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.


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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.


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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.


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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.


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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.


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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.


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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.


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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.


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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.


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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!!!


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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.


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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.


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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).


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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).


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Friday Night Date Place – Shopping to Shop

Smokey Robinson sang about “my momma told me, ‘you better shop around’” (my dad listened to Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, I’m not dating myself by any stretch). I am more of a pragmatist at heart than a romantic, so a certain about of shopping, haggling, and trading makes sense to me. Also feeding into this is the fact that I’m a guy, so mid-life crises (still not dating myself) also makes sense to me.

I can see this blog quickly getting away from me (it’s the potential pitfall of writing about singles’ issues while your wife not only reads over your shoulder, but keeps flashing back to the series of break ups the two of you had while dating), so let me try this another way. On a certain level, I understand (not saying I condone, approve, or otherwise give assent to) the idea of people trading up: to go prettier, smarter, funnier, wealthier in their next relationship – a terminal case of the grass-is-always-greener-itis. (Unless you are escaping a bad situation, then just run!)

It’s not much of an intuitive leap since too often we treat relationships like disposable commodities. However, what I can’t get my mind around is the idea of shopping to be shopping, or rather, trading simply for the sake of trading. A lateral move rather than a move up in anyway. I suppose in guy parlance, it could be seen as getting a little “strange” on the side; taking us back to the idea of folks getting tired of the same old home-cooking (which would really suck for me since I do all of the cooking in our house. I mean that in the literal sense).

The irony of all of this—between the stereotype of the mid-life crisis/trading the wife for the young secretary and/or the idea of getting some “strange”—is that the reason this topic has come up is because in my circle of friends, it has been the guys dumped. So obviously, this is an equal opportunity condition.

Selfishness and narcissism can rot relationships from the inside. The idea of entitlement, things being about “my needs” and “me first”, is antithetical to how relationships ought to work. Not having needs met; wanting to feel young, pretty, relevant, pursued again; simply wanting a change of scenery, these are symptoms of a poor idea of how relationships work (and while dating, maybe it’s best that they leave. However, these are things that ought to be worked through in a marriage situation).

We suffer from a relational disconnect. There is an emotional desensitization that comes with spending too much time with one person, especially when locked in the same routine. Relationships can only survive by continual reconnection. We combat the disconnect by being present in the relationship, investing time, self, and energy into it, prioritizing the person we wish to spend our life with.

I have a couple of friends who I see constantly. We worry about relational fatigue because we don’t want to get sick of each other. I worry about it less (now) because, for one thing, relationships change. If you 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.

For another thing, we have a dynamic I pray will be sustained despite the aforementioned observation about relationships. It’s like we’re in a constant competition to see who can love each other more. The math is simple: Continual acts of love = continual reconnection. Not letting the relationship grow stale or old, valuing the time you spend together, not taking the relationship for granted. Distance may make the heart grow fonder, but only until the heart no longer cares.

Browse if you need to, that’s what dating is all about. Serially wrapping yourself in a relationship simply for the sake of doing so (for the sake of not wanting to be alone, or needing a new face to keep you company), is the height of selfishness. And you may want to seriously look in the mirror and examine yourself about that.


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Friday Night Date Place – Church Screws Up?

“A major source of hostility to sex is religion.” –A.C. Grayling

YBOR CITY, Fla. - A southwest Florida church issued a challenge for its married members this past Sunday: Hanky-panky every day. Relevant Church head pastor Paul Wirth says the 50 percent divorce rate was the catalyst for The 30-Day Sex Challenge.

"And that's no different for people who attend church," Wirth said. "Sometimes life gets in the way. Our jobs get in the way." Oh, and the flip side of the challenge? No rolling in the sheets for the unwed.

A mandate for sex from the pulpit? These people are genius! I like sex (memo to my wife who I know reads this). I am pro-sex. I have no discomfort in talking about it (I talk about it in Friday Night Date Place fairly often). As parents, we try to navigate those seemingly treacherous waters early with our boys, 5 and 6, so the conversations go easier later (the 5 year old recently revealed having a thing for Summer Glau, the female Terminator so we might as well start having these conversations).

