Trust God. Test all others.

Well, there was no black ice near the harbour. From Shattered light.

Today is a black ice day. Yes, that included me slipping, ending up with myself on the ground and my coffee pouring into the gutter, and my dignity in shatters. It took a couple of hours before it started to hurt… Winter is like this, and ironically I had warned the management myself that this was a risk and the carpark needed grit. Not done. No one took responsibility. But someone has to do these things, and most of us do not like them.

There’s always things we don’t want to do. Who really wants to take out the trash? Who really wants to wash the dishes? Who likes to cut the grass? Who likes to dust/vaccum/whatever other chores there are?

Ok, some rare people do, but that’s not the point. Most people don’t. Things that are in everyday life, that you NEED to get done to have a functioning household, if someone is unhappy those are not things to worry about.

These are things that the husband and the wife need to understand aren’t worth getting unhappy about. They have to get done regardless of whether you like them or not. Why are you going to be unhappy about something you can’t change?

Well, that is because we have been trained to work emotionally. To rely on our emotions. We forget that most of life is simply hard work, and we do this better with support: although the sensual and romantic is important it does not make a marriage. Most of what I do as a father is not around being caring and understanding but making meals and putting out the garbage. We need to select more for people who are fit to task. We need to use logic, not emotions.

Because our children deserve us staying together: the empiric data indicates this decreases damage and risk to the child and improves their emotional and cognitive abilities.

So how do we avoid damaging our children? Well, we choose to have sex with people who are capable of long-term stability and commitment. And how do we do that? We test them before we have sex with them.

My approach to dating and courting has always been an engineer’s approach. A project manager’s approach. I am used to working with teams to deliver bug-free software that will exist in an enterprise environment. There, the software will have to survive unexpected disasters, peak usage and other challenges. If we are serious about avoiding harm to children, we should drop emotional/spiritual approaches to dating and courtship and stick with interview questions and performing tasks (tests). Marriage should be like software engineering projects – at least we know how to deliver quality software on time and on budget. The lazy, emotional hedonistic approach doesn’t work. It doesn’t work in relationships. It doesn’t work in engineering.

I don[t know much about the courtship challenge — except the evangelical subculture is broken in New Zealand and all too often young women are sleeping with their soulmates instead of waiting until they are in a covenantal relationship.

And most men are happy with this, because they get intimacy without the perceived cost of commitment and marriage. But I would suggest that it is only Marriage 1.0 — lifetime, covenantal commitment — that makes intimacy safe.

And if I have learned one thing over the last few years it is Look at what they do, not what they say , I know too many verbally adept hyperspiritual women who have been destructive to their families and their souls.

But if you are sleeping with them, your discernment of their faults has disappeared, and the natural neurochemical systems that allow you to bond will break if you wait until after a period of cohabitation to break up.

Much better to wed, then cohabit, until death. Of course, this requires that the safe sex industry, the divorce industry, and the white ribbon industries disappear. They would not be missed, but those who have gotten fat on the sufferings of others will fight tooth and nail to keep their sinecures.

Trust God. Test all others, including yourself: and when you find a woman who can commit, who seeks righteousness more than romantic bliss: marry her/.