So, we seem to have a lot of newcomers as of late and it makes sense to me that we give an overview of some of the content so you know what to expect and look for when reading some of the relevant information.

To my knowledge, there is no solid Christian "red pill" book on the market yet. Most of the sidebar posts are meant to be a short-term solution to rectify that problem, helping men get biblical advice that stands out from the mountains of unscriptural and often downright sinful content you'll see in the Christian publishing industry.

In the meantime, until more published content is available, it seems necessary to borrow resources from some of the secular men who have spent significant time observing the order of God's creation and commenting on it. Obviously they are mistaken as to the source of how things came to be this way, which also leads to some inappropriate and sinful behavioral prescriptions (ex. suggesting sex before marriage, cheating on one's wife, etc.), but these can be redeemed by appropriately understanding Scripture and maintaining boundaries in not letting praxeological content affect our theology or application thereof.

To that end, this post will go over why I have included some of the secular books on the sidebar and the most relevant content from those books, in an irrationally brief way (which is my way of saying: you still need to read the books!).

NMMNG

The primary purpose of this book is to give an "awakening" of sorts to men who have been indoctrinated into blue pill ideologies of pedestalizing women and being controlled by them. Many men put themselves in a box of believing that they must interact with their wives a certain way in order to receive the love, validation, and sexual enthusiasm that they desire. This self-created prison places a framework in our minds from which it is very difficult to break out.

The author spends a lot of time defining the traits of these "nice guys" and how they develop. He then explains why many of these men feel trapped and how they create their own prisons. "Nice guys" believe that the only way they can receive the love and validation they desire in life is if they place others' needs above their own and hide all of their flaws. This creates "covert contracts," which are when a man expects that his behaviors should yield certain results with his wife - sexual favors, respect, admiration, etc. - but he fails to communicate this expectation to his wife. He is often internally resentful when she doesn't live up to his unspoken expectation, causing further degredation to the relationship. The author uses numerous examples of Christian men and women throughout the book as the majority of his examples. Why? Because the church is notorious for producing "nice guys."

Biblically, we know that God created men to lead and women to help. However, many Christian men mistakenly emphasize the need to be a "servant" over their role as a leader, creating a mistaken understanding of "servant leadership." As such, they believe that they must make their own desires subservient to their wife's. It is true that a man should serve his wife, but the way Jesus modeled this was always in the context of pursuing his own purpose and mission and calling others to join him. Jesus did not give up his life to help his followers become better fishermen, tax collectors, etc. His service was always in the context of the advancement of his own purposes, creating a beautiful balance between intentionality and humility.

For many men, the thought of saying "no" to your wife or prioritizing your own direction for the family over her wants and desires is incomprehensible and terrifying to most men. It is only when a man escapes his self-imposed prison and begins understanding that God placed him in charge for a reason that we can have the fulfilling marriages God intended. It is only then that your service to your wife can be genuine and authentic, rather than a means of covert manipulation. Where most men are merely figureheads for their wife's puppetry, God intended us run a household from a place of strength, wisdom, discernment, and ability to act. Our wives are valuable advisers whose opinions should not be taken lightly; but they should also not be given more weight than they deserve.

WISNIFG

Bill of Rights

This book starts with a person's "Bill of Assertive Rights." They are as follows:

1) You have the right to judge your own behavior, thoughts, and emotions, and to take the responsibility for their initiation and consequences upon yourself.

Many men look to their wives for validation. When they do this, they let their wife be the judge over them. Giving her this power makes a man subservient to his wife, tailoring his actions to seek her approval. In reality, if he is the leader and she is his helper, she should be the one seeking validation from him, just as we seek validation from Christ, just as Christ sought validation from God.

Too many men try to pass off responsibility for their home to their wives. When things go wrong, they say, "I knew better, but it's what my wife wanted, so I went with it." Or when a decision must be made they look to her to make the call, thereby abdicating responsibility by saying, "I was just trying to make my wife happy in the situation." In reality, we must become our own judges. I cannot emphasize this enough.

2) You have the right to offer no reasons or excuses for justifying your behavior.