Except, the mandate for being pro-sex isn’t the relevant idea from a too cool pastor. It is an idea true to the story of the Bible. Church/religion has screwed up a lot of ideas about how we think about and deal with sex. We act as if the book Song of Songs isn’t in the Bible. We make our kids leave the sanctuary if we mention it. Why? They need to hear about it as much as anyone else. Where best can they learn what it means and how best to love one another?

(And I’m not talking about showing videos with a voiceover saying “here’s how pastor likes it.”)

Take “Christian love songs” for a example. Within the confines of the Christian ghetto, there is a need for Christian pop music, but much of it is bereft of the idea of how romantic love should work or how it should look. Christians singing love songs face hostility from within and without the Christian market, because they are expected to only talk about God, as if all areas of our lives aren’t under God’s dominion. As artists, we should be truthful (and true to our art) about the entire spectrum of the human condition. The whole of lives: being in love, being depressed, the beauty and passion of sex. It’s like there are some aspects of life we aren’t supposed to talk about from our pulpits or in our art.

In the ideal we were meant to be sensual, seeking pleasure in one another, being passionate. Tales of how we love each other should be something to write and sing about as part of enjoying creation includes each other’s bodies. Unfortunately, every relationship is touched by sin and pain. We’re a broken people doing our best to muddle through broken relationships as best we can.

We need a better, a bigger, view of romance and sex, both within the church and without. There is beauty to be found and had; the power and heat of attraction; the meaning of sex and the need to be known; the sensuality of being appreciated and of building up one another and putting the other’s needs ahead of your own. Conversations had without shame, all building on a sacred trust and commitment. Sex is the divine connection, we need to know more about it and not abuse it.

Dating is the process of two stories coming together in light of a greater Story. There is a public as well as private dimension to the process. I commend this church for having this dialogue on sex. Things ought to be discussed in community. Friends can see the disparity between the ideal (how folks in love see each other) and the real (how their friends truly are). Love gains confidence when affirmed by others, especially those who know them. In community, we need to model how to love one another and how to nurture relationship. In private, we need to pace ourselves and the relationship. If nothing else, remember the wisdom of Song of Songs 2:7: “Daughters of Jerusalem, I charge you by the gazelles and by the does of the field: Do not arouse or awaken love until it so desires.”


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Friday Night Date Place: Surviving Valentine’s Day

Alright, I am beginning this blog with the ultimate of disclaimers: take anything I have to say with a truckload of salt. I am the guy who once timed a break up to start on December 9th (the day before my then girlfriend’s birthday) only to conveniently reconcile with her on February 15th.

I remember when I wrote:

Men, I’m taking a stand against this Hallmark endorsed day of male oppression. That’s right, someone’s got to do it. That’s right men, stand up, cry out with one voice: “We are not going to participate in this made up holiday for the sake of going through the motions of showing some token affection as if this gets us out of anything during the rest of the year. We know that this so-called holiday is just another opportunity for us to screw up and we refuse to be the objects of scorn presented to your girlfriends as Exhibit A in the case of how men are worthless.”

There’s a lot to rail against when it comes to Valentine’s Day. I can talk about how this pretend occasion is a ritual of memory of those around us who have our affections and it is about taking the time to honor them. On the flip side, I can talk about how no one wants gestures of duty, least of all, your significant other. I can talk about how the idea of romance, and I’m talking about this false story we build up around the ideas of what love should be, is a cancer of expectation in relationships. Or how it reduces and objectifies love. You better have done something.

I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care how much you and your S.O. have talked about it and what kind of blood oaths the two of you have made to one another. If your S.O. … okay, let’s be real … if your girlfriend goes through the day with nothing from you (this only gets compounded if while at work, every woman around her is inundated with gifts from thoughtful significant others), wrap yourself in a blanket and enjoy the frozen tundra your relationship will be for the next few days.

