Friday Night Date Place – Stronger Together

“We are all, in a sense, experts on secrecy. From earliest childhood we feel its mystery and attraction. We know both the power it confers and the burden it imposes. We learn how it can delight, give breathing space and protect.” –Sissela Bok

People don’t do friendships well. We don’t lend ourselves well to making friends (or have no idea of what making/being a friend is) and thus call people who should be acquaintances “friends” or BFFs, though they are as disposable as an unfriending on MySpace.

Part of the problem is out inability to handle intimacy well. When we ask ourselves why do we insist on continuing to date after so many heart wrenching, near life-destroying, pain-inducing, love experiences (and then remain hopeful that the next dating experience will be different)? our answer boils down to one word: intimacy.

We know that intimacy can be abused, but some people start off with a fear of intimacy. The idea of becoming close to another human being causes us to (mentally or emotionally, if not physically) flinch. T o run away. To not give people a chance. To let someone in, to care about them and let them care about you can only lead to two things: 1) the laying down of roots as you invest in a relationship and 2) the possibility of future loss, because at best all relationships are til death do we part.

This lack of intimacy can sometimes be the result of self-fulfilling prophecy. Because of your experiences in the past, you’ve become reluctant to meet/let new people in. Not entirely unreasonably, your instinct tells you that they will be like the rest: they will get to know the real you, not like you, judge you, or otherwise abandon you and rather than wait for them to do so, you push and push and push new people until they finally have had enough and move on; then you pat yourself on your back for being right in not trusting them. In effect, you reject them before they can reject you and thus intimacy never occurs.

Some people can go through life as lone rangers, rootless in their life and relationships. However, I basically think that this points to the lie, or at least to the end, of American-styled individualism. That whole “I am an island”, “I don’t need anyone”, “you can only depend on yourself” ethos that eventually runs its course. Just like systematic theology can’t answer some ultimate/basic questions about faith, and when we come to the end of its usefulness and move on; in life, experience often teaches us that there are limits to what our own bootstraps can carry us through.

Yes, in the end, people will fail you. Despite our best intentions, sometimes even for the noblest of reasons, folks will let you down. That’s no reason to never let them in. Life is full of regrets. You, too, will fail others, but I’m sure that failure doesn’t define you, nor your relationships, and you’d like the chance to be forgiven and try again.


***
If you want to make sure that I see your comment or just want to stop by and say “hi”, feel free to stop by my message board. We always welcome new voices to the conversation.

Friday Night Date Place – Memo to the Nice Guys

Thinking back to my single and lonely days, I distinctly (painfully!) remember how often I was trapped in the friend zone. You know what I’m talking about: wanting to date, not quite knowing how to get with a person you’re interested in, end up sidling alongside them, becoming their friend and then confidante, even best friend, but they never quite see you as anything other than a dear friend.

I was always that guy. The best friend guy. Always had a bevy of girls around because they needed to bounce their ideas off of someone (and this was before the gay best friend thing became fashionable). But I was the safe guy, the one they could talk to, the one whose shoulder was always there for them to cry on. On one level, it was nice to have the attention and to be able to hang out with so many women. I learned how to be comfortable around this strange species of humanity, how to listen to them, what things they were concerned about. On another level, it was rather emasculating. Think about it: you weren’t seen as a “guy” as much as this sexless/genderless friend. Gender neutral.

You were a nice guy (or gal pal).

You were the one who watched the object of your affection go off and date, get into relationship after relationship, making bad choice after bad choice, waiting for them to FINALLY learn their lesson and appreciate what was beside them all along. How did that work out for you?

Like a fine piece of writing, I was never appreciated in my time. This may have been a function of where I was in life. High school/college-age. Ready to settle down (then … I out grew that a few years later once I recognized the pluses of singleness). I hadn’t come into my own. The girls/women I was interested in weren’t interested in settling down or lifelong commitments. They wanted to date and have fun. They weren’t looking for husband material.

So, memo to the nice guys: your time will come. Eventually your peer group/dating pool will come to appreciate you for what you are. You just need to be prepared when you are. Don’t be living in your mother’s basement or shacked up with an ex-girlfriend. Don't let your lifetime of "woe is me" attitude define who you are. Don't become self-defeated by your perceived ineffectiveness at dating (or unattractiveness to the other sex). Have a job and be prepared to be, if not a provider, then at least an equal partner in the relationship. Nice guys (or gals) don’t have to finish last, only be in a place where they can be appreciated for who they are when the time is right.


***
If you want to make sure that I see your comment or just want to stop by and say “hi”, feel free to stop by my message board. We always welcome new voices to the conversation.

Friday Night Date Place - On Jealousy

Jealous thoughts cause trouble
Yapping all the time
You know they're listening for rumours
So that they can drop a dime
--Jealousy, Club Nouveau*

I’m not a jealous person by nature.

It’s not that I don’t value my relationships or don’t get worked up about them, but I’m just not all that jealous a person. I’d like to believe it’s because I’m pretty secure in my relationships. More likely, it’s because I’ve seen the dark side of jealousy a few times too many. It’s a surprisingly short jump to go from following our significant other to their home and through their routine to buying a weapon, strapping on a diaper, and driving cross country to straighten someone out.

We recently had a discussion about jealousy at one of our gatherings. Though jealousy has been called “the dark side of love”, it has at its root zeal and envy that revolves around a sense of passion. Like with many things, it can be good and it can be twisted into something bad. The good side of jealousy is simply a protective reaction in a perceived threat to a valued relationship. It guards against trespassers into the relationship.

When it goes bad, it’s an unchecked passion, love twisted into an unhealthy obsession and irrational possessiveness. Jealous becomes a weapon to guilt, scare, or trap a partner in a relationship. (It’s funny how our jealousy seems perfectly reasonable, but our Significant Other’s jealousy is some kind of character defect.)

God describes Himself as a jealous God (Exodus 34:14), so obviously this can’t be a bad thing, right? We need to remember that we were created in God’s image and while we are quick to anthropomorphize God, He doesn’t have our qualities perfectly, we have divine qualities imperfectly.

So yes, there are times when we are to be jealous in our relationships. We don’t want to run so far away from anything approaching jealous that we develop a pathological tolerance, an emotional disinterest, or the absence of jealousy where we’d expect to see it. We want to guard those relationships that matter to us … just check yourself before you find yourself knee deep in bushes in order to check your man (because, if it gets to that point, you probably have all the answers to any questions you have anyway).


*Probably the most depressing thing about this blog was the fact that I found the lyrics to this song on a site called “Golden Oldies”. Oy.


***
If you want to make sure that I see your comment or just want to stop by and say “hi”, feel free to stop by my message board. We always welcome new voices to the conversation.

Friday Night Date Place – Sport Dating

I overheard a lady in our church once ask a hapless single caught in her headlights "if you're not going to get married why bother dating?" I know where this is coming from, one of the questions that I get quite often is, believe it or not, is when will I know that I'm ready to date? The answer to that question almost has to begin with the answer to a different question: are you ready to get married?

I know, it sounds like I'm going to advocate the "date to mate" school of thought when it comes to dating. I do and I don’t. I fully believe that dating relationships ought to have at least an eye on the potential of that partner as a mate (and as the relationship continues, more than an eye). I also know full well that people can recreationally date. That’s part of what singles groups (and part of what often makes them go bad) are all about.

Sheesh, do you need someone to give you permission to just go out, have fun, killing time with someone of the opposite sex? Go. Do. Keep in mind, however, that, especially as people get older, they don't have time to waste with the dating game and it becomes unfair to raise someone's emotional expectations. So I will leave the sport dating to the teens and twenty-something crowd, with the caveat that even they, should they find the relationship going on for awhile, should have a distant eye on the idea of "is this someone I would be willing to commit to and spend the rest of my life with?"

Many of us like to plan, have a direction for everything. It’s our inner control freak nature. Going with that mentality, it’s good to have to have a goal, knowing its accompanying motives and attitudes, and openly communicate as you go along. The goal could be relatively simple like nothing more than just killing time with someone. This can be as simple as two (strictly) friends hanging out. Of course, this is rife with the danger of the unspoken interest. Even if you both start from a platonic place, there is always the possibility of something kindling for at least one of you.

