Most Christian Men Do Not Want a Proverbs 31 Wife

Or, Why I Quit Online Dating

Photo by Jack Finnigan on Unsplash

Last year I decided to give up on all forms of online dating, and it came as an enormous relief.

No more awkward coffee dates. No more patronising comments about my appearance. No more conspiracy theories. No more ghosting.

Since this decision, I have had some time to reflect, and it has led me to one startling conclusion: most Christian men do not want a Proverbs 31 Wife.

To be clear, I do not consider myself to be a perfect emulation of the woman depicted in Proverbs 31. That is a high bar.

But she is the woman I aspire to be.

If you don’t know what I am talking about, Proverbs 31 is the most commonly referenced Scripture in the world of evangelical dating. However, it has become abundantly apparent that most men who reference it have never actually read the passage.

In this text, the mother of King Lemuel outlines the kind of characters he should look for in his pursuit of a wife. Here, an exemplary wife displays the following characteristics:

1. She is an Entrepreneur

The overwhelming majority of verses in this passage are in reference to this woman’s work ethic and business acumen.

Verses 13-15,

“She is like the ships of the merchant;

she brings her food from afar.

She rises while it is yet night

and provides food for her household

and portions for her maidens.

Verse 18,

“She perceives that her merchandise is profitable.

Her lamp does not go out at night.”

Verse 21,

“She is not afraid of snow for her household,

for all her household are clothed in scarlet.”

Verse 22b,

“Her clothing is fine linen and purple.”

Verse 24,

“She makes linen garments and sells them;

she delivers sashes to the merchant.”

Verse 27,

“[She] does not eat the bread of idleness.”

The Proverbs 31 Woman wakes up early each morning, not to pick her husband’s dirty socks off the floor - for a woman like this would surely choose to marry a grown adult over a child - but to make money for the family.

She is financially successful, and is an excellent provider for the home. Her children wear scarlett clothing and she wears purple, which would have been an indicator of wealth since those coloured dyes were hugely expensive in the ancient world.

It baffles the mind that so many men who claim to want a Proverbs 31 Wife spend so much of their online profile real estate showing off their ability to provide for their dream housewife.

My brother, if you ever meet a Proverbs 31 Woman, she will not be impressed by your bling. If she ever did marry you, it will be because she liked you as a person.

Trust me, she is not interested in your bank balance. She has her own.

2. She Owns Property

Verse 16,

“She considers a field and buys it;

with the fruit of her hands she plants a vineyard.”

Far from being the property of her husband, this woman is a property-owner herself.

Many people don’t realise that women in England were first stripped of their rights to own property around the same time that they were forced to take their fathers or husbands surnames. Prior to the Norman conquest, it was common for women to have their own surnames and for children to inherit their mother’s names rather than their fathers.

It wasn’t until the invention of ‘coverture’ that women lost both their rights to their own name and their rights to own land. In other words, women lost their rights to own property around the same time that they became property. (Interestingly, the Scottish did not adopt either of these practices until the early 20th Century).

This would have been completely foreign in Biblical times. It would never occur to a Proverbs 31 Woman to forfeit her right to property in order to become the property of somebody else.

All power to you buddy

3. She is Physically Strong

Verse 17,

“She dresses herself with strength

and makes her arms strong.”

This lady does not work out at the gym so that she can become a sexual object for a man’s personal consumption. She is strong because of her work ethic. She is ambitious. She sets goals. She gets up early and works with her hands.

I doubt she’d need help opening a jar.

4. She is a Philanthropist

Verse 20,

“She opens her hand to the poor

and reaches out her hands to the needy.”

There are two key aspects to this:

The first is that she is generous. She is not patronised for caring about the poor. Nobody writes a book about her “Toxic Empathy.” She is championed for having compassion and for caring about justice.

The second is that she has agency to make decisions on how to spend the family money. She does not ask her husband’s permission on how to spend her own earnings. The decision to be generous is hers.

Yet, in our apparently “civilised” Western world, women were first allowed to open a bank account in their own name in America in 1974, and in England in 1975.

When conservative Christians claim to be longing for the Good Old Days, they’re longing for a very recent period of history. They’re not trying to emulate the values of the Bible.

5. She is Reliable

Verse 11a,

“The heart of her husband trusts in her”

This woman is a grown-ass adult.

Her “yes” means yes, and her “no” means no. Those who are close to her know that she can be relied upon in all matters.

She can stand on her own two feet, and doesn’t need someone else to babysit her.

She will not be manipulated by those in the home or the marketplace. She knows how to set boundaries, and she sticks to them.

6. She Believes in Her Own Dignity

Verse 25a,

“Strength and dignity are her clothing”

This woman puts on dignity like a garment, which implies that she chooses this way of life each day. She knows that a life without dignity is akin to going outside naked and exposed.

A woman who wears dignity is a woman who expects fair treatment. She holds people - men and women alike - accountable when she sees unfairness in the home or the marketplace.