It doesn’t matter if every significant other bands together to boycott the occasion, there will always be one to ruin it for everyone else. Be that one.

Here’s the bottom line: you better have done something.

Ideally, you should be living your relationship life in such a way that Valentine’s Day is only a formalized occasion to encounter the ritual of remembrance. The spirit of Valentine’s Day should be part of the fabric of your relationship. I don’t mean continual gifts, I mean continual remembering and gestures of affections. They don’t have to be big. They don’t have to be flashy. They only have to be a thoughtful token of affection and remembrance.

You can’t just say things like “ain’t a roof over your head and food in the refrigerator proof of my love?” And a day after the fact blog on the topic doesn’t count. I’m just sayin’.


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Friday Night Date Place: Why I have Stopped Dating Christian Women

As I am still under the weather and am under deadline (some big announcements to come soon), this week’s Friday Night Date Place is brought to you by some time contributor, Jon Harp. It’s a lament I have heard quite often:

Let me begin by saying that anything I say here is a generality and universally true. If it were I would call it an universality (that made up word is too difficult to pronounce to be true anyway).

The reason I have stopped actively trying to date Christian women is simple, I no longer fit the criteria that qualifies me as a potentially acceptable mate. I did once upon a time, but that was before a divorce and three kids. Those two factors have made finding an interested Christian woman in her 30’s or 40’s nearly impossible. The truth is that most single Christian women are looking for a Christian man who doesn’t fall into either of those categories. Now I am not speaking of Christian women in their twenties, my informal (and completely anecdotal) research isn’t aimed in their direction, strictly women in my general age group.

It seems that most of the Christian women I have encountered seem to be searching for some type of untainted soul mate, someone who hasn’t felt that strongly about anyone else before, and/or doesn’t carry the baggage (children) that may have come along with that relationship. This seems to be strongest with women who have never been married before themselves and that is somewhat understandable, though extremely limiting. Women who have kids of their own aren’t much different, though you would think they would be more open and accepting of another Christian with kids, there seems to be a desire to have someone whose attention won’t be diverted from her and her children. Christian women who have been divorced, either with or without kids, seem to be the most accepting, but still seemingly prefer someone who hasn’t got the children.

I understand a lot of the reasons why, adding on a ready made family can be intimidating for anyone. In addition, anyone who has been through a divorce is going to bear some emotional scars, and that may make a relationship a little more difficult. The problem, however, is that I stated before, eliminating all but single never married Christian men in their 30’s will limit your options. Those clean, untainted souls are few and far between, and let’s face it, if there is a single never married man in his thirties in your church there is often a pretty plain reason for his not being married. Sure there are some perfectly acceptable guys who choose to not marry into their 30’s, but many of the men in that situation have, let’s say, social issues, to be kind.

The truth in my situation as a divorced man with kids is that I am part of the largely dismissed group. We aren’t clean and untainted. I have some dirt under my nails, and my share of scars. I am part of an increasingly large group of men in the same situation and if Christian women don’t find us generally acceptable we will turn to the one group that will, non-Christian women. The sad part is that I have found non-Christian women to be far more accepting of the dirt and scars than Christian women. Christians should always display a more open and accepting frame of mind toward others, but too often in many different arenas this isn’t the case. As I said these are generalities and not universally true. But I can tell you that on the internet dating service that I use, I would say easily 80 to 90% of the women who prominently mention that they are Christian, also mention that they are looking for someone, firstly, without kids, and secondly never married. Since I don’t fit that profile I have stopped looking for Christian women and just started looking for those who aren’t as discriminating about the dirt under my nails.


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Friday Night Date Place – A Thief Always Gets Caught

The other day, I ran across this site which read in part:

Do you believe that someone (even online) has used your love and trust in order to steal your money? Did they claim they loved you, would marry you, take care of you, start a business with you - and all you had to do was provide the financing for everything? Did they disappear overnight or just walk out on you after you ran out of money? Did they refuse to pay back any of the money they received, claiming that you gave it to them willingly as a gift? Did you learn after they left that they were involved with another person at the same time they were promising you the world and taking your money? Then you are the victim of a sweetheart scam.