Some folks date to have fun. Let me call this what this is: friends with benefits. Your snuggle buddy. Your strictly casual, no strings attached, kiss without commitment partner. Um, ditto on the dangers of kindling.

Sport dating may go against a goal-oriented mindset because it goes against our nature to just enjoy a moment. A person’s company. Have a spot of fun. Without direction or moving toward a specific destination. As long as both parties are on the same page about it and keep in constant communication about it, the situation should be fine. I’d caution you to be fair to the person you are going out with, and figure out what you want to do before you start and let them know. You'd be surprised how much less complicated life gets with effective communication.


***
If you want to make sure that I see your comment or just want to stop by and say “hi”, feel free to stop by my message board. We always welcome new voices to the conversation.

Friday Night Date Place - Long Distance Relationships

Long distance relationship present their own brand of issues. I've been in a few (and they were exceptionally short-lived, even by my standards). However, I've had a few friends who have met online, though living in different countries, and have not only made a go of things, but even got married. To my mind, a long distance relationship amounts to one thing: missing that person (aka long distance sucks). So, to provide the voice of eloquence, I turned to a friend of mine to give me his perspective.

A guest blog by "redwinegums"

Long Distance Relationships.

They suck.

Plain and simple. Essentially they do. There's the additional stress and strain of distance in addition to the normal downs in a relationship with very few of the ups. The hazards are plentiful and range from insignificant to major. They can work but there a few things that I feel make the difference. I'm not one to talk really. I've had two long distance interests. Neither worked out if works out means leading to a happy marriage. One ended well. One took a while to do so. The experience in my circle is of long distance relationships. In fact my expectation is for a long distance relationship. I'm not even sure I'd know what to do if I got a girlfriend who lived like in the same city as me. I'd be clueless as a result of shock for the first week or so. She'd find a way to snap me out of it I'm sure.

I don't think long distance relationships are doomed to failure. In fact if you look back on the amount of conventional relationships that fail it's not any big competition. A person might have half a dozen relationships in their life that don't work out. This doesn't mean that conventional relationships are cursed. With any type of relationship it takes work for it to come together. With long distance relationships it just takes a lot more work.

Anyway here are a few thoughts that represent my current views on the whole area. It's just my opinion. Not a set of rules upon which your relationship must abide by in order to succeed. I'm no expert but when talking about life I'm not sure being an expert means all that much anyway.

The necessity of real time together before the break

I'm sorry to say that I don't think starting the long distance thing from scratch seems to work. Not in my experience. The long distance relationships that have worked are those where the people involved spent a period of 6 - 12 months actually living their lives physically in the same location. The distance element happened but was never a permanent feature of the relationship. It was always a hurdle to be overcome; merely a phase that both had to endure. It's very hard for a relationship to work when both people are on two very separate long travelled roads winding further away from each other

Know where life is leading

I think you need to be answer a few questions in an honest and truthful manner. Are we in similar stages in life? Can I move? Can they move? Will either of us actually move when it comes down to it? How does this affect those around me? Does leaving my support circle and starting a new life scare me? It should. If it doesn't you're fooling yourself. This ties into the previous point about distance being a phase and not a permanent state of affairs. If he's planning to live with pygmies in Africa and you are going to become an investment banker in London it's unlikely to work out.

Everything other than real contact is only almost

We're spoiled in this part of the early 21st century. With Skype, email, IM clients and text messaging there are so many ways to keep in touch with loved ones. It's great but it's not real. It's a mini date in a way every time. It's an artificial situation that can seem natural because it happens so often, but it's that regularity that can be so addictive. It can also become soul shattering because when you flick off that computer screen there hasn't even been a simple little embrace to say goodbye. There's just been the same old feeling of I wish you were here and now I have to face my life without you in it again.

You get their version of their life. Not the real version

"How was your day?"

Such an easy question but so difficult to answer. In fact most people never do. They gloss over it. The fine, fine, fine refrain a mother gets when she asks her children about their day is one that is heard in stereo in every town and city. Even if the other tells you they've had a bad day you don't see how it affects them. She might comfort eat or be bitchy to her house mates in a way she isn't to you. He might completely over react when a small little thing goes wrong on the computer and bang the table and start cursing. You don't see it unless they tell you. You don't seem them being mean to that barista or that waiter. Distance isn't normal even though it can feel like it when you're in the midst of it. What happens is you get used to living a life without someone it. It can be a tough change to handle when what you've wished for all this time actually happens.

Personal Caveat

I'm not sure how much of my experience is of use to anyone. I approach a romantic relationship in the conventional sense with marriage as a very realistic consideration. There's been no sex and thus far not much kissing either in my life. I've never been on a date. Probably why I'm irrationally so good at crafting one for public consumption. In a very real way I've never properly had a girlfriend. The last interest was a total of four days physically in the same location in a total of five months. And two of those days were the days when we first met without anything in the picture. It's easier if you have money and the ability to travel. With me it's never been a case of hopping on a plane and visiting. In actual fact it's normally been a minimum of two planes to even get to the other. It's something to be acutely aware of. How far away does he or she live?

My brother is currently in a long distance relationship with an altogether wonderful woman. She is studying in the USA and he is studying here. Right now she is doing an internship in Australia. When he leaves Australia, having worked the entire summer to pay for traveling 20,000 miles to see her for a mere 15 days, it will bring the amount of time they have physically spent in the same location to a total of two months in two years.

In summary, they suck. More than you know. You might think you're ready and able to handle it but you're not. You don't know how bad it will be until you are lying down wishing he was there and realizing that in a very real sense you are still alone. I've had two. Neither worked. Been honest I'm not sure I could handle another long distance relationship. Knowing someone would cuddle or kiss me but can't due to distance is soul destroying in a situation like that.

I've traveled the world for love before and would do so again. Sometimes you don't care about the odds you just know you have to take that chance. But you can't be sure until you see the other and decide whether the risk is worth taking


***
If you want to make sure that I see your comment or just want to stop by and say “hi”, feel free to stop by my message board. We always welcome new voices to the conversation.

Friday Night Date Place – Embracing the Truth

Continuing our conversation from last week, I know it’s not easy to free ourselves from a lifetime of false lessons and beliefs about ourselves. It’s easy to get trapped in a mire of “woe is me,” a self-fulfilling and self-perpetuation spiral of self-hate. I don’t live under any illusion that we can just flick a switch and change.

But you don’t have to be who you are.

The overwhelming majority of folks I talk to know exactly when they are doing this emo dance of self-delusion and pity and simply can’t get out of their own way to stop it. It’s their default setting, a comfortable response to help them cope with the reactions they’ve come to expect from people. It’s the flip side of the chip on the shoulder posturing.

So I can’t say just stop it. I will, however, start by saying … stop it.

You are a precious creation of God. Precious. Accept yourself. No, better stated, accept the truth of yourself. Recognize that you, too, are an eikon, an image-bearer of God; worthy of respect, value, and love. We participate in the Divine Being, meant to partake in the Divine Life and Happiness*. We were created in love, for love, and are to open ourselves to the possibility of love. Embrace that love.

Draw on the love already in your life. I have several people in my life who are “sick” of how I see them. Because they don’t see themselves the way I see them. People of value, who deserve to be esteemed and appreciated. Whom I’m thankful God brought into my life and have made my life all the richer for knowing them. You know what makes them most uncomfortable? The idea that they don’t know if they can live up to how I see them … because they had had it so drummed into their heads that they weren’t beautiful or were somehow unworthy of being loved.

I’m ready to cut someone again.

Sometimes the only way we can really see ourselves is when we are reflected back in the eyes of someone who truly loves us. It gives us courage, strength, and a sense of worth we may never have known that we had. Find it in God, find it in the overflow of His love in your friends and family, and let that love begin to transform your thoughts.

Embracing the love and finding freedom and empowerment in it to love and be loved is a good second step. The next is to demand it. You DO deserve better. It’s okay to have high standards for yourself, to try to live up to them, and in so doing, help others to have higher standards. It’s okay to demand to be treated better.

