davehayes.org

the problem of dating in christian circles is an interesting one to be sure. this has become evident to me through a number of personal experiences, and due to the personal nature of those experiences, i struggle with maintaining a polite attitude on the subject. i will openly admit that i find the entire situation to be increasingly frustrating, and i hope that i can somehow shed some light or provide some insight on the subject without offending anyone too badly.

before we begin i’d also like to remind you that i do not claim to be a spokesperson for the male sex and that there will always be exceptions to everything that i say. however, i do believe that the ideas i’m about to describe contain a great deal of truth in general and could prove to be very useful in forming your ideas about how to go about dating as a christian. having said that, i’m no expert on dating either, as anyone close to me knows. alas, i am but a man with a bible and a brain who is only trying to find his way and find his mate.

some of my contemporaries relate to me stories of their female friends being perplexed by the actions of men, stating that men are complicated or some such business. this has not been my personal experience, but i will address this nonetheless. without trying to be smug, nothing could be further from the truth. we men are very simple in how we go about forming relationships. it seems to me that a lot of women are unaware of what the men in their life are thinking, especially in regards to the “friendship” between them.

perhaps the first thing that should be said is that men and women are just wired differently and there is no getting around that. we have different ideas about intimacy and whatnot that are beyond the scope of this post. one of the big areas where it seems men and women differ is the issue of whether or not men and women can truly be friends. i’m not talking about in a large group setting, rather where they’re alone together for some amount of time each week, talk frequently or whatever. from my experience, most women would say that it could/does work, most men would say that it would not. why do we disagree on this?

i can say from my own personal experiences that every single female friend that i’ve had that i was even remotely attracted to, i ended up wanting to date them. not that this has always been a good idea or anything. in fact, this attempt to date a friend has a near 100% failure rate. it’s the veritable kiss of death that so many of us guys have heard before, “i just want to be friends.” now we can laugh about that, but i dare say none of us has been spared this experience. but why does it happen so often?

well, for christian guys in general, we consider every girl we meet to be a potential partner. we see a romantic relationship as the natural progression from a deep friendship. as we grow closer and closer with a girl who is our friend, it will eventually grow into a desire to date that person. in other words, if you’re spending any amount of time with a guy outside of a group, it’s pretty safe to assume that he’s interested in dating you. there is no doing things as “just friends” for us, rather doing things as friends in hopes that it will progress into something more. we men make no distinction between friends and potential partners. the problem comes in that women make quite the distinction between the two.

as best i can tell, women have two groups into which they place men. some men are considered potential partners, others are considered friends. it seems that most men with which you have already established some type of non-romantic relationship will fall into the friend category by default. most women will not let themselves think of men in the friends cateogry in a romantic way. many women will see a growing friendship as a closing door in terms of a romantic relationship. this creates a problem because we men don’t have a “friends” group. consider how many times you’ve ever heard of a guy and a girl who were close friends and the girl wanted the relationship to progress into a romantic, dating type relationship and the guy refused. i can’t think of a single occasion.

at the risk of sounding improper, also consider this. say you and a close guy friend were at your apartment watching a movie. suppose you (the female) attempted to initiate a make out session. would the guy refuse, saying he doesn’t want to ruin the friendship? citing that he thinks of you as a sister? i submit that he would not. some might refuse because of personal convictions, but i’m certain it would have little to do with your interest in him.

so why do girls think this way? to be completely honest, i don’t know. but i do have a theory. from what i can see, it seems that nearly all girls (whether they would admit it or not) want to have a knight in shining armor ride into their life on a white horse and sweep them off their feet. the guys they see at church every week are mere peasants that could not possibly fill this role. i dare say most men out there are looking for a girl who will ignite their passion to such a degree that they would fight tooth and nail to show them how deeply they love. similarly, i think most women are looking for guys who would be willing to do just that. so is the knight in shining armor a pipe dream? does it still exist? is chivalry dead?

the analogy of the knight in shining armor doesn’t begin with a perfect knight and his steed; it begins with a peasant, a common man who knows next to nothing about being chivalrous, but when the woman he loves is at stake, he will fight with every ounce of strength, every breath of air, every molecule of his being to secure her.

if you’re waiting for the perfect knight, you’ll be waiting forever. but if you can find the man that’s willing to do his best (even if he has no clue what he’s doing) come hell or high water to be with you, you’ve found something worth hanging on to. i challenge those of you reading this to think outside of the compartmentalizations you’ve placed upon the people in your life and see a loving relationship for what it really is: a very deep and meaningful friendship. it’s no coincidence that both parties in a successful marriage will say that their spouse is their best friend.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 13th, 2005 at 4:36 pm and is filed under faith, life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.