Naturally, the first question I had to ask myself was how do things get to this point? How many times have you started dating someone who later turns out, or reveal themselves, to be someone else? How do you know if your relationship is built with the long term stability of a house of cards? Is there any way to know, to find out, before it’s too late?

In some ways, it’s pointless to ask what kind of warning signs to look for. We’re talking about being in love, and being in love can be a special kind of crazy. Put another way, we aren’t always as logical as we ought to be. When you’re in love, you will defend your lover against outside attack or anything you perceive as an attack. When you’re in love, you hear with “ears of love” so it can be easy for folks to explain things away and you give them the benefit of the doubt. It kind of reminds me of the lyrics to the song “When a Man Loves a Woman”:

When a man loves a woman
Down deep in his soul
She can bring him such misery
If she plays him for a fool
He's the last one to know
Lovin' eyes can't ever see

Still, there ought to be some red flags you ought to pay attention to. How did their previous relationships end? Granted, ex-girlfriends or ex-spouses can make for biased (to say the least) witnesses (I know that I’ve never had an ex with an ax to grind, preferably in my skull), but it’s a question to consider. How does they treat their friends and other relationships? Do they compartmentalize their life? By that I mean are you kept in one part of their life like some secret shame? Are you hidden from their parents, their family, or groups of their friends? For that matter, does too much of their life seem shrouded in secrecy, as if you are being cut out from portions of their life?

Or, one of the biggies, do they always seem to have or be in a state of crisis? Constant drama, coincidently around your pay days, can be a red flag. Money can be a critical issue in relationships, so if you find yourself constantly paying out a lot of money, or otherwise supporting them, it’s a red flag. If you find yourself always doing the heavy lifting of the relationship, be it emotionally, financially, or even spiritually, consider it a red flag. People eventually reveal who they really are, but you need to remember that a thief always gets caught.

You have a right to be picky when you are dating; you deserve the best and too often we settle for less out of fear of being alone. Make sure that the person you think you are dating really exists and isn’t just a figment of your romance filled imagination. Don’t let fear keep you from making the tough decisions. Investigate as you date, or at least keep your eyes open. Meet their friends; see what they think of your significant other and how your significant other presents you to them. But you have to draw your own line for when things rise to the level of being a deal breaker issue.

Not that any of this will make the pain any less should things go bad and you find yourself betrayed, hurt, and robbed. Few things will prevent you from falling into a dark place, curled up in a ball, under your bed sheets, shaking, like an addict in withdrawal because you not only hurt, but you still find yourself missing that person. Heartbreak is heartbreak. You need to allow yourself to purge, to mourn the relationship. Yes, you will find yourself asking if the person you thought you were dating ever existed. Maybe it becomes easier if you look at things through the eyes of a fiction writer: you can see this as another chapter of a story you contributed to, which you can and ought to put on a shelf and move on from. In the mean time, you hopefully have people, friends and family, who love you who can walk along side you through the dark times.


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Friday Night Date Place – Moving in Together

A.K.A. the practice divorce

When I first moved out on my own, I moved in with my two best friends: Jon (who has guest blogged on occasion) and Michele (who inspired my “random ‘I love you’ days”). We considered ourselves the “reverse Three’s Company” (now there’s a reference that dates us). We had basically grown up together, Michele and I in the same church, so moving in together was little more than like moving in with my brother and sister. Now, the church we attended was quite conservative and we were eventually called into pastor’s office. Apparently some folks had some issues with two people of the opposite sex living together. His argument boiled down to: fears of temptation, the appearance of wrong-doing, and the fact that “weaker” brothers had problems with it. What he couldn’t point to was a verse saying that two people of the opposite sex moving together was a sin.

However, we were two friends moving in together, platonically. I’m skipping over the whole premarital sex thing, since that is going to be the crux of many folks argument about couples moving in together. That is a whole separate issue that I’ve obviously covered before.* For me, it’s more of a common sense issue.