In the end, part of the transformation is a matter of faith. You see, it takes a lot of faith in yourself to make such a step and make such a transformation. Confidence is little more than faith in yourself and that’s hard to teach. But embracing your value, that much of a step I think we can handle. As a start.

Because you deserve better.

*Special thanks to M. Basil Pennington’s True Self/False Self


***
If you want to make sure that I see your comment or just want to stop by and say “hi”, feel free to stop by my message board. We always welcome new voices to the conversation.

Friday Night Date Place – Believing the Lie

After my "dating teh crazy" blog (which mind you, wasn't meant to be the most serious of posts), I was troubled by a recurring theme among some of the comments. It was as if they were battling against some sort of image forged in high school or something which they have carried with them well into adulthood. An image of themselves that tells them that they aren't worthy of "doing any better."

We are the fruit of a lifetime of listening to voices. Such formative listening too often results in us listening to lies, many of which we tell ourselves or allow ourselves to believe. We’re told we’re crap by enough people that we start to wonder and doubt; then we become quick to leap onto any bad appraisal of ourselves and end up in a self-defeating loop. That’s why it is so important to choose carefully the voices you choose to speak into your life.

This false idea of ourselves begins in small ways. You may have well-intentioned parents or teachers who trade on their love, attention, and/or favor to get you be behave a certain way. You may have grown up among peers/friends who constantly judge one another on who’s the funniest, has the most stuff, the prettiest, the most athletic. The take home lesson absorbed through all of this: you only have worth if you behave a certain way. What you are amounts to what you have, what you do, and what others think of you.

Too many of us have had life beat us down and feed our insecurities like a bulimic at a buffet to the point where we don’t think much of ourselves. We believe the lies these “lessons” have reinforced. We live in a closed off place, afraid to let others into your life because you secretly believe they might find out that we are what we believe ourselves to be: ugly, unloveable, unappealing, and unworthy of attention. suddenly we not only can’t see why someone else would like us or see anything of worth in us, but also think we better take whatever comes our way and be grateful (even if it means dating teh crazy).

You deserve better. Stop believing those lies. Self-destructive and self-hatred are not cute. There’s no need for you to keep putting yourself in “relationships” or situations not worthy of you. You deserve better. You have the right to be picky. You have to put to death this lie you’ve created of yourself. You deserve better.

Show me who’s been filling your head with those lies. Don’t make me have to cut somebody.

You deserve better. You are loved and worthy to be loved.

Next week I’ll talk about what it means or might look like to accept the truth about ourselves.

Because you deserve better.


***
If you want to make sure that I see your comment or just want to stop by and say “hi”, feel free to stop by my message board. We always welcome new voices to the conversation.

Friday Night Date Place – Friend Custody Battles

I’ve mentioned before that we have a family way in our house. Well, I’ve noticed an awfully disturbing pattern among some of the pictures along the wall: some of them are covered. You see, we tend to have portraits of our friends’ families up spouse and children, but some of our friends have gotten divorced. So for the sake of the friend who still comes over to our house regularly, we cover up the picture of their spouse (which serves two functions: 1) it’s analogous to sitting shiva on the marriage as we mourn that relationship; 2) my wife wants a reminder for folks to send us updated pictures of them).

It’s tough because part of what the family wall represents is a running document of the people we allow to speak into our lives. Our children know our friends by sight and name, even ones we don’t get a chance to see as often as circumstance has caused them to drift out of the regular rhythm of our day-to-day lives. It’s also tough because for years we considered our friends and their spouse family. And it’s not like we’ve stopped being family.

All of this reminded me of question I received not too long ago: who gets the friends when you break up? It was asked by a friend who assured me that she wasn’t considering her options in case they broke up, but rather because as the friend of a couple who had broken up, she wasn’t sure where her loyalties should lay. I remember my friend’s words concerning mourning periods of relationships: “WE’RE NOT IN JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL ANYMORE, SO LET’S ALL ACT LIKE ADULTS, PAINFUL AS THAT MAY BE.”

(Although, let’s face it, all that we know about relationships we learned in junior high school and the bulk of us have progressed much further than that.)

Anyway, I’d say that the situation depends largely on two factors: 1) the independent relationship you have with each partner in the relationship and 2) the nature of the break-up. Sometimes you have two friends who decide to date. Those are “hold your breath” dating scenarios because you KNOW if they don’t work out there are difficult times ahead for you/your circle of friends because human instinct if things go terribly wrong is to choose a side. [It’s nice to play Switzerland if you have that luxury, though typically one friend or the other is going to feel slighted with such a choice.]

If it’s a case of a friend of mine dates someone I don’t know, it’s a matter of if I’m able to establish independent friendship with the partner outside of my friend or if I’m friends with them solely through Significant Other. Most times the latter which makes it easier to go with my boy (or girl) should things end. [There was one notable occasion where one of my dearest friends introduced me to her boyfriend. He collected comics, loved sci-fi, and introduced me to this game called Magic: the Gathering. She knew when they split that he’d get me in the custody battle, so she opted to take the house instead.*]

In terms of the nature of the break up, cheating, abuse, generally being mean or what have you messy wise with my friend as the victim, I’m gonna support my boy (or girl). That simple. If it’s my friend that’s being a jerk, well, they get to hear about that, too. Friendship doesn’t mean blind loyalty.

As for your circle of friends, it shouldn’t be much of an issue. You give the couple space and be sensitive to their healing. There’s no reason why it has to be an either/or situation of the group choosing one friend over another. As long as you have independent relationship with folks and the break up wasn’t messy to the point of deep lasting hurts, time can heal many wounds.


*It was an ugly break up and complicated occasions like wanting them both in my wedding, but now things are just fine between all of us. Navigating that was a delicate dance on eggshells, however … for years.


***
If you want to make sure that I see your comment or just want to stop by and say “hi”, feel free to stop by my message board. We always welcome new voices to the conversation.

Friday Night Date Place - A Question ...

I know I usually spend these Friday Night Date Place blogs opining about one thing or another, but this week I need a favor. I'm thinking about the whole idea of a postmodern relationship. So I turn to you to ask: what might a postmodern relationship look like?


***
If you want to make sure that I see your comment or just want to stop by and say “hi”, feel free to stop by my message board. We always welcome new voices to the conversation.

Friday Night Date Place – Dating Teh Crazy!!!1!!1!

(Before I get emails, know going in that this isn’t one of my more serious responses/blogs.)

"Emotionally unstable women are fantastic in the sack. Their self-loathing translates into ... nevermind." --Jack (Alec Baldwin), 30 Rock

I realize that most of my Friday Night Date Place blogs tend to be aimed at women, but that’s because that’s who I hear from most often when it comes to dating relationships. More than one war council meeting has convened in my living room and I’m just there to take notes. Today, however, I’m doing one squarely aimed at the fellas.

Here’s how the conversation began: “Why do guys date crazy women?” Ladies, you know the answer before you ask the question (do you need to re-read the opening quote again), but I’m going to go through the motions of answering this question. Let us refer to a certain sub-species as Personae dramatis. Some may call the behavior of this group … crazy. Look, we don’t always know that the people we’re dating are crazy. It’s not like they wear “hey, I’m craaaaaaaaaazy!!” T-shirts. While sex is not hard to get, to quote my brother-in-law, “I don’t need no crazy cootchie.”

Although, I’m not gonna lie. Sometimes we know they’re crazy going in and still go there. Even I, this pillar of dating stability, may or may not have gone there in his dating life. I may or may not have said the following after 48 hours of dating someone: “Look, you and I just are not going to work. This relationship will crash and burn in spectacular fashion. You’re just kinda, you know, crazy. But if you want to keep dating knowing that it’s going to end badly, I’m in.”

Cause I just keep bringing the romance.

Anyway, like I said, an actual guy war council broke out in my living room for a change (well, three guys minding their own business while the women convened a war council and we had to defend ourselves) and one issue involved the dating of the crazy. We hated to burst all the mystery, but we’re not that deep.

For some, crazy represents a challenge. In the same way how when you buy a puzzle book, you go straight to the back, passing up less complicated, less messy puzzles and go straight to the hardest ones. There’s a thrill to the “danger” of it all and trying to get out of a mess relatively cleanly. But, to quote a friend, it boils down to “I still want to hit that.”