I was recently in a social setting with two other Christians; one male and one female. The conversation turned political (my fault) and it became mildly heated. Throughout the course of the conversation, the man spoke for roughly 75% of the time, I spoke for a little over 20% of the time, and the other woman spoke for less than 5% of the time. Upon leaving, the man told me I was “very opinionated.” In other words: you weren’t silent like the other woman.

We live in a world where it is normal for women to receive less than men, be it fair pay, leadership opportunities, or even just talking time. But, since men expect this norm to be the default, any woman who expects fairness is treated like a Karen.

She is too opinionated.

Too loud.

She asks for dignity and fairness, which he will simply dismiss as an attempt to be obnoxious.

Yet the Bible says that the ideal wife should be someone who wears dignity like clothing. She has self-worth. She understands her divine status as image-bearer of God.

She puts this on every single day.

7. She Teaches Others with Wisdom and Kindness

Verse 26,

“She opens her mouth with wisdom,

and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.”

The word used to “teaching” here is תּוֹרָה (Torah), which can mean “law,” “teach,” or “instruction.”

If she is able to instruct and teach with kindness, it can be assumed that she lives in a world where she is expected to teach. Period.

Her kindness is not dismissed as a sign of weakness, but rather it is emulated as a virtue.

She is also a pursuer of wisdom and learning. Perhaps she is educated.

It is common nowadays for bros in the manosphere to talk about so-called “biological roles” from the natural world, which they use to reinforce their belief that women cannot teach men.

My guys, if we’re going to talk about biological gender roles, you need to know that there is no known species in the entire animal kingdom where the males live more than a few years longer than their reproductive age. Yet there are known species - most notably, whales, elephants and humans - where the females live up to a third of their lifetime beyond their reproductive years.

The phenomenon of the menopause has puzzled scientists for centuries, but most have now concluded that its biological purpose is to enable knowledge transfer. In other words, women are biologically hard-wired to live beyond their reproductive years so that they can be teachers.

Women have been teaching since the dawn of time.¹ Don’t come lecturing me on biological function.

What About The Proverbs 31 Husband?

Well, if a man is ever lucky enough to marry such a woman, there are some clearly laid out instructions on how he ought to treat her:

Verses 29-31:

“‘Many women have done excellently,

but you surpass them all!’

Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain,

but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.

Give her of the fruit of her hands,

and let her works praise her in the gates.”

A Proverbs 31 Woman does not stay in her marriage because she is chained at the ankle by economic slavery. She stays because she actually likes her husband.

He verbally encourages her in public, and he champions her goals and ambitions.

Guys, this is not hard.

The Current Christian Dating Scene

As I said before, I do not claim to be a Proverbs 31 Woman (being a land-owner in this economy is almost impossible, and building physical strength is difficult with a chronic illness).

However, she is the woman I wish I could be.

Unfortunately for most Millennial women, the Christian dating pool - which is now almost entirely online - has been flooded with men who are deeply unattracted to the woman depicted in this passage.

I can guarantee you that if an average Christian man met a woman who founded her own designer fashion company, of which she then used the dividends to create a wine-making business, he would run a mile.

Christian men are not attracted to women with ambition.

I cannot tell you how many times I have mentioned my theology degree on a date and watched the man’s face fall in hopeless disappointment. I can assure you from personal experience that the biggest red flag for an evangelical man is when a woman says, “oh yeah, I recently preached a sermon on that!”

I once found myself thanking a man for agreeing to go on a second date with me, even after he found out I went to a Russell Group university. The bar for men is now so low it is literally touching the ground.

The hilarious thing is that I’m not even particularly “successful” by worldly standards. I just hope to be, and that’s enough of a turn-off.

Whenever a male Christian dating profile claims to be looking for a Proverbs 31 Wife, this usually means he is looking for a baby-making machine who never took the Covid vaccine and promises to be forever obedient to him.

Although not every Christian man is a “red pill” taker, these ideas are constantly infiltrating Christian spaces, making them more normal and mainstream.

At the heart of this ideology lies a deep hatred of feminism. As a feminist myself, I feel that I have been squeezed out of the Christian dating pool altogether.

Now, I must be clear: contrary to popular belief, feminism does not believe that a woman’s enemy is All Men. Rather, the enemy to women’s flourishing is misogyny, which is the belief that women are inferior to men in value and status.

Importantly, misogyny can be present in both men and women.

There are many women with more degrees than me who have good things to say on this. Lucy Peppiatt’s Rediscovering Scripture’s Vision for Women is an excellent read. So are Beth Alison Barr’s books, The Making of Biblical Womanhood, and The Making of the Pastor’s Wife.

But for today, all I can conclude is that most Christian men have chosen their spiritual formation to come from the manosphere and not from Scripture. When they say they want a Proverbs 31 Wife, they have no idea what they are talking about.

Until next time,

S

1. For more info on Women in the Bible being teachers and apostles, go read Nijay Gupta’s Tell Her Story.