I think I see what the problem is now, and I hope you don’t take offense. This is not meant as an insult or an attempt to put you down. It’s just that I’m pretty fluent in Manian, and I think I get what he’s trying to say.

Your decision to remain abstinent until marriage is commendable, but in this day and age, it is a gamble above a certain age. At up to 25 or so, it’s fairly normal for wifely types to be careful who and why, despite the media hype that makes it look like everybody’s doing it. Up to that age, your main worry is competition from other similarly aged girls. Even up to maybe 30, I’d say that was the issue.

Over 30 though, it’s not that your competition is prettier than you or nicer than you. It’s that your single competition at that age is very often still single for good reasons.

A person who can love and bond with people usually does so at least once before the age of 30, even if it’s with the wrong person. If they haven’t found a mate and don’t have kids, they at least have a dog or cat or better yet, more than the usual number of pets. The enjoy love and being a loving person.

A great many women though, are extremely self absorbed and taught that this is a good thing. They couldn’t truly bond with someone even if you sewed them to someone. As they get older, this problem usually becomes worse, not better, but many women feel social and financial pressure to marry. So they pursue it despite not being suited to it.

Where in your teens and 20’s, your competition was fresh, and so were you, now they are a horde of expert exploiters wreaking havock on the shrinking suitable single male population.

You have to try to see it from the other side. The few women over 30 and single who are suitable for commitment and the few suitable men over 30 sometimes overlap, but most of both pools are gold diggers, players, or some other brand of screwed up.

So you have to be able to stand out from the crowd in some way other than abstinence. That should be something you do to avoid harming yourself at the hands of others, and to preserve your freshness and ability to love in a healthy way. It is not something that will necessarily increase your chances of finding a partner in general. It’ll just make it easier for you both when you do.

Now, because you have a daughter, even if she has male role models in the family who love her (and I mean love as in would even visit her in prison or the hospital for the criminally insane if she became an axe murderer) whoever you get with has to be father material. If he has kids he loves and who respect him, you might be okay, but if he doesn’t, you might be taking a chance.

You don’t want to be a horror story. It’s not a good idea to experiment in this arena, or take chances that she’s going to pay the price for. You aren’t just looking for a partner, but a suitable father. That much, he is right about.

Others can do the job, but nobody else can really do the job of teaching her how a woman, specifically her mother, deserves to be loved. I learned things from my dad that I could not have learned from my uncles, even though my uncles are great.

If I’m understanding him correctly, this is what Obsidian is trying to say about that. When or if you have a man, you have to be able to trust him to be the man. If you can’t then he’s the wrong man.

The kind of man you need is in short supply. You’re asking him to be able to get over the fact that you’re not in prime reproductive years, and to be able to love a child that is not his biological offspring. On top of that, he’s got to find you in a crowd of women who are nothing like you, but pretending very well.

So you have to be up on what’s really going on out there, and work your girl game. That may mean becoming less conventional about your idea of marriage. Once you’re shopping for guys within a certain age range, many who have been burned before, paperwork should be secondary to the relationship.

Even Saudi Arabia is adapting to a new playing field. They started sanctioning probationary marriages because they have so many single and divorced people who are above the prime age and don’t have the families or social network to negotiate marriages competently for them.

It’s not about lowering your standards. It’s about understanding that the institutional aspects have failed because too many people for too long have made a mockery of them.

If you have to have the paper, then you have to narrow your search to guys who still value the institution of marriage. Those are in the church or the mosque. You don’t find those elsewhere in enough numbers to matter.

What’s likely pissing Obsidian off is that you seem to have conflicting desires, and you don’t understand the gravity of your situation.

Love…the deep crazy kind, is fairly common in the world, but in the west and westernized countries, it has become something twisted. I know some old people here who still have it, but something got broken in most people who are under 50. Making an educated guess, it was likely a combination of entitlement culture and feminism, but I can’t be worried about herd issues as more than a matter of fascinating curiosity and to be really honest, my own shepherding missions.

I’d like to help people in general, but I understand very well that people in general are very susceptible to social trends and influences. Survival drive will save most to a degree, so that’s the side I speak for, but I’m competing with forces that have more money, more media, and therefore more influence.

On the personal end though, I know I’m a freak and the statistical odds will always be against me. I had to learn to be comfortable with that.

Whether you are highly independent or moderately, I don’t know, but I do know sheep don’t venture outside and stay long enough to debate. You ask the questions and have the discussions and debates because you want to know the answers. For this reason, Obsidian does not pull punches.

On the one hand, you shouldn’t take it personally, but on the other, you should consider that he’s male and from what I can tell, quite dominant. If you make it a power struggle, he’s going to try to win it. If, on the other hand, you don’t make it a power struggle, and try to learn something of his perspective, then it won’t come to that.

That’s just my 2 cents. There is very little mainstream about the guy, and everything is measured against his perspective, which is closer to rational and yet natural, than you’ll find in most guys.

I’m not saying don’t ever challenge him. Just pick your battles, and if you’re really on the side of the decent women, understand that we have been sold a great lie that has put many of us behind the 8-ball.

We’ve been sold a great many lies actually.