Fabulous Females

Love Story: Bizarre

2009-06-27T04:54:00.000-07:00

Today I stumbled upon this woman's web site and her story of meeting her husband is one of the funniest I've ever read.

2008-07-28T03:37:00.000-07:00

Desensitizing of the Sexes?

2008-07-15T09:47:00.000-07:00

Is this possible? Here's a really interesting article I found by my favorite Jewish Rabbi Shmuley Boteach.

http://www.shmuley.com/articles.php?id=708

Thoughts?

The Greatest of these is Love

2008-07-09T20:47:00.000-07:00

1 Corinthians 13:13

"But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love."

Ever since I was a little girl, this Bible verse has been ingrained into my memory. That God's love is unchanging and unconditional - it always has been and always will be.

You figure it has to be pretty right on if people have died for love; countless songs, films and television shows have been based upon the topic; many have done some insanely crazy things in the name of it.

The enigma that is love encompasses so many mysterious qualities. No one can fully understand it, but most of us long to be caught up in its passionate embrace. To love and be loved with all your heart and soul.

Real and genuine love is rare and something to be treasured.

It's depressing how many couples I encounter that obviously do not love each other. Or others who consist of one person who loves and another person who takes advantage of them - essentially robbing their heart.

I find that utterly disgusting how many people do not or cannot love. This epidemic is sweeping the earth and leaving a hideously large disastrous aftermath affecting generation after generation.

Giving is an act of love. If someone can freely give of themself (time, money, heart), they love.

You really can tell a lot about a person by their generosity.

I'm one of those people that still believe love is out there for me. That I will find a man who fully understands, accepts, and needs me.

And when I find him, I will love him forever, no matter what the circumstance.

We need to get crazy about love. Seriously.

I'm not saying that you should marry someone the day you meet them, or get a mail order bride.

What I am saying is that we need to make ourselves vulnerable and stop being afraid, and start taking chances.

The other night I was expressing these thoughts to a girlfriend. She reminded me of the famous line from "When Harry Met Sally."

"I came Here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible." - Harry

I do not want to be with someone who is willing to wait to find love.

Lately, I've really been grappling with some internal questions. I keep asking myself different things, and changing my mind. I feel confused. I've figured out that the thing that drives me the most is the desire to bring love and joy to those in need. That includes many wonderful people in my life, and doesn't exclude myself.

I'm really seeking out your opinions on the questions I've written down below. If you could take a few moments and share your thoughts, I feel that I would gain a tremendous amount of insight. Please don't hesitate. Thanks for taking the time to read all of this...

How much should you risk for love? Is there a limit?

What do you think the biggest challenge is for single people to find love?

Why do you think you have not found love yet?

How would more love in the world solve societal problems? Would it make a difference?

How does someone find the love of their life?

What would help people fall in love?

Imaginary Bitches

2008-06-27T18:41:00.000-07:00

This... is simply fantastic.

Just watch every episode:

http://www.imaginarybitches.com/Episodes.html

It's about a girl who has only friends with boyfriends, who makes up imaginary friends to talk about her one night stand with.

safe spaces

2008-05-26T19:02:00.000-07:00

As with many other things, I have an on-again, off-again, love-hate relationship with blogging. On the one hand, I believe it opens communication across geographic boundaries and invites conversation on many pressing topics that might otherwise go undiscussed. Recently, for instance, I came across an article by a woman who shared a similar experience growing up as I had. Just by virtue of reading it, I felt an amazing, unprecedented catharsis knowing that I was not "the only one." I doubt this would have ever happened without the written, electronic word. Even on this blog there is comfort in knowing that the challenges of being twenty-something, Christian, and female today span more than individual lives, as does the encouragement we share as we come to terms with it or find that special someone.

At the same time, as we are all aware, publishing these experiences -- however anonymously or obliquely -- comes at the expense of our privacy. For this reason, I never use my legal name in my blogs (nor anyone else's), nor links between them, or post my direct contact information (if I can help it). Yet, in one way or another, many of the people -- exes, my father (egad!), et al included -- I come to write about have come across information that I never intended them to. It is a sobering thought, and one I must confess that makes me bothered as though a real privacy violation had occurred. After all, it is one thing to read someone's blog for fun, out of common interest, or so on. It is quite another to *search* for someone's information for the explicit purpose of finding out personal information about them that they chose not to reveal to you in person.

So once again, I am at odds regarding the consequences of blogging. It is psychologically relieving to write and read about daily life, dreams, and doubts in a community outside of one's immediate environment. Yet, as I am realizing all too often, it could often come back to haunt you.

For instance, I have not qualms about saying that I am moving on, am genuinely happy, thank you very much, with a neighbor (no, not boyfriend) that I have gone out with a couple of times, and have nothing to regret other than when this tertiary communicator, the blog, is used as a stand-in or short-cut to get to know the folks right in front of us. For my own sake, this time I'll keep shut about the rest ... at least for now.

What do you think? As this and/or your personal blog grows in popularity, and our relational issues deepen, how much thought are you putting into who or what you write about, based on whom you think is or not reading it. Where do you draw the line, and is there such a think as a violation of privacy in a presumably public space? How safe is the Internet, after all, to talk about the things that matter most?

Just a thought! I hope this doesn't keep the rest of you from sharing the rest of your unfolding stories. I've enjoyed reading and pondering them all..... l.d.

To Hold or to Fold?

2008-04-26T00:11:00.000-07:00

I'll be honest. I suck at poker. It's a game that I really enjoy playing, but have absolutely no prowess in.

Much like poker, at the moment I feel like I am completely inept at handling the relationship I'm currently in.

I love my guy, but am aware that he doesn't feel sure about whether he's madly in love with me. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not running to the altar at all, but lately his actions give me the distinct impression that he's kind of half-assing the relationship, but isn't motivated to get out of it.

He really is trying to sort things out, but it's been a few months and nothing yet. We met a year ago.

Should he know by now if he truly loves me? How long do I wait for him?

A few nights ago, I suggested that we take a three week break. I'm hoping a couple things will come out of it: his true emotions will become clear and that not having communication/being with him will stop clouding my judgment to see the real him.

Should I hold onto my hand? If so, how long do you keep your cards?

I've already laid my cards on my table, so to speak. I want to be with him, but not if he's lukewarm about us as a couple.

Should I fold and get out? On the other hand, I do want to give him a chance to figure things out before considering ending the relationship.

It's only three days into the "break" and I miss him terribly. I wish he was more impulsive and would just call me or (yeah right) show up at my place with flowers. I do not want to be the one to contact first in this situation, because the ball's in his court and I'd regret making the first move.

A Cohabiting Divorce Sucks Pretty Bad

2008-04-16T05:56:00.000-07:00

Cohabitation seems so practical, doesn't it? After all, the two of you spend so much time together anyway. It's so annoying to shuttle between two houses. It seems like it would be the last big test before deciding to get married.
This interview with Michael McManus, president of marriage savers, has enough evidence on why cohabiting is a very, very bad idea to scare any loving couple into maintaining separate residences.

Couples who live together are gambling and losing in 85 percent of the cases. Many believe the myth that they are in a “trial marriage.” Actually it is more like a “trial divorce,” in which more than eight out of ten couples will break up either before the wedding or afterwards in divorce. First, about 45 percent of those who begin cohabiting, do not marry. Those who undergo “premarital divorce” often discover it is as painful as the real thing. Another 5-10 percent continue living together and do not marry. These two trends are the major reason the marriage rate has plunged 50 percent since 1970. Couples who cohabit are likely to find that it is a paultry substitute for the real thing, marriage.

I just witnessed a friend go through a break-up that was more of a divorce. And this level of pain is the norm in 85% of the cases! This has to stop.

Another argument for marriage, dudes?

2008-04-03T19:13:00.000-07:00

Less housework!

mea culpa

2008-03-26T07:53:00.001-07:00

I don't think the pills are working right.

For the past few weeks now, I've been in a black mood. I've felt edgy, irritable, generally pissed off. I'm beginning to wonder if it's chemical and it's time to recheck the meds...yet again. This will necessitate a long drive up to Ann Arbor for decent medical care, given my heinous track record with the doctors around where I live. But oh well. Health is worth it.

But it's not like I don't have control over how I act -- how often have I said that action matters more than emotion? -- and I've been letting myself yield to the ugliness instead of overcoming it with good.

Mainly I'm writing this to a.) ask for prayer; God knows I need it, and b.) state publicly that I've been out of line the past few weeks with my harsh responses to other people[particularly David]'s comments. There's a way to disagree diplomatically, with Christlike consideration and maturity, and a way to disagree nastily and judgmentally, with an eye on being rude. I've been doing the latter lately. And I've been wrong.

The rest of you, my dears, have been much better at it than I have. I'm glad you've been a balancing act to my reactivity.

Please do pray, though. I'm getting tired of myself. And as I have a high tolerance for me, and it's worn thin, I can't imagine how icky I'm being to everyone else.

Just When I Think I'm Old

2008-03-12T16:39:00.000-07:00

I get hit on in the halls by a Notre Dame Football player.
I'm old enough to be his...graduate T.A.!
But it seems older woman/younger man is the new it-couple dynamic.

Thoughts on dating an older guy/girl?

withstanding my kryptonite

2008-03-10T07:19:00.000-07:00

I was thinking a little more on the Science Girl's post on progress, which led to thoughts about the growth I've undergone in relation to men in the past couple of years, and one facet in particular could lead to a discussion, so here we are.

I have a "type." I'm pretty sure we all do. It's not just a physical type -- height, weight, eye color, hair color, facial structure, etc. -- that a person finds attractive; it's that personality type too. And unfortunately, in my case, that type is rather extremely unhealthy for me.

And he's the only kind of guy with whom I feel "sparks." He's internally tormented, philosophical, well-read, intelligent, half sweet, half jerk, self-absorbed, and very, very needy. These are the guys to whom I'm immediately drawn, without fail. This fatal attraction has caused me a lot of unnecessary grief over the years, but it's only within the past two that I've recognized it.

There are many reasons why this is the kind of guy with whom I fall head-over-heels in love. A lot of it has to do with conditioning. I was born a "gifted" child -- and this term relates not to IQ but to Alice Miller's definition in The Drama of the Gifted Child -- "gifted" in her terminology denotes a child who has an innate receptivity to the feelings and needs of others, and who generally serves as an emotional support for those others, often to his or her own detriment. I've often jokingly referred to myself as "Sarah the Confessor" -- I literally can't stand in the checkout line without someone around me turning to me and pouring out his or her woes. Another one my family calls me is "Sarah the Caretaker" -- I often spend over half an hour on the phone at work with potential clients, listening to their troubles and offering sympathy, and that's just one common example. This isn't complaining (I very seldom mind); nor is it bragging (it's not something I asked for or earned, and it's equal parts blessing and curse); it simply is.

While it isn't often a problem in my general relationships, I have had to learn to scale it back, and with large amounts of success; but I have an incredibly difficult time finding any kind of balance when it's a man I'm in love with ("in love" as distinguished from "love" -- "in love" being all the butterflies, passion, giddiness, ultra-charged sense of aliveness, etc.), and I have a harder time setting any personal boundaries. And this kind of guy is usually pretty screwed up, so all of my energy is spent taking care of him, trying to solve his problems, giving him emotional support, striving to make his life better, all the while exhausting myself and paying no attention to my own psychological health.

Of course I can never make his life better or fix his problems, but his need never diminishes, and I get burned out, and it ends up going nowhere. But bring the next guy of this type along and I'm at it again. The last time it happened, two years ago, was the worst, and it set me on a serious thinking journey. I decided that I would rather be alone for the rest of my life than spend it with a man who needs constant mothering and spends most of his time gazing into his navel. My family and friends supported this decision wholeheartedly.

Making a decision doesn't mean the temptation, or the attraction, is gone, however, which has made me increasingly cautious with the men I meet, and extremely critical of childish tendencies (sometimes overkill, but I have to fight so hard against myself that I ricochet in the opposite direction). I know my own weaknesses, but I'm not always sure how successfully I can overcome them. This is why, too, when the question of "settling" came up I found myself an advocate of the idea -- because it's going to take a little fanning to make a tiny little spark a fire with the kind of man who is actually good for me. My type has the flame roaring in an instant, but I shouldn't have him; so I have to watch for the smaller sparks, and maybe work a little harder to get the fire going. For whatever reason, the strong, good men don't always do it for me, but that's the kind of man I intellectually want, and the kind of man I need. That's the sensible match.

I've seen a lot of people who have bad types, fatal attractions of their own, and it's not just the gals. I see a lot of really nice, good, thoughtful, kind, decent men wind up with the most horrible shrews a person can imagine. So it makes me wonder, why is that?

What about you? What kind of a "type" do you fall for effortlessly? Is the type good for you or bad for you? How has it impacted your dating/married life? What kind of challenges come with your type, even if it's a good type? If it's a bad type, how have you seen yourself grow to compensate for your natural inclinations? What are the most effective strategies?

Please tell!

2008-03-08T02:07:00.000-08:00

(FWIW, I didn't want to post this on the front page, I wanted to post it as a comment in the men vs. boys post, below, but I haven't been able to get the comment form to work in the last day and a half - stupid Zambian internet connection. Anyway - some of my thoughts below aren't stated as kindly as I would like them to come across, but I've stared at what I've written too many times now. I ask you to forgive me for not coming across softer, maybe after some time off I'll be a little better of a brother to you again, who knows.)

You know, I've been here for a couple years, at least, but I think I've pretty much had it. I'm not saying I won't be back someday, but I'm taking a long-term vacation from FF for my own sanity's sake.

I've weathered a lot of criticism from more than a couple of you on this site, and I think I've tried to stay pretty gracious about it, for the most part. I've tried to contribute a view from the less fairer sex, and time and time again I've had it thrown back in my face, sometimes subtly, sometimes not so. So here's some parting thoughts.

Generalizations. This is an incredibly important thing to understand: negatively generalizing any group of people inherently devalues certain members of the group that don't posess the traits common to the majority of said group. The same works in reverse, but don't kid yourself - this blog does a hell of a lot more of the former. I know - I've read it from the start. Here's some generalizations on women:

- Women talk too much. Gossip is far more common in women then men.
- Women let their emotions control themselves too much.
- Women use or withhold sex to get what they want.
- Women are more insecure and needy than men.
- Women blame men for all of their problems.

How does that make you feel?

Quit lumping me, and thousands of other decent, imperfect, Christian guys into the general category of all men, who play too many video games, drink too much beer, and are only interested in women for sex. Its literally dehumanizing to men who play video games and drink beer in moderation (or not at all), men who value women for their God-given qualities, physical, emotional, psychological, et. al., and are trying to protect their purity. Don't judge all men on your tiny, probably less-than-perfect dating history. And don't think for a second that you'll quit generalizing once you meet your special someone - its not a habit you can turn on and off like a light switch, and it will damage your relationship, should you ever meet him.

Stop assuming you can fix men. You can't. There's something wrong with every last one of us, even your precious Tyler Perry, as much as I hate to break it to you. The rather satisfying thing about that fact is that there's something wrong with every one of you too (and *that* statement about either sex is *not* a generalization). Stop thinking you're going to find the man who doesn't play video games, who doesn't want to spend an entire Sunday afternoon watching football, or who doesn't have some other means of enjoyment that you don't find the least bit interesting. Don't expect him to plop down next to you and pull out the needles every time you feel like knitting with a cup of tea. Try appreciating what you have in common, and what you don't, for a change. 80/20, anyone?

I can't tell you ladies how often I've been made to ~~feel~~know, thanks to careless words, that I'm not one of the few and far between. That's what we're all looking for in a life mate, as well we should, but the endless harping on the fact that you're pretty sure 99.9% of guys aren't up to par with what you'd prefer all men to be like, well it would take quite the narcissit to assume he's in the 0.1%. I certainly know I'm not anyone's Mr. Right, that much is clear. If I've made it this far without settling down with someone, there must be something horribly wrong with me. Guess what! There is. Its called sin, and its very contagious. You might want to wash your hands.

Stop blaming your singleness on men. Sure, its at least half our fault, but the point is that the constant and complete acquittal of yourselves in the overall process is self-righteous and a huge turn-off. Define hypocritical: reading about how passive the male sex is on the same blog I read about women bemoaning their Friday nights at home in their sweats. If cultural roles are changing, and men are getting more passive, the answer isn't to bitch about it, the answer is to positively be counter-cultural, and to encourage godly men to do the same, rather than assume none of us can or will. Wake up. And another thing - none of you will ever know how hard it is for a guy to walk up and start talking to a strange girl, whether its at church or in a bar. I wish more than anything that I could make you all feel that accute apprehension for just one second. Quit thinking we have it so easy.

Its important to know your self worth, and what a wonderful and awesome creature of God you are. Its also important to have enough humility to realize that you might not be all that fabulous, all the time, after all. I've said it time and again, life isn't about finding the right peron, life is about becoming the right person.

I'm still working on becoming that person. I'm a responsible adult, who has been paying the loans and bills on time every single month of the 8 years since college. I've held a professional position the sum total of that time as well. I've done well enough that I've been able to go on half of my salary for the better part of a year in order to do charity work in 3rd world Africa, and still keep plugging the 401k and the savings accounts. I'm clean-cut, well-dressed, in excellent physical condition, have a healthy diet, and am well-mannered. I've been heavily involved with my church and family in my spare time, and I have sought continue my education informally as much as possible - I've learned the basics of 3 new languages in the last 2 years and am working on a 4th, and I'm abreast of the latest politics, theology, science, and industry knowledge and news. My hobbies include photography, drawing, reading, writing, sculpting, and playing guitar / piano. I tithe at my church, I pay my taxes, I give to charity and volunteer in the local homeless shelter regularly. I enjoy driving after a goal, leading teams, and making tough decisions, and I have an often overly-aggressive competitive nature. And I can stop and laugh about everything above and more, and I try to make a point to do that every day, in one way or another. And I'm still working on becoming that person.

This is the type of man that your current mentality has driven off, today. If you want the kind that you're whining about all of us being, here's a hint: keep up the whining. You'll find guys who are content to sit and agree with you in bemoaning the state of their sex, instead of getting out there and living a life that shines in the darkness.

Pause long enough to consider the possibility that some of the stuff I've outlined above might be tantamount to doing yourselves a disservice. I know its driven this immature, passive, less-than masculine man away.

Consider it an inexpensive lesson, I guess.

for now

2008-03-07T14:53:00.000-08:00

I love the discussions on this blog -- the endless theorizing is entertaining, and I enjoy most of the varying perspectives we see here.

Lately it's just theorizing -- I'm still single, I still want to be married, I still want a family, and that still looks to be a long way off, given the givens -- but I don't mind it as much. I'm finding a church home for the first time in seven years, I'm finding ways to be involved, I'm making a new friend or two in the process, and I'm seeing places where I can be of some use to people around me. It's not going to replace the goal of marriage, certainly, but the grief and the ache of being single have eased these last few months. I'm grateful for the respite, for as long as it lasts.

Things are never perfect, but my dad used to tell me to look at the overall progress -- to view my life like a line graph. As long as the line is going up, he's say, you're making progress. And that's good.

Some of the biggest challenges I have faced over the past four years have related primarily to budgeting and money management, and to coming to a healthy balance in my social life. I'm happy with where I've come in the last year in particular -- I see significant progress in financial responsibility (I'm a spendthrift at heart -- I buy lots of cheap things rather than a few expensive things -- I have that much Scots in me), and tendrils of growth in the making of more friends (which is something of a challenge in my small town where I'm one of the only young people I know).

This year I'd like to waste less time watching movies and TV on DVD -- an exceptionally easy thing to do when I come home from work drained and exhausted and I just want some brain candy -- and focus more on my writing and my reading. I've built quite a collection of books since I was a little kid, and I still haven't read about half of them.

Moving to Michigan has been a jarring kind of experience -- not in a bad way. But I've remembered, after living two and a half years in South Bend and knowing a lot of people by default and being able to find things to do, that I'm rather severely shy and have a hard time talking comfortably with people I don't know -- people I'm looking to befriend, that is, not entertain in the grocery checkout line during the fifteen minute waiting period. I might have learned to disguise my introversion since college, and I can turn on that charm (yes, I do have charm! just don't get me talking about church problems and gender issues) and that laughing energy in an instant and fool all the strangers at the party into thinking I'm this extravagantly extroverted woman without a care in the world, and I'm not faking exactly; that facade is really part of who I am -- like a beetle's exoskeleton is part of who (what) it is. But there's a soft and squishy underneath, and it makes me internally reserved.

And here, where I live now, there aren't any sophisticated parties where I can be funny and charming and make myself forget that I'm usually terrified of people my age. There aren't any parties at all. So I get to know people by running into them on an individual basis, over and over again, since this is an exceedingly small town. And I've never really known how to relate to the vast majority of my generation -- I get along better with the forty-plus crowd. So trying to expand my social horizons has become less effortless and more a quest for a few true friends (I treasure the ones I already have, mind you) in my area. Church is the most sensible outlet I can think of at the moment. It's a good stretching experience; one of my worst tendencies is to isolate myself either because I'm depressed or lazy or prefer not to be bothered. Having to attend church every week has goaded me back into the realm of humanity.

I know eventually my singleness will make me sad again, but I'm hoping to build enough of a good life here that I can fall back on it when those rough days come -- and that means investing, not only in my writing, but in people.

I have two great passions: Art and children. And there are plenty of kids around here who need an adult's mentorship, and plenty of room for the community to offer it.

I don't know. Everything is changing. I love that it is. There's a lot to think about besides my own loneliness, and a lot to do, which is even better than the thinking sometimes. And because the progress is slow, I think the change will be more lasting.

It's good.

Men or Boys?

2008-03-06T19:06:00.001-08:00

Here are two articles claiming guys are delaying their maturity in favor for video games. Agree or disagree??

http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_1_single_young_men.html

http://chronicle.com/review/brainstorm/fendrich/just-hangin-forever-dude

Personally, I love this line:

Did the liberation of our daughters mean young men would become so creepy that they’d have to go through life alone?

And this one:

In the almost half-century since the arrival of the pill, the burden of hearth and home (that is, of society’s having enough stable ones), is falling once again on young women. They’re the ones who are going to have to demand better, more mature, more responsible, yes, even more sanitary conduct on the part of the new horde of child-men before they have anything serious — especially sex — to do with them. Perhaps a mandatory study of Lysistrata, where women could learn about collective female power when sex is withheld, is in order. Otherwise, they’re condemned to trying to find suitable candidates for love and marriage amid the trash of a beer-sodden NFL pizza party.

the new 80/20

2008-03-02T19:36:00.000-08:00

I heart Tyler Perry. I watch almost all of his films, even though I can recite the basic formula by heart: high-class girl gets dumped by her accomplished but abusive partner and is subsequently won over by a dashing Christian man (albeit in a blue collar) who shows her how beautiful she really is. I fall for it everytime, down to the final scene when the evil ex begs her to return and she says you´re forgiven, but no. In between, there´s always a good helping of slapstick comedy and couple of old-time homilies that make for terrific theater viewing. And you know it´s got to be good when it´s banned in Europe!

One of Perry´s more recent additions is last year´s Why Did I Get Married? Have you seen it? Based on the marital woes of four couples, Perry introduces the 80/20 rule: Any relationship is characterized by ¨80 percent fulfillment, 20 percent lack thereof. But if you go after that 20 percent by looking for it in someone else, the characters agree, you´ll lose the 80 and end up living only with the 20¨ (from Pluggedinonline). With one exception, all of the couples decide to stick it out after listing all of the good points of their partner and realizing that they outnumbered the bad.

Whether or not you can take the low ratings and the equally lowbrow message, I wonder if Perry has a point - a new twist on the whole settling question. Basically, no matter how long we pledge not to settle, no matter how long we hold out for ¨the one,¨ no one can meet ALL of our needs. Whether we are in a relationship or looking for one, 80% may be the best we´ll ever get. Even later in the film, Perry suggests that even 51% is good enough. Whatever the percentage, it´s something worth considering.

Do you agree with the concept? What is your 80 and your 20, and when do you know if a partner or suitor has crossed the line?

And does anyone else here concur that Tyler Perry is just awesome? (And unbelievably single yet too! Ladies, there´s hope :)

"I Heard There Was Some Flirting Going on!"

2008-02-28T08:55:00.001-08:00

Someone said to me with a grin of delight, relating the story of some Saturday night escapades among friends. Everyone enjoys hearing about flirting. And many of us enjoy flirting. But sometimes I find myself in the middle of an interaction with a male friend and I pause and wonder, "I hope I don't seem like I'm flirting." Or just as perplexing, "Is he flirting with me?"
Why is there so much confusion on what constitutes flirting nowadays? How can we, the most sexually aware and liberated generation in over a thousand years, be so clueless about unstated intentions and veiled interest?

