. I would do things like tell new acquaintances the worst stories about myself, or get belligerently drunk at important events, and he would get frustrated with me for embarrassing him constantly. He asked me why I always blurted out these insane self-directed potshots to people who didn't even know me, and pointed out that at the moment when I had an opportunity to start fresh and with my best foot forward, I instead put my foot in my mouth. I will never cease being grateful for him because he really helped me to change. Years after we broke up I am still improving as I think back over our conversations.
This is great and ALSO the original piece has never made sense to me because the entire point of the story is that David marrying Dora was a mistake, one that he regrets almost immediately. He then goes onto marry Agnes, who is the true love of his life.
These are the last words of David Copperfield: "And now, as I close my task, subduing my desire to linger yet, these faces fade away. But one face, shining on me like a Heavenly light by which I see all other objects, is above them and beyond them all. And that remains. I turn my head, and see it, in its beautiful serenity, beside me. My lamp burns low, and I have written far into the night; but the dear presence, without which I were nothing, bears me company. O Agnes, O my soul, so may thy face be by me when I close my life indeed; so may I, when realities are melting from me, like the shadows which I now dismiss, still find thee near me, pointing upward."
How does the author of the original piece reconcile that with her claim that Dora is adored and Agnes is "settled for"? I fear her entire premise is based on a misapprehension.
Yes! Did he settle or did he rightly recalibrate his desires? We need to talk about training the affections. That's why Solomon wrote Proverbs warning young men to simply stay! away! from the strange woman. She lures you in by appealing to misdirected desire. Solomon's solution isn't a complete numbing of desire, but the redirection of it. He tells his son to "be intoxicated always" by his lovely wife. Same guy wrote Song of Songs. I really don't think "intoxicating" and "settled for" are anywhere near each other in the spectrum of desire. Turns out you can adore and settle down with the same woman. The properly ordered soul acquires a settled disposition to adore a good woman.
Thank you so much for this. I felt quite disturbed after reading the original article and couldn't articulate why...but its emphasis on passion was drastically misplaced. Reading your article is like a soothing restorative balm to the mind! Thank you for laying this out so clearly. The point about the dragon-slaying is an excellent metaphor. (I am also a mad fan of Jane Eyre for doing what she knew to be right even when her beloved -- and even her own heart -- was pleading otherwise.)
It happened to me. I was fiercely in love with a guy named Sam, who was my best friend and also liked me, handsome, brave, a transgressor, rule-breaker. I was attracted to him because I was a dumb, innocent teenager that felt trapped by my parents "conservative" culture (at home), he felt like a breath of fresh air. My parents liked him, and my mom, especially, said I was stupid for not dating him, but I knew something wasn't right. However, he was highly temperamental, rude, over-sexual and a huge misogynistic, overall (not in the feminist sense, but in the common sense - a cheater who hates women but loves sex). He said he wanted me to be his girlfriend, when I was going to accept it, I was infatuated with someone else, Matheus, my now husband. Matheus was kind, gentle, brave in a good manner, kind of conservative, and chaste, denied my sexual advances a bunch of times because he knew it was too soon, always said to me that he wanted to have children, get married and have a loving family. I didn't like him at all, wasn't passionate in any angle, but I liked his character, and saw that he was a virtuous man. So I started dating him when he asked. He was a truly hardworking boy, was up at 4 am to go to work, and would go to bed by 11 pm after school, all of it, while being obligated to deal with an borderline insane girlfriend (me). He said the same thing this article wants to talk about, "I'm enchanted by your beauty and intellect, however, if you keep pissing me off and making my (already) troubled life harder, I'm going to find someone else." Well, he was right. I changed, and with 2 years of dating we got married. We are 1 year married and have a lovely son, Liam!
And the other guy, Sam, well... He's drowning in debt, living with his parents at 22 (he doesn't like working), and just by looking at the pictures of his girlfriend, I can see she's suffering. She used to look sweet and kind, now she has a dark gaze, angry voice and expressions. He also said to me that he had friends who were drug addicts... Well, seems like a made a good choice.
I'm very glad I found this article. The other made me feel a bit strange. It felt a little bit true, but not entirely, and disoriented me. Thank you for shining a light on it.
