DO NOT MARRY HER.
The Danger of Marrying a Divided Woman.
Due to the overwhelming response to my previous article, Do Not Marry Him, many have asked me to offer my thoughts for men. So here it is.
You are about to make the most consequential decision of your life. You are about to entrust your future, your finances, your children—born and unborn—to a woman’s loyalty. This decision will determine whether your home remains intact, whether your children know their father, whether the next 50 years are marked by flourishing or fracture.
So, how do you know if you can trust her?
The answer is: you can’t. At least, not on her own.
I’ve spent years walking alongside young married couples. I’ve seen marriages fall apart and marriages on the brink find restoration. I have yet to see a marriage that doesn’t go through at least one season where it feels like everything could fall apart. Some claw their way back to health. Others don’t.
What separates them? Many factors—some unique to each couple, some patterns that repeat. I can’t diagnose every broken marriage or hand you a formula for success. But I have watched one pattern emerge with alarming frequency.
I call it “the divided woman”. Her loyalties are fractured. She is pulled between competing allegiances and ideologies that prevent her from being fully committed to God, marriage, and your leadership. When the pressure comes, she will be pulled apart—and so will your family.
The opposite is “the dedicated woman”: dedicated to God and loyal to you.
How do you tell the difference? Ask these three questions.
1. Is She Dependent on God?
This is the foundation. Everything else flows from here.
The woman you want to marry has given her allegiance to Someone greater than herself. She does not lean on her own understanding, but on what Scripture commands. Her loyalty to God is settled. This is what makes her safe—her commitment to you flows from her devotion to Him. It’s principled. It’s not contingent on her feelings about you on a given day.
And because her dependence is on God, she understands the importance of motherhood and parenting. She believes in that sacred vocation and the sacrifice it requires. She has a proper understanding of its worth. She does not define herself purely by worldly metrics. She understands the irreplaceable role she plays in her children’s lives—a role no other person in the world can fill. The culture may try to degrade that role or measure it in purely economic terms, but she knows better.
What to guard against: The woman whose loyalties are not settled. Worldly influences, the sexual revolution, and secular messaging have shaped her to believe she’s her own best authority. Without a settled loyalty to God, you have no idea what will guide her decisions when the stakes are highest.
There have been whole male movements birthed out of men telling horror stories of how their children and families were taken from them. While their path is wrong—to go their own way—they make an important point: the stakes are incredibly high. You need to trust who her ultimate authority is. If it is not God and His law, you are putting yourself and your children at risk.
This is where alignment on Kingdom values matters. Seek clarity. Ask hard questions. Do your research before there’s a decision to be made. Her views on life, children (born and unborn), jobs, family, sacrifice—these reveal whether her loyalties are to God’s design or something else entirely.
AND ONE MORE THING: beware of the woman who claims faith but is willing to set it aside “just for you”—who will sleep with you before marriage, who will cheat on her current partner to be with you, who will compromise her convictions because you asked. If she’ll put you above God, she’ll eventually put something else above your marriage too.
2. Is She Detached from Home?
The second question is about her relational loyalties. Has she prepared herself to leave her parents’ home to become one with you, or is she still tethered to competing allegiances?
The woman you want to marry has done the hard work of leaving. She is ready to transfer her loyalty from her parents’ home to your new one. She is not clinging to how things were always done by her parents (although she’s not flippantly abandoning their wisdom either). She has settled the question: she is ready. Ready to form a new family, a new culture, a new household—with you at the helm, under Christ.
Leave and cleave is a biblical principle for a reason. This does not mean she disregards her family’s input—in fact, a healthy security that invites them to give perspective without feeling threatened is a marker of maturity (for both husband and wife). But there’s a big difference between welcoming counsel and subverting authority.
Marrying a woman from an intact family is a wonderful blessing—it means she’s seen a healthy marriage modeled, and it will certainly increase your chances of never facing the dissolution of your own. But a good father will be your partner in this venture. He will see his greatest success not in keeping his daughter close, but in vetting the man who wants to lead her, preparing her to leave, and handing her off with blessing. He doesn’t compete with her husband for authority—he celebrates the handoff.
The red flag isn’t closeness. It’s clinging.
What to guard against: There are two idols here that often keep a young woman her being fully ready to commit to the marriage.
#1 — The idol of origin. We have already touched on this earlier, but it bears repeating. Here she has not left home. Her loyalty remains with her parents, and you are being absorbed into their household rather than forming a new one together. This shows up as an over-attachment to how they did things, what her father thinks, how it’s always been done. She may be naturally inclined to follow—but she’s following them, not you. You’re competing with her parents for authority, and you’ll lose.
The idol of independence. This one is more becoming more prevalent as the average age of marriage gets older and fractured families tragically become more of the norm. Being detached from home doesn’t automatically mean she’s ready to be attached to you. She may have left her parents but she’s not interested in building a life with you. She’s her own authority. She’s interested in building her own house, not joining with you to build one together.