Arranging

2008-02-26T07:15:00.001-08:00

I have always liked the phrase, "a marriage has been arranged." When I feel like getting married, I'll arrange one." --Flora Post, Cold Comfort Farm

In the film Cold Comfort Farm, Flora Post is a master of management, adhering always to the thick volume, The Higher Common Sense. So, when she tells her new man, Charles, that when she feels like it she'll arrange a marriage for herself, we have perfect confidence in her power to bring this about.

But, looking at the meanderings of this blog, I suspect we (men and women) have little or no faith in our own powers to bring love and then marriage into our lives. We always talk about it like I suspect ancient Greeks talked about the caprice of the gods. "If it happens for me..." "Maybe if I suffocate a toad at midnight, I'll meet him this year..."

Considering that most everyone I know practices this kind of mental relationship voodoo, I was surprised to discover that there are strange communities of people, like members of Judaism, who still practice arranged marriages, but with a modern edge: after an introduction by parents (based on the goal of a possible marriage) they date, they get to know each other, the decision rests with the couple, etc. But, reading their stories, I'm astonished at how calm they are about the whole procedure! Where are the mixed signals? The reading of tea leaves and horoscopes to understand what in the world he (she) is thinking?

I think arranged marriages would make everyone happier. For men, the process would have that goal-driven bent that we know gives them a project and, more importantly, results. And women would no longer be left feeling crazy when all of a sudden, for the third time this year, another guy suddenly turns cold or disappears.

Thoughts?

2008-02-25T03:16:00.000-08:00

The one thing I really didn't appreciate about the Atlantic article and the various discussions regarding it that I was privvy to (ours being only the latest, and I'd like to point out, for the record, that it was some other david commenting in that thread, not myself), was the general but mostly unspoken theme that the "settling" issue is germane to the fairer sex.

That was a long sentence.

Anyway, I wrote this question a while back and got some really good response. It encouraged me to keep my standards high, and never settle. As one responder put it, if the word 'settle' ever comes up, its not the right person.

I thought perhaps you might enjoy reading it. In the meantime, I'll sit here and wonder why this issue is one that people think only women struggle with, and I'll do so with due regard to the irony of framing the issue in this particular venue.

So, Should You Settle?

2008-02-19T11:17:00.000-08:00

Go read this article in The Atlantic by Lori Gottlieb, titled "Marry Him!"

To the outside world, of course, we still call ourselves feminists and insist—vehemently, even—that we’re independent and self-sufficient and don’t believe in any of that damsel-in-distress stuff, but in reality, we aren’t fish who can do without a bicycle, we’re women who want a traditional family. And despite growing up in an era when the centuries-old mantra to get married young was finally (and, it seemed, refreshingly) replaced by encouragement to postpone that milestone in pursuit of high ideals (education! career! but also true love!), every woman I know—no matter how successful and ambitious, how financially and emotionally secure—feels panic, occasionally coupled with desperation, if she hits 30 and finds herself unmarried.

This attitude, especially for privileged young women in higher education, is all-pervasive. It's utterly taboo to say, "But...I also want to get married," when asked about plans for the future. This is why I find myself kind of speechless when my advisors weave these grand plans in which I spend the next two years in Europe doing research and teaching at a French university. I want to say to them, "But...I kind of want to get married before I'm thirty. I kind of have a boyfriend right now and I don't know what spending twelve to twenty-four months in Europe is going to mean for that..." But it's taboo to let such silly, girlish worries impact my "career." This might be why I find this article refreshing in its honesty. The author acknowledges boldly what I keep sensing under the surface of my single and dating friends' worries about the passing of time. But her advice is pretty shocking:

My advice is this: Settle! That’s right. Don’t worry about passion or intense connection. Don’t nix a guy based on his annoying habit of yelling “Bravo!” in movie theaters. Overlook his halitosis or abysmal sense of aesthetics. Because if you want to have the infrastructure in place to have a family, settling is the way to go.

For women who aren't used to settling for a lesser brand of shoes, a lesser law school, or a lesser 401K, this advice makes us indignant, I think. "Why should I have to compromise my standards when the men are the ones who suck?" might be the refrain. I hear it a lot. I've said it a lot. But there's always that voice in the back of my head that says, "Really? Is it really the case that all the men in the world suck? Aren't you being a little too picky?" After all, what is the ultimate goal of dating? Gottlieb writes:

It sounds obvious now, but I didn’t fully appreciate back then that what makes for a good marriage isn’t necessarily what makes for a good romantic relationship. Once you’re married, it’s not about whom you want to go on vacation with; it’s about whom you want to run a household with. Marriage isn’t a passion-fest; it’s more like a partnership formed to run a very small, mundane, and often boring nonprofit business. And I mean this in a good way.

This, then, is the reality that all of us want, stripped of the Hollywood and romance novel glamour. Married life is not a chick flick (this is why chick flicks end with a wedding, not with the argument over which minivan to buy).
If we have the desire for the grown-up life, are we willing to make compromises to get it before it's too late? I'm not saying we should consider dating bums or abusive men. And for the men, I'm not saying you should marry shrewish or abusive women. I'm just asking this crowd, with our mix of beliefs and backgrounds, should you settle while settling is an option?

just because it happened...

2008-02-14T14:18:00.000-08:00

Irony of Accident

This morning I shut off the clock’s buzzer
(it doesn’t buzz, it beeps – what’s in a name)
and took another half an hour to dream
strange things before I rose – just another
day. I sipped French-pressed coffee at intervals
while eating breakfast, showering, throwing
on what there was that I could wear, loving
the favorite sweater’s shield from winter cold.
I drove a crazy pot-holed path to work
and cursed the sticky office lock, at last
got in. The answering machine was blank
and I pulled off my boots, glad for the break,
then glanced down at the date and had to laugh –
Valentine’s Day, and I was dressed in black.

Millionaire Matchmaker

2008-02-12T20:11:00.000-08:00

Patti Stanger has hit the nail on the head. I absolutely love this woman. She's a Jewish matchmaker for millionaires to meet their true loves. If you have not seen her TV show on Bravo, you NEED to. It's on Tuesday nights at 10pm E time.

Her mission is to return men and women to more proper courtship and has strict rules for her dating club. This show is fascinating and oddly, I feel I've learned some very valuable things from it. I know idolatry is bad, but I think she's my new idol!

Here's a preview. Your thoughts on her/old fashioned matchmaking??

This is an AWESOME interview with Ms. Stanger done by Fat Jewish Guy ...

V-Day Plans?

2008-02-04T19:08:00.001-08:00

With the big, Hallmark-beloved holiday on the horizon, I was interested in knowing what others on this blog think of Valentine's Day...

1) Do you think Valentine's Day is a valid holiday or just a commercial conspiracy?

2) Do you usually want to have plans for February 14th?

3) What will you be doing on that day, if anything?

2008-01-02T07:57:00.000-08:00

Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up this whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They don't ask for it. They do something dumb one day like kiss you, or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so a simple phrase like "Maybe we should just be friends" or "How very perceptive" turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love. I hate love. - Neil Gaiman

I realized recently in talking to a friend that I've spent most of my twenties being single. Its funny how it just kind of happened. I didn't plan for it to be that way, hell, I never really thought it could even sort out that way, but it did. And I never really became fully aware of it until last month. It dawned on me like a whole new reality I hadn't known about, even though I was the one living it out at the time.

And you can't go back. You can never go back.

That's the subtle sting of any reality related to this life - they are all so finite. They all sit there and silently tell you that some day, you too shall pass. The end is absolutely coming for us all.

In a sense, then, I suppose that even finding someone to stumble through life with would have a bit of the same sense of finite wrapped into it. Perhaps even more so - you get the love and joy and other wonderful things about companionship, but the knowledge that one day one of you is going to grieve the other person. I remember my pastor once put it along the lines of "death is knowing that one face at the dinner table will watch all the rest be buried."

But even that, losing your love to the grave, is the bittersweet temporal experience for the Christian, who sheds tears with a smile knowing that the day of reuniting is not far off.

I think what I have the most trouble with is the threat of lost love in this life - that love might leave you for reasons other than death.

After so many years of walking this world on your own, your heart builds a little box around it, after a fashion. You're not challenged by people who know you well enough to push the right buttons at the right time. You're not often called out when you stray a little too far. You don't often find yourself in the position to struggle with another person, be it over a sunroof left open in a snowstorm or whether life begins at conception. In the box, your heart doesn't have to worry about any of those things. Of course, as with most things, someone before me has put it more eloquently:

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. - Clyde Staples Lewis

And so I've realized that trying to place my self in a state of relationship - an effort one might say I've been more actively pursuing over the past few months - is a matter of taking my heart out of the box. You have to set it on the table between the two of you and then sit there with your hands on your lap and watch what the other person decides to do. And it takes a very, very long time. And sometimes you put it back in the box and you know you're going to have to start all over again. It is not at all an easy process.

It is, however, a good thing that I am aware of this at the moment, because I'm still desperately early in this process. I don't really belong to anyone yet, although I wouldn't mind if I did in the near future. Being in Africa and not being sure where I'll be living or working a few months from now doesn't help smooth the process out much, but I digress. The point is that I am, if anything at all, in the earliest stages of anything at all, and it doesn't take much to know that things likely will not get easier. The opening up and the sharing and the trusting - so very much the trusting - the more invested one becomes, the greater the risk. I struggle so much with trusting my heart to another. Trust is one of my big three qualifications for a person that I would belong to.

I think the risk, however, is one of the things that really brings a sort of roller coaster thrill to the possibility of love. There's a danger there, a flirting with gravity, of a sort. I was climbing in Great Falls National Park this past weekend with friends. Nothing serious - no harness and ropes, but enough to make you careful about where you put your hands and feet. Love is so very much that feeling - its exhilarating, it makes you feel most alive, and yet only so because there's the possibility of exactly the opposite, right there, all the time. To love anything at all is to realize that it might be lost.

I know love is a decision, not something that just happens to you. But I'll say it all the same - I want to fall in love. I want to throw myself headlong into it and hope things work out in the end. And if they don't, I want to work through heartbreak, again. If I do, I know I'm much better prepared for it, this time. And if I don't, so much the better. But what I don't want, anymore, what I really fear, I suppose, is any more of this complacent neutrality.

I want to get rid of the box, for good. And, in a sense, I think I'm glad that its not an easy process.

Playing Matchmaker

2007-12-01T11:51:00.000-08:00

It's time for another "Good idea. Bad idea."

I am tempted to play matchmaker often. I have lots of single friends. I have a lot of time on my hands when I should be grading papers or reading for my PhD exam. Therefore, I try to make matches.

And none have worked out yet.

Is matchmaking a thankless (and futile) job? Or a lost art?

Blooming Out of Season

2007-11-12T12:02:00.000-08:00

This is my very first blog post ever!

I'm feeling a bit pathetic today, so get out your teeny tiny violins. : p

So. I'm in my late (soon to be later) thirties. I've been on maybe three dates in my life time(!). I guess this makes me quite unique. : ) Anyway, up to last year I was utterly and totally convinced that I was, well, totally ungorgeous. Okay, ugly. I just didn't think any man could possibly be interested in ME in that way.. not me...in reality... at least, not any sane man. Once in a great while, I seemed to sense that someone WAS a bit interested and it would really frighten me and I'd think "what is wrong with him? yikes!". It was sorta like that old Groucho quote "I would never want to join a club that would accept me as a member".

So, last year, stuff happened that helped to challenge this entrenched perception. It was a combination of a lot of things, including, well, weight loss, actually STAYING on my anti-depressent medication (this is a really really good idea : )), starting to excerise regularly, God stuff and just simply the ongoing maturation process (which is a Gold led thing too). I now know that I was never horribly ugly, just unkempt, and my depression and severe anxiety just really scewered my perception of everything, which is a bummer. I missed out on so much. Also, it helped that there was this guy at work who I liked and who was just really flirty and stuff with me. He's just like that with everyone, but suddenly, I started to actually feel attractive. Me? That was just really weird..in a good way.

So, well, a year later the weight has come back, but I still feel a little like I've finally 'blossomed' at the age of 36 in the way that many woman do as teenagers. Its not that I suddenly became beautiful, but that I can perceive my potential to be beautiful in someone elses eyes.

Okay. So... here we go. I'm now 37, discovered that I'm not hideous. And now what? I think the dearth of single Christian men has been discussed at length here. : P I feel like I've finally 'blossomed' but its too late to really matter; it's after the first frost and all the bees are dead. : P

Okay, actually, a big problem is that I'm looking for a cute, youngish man with hair and all the men my age are looking for a cute youngish woman with a slim waist and we just don't want to accept the reality that such expectations are a tad unrealistic as we near our 40s. A lot of life has happened since we were youngish and had hair and slim waists, and a lot of that living has included pain and rejection and suffering... whether a person is married and divorced or just perpetually single like myself. Because of the consequences of being alive in this stupid world, I think a lot of single Christian people my age are just very cautious about the whole 'romantic' thing. We are just plain scared.

Anyway, there you go.

It is not good for woman to be alone

2007-11-07T06:14:00.000-08:00

This morning I woke up to discover that the two flies in my apartment had multiplied to ten in the night. And these are no ordinary flies. These are Teenage Mutant Ninja Flies. As I hunted the flies armed with only a black ballet flat and the remnants of a spray bottle of flea killer, I thought to myself, "It would be really nice not to be alone right now." I'm not one of those girls who expects a man to kill all the bugs (though that doesn't stop me from asking the closest man to do so). Nor am I a damsel in distress type. Quite the opposite. If anything I tend to be too independent and generally refuse to ask for help. It just seems to me that in moments of domestic emergency, when I'm beginning to panic that hundreds and hundreds of flies might come pouring out of the heating vents, having a calm, rational male presence would help matters.
In a sermon at my church, the pastor was reenacting the story of creation, and he pointed out that the story in no way says, "Adam got really lonely and wondered why he didn't have a girlfriend." It wasn't as if a pair of monkeys walked by holding hands and Adam thought to himself, "Hey, I need a girl monkey." No, it was God who noticed that something was "not good" and set about fixing it by creating woman.
I'm starting to think that being a woman is a lot like being a human "not good-o-meter." Flies=not good. Stacks of dishes=not good. Starving children in Uganda=not good. Friends fighting=not good. We are very quick to notice unsatisfactory situations and to set about fixing them. This blog is an excellent example of that impulse (even if at times our efforts result in more of the bad than the good).
The curse placed on woman was frustrated desire, a desire for a level of intimacy that she would never reach with her husband. Even if we're single, that desire is still there, and it feels very real in moments like I had this morning, wishing that someone were here to help me in this small crisis. Our desire to have harmony and peace (which often becomes distorted into a desire to control) is constantly frustrated by this fallen world. And now, in a world of even more fractured relationships between the sexes, unmarried women have very little control. The "not-goods" of mixed signals, hurt feelings, and broken relationships may far outnumber the goods in our lives.
I'm not going to end with some annoyingly cheery Christian answer like, "Let Jesus be your everything." Websites like christianitytoday.com have become almost ridiculous as their singles' authors try to shore up ghostly fragments against the ruin of their hopes for marriage. "At least I had a great coffee date with an old friend!" "This is what I do on a Friday night at home! I eat ice cream and hog the remote control. Hee hee!" The reason you're uneasy if your dating dry spell has stretched from months into years is because it's a genuinely stinky situation.
This isn't a "solution" piece, just a random thought piece. If you would like to suggest a solution in the comments section, please do! We could all use "a little help from my friends."

Fresh Blog

2007-10-31T19:20:00.000-07:00

Awhile ago, I stopped blogging on my personal blog. But I've decided to start a new one. Here is the link.

http://becomingthemarshmallow.blogspot.com/

Hope you stop by for a visit!

How the Story Ended

2007-10-17T10:10:00.001-07:00

I set everything up for a double-date with me and my guy and Mike and this girl. I found an open weekend, called the guys, and then called the girl.
"I'd like to invite you over to dinner. Mike really wants to meet you."
"Oooooooo-kay. That would be cool. But do you mind if I ask if this is a set-up?"
"Yeah, it kind of is."
"Then I should tell you I'm currently dating someone."
[insert girly squealing of congratulations]
"But we could still do dinner," she offered. I decided there's no reason 4 friends cannot have dinner together. But Mike backed out on Thursday, claiming that it would just be too "weird" since she has a boyfriend.

This, to me, shows a major lack of foresight on his part.

Do I have an ethical responsibility here?

2007-09-25T05:13:00.000-07:00

I was in my apartment cooking dinner and waiting for my guy when there was a loud knock on the door. "He's early," I thought to myself. I opened the door, however, and found two guy friends of mine, Mike and James.* Mike likes to stop in for coffee and leftovers once a week, and he had brought a buddy this time.
They sat at my table, had some chips and salsa, drank some coffee, and told me all about their latest adventures with girls. It seems they are both on the prowl. James had recently had a very successful date with a girl he liked. James is sweetness personified and I wished him the best of luck. Mike, on the other hand, was having less luck.

Now, I have known Mike for a year now, and my first impression of him was pretty negative. And I've told him. I thought he was kind of slimy and obsequious and that he had an agenda with every woman he met.

I was right only about the last part. This is a man who loves women. He loves their company and he loves, as he says, trying to "get in the cuddle." He's always on the lookout for his next short-term girlfriend. He studies French manners and galantry to be more appealling to the opposite sex.

(incidentally, if Christian young men would put some effort into being appealling to girls: their manners, how they dress, what they talk about, they might find "God's will for their lives" materializing a lot more quickly.)

So, last night, drugged up on codeine (cold and cough), having just hung up the phone with a certain young man, I was drifitng off to sleep. Then my phone beeped with a text message. I opened it up, "Don't forget to set me up with Jane like you promised. A double date!"

I hadn't forgotten my promise to set him up with this spunky friend of mine. But I had just been at his house on Sunday and there had been a new girl there hanging out. I figured his interest in Jane had disappeared. Apparently, things did not move fast enough with this girl, and by Tuesday he had to send a message out to his Romance Facilitator, moi.

Here is my moral quandary: do I set up this man with a friend of mine. He is not a Christian and neither is she. She's pretty strong-willed and tough, so I don't think he'll have the chance to break her heart before he gets bored and moves on. But, should I serve up a new entree on this girl buffet he seems to enjoy so much? Should I warn her beforehand what he's like or let her judge for herself?

*the names have been changed to protect the innocent and the not-so-innocent

Where are the Men At?

2007-09-23T09:39:00.000-07:00

All right. I don't often like to go down this road of fear-mongering, but I really have to ask, "Where are the young men in church?"

I ask because I went to the Young Adult Sunday School for the first time in about five months. I hugged some old friends, met some new college students. Had some coffee, admired a friend's beautiful and rambunctious baby while catching up on her life, sat down at a table, and noticed that I was in an estrogen ocean.

No, I thought. This can't be right. I must be misperceiving. So, I counted. Thirty women. Five men.

That is one man for every six women.

Where are the guys? Is the group anti-male in some way? I think it must be. I don't like all of the chit-chatting and hugging myself. So, for men, I can imagine it's thirty minutes of uncomfortable social interaction followed by a fifteen minute devotional. I have trouble dragging myself out of bed for it, personally. I only go because I need some Christian friends.

But are the men skipping Sunday School and attending church? I looked around. Five rows of college/young adult women. Two rows of men. A little bit better. Maybe the young men sit in the balcony? I'm going to do some reconnaissance next week.

Here's the problem:
A church without men has problems. Now, this church is very strong in its male leadership and male attendance among married men of all ages. But where are the young men?
And, not that church should be a dating service, but if according to all of our youth leaders and Josh Harris books, we should not be "unequally yoked" (which goes so far as to mean, "Don't date a man who isn't a worship leader or a short-term missions trip leader), who are all of these obedient and idealistic women going to date and eventually marry?
So, I gave up worrying about my lovely sisters in Christ and focused on the message.

I don't know... I still find the rapture-by-default of the church's young men a little disturbing...

Why Meeting the Parents Freaks Me Out

2007-09-17T08:21:00.000-07:00

So, I have had two high-stress events in the past two months. Meeting his parents (two action-packed days in Asheville). Him meeting my parents (just this weekend, really, since they talked to him for all of two seconds back in August). And the no-less surreal: the parents meeting the parents (this was back in August in Asheville).

Everyone kept (keeps) telling me: stop freaking out. It will be great. What could go wrong?

To which I reply: everything. Everything and anything could go wrong. Dad could tell embarrassing stories about me. Mom might call me by that endearing but awful nickname. They might not like him, which would be the worst. And what if his parents don't like me? For a control freak like myself, the situation has too many variables. I was a puppet-master whose strings had all been cut.

I'm trying to learn just to chill out and enjoy my own life. It's been a steep learning curve. But when it comes down it, being with someone else is all about letting go of complete control over your own life (which is an illusion, anyway).

The visits went really well. Everyone seems to like each other. Everyone "gets" each other. I find myself breathing a little easier today.

What Happens?

2007-09-13T09:07:00.000-07:00

What happens when some of our most prolific posters meet great guys and start spending more time with those guys than angsting about singleness and the search for love?

They stop posting on Fabulous Females. They feel a little like, "Well, what do I have to say about that anymore? And besides, I don't want to talk about my 'relationship' in a 'look at me!' way. People might think I'm boasting, or self-obsessed, or ..."

And the blog suffers.

Get it, got it, good

2007-08-12T16:16:00.000-07:00

My cousin tells me there are three kind of people in the world of young singles.

"There are those who get it. There are those who want to get it. And there are those who don't get it at all. You get it. The people who get it are mostly with others who get it. That leaves the few of us who want to get it trying to weed through all of the crazy people who don't get it."

Now, he couldn't really define "it," but I gathered that "it" meant the ability to overcome the barriers between the sexes to explore the new world of "together." "It" is what the poets have written about and what the philosophers have pondered for the ages.

Heads in the sand

2007-08-06T06:13:00.000-07:00

This reviewer can be added to the chorus of post-third wave feminists bristling in indignation at the message of Wendy Shalit's new book, Girls Gone Mild. Read:

How real is the sexed-out, I Am Charlotte Simmons world Shalit describes? There's plenty of sleaze everywhere you look, but Shalit's reporting leaves me unconvinced. She leans too hard on secondhand evidence, most of it grabbed from the Internet and readers' e-mails. She's promiscuous in her reliance on studies but does not give much detail about their methods; as long as they support her conclusions, they must be sound.

Is she on crack? She certainly reveals her age, if her cluelessness about the reality of campus life is any indication. At Notre Dame, a campus holding tenuously on to "parietals" and a moral code of behavior, I frequently hear such gems as, "Yeah, I've hooked up with all the guys in Morrisey. I'm a Morrisey whore."
Does it really require a conservative bent to see that something is deeply troubling in the lives of young women? Why can't the champions of sexual liberation take their heads out of the sand and take an honest look at the legacy they've left their daughters?

Invisible Men, Glaring Difficulties

2007-08-02T08:18:00.001-07:00

I want to apologize to the nice guys I've turned down over the years. I'm sorry. I especially want to apologize because I have been a member of the chorus, "Why won't a nice Christian guy ask me out?" When in reality, you were asking, or trying to ask, and what I meant was, "Why won't the guy I have a crush on ask me out?"

Why am I stricken with remorse? Well, as always, I'm spending too much time reading blogs, and Boundless, and there is a whole cohort of very defeated young men out there who keep pointing out, "If there are so many marriage-minded young women in church, where are they? Cause the girls here never accept my invitations when I 'take the initiative.'"

Now, in 50% of the situations, I was completely justified in my rejection. Case in point (this is an excerpt from my own blog, 2004) take this guy:

I, meanwhile, surrounded by the Philosophy PhD's received a very uncomfortable invitation to dinner from a guy who shall remain nameless (by the way, he wanted to go to dinner on February 14!), but I will quote the exchange here as an invitation for analysis from those more experienced than I. Witness:
He: I'd really like to go out to dinner with you sometime.
Me: Oh, that's very nice of you, but I'm awfully busy.
He: I know a really great Italian restaurant.
Me: I have a job that's kind of up in the air and I don't know what evenings I work.
He: How about if I call you. What's your phone number?
Me: I don't know it.
He: Are you in the phonebook?
Me: I think so. I don't know.
He: What's your last name?
Me: --(name)---
Now, upon leaving the Fiddler's Hearth, the female contingent decided that the evening would not be complete without a visit to Steak 'n Shake and tried to understand the type of discouragement that might have stopped this unfortunate conversation from progressing to the alarming point that it did. (This writer is still bearing a grudge against the two gentlemen who sat grinning into their lagers and enjoying the uncomfortable predicament of the hapless female in the face of this determined density).
We decided that these are possible rejoinders to my inevitable next meeting with this guy.
"Oh, I thought you were joking."
"I'd love to go out with you, but I think you should know, I'm pregnant."
"I'd love to go to dinner with you, but I just started seeing a professional wrestler this week."
"I'd love to go out with you but I'm a hermaphrodite and I'm already seeing myself."

