Monthly Archives: April 2012

Apr30

My Dysfunctional Relationship

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I have to admit something to all of you. You might have assumed from this blog that I have not been in a relationship for a long time. That is not really true. I have been in a relationship for a while now.

My relationship is with a little blog called the sexy celibate.  And it has become a very dysfunctional relationship.

It started out with risk and mystery, like many relationships. I wrote my first post, thinking “Not that many people will read this, but at least it will be a great way to get my thoughts and angst down on paper.”

But on the inside I really wanted people to read it.

There was risk involved from the very first word I wrote down. It was kind of scary. I was putting myself out there. People might read my intimate thoughts and be changed.  Or they might reject me. I might get three hits a day, two of which were my mother. If that happened, I would wonder if I was not a good writer and if the book I was writing would ever be read.

I put up my first post and was surprised that soon after, people were reading my words and even having discussions about what I was writing. It was strangely like when you have a crush on someone. After the initial risk of putting yourself out there, you start realizing that maybe that person likes you back, and that is a very exciting thought.

Around January, some crazy internet explosion happened and I had almost 6000 hits in one day with my article called What Married People Wish Single People Knew (about 20 times more than my average.) The romance and exhilaration of the throes of first love were upon me now. I was in a real relationship. “Lots of people are reading my blog! People like me! They are asking me for dating advice even though I’ve only dated a handful of people in my entire life and secretly know almost nothing about dating! I have purpose! I am valuable! I am loved!”

As in many relationships, after the initial infatuation was wearing off,  dysfunction started to happen. I began to wait for comments like a high school girl waits by the phone for her crush to call her. That’s not good.

My roommate had a friend from out of town over. She said “I don’t meant to seem to seem star struck but I really love your blog. I have practically fallen out of my chair laughing at work reading it.”

Instead of feeling flattered, do you know what my first thought was? “Oh man, I am in my pajamas and  have no make up on, and she’s going to go home and tell people ‘I met that sexy celibate chick and I don’t know why she calls herself sexy. She looks pretty plain to me.’”

The rest of the day, I felt insecure because everything I said felt awkward and not very clever. I thought “dang it, she’s going to go home and say ‘that sexy celibate girl is super bland in real life.’”

Slowly and surely, things started to change. The six thousand hits day was a rarity, and my numbers began to go down and down. “Wait!” I thought “Don’t you still love me? Don’t you still want to read my brilliant thoughts? Maybe I’m not that brilliant. Maybe I’m not even very wise.”

I had a harder and harder time writing posts, feeling like if I wasn’t clever, I wouldn’t be liked. Feeling like I might be a disappointment. I started to realize that “The Removal of the Projections.”  was happening.

My long time counselor has a theory that when you are in love, you not only project your best self for the person to see, you also project an your ideal  person onto your partner. What you see in them is not completely realistic.

Then a season called the removal of the projections happens. Your projection of yourself comes down, and your projection towards the other person is removed as well. There is a lot of control during that period, as both partners want to keep the projections up and continue believing in the figments in their head. They don’t want to see the weakness in their partner or in themselves.

It is much safer to go through the removal of the projections stage when you are dating than after you get married. If you have gone through that stage before you get married, you are more confident that your spouse will stay committed to you because you know that they love you for who you are, not for your projection. (This is another reason to not put marriage pressure on dating too fast, as I will talk about in one of my next posts.)

One of the biggest lies I have believed in my life is that people like me at first- are drawn to my music or my teaching or my personality-but once they get to know me, once the projections come down, they are disappointed. It has especially seemed to be true with almost every romantic relationship I’ve been in.

I have had to replace that lie with truth. When I hear in my head that people won’t like me once I get to know me, I say “People love me more the more they get to know me. I bring good things to people’s lives. If I get married, I will greatly enrich that person’s life.”

I have also had to tell myself that those relationships didn’t fail simply because I wasn’t valuable. They failed because it wasn’t a good match.

Sometimes you have to intentionally replace lies with the truth in order to stay sane.

So dear readers, now you know the truth. I am not always clever. I am not always wise. I am just as clueless as most of you when it comes to love. The projections come down, and really I am just a normal person.

But then I remember one of the reasons I love God so much. He loves me whether or not I am clever or wise. He thinks I’m beautiful even when I am in my PJs with no makeup on. I would be infinitely valuable even if I was in a car accident and was a vegetable my whole life.

Even if people are disappointed with me at times, God always sees me beautiful.

I hope you stay committed to me and my blog even if I am not always clever and wise. I hope you don’t break up with me.

But if you do, I will be okay. Even when projections come down, I am valuable. I am loved. I am precious to my Creator’s heart.

Believing that battles all of my insecurities. I no longer rely on my partner or my friends or my readers to give me value. That takes pressure off my relationships and brings freedom and life.

