TikTok single mom has two flaws: entitlement and lack of accountability

I have been working on an article that explains some of the reasons why Christian men are declining to approach, date and marry women. My list started off with 16 reasons, and now it’s over 30! There are policy reasons, feminist culture reasons, and feminization-of-the-church reasons. So, in this post, let me talk about two reasons, which came up in a recent TikTok video that went viral.

So, two of the “feminist culture” reasons why Christian men are declining to pursue women for marriage are:

1. entitlement
2. lack of accountability

Now it’s important to say that I am not talking about ALL WOMEN when I say these things. In fact, if you go back to the 1940s, these flaws were rare. But somehow, they have become dominant today. You can see them in the movies and books that are popular with female audiences.

The TikTok below has over 100,000 comments, and over 1.5 million likes. It’s resonating with young women, and we need to see why.

The TikTok is from Shylee Allen. Her channel is @wildly_shy. It’s 5 minutes long:

Please don’t message the TikTok lady, but please do pray for Boss to help her to make excellent decisions going forward. We get the most amazing results from women who have made mistakes exactly like hers. There are many Christian women who teach other women not to make the same mistakes that they made, and that’s great.

So, there are two flaws in this video, and I want to recommend that Christian men pay attention, because you want to learn these flaws, and make sure that you do not choose to approach, date, and marry women with these flaws. There are lots of women who are anxious to serve the Lord, and they want to help a man who will lead them well. You need to focus your attention on THOSE women.

So, the first flaw in this view is entitlement.

Entitlement

An entitled person feels that they deserve to get a particular outcome, without having to merit it, because of their special privileges or victimhood. One good illustration of entitlement was Tomi Lahren on the Piers Morgan Show, insisting that “real men” give women protecting and providing, without asking for anything in return. Think of going into a store with a gift card, and not having to pay any of your own money for anything under $100. The Tomi Lahren view, and I think her view is common among church-going men and women, is that women have a gift card with unlimited dollars for use in the man store.

So, when men ask modern women “what do you bring to the table,” women today reply “I am the table”. Today, “strong, independent boss babes” demand that men pay for everything on dates, despite decrying sex differences as “sexist”. The common motto of modern women in relationships is “my money is my money, and your money is our money”. That’s what men are seeing as “entitlement”. And the shocking part is that most Christian parents of women and Christian pastors seem to agree with Tomi, that “real men” pay for everything, and women don’t have to give them anything in return, unless they feel like it.

So, in the TikTok video, the woman felt entitled to a husband who meet all her emotional needs. Since she ended two relationships, clearly she did not get her emotional needs met. So how to do succeed on the third attempt? Well, rather than feeling that getting your emotional needs met should be automatic, regardless of which man you choose, women need to test men, and choose one who can actually do the work. And not one who says he can do the work. Not one who she feels can do the work, based on his appearance and words. But one who has a worldview that rationally grounds doing the work. And one who has a record of demonstrated ability at doing the work. And the way to do that of course is just to disregard what the man says, and what he looks like, and observe for 2-3 years whether he is able to do actions that meet her emotional needs.

One specific thing she mentioned was that the man lied about not being able to get her pregnant, and it’s not her fault for believing him. Anyone who has ever participated in a private sector candidate interview knows how to evaluate a candidate’s knowledge and ability. We don’t rely on “first impressions”. We don’t have intuitions about clothes or confidence. We are looking for competence. We hand you a marker, and we make you write code on the white board. We want to see your hobby coding and your Github repository of open source projects. We sit next to you and we pair program with you. We change the requirements, and we ask you how you would adapt your design. We need to help women take the job interview approach to dating, instead of the hedonistic approach. Having fun on dates doesn’t prove that a man can meet emotional needs.

Another problem with entitlement is that women have to accept responsibility for engineering relationship outcomes. Have you ever noticed that lesbians have the highest rates of instability and domestic violence? They have high expectations from their partners, but low ability to meet their partners needs. Women seem to be more likely to accept the “soul mate” view of relationships. They think that “the universe” will “manifest” the perfect mate for them. The perfect mate, of course, gives them everything they want, and asks for nothing in return. Soul mates don’t impose any obligations on you to fuel them or help them, you just “follow your heart”. But that’s not how anything works in the real world.

In the real world, you have to find out what counts as fuel to another person. You have to accept responsibility to fuel the other person. You have to solve problems that are roadblocks to success. In short, you have to run towards obligations, instead of away from them. We need to encourage young people to accept what Dr. Laura Schlesinger calls “loving obligation”  in relationships. We need to teach women not to end relationships where their needs aren’t men, but to choose men wisely, and accept the obligation to fuel men so that the men want to meet their emotional needs.