Now, I loathed this guy, and his ability to read signals was so terrible that he did not pick up on my six months' of disdain for him. Or he thought it was love. Mr. Collins, anyone?
But there were a few other guys that I shot down with really no good reason except my own fear of a "serious" relationship. I was too young, had too many plans, they seemed to want too much.
And so, as time passed, I found myself getting more picky. I cloaked my fear of the unknown in standards and indicators of compatibility. "He watches NASCAR, it would never work." "He's Catholic; it won't work." "He likes ham and pineapple pizza; it won't work."

In a recent Boundless article, the author asks,

But what does it mean to not settle? Does it mean that the guy must have the godly passion of King David, the looks of a movie star, the personality of my favorite comedian and the servant attitude of Mother Theresa? Not to mention, he should always be sensitive to my feelings, know exactly what to say in every situation and have the ability to melt my heart each time we are together.

I hate to say it, but maybe we were all told that we were princesses too often when we were children. Our standards are so high, no human could meet them. (It doesn't help that young adult groups tell us to let Jesus be our boyfriend. We are either profaning God or inflating the role of boyfriend into savior/lord). And when a young man falters, when he says something stupid, or the pause in the conversation stretches too long, we react with panic, sure that it is a "sign" that he is not "the one."

But, what human relationship is 100% satisfactory, easy, natural, and joyous? Not the relationships with our parents, siblings, or friends! People are messy and people are work. I found myself the victim of my own lousy karma: I didn't give the nice guys a chance, and the cool guy didn't give me a chance. When I stopped labeling and categorizing my fellow human beings, they were given to me in the richness of their characters. The cool guy was suddenly kind of shy, a bit of a nerd even. I realized that the very idea of "cool" is an attitude, not a character trait.

Ladies, it's up to us.

2007-07-23T10:39:00.000-07:00

I faced an unpleasant reality this summer, one that has always lived at the back of my mind and informed a lot of my policies and decisions in regard to the opposite sex, but one which I couched in terms of extremes, and so I didn’t realize, until recently, that it extends to every aspect of my being: I am extremely vulnerable.

No one who knows me could classify me as weak; I speak my mind, I stand up for truth, I don’t mince words, and, in the paraphrased words of Robin McKinley, "I don’t suffer fools gladly. The short term of this is that I’m a bitch." I’ve undergone a lot of various stresses and challenges in the past years which have molded and shaped my character, and I’ve always striven to face my faults and weaknesses and overcome them on the quest for perfection.

But still, I’m vulnerable – easily hurt, extraordinarily sensitive to other people’s needs and opinions, desirous of meeting those needs and winning approval. Not where it comes to compromising my principles, but everywhere else.

Friends who don’t share all of my values have asked me particularly about my decision regarding chastity. "Why aren’t you going to have sex until you’re married? How can you be sure it’s going to work unless you’ve tried it? How can you know the intimacy is there? How can something that important be something you’d gamble on?"

The questions come from a place of deep concern, and not judgment, and I take them seriously. But for me (and this is the extreme in which I’ve always couched the knowledge of my own vulnerability), the gamble goes in the opposite direction: Sex is too important to gamble on before marriage. Because of my particular kind of vulnerability, I have always known that I can never, ever open myself so completely to someone unless he is fully committed to me – never, ever give of myself wholly if there’s even a possibility he could walk away the next morning. That’s the kind of gamble I cannot take, because were it to happen, the consequences would destroy me.

And of course, it’s led to a lonely dating life, even in my attempts to date Christian men, though there haven’t been very many of them. Attitudes on chastity have changed as drastically in the church over the last thirty years as in the secular culture. So I blitzed through my college years and early twenties without experiencing any challenges to my decisions, or broaches on my vulnerability, in any of the smaller ways – I didn’t receive my first kiss until I was twenty-four, and that was a meaningless throwaway, something I could (more or less, though not completely) shrug off when it didn’t work out with the guy, who wasn’t a Christian and only wanted a good time rolling in the hay – a good time which he obviously didn’t get.

But the mid-twenties have brought with them an increasing loneliness and hunger for, not a few good laughs or a few good times, but the Real Thing – love, commitment, marriage, family. A good man, a home, a couple of years cuddling on the couch and making love all over the house, breakfasts and dinners for two, and then fat kissable babies rolling around and wreaking havoc, and a sneakier sex life with hubby, giggling, whispering, and tiptoeing around the kids. All of it. Which makes any attempt at casual dating difficult, and the vulnerability even more tremulous.

Whose fault is this? No one’s. It does mean, though, that I have to set up more guards than I always thought I would need, as I realized recently. I’m not capable of casually kissing, of casually making out, of casually having a guy stay in my apartment for extended periods of time. To me, I discovered, all expressions of human sexuality are sacred: an astonishing revelation. My cultural training prepared me to take it all a lot more lightly – not sex itself, but the lead-ups to it – and I had prepared myself to be more sophisticated than I found I am. I should have suspected, perhaps, that my experience would be different from other people’s, when holding my first boyfriend’s hand sent a reaction through my body so extreme that I couldn’t breathe. But I was unprepared all the same.

Thus after this summer, I have laid some new ground rules for myself. I’m going mild – even more so than I have been in the past. I know some of my friends will be worried about these ground rules, and I know these rules will make me lonelier. Guy interests, for example, will not be welcome alone into my apartment any longer, not without the buffer of other people; and it will be a long, long, long time before I kiss one again. But I don’t know any other way to protect myself, because a month or so ago I was so heartbroken at the failure of another attempted relationship, complete with physical overtures that meant a great deal to me for their own sakes, that I fell into a grief that lasted for weeks, and from which I’m still recovering.

Sometimes I feel like a freak, because everywhere I look, in all the magazines and commercials, in conversations with friends of faith and friends outside the faith, it seems that no one is affected by these things as seriously or as deeply as I am, and vulnerability is not a merit anymore. But it’s the truth, it’s how I am, and since we no longer live in a culture where a woman’s sexual honor is cherished, and marriage encouraged, and where we live far from parents who provide a physical supervisory presence, those of us who are "freaks," who recognize our vulnerability, have to do something about it for ourselves.

My boss said a couple of things this morning, as we were talking about it a little bit. He said that my vulnerability is endearing; said, too, that men think in linear terms about sex, and that it is, as it always has been, up to women to say No. I smiled and quoted the old saying, "Men can’t cheat if women won’t." Which can be adapted to this situation: Men can’t engage in sex if women won’t. (Questions of force aside, of course, which is ever and always wrong.) Which is the truth. Even among the Christians of our age and culture, it’s the truth.

So ladies, it looks like it’s up to us. Naturally not every woman feels the way I do, but I know there are at least a handful of us who believe so strongly in the sacredness of sex and sexual pleasure that it’s worth a long wait, and whose special vulnerability makes a few extra personal rules beneficial to our overall well being. (And as I’ve said often, my virginal status at the age of almost twenty-six is certainly not for lack of a sex drive. But other things are more important than light and momentary indulgences, even in the arenas of a nice make-out session or a good-night kiss, because they're more than just that.) And I’m not talking about revolution; there are too few of us for that. But I am saying that, for those few of us who recognize our vulnerability, which, I posit, is not freakish but a stamp on every woman, though it has been stamped out of many of us by our societal upbringing, it’s worth the temporal cost of extended loneliness and strange behavioral appearances to lay down the ground rules necessary for our own protection, because we can’t count on anyone else to look out for us.

Much like Marianne said in the last post, we need to count the cost of each action we take with a man, and weigh the outcomes and the consequences. What is the gain? What is the loss? Is it worth our while? Will there be a real, substantial benefit, or only a gamble on our part with the ghost-hope of a benefit? Is fear of the loss of a might-be worth sacrificing a little more of our steadfastness, a little more of our innocence?

Oh yes, all of this is very old-fashioned. You can tell me that I’ll never get a man this way. You can tell me that I’m only reacting out of hurt and throwing up walls. Maybe it’s partially true. But my parents think the ground rules are wise. There are only two of them, after all.

I’m worth it. If a guy isn’t going to think about me and my long-term interests, as it’s apparent he won’t, even if he’s a Christian, not necessarily because he’s a monster or a self-absorbed unmentionable, but just because he’s a guy and our culture no longer, on the whole, raises gentlemen (thought I’ve met exceptions!), then I have to be the one to think about my long-term interests. And if that makes a few men frustrated, drives a few of them away, and keeps me awake and lonely on several (as L. M. Montgomery calls them) "white nights," so be it. Better lonely, but happier and whole, than a self-compromised, emptier shell. Better mild than miserable.

Are We the Naive Ones?

2007-07-18T09:05:00.000-07:00

"On When to Go to a Man's Apartment" by Alice-Leone Moats (1933)

The key to the whole situation lies in the fact that you don't know when or by whom you will be seen coming in or going out. The most harmless visit can assume a naughty appearance, and certainly an acquaintance seeing you come out of a man's apartment in the early hours just before dawn will draw but one conclusion. Avoid stopping in for a drink after the theater, as the hour is a bit late, and it gives the young man ideas. Don't fall for the old line of having to go home for a long-distance call, and at the very mention of works of art run in the opposite direction. In any event, an innocent visit late at night seems rather silly, for it is taking a maximum risk for a minimum pleasure.

As I type this, I am watching "What Not To Wear," which helps hapless women to learn the rules of proper style--suiting their clothes to their age and the context.
Unfortunately, there is no correlating show that ambushes a young woman at 7 a.m. on a Saturday as she walks the "Walk of Shame" to tell her "What Not To Do." But, as Wendy Shallit points out in A Return to Modesty (in which I found the above quote), women seem to long for such guidance. This is why we have hundreds of relationship books, women's magazine articles on how to "Make Him Commit," and our endless bull sessions with girlfriends recounting every tiny detail of a date, interpreting it, analyzing the clues, and in the end, just hoping the guy will call again. It would be funny--it often is--if it didn't so often end in tragedy. I hate getting tearful phone calls from my close friends who, after a promising start, some nice conversation, fun times, and good kissing, are suddenly and callously dumped for any of a number of reasons that all boil down to "you aren't what I'm looking for right now."

Even extremely moral young women are conditioned to take "maximum risk for a minimum pleasure" nowadays because the men seem to be scarce. (I say "seem," because of this article by Candice Watters). In a culture of scarcity, women are taking the risks for a ghost of the relationship they really crave. And in our hopefulness, we make the same mistakes over and over again.

In the past, a woman could be shrewd without having to be scarred and cynical. The society provided the safeguard: people will talk. But now, people talk if you aren't at a guy's apartment making out until the early morning. (I know; my weirdness is a frequent topic of conversation). So now, when a girl says "no," that "no" becomes highly personal-- a rejection of that particular guy and not a nod to morals and manners. There are no more morals or manners, and a girl is left with little decision-making support.

We have become naive and childish--walking into the same emotional trap over and over again. The young women receiving Ms. Moats' advice knew very well what people would think and what the young man was after. So why do we, enlightened 21st century women protest, "nothing's going to happen! We're just friends! It's just watching a movie!" like elementary school children? Our naiveté may be excusable the first time, but after an evening of Braveheart becomes an evening of making out or more, and then the man disappears--why do we do it again?

We do it because we think that this is what is expected of us, that this is how a relationship develops now, and besides, it is fun. But then why the tears? Why the feeling of hopelessness as the dating years stretch out toward thirty and beyond?

In my opinion, we've destroyed a lot of the fun and adventure by flattening male and female relationships into "friendships" that occassionally result in sex. Listen to the hilarity of this, "at the very mention of works of art run in the opposite direction." There was once a time when a woman had complete decision-making independence, but she also had a framework for saying "no."

Today, when Friend Fred asks you to come over to hear a new CD, you have so little ground for refusing; after all, he's a friend; you both like this band; maybe this is the start of something more...But you don't know. You, the woman, have to take the maximum risk, possibly for maximum heartbreak.

Horrible as it is...

2007-07-13T19:57:00.000-07:00

Just thought I'd hop on and point out this comment, from a post about being the 3rd wheel on a community blog that I read regularly (its actually a great, useful site, if you're at all interested).

Anyway, it made me think of our little site. I've been that odd-one-out and still am from time to time. Stayed in tonight for a number of reasons but one of them was not being the 3rd wheel with my best bud and his GF. "We can lessen the pain, but the pain is still there."

Just wanted to encourage all of you peeps to not forget who you are now, when you are that future person who is (hopefully) coupled up.

So, When Is the Time Up?

2007-07-03T08:06:00.000-07:00

We live in a world governed by time. Birth, aging, decay, death. That is the cycle. We moderns have fought death on every front, pushing the demands of time as far from our thoughts as possible. Are we delusional?
This is Robert Herrick's famous poem, "To the Virgins, To Make Much of Time"

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying;
And this same flower that smiles today
Tomorrow will be dying.

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun,
The higher he's a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he's to setting.

That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times still succeed the former.

Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry;
For having lost but once your prime,
You may forever tarry.

His goal is clear: get married! You're getting old!
We don't hear this much anymore, because we aren't really old--or past our prime--for quite a while. And in the meantime, there is so very much to do! I like to hop over to Europe in the summers, or direct plays, or take a job as a nanny--whatever whim takes me, I do it. I am "making much of time," in every way except the one Herrick implores me to do.
Here are the questions:
How are you "making much of time?"
Should "virgins" (there are so few of us left in this world!) hurry up and get married in their twenties?
What age is your "I always thought I'd _______ (have met someone, sailed around the world, gotten married)" age?

I'll start us off in the comments section!

Guys With No Game: The Ultimate Players?

2007-06-27T06:52:00.000-07:00

We've discussed the phenomenon of "the D game" before. You know, It's Thursday night at ten p.m., and you decide to run to the grocery store in your college hoodie, no makeup on, and surprisingly, two men hit on you in the Produce section.

Well, men, I'm beginning to recognize your version of "the D game." I've experienced it in action several times, and it is very persuasive. A friend of mine has recently been charmed by a young man working this technique. But first, let me define it. I found it in one of the rhetoric textbooks that I will be teaching from in the fall, Thank You for Arguing.

Don't try to calm your butterflies; use them. Keep in mind that an audience will sympathize with a clumsy speaker--it's a first-rate tactical flaw. And employ just one technique: gradually speak louder. You will sound as if you're gaining confidence from the sheer rightness of your speech's contents.

This technique is called "dubitatio," and as author Jay Heinrichs explains it, it "lowers expectations and causes opponents to 'misunderestimate' you, as Bush (a master of dubitatio) puts it."

Ladies who have recently fallen for the shy, nice guy, this explains it. I fear I may have misunderestimated my opponent! Maybe the bumbling, shy, stuttery thing was all part of a clever plan to secure my good will.
Men, work the soulful puppy thing. It's so darn adorable when a man isn't a player. In fact, it's reassuring, as I told Jen a while back. Classical rhetoric explains what I had sensed subconsciously.

Heinrich's son used dubitatio to great effect:

George: I tried that thing you told me about...The thing where you look down until you make your point and, blam! Stare into her eyes.
Heinrich: Her eyes? What were you telling her?
George: None of your business.

Ridiculous Excess

2007-06-18T15:29:00.000-07:00

So, since I have been recuperating from surgery and its aftermath for over a month now, I watch a lot of cable television. And since it's June, wedding shows are all over the stations.
Okay, I think most of the women who read and contribute to this blog will admit to occassionally daydreaming about their future wedding. One of my freshman roommates had a sort of scrapbook of dresses and flowers and food. And men aren't innocent of this romantic pasttime, either. I have one young cousin who has issued me a challenge: he's racing me to the altar. Neither of us has a fiancé/e. He's twenty, by the way.
But these shows...I'm very, very disturbed by these shows. The excesses (acrobats, signature cocktails, horse-drawn carriages, fireworks, $10,000 wedding gowns) demonstrate a profound misunderstanding of the purpose of a wedding. None of these women are royalty. Their weddings are not affairs of state. So why do they screech and demand the right to be "princess for a day" (tiara included)? The self-focus of the brides, to me, should be sounding warning bells in the ears of their grooms. If someone begins marriage by chanting "It's about what I want!" for twelve months, she is not likely to have a personality change the next morning.
And I'm disgusted by the fact that this is the glorified vision of the modern bride: selfish, demanding, monetarily incontinent. She's spoiled, irrational, and ugly in her petulance.
That's a great picture of love. What a preparation for living out the wedding vows. (Never mind, those have been revised to suit the needs of each particular couple. Marriage: have it your way).
That picture may, over time, convince women that they have the right to behave this way. And women who believe that it's their "special, special day"--and if they want doves, they deserve doves--are likely to spend thousands more dollars on candles and flowers and favors. See this article. Advertisers are happy. Businesses are happy. Florists are delighted. And I'm a little sick...

So, since we all have at least one wedding to attend this month: what do you think makes a ceremony or reception really special?

My Feminist Heritage

2007-06-11T05:45:00.000-07:00

I was wasting time on facebook this morning by looking at some friends' photos, when I clicked on a picture of a high school acquaintance. A photo of five stunningly beautiful, well-groomed, preppy young women appeared. It was captioned, "Med school wives. I'm not a member of the group yet, but they let me stand with them."
I felt irrationally irritated. My mom took a look at the photo and said, "Wait, they're not in med school themselves?...Oh, they're getting their PhTs."
"What's a PhT?" I asked.
"Putting Hubby Through."
Why wasn't the photo captioned, "A dental hygienist, an accountant, an elementary school teacher, a Gap manager, and a waitress?" Why is marriage to a med student a prerequisite for membership in a sort of post-college sorority?
Now, I am all for marriage! I hope to join the big grown-up club of suppers-for-two and joint checking someday (sooner rather than later!) But if I were to derive any aspect of my identity from wife-hood, my mother would kill me. At Grove City, when Nancy Paxton made her famous "look to your left, look to your right. Your future mate might be in sight" speech, my mother leaned to her left and stage-whispered in my ear, "If you marry anyone in this room, I will kill you."
My parents were writing the checks for a B.A., not an M.R.S. Thirty years of screwy feminist history may have resulted in a sexual wasteland, but at least I had more options than, "Teacher, Stewardess or Nurse." At least the only person calling me a tragic spinster at 24 is me and not my friends and family!

I suppose there are "PhD wives," meaning women who are married to grad students, but not grad students themselves. Maybe they're all hanging out together at university family housing talking about the trials of having a husband in grad school. "You can't believe all the books he brought home yesterday!"

How do we find the middle-ground between traditional roles (which many of us support morally/philosophically) and the fruits of twentieth century feminism? Or are our "enlightened" ideas about women holding us back from marriage and family? (see the comments on this blog post for the counterargument to my position. Many of these men see women outside of the home as a hostile attack on masculinity, marriage, and the family).

"What are we going to talk about?"

2007-06-02T07:32:00.000-07:00

First: Come on, people! Post something! I'm recuperating in my parents' house and I need stuff to read! Now, on to the post.

I was riding around the city of Pahrump, Nevada in a dusty truck with my aunt, talking about boys. My aunt is a practical-minded horse trainer, so any wisdom she might give is firmly grounded in reality.

She was telling me about the day before her wedding to my uncle, and the panicked thought that came to her, "What are we going to talk about for the rest of our lives?" For her, this was a serious worry, as she's not that big of a talker. But she summed up their thirty years of marriage by saying, "You know, Marianne, it all worked out, cause yur uncle doesn't like to talk that much either. We've had a great life not talking together." (This is not to imply that they live in silence. They're both actually quite loud and dramatic).

She said this to me at Thanksgiving, and it's been on my mind. Since then, I find myself listening to the interactions of happily married couples, how they talk to each other and what they talk about. Some are real talkers, always conversing about politics, religion, feelings, and the every day details of life. Some couples exist in companionable quiet. Some are all argument (entertaining, if tiring).
Am I the only person who sometimes feels oppressed by the social expectation to talk everything out exhaustively? I remember being overwhelmed when I went to college with the pressure to share so much of my person so quickly. I was supposed to develop best friendships within a couple of weeks and spill my sins and struggles to an accountability partner withn an hour of meeting her. I remember thinking, "I don't really have anything to add to this conversation..." I had not been trained to analyze and dissect relationships and motives (heaven help me, college sure did train me since then!)

As a girl, I've become a very good talker. But I think I went a little astray for a while, expecting guys to talk like girls and being disappointed when they didn't. I had to smack myself and force myself to pay attention to how the guys in my life really communicate. My brother is generally quiet, until a talking mood siezes him and he won't shut up. My cousins will send me a text or a quick IM, but rarely ask me about "deep" things. I've learned that if I want their opinion, I have to give them the situation and then ask them to give me their perspective. My guy friends are always happy to see me or hang out, but they will never call me "just to chat." But then there's the flip side: that moment when a guy becomes so comfortable with you that he won't shut up. Have you ever witnessed that?

I've noticed there are two kinds of talkers: people who talk primarily about interior things (feelings, needs, relationships, states of mind), and people who talk about exterior things (work, politics, cultural stuff, family).
What do you think of these categories? What kind of guy/girl are you looking for? Can opposing talk-styles be happy together?
Guys, what's your perspective on girl-talk? What do we do that makes no sense/frustates you?

A Really Entertaining Blog

2007-05-27T04:23:00.000-07:00

Hi y'all! I found a very fun blog read yesterday. I'm currently reading through its archives backwards, and it's keeping me distracted quite nicely as I convalesce. Here's the link. Speaking of reading blog archives, I had a moment's panic when the man I'm sort-of, kind-of, um, maybe going out with told me that he was reading my archives. I spent an afternoon going through three years of my insane ramblings just to make sure nothing was too awful. Which made me wonder: how did we as a culture become so free with our words? Do any of y'all have blogs, emails, comments, letters, that you wish you could somehow take back? (and shred and burn and pour water on and then flush down the toilet?) How much of you is in what you write? I hate to break it to y'all, but my Fab Females persona is not exactly the real me...Does anyone else have an internet persona, and what would the existence of such an alternate you mean to a new relationship?

A Call to Action

2007-05-19T09:57:00.000-07:00

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more...
~Henry V, 3.1.1

Our friends and sisters and brothers on the Gift of Singleness blog, linked on the sidebar (http://thegiftofsingleness.blogspot.com), have put in a Call to Prayer beginning tomorrow, Sunday, May 20, concerning the singleness crisis sweeping the Western church.

Check out the posts for suggestions on prayer focus. They're asking for everyone to put in one solid hour tomorrow, and for Christians all over the world to begin stepping up 24 hours of prayer, 7 days a week.

We know that a lot of times singleness isn't fun, or has a lot of crazy and often hilarious dating stories associated with it; but there are a lot of serious issues connected with it too, which we've all talked about before, and which affect more than just us as individuals. Whether we're in relationships or not, married or not, there are a lot of people in the church getting older and not getting married, and this poses some grave concerns for the church as a whole. The Gift of Singleness blog (lovely British tongue-in-cheek title) addresses the issues very well, basing a lot of their posts on Debbie Maken's Getting Serious about Getting Married, an excellent book which Marianne has reviewed on FabFemales before.

This is a perfect opportunity for us to gather together across time zones and space and join as believers in prayer to our sovereign Father -- to intervene for us, the suffering singles; to bring more men back into the church; to ease the hurt of the young and not-so-young women who, as a result of being told that singleness is God's will for them, when their deepest desire is for family, are angry with God; to reunify the body of Christ; to work on the church to return to a biblical understanding of the necessity of marriage and family, and stop preaching the "gift of singleness" to a hungry, lonely, and largely complacent generation; and to show us how to direct our action to affect change.

And hey, even if you think all of this is melodramatic, or wrong, an hour of prayer is still a rockin' good idea.

Check out the blog.

The Summer of Yes

2007-05-08T14:25:00.000-07:00

I just bought a book called The Year of Yes by Maria Dahvana Headly. It's a memoir. In it, the heroine decides, after a man she agreed to see a play with calls to ask her, "I'm listening to NPR. Do you want to come over and make out?" that her taste in men is so appalling that something drastic must change. So she decides to say "yes" to every man who asks her out for an entire year. I'm about fifty pages into it, and it's hilarious. So far, she's had no lasting luck finding "a man she can stand for longer than a couple of hours," but I'm holding out hope.

