Young Man,
It has been a while since I have written a letter to you. The demands of life and new responsibilities have kept me from it. I have also been mulling over the topics that need to be covered. I don’t want to become too repetitive, but the principles through these letters necessarily overlap. So, I have been mulling over what characteristic of masculinity needs to be emphasized in this letter, and I have settled on the masculine burden of performance. There are always gaps and questions left unanswered because you can think of many “but” and “what if” exceptions and questions. I can’t answer all those questions in a book much less this short letter. I won’t even try. Indeed, I am still working on understanding and formulating my thoughts. Writing helps me to do that and, hopefully, think more about these issues and cultivate your masculinity.
The masculine burden of performance is the necessity to continue to perform and grow in your masculine responsibilities, which will, under healthy circumstances, help you remain attractive to women in general or your wife in particular. The phrase “burden of performance” floats around in the manosphere. I don’t know who coined it, but Rollo Tomassi has much to say about it on his blog and in his books. I touched upon it some in my letter to you regarding respect. This needs to be developed because, quite frankly, living in a culture that is primarily feminine in its perspective, men don’t understand why they can’t just be “accepted for who they are” without some type of performance-shaming, which hurts their feelings. (I’ll explain why this is feminine in a moment.) Men shouldn’t have to perform and achieve to be respected. “I just want to be me” is usually code-speak for, “I don’t want to work for your respect. I want your respect (love) just because I exist.” We should be attractive to women just as they are attractive to us: just for being. Women may have some form of affection toward you as a non-achieving man, but it will be the same type of pity that she has for those abandoned dogs she sees on commercials, not the love a man desires: respect that contributes to her desiring you sexually.
Women don’t have the same burden of performance men have. This isn’t whining, nor is it being condescending to women or saying that women have no responsibilities. It is a recognition of the created differences between men and women and the sexual dynamics between us. Men are created with a unique burden of performance. The man is responsible for the mission of the world. God appointed him to guard and keep the garden. Sin entered the world and the whole human race fell into sin through the man, not through the woman (Rom 5.12). The woman is called to be a faithful helper of the man, but the man owns the primary responsibility for the mission.
These differences affect our intersexual dynamics because they are a part of who we are and what God expects of us as men and women. One aspect of the difference between us is captured by some in the phrase, “Women are. Men become,” a phrase used even by lesbian first-wave feminist Camille Paglia (who, quite frankly, has many good things to say because she still understands that there is such a thing as men and women). To be sexually attractive to a man, women just have to be. God has given them pretty much everything they need for initial attraction. Even transitioning into womanhood is effortless and clearly defined; womanhood is granted. When a female begins her menstrual cycle (“gets her period”), she is considered to be a woman. Womanhood is defined by her natural biological progression. This is not to say that women have no responsibility at all to cultivate their womanhood. Women have the responsibility to add character to their physical attractiveness so that their beauty is more than skin deep (1Pt 3.3-4). It is this character that will cause her husband to cherish her even when her physical attractiveness fades (Prov 31.30; “beauty is vapor” not “vain;” it appears for a time and vanishes away; see Jms 4.14; this is the “everything is vapor” theme that Solomon picks up in Ecclesiastes). Womanhood is given, but it must be cultivated, developed, and maintained. In some respects, women have it easier the younger they are and more difficult as they grow older, which is the opposite of men, especially in terms of attraction. Women tend to be more attractive to men physically early in life (their twenties), and men to be more attractive as they get older (their thirties) because of their achievements. (Remember, we are attracted to one another for different reasons.) Women don’t have to achieve anything in the beginning to be attractive to a man or even to be a woman. They just pass right into it naturally, and everyone acknowledges it.