The scene in Jane Eyre where she says laws and principles were made for moments of weakness and passion, must be inviolate, and "here I plant my foot" has stuck with me for at least 20 years.
I can't wait to reread Jane Eyre. Compromise in relationships is hard to avoid, and Jane's firm voice of conviction and determination is so moving and inspiring.
Very interesting piece. The idea of 'psychomachia' has a very long history in (English) literature, leading to the celebration of the passions over reason in the 18th century (much mocked by Jane Austen). I've been planning to write about this in detail and your great piece here might just give me the impetus I need.
I look forward to reading your piece when it comes out! My knowledge of the literary history of psychomachia definitely pales in comparison to that of anyone who's studied it at length.
I had some fairly similar thoughts when I read the original piece, but a slightly less negative reaction. In my experience, there are 3 components that make any relationship (romantic or otherwise) work, and relationships require at least 2 of them to stably function: a shared honor system, positive feelings (in this case passion), and shared loves. By that last point, I don't mean love for each other, I mean a shared love for something outside the relationship. The easiest way to be loved, is to sacrificially love the things that someone else loves. This is an element that gets comepletely lost in most dating advice. There is more to a relationship than what is in the relationship.
I agree! Positive feelings are critical for the health of a relationship—fortunately, virtue helps us train our affections so that positive feelings can be maintained long after passion has, inevitably, withered. I strongly back your last point and would submit that virtue also helps us foment love for what our partners love despite our natural disinclinations. I surmise that this is lost in dating advice because dating isn't a good time to conform your will to that of your partner, whereas in marriage that's required. In dating, which is the pick-and-choose process, I might ask myself, "Why go out of my way to love [hobby my dating partner loves] if instead I could move on to a more compatible dating partner who has the same interests as me?" It's a fundamentally selfish process, as it should be if you're in charge of picking the person you'll be with until death do you part. Why not be picky? Why settle? There are always more fish in the sea. I completely agree with your point, but I think we first need to confront the reality that there is no perfect match, and if someone is just looking to marry his/her clone then we might need to have a different conversation. Sounds basic, but I'm always baffled to discover yet another young person who has yet to grasp that reality. Only once it's clear that no amount of dating app swiping/relationship tourism will result in a total 1:1 can we proceed. Having established that our will not always love exactly what we do, we can now discuss the non-negotiables (if unmarried) and, later, move toward loving what the other loves (in marriage).
I much agree with your inclinations, perhaps best summed up by your response to Kelly Garrison's comment ("Yes! Did he settle or did he rightly recalibrate his desires? We need to talk about training the affections. That's why Solomon..."). I also have the impression that your critique of Lillywhite's post is more an expansion than a refutation. Lillywhite did not stipulate that the childishness and other emotionality of the characters was the reason for their attractiveness, but their openness and vulnerability. Also, your attention to dragon slaying can be seen as affirmation of Lillywhite's argument that a man need to feel heroic. From a high level, I can see where the two views blend quite well...at least when you get rid of materialism as a primary cause of the current dysfunction.
Jane Eyre is such good example. This also makes me think a bit of Jane Austen's Sense & Sensibility, which is in part about the dangers of being carried away by passion, untempered by virtue or reason (or just plain common sense).
Oh that's a good one!! Need to reread!
Thank you so much for this — it’s so well articulated, and I love that you pull from Scripture and Aristotle and Jane Eyre!!
Thank you for your kind words! 🥹 I'm working on a follow-up piece to keep fleshing out the problem of passion—stay tuned!
love the aquinas and randall smith.
my best-kept secret: being a Reformed Prot
how I keep it: loving Catholics
Amen, amen; verily, verily
I had a visceral reaction to the original article, so this was such a breath of fresh air.
“There are many reasons for the modern divorce rate, but the idea that women should be allowed emotional free rein and that men should love them for it is surely one of them.” +100
While we were still dating, my now-husband pointed out that my default mode of requesting attention and care from others was putting myself into crises.
He asked me, “Do you think people would love you less if you weren’t bleeding?”
I hadn’t noticed it before, but he was dead on— from getting drunk, to getting stranded on a bike during a storm, to playing up an old boyfriend’s anger issues to have the guy I was actually interested come save me (neither of whom I ended up marrying, thank God), my whole life was a series of manufactured emergencies designed to solidify my relationships by having my friends and love interests swoop in and rescue me. Rinse and repeat.