So, here's my question for you: Summer is approaching; what in your life do you need to say "yes" to? It may not necesarily be romantic. Although maybe you do need to say "yes" to that nice guy or nice girl you've been brushing off for so long...Or maybe you need to say yes to a new job, or a new hair-do, or a new best friend, or a new exercise regimen, or a new church. The possibilities are endless. (Yes to a nose ring! Yes to tango lessons!)

Last summer we had the Fabulous Females Summer Challenge, which was a crazy and inspired competition.
But this year, I think we should try something different. Something positive. I think we should say yes to some new things. After all, many of us seem to have some pretty bad luck. I'm still stuck in that game of Battleship I mentioned a couple of weeks ago. A change couldn't hurt, right? Summer seems like the time for adventure and renewal; after all, everything looks better when you're wearing a sundress and have a tan! (Or, when you're wearing cargo shorts, men).

So, what will you say yes to?

Brennan Manning in Chicago

2007-05-06T06:09:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite Christian authors is Brennan Manning - and he'll be speaking in Chicago on May 21st! For those in or near Chicago, you should come along. He's the author of The Ragamuffin Gospel amongst many other books.

When I was poking around his website I noticed his appearance is sponsored by a group called "The Pulse." Having never heard of them, I called the number. Apparently they're a group of Christian musicians and fine artists just getting off the ground, and somehow for their first gathering they've managed to snag Manning.

It's at the Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division Ave. in Wicker park. Admission $10. Monday night, May 21st, 7:00 pm.

Lauren Winner

2007-05-03T02:00:00.000-07:00

This is long, but well worth the listen--I'm pleasantly surprised by this talk by Lauren Winner at Calvin College on sexuality and the myths that American Protestant Christianity tells about it.

Playing Battleship

2007-04-26T09:14:00.000-07:00

"Listen," I said to my friend, "I'm trying to do this right, but it's like we're playing a game and I can't see the board!"
"Like Monopoly," she said.
"No, it's like Stratego, and I'm surrounded by bombs. And all I want to do is scream, 'Where is your flag???!!"
"No!" she shouted, "You're playing Battleship!!!!!!!"
"Augh!" I yelled back, "That's exactly right! I can't even see the opponent's game board! A-4? I ask. MISS! he shouts!"

Playing Battleship: my new metaphor for modern, Christian dating. Modern, secualr dating: there are rules. Or at least, there is some sort of standard for progression. Dates lead to more dates lead very quickly to "going out," and then to moving in, and then to breaking up. There is a pattern.
But once you heap a good dose of Christian anxiety on to what has been a normal human impulse for...ever...you get a a game of Battleship in which neither side has the least clue what the other side is thinking or doing.

You know, I just now remembered how much I used to cheat at Battleship when I played with my brother. I would move the ships around. That's a really evil thing to do. But now, I fear, someone is doing exactly that thing to me: moving the ships around, leaving me to question: wait, didn't I already call out C-15? I thought that was a "miss." Now it's a hit?

Battleship: a game for those who don't like to be too vulnerable. The game for the guarded.
I for one would rather play Risk. I love throwing my armies foolishly into battle with all of Asia.

Which board game player are you? Would you prefer a return to rules and structure? Or do you like the space for mystery and drama to develop with a member of the opposite sex?

Location, Location, Location?

2007-04-23T21:12:00.000-07:00

In one week, I'll be moving to a new city on the opposite side of the country - specifically the Tampa Bay area. Originally, I hail from Buffalo, NY, spent time in Grove City, PA while going to school and have now spent three years on the "Borderland" in El Paso. In two weeks, I start a new exciting television job. I'm not married. I'm not dating anyone and haven't for a long time.

Today, several things were brought to my attention. A friend who lives in Florida called and we were talking about relationships. He said that the situation wasn't "me" per say, but more the situation. Lack of options due to geography. First of all, the job I just left involved working in a building that employed less than 50 people and I never left the building. I also spent two years working overnight, and I saw maybe five people in one day. The weekends were my only chance to get out. Then six months ago, that was taken away also. This friend had a point. In my (formerly) current situation, there were very little opportunities to meet a Christian guy. Especially recently, since I could no longer attend church on Sundays.

We made a $100 bet over the phone. He wagered that I would get involved with someone by the years end. I wagered the opposite. Okay, kind of movie-like in a "She's All That" kind of way, I know. But I'm still interested in seeing who wins.

While saying farewell to a coworker (one who has worked as a youth pastor) he told me that I was going to fall in love and get married there. He just knew it. I laughed at him. The other freaky thing? A former roommate once had a dream that I was engaged to an Air Force man. Oddly enough, I'll be living blocks away from MacDill Air Force Base.

On a slightly different topic, I've made another observation. Every wedding I've been invited over the past year all involve grooms named David. And I was just introduced to a friend's twin sister who is also marrying a David. Is this a strange phenomenon or what? I'm not sure how to take it. Based on all these revelations, I could come to the conclusion that I will soon start dating an Air Force guy named Dave before ringing in 2008. Again, this is a bit too cinema-like for me. It's slightly freaky, actually.

But back to this location theory. I'll admit, El Paso is not a hotbed for potential dudes for me. It's just not. I'm constantly hit on by overweight divorced middle-aged Mexican men with seven kids. Not that I have anything against them, but that's probably not what God has in store for me. If it is the case, I'm converting to Judaism.

This transition is exciting and I'm really quite curious to see if my personal life does, in fact, change. What makes me skeptical is that, despite having already lived in three different parts of the country for a significant amount of time, that hasn't seemed to make much of a difference before. Why should it now?

This reminds me of my teenage years. When I was in middle school, I liked boys. None of them seemed to like me. I figured "it'll happen" in high school. So then I got to high school. Same story. I then concluded that "it'll happen" in college. Spent most of freshman year wondering if I was wearing some sort of male repellent without my knowledge. After a somewhat brief disappointing relationship, I then started to question whether "it'll happen" post-graduation. It has not. This is why the whole new city thing isn't exactly getting my hopes up in that area.

And what if I do meet someone there as some are predicting? I'd like to think I'd be able to conduct myself in a serious relationship... but the truth? I've never had one before. That definitely scares me. I almost think maybe it is better to marry young, before you're too set in your ways. What if I'm too old to learn new tricks? What if I'm so used to bachelorettehood that I just can't do it?

We'll never be able to explain what's really behind the mysterious shroud that is, indeed, love. Whether it's best when it grows over time, or is sparked in a moment when two pairs of eyes meet by chance. All I know is if I happen to run into an Air Force mechanic named Dave, I may run screaming in the opposite direction.

Picky Chicks

2007-04-23T07:47:00.000-07:00

I was hanging out with some church girls yesterday and the subject of guys came up. (It always does). We were talking about what we're looking for, our "types," and how difficult it is to be a young woman in graduate school while dating.
The subject of "ideals" came up and I was shocked at how two of the girls won't date any guy under six feet tall. To be fair, one of them is 5'10", but the other is around 5'6" and very slim. Not only do they have a height requirement, their actual preference is for a guy who's 6'3" or 6'4". Then they berated me, as a very short girl (5'2" on a good day), for having my pick of all men, and how very unfair it is when a tiny girl has a really tall boyfriend.
See, I always thought I was a very picky chick. My standards are pretty high, such as: he should have a job, a good sense of humor, be a Christian, be an upstanding citizen etc. I'm picky about personality. I think a man I date should have one. But I'm beginning to see some pretty impressive pickiness from my colleagues in the female gender.

Really, if young women are going to be this picky, I think their license to complain about "no good men" should be taken away. Because goodness is not necessarily related to height, or bank account, or the car he drives.

Gender Disparity in the Church

2007-04-18T03:18:00.000-07:00

I came across an interesting article in Christianity Today about singleness in the church:

But then I looked at the research. In 2000, the Barna Research Group found in a nationwide survey that 60 percent of adherents to Christianity are women. The survey also looked at the number of each gender whose beliefs identified them as born-again Christians. Based on the results, Barna estimates there are currently between 11 million and 13 million more born-again women than born-again men in the U.S.

But what's startling is not just the gender disparity among Christian adherents; it's also the difference between men who believe and those who are actually active in their belief. Although 36 percent of men in the Barna survey were identified as born-again believers, only 14 percent attend Sunday school, 13 percent belong to a small group, and 9 percent have held any leadership position in a church. Each category's percentages were substantially higher for women.

It's an interesting article, and it does try to offer solutions.

OMG, LMAO!

2007-04-15T11:50:00.000-07:00

For anyone who went to Grove City, this will ring so many bells you'll feel like Quasimodo:

Let's say that Sam and Becky are diehard Calvinists who are so dedicated to their theology they decided that they're predestined to marry someone who shares their convictions.

Naturally, therefore, they knew that they were made for each other when they happened to ('were predestined to' in Calvinist slang) sit down next to each other in the student lounge in order to engross themselves in John Calvin's Institutes of Christian Religion. Only serving to reinforce their intuitions, they subsequently caught each other reciting the Westminster Catechism as they walked to class. After much prayer and consultation of Spurgeon's works, Sam and Becky are wed.

A few years after the wedding, trouble begins to brew. Becky takes a theology class from a local college where she is assigned to read a handful of Arminian authors. She is alarmed when she begins to find their arguments more and more persuasive. Understanding that this would be a great source of contention between her and Sam, she prays about her misgivings. Yet after much internal debate and pastoral counsel, she cautiously enters the Arminian camp.

How could she? Sam groans. If I had known this was going to happen, I would've waited for the right one. I thought she was more rooted than that. Had I been too hasty in my judgment? Was I just blinded by her irresistible beauty? Is this just a phase that she's going through to test my faith? How did I get Japanese pop music stuck in my head?

Sense or Sensibility

2007-04-12T12:03:00.000-07:00

"I do not attempt to deny," said she, "that I think very highly of him- that I greatly esteem, that I like him."

Marianne here burst forth with indignation-

"Esteem him! Like him I Cold-hearted Elinor! Oh! worse than cold-hearted! Ashamed of being otherwise. Use those words again, and I will leave the room this moment."

Elinor could not help laughing. "Excuse me," said she; "and be assured that I meant no offence to you, by speaking, in so quiet a way, of my own feelings. Believe them to be stronger than I have declared; believe them, in short, to be such as his merit, and the suspicion- the hope of his affection for me may warrant, without imprudence or folly. But farther than this you must not believe. I am by no means assured of his regard for me. There are moments when the extent of it seems doubtful; and till his sentiments are fully known, you cannot wonder at my wishing to avoid any encouragement of my own partiality, by believing or calling it more than it is. In my heart I feel little- scarcely any doubt of his preference. But there are other points to be considered besides his inclination.

Now Here's a Thought

2007-04-03T14:10:00.000-07:00

I was sitting in a comfortable chair in the foyer of my church's gym, an ipod in my hand. I had just downloaded the soundtrack to be followed as I took the "Journey to the Cross," a sort of prayerful recreation of Christ's last week on earth.
But that's neither here nor there.
As I sat there, I somehow struck up a conversation with the woman next to me. She was very pretty, young (she told me she was 30, but she looked 25 or 26 to me), smart, and very ladylike. She defined herself as a "professional dater," which made me laugh, and she ruefully rolled her eyes toward heaven in hope that someday soon she can change her vocation. She told me tales of dating Catholics and Protestants, and we commiserated on how difficult it can be to find common ground among Christians.
And then she said something that gave me pause. She was telling me about a man she had seriously been considering marrying. She was considering a future with this man (who sounded rather mean-spirited), when the thought occurred to her, "He may be good enough for me, after all. I have low expectations of what I deserve. But he isn't good enough for my children. He wouldn't be a good father."
I found that to be such an interesting and mind-blowing way of considering the merits of a person you may have just begun to date. For those of us who feel a little bedraggled by the dating scene, those of us who feel like the bruised apple on the stand (picked over, rejected a few too many times), those of us who think we may not deserve more, perhaps the thought of those future "someones" would help us to set our standards a little higher?
And for those of us whose standards are way too high, maybe such a thought would help us to see the "nice guys" or "nice girls" in a new light. After all, six-pack abs and perfect manicures don't seem so important if you're thinking of fifteen years from now, of a day when the septic tank has backed up, Little Johny has a soccer game, and your mother is coming in to town for a visit. I don't know about you, but I'd hope that my spouse would give up the golf game or the manicure appointment in order to help.
Expect more. But expect reality.

Emotions

2007-03-31T01:43:00.000-07:00

It's difficult to judge whether or not I'm an emotional person. People who know me through my art assume that I am. Most artists are, and the art itself is rather emotional, personal. Friends who know me well will tell another story. I'm incredibly open up to a point. Whatever I decide is too personal I just won't share, even if I want to. I can count on one hand the number of people who have seen me cry (people who are outside of my immediate family). My first boyfriend used to spend literally hours trying to get me to open up about things that were bothering me, how I felt, etc. And I will be eternally grateful for that, because I always wanted to tell him but felt like I couldn't. Though him I've gotten better about opening up in those situations, but I'm still bad at it. I'm ruled by my head, not my heart, though sometimes the heart wins (in which case I always end up doing something that is foolish).

But for 2-3 months, I've been much more emotional than usual. I saw a play tonight and I cried. And struggled to keep back the tears. But I made sure that no one would notice (I was dry-eyed and smiling by the time the curtain call came). Last night I went to a dance concert and was in exactly the same situation. My tears aren't caused by nothing. Usually they come about because I'm thinking about grace and realizing how badly I'm in need of it, how badly I need God. Or they come about because I see/read about joyful, requited love and wish I had it, or a relationship that is broken in some way. I feel raw.

I'm scared that I'll never find someone who loves me, someone who loves me and is right for me. I'm scared of being alone. I'm past the average marriage age, and it seems like every interesting Christian is taken. Heck, a lot of my friends (both Christian and not) are in the stage of popping out children. And the one man I'm interested in doesn't love me. I don't think he can. It hurts, though I don't know if I've really admitted that to anyone. I've talked to him four times in the last three months, and three of those encounters were accidental (we still run in the same social circles). A couple of days ago was the first time we've talked alone in ages, and we didn't talk about us. I have mixed feelings. I waver between wanting desperately to talk to him because he knows me better than anyone else in the state and wanting to stay away from him because I don't know that seeing him even in a "normal," platonic context is helpful. It doesn't make me want him more or less, but when things get difficult my first instinct is to run, and avoiding him is a form of running. I get a little irrationally angry about this whole situation sometimes. I miss my friend. I miss having someone to rely on, to talk to about silly things no one else would understand. I miss being held. I miss being around someone that really was a partner in a lot of ways. And can I be honest? I also miss the sex. I wouldn't do it again outside of marriage, especially not with anyone else, but I still miss it. Now that my sexuality has been awakened in a real way, it's hard not to want it even though it was never a struggle before.

I'm just as messed up inside as I was three months ago. It hasn't gotten any better. But experience tells me that time allows these things to fade and I just have to wait. The couple of people in the city I might be able to really talk to are too busy to hang out and probably too new anyway. I'm too used to bottling these things up to be melodramatic enough to say that talking would be important. The older friends I would talk to aren't physically here. And while they're great, it's back to that internalizing again. To pretending that everything is fine. Sometimes they draw me out, which I appreciate. Sometimes they miss it too.

In keeping with business as usual, no one knows the state I'm in. And the sad part is I don't really want to break down these walls. I hate being emotional.

does e-harmony work?

2007-03-28T15:50:00.000-07:00

Since y'all were kind enough to let me share my experiences on this blog a while ago, I thought you deserved an update. You may recall that I felt awkward and frustrated by my persistent singleness, especially because it seemed that women were the ones who typically had that problem (or at least were more vocal about it).

I do believe strongly that Christian men should be proactive in seeking relationships, and I identify with the numerous men on Boundless who say they have tried—many times—and been rejected. My tendency is not to be too passive; rather, it is to be so assertive that I come off as abrasive and rude.

I decided a few months ago on a three-tiered strategy. First, I would attend my urban church's partner church, which is a megachurch on the north side of Indianapolis, in hopes of meeting someone. Then I would join their singles group. If that didn't work, I'd join the vast hordes of desperate singles on e-harmony (that was supposed to be funny—don't get offended!). Unfortunately, the megachurch empties 5 minutes after the service ends, and the young couple who was supposed to introduce me to people had financial problems and couldn't go out after church, as they'd proposed. They suggested that I not join the singles group; "it's a divorced middle-aged singles group," they said. So I joined e-harmony.

E-harmony has an extensive personality test, and I tried my best to be honest. The results concluded, accurately, that I care about other people, but that I don't feel sympathy for folks who aren't making an attempt to solve their own problems. But then it said that I was a rather emotional person, and that I could be described as "too sensitive." That's so inaccurate that it's absurd, even funny! What's not funny is that e-harmony used its incorrect personality profile to match me with women—specifically sensitive women.

Sure enough, one of the first matches described herself as being "much more sensitive than I appear," although she also said that she valued honesty (the one trait I most definitely have!). I stated clearly on my profile that I wasn't a sensitive guy. We started communicating, and one of the questions she asked me in the "guided communication" process was how I acted when I was angry. I took the opportunity to explain my abrasive tendencies: "I've been described as 'abrasive' and 'insensitive,'" I said, "and there is some truth to those statements." I wanted her to be clearly warned, since the last thing I wanted to do was hurt a(nother) woman by making insensitive comments to her. After making that statement, I gave her time to close the match and run far, far away, but she never did. Eventually, we got together (she lives 20 minutes away).

It was apparent after about two dates that she liked me, which I must say was a positively refreshing change! "I can see why people think you're abrasive," she said—but she told me she liked my honesty anyway. (She also likes my Southern accent, which sounds like Forrest Gump on speed.) I tried to be intentional about the friendship by spending as much time with her as my busy schedule would afford, but the relationship soon became rather awkward. I knew she wanted to date, but I thought it was wrong to date without fairly serious commitment (source: my courtship-obsessed upbringing). After discussing the matter, we realized we both were comfortable with dating with the explicit goal of getting to know each other, with no commitment beyond that. To make a long story short, I now have a girlfriend, a mere month after meeting her for the first time! And we're not doing it Josh Harris-style!

She and I do share a lot in common, since both of us are committed Christians, both are youth leaders at our churches, and both enjoy having middle-schoolers over to our respective homes. She doesn't have much background in urban outreach, although she seems very open to it and has been to my church and met "my" kids. She's also very casual and honest and real, and I deeply appreciate those qualities. She's unpretentious and says she's always wanted a financially modest lifestyle. Although she comes from a very conservative background similar to mine, I wouldn't describe her as the "ideal Christian girl," since she has (tasteful) tattoos, rides motorcycles, and listens to hard rock music. Hey, I'm loving it!

This is far from one of those e-harmony success stories you see on TV, since we are not thinking about anything serious at this point. I don't do the love-at-first-sight thing, and it will be months before we know if this is going anywhere beyond casual dating. I am so thrilled that she is my girlfriend, though, and I believe that God has worked in this situation (despite the detractors, who claimed that I wasn't trusting God to "bring your wife to you"). Now I'm just trying my best to treat her like a lady and seek God's best for both of us.

Statistics

2007-03-27T22:35:00.000-07:00

I came across all of the material below while searching for stats on the average age of first marriage for Christians. Alas, after two hours it was not to be found. Anecdotally, I'd put the number around 22/23, right around college graduation--I'm convinced that Christians here must be younger than the population at large (27 for men and 25-26 for women, depending on the source).

On Christians and divorce, from George Barna (2004):

Among married born again Christians, 35% have experienced a divorce. That figure is identical to the outcome among married adults who are not born again: 35%.

George Barna noted that one reason why the divorce statistic among non-Born again adults is not higher is that a larger proportion of that group cohabits, effectively side-stepping marriage - and divorce - altogether. "Among born again adults, 80% have been married, compared to just 69% among the non-born again segment. If the non-born again population were to marry at the same rate as the born again group, it is likely that their divorce statistic would be roughly 38% - marginally higher than that among the born again group, but still surprisingly similar in magnitude."

Barna also noted that he analyzed the data according to the ages at which survey respondents were divorced and the age at which those who were Christian accepted Jesus Christ as their savior. "The data suggest that relatively few divorced Christians experienced their divorce before accepting Christ as their savior," he explained. "If we eliminate those who became Christians after their divorce, the divorce figure among born again adults drops to 34% - statistically identical to the figure among non-Christians." The researcher also indicated that a surprising number of Christians experienced divorces both before and after their conversion.
Multiple divorces are also unexpectedly common among born again Christians. Barna’s figures show that nearly one-quarter of the married born agains (23%) get divorced two or more times.
The survey showed that divorce varied somewhat by a person’s denominational affiliation. Catholics were substantially less likely than Protestants to get divorced (25% versus 39%, respectively). Among the largest Protestant groups, those most likely to get divorced were Pentecostals (44%) while Presbyterians had the fewest divorces (28%).

On the UK:

More and more couples are choosing to cohabit and in June 1999 the Guardian reported that more than 70% of couples in their first serious relationship choose to live together.

... The average age for first marriages in England and Wales in 2003 was 31 for men and 29 for women. This compares with 26 and 23 for men and women respectively 40 years earlier.

On weddings, from Forbes:

The average wedding in the U.S. today costs over $23,000 and includes an average of168 guests, 100 of whom actually give wedding gifts that average $85 each. But the costs of attending a wedding are not limited to the gift—amazingly the typical guest spends on average $500 to attend the event when new attire, travel, gas, parking and hairstyling are factored in.

And because all of this isn't exactly encouraging:

... The wedding of Catherine Zeta-Jones and Michael Douglas cost between $1.5 and $2 million dollars but was offset by the sale of exclusive photos to a British magazine for $1.6 million and a $24,000 settlement again another British magazine for publishing unauthorized photos. With all that dough on the table, you may wonder if a pre-nuptial agreement was part of the deal? You bet. With Hollywood marriages
breaking up faster than you can say “Brad and Jen”, pre-nups are almost as common as marriage vows. In Zeta-Jones case, if the marriage breaks up, she gets $2.8 million for each year that the marriage lasts.

What Are the "Rules"?

2007-03-27T20:51:00.000-07:00

I'm fascinated with the dynamics between guys and girls in general, but in particular, the romantic dynamics between Christian men and women. I, like most of the contributors I assume, thought when growing up that I would meet someone in college and be married by age 22. Alas, I am 26 now and still single. I've dated around, even dated a girl for six months about 9 months ago, but I haven't had a "girlfriend" since I was 20. I'm not sure how we got here, with so many great Christian men and women still single, but I think it has to do with a confluence of many factors.

Sam's Perfect Storm of Factors Impeding Marriage (in no particular order)
1. Sexual Revolution - no reason to get married (guys especially) if you're getting all your sexual needs met

2. High Divorce Rate / Children of Divorce - our generation is skittish with making a marital commitment when they've seen their parents and others get divorced so frequently.

3. Increasingly Knowledge-Based Society - back 30-40 years ago, a man could graduate from high school, get a factory job, and support his family. Now, a bachelor's degree is a minimum requirement for a decent job, if not graduate degrees.

4. American Society's Fear of Growing Older and Facing Responsibility - also known as "Peter Pan Syndrome" (at least for males); see also the popularity of such movies as Old School and Wedding Crashers

5. Joshua Harris / Fear of Being Hurt in Relationships - Did I read "I Kissed Dating Goodbye" as a teen? Yes. Did I buy into this garbage for awhile? Yes (probably for too long). For those of you who haven't read it, the title says it all. The basic premise is that everyone should group date for awhile and then eventually pick someone out of your group to start a courtship with. It's something that sounds great in theory (kind of like communism), something in which relationships could move from group date to marriage seemlessly with no risk of anyone getting hurt. Which leads me to my current girl situation:

So I'm interested in the roommate of my friend's girlfriend. I met her a couple of months ago at a Super Bowl party but was discouraged by my friend and his gf to call her. They advised me to wait and get to know her better in a group setting so she'll feel more comfortable around you. I follow their advice and wait for about a month or so, which in the mean time, I've hung out with her in groups another 3-4 times, going out to lunch with her in groups a couple of times after church. (Please note: I didn't ask my friend and his gf if it was too soon to initiate contact. Maybe I should have in hindsight, but I was tired of feeling like I was back in 7th grade, asking a girl's friend if she likes me). So last Sunday, I shoot her an email asking for her number, saying I'd like to give her a call sometime. Still haven't heard anything back yet.