The other question I get is “when is the crazy too much?” In short, your mileage may vary. Hopefully some time before what we’ll call the Left Eye Rule: if she tries to burn down your house, it may be time to buy some roses and call it a day. However, it usually doesn’t have to get to the whole “I’m gonna burn everything you own” level. Most folks build up to that. You get the phone calls, the 3 a.m. texts, the emails, the showing up at the job (come on, now, you don’t bring stuff to work). Mounting crazy behavior would encompass everything from throwing a glass table at you to vandalizing your stuff to leaving bloody underwear in your locker.* And what is too often the male response to such behavior: “Can I hit that one last time?”

Alright, look, crazy is not contagious, but it does have a way of working its way under your skin. Crazy is infectious and some people need that sort of high level drama in their life (to spark it or whatever). Crazy is passionate. Crazy is exciting. Crazy is a bit of a freak. Dating crazy does not make you enlightened, it makes you crazy because crazy likes to inject drama into their lives and tell everybody about all the deep emotional trauma going on in their lives. Crazy likes the constant rollercoaster and you need to decide if the ride is worth it.

In the final analysis, crazy is what we all are. Some folks are broken in emotional ways and frankly, some of the relationships they are prone to enter into are self-destructive (<-- you may want to click on this link for a more serious take on this topic) or enabling. Sometimes dealing with the crazy makes you appreciate the sane or, to again quote my brother-in-law, “you have to go to the cave to come out a super-hero.”

Anyway, guys … aren’t that deep. Some brothas need 13 steps to quit the crazy, cause 12 just ain’t enough. “My name is Jon and … hey, you look nice…”

*Sadly, all real life examples. Not all of them to me. Though I’ll fully admit that I can bring a special kind of joy that drives women to, well, throw a glass table at me.


***
If you want to make sure that I see your comment or just want to stop by and say “hi”, feel free to stop by my message board. We always welcome new voices to the conversation.

Friday Night Date Place – When Good Singles Groups Go Bad

I think I’ve mentioned before how I was once part of several singles groups and how these groups can sometimes develop strange dynamics. The key was understanding the "politics" of them:

-those who make "friends" strictly as an opportunity to date those within the circle -those who genuinely want friends -those who just want folks to kill time with until they find someone and then they can disappear -those who want an entertainment/activity circle

So I’ve been thinking a lot about when a singles group can reach a tipping point to where it might be better to move on from that group. This is a fairly common occurrence as most folks only tend to last 3 years in a singles group before moving on for one reason or another (if for no other reason than they are tired of “singles groups” and move on to explore the rest of what life has to offer).

The fact of the matter is that part of the dynamic of the singles group is that unless it is continually renewed with, let’s call it what it is, fresh meat, they eventually implode. Close and constant proximity can cause feelings to occur even when, on paper, you wouldn’t ordinarily find yourself attracted to that person. Rinse, lather, repeat, and sooner or later, most of the group has gone through the round robin of dating one another. If all went well, the group can settle into being friends. However, things rarely go well and sometimes the very process of round robin dating tears the group apart.

Sometimes the group is TOO up in your Kool Aid. There’s a fine line between a protective circle of friends and a bunch of nosey busy-bodies. The difference will lie in the type of individual relationships you may have with the folks in the group. My friends have a lot more latitude to speak into my life. A group of acquaintances, despite the frequency of us hanging out, does not. (Though I try to not be too hasty in dismissing their opinions outright just because we may not like their conclusions. Sometimes friends, because they aren’t so personally invested, can see things that you can’t.)

In my ideal single’s group, there would be married couples in there to act as mentors of a sort. One, for an example of the type of relationship the singles (think) they want, if only to take the romantic notions off of marriage to replace them with realistic ones. Two, to set the example of not ditching your friends after you get married. Three, to give the benefit of their experience. A friend of mine recently found herself in a dating dilemma which threw her singles group into a tizzy. It was a single’s group mostly her age, with largely her level of experience in life. She posed the same dilemma to another set of friends, most of whom were married and had dated to much greater extremes and experience (read: severe consequences) and the perspective was entirely different.

There are other times when the community you are in may not be the best fit for you. Communities change over time. If teh interwebz have taught us nothing it's that it only takes one or two personalities (read: trolls) to poison a group if they are left unchecked. If you find you don’t have deepening relationships, but instead everything remains on a very surface level, you may want to move on (unless that’s what you want). While all close circles of friends have “gossip” issues because they talk to each other about each other, such behavior can turn negative. In fact, it doesn’t take too much for a once loving community to become a bullying, excluding clique.

In the end, singles groups are like any other community: you have to decide if it is helpful to you or has become toxic. If nothing else, how the group continues to reach out to people, how it loves, how it forgives, how it handles crises, and how it repairs damaged relationships tells a lot about the group. I began quoting from one previous blog, so I’ll end with another:

Take a look at your current circle of friends. There’s a good chance that a year from now, maybe two, the complexion of your circle of friends will be different. People whom you shared intimate secrets with one day drift (or storm) out of your life. People fight. Misunderstandings occur. Trust is betrayed. People move, switch social circles, life, circumstances, what have you - you wake up one day and realize that some folks aren’t as close to you or aren’t as much a part of your world as they used to be. There is a natural ebb and flow to relationships.

Luckily, friendships renew themselves. Cherish the friends in your life right now.

***
If you want to make sure that I see your comment or just want to stop by and say “hi”, feel free to stop by my message board. We always welcome new voices to the conversation.

Friday Night Date Place – The Burning Ceremony

“The ties that bind us are sometimes impossible to explain. They connect us even after it seems that the ties should be broken. Some bonds defy distance and time and logic.” --Meredith Grey (Grey’s Anatomy)

We don’t get through this life unscathed.

Trauma, hurts, abuse, pain, all manner of threatening experiences, all of these things are a part of what it means to experience humanity. The uniqueness of man, to borrow from Pascal, is the great paradox of creation, capable of the highest grandeur and the worst misery. We have the ability to think and reflect, a rationality and the free will to make choices. Our minds are wondrous creations, so it is doubly painful when our rational intellect gets turned against itself. When our memories hold us prisoners, grasping onto the experience, constantly replaying them, and in so doing, rekindling all of the attendant emotions of an event. To truly overcome, first we survive, then we heal, then we live again.

When pain comes, we will survive at any cost. We will do what we have to to protect ourselves. Even if it means that we rush to security in whatever form we can find it in our need to regain power and control. Sometimes we do that at the cost of healing. We slap a plate of armor over a wound rather than gently exposing it, letting it scab up, and wait for the scab to fall off. In the name of protecting ourselves, we deprive ourselves, become afraid to feel, and we can perceive even good things as threats to our security. So, in our rush to protect ourselves, we instead become ruled by fear.

A: i want to have a burning ceremony. i still have cards and stuff from him and i just want to burn it all away
M: you need company for it?
A: i might actually. depending on what mood i'm in, i might try to jump in too
M: i’ll catch you.

We also need to do what we have to do to heal. We don't appreciate ritual and tradition as a culture. We are prone to social amnesia. The power of ritual is that it renews what you believe. Renews and remembers, which is why symbol is important. Symbols have power. We say "never forget" but without ritual, without the days of remembrance, we'll do just that. Sometimes we have to go through the motions of a ritual of some sort to bring closure and begin the healing process.

We then need to find a place of belonging, empowerment, security, and survival. A healthy and healing community, a family to restore us. Faith can drive us to deeper pleasures and joy, as it allows us to center ourselves securely in God’s loving hands. There is a healing to be found in the Divine, resting in Him, turning those memories over to Him. And, lastly, we need to experience and practice the power of forgiveness, not just of your abuser, but also for yourself. How often have we not bothered to forgive ourselves, but instead turn that anger, the poison that comes from holding onto the hate, and turning it inward?

Yes, sometimes the key is simply to survive. After a time, you need to get back to living. Don’t let past pain define and control you. It’s easier said than done, but know that there is healing to be had. And friends who will walk through that long journey (and it may be a long journey) alongside you.


***
If you want to make sure that I see your comment or just want to stop by and say “hi”, feel free to stop by my message board. We always welcome new voices to the conversation.