Without ever really examining why I did these things, I assumed it was my right as a woman to be a Goshdurned Beautiful Disaster™️, and that this somehow endeared me to other people.
The “desirable” paradigm as prescribed in the original article makes you utterly useless to anyone. Even if you did actually give a man a sense of purpose — congratulations, you have “helped” one person by being a thorn in his side, I guess.
I’m grateful that my emotional experience is no longer my god (at least to the degree it was), and that I can put down all the strings I was pulling to make people love me. The original article was a nasty reminder of what my life looked like before Christ redeemed that broken part of me; your article was a reminder that there is a better way.
Thank you so much for sharing! That sounds a lot like me in my early twenties, and thank God I also had a boyfriend at the time who similarly pointed out my continual self-sabotage. I would do things like tell new acquaintances the worst stories about myself, or get belligerently drunk at important events, and he would get frustrated with me for embarrassing him constantly. He asked me why I always blurted out these insane self-directed potshots to people who didn't even know me, and pointed out that at the moment when I had an opportunity to start fresh and with my best foot forward, I instead put my foot in my mouth. I will never cease being grateful for him because he really helped me to change. Years after we broke up I am still improving as I think back over our conversations.
This is great and ALSO the original piece has never made sense to me because the entire point of the story is that David marrying Dora was a mistake, one that he regrets almost immediately. He then goes onto marry Agnes, who is the true love of his life.
These are the last words of David Copperfield: "And now, as I close my task, subduing my desire to linger yet, these faces fade away. But one face, shining on me like a Heavenly light by which I see all other objects, is above them and beyond them all. And that remains. I turn my head, and see it, in its beautiful serenity, beside me. My lamp burns low, and I have written far into the night; but the dear presence, without which I were nothing, bears me company. O Agnes, O my soul, so may thy face be by me when I close my life indeed; so may I, when realities are melting from me, like the shadows which I now dismiss, still find thee near me, pointing upward."
How does the author of the original piece reconcile that with her claim that Dora is adored and Agnes is "settled for"? I fear her entire premise is based on a misapprehension.
Yes! Did he settle or did he rightly recalibrate his desires? We need to talk about training the affections. That's why Solomon wrote Proverbs warning young men to simply stay! away! from the strange woman. She lures you in by appealing to misdirected desire. Solomon's solution isn't a complete numbing of desire, but the redirection of it. He tells his son to "be intoxicated always" by his lovely wife. Same guy wrote Song of Songs. I really don't think "intoxicating" and "settled for" are anywhere near each other in the spectrum of desire. Turns out you can adore and settle down with the same woman. The properly ordered soul acquires a settled disposition to adore a good woman.
Yes!! You’re so right, it’s the proper ordering of our desires that is crucial here!
And thank you for adding this quotation from the book! Dickens has a mighty way of bringing tears to my eyes.
This is awesome. You are an author for Christ, standing up for Him when many stand down. I salute you🫡.
Thank you so much for this. I felt quite disturbed after reading the original article and couldn't articulate why...but its emphasis on passion was drastically misplaced. Reading your article is like a soothing restorative balm to the mind! Thank you for laying this out so clearly. The point about the dragon-slaying is an excellent metaphor. (I am also a mad fan of Jane Eyre for doing what she knew to be right even when her beloved -- and even her own heart -- was pleading otherwise.)
It happened to me. I was fiercely in love with a guy named Sam, who was my best friend and also liked me, handsome, brave, a transgressor, rule-breaker. I was attracted to him because I was a dumb, innocent teenager that felt trapped by my parents "conservative" culture (at home), he felt like a breath of fresh air. My parents liked him, and my mom, especially, said I was stupid for not dating him, but I knew something wasn't right. However, he was highly temperamental, rude, over-sexual and a huge misogynistic, overall (not in the feminist sense, but in the common sense - a cheater who hates women but loves sex). He said he wanted me to be his girlfriend, when I was going to accept it, I was infatuated with someone else, Matheus, my now husband. Matheus was kind, gentle, brave in a good manner, kind of conservative, and chaste, denied my sexual advances a bunch of times because he knew it was too soon, always said to me that he wanted to have children, get married and have a loving family. I didn't like him at all, wasn't passionate in any angle, but I liked his character, and saw that he was a virtuous man. So I started dating him when he asked. He was a truly hardworking boy, was up at 4 am to go to work, and would go to bed by 11 pm after school, all of it, while being obligated to deal with an borderline insane girlfriend (me). He said the same thing this article wants to talk about, "I'm enchanted by your beauty and intellect, however, if you keep pissing me off and making my (already) troubled life harder, I'm going to find someone else." Well, he was right. I changed, and with 2 years of dating we got married. We are 1 year married and have a lovely son, Liam!