I certainly don't think I have an overinflated view of myself, as Boundless might hypothesize (see "Brother, You're Like a Six" article). I think I'm about an 8, to be honest, and I have pics to prove it!! :) That being said, I don't go after girls "out of my league" and think she was in my range. My question for the ladies is:

What are the rules in dating in general for Christian women? I completely disagree with the Boundless article "Where's the Motivation, Guys?", as I am one of the guys that doesn't mind calling a girl and risking rejection. I think a big problem in the Christian dating scene is that there is no standard set of rules to follow. For one girl (my current interest apparently), you need to have known her since kindergarten and be best friends before you can dare to ask her out or else you're a creep and a pervert. Then you have other girls who are wondering why Christian guys are such wusses and are afraid of women and physical contact with them (see: "Where's the Motivation, Guys?" article). Just from my perspective, the reason guys don't have motivation is because guys that do (like me) don't have much success unless you put in time to be "group hangout" friends. Maybe it's just living in the South (Dallas). Is it different other places? I lived in Chicago for a couple of years, and it seemed like the Christian women there were more open to dating to get to know one another. They didn't feel like they had to decide if they wanted to marry the guy before going to dinner with them. Please advise, oh wise fab females. I'm going to go fill out my eHarmony personality test now...

More Boundless...

2007-03-26T08:20:00.000-07:00

In the vein of "you need to know where you came from to know where you're going..." I thought this merited its own call-out:

A Brief History of Courtship and Dating in America: Part 1 and Part 2.

I thought they were good reads and I'm interested in checking out the related Mars Hill Audio he sites.

A Craigslist Adventure

2007-03-25T19:08:00.000-07:00

Partly inspired by our fellow poster UrgentSound I posted a Craigslist ad today. (did you ever meet up with any of your responders by the way?) I've posted once or twice over the last 4 years, and nothing has ever come of it. A few emails, a cup of coffee once, but that's it. Single Christian women don't make up a large percentage of people browsing CL :)

I went a little nuts on the format this time...tried to stay away from laundry lists and cliche. Who knows - maybe I'll meet an interesting person.

The Post

We're Far From Alone

2007-03-24T22:55:00.000-07:00

Hey All!
The other day, Marianne sent me a link to a boundless blog, and I read this very interesting and reaffirming blog, and the more then 75 comments!!! made by other frustrated single Christians. It made me realize how many of us there really are. That's incredibly depressing.

http://www.boundlessline.org/2007/03/wheres_the_moti.html

You may notice my comment as "J" discussing my latest oddball situation at church. One other thing I observed was how many people are longing for a forum like this one. I posted the link to Fab Females as a comment, hopefully it will be successfully moderated. Hopefully some other folks like us will find their way over here. If you are a first-timer on this forum, enjoy and can relate to the posts, and would like to join... email me at j.l.steffen@gmail.com and I'll be happy to add you as a member.

Do We Dare Love?

2007-03-21T11:24:00.000-07:00

I have been reading a somewhat huffy blog today, linked on my cousin's myspace page. I understand how many young (and not so young) men might feel attacked by Debbie Maken's all-but-sensitive book, Getting Serious About Getting Married. She comes down very harshly on men (although I think her actual quarrel is with passive church leaders, an overly-indulgent parenting structure, and rogue hack theologians of the late 20th Century).
But I don't want to argue her thesis here. So, please, all of you very angry young men and very angry young women, hold that debate for a forthcoming post (or see past posts to that effect).

I want to talk about a spirit of fear and recrimination that I see and read on both sides of the debate. I see so many young women who are suspicious of men's motives, quick to judge, slow to forgive. And I see just as many men who are terrified of women, slow to heal from rejection, content to wallow in self-pity. Hey, for the greater part of my "adult" life, I've been one of them! I find this trend much more worrying than the fact the current average age of first marriage is 25 for women and 27 for men.
2 Timothy 1:7 should cause all of the anxiety-ridden singles to stop in teir tracks:
"God has not given us the spirit of fear: but of power, of love, and of wisdom." If you would like to read every English translation, here is a link to the verse in eleven variations. In addition to wisdom, we also have "self-control, discipline, a sound mind, and wise discretion."
This verse has a "not one thing, but the other" structure, implying that the spirit of fear is actually aberrant. What you have been given is the spirit of power, love, and wisdom. And yet, like many gifts, you ignore it. I often ignore (or lose) my gift cards and embrace my spirit of circumstantial poverty. The fact that I feel poor does not mean that I did not receive the gift card.
Embracing the spirit of fear drives out the reality of power, love, and wisdom. Now, think about it for a moment. Many of us could come to terms with a life without power. Many of us enjoy feeling powerless; we wear the badge of "victim" proudly. Many of us have resigned ourselves to a state of foolishness. We know we can trust other people for the wisdom in our lives. We have parents, Sunday School leaders,and trusted friends.
But imagine a life without love.
Most of us own up to a desire for love in our lives. And no, not just a love for our pet turtles. Soren Kierkegaard, the great theologian and philosopher of the 19th Century, writes in in his discourses Works of Love that:

In the busy, teeming crowd, which as companionship is both too much and too little, a person grows weary of society; but the cure is not to make the discovery that God's thought was wrong--no, the cure is simply to learn all over again that first thought, to be conscious of longing for companionship. So deeply is this need rooted in human nature that since the creation of the first human being there as been no change, no new discovery has been made, but this selfsame first observation has only been confirmed.

God knew what he was doing when he created (many) people. And when we venture into a relationship with someone, even if it ends in heartache, we were right to have desired that companionship. Through the heartache we must "learn all over again" that we were created to love and be loved--a need that even Christ deeply had, as Kierkegaard points out.
Where do we go wrong? Where does the anxiety and the fear take root? I think most of us are paralyzed by the idea of making the wrong choice. In the age of internet dating, the choices of who to love are limitless, and so we feel pressured to develop a plan, a list of ideal qualities, and a standard, for crying out loud.
But too much choice leads to anxiety. How do we escape this gripping fear? How can we embrace love?

By embracing love. How easy is that?
Kierkegaard tells us that we should, rather, "find in te world of actuality the people we can love in particular and in loving them to love the people we see. When this is the duty, the task is not to find the lovable object, but the task is to find the once given or chosen object--lovable, and to be able to continue to find him lovable no matter how he has changed."

In the end, isn't that what everyone wants? No one wants to be part of the great crowd of "too independent young women," or "perpetually adolescent men." We want to be seen as we are, and be loved, and loved in spite of ourselves for ourselves.

The JesusBlock

2007-03-19T05:39:00.000-07:00

I was talking to a female Christian friend recently, and the subject of dating/relationships came up. She mentioned that she had been JesusBlocked recently. On seeing my blank stare she explained:

Apparently a JesusBlock is when He ends something prematurely that would not be good or healthy for you. In her case, it was a very nice first date. He called her two days later and said "I don't see this going beyond friendship." JesusBlocked!

Am I the only one that has never heard this before?

in praise of amigas

2007-03-15T20:02:00.000-07:00

Not to break from the last entry, but can I just say,

OH MY GOD, I’M GOING TO HARVARD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[insert high-pitched, girlish scream here]

Okay, breathe, la persona, breathe. The point is not the place; for many people, admission to H.U. is no big deal, and for far too many, it’s too big of a deal. For me, however, it’s not so much about the school as it is about the impossible. My whole life I wanted to go to Harvard, but who am I kidding? I always knew I’d never get there. College alone was really rough for me. Believe it or not, I actually flunked the mandatory freshman PE class, and at one point, dropped out altogether. By the time I finally graduated, I was all but burned out. Not only was I not going to Harvard, I would not be going to graduate school. Well, I should say, if it were not for a little help from my friends.

“You need to go to graduate school!” my roommate urged me. “God gave you a gift, and you need to use it.” But I just shrugged her and the others off.

After two years of this, however, I finally conceded. I would apply to Big State University, the one that may not have had the greatest rankings but where almost everyone in my hometown ended up going. So there.

Then I received a call from my good friend, M.H., whom some of you may known.

“You need to go to graduate school,” she said. It was not a question.

“Okay, okay,” I conceded and divulged my plan to try my luck at BSU, which to me was already a bit of a long shot.

“No,” she insisted, “You need to go to Harvard. You’re talented and fabulous and I won’t let you sell yourself short. You’re too good to settle for less than the best, and I’m not letting you get off the phone until you say you’ll at least consider it.”

She’s crazy, I thought. But my cell minutes were running short and I needed to go, so I reluctantly gave her my word.

Forced by conscience to make good on my promise, I arranged and interview with the admissions office – and promptly fell in love with the place. It didn’t take long before all of the other obstacles that stood between me and my childhood dream fell into place: GRE scores, recommendation letters, transcripts, personal statements.

By August – a full 4 months before the deadline – everything was set to go. Meanwhile, I entertained my second “major” relationship, sold or gave away most of my belongings, and moved to another country. I didn’t think much of the process because I was too busy with other things, and besides, I had spent too much of my life worrying away what few chances I had.

Well, come this evening (and my hands are still shaking from shock as I type this), and I´m in! Who would have thunk? I am so amazed and blessed.

Really, then, this post is not so much about Harvard than it is about those special people in your life – the kindred spirits, if you will – who will not let you forget who special you are – no matter how ill-founded or ludicrous their faith may be. This post is a tribute to them to – girlfriends. amigas. The ones who stood by you and were there to remind you that you didn’t need a man to follow your dreams. Friends like my roommate, who, when I bombed the GRE math section on my first try, and I didn’t plan to retake it due to financial pressures, offered – no, insisted – to pay the full $130 fee. We finally worked out an arrangement that she would give me $10 for ever 10 points I improved my score. Later she made arrangements for which she jokingly referred to as the “PHTSS” – The Post Harvard Traumatic Stress Syndrome, for those souls who have staked their life meaning on admission to this fine institution, only to find out that once they graduate that it doesn’t mean so much.

And so, really it doesn’t. These friends of mine mean so much more to me than any gilded degree.

I only hope that I can be that kind of friend for someone else too someday. So let´s here it for the amigas in our lives that gave us that inimitable sense of adventure even when the guys were in short supply.

P.S. In keeping with the last entry, above is a beloved screenshot from Gilmore Girls, when Rory and Loralei visit Harvard and I believe both were between men (and certainly pre-Logan). Who says you always need a man to have a little fun? :-) Oh my God, I´m going to Harvard!!........

Open For Interpretation

2007-03-13T23:38:00.000-07:00

Every once in awhile, I catch an episode of the Gilmore Girls on ABC family. This is a clip from my favorite episode of the series titled 'You Jump, I Jump Jack.'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yw_5qm3gplQ

It's interesting that Rory starts off having a strictly practical view of Logan, until she discovers that his mystery and adventure.

"People can live a hundred years without really living for a minute. You climb up here with me -- it's one less minute you haven't lived." (This is what Logan says to Rory that entices her into a dangerous Mary Poppin-esque stunt)

It's taken me a few seasons to see why Rory fell for Logan. As I read in the book Captivating by Jon and Stasi Eldridge, women seek out this: unveiling beauty, having an irreplaceable role in a great adventure, and being romanced.

What is it about certain people that inevitably attracts us to them? We might not like them, in fact, we may despise them. But there's just something about this person that we can't get out of our mind. It drives us crazy, too.

Take for instance, Logan. His character is a wealthy, upper crust playboy. On paper, he doesn't seem to have depth and I'd seen episodes after You Jump, I Jump Jack and wondered to myself "What is she doing with him?" I didn't understand. After all, she'd passed up her first love Dean and sensitive thinker Marty for this blond Richie Rich. It wasn't until I saw that scene, that I got it. Logan brought Rory to life, made her truly feel alive and exhilerated her spirit.

Have you all met anyone who had that effect on you? Whether it be a stranger you met on an airplane, or your childhood best friend? An unforgettable soul... Whether you were warmly in love, had an instant spark, or struck up a platonic cameraderie... Someone who made you feel like you now knew the answers in life, and had a purpose for waking up in the morning.

For me, the closest I've come to that person is M. We first became friends toward the end of our freshman year of college. I remember our first real conversation. With our bags full of books and heavy coats on, we stood in the Gee at GCC and he pointed out a girl he had a crush on. Soon after, I began dating a friend of his. The first time I met my boyfriend-at-the-time's parents, M was there. My boyfriend's mother had told him that she thought M. and I got along better than he did with me. It was true.

We became better friends sophomore year, and I broke up with the boyfriend right after Christmas break. M. was really a great friend to me in the ugly aftermath. He and I would watch Who's The Boss in Ketler at midnight. We both attended a political conference and hung out, even going so far as taking goofy pictures of each other doing some very strange things. We got addicted to The Sims. After Valentine's Day, we went to Rite-Aid and loaded up on 75% off candy. How great is that? I recall countless random, crazy escapades. Some are too embarassing to tell. Of course, I fell for him. Who wouldn't? No, we never dated. He just didn't have feelings for me. And honestly, the fact that he didn't give me a chance made me realize that I want someone who's a risk taker.

So let's hear some stories...

what can a girl do?

2007-03-10T12:24:00.000-08:00

So, this is what happened this afternoon:

I walk into Wal-Mart (please, nobody shoot me) unshowered, unmakeupped, bloated, breaking out, dressed in old jeans, a hoodie, and sneakers, with my unwashed, unbrushed hair pulled carelessly back into a half-done ponytail -- the American woman's equivalent of a burlap sack. Not only modest, but sloppy and downright unfeminine.

Some creepy guy ogles me, and when I notice, says, as if compelled, "Sweet ass," and "You're kind of sexy."

I was coldly polite and strode away in as much of an opposite direction as possible.

The only thing more I could have done was wear a ski mask. But maybe that wouldn't have helped either.

I give up, folks! I give up.

The condensed (but still long) version of a much longer story.

2007-03-09T00:48:00.000-08:00

I don't even know where to start. This will probably take a few posts to get out in any real way, but the short story is this: I'm a Christian. I believe in commitment and sex only in marriage. But in the last year and half, I had sex, fell in love, and had an abortion. In that order, and all involving the same man. It's pretty damning when you put it all into one sentence. But in the moment, even now, it never seemed quite so terrible.

He's not a Christian. Rather, he's a good friend that I've known for years and one of the most giving will-go-out-of-his-way-for-you people I know. From the beginning we took our relationship seriously, and it didn't take us long to decide that things wouldn't work and so we tried to stay away from each other. But in spite of our resolutions, it never worked.

We get along incredibly well and the day to day has always been really good, so on a practical level it overcame rationality. And we're both more driven intellectually than emotionally, which is what made this surprising. All of our friends, people who know us well, think we're a great couple and can't understand why we've had such reservations about being together and are always trying to not be dating. The person with the dealbreaker reservations has shifted throughout our relationship. Sometimes I didn't want to commit. Sometimes he didn't. Initially it was because he wanted kids and I didn't. Don't. And he's not a Christian, even though we often have interesting discussions on spiritual topics.

After half a year we ended up having sex. It wasn't intentional on either side. It's strange that somehow the line got so blurry, blurry enough that the day he thought we crossed the line is different than the day I thought we did. There's about a month's difference in our estimations. I agonized over that for a while, but it's hard to stay away from something when you've already gone there (though I wouldn't repeat this situation with another man. Honestly, there's a part of me that kind of wonders if Christians hold sex to too high of a standard. But that's another set of musings for another day).

Long story short, in spite of our best intentions we've had a hard time staying away from each other, even when we realized that we should because this couldn't go anywhere. It's partially physical, partially emotional, partially just because we get along as friends so well. We weren't very careful about birth control, and in August I realized I was pregnant. At that point we discussed all sorts of options and decided to get an abortion (I was only at six weeks gestation, if I'd done it any later I wouldn't have been able to rationalize the choice). It sounds almost glib as I write it, but neither of us could really eat or sleep for a week and I was terrified. So was he.

Oddly enough, that situation brought us closer in a lot of ways, though I think it revealed a heartless side of my personality. I've always been pro-life (what good Christian isn't) but there I was, making a choice because not only was the timing terrible, but I don't want kids. Ever. And the biggest problem: I couldn't admit to the world around me that I was sleeping with someone I wasn't married to. But I feel a little heartless because in spite of everything I don't regret doing it. I do feel like a hypocrite though, because none of my friends, even my roommates (and there are three of them), realize that I'm not a virgin anymore. Much less the rest.

You'd think that after that whole situation, faced with the reality that push come to shove we couldn't just get married on the spot even though we really care about each other, we'd be able to break up for real. But again it didn't work. I love him, and I realized that a few months before the whole pregnancy situation. Even now I'd marry him if he truly wanted to do it. In the end what changed appreciably was that we became really careful about birth control anytime we ended up having sex (which again, wasn't usually entirely intentional).

But here's the thing: he doesn't love me. The abortion made him realize that even though he's been saying for his entire life that he wants a family and kids, when he had a chance for all of that at once he freaked out instead. Maybe he doesn't want that after all. Maybe it was just the situation at hand. Which leaves him not knowing what he wants. The end of that is that as far as I can tell, whatever he wants it isn't me.

It's confusing though. He does things like bring me soup when I'm sick, unexpectedly give me money for my car insurance when I was stressing about not having enough money to pay the bill. He takes care of me, and it's only one of the many reasons that he is a great guy. (To be frank: one of my friends, not knowing even the entire story, said that he's "simultaneously a great guy and an ass"). In essence, his actions tell me that he loves me with the (significant) exception of the whole thing in August. But he doesn't think he does. And if he's confused on the point, he must not.

It's taken too long to get to this point, but right now we're not talking to each other so he has space to figure himself out on this and other issues. We're not dating. I'm not holding my breath. I want to say that we've finally broken up for real. In fact, ideally someone else would come along and sweep me off my feet so it'd be easier to move on. But even though this time apart is a good thing, he needs to do this and I know I can't have him anyway so I should really be consciously trying to move on (which I am, but it's not working very well), we haven't talked for two months and I miss him.

Even when one of us was out of town for weeks at a time or we'd tried to break up we still talked every couple of days and saw each other when we could. When we're both in town, we'd usually hang out every couple days even if it was just as friends and/or with other people. Right now in two months between the two of us we've sent four emails.

It hurts. I don't cry much, but I've been crying most nights for the last two months. It's not even the crying that's so horrible, but it's a physical pain that starts somewhere in my chest and travels out to my fingers. I see things that only he would find either interesting or amusing and have no one to share them with.

I know it will pass. I once faced the end of a relationship that nearly destroyed me, we'd invested so much into it. This at least we always said could never last. But right now I'm grieving for the loss of something that in many ways has been wonderful, if simultaneously unhealthy sometimes and frustrating other times.

This thing between us has gone on for almost two years, and its ending feels real this time (though when didn't it feel real). But we haven't spent this much time apart or not communicating since we started. I can't help wanting him, even though I try not to.

Dating and Power

2007-03-08T12:27:00.000-08:00

I haven't read the book myself, but I came across this quote on a friend's blog. Vincent spent 18 months disguised as a man: she dated women (she's a lesbian), worked a high-pressure sales job, went on a men's retreat, and joined an all-male bowling league.

Dating women as a man was a lesson in female power... I saw my own sex from the other side, and I disliked women irrationally for a while because of it. I disliked their superiority, their accusatory smiles, their entitlement to choose or dash me with a fingertip, an execution so lazy, so effortless, it made the defeats and the successes unbearably humiliating. Typical male power feels by comparison a blunt instrument, its salvos and field strategies laughably remedial next to the damage a woman can do with a single cutting word: "no."

Sex is most powerful in the mind, and to men, in the mind, women have a lot of power, not only to arouse, but to give worth, self-worth, meaning, initiation, sustenance, everything.

- Norah Vincent, writing about her experiences as an undercover man in Self-Made Man: One Woman's Journey into Manhood and Back

Thoughts? How true is this?

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!

2007-03-08T01:16:00.000-08:00

Apparently we need more sleep!

Check out this article, entitled (no joke), Women In The U.S. Too Tired For Sex

http://www.news-medical.net/?id=22438

2007-03-06T18:30:00.000-08:00

Here's a first for the fab females (I think? Perhaps not?).

The plea for modesty.

You've seen it other places before, you probably heard it for years from your parents, had it forced on you through church and the like, and chances are, if you're reading this, you're probably already pretty damn good at it. But I'm repeating it because...

Its important. Really important. Important enough that if there's ever a little girl that I'm blessed to father, it will be a huge, huge guiding principle instituted by her parents. Its important enough that I'm thinking about it before I've even met a girl to mother said daughter.

I just don't think girls get how important it is.

There's an absolutely excellent article that I've referrenced in a number of different circumstances from the New York Magazine, by Naomi Wolf, called The Porn Myth. From the article:

I will never forget a visit I made to Ilana, an old friend who had become an Orthodox Jew in Jerusalem. When I saw her again, she had abandoned her jeans and T-shirts for long skirts and a head scarf. I could not get over it. Ilana has waist-length, wild and curly golden-blonde hair. “Can’t I even see your hair?” I asked, trying to find my old friend in there. “No,” she demurred quietly. “Only my husband,” she said with a calm sexual confidence, “ever gets to see my hair.”

When she showed me her little house in a settlement on a hill, and I saw the bedroom, draped in Middle Eastern embroideries, that she shares only with her husband—the kids are not allowed—the sexual intensity in the air was archaic, overwhelming. It was private. It was a feeling of erotic intensity deeper than any I have ever picked up between secular couples in the liberated West. And I thought: Our husbands see naked women all day—in Times Square if not on the Net. Her husband never even sees another woman’s hair.

She must feel, I thought, so hot.

And so we're back to the skirts. It won't be news to the ladies when I tell them that we gents are visually stimuatled. Its how we're wired. Its how we are programmed to react. We're like stupid frickin computers, and as simple as it is to type, its truer than it can possibly sound. We see skin, we initiate the sex protocol. We can (and should) work to re-write our software, as it were, but at the end of the day we're still the same machine.

Gross, I know. You are rightly disgusted. And yet, this is the truth of the matter.

You now have a choice: you can remain angry and perturbed at the way we are, or you can accept the way God chose to make us. No, I'm not saying its God's fault when a guy goes to far in lustful thought, however I do think its true that he created men to be primarily visually stimualted for a reason. That said, I don't pretend that the choice of acceptance is an easy one for girls to make, but most important decisions never are.

Skirts show more leg than jeans. Short skirts show even more leg. That's all I really need to say about it. Should girls be able to wear a modest skirt and not have men lurch into debauched thoughts at the sight of their uncovered calf? Yes. Will that be the case 100% of the time? The Victorians didn't think so. Maybe they had something.

I remember back when Gibson's The Passion of the Christ was about to be released, there was some measure of debate in (at least) reformed circles as to whether such a film was in fact a violation of fairly clear Old Testament law that forbids the visual representation of God in any form. My younger brother made an interesting comment as we talked about whether watching such a movie would in fact be "sinful."

"I won't sin by not watching it," he said.

That's kind of how I like to think of things like modesty, or physical involvement in a relationship, for that matter. Its not a matter of how far you can push the envelope and still "stay safe." Approaching such issues with the wrong motivation will only set you up for failure. We need to change our motives to be more of "how far can we flee temptation?" (or in the case of modesty, "how far can we help others flee temptation?").

Do we men have a calling to bring our thoughts captive before God and maintain pure hearts? Yes. Can women by the simple act of what they choose to wear help men to do that? Yes.

Which is more honorable? I'm not entirely sure.

Enough, Already!

2007-03-05T13:20:00.000-08:00

I can't take the silence any more.

1). All right, friends, I need some reporting. Take a moment and put up a comment about what's going on in your life. Major successes? Major downfalls? New job? New love interest? New heartache?

2). How awesome and awful are the boundless.org videos? Post your opinion on "Is This a Date" and "World's Worst DTRs" in the comments section. Personally, I have never had a DTR (I've had a few "I'd like this to be something more"s, but those are less murky than the true DTR). And I found that "Is This a Date" struck really close to home for me as a young woman. I find it amazing that we can interpret the most banal gesture as a major sign of a man's interest. But, and I would like to pose this question to both the men and the women, are we wrong to do that? Or are the signs really there, but then the man or the woman pulls back and denies it?

3). It's spring (well, in my head it is), and a young man's fancy is supposed "lightly to turn to thoughts of love." Well, men, does it? Is the old saying true? I always wonder. I can tell you that my professors are obsessed with the idea of love. It's in almost every lecture this semester.

Singles Map

2007-02-24T11:39:00.000-08:00

I just came across this map from the National Geographic:

According to this, anyway...the odds are stacked in my favor here in Chicago. Sorry ladies - it looks like the West coast is the hotbed for single men; perhaps it's all the computer programmers? I'd be interested to see a similar map for single Christians...I wonder how much it would deviate from this one.

Illiteracy

2007-02-23T09:15:00.000-08:00

"I would rather read _____ than try to read signals from a member of the opposite sex."