Friday Night Date Place – The Road to Just Friends

Remember when we tackled this question: how do you love your brothers in Christ without giving them false hope of you wanting something more? Apparently I need to revisit the topic. The situation is a familiar one. You dated someone, it lasted a few months, you realized it wasn’t going to work out so you ended it. The things which first drew you to the person are still there, they are still every bit the friend they had always been, so you want to keep the friendship.

Now, the other person makes the attempt (read: lie) to just be friends. Sometimes they’re sincere, sometimes they intend to, and sometimes they are doing whatever it takes to stay in the game (and a lot of the time, the intent to stay friends is prelude to just staying in the game). But along the way to being just friends, there may be the occasional bumps as feelings settle down. In short, you’ve told someone to move on and you won’t date them over again, but you’ve let them know that you still want to be friends. Now what?

The transition to “just friends” is fraught with emotional land mines. It’s hard to go from dating to being just friends. When part of you wanted more, dreamed of more, expected more and all those hopes came crashing down and falling short. It takes a while to pack those feelings back into a box and be able to manage them. It takes focus to channel those “more than friends” feelings and energy into something platonic. The road may be full of DTRs.

Sometimes the road may want to make you re-think being friends. Honestly, the commitment to friendship begins with one sentence: If you can’t deal with the fact that I don’t want to date you any more, then this is the last conversation we will have. The true test comes with one simple scenario: can you handle me going out with someone else?

Basically, you have a decision to make: to be friends or to cut things off. And they have to be prepared to either accept the reality of the situation or stalk you.

For the being friends contingency, both of you will be pouring energy into the relationship, in time and emotional sweat. In some ways you have to live life in light of their feelings, balancing being sensitive with the need for you to move on and do what you’ve got to do. But you do have to lead your life and attend to your own emotion needs and situations.

In the just end it scenario, look, sometimes you can’t be “just friends” and you may have to just cut bait cause friends don’t work. If they don’t get the hint that things really can’t work when you’re being nice, the follow up conversation won’t be pleasant. To quote my brother-in-law: “come here Roly Poly, turn into a ball so I can flick you into the grass.”

Either way, there might be some stalking-ish behavior. Constant phone calls. Texts throughout the night. Showing up where ever you might be. Standing outside your window with a boom box raised above their head playing Peter Gabriel songs. They stay close cause at some point you may end your new relationship and they can catch you on the rebound, after all, the point for them is to stay in the game. This is one way how on again/off again relationships start.

Relationships are commitments, even friendships. Sometimes you have to walk away from friendships for a time in order for the relationship to heal and the two of you to move forward as adults. There’s nothing wrong with that, and that beats the alternative of silly games and stalkerish behavior. We’re better than that.


***
If you want to make sure that I see your comment or just want to stop by and say “hi”, feel free to stop by my message board. We always welcome new voices to the conversation.

Friday Night Date Place – Proper Expectations

We’ve all ended up in relationships that didn’t quite break our way. From friendships to work colleagues to significant others to spouses, some of the relationships we’re in don’t match up to our expectations of them. However, since our focus is dating, we’ll key in on that and allow for the trickle down theory to take into account other kinds of relationships.

For example, stemming from our friends without benefits discussion from last week, we might have a guy who is frustrated by women who have either wanted to date him (or who have previously dated him and have moved on) who end up just dumping him as a friend. Or a woman who feels the sting of not getting enough attention from the men in her life whose friendship she wants to deepen.

Relationships are a delicate dance of expectations (read: romantic ideas) clashing with the reality of another person intruding into your life. That also points to the crux of the matter: having realistic expectations of the relationship. Not lowered, not raised, but simply realistic. (Don’t get me wrong: I unapologetically expect a lot from people, especially those closest to me, myself included, and the relationships that I’m in. Sure I’m often let down, but that’s part of the deal I sign up for.) There are at least two things I try to keep in mind as I approach the people I’m in relationship with:

-Accept who they are. We can’t be with people based on our expectations/daydreams of who they ought to be. People are just so darn … people-ish. They tend to not cooperate with our ideas of who we think they ought to be and how they ought to act. They are who they are. Their faults are their own and a part of what makes them who they are.

-Forbear one another. One thing that HeWhoWouldBeHeadPastor said recently was that we need "to give someone room to be, and to become". This applies even to (especially to) high maintenance folks.

It’s not wrong to have expectations from folks. Granted, having no expectations is a safe way of going through life: no expectations means you’re never let down. Another person is not the solution to the problems you face in life (no, not even loneliness as counter-intuitive as that may sound). A friend of mine passed along this observation:

“More specifically, we expect our love relationships to be exciting, romantic, erotic, passionate, cute, conflict-free, and perpetually novel. And like the consumers we are, we often break our commitment when we don't think we have enough of these, and move on to a new relationship to find them again. Our materialist/consumerist mindset treats relationships as a department store for our personal satisfaction and pleasure. This defeats long term commitment, which must include compromise and hard work. Why do any hard work when you can just pick up a new one, or even get an upgrade?”

When I look at my marriage vows, I realized that I committed to the idea of our relationship as much as I committed to the person herself. During some of our bad patches, our commitment to the relationship was one of the things that kept us together. It was something worth preserving (even as we figured out how to live with each other). Granted, dating is a long way from marriage in terms of one’s commitment to it, but there is something to be gleaned from this. Deeper levels of true love and intimacy can only be mined over time. Once the “romance” has cooled, or rather the white hot feelings of “being in love” have.

We can’t force a relationship into our idea of what we want it to be. We have to take it on its own terms. Only from there can we judge whether it is a relationship worth pursuing or keeping in our lives. Because relationships take work, time, and commitment, but not all of them are worth that kind of effort. Some are best to simply let go.


***
If you want to make sure that I see your comment or just want to stop by and say “hi”, feel free to stop by my message board. We always welcome new voices to the conversation.

Friday Night Date Place – Friends Without Benefits

I had a friend who always got in trouble in one of the singles groups I used to be in. Whether he actually did anything wrong was a matter of debate, that debate usually splitting down the great sex divide. You see, he was nice. When he talked to women, he was attentive and actively listened. He walked ladies to their car. He checked on them if they were down or sick. He hung out with them regularly and paid for lunch when he did. To guys like me, we thought we numbered among a dying breed: the fabled gentleman. To the ladies in the group, he sent mixed signals of interest.

One of the peculiarities of that beast we call the singles group is how the dating tension is an ever-present specter. It hovers over each activity, conversation, and interaction, bubbling with attendant drama for the group. All because it’s tough having male/female friendships without sending "mixed" signals.

Because singles groups exist to kill time before people drop out of them, one of the casualties becomes the prospect of real friendship across the sexes. Everything become fraught with “is he interested in me” or “is she too into me” type questions in the back of people’s minds.

We’ve come so far in our social interactions, and by far I mean men have sunk so low, that gentlemanly actions, which were once routine, now signal interest. Apparently, if you do the gentleman thing with a lot of your female friends, despite your intent, it stirs up their passions. Why ELSE would you be so attentive? There's nothing worse than a nice guy dangling themselves in front of a woman. So it was explained to me/us.

As I’ve managed to get my brain around this notion, despite what we said or how clear we’ve been about our intent (“I’m just looking to be a friend. I just want to get to know you better as a person”), we gave the illusion of interest. By giving the illusion of increasing intimacy (arm holding, lots of one-on-one time, even what we would consider simple politeness), we sent the signal that we were interested. In other words, it’s the couch dilemma (and will result in the dreaded “Defining The Relationship” talk).

Don’t get me wrong, if you find yourself (even in a platonic) cuddling scenario or if part of your act is being a perennial flirt, you do confuse the issue and send a mixed signal. It’s a fine tightwalk to walk. I tended to err on the side of love. I would risk helping, protecting, and nurturing because I try to be genuinely loving. If that sends a mixed signal, then, well I'm sorry society has conditioned us to believe that's a mixed signal. In the end, I'm guilty of being nice. That being said, there is trust and friendship and relationship, none are to be treaded upon lightly. We want relationships, all types of friendships, so we need to be ever-mindful of the signals we send and the feelings that may get hurt.


