The 12-Step Program - Suzanne Venker

In How to Get Hitched (and Stay Hitched), Suzanne Venker lays out a 12-step program that serves as a "detox" for women who've absorbed 4 lies our culture tells. Do any of these sound familiar?

Sex is just sex
"Never depend on a man"
Marriage + motherhood = jail
Career success will (and should) define you

These four lies have resulted in a complete breakdown in the relationship between the sexes and keep women who want happy marriages and balanced lives from achieving their goals.

The 12 steps in How to Get Hitched articulate a massive mind shift and represent practical solutions for building a marriage and a life that works.

But be forewarned: These steps are exclusively for marriage-minded free thinkers. Women who want to be successful in life and in love and who have no allegiance to any person or group.

This won't be easy to do in an era in which women are lied to every day about what most women are doing and about what makes most women happy. But it can be done.

It begins with The 12 Steps.

Step #1 | Live an Examined Life

An unexamined life is when you move through the years mindlessly, not really thinking about what you’re doing or why you’re doing it, or even if you like doing it. You’re just doing it, whatever “it” is, because that’s what other people are doing—because that’s what you think you’re supposed to do. Or because, quite frankly, it’s easier. Living an unexamined life means living a life someone else designed for you.

The examined life is when you tune out the voices, sounds, and visuals in your midst and make important decisions based on what you want and on what you believe is right. More than anything, to live an examined life means dismissing cultural trends that conflict with your core beliefs.

Step #2 | Get Over Yourself

If you want to be successfully married, you’ll need to ignore all that coddling you’ve been given and stop thinking in terms of what you think you deserve or are entitled to. To have a fulfilling, beautiful life—the best life you can have—you don’t need to "find yourself." You need to get over yourself.

Step #3 | Find Your Feminine

The biological differences between women and men are real, and they are hardwired. Masculine energy conquers and cogitates. It likes to do things, and it likes to be alone to think about how to do those things.

Feminine energy nurtures and verbalizes. It likes to talk, and to be pampered and doted upon. That’s why feminine energy is the receiver of masculine energy. It’s why men typically make the first move in a relationship and why the man asks the woman for her hand in marriage, rather than the other way around. The male acts, and the female responds.

The fact that men are capable of nurturing and women are capable of conquering doesn’t change the fact that this is typically not where each sex’s natural energy flows. Men and women are as different as night and day, and these differences are a deeply rooted part of evolutionary biology.

Male and female roles aren't set in stone; there's room for overlap. But the more you move with the biological tide, the easier and more satisfying your relationship will be.

Step #4 | Don’t Rely on Love Alone

When choosing a spouse, you cannot rely on love alone. The feeling of being “in love” almost always ends, but the decision to love lasts. What matters most is that you and your man share the same values, priorities, and choice of lifestyle.

Forget about romantic love when it comes to choosing a spouse. Romance may be the path to a fun or even satisfying dating relationship—and it can certainly be the start of something potentially lasting—but it has zero to do with sustaining a marriage. You need much more than gooey feelings to keep a marriage going. Much more.

Step #5 | Get a Ring, Not a Roommate

Cohabitation is simply commitment with an escape hatch—which, by that very definition, means it’s not a commitment. It’s also something people tend to fall into. A marriage, on the other hand, is a decision people make. Those are two very different things.

Living with a man to whom you're not engaged or married is not a "step up” in your relationship. It’s a step back. It will not provide the assurances you’re looking for. On the contrary, it will work against your being successfully married. It

Step #6 | Marry the Accountant, Not the Artist

Most marriage-minded women do not want to be lifelong earners. Once they get close to the age of thirty, thoughts of marriage and motherhood begin to loom large—at which point they become (understandably) much more interested in a man’s earnings.

To pretend this is not going to be most women's fate by encouraging them to believe they will always be (and will always want to be) their own providers is both irrational and nonsensical.

Step #7 | Reject the Green Grass Syndrome

You will never get everything you want all wrapped up in one man. It doesn’t matter whom you end up with— John Doe or Brad Pitt—there will always be something missing. Always. If this is a phenomenon that's hard to accept, you are not alone. You’re suffering from an affliction your generation knows well. It’s called the Green Grass Syndrome.

When it comes to choosing a husband, you must decide on your non-negotiables—the traits or characteristics you cannot live without—and then forget about everything else. Because the man you choose, no matter who he is, is going to have deficiencies.

And guess what? So do you.

Step #8 | Know Your Body

Few other modern crises have been as financially and emotionally devastating as an entire generation of women realizing they missed their opportunity to conceive. Or at least to conceive the natural way.

The most egregious aspect of this phenomenon is that, for most women, it was entirely avoidable. But the truth about fertility has been squelched. No one wants to say to women, “You have a window, ladies. Wait too long, and you’ll be sorry.”

So I’ll say it. Ladies, you have a window. Wait too long, and you’ll be sorry.

Step #9 | There’s No Such Thing as Work-Family Balance

How do you combine raising a family with the pursuit of a career?

First, decide how many children you want. Because the more children you have, the longer it will be before you feel comfortable turning your attention away from the home. It will also be harder to work outside the home the more children you have. A part-time job? Yes. A career? Not so much.

Second, prioritize what you value more: having a strong marriage and raising physically and mentally healthy kids, or being highly successful in your career. You will not achieve all of that simultaneously. Something must give.

Third, determine what you want your day-to-day life to look like. If you want to not feel stressed out or guilt-ridden—and if you want to live a calm, rather than a chaotic, lifestyle—you’re going to have to make choices that are commensurate with that goal, even if they're countercultural. Begin by looking at your life as one long journey in which you have plenty of time to do what you want to do but in piecemeal fashion, rather than all at once. There's plenty of time. Relax.

Fourth, choose a flexible career. Because if you pursue a career path that takes you away from home too much, I can pretty much guarantee you'll be unhappy.

Step #10 | Decide to Stay

Marriage is like riding a bicycle: You don’t fall off unless you stop pedaling. Here are two things that help keep divorce at bay.

Follow Step #1: Ignore the culture and live an examined life. Because when it comes to getting married and staying married, the culture will steer you wrong. Every time. Instead, surround yourself with positive influences—and ask for help when you need it.

Pretend divorce isn’t an option. Entering a marriage knowing you can always get out of it dramatically affects the way you approach the marriage itself. If you’re depending on divorce as a means to relieve you of pain and conflict, you will likely take advantage of it when there was, in fact, another way out.

Step #11 | Find God

Being in a marriage without God is like showering without soap. You can do it, but the result won’t be nearly as satisfying. Without God and religion, which are ultimately about sacrifice, we humans would simply exist alongside each other, with zero sense of obligation.

The ability to give without recognition, to compromise and to make sacrifices, to give without thoughts of what you'll get in return, is what marriage is about. And it’s very hard to do this without God.

It is not a coincidence that marriage has taken a nosedive at the exact same time religion in America did. The two are intricately related.

Step #12 | Learn a Few Basics About Being a Wife

1. Dump your feminist mind.
2. Put down your sword.
3. Be sweet.
4. Surrender control.
5. Have more sex, not less.
6. Talk less; listen more.