I invite you to fill in the blanks in the comments section. (Everyone except Babba).

Here's mine: "I would rather read my Subaru manual than try to read signals from a member of the opposite sex."

Because, really, I have had just as much success reading the manual, specifically the section on the car's security system, as I have had trying to read various signals from young men over the past--I don't know--five years. When I think we're just friends, it turns out they like me. When I think they might be interested in me, it only takes a week or two before they disappear and I am left to question my own sanity. I question whether we were even friends. I question the laws of physics, of gravity, I question the conditions of possibility, because really, what do I know?
I must be illiterate.
That, or they are all speaking Greek.

2007-02-18T16:21:00.000-08:00

Those who have nothing can share nothing; those who are going nowhere can have no fellow-travelers. - Clyde Staples Lewis

Sometimes Sunday afternoons are the worst.

Not always. Actually, its rare. Most Sunday afternoons I'm busy teaching the Senior High youth group at church. Then there's the 16 glorious weeks or so that I'm straight away to the sports bar to meet up with my best bud Dave and see how bad my fantasy team is performing that week. But the NFL can't be there for you all the time, alas.

For me, as I travel to work on Monday mornings, Sunday afternoons are usually a rush of laundry and packing and bills and mail and whatnot, so that I can have a few hours free in the evening to chill, as it were, although it seems that's usually the unobtainable ideal.

But then there are those random Sunday afternoons, like the ones on a holiday weekend, where we don't have youth group, and I get home early, and I don't really feel like starting the responsible tasks of the day.

The worst ones are always, ironically (cosmically), the ones where worship was such a beautiful thing that morning. I felt God in my heart in so many ways, and that's something I haven't felt so much, so often, for so long. I felt His sorrow for the ways in which I've betrayed Him, in the morning's Reflection:

In any group of teacher and disciples the disciple was never permitted to greet his teacher first, since this implied equality. Judas' sign, therefore, was not just a signal to the mob, but a deliberate insult, and final repudiation of his relationship with Jesus. - Moses Auerbach

I felt His ever-present love in the Psalms in our Call to Worship:

We praise you Lord, who crowns us with love and compassion, who satisfies our desires with good things so that our youth is renewed like the eagle's...From everlasting to everlasting your love is with those who fear you..

I felt drawn to Him and into the body in the Renewal:

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son purifies us from all sin... - 1 John 1

I felt my utter, utter need in the Prayer of Confession:

Though you should guide us, we inform ourselves. Though you should rule us, we control ourselves. Though you should fulfill us, we console ourselves...For we think your truth too high, your will too hard, your power too remote, your love too free. But they are not! And without them, we are of all people most miserable...

I felt my desire to truly turn back to him, re-awakened in the African-American spirtiual first written by Joseph Hart in 1759 - I Will Arise and Go to Jesus:

Let not conscience make you linger,
nor of fitness fondly dream.
All the fitness He requireth
is to feel your need of Him.

I will arise and go to Jesus,
He will embrace me in His arms.
In the arms of my dear Savior, oh,
there are ten thousand charms.

I understood Mark's account of Jesus' arrest in a completely new light, through the sermon:

Then everyone deserted him and fled.

A young man, wearing nothing but a linen gament, was following Jesus. When they seized him, he fled naked, leaving his garment behind. - Mark 14:50-52

You see, all 4 of the Gospels recount the story of Jesus' arrest in quite some detail, and yet Mark was the only writer to capture the story of this young man, which occurred after everyone had deserted Christ. Its not entirely unsubstantiated to suspect that this young man may have been Mark himself - recreating, as N.T. Wright noted, the naked flight from God in the garden, all over again. Inviting me, as it were, to put myself into the story, to see myself in that same state.

And I pondered this all, set to the brassy strains of Edwald's Vivo from Quintet No. 3.

I experienced all of this and more in my wonderful, huge church, on this windy, cold winter morning. How could this lead me to the worst of afternoons?

Its quite simple.

Think of the most beautiful sight you have ever seen. Go ahead, it may take you a minute to recall, and even then to evaluate or decide. It may be the sunset over a deep blue sea, perhaps the wisp of snow off of soaring peaks, or deer in a meadow in the fog of dawn, with Half Dome rising above the trees.

Think of the most beautiful sound you've ever heard. Bach's Unaccompanied Cello Suites in G Major, maybe just a thunderstorm, or children laughing.

The best taste to ever cross your lips - beef braised to tender perfection, or avacado in a mustard glaze. A '90 French Bordeaux. Or maybe just plain old macaroni and cheese when you hadn't had anything to eat in days.

We may enjoy these wonderful things for what they are, yet our deepest enjoyment of them isn't found when we hoard them for our own experience. The finest wine, the most breath-taking vista, the sweetest strains - all fall lost on us if we can't see the gleam in the eyes of another person realizing the same thing that we have. We were created in this way - its simply not in our nature to be able to know the fullness of something, anything, on our own. Alone, we cannot have that complete joy that we know when we have an otherwise identical encounter in the presence of others.

This is where I get to on these rare afternoons. The sun sets so painfully slow, but the hours pass all too fast in the end. I have these wonderful truths bubbling up in my heart, and no cups into which to pour the overflow. I know that God puts me here, at times, for a reason, but I still struggle in these times when I feel like I'm missing out on the complete experience. It feels like I'm watching things through a one-way mirror: I see and hear and know the situation for what it is, but I'm not part of it as if I were in the room itself, breathing the same air.

I must be clear: when I say these are the worst, it is not so much out of a spirit of complaint, as it is yearning. I think my namesake did a fair deal of this in his writings.

I know He's given me good friends to call or meet for dinner or just simply blog at, and I return to Him even with these words, with a trust that will not fade, and... I wait.

Great Expectations

2007-02-15T06:12:00.000-08:00

The logistics of my date could have gone better. Saturday night we went out for Indian food and music. The Indian restaurant was incredibly crowded - I felt like we were sharing our table with couples on both sides of us. The only available table was right next to the door, so we were subjected to sub-zero blasts of frigid wind every time it was opened. We ate our meal with our coats on.

After dinner I discovered that sometimes bands can be flaky. Who'd have thought? There were three bands that night scheduled at Martyrs - and the band listed as first on their website starting at 9:30 was a bluegrass band I knew she'd like, and it would be a bit quieter music so we could chat. When we got there, however, the drum set and electric guitars being set up onstage didn't look very down-homey. It turns out the band we wanted to see had switched to the 1:30 am slot. So we spent the next two hours getting our eardrums blown out by a "psychedelic groove" band, and hardly a word exchanged between us. They were actually pretty good - but it didn't let me accomplish what I wanted to do, which was get to know this girl better.

So all that aside, the date was a little less than I was expecting. This girl, let's call her Sue, is sweet, empathetic, kind, beautiful, and.....boring. What I took to be a feminine mysteriousness could just be dullness. But I'm not sure - perhaps she was just reserved, or perhaps she's just a reserved person in general. It came across that she's not all that into me - but maybe I just wasn't reading her right because I don't know her well enough. Ladies - here's a case of a guy scratching his head over confusing signals.

This also brings up the whole expectations debate. Just because she didn't live up to this ideal construct in my head, I'm disappointed. I've talked to numerous couples, however - including my parents, who said if they had quit at a less-than-great first date they wouldn't have the wonderful relationship they have. Or - I wouldn't be here :)

Has anyone else experienced the first-date blues, followed by something better?

I rechristen it

2007-02-14T08:14:00.000-08:00

Not Valentine's Day but "Disappearing Single Men Day."

Where do they all go? The whole week is shot. They're like wildlife when an earthquake is coming: they head for higher ground.

I promise not to bombard any young men with teddy bears or chocolates today. Really. It's a romance-safe zone around me. As in: no romance here.

I guess they'll be back from hiatus tomorrow...

Mr. Hopeful says Hello

2007-02-12T06:45:00.000-08:00

Mr. Hopeful (aka adam) greets and salutes those I haven't already talked with through comments! I thought I'd tell you a little bit about myself and my journey as a means of introduction. I've found in my life as well as my art I can really only speak from personal experience - or that unique experience of life we all have; all different, and all meaningful.

While I have been a Christian my entire life - for most of it my faith has been a solitary pursuit. I've rarely had a faith community. This is primarily due to my chosen career - acting. I've had to drop out of countless small groups and bible studies for rehearsals and shows. 1 hour on Sunday mornings is not enough time to create deep, meaningful relationships :)

As far as dating and relationships go - I've recently experienced a re-awakening, thanks in part to this blog and others like it. I honestly didn't know there were other Christians out there thinking and struggling with the same kinds of things. I've had relationships in the past, but they've all developed organically out of multi-year friendships into something deeper. After my last girlfriend 6 years ago I swore it off for a while, and became a Purity Robot^tm.

It happened so slowly that I didn't know it was going on...but the slow closure of my heart affected more than my dating life. I'm a whole person with one heart, and what I do with it affects my whole being. I've been reading a lot about the heart, in the Bible and elsewhere. In the Psalms God is praised for "enlarging my heart" - but this is a two-sided coin. When the heart is enlarged, its capacity for love is increased, but also its capacity for suffering. I've felt and experienced more in the last 6 months in my emotional life than the rest of my 27 years put together, and I wouldn't trade that for the potatoes in Ireland.

So now I admit I'm discontent, and feel much more at peace. I'm lonely - and for the first time in a while, I don't feel guilty about that.

There's much more I could say, but I wanted to try and be brief :) And yes - I went on my first date in 6 years this last Saturday...but that's the subject for another post, once I process things.

2007-02-11T13:22:00.000-08:00

Some of you may have seen this before, so this is for those few who might not have yet had the pleasure...

Let's say a guy named Roger is attracted to a woman named Elaine. He asks her out to a movie; she accepts; they have a pretty good time. A few nights later he asks her out to dinner, and again they enjoy themselves. They continue to see each other regularly, and after a while neither one of them is seeing anybody else.

And then, one evening when they're driving home, a thought occurs to Elaine, and, without really thinking, she says it aloud: "Do you realize that, as of tonight, we've been seeing each other for exactly six months?"

And then there is silence in the car. To Elaine, it seems like a very loud silence. She thinks to herself: Gee, I wonder if it bothers him that I said that. Maybe he's been feeling confined by our relationship; maybe he thinks I'm trying to push him into some kind of obligation that he doesn't want, or isn't sure of.

And Roger is thinking: Gosh. Six months.

And Elaine is thinking: But, hey, I'm not so sure I want this kind of relationship, either. Sometimes I wish I had a little more space, so I'd have time to think about whether I really want us to keep going the way we are, moving steadily toward . . . I mean, where are we going? Are we just going to keep seeing each other at this level of intimacy? Are we heading toward marriage? Toward children? Toward a lifetime together? Am I ready for that level of commitment? Do I really even know this person?

And Roger is thinking: . . . so that means it was . . . let's see.... February when we started going out, which was right after I had the car at the dealer's, which means . . . lemme check the odometer . . . Whoa! I am way overdue for an oil change here.

And Elaine is thinking: He's upset. I can see it on his face. Maybe I'm reading this completely wrong. Maybe he wants more from our relationship, more intimacy, more commitment; maybe he has sensed -- even before I sensed it -- that I was feeling some reservations. Yes, I bet that's it. That's why he's so reluctant to say anything about his own feelings. He's afraid of being rejected.

And Roger is thinking: And I'm gonna have them look at the transmission again. I don't care what those morons say, it's still not shifting right. And they better not try to blame it on the cold weather this time. What cold weather? It's 87 degrees out, and this thing is shifting like a garbage truck, and I paid those incompetent thieves $600.

And Elaine is thinking: He's angry. And I don't blame him. I'd be angry, too. I feel so guilty, putting him through this, but I can't help the way I feel. I'm just not sure.

And Roger is thinking: They'll probably say it's only a 90-day warranty. That's exactly what they're gonna say, the rats.

And Elaine is thinking: maybe I'm just too idealistic, waiting for a knight to come riding up on his white horse, when I'm sitting right next to a perfectly good person, a person I enjoy being with, a person I truly do care about, a person who seems to truly care about me. A person who is in pain because of my self-centered, schoolgirl romantic fantasy.

And Roger is thinking: Warranty? They want a warranty? I'll give them a warranty. I'll take their warranty and stick it right up their ....

"Roger," Elaine says aloud.

"What?" says Roger, startled.

"Please don't torture yourself like this," she says, her eyes beginning to brim with tears. "Maybe I should never have . . . I feel so . . ." (She breaks down, sobbing.)

"What?" says Roger.

"I'm such a fool," Elaine sobs. "I mean, I know there's no knight. I really know that. It's silly. There's no knight, and there's no horse."

"There's no horse?" says Roger.

"You think I'm a fool, don't you?" Elaine says.

"No!" says Roger, glad to finally know the correct answer.

"It's just that . . . It's that I . . . I need some time," Elaine says.

(There is a 15-second pause while Roger, thinking as fast as he can, tries to come up with a safe response. Finally he comes up with one that he thinks might work.)

"Yes," he says.

(Elaine, deeply moved, touches his hand.)

"Oh, Roger, do you really feel that way?" she says.

"What way?" says Roger.

"That way about time," says Elaine.

"Oh," says Roger. "Yes."

(Elaine turns to face him and gazes deeply into his eyes, causing him to become very
nervous about what she might say next, especially if it involves a horse. At last she speaks.)

"Thank you, Roger," she says.

"Thank you," says Roger.

Then he takes her home, and she lies on her bed, a conflicted, tortured soul, and weeps until dawn, whereas when Roger gets back to his place, he opens a bag of Doritos, turns on the TV, and immediately becomes deeply involved in a rerun of a tennis match between two Czechs he never heard of. A tiny voice in the far recesses of his mind tells him that something major was going on back there in the car, but he
is pretty sure there is no way he would ever understand what, and so he figures
it's better if he doesn't think about it. (This is also Roger's policy regarding
world hunger.)

The next day Elaine will call her closest friend, or perhaps two of them, and they will talk about this situation for six straight hours. In painstaking detail, they will analyze everything she said and everything he said, going over it time and time again, exploring every word, expression, and gesture for nuances of meaning, considering every possible ramification. They will continue to discuss this subject, off and on, for weeks, maybe months, never reaching any definite conclusions, but never getting bored with it, either.

Meanwhile, Roger, while playing racquetball one day with a mutual friend of his and Elaine's, will pause just before serving, frown, and say:

"Norm, did Elaine ever own a horse?"

listen...

2007-02-09T21:10:00.000-08:00

I ran across this poem on a friend of a friend's facebook profile. It speaks to me, not only because it's true of my life, but also because it helps me understand how even well-intentioned criticism and insensitivity can deeply wound someone who wants to communicate what cannot be spoken. This is a major blind spot in my life, but I hope that someday I will love all my friends as this poem describes.

Don't be fooled by me.
Don't be fooled by the face I wear.
For I wear a mask; I wear a thousand masks,
Masks that I'm afraid to take off,
But none of them are me.
Pretending is an art that's second nature with me,
but don't be fooled, for God's sake don't be fooled.
I give you the impression that I'm secure,
that all is sunny and unruffled with me,
within as well as without,
that confidence is my name and coolness my game,
that the water's calm and I'm in command,
and that I need no one.
But don't believe me.
Please.
My surface may seem smooth, but my surface is my mask,
my ever-varying and ever-concealing mask.
Beneath dwells the real me in confusion, in fear, in loneliness.
But I hide this.
I don't want anybody to know it.
I panic at the thought of my weakness and fear being exposed.
That's why I frantically create a mask to hide behind,
a nonchalant, sophisticated facade to help me pretend,
to shield me from the glance that knows.
But such a glance is precisely my salvation. My only salvation.
And I know it.
That is if it's followed by acceptance, if it's followed by love.
It's the only thing that can liberate me from my self,
from the barriers that I so painstakingly erect.
It's the only thing that will assure me of what I can't assure myself,
that I'm really worth something.
But I don't tell you this. I don't dare. I'm afraid to.
I'm afraid your glance will not be followed by acceptance and love.
I'm afraid you'll think less of me, that you'll laugh.
And your laugh would kill me.
I'm afraid that deep-down I'm nothing, that I'm just not good,
and that you will see this and reject me.
So I play my game, my desperate pretending game,
with a facade of assurance without, and a trembling child within.
And so begins the parade of masks.
The glittering, but empty parade of masks.
And my life becomes a front.
I idly chatter to you in the suave tones of surface talk.
I tell you everything that's really nothing,
and nothing of what's everything, of what's crying within me.

So when I'm going through my routine do not be fooled by what I'm saying.
Please listen carefully and try to hear what I'm not saying,
what I'd like to be able to say, what for survival I need to say,
but what I cannot say.
I dislike hiding. Honestly.
I dislike the superficial game I'm playing, the superficial, phony game.
I'd really like to be genuine, and spontaneous, and me,
but you've got to help me.
You've got to hold out your hand
even when it seems like that's the last thing I seem to want or need.
Only you can wipe away from my eyes the blank stare of the breathing dead.
Only you can call me into aliveness.
Each time you're kind and gentle and encouraging,
each time you try to understand because you really care,
my heart begins to grow wings, very small wings, very feeble wings,
but wings.
With your sensitivity and sympathy, and your power of understanding,
you can breath life into me. I want you to know that.
I want you to know how important you are to me,
how you can be a creator of the person that is me if you choose to.
Please choose to.
You alone can break down the wall behind which I tremble,
you alone can remove my mask,
you alone can release me from my shadow-world of panic and uncertainty,
from my lonely prison.
So do not pass me by. Please do not pass me by.
It will not be easy for you.
A long conviction of worthlessness builds strong walls.
The nearer you approach me, the blinder I may strike back,
It's irrational, but despite what all the books say about man, I am irrational.
I fight against the very thing that I cry out for. But I am told that
love is stronger than strong walls, and in this lies my hope.
My only hope.
Please try to beat down those walls with firm hands, but with gentle hands—
for a child is very sensitive.
Who am I, you may wonder? I am someone that you know very well.
For I am every man that you meet, and every woman that you meet.

– anonymous

Who Will Advocate for Us?

2007-02-06T09:20:00.000-08:00

This whole singleness situation in our society is a mess.

We all know it. We all know there’s something wrong with staying single so long, with putting off marriage and children to early middle age. It’s especially disheartening in the Christian sphere, since the church as a universal body has emphatically supported marriage up until fifteen years ago. (This change only occurred in Protestant circles. You will never hear "the gift/call of/to singleness" preached from a Catholic pulpit.)

So we know there’s something wrong, but there’s evidently nothing to be done about it.

We girls have tried everything. We’ve tried contentment, we’ve tried declaring that we’re not ready for marriage yet, we’ve tried dressing well and looking attractive to catch the guys’ attention, we’ve tried focusing on our careers and honing our ambitions both to distract ourselves and to look more attractive and successful, we’ve tried bettering ourselves and cultivating our talents and skills, we’ve tried making ourselves more interesting, we’ve tried being complete people, we’ve tried relying on Jesus to bring that special guy into our lives, we’ve tried patience and waiting, and we’ve tried asking guys out. We’ve tried regular church attendance, frequenting coffee shops and bookstores, enthusiastically sitting down in singles groups, holding dinner parties for single friends in the hopes of encouraging the sprouting of couples, praying, and ignoring the problem. We’ve tried filling the loneliness with friends, roommates, and pets.

Nothing works.

As a go-getter, I’m increasingly frustrated by my fruitless endeavors to effect some result. I’ve tried dating men who aren't Christians, since they ask, but have found that they aren’t to my taste. No matter how great or nice or gentlemanly they are, in the end there’s an insurmountable gap that comes from an unshared faith. If I were a rote Christian it might not matter, but like most other Christian girls my age, it formulates the most crucial part of my own makeup. Dating someone who doesn't have that eventually becomes a Tower of Babel experience – we don’t speak the same language.

So there are no more avenues to explore. I know eHarmony takes time, but let’s be honest, that’s a last recourse. One of desperation, of admitting defeat in drawing any of the men I actually know.

I’m not sure where the break comes. I know a lot of it has to do with our upbringing, so guys, don’t worry, I feel for you. Our parents, for whatever reason (and most of them married young), encouraged us not to date. Was it the advent of True Love Waits? Was it a terror reaction to the rise in teenage promiscuity? At some point I think it boils down to a certain (sometimes well-founded, sometimes not) lack of trust or faith in us on our parents’ part to keep good heads on our shoulders and make responsible decisions, coupled with a lack of supervision. Courtship used to be highly supervised, complete with chaperones, and even dating, up to the 60s, had some pretty severe limitations as to where a young couple could go so as to prevent private trouble-making. Which of course is a very good thing -- we've all seen Romeo and Juliet; we know what unsupervised, unrestrained adolescent passion can do. But the Jesus Movement in the 70s seemed to carry more purity of heart and responsible behavior back into the culture – the Christian culture, at least. My parents were engaged for two years and stayed sexually pure until their marriage. Their friends made it too.

But for some reason, they appeared to think we were fated by our own evil natures to screw it up. (No pun intended.) Never mind that we had been reared on Bible verses and chastity classes, and taught to make good decisions. My parents trusted my decision-making skills in regard to my academics and youth group activities, but not really my social life. And certainly I was discouraged from dating.

(A note to the parents: It's gotta suck raising teenagers in this culture, where kids are encouraged to rebel and society strips away your authority. My parents did the best they could; and in some respects the church did, too; but something didn't happen in cultivating kids for marriage and etiquette.)

And not dating in high school was fine; I didn’t see the point of dating then anyway, because who marries their high school sweethearts all that often anymore? Plus the selection wasn’t exactly winning (and I was a weirdo myself), and if I did like somebody, I had endless hours of paternal teasing to contend with.

Now, my parents had nothing against me dating in college, and put no pressure on me either to stay single or to get married. But they never liked any of the guys I did. (I mean, they were right, but all the same it wasn’t fostering a "try and see" attitude.) And I know a lot of people my age, especially guys, whose parents actively discouraged serious relationships until some undefined future perfect time when everybody was "ready" for it. And these guys’ mothers never wanted them to leave home.

And with the growing absence of wholesome coed group activities, like dances (not the grungy grindy kind, but swing and ballroom and contra) or cookouts, there wasn’t a safe haven to practice interactions with the opposite sex. Men’s mothers and fathers never taught them how to approach a girl, how to date a girl, or often even how to treat a girl, but instead they taught them to "guard their hearts," to wait until they were "stable," and to get a job first. Meanwhile the guys never received guidance or training on how to conquer the natural trepidations that guys legendarily feel about asking a girl to do anything; and were never taught that the achievement of manhood is taking on adult responsibilities – family and career. A career used to be the means by which a man provided for his family; now the career comes first, and family second, if at all. Dating and marriage became this fearsome realm of temptation and commitment that it was best to avoid altogether until a serious relationship "just happened" or until "the right person came along."

So instead of marriage acting as a milemarker of true adulthood, something for a guy to make himself worthy of and strive for, adulthood became entirely career-oriented and marriage something that blew into a person’s life like Mary Poppins when the time was magically right.

So what we have is a generation of people who are largely completely unequipped to get serious and grow up. Adult responsibilities took a strong root with the girls – in this age of women’s power we are taught to fear nothing and achieve everything, and we took it and ran with it – but in the boys there seems to be a spirit of fear that was fostered from a very young age, either by parents or the church environment where any physical contact with girls, any hugs or backrubs, were decried as leading to lust and the downfall of one’s soul – so that men from their mid-twenties onward are left with inexperience in opposite sex interaction, cluelessness as to dating etiquette, a primary focus on self, and a conviction that their own sexuality is abhorrent to God. Or, conversely, with the rise of divorce within the church (and again, aside from the occasional pulpit message about divorce being wrong, nothing much is done about it, to say, God always loves you, but if you're married, you need to stay that way), men in particular are disillusioned, feel that marriage is doomed to fail, or are terrified of ruining their marriages should they try to make a go of it.

And this spirit of fear in some guys manifests itself in snide, bitter, hardhearted attitudes toward women altogether; in others it makes them powerlessly shy and retiring; in others it makes them arrogantly convinced that no girl is good enough for them, because their mothers think so. In a lot of them it has bred a denial of the necessity of family.

We are no longer taught that "for this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be united to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh"; we are taught that "a boy or a girl shall leave his or her parents sometime after college and get a fulfilling career and make a lot of money, and then wait until marriage finds him or her, if it ever does."

The guys whose parents taught them otherwise are already married. The rest are waiting for something, and they don’t know what. The rules aren’t clear. Nobody’s taught us what to do next, and there aren’t any signs in the sky.