***
If you want to make sure that I see your comment or just want to stop by and say “hi”, feel free to stop by my message board. We always welcome new voices to the conversation.

Friday Night Date Place – Smother Much? Part II

We’ve come at this topic once before, but since I live to serve (read: I’ve been asked again), I thought I’d revisit this topic from a different tack. People have different tolerance levels for behavior that could be construed as smothering. For some, smothering could be something as relatively light as a text message too many. For others, smothering attention could be at the level of needing a restraining order before it bothers them.

Sometimes “smothering” is a person’s love language, that is, they only know how to express themselves in terms of constant contact. It’s not something to be automatically condemned. Some folks like it, find in it the comfort of a thick blanket they can snuggle into. A reassurance. Others want to kick off the covers to those same attentions.

Sometimes smothering speaks to an insecurity in the relationship. Think of it as a relational OCD, as if they can control enough aspects of their partner’s behavior, a kind of loose leash, they can steer the relationship.

There’s a fine line between attentive and smothering, in fact, I think of it as being analogous to walking the line between being persistent vs. stalking: it can boil down to whether the attention is wanted. Constant texts, e-mails, IM chats, and/or check in phone calls has the specter of possessiveness or jealousy; a tactic to break up an evening or otherwise turn the target of their attentions’ thoughts back to them.

But we return to the same conclusion as the first time around. There might be some hurt and some awkwardness, but it’s always best to maintain clear lines of communications. Admit how you feel and above all, just talk. Let them know if you find their behavior particularly cloying. Don’t feel guilty that you and your friend aren’t at the same emotional or relational place.

Still, it's something to keep in mind should you find your texts ignored, your phone calls ducked, or you hid from on chat. Folks will find the space they need one way or another.


***
If you want to make sure that I see your comment or just want to stop by and say “hi”, feel free to stop by my message board. We always welcome new voices to the conversation.

Friday Night Date Place: Looking for Communitas?

A friend of mine engaged me in a discussion about the nature of the group of friends that she was currently hanging out with. The group met her companionship needs, a group of people her age in the same life situation. They got together to kill time together, watching television, going out to eat, and in general, enjoying one another’s company. In other words, it was basically a singles group.

Singles groups are singles groups first and part of the church in the secondary. Sometimes VERY secondarily. Your typical church singles group has a few key characteristics: 1) the average stay of the typical member is five years and 2) about every three years, the group has gone through a cycle of turnover. Why? Because it is one of the few ministries where the object is to get out of it. People date, and if they marry, they leave. People date, and if it doesn’t work out, they leave. People hang out, and if there are no prospects, they leave.

Some communities exist for their own sake, but can’t sustain themselves over the long haul. Even in my own experience in singles groups, a few true friendships were forged, but the group on the whole couldn’t sustain itself. I’m not talking about the relationships per se because those interested in true friendship built those relationships. But the group on the whole, if it were just about killing time, got old. Especially since the “mission” of the group was to get out of the group.

Michael Frost in his book Exiles discusses the commendable desire for Christian community, how it has become a buzzword, but how it has gone often unfulfilled. Frost’s contention is that the problem begins when we make community our end goal, how "aiming for community is a bit like aiming for happiness. It's not a goal in itself. We find happiness as an incedental by-product of pursuing love, justice, hospitality, and generosity. When you aim for happiness, you are bound to miss it. Likewise with community. It's not our goal. It emerges as a by-product of pursuing something else."

There comes a point where you want to go deeper with a group, where you want to move from community to communitas. With communitas, you buy into a mission or vision and that mission sustains the group because not only do the activities stem from that sense of mission, but there is a sense of purpose about them. The group becomes united behind the feeling that they have banded together at this time for this reason. Whether to join in with what God is already doing (to put it in spiritual language) or simply to better the world them; either way, they become a part of something greater than themselves and turning outwards, rather than continually focused inward.

This part of a hermeneutic of communitas I can buy into. People will want to go to the next level, deepen the roots of the friendships in any group, moving from a sense of a group of casual acquaintances to real friends, because we are relational beings and long for that sense of connection. If we don’t share a committed pursuit of a greater goal, we often will succumb to being a short term, unsustainable mission of hanging out. Until we leave.


***
If you want to make sure that I see your comment or just want to stop by and say “hi”, feel free to stop by my message board. We always welcome new voices to the conversation.

Friday Night Date Place - Blind Dates

Okay, I was trying to kill off this feature, but like the most tenacious of zombies, it keeps shambling on. This, however, is actually a guest blog by my assistant, Lauren David, one of the founding members of Team Broaddus. I'd like to officially welcome the traffic from the guys who regularly stalk her on her blog and Twitter (note that I'm not helping you out by linking to her Twitter - and as fair warning, she's earned the right to be picky - although the quickest way to her heart is for you to buy my book).

You know, I get that people mean well. Many of my friends are (for the most part) happily married or dating and they want me to have that same....joy. They don't want me to be alone. They don't want me to be the crazy cat lady. They want don't want my corpse to be rotting by the time someone finds me. I get it. However, I truly am happy being single. Are there moments where I do wish I had someone? Yes. The moments when I realize that I'm not Wonder Woman and that I can't do everything by myself; when I sometimes wish I had someone to pick up the slack. Someone to share stuff with. But those moments do not match the moments that I am grateful for my independence and freedom.

So when a friend of mine wanted to set me up on a blind date, I *very* reluctantly agreed. (Truth be told, my main thought was "Well, at least I'll have blog fodder.")

She sent me a link and I checked him out as best I could online. (Hooray for Facebook: Stalking made easy.) Needless to say, I had more than a few reservations. But I knew I wouldn't hear the end of it until I went out with him. So we set something up. But I kept my expectations extremely low. He didn't seem too bad from online but I have heard horror stories about blind dates. Not to mention the interactions that I have had online that turn out much different in real life. But since he didn't look like an ax murderer or like Boo Radley's cousin, I said okay.

Men, here's a little tip: If you are set up on a blind date with a woman, do not--I repeat, do NOT--go into her work before the date is to take place. Catching her off-guard may make you feel like you have the upper hand or whatever but it certainly is not going to win you any points. Girls like to have time to get ready and look nice before meeting someone, especially for a date. It's not that we're trying to be fake but catching us at work when we may have just done the bare minimum to get ready isn't nice.

Blind dates are useful for at least one thing. It gives you an insight into how your friends/co-workers/family see you. Unfortunately, it can very quickly turn into the blind leading the blind. If they are matching you up with someone who they think is just perfect and your date is the complete opposite of what you're looking for, maybe you need to have a chat with whomever set you up. In my case (and fortunately for the person who set us up), it wasn't that the date went horribly wrong. Outside of catching me off-guard at work, my date was pleasant enough. However, come to find out later, my friend who set us up had only had minimum interactions with him in person. Most of it had been online and when she did finally hang out with him in person, she ended up apologizing to me for setting us up.

I think that sometimes people get so focused on getting single people "with someone" that they throw at them the first available person who isn't insane or wanted in 3 states. I have said this before and I will continue to say it: it is okay to be single. It is not a sin. It is not a disease that needs to be cured. And even if it was a disease, I doubt that blind dates would be the cure. No one knows you better than you know yourself. You know what you want. You know what you're looking for in a spouse. (Or, in my case, you know whether or not you're looking for a spouse.) Yes, some blind dates turn out wonderfully. The ones that don't usually make for great stories. (After you're done living through them.) But as for me, getting to the morgue before I smell isn't real high on my priority list. So unless I'm in need of a blog topic, I don't think I'll be attempting any more blind dates.


***
If you want to make sure that I see your comment or just want to stop by and say “hi”, feel free to stop by my message board. We always welcome new voices to the conversation.

Friday Night Date Place – On Again/Off Again

Gather close Interwebs, I have a secret to tell you: Broadduses suck at relationships. I know, I know, but it’s true. I’ll use myself as an example ad not toss my siblings under a bus. My wife and I dated over a two year period before we got married. That is to say, the length of time we dated covered a two year span. The problem was that over that that time, the longest we dated for any stretch before our engagement was two weeks. (In fact, as not to stress ourselves, our engagement was only about six weeks long.)