We can understand this with the principle of “different glories for different bodies” that Paul talks about in 1Corinthians 15. There is one glory of the sun and another of the moon; there is one glory of the woman and another glory of the man. Women are given a glory early that must then be cultivated and men must wait for their glory. Man’s glory is only granted after a process of death and resurrection. This fits with the order and manner of our creation. The woman is the glory of the man (1Cor 11.7), but he must endure death (“sleep” and being ripped in half) to receive this glory. The woman is created as the glory of the man. She is the glory of the man in her given createdness. As with any gift of glory (responsibility, beauty, rule) God grants, there is a corresponding responsibility to be a good steward and cultivate it. She is created as the glory of the man in order to give glory to the man. The woman must cultivate this glory throughout her life as she and her glory move through life’s changes, the old glory passing away (vapor) and moving into new expressions of glory. But even in this cultivation, the man bears responsibility for the cultivation of his glory, the woman. The woman is created as part of the garden and, therefore, his responsibility to guard and work. He has the responsibility to cultivate her glory because she is his glory. She must be a “responsive soil” and play her part, fulfilling her God-given responsibilities. But in Ephesians 5, Paul places the sanctification–the beautification–of the wife upon the husband, looking back to those original garden commands. Working with a faithful husband, she must receive the gifts given to her by her husband and cultivate her given glory. However, she begins with a gift of womanhood without achievement.
(It can be tempting to get into binary thinking when dealing with the responsibilities of men and women. When some hear that the man has responsibility for the cultivation of the woman’s glory, they interpret that as, “If anything goes wrong with the woman, it is the man’s fault. She bears no responsibility.” Others, knowing that the woman is also a morally responsible agent will go to the opposite extreme: she bears all of the responsibility. This type of hardline binary thinking in human relationships is almost always wrong. The man is responsible to be the man and give to the woman everything that she needs to cultivate her femininity. The woman is responsible to receive the gifts from the man humbly and gratefully. She is to take what the man gives her, glorify it, and give it back to the man for his glory. Think of this in terms of conception and birth. The man plays his part and gives the gift of seed to the woman. She gratefully receives the seed, nurtures it through gestation, and then gives birth to a child, increasing the man’s (as well as her own) glory. The woman is responsible to be the woman God created and commanded her to be in response to the man. If she is rebellious toward the man and his gifts, she is responsible for her sin. If the man is rebellious with regard to his responsibilities, he is responsible for his sin. When either the man or the woman refuses to take responsibility, the other is always hurt in the relationship. Now, back to the main thought…)
The lines of manhood aren’t so clearly defined for the man. In contrast to the created glory of the woman, the glory of young men is their strength, and the glory of old men is their grey head (Pr 20.29). Both of these are achieved over time. Yes, a man’s looks may be initially eye-catching to a woman, but he must perform or achieve to attract or increase that attraction. Women are attracted to men they perceive to be high value, and high-value men are achievers in some form or fashion. Women are attracted to men that other men respect (which comes through achievement, who have proven themselves) and other women desire. We are not attractive for just “being.” Two guys can be equally physically attractive, but if one is the quarterback of the football team and the other an under-achieving video gamer, take a guess who will be most attractive to the ladies.
Unlike women, our manhood is not closely joined to our biological progression. The transition into manhood has been different from culture to culture throughout history, many cultures having rites of passage. But one thing is consistent: puberty is not the entrance into manhood. Males are seen as awkward, horny boys. Manhood is not given. It is achieved. The man must endure a test of some sort, be approved by other men, and then accepted into the fraternity of manhood. (Unfortunately, these cultural rites of passage have been lost in Western Culture. Families may have these rites of passage, but they are not consistent throughout our culture.) To be attractive to a woman and to sustain that attraction, a man must perform. He must prove himself to the woman, satisfying her hypergamous desire that the man to whom she will commit herself is “above” her and can provide for and protect her. He must satisfy her hypergamous question, “Is this the best that I can do?” Men create value in the eyes of women through achievement and, with it, respect. As I have mentioned before, when we lose our physical prowess, the wisdom or other strengths that we have gained through the years (for example, financial success, notoriety, wisdom) keep us a “high-value man.”
As you might guess, these truths can be teased out of God’s original creation. God created the man and gave him a mission of dominion. He is working before the woman comes along. There is no praise for the man for what he has done yet. He hasn’t accomplished anything yet worthy of praise. However, when God creates the woman, the man awakens and the first words of a man recorded in Scripture are poetic praise of the woman. The woman just appeared, and the man broke into song. The woman in her sexual agency just is, and that is her primary power with a man.