And nobody’s advocating for us. Because in the end, the guys always have the power. A girl can do everything she can do, up to the point of asking a guy to date her, but if he doesn’t want to, he won’t. If he doesn’t want to "wake up," he won’t. If he doesn’t want to date or get married yet, there’s nothing she can do to convince him otherwise. The scales are tipped away from the women.

This is where we need the older generation to step in. Parents need to be telling their twenty-something sons that it’s time to put aside the childish things and take on manly responsibilities. Marriage is the healthiest state for anyone. Sure, there are some crappy marriages out there, and now that we haven’t been raised to be good husbands and wives there’s a greater risk of things falling apart, since we’re most used to considering ourselves and really don’t know what we’re doing; but there are two thousand years of tradition to draw from, and our own parents’ wisdom, and God’s command to be fruitful and multiply.

The singles need the backing of the older generations. Paul’s letters to Timothy are very clear in expressing the need of young men to be mentored by older men, and young women to be mentored by older women. (This means that dads specifically need to be getting on their sons’ cases; if it’s just the moms doing it, it’s nagging.) The parental generation didn't want us to date, didn't tell us much about the practical aspects of preparing for marriage, and now expects us to take care of ourselves while knowing nothing, or to rely solely on God's Santa Claus provision of that magical mate at that magical moment (when in every other area we know that holiness is something to work toward -- we have responsibilities, things we have to do, in living the Christian life. If we aren't supposed to sit around and do nothing and wait for God to make all our actions holy, then in this area of marriage, which is a creation mandate, we should likewise seek to do something in order to get married). The church culture appears to be so materialistic and afraid of offending, or just cynical about young people’s uncontrollable impulses to sin and resentment or deafness of the church's message, that it says nothing to us about right or wrong, politeness or rudeness, action or inaction.

And the Protestant churches need to stop trying so hard to accommodate singles by legitimizing their situation. This is a unique trend in the entirety of world history, and it has truly scary implications. Putting singleness on the same plane with marriage means that it’s okay never to get married (i.e. learn to live with and for someone other than yourself) or to have children (i.e. preserve Christianity for the future generations – the Psalms describe godly daughters as "pillars gracing a hall," and pillars weren’t only beautiful but structurally vital – produce more salt for the earth, keep the church alive to minister in practical ways to a broken world rife with evil, and carry on the Great Commission). Instead of sanctifying a trend that is strangling the church body and leaving men and women alike feeling frightened, empty, powerless, and alone, the church needs to stand up and tell us to get our acts together and pursue marriage. No more "contentment." No more "education first." No more "wait and God will make it happen." Instead "hear and obey."

Debbie Maken’s book is fantastic. But young women can’t change society by themselves. We need the support of the church authority, of the fathers of the men who aren’t dating, of our mothers to keep their eyes peeled for potential mates for their daughters, or for the single young women around them who live far from their parents. In today’s attitude of fierce independence and the idea that a person’s personal life is nobody else’s business, we need the church to take back its traditional authority over the lives of its members and remind us that our private lives impact the world, and that the church does have the right to tell Christians what to do.

It’s like everybody’s waiting for the girls to do something, when we’re, sadly, on the bottom rung of the power ladder. A lot of guys our age, through their fear or pride or stubbornness, live as if they’re at the top of that ladder. Dads and churches need to remind them that they’re not.

Of course it’s going to take some heroic efforts to rectify our situation. Like I said, we haven’t been taught from childhood that marriage is necessary and that we should be preparing for it. So there’s a lot of internal adjustment to be done, and the whole body needs to come together to do it. And when we finally are married, it’s going to be up to us to teach to our children the things that weren’t taught to us, so that our sons and daughters won’t find themselves growing past youth and locked in a paralysis of ignorance and passivity.

Enlighten Me, Gentlemen

2007-02-05T08:21:00.000-08:00

First comes mutual attraction, then what?
Really, guys, help me out! If a guy seems attracted to me, is flirty, sweet, makes all of these date-like suggestions ("We should _______ " [you fill in the blank with fun activity]), am I supposed to do something?
Or does it mean nothing?
Do men just practice flirting on random young women?

nil

2007-02-04T18:39:00.001-08:00

No date. No phone call. No big.

dazed and confused

2007-02-02T17:56:00.000-08:00

By way of introduction, I am the Christian guy referenced in the first paragraph of the post below ("first comes love, but then what?"), and I have been reading this blog for the last several months. I've hesitated to post, since I thought my comments would be divisive, but la persona herself suggested that I introduce myself here. (BTW, she is the only one of the fabulous females whom I've met, and she initially told me about this blog several months ago.)

I am now 24. Not only am I single, but I have never had a girlfriend. I grew up in an extremely isolated, ultra-conservative home-schooling family, where even my Steven Curtis Chapman contraband CDs were declared "evil" and confiscated. My parents were so paranoid that they made me sign a contract before I went to college stipulating that I would not date or court (or even touch) anyone while there. That was enormously stressful and put a wedge in our relationship which persists to this day. The only honorable thing to do, I reasoned, was to keep my word but to escape college as soon as possible; I graduated in three years. I went to grad school the next two years and currently work as an engineer in Columbus, Indiana.

I am very passionate about urban outreach, and outreach in general. I'm deeply troubled by the seeming selfishness of the church—so eager to build expensive buildings, live in nice houses, and lead comfortable and safe lives, but so unwilling to sacrifice (really sacrifice, until it hurts) for those who are forgotten and lost. How can we live our cushy lives in America and be so oblivious to those rotting in inner cities and dying in third-world countries? It's even worse when we sit around and argue about theology and pretend that we are so much better and more spiritual than the "riffraff" in the streets.

When I lived in Atlanta and Boston, I was heavily involved in urban outreach, first with my church and then with a one-on-one mentoring program. Now I live in a modest house in inner-city Indianapolis, and I spend most of my free time working with teens who are from broken families and entrenched in poverty. I drive an old but reliable car and have no intentions to upgrade. Don't get me wrong—I have a very comfortable life, but it's just not the typical middle-class existence, and it is certainly not typical for graduates of my alma maters. My story is on my blog, which is best read from the oldest post to the most recent, although a recent entry describes a unique challenge of my single status. I also have a personal website, which hasn't been updated in nearly a year (apologies); I'm including it as a picture so Google's bots can't access it:

When women see me as a financially secure man who can support their dreams of an idyllic life in the 'burbs, I run the other way. I'm not judging them for their dreams, but I personally am not going to have that life, and any prospectives deserve to know that up front. I want a woman who does not have to change who she is, or what her passions are, to be with me. I liked Miss persona in part because she seemed to be not only willing but excited about such a lifestyle. No one is perfect, of course, but her actions did say something important about her heart.

This marks the third time I have seriously tried to initiate a relationship ("serious" owing to the months of preparation and perhaps unwise emotional entanglement each involved), and it is the third time I have been rejected. All three rejections occurred without so much as a first date; evidently my non-eligibility is obvious from a distance. This is the first time, however, that I have learned why.

It may not be as apparent online as it is in person that she and I have dramatically different personalities. If I were to describe myself in three words, they would be intense, honest, and earnest. I've never been one to shy away from conflict, and sometimes I initiate it. Perhaps as a result, I am not a sensitive or kind person. Hard though it may be to believe, I actually do try to be sensitive, but it's always a conscious and imperfect effort and will never flow naturally from my personality.

Months ago, I hesitated to pursue anything more with her because I knew the personality difference would be difficult at the very least. However, since many successful relationships involve contrasting personalities, I thought it was something we could work through. I thought that the most important requirements were a common faith and common life goals. I thought that if we built a solid friendship on that basis, it could naturally grow into something more. Without going into all the details, it has now become quite evident that I was mistaken—shared goals alone are not enough to sustain this type of relationship; it is also necessary to have compatible personalities and better chemistry. Oh yeah, and I just need to be "nicer."

Describing this experience as difficult would be an understatement, but it's not productive to complain. It's strangely comforting to be assured that she would never have been happy to be with me regardless of how hard I tried. My insensitive personality would never have allowed it, and I simply can't change that. I must believe that it will work out for the best, and I hope she has gotten something good out of an experience that has been very painful for her.

Looking forward, it is difficult to be excited about the dating scene. I feel like I am very ill equipped to be a romantic boyfriend or husband, as my track record so amply demonstrates. And I don't have any idea how to learn. If I'm trying to dance or box or some other new activity, I am shown certain moves which I repeat mechanically at first. Usually I make mistakes over and over again, as I'm a rather slow learner. I become natural only after a great deal of practice. But when it comes to dating, I'm expected to be a world-class performer on the first try, or I lose my chance.

For example, I know intellectually that women want to be pursued. I have learned that they want be pursued teasingly, gently, deftly, but I have no idea how to do that. My first attempts at "pursuit" resemble my moves on the dance floor—I'm clumsy, overbearing, and step on my partners' toes (and feelings). No woman wants that. I don't know how to get better without practice, but as time slips by, I seem to get only worse. I don't want to become an old bachelor engineer.

It's not for lack of trying. I've really tried to be attentive, and I've put a premium on respecting women. But I wonder if they mistake respect for timidity. For whatever it's worth, I read Pride and Prejudice to try to understand women's perspective on romance, but I'm afraid I didn't really understand it. Darcy seems to be sort of aloof and contentious, as I am, but women actually like him. I read Boundless, which is frustrating because it's a continual tirade against men who allegedly don't have the guts to ask women out. I've read other books and talked to many people, but talking about dating doesn't make me a boyfriend any more than talking about dancing would make me an expert dancer. Then after all that, I hear that my real problem is that I'm trying too hard. What the...?!

I feel awkward posting these thoughts here because the gist of this blog is that women never get asked out. Perhaps it's a small comfort that some men can't seem to make anything happen either.

As far as my future plans are concerned, I think the consensus of the Fabulous Females and Boundless editors and other Christians is that as a guy, I owe it to the human race to be dating as often as possible. And I'm trying to. There's an urban youth workers' conference coming up in Indianapolis, and I've got my fingers crossed (yeah, I know, ulterior motives). My church is a small urban church a mile from my home (which has no single women my age), and it is partnered with a megachurch in the suburbs. Megachurches in suburbs aren't my style, but I'm thinking about attending on Saturday nights so I can meet women. I can't believe I'm even thinking about that, because I always derided guys who went to church to meet women. But at least I'm very involved in my own church, so I'm not being a fake Christian. I may join the singles group at the megachurch, although I've heard scary things about singles groups (especially when they advertise free child care). I'm even planning to join e-harmony if nothing happens. I must confess that this type of dating is no fun... I'm pursuing an abstraction rather than a person. But maybe I'll learn how to do it right so I'll be more prepared next time.

Once again, I hope this post has been slightly helpful to you ladies. You're not the only ones who find yourselves alone. If it is not helpful, let me know.

First

2007-02-01T17:39:00.000-08:00

Thirty-five minutes ago I asked a guy out.

Now, I've never done this before. I know a lot of you gals are super cool and have casually asked guys to dinner, but not me. Fearless Sarah shrivels to a mewling bundle of nerves at the thought of approaching a guy I like. My usual policy is either I'll be so awkward around him I'll eventually fade into the wallpaper, or I'll just smile a lot and maybe he'll get the picture.

Yeah, so I'm not big with the flirting.

Anyway, there's this guy. I met him a year ago at a party and we yakked each other's ears off for an hour or so. He gave me his number, drew me a map to his church, and invited me to attend. Then he never picked up the phone, didn't have voicemail, didn't return my call, and wasn't at the church. Then the next few times I ran into him he never seemed to remember my name. Oh well, figures.

But last semester he remembered my name. He called MP while she was at my apartment baking cookies to get my number (she evilly handed the phone to me) and got directions to my house to bring me leftover roast beef for my lunches (and it was excellent roast beef. It had fresh basil in it). He stood around in my kitchen, towering over my refrigerator (this guy is tall -- I feel like, well, like a woman standing next to him) and grinning and talking. When I saw him at social events we always wound up in an extended conversation.

Sometime around the past weekend I realized I like him. Could like him a lot. And enlisted my friends for scouting and support. Everyone concluded that he likes me, but being a humanities student would never take the initiative, so I should. Then in an unexpected phone conversation with my dad, Daddy exploded into this sudden, "If you want him, GO FOR HIM. You deserve whatever you want. You're fabulous, and funny, and smart, and beautiful, and sweet, and you never sit around. So don't sit around. If you want him, go for him."

Thanks to all those wingwomen and my awesome father, I took the bull by the horns, bit the bullet, stepped up to the plate, threw my hat in the ring, faced the firing squad, and called him.

And he said yes.

He's out of town for the present, but said he'd be back in South Bend on Saturday, and that he'd call me when he knew his exact schedule. So there's no definite plan yet, but a definite plan to have a plan.

And now I'm freaking out. I'll be drifting along in my usual absentminded fog, when it will suddenly occur to me that I ASKED A GUY OUT and I'll freeze and squeal like a girl when a boy drops an ice cube down her collar. (Poor Marianne. She's been the pep squad for this evening's stint and she has to listen to the freezing and the squealing every five minutes or so.)

She says she doesn't mind.

So internally I'm whooping up a storm, but I don't want to be giddy and gushy all over a blog post.

So we'll leave it at that.

Now if only I could shut up the voice in my head that keeps saying, He only said yes to be nice...

Craigslist Revisited

2007-01-31T22:58:00.000-08:00

I posted my ad on Craigslist almost 48 hours ago, and I've gotten 76 responses thus far. The vast majority of them were well-written. A few were practically novels. But here's the problem: I don't know if I'm going to be that interested in any of them. In a romantic sense, anyway. Some of the responders sound like very cool people, and I realize that in person what I'm attracted to often differs from just a photo--but based on the photos, I don't think any of the ones who wrote decent responses are that attractive. In my subjective opinion. I emailed some of them back anyway, since some of the guys I have considered physically attractive in person I would never have dated if I'd just screened on the basis of photography. But there you have it.

The other disappointing thing is that even though I got a million emails, many (most?) of them don't seem to match even the criteria in my post (in summary):

- A committed Christian who agrees that the vast majority of so-called Christian music sucks.
- Loves to read.
- Enjoys intellectual conversation, banter, and debates.
- Enjoys travel.
- Has a deep appreciation for the arts.
- Is chivalrous and understands that even strong women appreciate it when someone takes care of them, even if they'd be reluctant to admit it.
- Doesn't smoke, and is at least 5'9". (A little taller than me.)

So I guess I'm disappointed, though I wasn't hoping for that much. You'd be surprised how many guys who say they aren't Christians or are just spiritual responded. But to have so many emails and still figure that I'm unlikely to want to really date them is kind of sad. Maybe things will play out differently than I imagine. One or a few of them could have charisma in person that doesn't come out in a photo. But why is it so hard to find the combination of intellectual, personable, and physical attractiveness that I long for?

CraigsList

2007-01-30T04:40:00.001-08:00

Note: I've been lurking for a while. Thanks for the invite to join the blog!

Most of you are probably familiar with CraigsList. Well, I don't have the money to sign up for eHarmony, so I tried posting an ad on CraigsList instead (without a photo....). I wasn't expecting terribly much (I swear most of the posters are older white men with Asian fetish, older men looking to be sugar daddies, or twenty-something men who just want sex). But it's free, so I wrote a very detailed post and waited. I got back around 60 replies, most of them reasonably well-written. But one I got came from a man who must be crazy. In addition to his strange email, I recognized him. He'd posted an ad with a photo a little while ago in broken English looking for an Asian woman (yeah, I usually read through the ads for amusement) . And it's clear that he can write fluently, so I was actually pretty offended. (What, he needs to "relate" to Asians by writing incomprehensible English?) Now, I don't get offended easily in general. But he has to be in his mid-forties. And I wrote in my post that I'm 25. (Can't blame him for trying?) Here are the more interesting parts of what he wrote to me (his typos/errors are amusing):

My taste in music changed dramatically after receiving our Lord Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord.

Yet, what an eye-opening surprise it was to find worldly music creeping into the churches.

3 years ago I stopped watching hellivision altogether with very few exceptions, Sci-fi (haha!) being one of them.

I have a healthy dislike for being manipulated and I know TV viewers are offering themselves up to be brainwashed, tempted, socially engineered and seduced by the programmers of the TV networks.

I too, do not worship the Shrub from Washington D Ceive us.

Shrub's grand daddy was caught trading with and supporting Hitler during WW2.

W's daddy, announced we are in a New Word Odor while he pretended to be our president.

'W' and John Kerry both admitted on TV on the very same Sunday that they are members of Skull 'n' Bones, the most Satanical organization on earth.

When asked the very same questions, word for word, both admitted Skull 'n' Bones is a "secret" society and both refused to divulge what that secret is to the American people as they both snickered and laughed in the faces of the American people....

We know what the foundation of the problem is and Jesus instructed us in Mt 24 that "many" shall come saying that I am the Christ and shall deceive "many."

The word "many" is key. I now understand that real Churches with real pastors that teach the real truth will be more and more unpopular and the Main Stream so-called churches will continue to grow teaching false doctrines, tickling the ears of the hearers.

Me. I write poetry, publish a local business directory, entrepreneur, jurist, researcher, truth-movement activist and I'm a single pastor of a New Testament Church.

I'm highly interested in talking to you about God honoring music.

It's a very challenging subject. I do listen to a wide variety of music presented as "Christian", however, as a pastor I error on the safe side with my heart well focused on protecting the Church from inappropriate music.

One family we affiliate with loves my preaching and I have opened this brother's eyes on a number of things pertaining to the Word of God and the Church, but, his family singing group uses taped music that is the kind of music I do not allow in our Church.

So, it's very refreshing to me to read in your ad about how particular you are about music you deem to be Christian.

I think he missed my point about music entirely. I wrote that the majority of so-called Christian music sucks. Not that we have to protect ourselves from inappropriate ("secular"?) music.

1 Corinthians 7:8-9

2007-01-30T03:02:00.000-08:00

Someone posted this on the Relevant Magazine message boards as a joke, and I thought it was hilarious:

Dear sir,
I am currently experiencing burning passion and feel it is biblically necessary for me to get married. Please help me in this area of my life, in Jesus' name, and take me out tonight.
Thank you.
the desperate girl next to you

It's an idea. :-p

a little naked honesty

2007-01-29T09:11:00.000-08:00

I -- once -- was better
I put off all my grief
I put off all my grief

~Sufjan Stevens

I woke up in a rage today. It's beginning to happen more frequently, where the absence of a body next to me in the bed makes my eyes hot and my stomach clench. I seethe in the shower. I hit the accelerator a little too hard on the way to work. I slam papers and staplers down on the desks. I yell at the computer for booting up too slowly. I kick the copier just because I hate it.

But then my boss talked to me this morning about "fishing," and asked me some questions about what kind of man I'm looking to find, and gave me some tips on where to go to find him. He concluded the conversation with, "We need to get you someone. We can't have you sad all the time."

And I thought, Sad? Angry, almost always; sarcastic, definitely; ferocious, yes -- at least about this topic. But I'm happy about plenty of other things. My cat, my cooking, my friends, my family, God.

He's a shrewd one, my boss. He doesn't miss much. Under every emotion I emit, there's a grief. Every day I mourn my aloneness. I can't shake it.

I'm not sure why the human psyche almost instantaneously converts sorrow to anger -- perhaps because anger tends to give a person strength, and I need to hold it together through each day, not fall apart; or perhaps because anger is easier to handle. I'd much rather be furious than sad. There's something -- well, anger burns, and that can be distracting and thrilling. Nothing compares to a brilliantly constructed, irate sentence that pointedly gets across something true in the meanest way possible. Anger causes pain. Anger is satisfying.

Grief is not. Grief saps the strength, dulls the ambition, kills the wit, swallows joy. And I think I feel guilty about grief because it doesn't get anything accomplished; it's not productive. I can do a lot in one day when I'm in a rage; I can barely get out of bed when I'm swamped in sorrow. Which is fine if you're mourning the death of a pet, or the loss of a job, or the protracted illness of a loved one, because you're supposed to grieve in those situations, and the grief eventually fades as you cope, heal, and keep moving forward.

But this? This aloneness? This lack of companionship, lack of physical intimacy, lack of love and touch and purpose and children? This shallow dependency on a job for life fulfillment, instead of a family? I carry it with me every day, everywhere. It doesn't end. There's no set expiration date on my single status. It could end tomorrow, or it could never end at all. It's not a grief that comes from loss; it's a grief that comes from absence, from never having had, and so it's not something you necessarily go through the Five Stages of Mourning or whatever to get past. I go through them all the time, and in no particular order. Some days I deny that I care, or I'm angry, or I try making deals with God, or I cry, or I'm content. But I don't get over it. The cycle spins out all over again, from day to day or even minute to minute. It has no locus in time, so time doesn't heal it.

I tend to ignore the fact that all anger stems from hurt or sorrow. Probably most other people do, too, and so we seem to be a rampaging army of Angry Young Women, and we look scary and estrogen-charged and unreasonable, when if you were to view us when we're alone, you'll probably find us sad, because the one thing we want most is continually denied us, and we don't know why, and we can't see a way out, and it hurts us.

I wake myself up crying sometimes. I was built to belong to a family, to have my own, to be someone's companion and helpmeet and lover. I was built to raise delightful, beautiful, confident children. But time continues to pass, and I'm alone.

So there it is. My rage and accusations pinpoint pieces of truth, but they also mask a sorrow so consuming I'm never free of it, even in my moments of blazing joy in Christ. And it's especially horrible because I don't understand why this yearning, which unfulfillment is the wellspring of the grief, hasn't been fulfilled.

I know it's better to be alone than to marry the wrong person, but why haven't I found the right person? Why hasn't he found me? Why does no one ask me out? Is there something wrong with me?

I'm not incomplete in myself. But I'm incomplete in my life. And I don't understand.

You are talking like a foolish woman.

2007-01-22T22:36:00.000-08:00

If my doctor told me I had only six minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I'd type a little faster. - Asimov

Well, I was wrong.

If you're wondering what I'm talking about, skip back 2 posts. FWIW.

I've been reading The Sacred Romance and MAN has it been hitting me where I am right now. A bit more directly to Sarah's point...

The battles God calls us to, the woundings and cripplings of soul and body we all receive, cannot simply be ascribed to our sin and foolishness, or even to the sin and foolishness of others. When Jesus and the disciples were on the road one day, they came upon a man who had been blind since birth. "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents?" they asked him. "Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life." And with that, Jesus spat on the ground, made some mud to place on the man's eyes, and healed him (John 9:1-7).

Many of us who are reading these words have not yet received God's healing. The display of God's works through our wounds, losses, and sufferings is yet to be revealed. And so, we groan and we wonder.

I was reading this on the plane the other day and had a stark realization - I wasn't born at the time of Jesus because theses truths would have been lost on me more than they were on Peter.

And so...I groan. And I wonder.

Unexplored Options

2007-01-22T07:11:00.000-08:00

Well, I’ve done it. I’ve become my own Lewis and Clark of resolve and exploration following the Sacajawea of eHarmony across a vast and hitherto undiscovered terrain of searching singles.

It was a pretty sudden switchover. I’ve been against online dating on principle for a very long time. I thought it wasn’t putting enough faith in God to bring someone along that I could meet for the first time face-to-face. I thought it was reckless and foolish (what? Meet a stranger for dinner? It’s worse than blind dating! What if he’s a predator?). I thought it was for losers who couldn’t hope to meet anyone unless they hid their faces behind a computer screen.

Until I turned into one of those losers. I was having a conversation with MP the other night and we were writing down strategies for meeting new people. Looking at the list, I realized I would have to make over my entire leisure time structure in order to do it. Because all of the things I most love to do don’t take me out of the house. What are my favorite hobbies? Reading, writing, cooking, knitting, watching TV on DVD, hanging out with my cat, and eating dinner with friends. I don’t tend to meet new people in my apartment; if I did, I would probably shoot them. I just don’t get out much, and that’s the kind of person I am – I like the comforts of home.

I do enjoy the occasional trip to a city, the occasional outing to a botanical garden or a beach, but when I do it’s never to meet people; I go to visit friends, or take friends along for company. I’m reticent and shy with strangers. I strongly prefer the known to the unknown.

Which severely limits my options. About the only workable strategy I have for meeting new people in South Bend is to go to the Notre Dame law library for bogus research projects for my boss in hopes of stumbling across an up-and-coming young lawyer. Other than that, I’m sunk. This isn’t an age when it’s easy to meet people. I’ve given up on finding someone in church. The people I meet at work are criminals or future divorces, and my boss and his wife don’t socialize much, and don’t know anyone my age. I am one of four staff members in the office, so there’s no hopes of meeting some interesting male coworker. I haven’t met any serious-relationship material through my friends in the grad school. My family is far away, so it’s hard for them to recommend anyone. And with there being a strong undercurrent of No Community in neighborhoods and cities – no barn dances or barbecues or socials – you don’t run into people much outside of church, work, friends and family.