I am valuable. That is the truth. And it is a truth that no one can take away from me.

Apr24

90′s Dating Gone Bad #3: Families Should Be Intimately Involved With Who You Marry

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Today I am going to continue my series on 90′s dating gone bad. (Read this article as an introduction.)

We come to our next rule, that families should be intimately involved in picking our spouses. I include this rule because it was one of the main points in “I Kissed Dating Goodbye.” Out of all the rules that we made as a Christian culture from the book, I really think we could learn from this one.

I wish that  family was as important to our culture as it is to most of the cultures around the world.  It breaks my heart that it is not. The importance of materialism and comfort over family is probably the saddest byproduct of our countries’ independence. But the reality is, in our culture there are very few families that are healthy enough to pick our spouses, or to even help us pick our spouses. Fifty percent of them seemed to do a pretty bad job picking their own.

If you have a wonderful believing family that you are close to who you can dialogue with about your dating life, then go for it. If they treat you like an adult but also want to lovingly help you make such a big decision, that’s invaluable. But not all of our families are like that.

If my parents picked a spouse for me, today, it would most likely be a modified kind of a business proposition (like in the Bible) where they found someone who would take care of me and my kids.  I’d probably get an accountant with a nice mustache and some good hair on his chest. (For some reason I have vague memories of my mom telling me she liked those things. Weird.)

There is nothing wrong with an accountant with a nice mustache, but I am glad that I have the opportunity to pick a life partner that I deeply love .

I like that I can look for  someone that I can dream together with about the kingdom and bringing it here to earth.  That I can look for someone that believes like I do: that  loving people is one of the most important vocations we can possibly have, even if it doesn’t pay well. A man who who simply brings home a decent paycheck and doesn’t think about the world around us is not enough for me, even though it would probably be enough for my parents.
I like that I can choose the man I will spend the rest of my life with. I feel like that is my right as a human being.

On the other hand, I don’t want to be the selfish, non family oriented American that I just described. I have a new, wonderful family around me, a family called the body of Christ. Most of the intimate friends I have chosen in this season of my life are the kinds of friends that never tell me what to do, that trust me to make my own decisions, but who process with me about all things that are important in my life and give wise advice.

I want to process with my family. I want to tell my family how I feel, and genuinely listen to what they have to say about the relationship that I am in. I trust them. They are not controlling, they love me.(If your family does not make you feel safe and try to control your dating life or you I would suggest running away fast.)

If I had eight of my most trusted friends  telling me that they are concerned that the person I’m dating could be a bad fit for me, I would be wise to listen. They can see better than me, since at this stage my brain greatly resembles a bowl of hormonal soup. A bowl of hormonal soup does not often think clearly.

I do make the final decision. They get a vote, I get the biggest vote. But I want the people I trust  to be involved in the process.

Another thing I would like to challenge the church on is creating better singles groups so that our “family” can help us in the dating process. Most single groups now involve a bunch of awkward people standing around a punch bowl asking each other if they like star wars. I hate small talk, and so singles groups are the scariest places on earth to me (along with eharmony first dates.)

I went to Bethel church in Redding last year and attended their single life workshop. I was so impressed with the way they went about bringing single people together. We all met in a large group, but had small groups that we sat with every week and had intimate conversations with. The groups were (heaven forbid!) both female and male! And we (heaven’s to Betsy!) talked about very intimate topics in our group like sex, communicating, even struggling with pornography. Somehow the evangelical police did not arrest us, even while talking about those topics with people of the opposite sex.

We also talked about sexual abuse- something I was surprised and incredibly saddened to discover was something many men had suffered. It was the first time many of them felt like they could talk about it, partially because there were women in the group who had gone through the same thing. They felt safe for the first time.I learned so much about men in those groups-  the way they think and date and struggle and how to pray for them. All invaluable information.

We were encouraged to date each other without crazy amounts of pressure. In fact, Bethel has their own dating website for passionate Christians, which includes links to wise teachings on dating. (ondaysix.com) Our leaders trusted us to be thinking adults who can date well. It felt good to be trusted as a single person.

My Christian culture has often made me feel like I haven’t gone through the “right of passage” of marriage, and so I am not as mature as married people. Why try to teach me on communication,  being a parent, or sex when I don’t need to know any of that? (Except how not to have sex, of course.) The leaders of this group made me feel like this information was important for me to learn, even as a single person.  They made me feel like a valuable, thinking adult. I would love to see people taking the initiative to have these kinds of healthy single groups popping up in churches everywhere.

So let’s take this 90′s dating gone bad rule and make it balanced and redeemed. Let’s love each other enough to teach about singleness. . To dialogue about our dating lives in non manipulating, empowering ways. Marriage is a big decision, and it is good to have family around us to walk with when we make big decisions.