No DEERing (Defend, Explain, Excuse, Rationalize). Doing this once again makes someone else a judge over you by demonstrating that their judgment of you has power over your emotional state and self of worth and value.

3) You have the right to judge if you are responsible for finding solutions to other people's problems.

Sometimes you are, sometimes you're not. Don't let someone else con you into thinking you're responsible for their mess. If my wife doesn't like x, y, and z about the house and I'm fine with all of those things, it's up to me to decide: (1) if I'm going to do x, y, and z myself, (2) if I'm going to make my wife take responsibility for resolving her own interest in x, y, and z, given that it's not a problem I'm interested in, or (3) if I really don't want x, y and z to change, I'm going to put my foot down and make sure they stay exactly the way they are.

4) You have the right to change your mind.

Too many men feel trapped when their wives say, "You told me last week that ..." This isn't a trap. "I changed my mind" is a perfectly acceptable reply.

5) You have the right to make mistakes - and be responsible for them.

Again, no need to explain the problem or prove to her that you'll do better next time. You screwed up. Admit it, accept the consequences, address the issue, and move on.

6) You have the right to say, "I don't know."

Again, don't feel pressured to give a certain reply.

7) You have the right to be independent of the goodwill of others before coping with them.

That is, you do not need other people to like you. It's okay if your neighbor thinks you're a jerk. That's his business deciding what he thinks of you. You should not bend your will to impress him unless you have a reason for doing so. Wanting to share the Gospel with him, for example, might be a great reason. If that's your motive, then by all means try to earn his respect. But don't put all your eggs in one basket. Don't orient your life around serving your neighbor when all that effort may never result in fruit for God's Kingdom.

To put it another way, just as the pre-marriage process should be one of a "shotgun mentality" and not a "sniper mentality," so also are we to scatter seed and not be seed snipers for God's Kingdom.

8) You have the right to be illogical in making decisions.

We're not robots. My wife's favorite phrase lately has been, "I don't know why I want to do things this way. I know it's not logical. But it's what I'm feeling. Can you respect that?" She figured that out before I did - and now it's a powerful tool to wield in return and gives an excellent basis for avoiding DEERing when I make a decision that I know she won't understand - even if it is a logical one in the first place. But let's be honest, at least 90% of what we do is not the "logical" best thing we could be doing at any given time.

9) You have the right to say, "I don't understand."

Simple enough.

10) You have the right to say, "I don't care."

"But we should always care about everything that our wife thinks is important, right?" Wrong. My wife likes to get on me for not cutting grapes in half for my 6.5 year old son. "Don't you care if he chokes on it and dies?" No, honey. The risk is so low that I don't care to worry about those odds.

He concludes: "You have the right to say no without feeling guilty."

Techniques

As important as the above are, the remainder of the book is even better: addressing techniques for asserting these rights. They are as follows:

  • Broken Record: Just repeat what you want whenever the issue arises, offering no explanation. When they try to bring up another argument you simply say, "Thanks for telling me. I still want ..."

  • Fogging: Agreeing with someone else's perception rather than arguing with it. This leaves them with nothing to argue against. If they say, "You're a liar!" you simply reply, I understand that's how you feel. You don't have to admit anything, you just acknowledge their perception, even if the conclusion itself is invalid. This often diffuses aggressive behavior by letting the other person know that you understand and accept their position at face value, even if you disagree with the conclusion.

  • Negative Inquiry: This is my favorite tactic and, in my view, the most powerful when mastered appropriately. In short, you ask questions to explore why the other person has the perception they do. So, if your wife is yelling at you for spending time with your friends instead of helping her with the kids at home, instead of defending yourself you simply ask, "What is wrong or morally objectionable about spending time with my friends?" With every answer she gives, you ask another similar question until one of three things happens: (1) She realizes that her complaint is really not a moral issue at all; it's an issue of personal preference and she just didn't get her way; (2) She realizes that you didn't do anything wrong and drops the issue; or (3) After enough questioning, she opens up about a deeper issue at the core of her frustrations and acknowledges that her emotional reaction has nothing to do with the actual issue at hand, but with some other insecurity or vulnerability, which can then be addressed appropriately, often as a comfort test.

