It's Not Just Me...

Everyone seems to be talking about relationships, masculinity, and femininity right now. Ok, granted...it may have to do with the blogs I read, but between Chrissie, The Boundless Webzine, and CBMW, I've gotten quite an earful. Then, I asked around for more--polling some guys at my church in Texas and starting up a conversation with the Mormon guy at my work. I even spent a good hour this morning talking to my roommate's cousin about what things look like up in Minnesota.

Call it Spring Fever...I think we just want to know that we aren't alone in dealing with the issues that inevitably come up when Christians try too hard to be perfect--especially when it comes to dating relationships.

My fear of commitment (yes, I realize this perpetuates the problem) prevents me from claiming this as a series of posts, but I plan to do a little reporting on the things I'm hearing around town.

First, a notable piece from Boundless about Being Proactive:

"For today's women, sometimes being proactive means pulling away from relationships that aren't going anywhere. If the guy you've been hanging out with hasn't "made a move" then it might be necessary to end whatever sort of pseudo relationship you're involved in. The guy is either 1) not interested or 2) too comfortable with the way things are to define things. Either way, you're going nowhere. Although it may be painful and a difficult transition, sometimes the most healthy thing to do is to let it go."

The writer also gives a nice shout-out to communication (who knew that would help us all out?) and encourages men to pull a Nike and "just do it" (ie: ask girls out). There's also a good follow up that reminds us all to chill out when it comes to the expectations.

But when talking about relationships, it seems that very few of us have "chilled out"--there's a lot of pessimism and old scars, compounded by individualistic world-views, that have turned this into a heated and heightened topic of debate. The simple answer, I suppose, is to "Let Go and Let God." ...which I think is one of those creepy Christian mantras that means we should not worry so much about things, focus on God, and remember that He has everything under control.

But, humanly, I still want to know what's up. Hence, I've started "researching" amongst some Christians I know outside of the LA bubble. Due to conflicts of interest, I've avoided breaching the topic with my guy friends at Shoreline (and because I don't want to get cast out, labeled as a freak, etc, etc.) I needed to expand my horizons anyways. Life's been a little stagnant lately and I figured I'd conversationally shake things up. I've been bored.

So I started emailing back and forth with this guy from home (the Texas version). He's admittedly NOT single by choice and one of those gems who still thinks marriage is a good idea. While he had a lot of great things to say about his outlook with women, the one part that particularly stuck out was his response to my questions about The Friend Zone:

"Bottom line the friendship is going to change. The two of you will marry someone in the future. If you marry someone else, your friendship is not going to be the same; if you marry each other, your friendship is really not going to be the same. So the excuse 'I don't want to mess up the friendship' is a load of crap because it will change from the way it was. This argument gets stronger the older you get."

I've discussed these lingering friendships with a few others. Chrissie posed the question, "If He is a Christian and She is a Christian, and He doesn't 'like her, like her' and she 'isn't interested in him in that way' what's the harm in hanging out? Is there actually a danger there? ...Would you want to punch me in the face if I told you that I thought that there was?"

I told her, yes, I would punch her in the face.

What I meant to say was that I'm selfish and if I'm not going to date someone right now, then I want several men in my life to fill that void in various ways...guys I can do things for, guys I can talk to about what's going on in my life, guys I enjoy hanging out with (but of course not guys for the physical stuff--give me a little credit--I'm trying to be a "good Christian girl" here). But then, the moment I start explaining all of this, I can't help but remember how I bashed a couple of my friends recently who said they were single for the same reason that I can't give up my guy friends: selfishness. I just want to focus on me right now.

Again, another hopelessly simple solution: we should just all stop being selfish. It's something we can all strive towards and is a tangible way of being proactive when it comes to preparing ourselves for marriage. That, and the prayer thing, which we so often tack onto the end of our solutions manual, even though we know that it really should be the first and foremost method of response. And, really, if God is as good as I always say He is, then there's no need for me to stress over the specifics.

At the end of it all, I like what Alethea's cousin Jess said to me this morning: "God is God...and Christians are just retarded."