Quite frankly, a woman only has to take off her clothes and let you know that she is available to gain power over most men. Consider Harlot Folly in Proverbs. She is a perversion of this power, but she is perverting the power God gave her. She doesn’t show the young man all of the things that she has achieved to draw him in (the opposite of Lady Wisdom, who has prepared the house for a feast). She is “dressed as a harlot” (Pr 7.10), indicating through eye appeal that she is inviting sexual advances. She aggressively kisses him (Pr 7.13). She talks to him about the place where they can have sex (Pr 7.16ff.). She can capture the young man with her eyes (Pr 6.25). Harlot Folly continues misusing female power today through pornography, earning money through “Only Fans” pages, and, many times, taking off all of her clothes to make political statements. (Many links could be provided for all of these, but, for obvious reasons, I won’t link them.) Women are, and the sexual agency that they have naturally, especially in their youth, is their primary power with men.
Men, on the other hand, must “man up,” which means that they must be strong and perform. There is no equivalent common phrase for women. When people say “woman up,” it just comes off awkward and silly because we know it doesn’t fit. Men become. Men can’t merely take off all of their clothes and have the same power over women. Generally, men like this are the idiots who streak at ball games for a good laugh (and probably because they were dared or lost a bet). Men must prepare fields outside, establishing that we can provide, and then we can build a house with a woman (Pr 24.27). Men are expected to perform if they are going to be respected and attractive.
Women despise weakness in their men, some because it stirs up latent fear that she is left vulnerable and, related, because she is now thinking, “This is not the best that I can do.” Women will mock men’s pain (unless it is a mother with a son), comparing it to their own in menstruation or child-birth; “Men are such whiners. If you had to go through a period or childbirth….” They will make fun of us because of our “man colds.” Granted some men deserve to be made fun of because they are being wimps, but it is true that viruses do affect men more severely than women due to our differences (cold and flu viruses are different in men and women; COVID-19 disproportionately harms men more than women, even killing more men than women). Many times, there is not a lot of sympathy from women (or from other men!) because men are expected to be strong and perform. A woman needs a strong man, and her man’s weakness, his lack of performance, is a threat to those needs being met.
Your weakness says something about her. As I mentioned in another letter, self-deprecation, embracing and praising your weakness, tells women that you are not high value. If you are married, your wife takes it as an insult. This was expressed in an episode of Duck Dynasty when Jase lost his wedding band. As he and his wife, Missy, were shopping for a new one, she wanted Jase to get a flashy wedding band that said, “Stay away. I’m married.” Jase said something to the effect of, “There are only about twelve women who would look at me and say, ‘That’s worth a shot.’ They are probably all in prison.” Missy responded, “What does that say about me?” You insult her by not being a high-value man, a man that many other women would want.
Men show high value through the display of some type of accomplishment. The PUA (Pick Up Artist) community understands this principle of portraying having achieved high value but, like Harlot Folly, twists this power. They take cheap short-cuts to sexually attract women through “peacocking.” Much of their peacocking is juvenile and silly to us, but they dress in very flamboyant ways to demonstrate some type of value. Because it is cheap and superficial, because they are “empty suits,” not able to sustain a truly manly performance that achieves anything substantive, their relationships are unhealthy and fizzle. But again, to some women–some of them very attractive–they display some type of value, looking the part … at least for a while. Nevertheless, they have hit on something that attracts women, and it is something that is proven time and again. Men who demonstrate status or who are accomplished in some fashion are more attractive to women. Many rock stars have groupies, women who hope that they will choose them, and they will use their sexual agency hoping to secure the prize. High power men in society attract women. Even pastors and other high-profile teachers in the church can have women throwing themselves at them. Stories abound like this.
Aaron Renn talks about this aspect of the attraction phenomenon in his newsletter The Basis of Attraction. He charts the different ages in which women and men are most attracted to one another in his newsletter The Truth About Online Dating. It is consistently proven true that men become more attractive to women as they grow older, the peak being somewhere in their mid-thirties. This is the time when they are the most established and have at least begun to accomplish some of their financial or status success. If you are going to sustain attraction from a woman, you must bear up under this burden of performance and command respect through what you do.