I never got the move-in together mentality. A woman asking me to move in with her has always sounded to my ear like “you must not want me commit to you and you’re willing to get as close as possible to feeling like a marriage without actually being one in order to hopefully change my mind later.” What are the goals of it? Playing house without commitment? For life convenience as you merge expenses? I remember once reading about

a little-noted peril of cohabitation: the potentially negative financial consequences of breaking up. When unmarried couples who have been living together part company, women are substantially worse off economically than men, according to a study in the Journal of Marriage and Family. Men's household income drops by 10%, while women lose 33%. The percentage of women living in poverty increases from 20% to 30%, while men's poverty level remains relatively unchanged at about 20% ... "A lot of us go into a (live-in) relationship with a positive outlook. We think, 'Oh, nothing bad will happen.' The girl typically thinks, 'This is going to be great, we're (eventually) going to get married.'"

Some people consider moving in together a practice marriage. However, I have a friend who says: “separate finances, separate stuff, and they can move out and take their stuff with them? Nope, it’s more like a practice marriage, it’s a practice divorce.” It’s like a play marriage with a built in getaway box (okay, I’ve been watching Women’s Murder Club and one of the ladies was thinking about moving in with her boyfriend but she kept a getaway box at her friend’s house. It was filled with clothes and essentials in case she had to make an emergency exit from the arrangement).

There’s no such thing as a practice marriage. Little prepares you for the real deal and by many accounts, the divorce stats are higher for couples who move in together before getting married. So should you move in together? Premarital sex issues aside, there are a lot of questions you will want to answer for yourself about why you want to do it and where you want the relationship to head.

[Cue the line of comments telling me how wrong I am.]


*We’ve covered some of that ground before: chastity as discipline, “the talk,” the church and sex, biblical loopholes part I and part II, drawing a line, “you burning” part I and part II, abusing intimacy, and even a guest blog of further musings on the topic.


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Friday Night Date Place – Dating Addiction

As far as getting involved in the next relationship, I would say there’s no real time limit for either parties, it’s just when they feel they are ready. However, I would strongly suggest a good month or two, possibly more depending on the person, timeout from any type of “serious” relationship.

I thought that I’d return to the idea of “mourning periods” after the end of a relationship. A lot of us, myself included, are often guilty of following the sage wisdom once pronounced by that great television philosopher, Ally McBeal: “the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else.” It’s why so many of us go from relationship to relationship without sufficient time to “grieve”.

There is something to be said for healing times, times of transition and recovery, after a break up. That being said, there’s another type of person who goes from relationship to relationship, and those are the people who I am calling “dating addicts”.

When we asked the question “why date?”, we answered it by saying that we might as well ask why form friendships or any relationships at all. Everyone wants to be loved and be loved by someone. Everyone wants to know and be known by someone. When people speak of intimacy--trying to define what it is they are wanting–they talk about genuine trust, vulnerability, and transparency. They want to feel connected to someone. This sense of connectedness is a characteristic that we want in all of our close relationships. We want to share our lives, be accepted, and be intimate with others. Especially an other. We are hard-wired for intimacy; we’re relational beings.

Like with anything else in our lives, we can take something good and twist it. By “filling an addictive need”, I’m referring to the draw of intimacy. We crave the affection that comes from being in a relationship, the sense of intimacy of being with another, that connection. Sometimes it’s as simple as we love the attention from another (thus a reason why some folks are so hesitant to define a relationship for fear of losing the illusion of being in one).

We often exist in a state of perpetual longing for intimacy (the longing is good; however, when it rules you, it becomes bad). So some folks bounce from relationship to relationship, feeling the need to meet someone else in order to sustain their high or fill whatever intimacy void they may be experiencing. Thus they end up never dealing with their own crap. They fail to realize that sometimes saying “no” to someone who is obviously not right saves both of you time and potential future heartache. Their need to quickly fill that longing too often leads to a lowering/compromising your standards. And then where are you?