The woman in our TikTok clearly felt entitled to certain outcomes from her marriage and motherhood choices. But what preparation did she make? She should have prepared herself to choose a good man by learning about religion and morality, so that she could choose a man who had a good reason to be moral when it went against his self-interest. She could have prepared herself to supply the typical kinds of fuel that men respond to, like food, sex, conservative politics, watching sports and playing co-operative video games. But if you watch that video, you can pretty clearly see that she just sees herself as a victim of “the patriarchy”. She talks about what she wanted as if it was a guaranteed outcome, but she has nothing to say about her process for choosing a good man, or meeting his needs. She is the table.

The second flaw is lack of accountability.

Lack of accountability

A person who lacks accountability makes foolish decisions that are unlikely to produce the desired outcome, and then complains to others as if the predictable outcome was completely unexpected. You would think that after having TWO children with TWO men who she dumped, she would see that that the problem is her own choosing. But she doesn’t see herself as responsible at all. And she’s screaming and crying about her innocence very energetically! she telling other women “I made no mistakes at choosing men, so if you choose a man, you won’t be able to do any better than me. So don’t date or marry men!” That’s like saying “I took a course in math, and I failed! So don’t you take a course in math, or you’ll fail too!” She refuses to accept that her failure was related to her choices, and that someone who makes better choices might get better results.

There seems to be an epidemic of women going on social media and complaining about the shortcomings of their boyfriends and / or husbands. But what they don’t understand is that thoughtful men see these complaints about husbands and boyfriends as huge red flags. All it means to men is that if a man approaches a woman who complains about the men she chooses, then he will be the next man that she complains about on social media. If good men see a woman complaining about her ex, we know right away that she either 1) failed to choose a good man, or 2) failed to keep a good man. And then we don’t get into a relationship with her.

The lack of accountability problem is a widespread problem. It’s not this one TikTok and the 1.5 million likes. Look at the voting trends of single women over the past decades. While married women are about 50-50 conservative vs leftist, unmarried women vote about 70-80 percent leftist. That’s a lot of women. They see government as a substitute husband. When they make mistakes, like bad marriages and student loans for useless degrees, they want government to swoop in and give them no-fault divorce cash and prizes, single mother welfare and student loan bailouts. So, this problem is very widespread – and we should all care about it.

When I talk to conservative Christians who are “pro-child” and “pro-marriage”, they inevitably agree with women that the bad outcomes of a woman’s choices are never the woman’s fault. It’s always a man’s fault. For example, one pro-marriage  advocate I know thinks that women should just be able to choose a man who is attractive to her, and then expect him to change after marriage. I will never forget one Christian woman who commented on my blog. She claimed to be a Christian and went on and on about how her ex-husband had mistreated her. I asked her “how did you test him to see if he really believed in Christianity, and had acted on it?” She said “he was not a Christian”. So I said “why would you marry a non-Christian man, and then think that he would act like a Christian?” And she replied “the Bible applies even to non-Christian men”. So that is the level of lack of accountability that men sometimes see. And I would really like to invite “pro-child” and “pro-marriage” Christians to start talking to women who have this problem about it. Women aren’t going to be empowered to choose better men unless we ask them to.

Advice for Good Men

Sometimes, men (because we are impressed with looks) will chase after women who are attractive, even if they have these two flaws. I want Christian men to stop choosing bad women. Don’t look at youth and beauty. Instead, choose good women who want to help you to achieve results for the Boss, women who follow your lead. It should be seen as a huge betrayal of God to give your time and money to women who aren’t interested in serving God. Choose good women. Choose women who choose good men, and choose women who accept the obligation to treat good men in the right way to fuel those good men to do good things.

What’s the best way to avoid women like the one in the TikTok? Avoid women who have red flags. Non-STEM degrees are a red flag. Debt is a red flag.  Tattoos are red flags. Piercings (especially nose and tongue) are a red flag. Spending a lot of money on make-up and cosmetics and cosmetic surgeries is a red flag. Excessive spending on displayed wealth is a red flag. Leftist politics is a red flag. Liking fiction like “50 Shades of Grey” is a red flag. Liking movies like “Titanic” and “The Notebook” etc. is a red flag. Seeing Christianity as life enhancement rather self-sacrificial service to God is a red flag. Astrology and manifesting are red flags. Posting selfies of travel / entertainment are all red flags. Seeking attention with immodest photos is a red flag. Screaming and crying on camera for sympathy and money is a huge red flag. Men, we need choose better women! Women who work for the Boss. Women who respect and value good leadership from good men.

By the way, if you’re a good man, and you want to learn how to choose better women, check out the YouTube channels of Emily King and Jedediah Bila. If you’re a woman who wants to avoid making the mistakes of the TikTok lady, you’ll like them, too.