The burden of performance can’t merely be “a performance;” that is, it can’t be an act. This is not something you put on for a while to “get the girl” or, if you’re married, “get sex.” If you consider the burden of performance a technique so that you relax once you achieve the immediate goal, then the relationship will not be sustained in a good and healthy way. This performance must become who you are. It may begin by doing things that “aren’t you,” which means that you are not comfortable with them or you want to remain slothful and not do what you ought to be doing. But as with all changes that must take place in mind and body, you discipline yourself to do what you should do, and then you become what you are supposed to be. You change the way you think and act by the way you discipline your mind and body.
This performance is nothing more than what God has called you to do in fulfilling your masculine vocation in dominion, your mission: work and make the world fruitful. This performance is your masculine responsibility. You must not only fulfill these responsibilities, but they must also become what you love. The burden of performance is not a technique. This is who you are.
When done right, there is a beautiful synergy between a woman’s hypergamy and a man’s burden of performance. We need one another, and these characteristics of male and female move us to complete one another and the mission God gave us. Hypergamy drives men to perform to maintain desire from women in general and his wife in particular. When the man performs, the woman is drawn to him to complete his mission. It is a dance with the man in the lead. This synergy can’t be achieved by “reason.” As a man, you can’t talk a woman into a good relationship with you, laying out all of your qualifications. Some confident talk about yourself may help. But in the end, you must do in order to make her feel, and because she prioritizes emotion over rationality (see the previous letter about the differences in the way men and women think), she is looking to feel something.
Conversely, when she perceives you as weak, whether physically, emotionally, or psychologically (you lack courage, determination, mental stamina, etc.), you lose respect (not the every-once-in-a-while bad day, but a sustained, characteristic weakness). One way this expresses itself is being “needy.” We have needs, and those needs are well known to women. We have a need for food. We must eat to live. But food must not become our master, an idol from which we seek life. We have a need for sex. We don’t need sex like we need food, but our drive for sex is sometimes as strong (stronger?) than our drive for food. But we must not be mastered by our desire. That is the way you fall to temptation when Harlot Folly comes around. We have needs, but women who can manipulate you through your needs will, in the end, not respect you because you are weak. You must master your needs so that you cannot be manipulated by Harlot Folly’s temptations or your wife threatening to withhold sex because she is angry with you or testing you to see if you have your stuff together. You still have the need, to be sure, but becoming “needy” is pitiful and weak. You are like a city broken into and left without walls (Pr 25.28). Being mastered by your appetites so that you will resort to any kind of action to satisfy them is neediness that is weakness. When you are in a healthy relationship with your wife, when she is seeking to be a godly wife, she will know your needs and want to meet them; whether it is fixing a sandwich or having sex. When you are being a man for her, she will be happy to help you in any way that she can.
Don’t think that these intersexual dynamics operate formulaically or mechanically. There are times that you will be all that you are supposed to be as a man and your wife will not do these things for you because she is in rebellion. Yahweh was the perfect husband to Israel, and Israel was an unfaithful whore (see, for example, Ezekiel 16). As men, we certainly have the responsibility to perform in our masculinity so that she has no excuse not to respond to us positively, but, again, it is not automatic. Both the man and woman have responsibilities.
I can’t caveat and balance everything that I am saying here, but I do want to give you some caution. We must be careful here not to think that we will lose attractiveness to our wives if something happens to us physically that we can’t control. There are certainly many women out there who, at the first sign of weakness in their men, ditch them to go find another. This is hypergamy gone wild. Rollo goes through a whole list of “hypergamy doesn’t care” that characterizes many women. Covenant commitment reins in hypergamy so that she must be committed for richer or poorer and in sickness or in health. This is good. (The same is true for man’s desires, especially when he becomes attractive through his performance and is tempted by other women.) The covenant of marriage puts boundaries on how a woman tries to satisfy her hypergamy, but it doesn’t eliminate her hypergamous impulses, nor should it. She expects her man to be strong. Even if he endures some physical disabilities, for example, he needs to remain mentally tough. Think of the military men who have come back from battle with missing limbs, yet their wives remain with them. They have earned respect and, many of them, remain or at least get to the place in which they are mentally tough.
You have a burden to carry as a man, sometimes it seems heavy and at other times it seems lighter, but it is always a burden. You must continue to grow in your masculine prowess, whether that is in intellect, strength, wealth, skill, mental fortitude, or other ways, not just for attraction (though that is a benefit), but because this is a burden God has given you as a man.
For Christ’s Kingdom,
Pastor Smith