Which leaves the online community. In an era without community matchmaking, where your friends and neighbors aren’t actively seeking to marry you off, these online dating systems provide the next-best thing – a supervised method for getting to know people who are looking for a serious relationship. You don’t really have to sweat a person’s intentions – they’re right there on the screen. You can survey their personality and interests, their goals and life pursuits in a rational manner, to see if this is someone you can picture being with. And it’s fairly safe.

So I went to eHarmony, which has the best recommendations, and filled out their survey to get my Personality Profile. It was dead-on, by the way. And what I liked about it were three things:

1. The only options were "I’m a man seeking a woman" or "I’m a woman seeking a man." I just really liked that – it means the site is marriage-minded (sorry, some of you).
2. It was founded by a Christian.
3. The survey didn’t focus as much on interests and hobbies as on personality and pursuits – who I am, what I want out of life, and what I want out of a partner. Because really, it doesn’t matter if (and is unlikely that) the man I marry likes exactly the same literature, music, and movies that I do. What matters is whether what we want out of life, and our characters, are compatible. Can we live together? That’s the real question, and this website matches people based on those lines.

I hung back from actually subscribing – that’s the dive into perilous water. Until this morning when I was notified that one of my matches had requested communication. As I only have two matches so far (I KNEW I was a tough one to match – I even clicked on four different states), I thought, well, here goes...and took the plunge.

So I’m now a member for a year, and have one more bill to pay, but the more time passes, the stronger I feel God’s call to family. Two years ago, when I was looking to leave the retail business, but had no idea where to go next, MP asked me, "What do you really want? Don’t think about it, just answer. What’s your ideal job?" And I said, "Not to have one." And now it’s become not just a wistful yearning for the future, but a purpose. Every other ambition and goal pales to that call. I’m supposed to be a wife and a mother. I’ve been praying about it for months. If I’m going to walk in obedience, I need to stop hanging around waiting for God to make it happen. It’s time for me to "strain toward what is ahead," not just hope for it. I have my part to do, too.

So, maybe you think I’m insane, or the years of singleness have turned my rational brain to pudding. But I’m tired of this. I’m tired of being alone. I want more.

This appears to be a reasonable option. At the very least, it’s a way to meet people who are similar to me, and it should yield some great stories.

(Okay, someone come out of the woodwork to support me.)

FWIW

2007-01-14T21:45:00.000-08:00

There is no lostness like that which comes to a man when a perfect and certain pattern has dissolved about him. - Steinbeck

I'm fresh off of what I can authoritatively speak to as the worst month of my life.

Some of it was the travel. I'm on a new project - consulting with Walgreen's outside of Chicago, so I'm there Monday morning through Thursday evening on your typical week. I flew out there and worked the week before Christmas, and then flew home to California from there. After Christmas with the folks I flew down to Dallas / Ft. Worth for the wonderful wedding of one of my best college friends, Kathleen - she was wedded on New Years Eve. After New Years it was back to Chicago for more work, and then home. All told, nearly a month not in my own home. As an aside: for so many years I resisted calling a place not in California my home, but that paradigm has certainly shifted at this point. You get to missing your own bed.

Some of it was the work situation - there's a lot of it, I'm in an area I don't have particular expertise in, we're behind schedule, and if all that were not enough, we have management that is jerking us around on the hotels we out-of-towners are staying in. At this point we've worked our way back into the relative luxury of a freakin Courtyard, relative to where we've been the last couple of weeks. There's a Westin just down the street that is delightful, that other people from my company on other projects are not restricted from staying in, but apparently that's just too good for me, for the extra few dollars a night. And I'm going to be out there for more than a few months.

Some of it was the quasi-relationship I have or have not had for the past few months as the case may be. Long story short I met a fabulous young lady that (from my point of view) works on paper just great, but I just don't get the feeling that the timing / etc. is going to work out. Its quite maddening - which if you know my history I'm sure you can begin to understand. She's been out of town for the month, so February should be interesting.

Certainly a huge part of it is the "is this all there is?" whisper I've been hearing from the dark corners of my heart lately. I've completely lost any passion for work, but what's worse I've lost most hope / positivity on other options - going back to school, finding some other line of life pursuit, etc.. And its not just work - I haven't had the desire to write, to read, even the one day of skiing I got in so far this year seemed an empty experience next to any other day I've ever spent on snow.

And then of course there was Christmas. Long story short I had a certain part of my reality turned on its ear - and certain things in my life will never be the same. It wasn't the best time for me to find out what I did, but in retrospect, it was the right time. That's really all I can say about it at this point, and probably ever.

Its just been really, really tough.

But thank God that's not why I'm posting this.

What I am simply amazed by as I type this out is the "strength for today" I've been granted in these darker times. I may not have the "bright hope for tomorrow" at this point, but at the very least, if I can look back upon days of strength granted, I can hope for at least that much in the future - I just need to keep telling myself that.

I have this strength because, in large part, God was preparing me for this time over the past year. At least one way that comes to mind is through my pastor's preaching. I've been listening to him for almost 5 years now, and while his underlying theme is usually one focused at communicating the gospel message to those in need of it, there are the recurring side-themes that I benefit from in different ways. This past year, one new thing I began hearing was that, for most of us, its not until your mid-twenties to mid-thirties that life starts really throwing you the big curve balls that begin to help you define your true character and hopefully find that its rooted in Christ. These curve balls come primarily due to the consequences of sin - whether they be damaged relationships, intimate betrayals, the loss of health in one's self or a loved one, or sin's temporary triumph of death - and the important thing to realize is that they are indeed coming.

That said, I just wanted to throw this out there for the times that you may be down. I feel there's two important applications of thrusting the pain of real suffering into your horizon. The first thing is - in the down times, think about where your down is: are you down, or are you really down? You may be the latter, but most times its just a concentration of the former - in which case you need to think about all the wonderful things that you are blessed with right now, rather than the one or two in particular you might not yet be.

And the second thing is that, yes, the big drops on the roller coaster of life are indeed around the corner, if you haven't yet already been in one. But there's hope in the fact that God only ever gives us enough grace for one day at a time: "Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own troubles."

But there's an even greater hope in the fact that our God is one who knows where we are when we do suffer. To paraphrase my pastor, the Cross may not tell us why suffering can happen, but it clearly shows us that it can *not* be because He does not love us. We have a God who walks with us when we are in the shadows.

I believe like a child that suffering will be healed and made up for, that all the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage, like the despicable fabrication of the impotent and infinitely small Euclidean mind of man, that in the world’s finale, at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, of the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, of all the blood that they’ve shed; and it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify what has happened. - Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Why I Will Never Have a Boyfriend

2006-12-27T05:33:00.000-08:00

Wrote this up on my personal blog just now and thought you guys would be amused. (I nearly posted it here instead.) So without further ado: Why I Will Never Have a Boyfriend.

I suppose I'm just ranting.

2006-12-27T02:38:00.000-08:00

In the last couple of months, I've browsed through two different Christian books on sex--one written recently, the other in the '70s, pre-Roe v. Wade. I could talk about a few different things, but what struck me most was that both books are obviously intended for high school- and college-aged audiences; both authors keep talking about "young people" and "youth." They make the assumption that anyone older is married. On the one hand, their assumption is generally correct--it seems like the majority of Christians get married right out of school--but on the other, they're almost entirely neglecting the population of Christians who are in their twenties and thirties and beyond who haven't married (and thus, presumably, are to still remain abstinent in an oversexualized society).

I suppose what each author wrote would remain essentially the same when dealing with an older audience, but it irks me that they both ignore singles for whom the terms "youth" and "young people" are not entirely appropriate.

let us pray!

2006-12-22T10:55:00.000-08:00

So, MP loaned me her book Getting Serious about Getting Married, by Debbie Maken, and I've been working my way through it, and loving it. Principally what I've gleaned from it is that it's really okay for me to express my dissatisfaction with my single state, because it's unnatural, particularly in the Christian tradition, and the church as a whole has let its young women down by telling us things like, "This is God's will. Just be content," instead of preaching marriage as God's will for all, with a few born exceptions (e.g. the Apostle Paul or Mother Theresa), and encouraging its youth to marry while they're still young.

So I've come away from it, chapter by chapter, being a little more vocal about what I want. I'm not buying the "contentment" doctrine anymore. Obviously I'm going to make the most of what I have, which is a pretty great life, and not sit around doing nothing but bemoaning the onrushing of my biological clock; but I'm also not going to settle for private misery by saying I don't want or need what I really want and need. It's taken a few people aback; in Protestant circles the Contentment Doctrine is so pervasive as to be assumed, and practically dogma. But my parents are now praying more specifically and more (I imagine!) effectively, and so am I. Instead of saying, "Well, God, if it's Your will, I'd like to get married someday," I'm saying, "Father, I know You've called me to a family. I would like one before I'm thirty. Please work it out SOON." And I know my parents are praying the same thing.

We're very concerned in the present-day church with submitting to God's will. Which is a good thing to do -- after all, He's sovereign, and as Isaiah 14:24 says, "As I have planned, so shall it be, and as I have purposed, so shall it stand." But we seem to forget all the times when people have wrestled with God in prayer. Abraham even bargained with God to save the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah! Moses CHANGED GOD'S MIND a time or two when God wanted to destroy the Israelites for their stubborn disobedience. And Christ's parable of the persistent widow, where a woman with no legal rights and no protector kept bothering a crabby judge who finally yielded to her demand for justice just to get rid of her, shows that, if human persistence can win against a generally cruel person, how much more will it work for us when we're being persistent in our requests to a God who infinitely loves us!

Now, we of course don't need to presume that we're Moses. But God wants to listen to us, and God will. We may get "no" for an answer (for which, time after time, when I think about the guys I prayed to be with, I'm incredibly thankful), but up till we hear that "no," we should keep praying, persistently, for what it is we want to see happen.

Most Christians seem afraid to pray for what they want. Take our single situation, with which most of us are unhappy, if only in our secret hearts. Then work it into a typical prayer. It probably runs something like this: "Dear Lord, if it's Your will, I think I'd like a husband someday. I mean, I like children, and I'm not always happy by myself. Not that it isn't good enough if that's what You want for me forever, but if You want to give me a husband and family before I hit, you know, menopause, I think I'd like that. If it's Your will."

In what way is that a powerful prayer? What are we afraid of? That it's not what we should ask, that it's outside the will of God? That God's will is automatically contrary to our desires, that always not getting what we want will somehow better our souls? That our wishes and hopes and dreams and desires aren't important to God? That we're not even sure we want what we're asking? That we're going to make the wrong choice? That we're going to offset the balance of God's will? That we're wrong?

It's a passive way to pray. But if we examine Scripture, we see that the people who made a difference with their prayers weren't passive about it at all. Take Hannah, the mother of Samuel. She was barren, miserable, and looked down upon. She prayed so hard for a child that she appeared to be drunk and crazy, and the priest was worried about her behavior and sanity. And God GAVE her a child. Samson prayed for enough strength to wreak vengeance on his enemies. He got it. David prayed actively and hard all through the Psalms. Jacob wrestled with God until God blessed him.

Paul tells us often in the Epistles to "pray without ceasing," to "boldly approach the throne of grace." He also tells the churches he is wrestling in prayer for them. I'll bet Paul's prayers didn't run along the lines of, "Oh, God, if it's Your will, please let the Philippian church grow, and please bless them, if you want to, Father, because they're great. But if that's not Your will, it's fine."

Even Jesus tells us, over and over, to "ask whatever you wish in My name, and it will be given to you." It's generally understood that "in My name" means "according to My will." Some things are obviously in the will of God -- like the growth of the believers in the Philippian church. Or that a person will grow closer to God, or remain faithful to his wife and children.

Other times, we clearly don't KNOW what the will of God is, and this is where we hedge in our prayers. I wonder if we take this from the prayer of Christ at Gethsemane, where He prays, "Father, if it be your will, take this cup from me. But not my will, but yours be done."

This is an extreme example, and a strikingly singular example of prayer in the Bible. Christ was about to undertake the most difficult thing ever done in the history of creation -- to bear every sin of every person, [past,] present and future, and to suffer horribly and die doing it. But see, even then He wasn't afraid to ask for what He wanted -- not to have to do it. He simply expressed further that He wanted to do what was in accordance with the Father's will, which maintained His perfect obedience to God, and which He knew already.

We, who lack Christ's divine understanding of God, are allowed to pray boldly. If what we're asking is not in God's will, it won't happen, and that's when we actively work to submit. For example, if you think you want to be with a certain guy, and you're praying that it happens, and praying boldly, and he marries someone else, well, that's probably a "no." Because if you continue to pray to wind up with him, you're praying for his infidelity or divorce, or his wife's death -- none of which are Christian things to ask of God. So, okay, wrong call. Now you get to take stock of your situation, and try again. But at least it can never be said that you didn't ask.

I was discussing this with one of my friends recently, and she said that she was afraid to pray boldly for a specific guy because she was afraid she'd make the wrong choice -- that if her prayers were answered as she wished, he'd turn out to be the wrong guy. And this is where family and godly friends come in, to affirm or negate our choice. Because some guys that we really, really like aren't good for us. So listening to the counsel of Christians who know and love us well, in addition to praying hard and persistently for what you want, will help balance the equation. I prayed for a long time to wind up with the Millstone. But toward the end, even when I still wanted to be with him, I knew I couldn't even if he ever did decide he wanted me, because my friends and family all hated him. It was a moment when I had to subjugate my will to other people's, and take it that those other people's will was similar to God's will, because they were good and godly people, and had my best interest at heart. But I still asked. And learned to be glad when the answer became, obviously, "no."

"But the Lord's Prayer," a person might say. "It prays, 'Thy will be done'!" Yes. It prays, "Thy will be done ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN." Where there is no sin, or death, or sorrow. Naturally we always need to be open to the will of God, and always need to be willing to submit to His will. But we still should ask.

Ladies and gents, we live in a confusing world of many nebulous choices, where right and wrong aren't as clear. Behind all of it is a war that we can't see, but in which we play a huge part. Christ's redemption raised us from spiritual death and clothed us in the armor of God, so that we can take part in that war against an invisible army, to free the hostages among whose ranks we used to lie. If we're not praying hard and clearly, with focus, confidence, persistence, boldness, and strength, we're just standing on the battlefield staring at our swords wondering if it's God's will that we use them.

You might think that praying for a spouse (if you want one, and I think that, at least eventually, most of us do) is an unimportant part of that battle. But that's not the case. Godly families are crucial, particularly in our current society, so that we can raise a new generation of godly men and women to carry on the working out of God's will in the world -- a will to draw all people to Him, through love and social justice based on the willing sacrifice of the Incarnation whose birth we celebrate on Monday. Marriage for the majority of humanity, to be fruitful and multiply and raise children in godliness, is certainly part of God's will -- because "a cord of three strands is not quickly broken." Praying for your spouse might be one of the most important prayers you can forge in situations like ours.

So if we have a specific timeline in mind (because our fertile years do have an expiration date, and even before that we start to run some health risks and tire more easily), or if we see someone we're drawn to, and think he or she might be a good candidate for the passion, love, affection, companionship, and growth in faith that will shape our lives and a small (but important!) part of the future, we should feel free to pray in the specific.

After all, if we're wrong, we'll know.

It's God's will that we pray! (Read any Gospel or any Epistle.) God's will be done!

When In Doubt, Dance

2006-12-22T09:07:00.000-08:00

When things on the social front start to look bleak, go dancing. Put on the dancing shoes, a flouncy skirt, and a smile and head out to a big barn, a mirrored rehearsal room, or a hoppin' swing club.
Stop obsessing about the guys in your life: the pseudo-boyfriend who takes you for granted, the cool guy who doesn't have a clue you exist (grrr.) and the skeez who keeps following you around. Ditch them, if only for one night. Banish them from your thoughts, and meet a few dozen new people.
Now, I hate to glorify "the single life," as much as many of you. But I will glorify living a full, fun life. Get out there and have some fun, people! Go to a Christmas party and wear dorky earrings or Rudolph socks. Learn a new skill like kayaking or enbroidery or boxing.
I watched a little eleven year old boy expertly guide his partner (she may have been his sister) around the room in a waltz. He had confidence and a big smile on his face. So, come on older people, men and women alike. Get out there, learn some new steps, and get some confidence. I suspect it may spill over into the rest of your life...

Beta Upgrade

2006-12-19T13:41:00.000-08:00

Okay ladies and gentlemen. The time has come... to upgrade to some sort of blogger merger with Google. So in case you're wondering why you are no longer on the contributor list, that's why. Just go to the blogger page and there should be an offer to try the new Beta version. Then you'll be good to go again. =)

Family or Career? Love or Life?

2006-12-18T00:53:00.000-08:00

I'm currently visiting my cousin in Virginia. She lives in the suburbs with her husband and son. She owns a beautiful home, drives a luxury sedan, and seems happy. I remember when she got married at the tender age of twenty-one. I thought that she was making a big mistake, and that she needed to graduate and experience life before making such a huge commitment. Nonetheless, fast forward seven years later she’s happily married and I try to visit her at least once a year.

Since arriving on Saturday afternoon (it's now Monday at 3 am), we have visited Walmart twice and Target once, went grocery shopping, went Christmas shopping, and watched a lot of movies (courtesy of blockbuster). The one reoccurring theme is quality time. They (my cousin and her husband) do everything together. They grocery shop together, picked me up from the airport together, run their errands together, cook together, take care of their son together, etc. They refer to each other exclusively as honey (or mommy and daddy when addressing their son). Her husband opens her doors for her and carries all the heavy things. They even have a little game they unwittingly play, which I've secretly dubbed Prince Charming and the Damsel in Distress. She pretends to be hopelessly helpless and he in return always comes to her rescue. This entails retrieving hard to reach objects and fallen objects amongst other tasks. He’s the Nick to her Jessica. Nonetheless, she seems happy.

I mean there have been hard times. Since they got married so young they've had to mature over the years. They had their share of ruthless arguments, but have honed their communication skills and stayed committed to their family. They've had their share of financial woes, but nothing a little financial ethics didn't solve (i.e. working hard, spending less, and saving more). He travels a lot for work, but when he is home he is completely involved with his family, and even when he’s physically absent he is still emotionally present. Still, their lives do seem a little boring: no chic social gatherings, intellectually charged conversations with their peers, and hot sexy flings; however, they do seem content, something I can’t say I’ve felt in a long time. So I ask myself, did my cousin make a mistake by marrying young and deferring her education and life experiences or did I make a mistake by forgoing marriage and kids for my graduate education and the life experiences of a young, single woman?

I’ve had a good life and done things my cousin wasn't able to do because of her responsibilities. I’ve done the excitingly superficial things, i.e. traveled extensively (domestically and internationally), lived in several major metropolitan cities, mingled with celebrities, went skiing in the Poconos, jetted away to island getaways with friends, etc. I’ve also received an amazing education that has positively impacted many aspects of my life. Overall, I have no complaints. However, on lonely nights with no prince charming in sight I wonder would I have forgone it all for true love at twenty-one.

After all, my cousin life isn’t bad at all. She’s not as highly educated nor does she share my life experiences, but she does own a gorgeous home and car, is financially secure (i.e. she pays for my annual visits to see her), she goes on a weeklong vacations once a year with her husband, only works part-time (if at all), and is unconditionally loved and cared for by her husband. Me on the other hand, I have a lot of college loans and with graduation still a semester away I can’t even start to consider a home or new car loan. And although I’d love to do Cancun for Spring Break, with the bar and related study courses I just don’t have the money to spare. And when I do graduate chances are I'll be working 40 plus hours a week and all the men in my age group without commitment phobias will already be spoken for.

I don’t regret my choices in life, I’m just considering, was it necessarily the better choices?

Where Is The Love?

2006-12-15T00:07:00.000-08:00

Okay, this is a classic case of double posting. Just a warning...

We can choose a hometown to spend our lives in. We find out what our gifts are and decide what field to go into, spend four years at college (and grad school), want a long-term job with security, and pick a 401 K plan that, chances are, we’ll never look at ever again until age 65. We like and crave stability, people who love us, and law and order. Not the show, but societal peace and order. Even if a group of students are given the option to choose their own seats in a classroom instead of having them assigned, they will inevitably sit in the same ones day after day. So in all seriousness, why can’t we commit in relationships? Forget marriage or even engagement – heck, we can’t even make it to a third date in the year 2006. So-and-so just doesn’t seem to ‘get’ you. Greg isn’t ambitious enough. Steve’s teeth are too crooked. You’re too ‘into your career.’ You/they just aren’t ‘ready’ to date someone, and want to keep things super casual. It’s too weird to be with Dan, because it would mess up the friendship. I just don’t get it. People can’t stick with their significant others at the slightest tremor, yet we won’t change bank accounts even with a painful $30 a month service charge. It scares me how little knowledge and experience I have with commitment. It’s not that I don’t want that, but it appears so few others do. Back in the day, I didn’t think I wanted to get married or have children. Even after college, I equated marriage to a loss of freedom and dreams. How could I pursue my profession if I had to sacrifice for my husband’s career? Would I be doomed to watch Oprah while folding laundry? Even at homecoming last October, a bunch of girls and I sat around a table eating cookies and chatting about our futures. We all agreed we didn’t want to become boring housewives.But now? I believe marriage helps us become better people, grow in wisdom, and reach our goals better than we could on our own. And as for the trapped argument? I feel trapped and lonely as a single woman. I’d do anything to have someone here with me who I’m completely comfortable with, can open up to and trust, and who loves and supports me. I am not an island. As much as I try to be, it doesn’t work. Time and time again, I’ll fail. We singles waste so much time thinking about the opposite sex, if they noticed us, if they’ll call, what ‘phase’ the relationship is in. Wouldn’t it be nice to be rid of all that? An amazing book I’ve been reading is ‘Why Can’t I Fall In Love’ by Shmuley Boteach, my personal hero. Honestly, it’s changed my outlook in love and marriage. In the past few years, my fear of falling in love and risking heart break has waned. In fact, I’d say I’ve garnered a lot more confidence and hope. Boteach lays out how God created man and woman to come together as one. And when God said that, he didn’t mean for a one night hook-up. He meant... well, for life.

Falling in love actually frees you on many levels. It enlarges rather than diminishes you, because the most important freedom in life is the freedom to maximize your human potential, to take whatever gift you have on the inside and make something of it on the outside. When we are deprived of this freedom, we live in pain and disillusionment. When we have no one to draw us out, the pain we experience is terrible. Love enables us to bring out that interior gift. - Shmuley Boteach

Over the last week or two, I’ve been catching up with some old friends – all guys. Let me preface this by saying that I was the ultimate gal pal in college. As a freshman I knew about 90% of all the guys in my class and a good number of the girls. No, I was far from a flirt. In actuality, I’m one of the most platonic people on the planet. Although I’m no sports buff, I spend most of my time with friends of the male persuasion. Never dated any of them. Got to know them well, and cherish those days greatly. On Thanksgiving, I had a few glasses of wine over the phone with my friend M. He was working on Bourbon in another state. Back in the day we played poker, watched Joe Millionaire, and I was the official photographer/videographer on his birthday. He recently moved to Florida from Pennsylvania to accept a job and live on the beach. Unfortunately, he also moved away from his wonderful girlfriend. We discussed his relationship at great length and he expressed just how much he misses her and wants to be together in the same city. He felt that in retrospect, he shouldn’t have taken the job in Florida and is now looking for a new direction in Pennsylvania. Last night, I spoke to another friend who’s become quite a fixture in my life. C. is a really wonderful person. Kind, intelligent, funny, self-deprecating, loyal and trustworthy. He’s been through a difficult time with the lady in his life as well. He told me wholeheartedly that he’s in love with her, wants to spend the rest of his life with her starting right now, and just needs to know if she wants the same thing. He’s been wondering the same thing for about a year. Regardless of what happens between them, he genuinely wants her to be happy, even if it isn’t with him. These two men are in love. They’re not afraid of jumping in headfirst and experiencing all that life has for them in that area. M. and C. are bold, wise, and rare. A woman should consider herself extremely blessed to find herself in a romantic situation with anyone like the friends I just mentioned. Every week, I’ve been mentally recapping interesting new things I’ve learned. Through my friends, I’ve learned that there is hope. Not everyone is afraid of commitment. I want to be one of those people. So my question to you is why? Why are you afraid? What stops you from giving love a chance? Why can’t you fall in love?