And the other guy, Sam, well... He's drowning in debt, living with his parents at 22 (he doesn't like working), and just by looking at the pictures of his girlfriend, I can see she's suffering. She used to look sweet and kind, now she has a dark gaze, angry voice and expressions. He also said to me that he had friends who were drug addicts... Well, seems like a made a good choice.
I'm very glad I found this article. The other made me feel a bit strange. It felt a little bit true, but not entirely, and disoriented me. Thank you for shining a light on it.
The scene in Jane Eyre where she says laws and principles were made for moments of weakness and passion, must be inviolate, and "here I plant my foot" has stuck with me for at least 20 years.
I can't wait to reread Jane Eyre. Compromise in relationships is hard to avoid, and Jane's firm voice of conviction and determination is so moving and inspiring.
Megha's article didn't quite sit right with me, either, and now I know why. Also, you're spot on with Jane Eyre. Thank you for writing this!
Thank you, Elissa!
Very interesting piece. The idea of 'psychomachia' has a very long history in (English) literature, leading to the celebration of the passions over reason in the 18th century (much mocked by Jane Austen). I've been planning to write about this in detail and your great piece here might just give me the impetus I need.
I look forward to reading your piece when it comes out! My knowledge of the literary history of psychomachia definitely pales in comparison to that of anyone who's studied it at length.
Love this, love the sources, love the thoughts. All of it. Thank you for writing this!!
Thank you!!
I had some fairly similar thoughts when I read the original piece, but a slightly less negative reaction. In my experience, there are 3 components that make any relationship (romantic or otherwise) work, and relationships require at least 2 of them to stably function: a shared honor system, positive feelings (in this case passion), and shared loves. By that last point, I don't mean love for each other, I mean a shared love for something outside the relationship. The easiest way to be loved, is to sacrificially love the things that someone else loves. This is an element that gets comepletely lost in most dating advice. There is more to a relationship than what is in the relationship.
I agree! Positive feelings are critical for the health of a relationship—fortunately, virtue helps us train our affections so that positive feelings can be maintained long after passion has, inevitably, withered. I strongly back your last point and would submit that virtue also helps us foment love for what our partners love despite our natural disinclinations. I surmise that this is lost in dating advice because dating isn't a good time to conform your will to that of your partner, whereas in marriage that's required. In dating, which is the pick-and-choose process, I might ask myself, "Why go out of my way to love [hobby my dating partner loves] if instead I could move on to a more compatible dating partner who has the same interests as me?" It's a fundamentally selfish process, as it should be if you're in charge of picking the person you'll be with until death do you part. Why not be picky? Why settle? There are always more fish in the sea. I completely agree with your point, but I think we first need to confront the reality that there is no perfect match, and if someone is just looking to marry his/her clone then we might need to have a different conversation. Sounds basic, but I'm always baffled to discover yet another young person who has yet to grasp that reality. Only once it's clear that no amount of dating app swiping/relationship tourism will result in a total 1:1 can we proceed. Having established that our will not always love exactly what we do, we can now discuss the non-negotiables (if unmarried) and, later, move toward loving what the other loves (in marriage).
Yes! Thank you
I much agree with your inclinations, perhaps best summed up by your response to Kelly Garrison's comment ("Yes! Did he settle or did he rightly recalibrate his desires? We need to talk about training the affections. That's why Solomon..."). I also have the impression that your critique of Lillywhite's post is more an expansion than a refutation. Lillywhite did not stipulate that the childishness and other emotionality of the characters was the reason for their attractiveness, but their openness and vulnerability. Also, your attention to dragon slaying can be seen as affirmation of Lillywhite's argument that a man need to feel heroic. From a high level, I can see where the two views blend quite well...at least when you get rid of materialism as a primary cause of the current dysfunction.