  • Negative Assertion: Acknowledging your behaviors that she views negatively. This essentially nips her criticism in the bud by letting her know up-front that you already understand your behaviors and have evaluated them. The implication (which you should not say directly, unless it's calm and composed) is that you don't need her to critique your poor choices and actions any further because you have already done so.

  • Workable Compromise: Straight-forward: offer a solution that meets your goals while still addressing her concerns.

  • Self Disclosure: Revealing additional information that she may not know about, which might affect the flow of the conversation. This is easy to confuse with DEERing, but can be done appropriately when you're issuing a judgment, rather than defending yourself before her as your judge.

All of the things in this book are appropriate and tactics we see employed in Scripture. The Bible does not present itself as a manual for conflict-resolution, but it does include principles for behaving in conflict and examples for what that looks like, all of which are consistent and aligned with the way these techniques can be practiced. As such, although they don't come from the Bible, they can still be valuable, just like knowing basic math doesn't come from the Bible, but is still valuable in daily life.

MMSLP

There is a lot that can be said for this book. Athol Kay is not a Christian, but there were many points where he was speaking so aligned with biblical principles that I found myself googling if he was - because I thought the only way someone could reach some of his conclusions is if they had read the Bible first.

The beginning of the book starts with an evolutionary perspective on alpha and beta qualities. Whether you're an evolutionary creationist or not, there's still some interest in this bit, but mostly in trying to understand what he defines as "alpha" and "beta" qualities and the balance that he suggests is necessary. To be clear, when he says "beta," he means specific behaviors and not the motivations behind those behaviors, which can get confusing when the manosphere defines "alpha/beta" by the internal motivators of a man rather than the actions themselves. Perhaps a better way to put it would be that Athol Kay is talking about strength-oriented behaviors and service-oriented behaviors. So, a man who gives his wife $300 to go shopping at the mall is doing a service-oriented thing that Athol calls "beta," but this can also be done from a very alpha internal state by ordinary definitions of those words.

With an appropriate balance of alpha/beta, Athol then goes into developing a MAP (Male Action Plan), which is your personal road to improving yourself and your marriage/sex-life. This involves ways of ramping up the strength-oriented behaviors, like lifting weights, enhancing social status, developing confidence, etc.; and to the degree that anyone might actually be weak at beta qualities, how to address those as well.

After this he moves on to talking about certain strategies and techniques for maintaining sexual interest by displaying confidence and initiative with your wife. For example, he discusses "the shower move," where his wife is taking a shower, then he steps in naked, fumbles around with the soap and eventually butts her out, then initiates sex. It's a display of dominance with a context of already having your clothes off, among other things.

Lastly, he goes into the topic of divorce and what to do when a marriage simply can't be salvaged. Needless to say, he doesn't come from a biblical perspective, but some of his advice is still useful for those for whom divorce is inevitable anyway.

/u/BLUEPILLPROFESSOR'S PODCAST/BOOK

I'm not going to give much of a summary here because the entire podcast is, itself, a summary. He goes through all of the resources above as well as the collective discoveries of countless men in the manosphere and compiles a very short, concise, and easily-accessible means of ingesting the information that you need to know to set your marriage straight.

Although BluePillProfessor is a Christian, we must remember that he's writing for a secular audience, which adjusts how he communicates. That said, you'll probably find less issues with his podcast series than you will with the above books.

I always recommend reading the above books in that order and listening to BPP's podcast as you have time around the house or at the gym. I put MMSLP last, even though it is perhaps the most important of all of them. I have intentionally left that section more general to give you all a greater incentive to actually go through the book for yourself.

In all, even though these are distinctly secular books, they are still of great value and should be read by all men who have any interest in getting married or improving their sex-life in marriage. Just make sure that you're filtering what you read through Scripture. Again, the Bible may not be a manual for how to improve your sex life, so we have to turn to outside sources for that.

From there, the prime distinction between Christian and secular sources is that the secular sources will include recommendations that the Christian sources may have already filtered as being unbiblical. It does not mean that everything from the secular sources is somehow moot or irrelevant, as Christians and secular authors actually agree on a lot more pragmatic things than we disagree, despite the fact that the disagreements are what get publicized in the media, and therefore seem more prominent.