Sometimes the desire to be found attractive by prospective partners is great. Many of us have a need to be validated through the attentions of others. As much as I understand that, we can't start seeing or defining ourselves through the eyes of potential dates. There is nothing wrong with a time to be alone. Learn from the situation, give yourself time to heal, and move on. Deal with whatever issues you may have that might have led to the break up. Enjoy your time with you and your friends. Don’t let any addiction rule you or else they will only fuel poor decision making.


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If you want to make sure that I see your comment or just want to stop by and say hi, feel free to do so on my message board. I apologize in advance for some of my regulars.

Friday Night Date Place – The Right to be Picky

I’ve mentioned before that I have a lot of female friends. One of the reasons for that is because I have legitimately cultivated friendships with people of the opposite sex. True friendships, not “people I haven’t slept with … yet”. During the course of the friendships, sometimes we may have had to have a variation of the DTR talk. As their friend, I have had one simple “rule”: find a person who will love you as much and treat you as well as I do.

Sure, I get the occasional complaint that I set too high a standard. Actually, that’s a shame, because if a friend loves you and treats you better than your Significant Other, then you really ought to examine what you look for in an S.O. and/or why you settle in your relationships. I shouldn’t have to hear things like “I’m pickier than I have any right to be.” Any right to be? Wrong. You have the right to be picky.

We’ve constructed a false self, where we are defined by what we do, by what we have, and by what people think about us. It’s like we are all trapped by these false ideas of ourselves. These false selves, these false ways that we see ourselves, start developing when we’re young: how our families shape us, how we let our friends define us. We derive our self-worth from what we do; we’re of value because of how we behave or what we have.Too often, we’ve bought into several lies about ourselves. “I’m not pretty enough.” “I’m not smart enough.” “I’m not funny enough.” “I’m not worth loving.”

Truth is, we are eikons of God, created in God’s image, created to relate to God, to relate to others; created with inherent worth and dignity. In other words, you deserve to be loved. You deserve to be respected and esteemed. You deserve to be picky.


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Friday Night Date Place - Dating Divorcees

“Is it okay to date someone who has been divorced?” You'd be stunned how often I get this question. Or, maybe you wouldn't be. We live in an age of divorce, where one out of two marriages end in divorce, Christian and non-Christian alike. So many folks find themselves single again or dating prospects who have been divorced.

I’m not going to hash out a theology on divorce – why re-invent the wheel? Here are a few articles that I found helpful:

-The Importance of a Clearly Defined Position

-Four Evangelical Views on Divorce and Remarriage

-A Brief Development of the Reformed Perspective

-Pastoral Applications of the Reformed Position

Dating divorcees I basically just wanted to know the answer to a couple of questions:

1. What were the circumstances of the divorce? Adultery, abuse, abandonment – it’s hard to hold someone into account for the actions of another, don’t you think? Now, if I hear things like “my spouse no longer fulfilled my needs” or “we fell out of love;” well that’s going to make me more cautious.

2. How do they feel about the divorce? Did they fight to stay married? Were they repentant (if circumstances dictate/warrant it)? Basically, I want to know if they take marriage seriously. However, I understand circumstances beyond our control.

3. What sort of baggage is there? Hmm, perhaps there’s a better way to phrase this, but it doesn’t matter since only the first two questions are “make or break” sort of questions (and most folks carry baggage into a relationship). I’m just getting at what are the other relationships I’d be getting into (the ex still around, children, etc.).

“Is it okay?” I guess that’s up to you and what you have on your list. I know some hard core folks with a “no divorced people” dating policy. There’s something about that stance that smacks of judgment and an unforgiving spirit – but maybe it’s just me. I do know that marriage is hard and has many pitfalls. It strikes me as unloving to see someone who has been bruised by life, point to their bruises, and go “you’re automatically defective. Next please.” Maybe they should be asking if it’s okay to date you?