All relationships have to find their own course, but had my wife come to be for counseling and laid out the specifics of her/our relationship, I’d have told her to run. Actually, many of her friends advised her to do exactly that (but, well, sometimes there’s just no talking any sense into her and every April 1st I’m sure she thinks “I should’ve run.”)

Why would I have said run?

Obviously something in the dynamic of the relationship abhorred stability. There was an element of fear at play that needed to be rooted out. Maybe an inability to commit that caused the trigger-happy party in the relationship to either break up, drive her away, or otherwise sabotage the relationship. Unless it was addressed, and people are loathe to deal with their own issues, it would haunt the relationship.

Continuity is important in a relationship. You learn about each other and a lot of information can slip through the cracks when you’re always breaking up when things get tough or inconvenient.

On the flip side, there are some positives.

The relationship breaks can give time to process and come to terms with a few things. To get at the root cause of that fear requires introspection, intense reflection, and time. Applying the brakes slows things down, allowing the scared party to get their head around the concept of a partnership, a relationship, and commitment.

The on gain/off again nature of a relationship comes with its own stressors:

-trust. It’s hard to establish stability when the trust is rocked every few weeks. It’s hard to rest comfortably in the relationship when you fear it will all go to crap at any minute. It drains the fun out of being in a relationship and increases the sense of drama. Imagine your attitude at the prospect of crossing a bridge prone to collapsing.

-break ups. Even at their best, break ups aren’t easy to navigate and “survive”. The things that first attracted you to that person are still present, and it’s easy to fall back into that routine and established comfort levels. You have to remember that the things that drove you apart are also there. To continue to jump back in is the equivalent of ripping the Band Aid from a wound that hasn’t been allowed to heal.

-resolutions. In marriage, you don’t have the luxury of solving your problems by breaking up. (Well, you do, but it costs you half your stuff. I may have fear of commitment issues, but I love my comic book and DVD collection, too). Regardless, running away is not real conducive to the health of a relationship. The process of facing your fears together and resolving conflicts together builds trust, dependence, communication, and coping skills, all of which will come in handy later.

I look back and marvel that the two of us ever got together. Was the on again/off again a necessary part of our journey. Probably (he rationalizes knowing that despite 8 years of marriage, my wife still acts likes she’s suffering from post traumatic stress any time someone brings up our dating history). I wasn’t even close to being in a place to settle down, but when the right person comes along, and won’t wait around forever for you to get your act together, the paradigm shift in thinking and behavior can be an abrupt and ugly process.

If the on again/off again can be seen as one, or both, of you working your way toward, or through, something, and the person is worth the pain of the process (and let me tell you, I am PURE JOY!!!), then go with God. Do what you need to do. Otherwise … run!!!


***
If you want to make sure that I see your comment or just want to stop by and say “hi”, feel free to stop by my message board. We always welcome new voices to the conversation.

Friday Night Date Place – Fellas Take Notes

Remember when I said that I’m not ready for my eldest son’s (all of seven) dating life? Well, come to find out here is the note he just gave to his friend (I have no idea where he found heart paper). Apparently they discussed it at recess (with all of the teachers ooh-ing and aw-ing while watching them talk).

Dear Maurila,

Will you date me? You are very cute. I like how you wear your hair. I love you. Do you like to play with me? Do you love me?


As a proud father, I guess, I have to appreciate how he handled his business. There was none of this “hey, you … girl” nonsense. Let’s break this down:

Dear Maurila – first he addresses her as a person. An individual. Hopefully he spelled her name right.

Will you date me? – Direct. Strong. Intentions clearly stated. There will be no “couch dilemma” where she wonders what he’s thinking. Thus he also saves himself an awkward DTR talk down the road.

You are very cute. – YEAH, boy. Insert flattery. Appreciate her beauty.

I like how you wear your hair. – And now the student becomes the master. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve blown the whole hair thing.

I love you. – Okay, a little too much. He might be moving a little too fast. We throw a flag on the play because he hasn’t received the memo that there’s no such thing as instant intimacy. On the plus side, he knows how he feels and he’s putting himself out there. By making the first move, he’s the vulnerable one (not afraid of possible rejection, but also making sure she knows that her risk will be lessened).

Do you like to play with me? – already he’s thinking about possible date activities. He attends to her needs by assessing what she enjoys.

Do you love me? – Again, he puts himself out there, but only so far as to see what she’s thinking.

He gets extra points for not simply IM-ing her, posting the query on Facebook, or stalking her on a message board, but by doing this in the context of a conversation in person. He thought through what he wanted to say, organized his thoughts on paper, but presented them in person.

That’s my boy.


***
If you want to make sure that I see your comment or just want to stop by and say “hi”, feel free to stop by my message board. We always welcome new voices to the conversation.

Friday Night Date Place – True Beauty

There is truth and goodness in beauty, one that we recognize without having to be told (much less needing it plastered all over magazine covers). Beauty should touch a primal chord within us, captivate us, and spur us to adoration, even worship. Sometimes it takes a spiritual eye, a discerning eye, to truly appreciate beauty. A spiritual perception of glory, the loveliness of holiness, and the preciousness of grace ... all the things that come with being created in God’s image. All beauty reflects its source, namely, God. When we experience beauty, we experience God. When we create beauty, we reveal God to others.

Continuing the thoughts from yesterday’s post, whenever my faith wavers, I try to remember that I have encountered true beauty in my life. I just wish more would see the beauty in themselves and realize they reflect God with their very existence. True, beauty has a subjective element to it, but there are also standards, or universals, to it. So I decided to look around at some of the beauty in my life to realize what they have taught me about beauty (keep in mind, these are but a few examples. I could easily go on):

Beauty sometimes has believed lies about itself, be it from a parent or a friend or a social group, to the point where it can’t recognize itself. The tragedy is that beauty is so often determined from the outside that we’re left in need of validation. We find ourselves consciously or unconsciously asking “Do you see beauty in me? Am I worth another glance?” We can become trapped in negative stories we’ve come to believe about ourselves and cling to a fundamental insecurity about ourselves to the point where we can recognize beauty in the mirror.

Beauty sometimes needs to be drawn out. Better stated, sometimes beauty doesn’t recognize its own preciousness. Nicole Johnson has captured the desires and dreams of women in her book, Keeping a Princess Heart In a Not-So-Fairy-Tale World. Without succumbing to sentimentality, Nicole demonstrates how the fairy-tale stories of our youth touch upon the very real desires women possess. We all long to be Cinderella (the mistreated beauty rejected by others but pursued by a prince), Sleeping Beauty (the captive beauty waiting for life-giving kiss), and Snow White (the outcast beauty who raises a family of dwarves). Put succinctly, too many princesses wait on princes, not realizing that they don’t need them.

Beauty should have confidence and confidence is beautiful. Because beauty is so often determined from the outside, we forget that beauty recognizes itself. Beauty can be self-defined and self-determined. Just like we can become trapped in negative stories about ourselves, we can write our own positive stories and wait for the world to fall in lockstep with them. When beauty acknowledges and affirms their beauty rather than waiting on the princes of the world to recognize, beauty turns heads.

Beauty perseveres. Like faith it can be tried and tested, it may bend, but never fade away. I am reminded of this verse: "We also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us." Romans 5:3-5. Beauty, art, faith – all are meant to persevere.


Beauty has standards. I am guilty of Philokalia. Philokalia is Greek for "the love of the beautiful." Beauty doesn’t need me to value it, but it demands to be known, loved, and appreciated. I may not be everyone’s idea of a prince, but I am someone’s. When true beauty is encountered, it defines the world around you. That kind of beauty you better marry.

A part of loving one another means looking at one another with eyes of love. I’m not going to look at just anyone with the same eyes that I look at my wife, but the spirit of philokalia should be contagious.


***
If you want to make sure that I see your comment or just want to stop by and say “hi”, feel free to stop by my message board. We always welcome new voices to the conversation.

Friday Night Date Place – Cutting the Apron Strings

One of the hardest things to do in our transition from child to adult is to establish an adult relationship with our parents. Life with our parents is an evolution of power: we come into the world completely dependent on them (and our parents know EVERYTHING); we start to make noises of independence and doing things our way (and our parents know NOTHING); and then we start to brave the world by ourselves (and our parents know SOME things after all).