The culture has discipled her to believe that a man in her life should be, at best, an accessory—never an authority. Marriage is more like an acquisition or a box to check than a sacred covenant requiring “all-in” risk. And so while young men are drowning in isolation and purposelessness, young women are unfortunately drowning in voices telling them they can be totally independent (even in marriage). Both are lies. Both leave them unprepared for marriage.
3. Is She Devoted to You?
The final question is personal—how she treats you, how she speaks about you, how she responds to your leadership. This is where it all becomes very tangible.
The woman you want to marry builds you up. She does not tear you down with her words—not in private, not in public. She respects you. She trusts your leadership, even when you make mistakes. Not because she doesn’t see your faults but because she is committed to you, excited to follow you, and loves the idea that she can support you as you lead and grow into the man God made you to become.
This doesn’t mean she has no voice. The best marriages are always made up of two people who are indispensable to the decision-making process—two people who contribute, discuss, dream together. A strong woman isn’t a threat to biblical leadership. She strengthens the man trying to live it out.
Here’s the truth: a woman dedicated to God and loyal to you is a superpower. She is a game-changer, a difference-maker, a force multiplier for everything you’re trying to build. She sharpens you. She calls out the best in you. She makes you want to be better—and she makes you believe you can be. The data backs this up: married men are healthier, live longer, and are even more likely to go to regular doctor’s appointments than their unmarried peers. They’re less likely to smoke, drink excessively, or engage in risky behavior. They report lower rates of depression and higher satisfaction with life. (Harvard Health)
A man with a devoted woman in his corner rises to the occasion. Find that woman.
What to guard against: This section isn’t just about kind words. It’s about what her words reveal.
Out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. How she talks about you—in public and private—is a window into her true posture toward you. Does she actually believe in you? Does she respect you? Or does she merely tolerate you? Is she looking for a partner to build with, or an accessory to manage?
The woman who will not follow your leadership often tells you with her words before she tells you with her actions. She may say she wants partnership, but what she means is veto power—the ability to permit all things she agrees with and call it submission, but veto every high-stakes decision she opposes and call it partnership.
It has become culturally acceptable to treat the husband as the useful idiot—the absent-minded incompetent next to his organized wife. As a result, it’s become normal for women to tear down the men they claim to love. This is a huge red flag. It’s a red flag if she does it in private. It’s a five alarm fire if she does it in public around family or friends.
Isolation vs. Infiltration
In my previous article, I warned women seeking a husband about the danger of marrying an isolated man—a man with no community, no accountability, no one to drag him back when he drifts.
For men seeking a wife, the danger is different. You likely won’t marry a woman with no community. Women tend to be connected. The question is: connected to what?
The danger here is not isolation. It’s infiltration. Her community, connections, and influences will either strengthen your marriage or erode it from within.
Does her community help or hurt what you’re trying to build?
Do they encourage and support your marriage?
Do they hold her accountable and tell her the truth?
Do they keep her rooted in faith?
Or do they undermine? Do they sympathetically erode her commitment to you, dripping toxic counsel disguised as friendship?
Add it all up: her family, her friends, her church, her workplace, the voices she follows online, the causes she gives herself to. What picture emerges? Is she being pulled toward God or away from Him?
You’re not just marrying her. You’re marrying the sum of her influences.
Here’s the question I want you to ask yourself:
“When we hit a hard season—and we will—who will she call, and what will they tell her to do?”
If the answer is friends who will encourage her to stay, to fight for the marriage, to honor her commitment—you’ve found a woman dedicated to God and loyal to you.
A Word for Parents
For those raising daughters: Be the example. Let your marriage demonstrate that authority can be trusted, that leadership can be sacrificial.
When the time comes, vet the man who wants to marry her. Is he submitted to God? Is he surrounded by men who will hold him accountable?
But also: be thrilled to let him step into his role. Make it clear that a handoff is occurring. If everything is in its proper place, this is your highest success as a father—not keeping her, but releasing her to be loved well by a man who will lead her toward God.
For those raising boys: Encourage your son to do his homework. Even if she is kind. Even if she seems like everything he is looking for. Remind him of what’s at stake.
Teach him to ask good questions—about her family, her friends, her influences. Who is shaping her? Where do her loyalties lie?
Help him understand: what looks like empathy and kindness can become something else when it’s not rooted in faith. A woman easily swayed by sympathetic voices, with no firm foundation, is open to influences that can wreck families.
Kindness without conviction is not enough. Help your son see the difference between a woman who is nice but will ultimately be divided by the world, and a woman who is dedicated to God and loyal to him.
Closing Thought:
Marriage is good. I likely don’t have to convince you of that.
What I need to remind you of is how much is at stake. Your children. Your home. Your finances. Your mental health. Divorce could ruin you. Courts are not kind to men. The statistics on depression, isolation, and suicide for divorced fathers are devastating.
But a devoted woman is a superpower. She will lift you to heights you couldn’t reach on your own. This is the most important decision you’ll ever make.
Do not marry a divided woman.
Do not believe you can change her.
Do not believe your love and leadership alone will be enough.
Find a woman dedicated to God and loyal to you.
Wait for her.
Run from any other.