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If you want to make sure that I see your comment or just want to stop by and say hi, feel free to do so on my message board. I apologize in advance for some of my regulars.

Friday Night Date Place – Self-Destructive Ain’t Cute

I hate getting caught up in other people’s drama. Be it messy previous relationships or the consequences of their own bad decision making, some folks have self-destructive tendencies and the drama rarely seems to end with them. I suspect that they thrive on it half the time. Whether through their own insecurity or selfish behavior, most of the time these are dilemmas of their own making. Life becomes about meeting their own needs. Granted there is a perverse entertainment value in watching a plane crash; people can’t stop staring at wrecks. I don’t want to be collateral damage

Part of this is a spiral of self-hate. They have such a self-loathing, believing that things aren’t supposed to work out from them, that they don’t trust good things coming into their lives. So that even when things are going well, they have to do something, revert to some previous poor behavior, in order to sabotage things. In the process, they inflict damage on their partner as well as the other relationships in their lives. Friendships. Kids. Family.

Just like with mourning times after a break up, sometimes it is better to be alone for a while; a time for reflection and self-evaluation as you get your act together. This time of contemplation would be a good time to quit blaming others (an end of self moment) and look inward. Examine the mess and clean it up. Own who you are, own your own mistakes, and chart a course of the muck and mire of your present situation – fix yourself, find your path, not to be perfect, but to take account of your personal and moral failings. A part of owning your mistakes means confessing them, and seeking to become whole. On one hand, no one expects you to be perfect before you can date. On the other hand, you shouldn’t be looking for a relationship to cure you of being who you are. What we should be expecting is being on a journey to become whole.

Wholeness is attainable, and a journey of growth is what we should all be on.

Self-destructive isn’t cute, nor is it attractive, though I’m sure it appeals to those folks who are compelled to rescue the people they date. While we want to accept people where/as they are (in order to get away from our need to fix people or re-shape them into an image we want), this needs to be balanced by the fact that some people aren’t in a place where they are ready to be in a relationship. Those folks need to learn to look past themselves and their own needs. Relationship about the other person. Finding your needs met in being a blessing to another, not tearing them down or apart in the wake of your self-hate spiral.

I can love you wherever you are, but there are times when I will love you from “over there,” because some relationships will only be toxic.


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If you want to make sure that I see your comment or just want to stop by and say hi, feel free to do so on my message board. I apologize in advance for some of my regulars.

Friday Night Date Place - Getting Serious

In dating there are several milestones in the course of the relationship getting more serious: the first date, first time you hold their hand, the first kiss, meeting the parents, and, in Broaddus relationships, the first break up. The question becomes how do we progress from the first date to the first break up (or whatever it is normal couples do)? Or more on point, what are some things you ought to be examining as the relationship deepens?

-Trust. Do they keep their promises because the simple math is that a promise breaker = heart breaker. Are each of you people of integrity and honesty?

-Friendship. How good of friends are you? You have other friends and can judge those relationships. How does this one stack up to those?

-Conversation. Can you be open and share with one another? Communication is key and, counterintuitive as it may seem, so is learning to fight. When I hear "we're perfect, we never fight" then I’m pretty sure the relationship isn't serious. Disagreeing is fine, you have to learn how to resolve disagreements.

-Be yourself. Do they let you be yourself and love you for it? If you can't relax, you can't breathe. On the flip side, they're not getting to know you, but some version of you that (apparently) doesn’t want to risk rocking the relationship boat.

-What do your friends and family think? This is a quick spot check of your relationship. Do you include your friends and family (and kids, if applicable) or have you cut them off? Can you maintain friendships apart from each other?

-Possessive. Do you feel smothered, bothered by their jealousy? This is a potential red flag for future abuse. Just something to keep an eye out for.

Obviously this list isn’t exhaustive, but a few things to examine in the course of the relationship. I find it curious that I didn’t have anything to say about your feelings.


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If you want to make sure that I see your comment or just want to stop by and say hi, feel free to do so on my message board. I apologize in advance for some of my regulars.