Now that I’m a parent, it’s easier for me to look at things from a parent’s perspective. Like most parents, I worry about what kind of men they are going to be and how best to train them to be the kind of men they ought to be. It will be hard to let go of them, to get to that stage where I stop worrying, to stop thinking of them as my kid and let them be the adults they are one day supposed to be.

I changed their diapers, I wiped their noses, I kissed their boo-boos. I have planned for them, I’ve answered their (endless) questions, I’ve guided them. I’ve sacrificed for them and provided for them. Do I expect anything in return? Heck yeah, I want a payoff of my investment. I want them to become fully functional adults, prepared to go into the world and find their own way.

In other words, at some point you have to move out.

(In fact, now that my kids can tell time, I’m going to stick a counter on my blog as a continual reminder.)

Now, I’m not exactly sinless to cast any stones in this area. If someone wants to keep running after me to give me free stuff, I’m going to let them. However, at some point, certain ties had to be cut (right around the time I had to establish my own family and myself as the head of it, coincidently enough). And it was a painful transition period for me and my parents (read: mom). But it had to be done in order 1) for me to establish the direction for my own family, 2) for me to be seen as an independent adult by myself, 3) for me to be seen as an independent adult by those around me, and 4) to be seen as an independent adult by my parents.

You can’t keep living in your mother’s basement. Or your friend’s mother’s basement. Or otherwise sponging off people in your life because you don’t want to stand on your own two feet. I don’t know what it is about our generation, but a lot of us are taking longer and longer to, well, grow up. Maybe it’s because we haven’t had to. Previous generations have had Depressions and wars to define them, forcing them to grow up sooner. We’ve had MTv. But I’m strictly speculating.

Did I mention that at some point you have to move out?

I haven’t even gotten to the most practical lesson of cutting the apron strings. Control. Nothing is ever truly free. You think you get to live in a basement rent free? You think you get to borrow your parents’ car whenever you want, no charge? You need a temporary influx of cash, gratis? Besides being generally thought of as a loser by your friends, you have also given up control in your life. You are under a certain amount of obligation to live by their rules (their house, their roof, their rules). Each loan is another string attached to you. Call them “guilt lines” or “advance pay day guilt loans” and they will be pulled or cashed in.

Cutting the apron strings is a rite of passage, one that can be relatively painless (despite the occasional bout of empty nest syndrome) or messy (when folks finally have to kick you out). It’s best to take the reins of your own life and carve out your own direction, no matter how many bowls of ramen noodles you have to eat in the process.


***
If you want to make sure that I see your comment or just want to stop by and say “hi”, feel free to stop by my message board. We always welcome new voices to the conversation.

Friday Night Date Place – Perfection: Give up the Dream

I’ve written before about how we should accept people as they are and quit dating folks with the idea of remaking them into the image of what we think we want. Today I’d like to write about an idea tangential (if not flipside) to that: the quest of perfection.

We all want to be accepted for who we are, find that person who accepts us, and allows us to be real. Authentic. The fact of the matter is that sometimes who you are is an idiot. Seriously. Just this side of brain damaged. So socially inept, it’s a wonder you can function in civilized society. I’m not throwing stones: I’ve embraced the reality that I’m not perfect (I’ve even gone so far as to embrace the fact that my imperfection can only further my wife’s holiness as she learns to love me anyway).

To recap, we have the need to accept people balanced against the need to face the reality that you aren’t perfect so there are some things you have to change or areas you need to grow in. The other tension in this equation, and the actual topic I wanted to write about, are those who endlessly chase perfect acceptance.

"The best thing you can do is find a person who loves you for exactly what you are. Good mood, bad mood, ugly, pretty, handsome, what have you, the right person will still think the sun shines out your ass. That's the kind of person that's worth sticking with." - Juno

Even discounting the blinders that come with falling for someone, I encounter all sort of folks for whom my natural reaction is “I can accept you as you are. I just wish you weren’t so … ‘you’ some of the time.” There are folks who want the former without the latter. Somehow they have it twisted in their head that a good relationship means in order for their relationship to work, they need to be accepted just as they are, with no expectations for change. Or growth.

They define acceptance as a full embrace of who you are and what you do when reality says that I may begrudgingly put up with you and wish parts of you would change. There is a big difference between accepted and being put up with, and sometime that difference is the measure of reality. I wonder if part of their misconception lies in the belief that if they aren’t perfectly accepted, they are merely being put up with. Tolerated.

Now, what I call putting up with, since I know the torments I regularly put my wife through, I see as part of the reality of the accommodation of relationships. Unless you manage to find Mr./Ms. Perfect you will continue to be frustrated unless you realize that perfect acceptance, perfection period, doesn’t exist. If you are like a child who only wants constant affirmation (“Everything you do is wonderful”) or else you think something is wrong in the relationship, or if you think the blinders that come when two people first start dating (“Everything you do is wonderful”) are meant to last the entire length of your relationship, then you have some issues you need to work out.

Probably starting with accepting yourself. You have quirks. Because the unreality of romance and faultlessness eventually wears off and people will recognize your act and who you are. The real and authentic you. “You have some aspects to you I flat out don’t like. I love you anyway.” That is the kind of acceptance we should want. A quest for anything else will leave you in constant quest, moving from relationship to ultimately dissatisfying relationship. You may have to face the fact that you have areas that you need to work on (and, in fact, you running from relationship to relationship is simply you avoiding dealing with your issues).


***
If you want to make sure that I see your comment or just want to stop by and say “hi”, feel free to stop by my message board. We always welcome new voices to the conversation.

Friday Night Date Place – Crap or Get Off the Pot

Relationships are about timing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know we hear about God’s timing, but that’s not what I specifically mean. I mean sometimes the timing of things, the timing of two lives coming together, isn’t always in sync.

Have you ever been in a treading water or yo-yo-ing relationship? By treading water, I mean you have reached this comfortable spot, things don’t seem to be going either forwards (towards marriage) or backwards (toward a break up), but you have lost relationship momentum and find yourself in a steady-state position. It’s not a bad place, things are going along fine, yet, you can’t help but feel some sort of dissatisfaction. Like you aren’t where you want to be in the relationship or that you could seriously see your relationship in this same place a year from now. Two years from now. For the foreseeable future.

On the other hand, you have the yo-yo-ing relationship. You get together, things for fine for a time, then the relationship seems to come to a head. One of you may want more while the other isn’t ready to commit. You may want to get married but you can’t quite seem to take that final step. So the two of you break up, ready to go your separate directions and start anew with someone else. Time goes by, then you start to drift back together. It may start slowly: you still hang out with the same friends and thus bump into each other a lot; you attempt to just be friends and find yourselves calling each other and hanging out again; next thing you know, you’re talking about giving things another shot and the process starts all over again.

There comes a point where you have to decide the ultimate future of the relationship. Much like some people feel a biological clock (and that may factor into the decision) others feel a “lifetime commitment” clock. Think of it as a lemon law: once you’ve decided that this is the person you could spend the rest of your life with, how much time, energy, and emotion are you willing to invest in the relationship before you decide that things aren’t heading down the aisle?

This lag time will vary per couple; relationships have to go at their own pace. It is a time of discovery, of learning about your partner. So part of the decision making process may boil down to where you are in life. Financial reality may play a part in the decision, being in school, career decisions, family obligations. These are realities.

Indecision, not wanting to settle down just yet (if ever), “I don’t know”, “it doesn’t feel right yet”—you’re lying to yourself if you don’t believe these aren’t decisions every bit as real as a break up. And you know what? You should listen to those decisions. If one partner doesn’t know, don’t pressure them into a “yes”. You shouldn’t have to sell you or the relationship to them.

No one ought to force you into making a decision you aren’t ready to, but there comes a point where you are going to have to make a decision. Otherwise you really are holding up two people’s lives. Timing is a delicate thing (more delicate than the title of this blog).


***
If you want to make sure that I see your comment or just want to stop by and say “hi”, feel free to stop by my message board. We always welcome new voices to the conversation.