I am not Bella Swan.

[deird1]

I read an article by Donald Miller, and now I want to hit things.


It was a two-part article, which can basically be summarised as follows:
Part 1 - "Girls! Stop being sluts and then you'll have a great love story!"
Part 2 - "Men! Get a good career, man-up, find a girl, and write her love story for her!"

(No, I am not exaggerating. At all.)


While there are a number of things I could rant about in this - such as repeated uses of "slutty", dividing people into "girls" and "men", and the implication that women should be valued entirely by how much sex they haven't had - the bit that is actually annoying me the most is this:

Be willing to suffer: What this means for you is that your love story needs to have a lot of lonely crying in it. Believe it or not, there will come a day when a man will fall madly in love with you and you will have the honor of sitting down with him one special night to explain that, while you weren’t perfect, you turned down plenty of guys and and cried yourself to sleep hoping somebody would come around and treat you with respect. He will be honored by this, and he will love you and feel humbled. If he doesn’t have the same story, he will feel intensely convicted and unworthy. You’ll really be giving him the foundation he needs to love your heart.

Uh-huh. Apparently, what makes me a desirable wife is having spent night after night sobbing into my pillow, wishing to be loved, until that glorious day when the man of my dreams strode in to take charge and write my love story, at which point I flung myself into his arms, weeping uncontrollably, and clutched at his manly arms, begging, "Never ever leave me! You will fulfil my every dream! YOU ARE THE ONE I'VE WAITED FOR!", eyes still reddened from the long sorrowful evenings of huddling into my quilt and wishing that the man who would bring my life meaning would hurry up and bring it already...

Call me crazy, but I'd think that having a fulfilling life regardless of my single status (in which writing music, learning languages, performing in plays, helping friends, going to barbecues, and babysitting nephews will be regular occurences) is much more attractive than making the highlight of my week crying myself to sleep. And even if it isn't more attractive, I'd rather do it anyway, because it's much more fun.



Dear Donald Miller,
You suck.
Sincerely, Me.
(PS - Before you decide to give the world pompous advice on the perfect marriage, maybe you'd like to wait until you've actually gotten married? Just an idea.)

Comments

[vass]

He keeps saying 'designed' and backing it up with cultural artifacts, and from one culture at that (also, he doesn't know what 'ancient' means.) I realise this guy presumably believes in Intelligent Design and everything, but how does he think human culture is evidence one way or another? Back in actual ancient times, some people sacrificed babies to Moloch, and I'm certain he doesn't think they were 'designed' to do that. If he means 'because it says so in the Bible' then he should cite the Bible, not a secondary source.