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Three relationship resolutions for 2016.

Relationships are good but hard, and I know it because of personal experience and because of the emails I received throughout 2015 from readers whose requests best can be summed up with one word.

“HELP.” — as in, “Should I break up with her?” and “Why won’t he ask me out?” and “Should I pursue a relationship with her?” and “Is it ok to tell him that I like him?”

It is normal to desire to do relationships well and it is also normal to feel a lot like you have no idea what you are doing. Continue reading “Three relationship resolutions for 2016.”

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What Tim Tebow’s breakup can teach us.

Tim Tebow got dumped. Again. This time, the girl is Olivia Culpo, a former Miss USA who allegedly called it quits after a couple of months because she “can’t handle” Tebow’s sexual abstinence.

So last week, a New York Daily News gossip blog mocked the famous football player for his inability to “find the endzone,” and wrote that it isn’t the first time that his decision to save sex has caused him to fumble in his love life.

Which is ludicrous.

It’s not ludicrous because Tebow didn’t fumble. He absolutely fumbled. We all do. But he didn’t fumble because he decided to save sex. He fumbled because he decided to date a girl who thinks saving sex is a bad idea.

And I wonder why — why a person who intends to live life like God designed it decided to date a person who isn’t into that. Maybe for the same reason I did? Continue reading “What Tim Tebow’s breakup can teach us.”

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Why women need good men in a world where Tinder exists

On Friday, a friend sent me a text while she swiped left and right for awhile on Tinder. The app connects users to close-by potential dates, which is why what my friend found there that morning alarmed her.

She stopped swiping when she saw it: the familiar face of a man last active on the app a half hour earlier — a smiling male acquaintance.

A smiling male acquaintance who has a girlfriend. Continue reading “Why women need good men in a world where Tinder exists”

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Want to find true intimacy? Then drop the act.

Relationships are hard. This is not new information. But I propose that part of what makes them hard is not the adjustment and disclosure that authenticity demands of us. Instead, it’s our relentless resistance to adjusting and disclosing.

I bet Donald Miller would agree. Over the weekend, I finished reading his latest book, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Finding True Intimacy. In it, Miller discusses a painful disruption of his life (which started with the demise of an engagement), his later relationship with the woman he’d actually marry, and how his experiences resulted over time in an ability to pursue what he never had pursued before: true intimacy. Continue reading “Want to find true intimacy? Then drop the act.”

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The Lost Art of Patience

I am not good at patience. Neither is the elderly woman I met on the checkout line at Sears once. She stood behind me, clutching a pink nightgown wrapped in plastic, prepared to pay for it with debit or credit. I — though then in my early 20s — rifled through papers and pens in my purse until I finally found what I sought: my checkbook.

Responses to the person who writes a check at the checkout counter vary in intensity, and include but are not limited to stink-eye and mockery. The elderly woman settled for an audible sigh. But I ignored it, pen in hand and smile on face, prepared to exercise my right to write a check for whatever it is that I bought.

At the register, I recognized the cashier — a classmate from middle school. Conversation ensued. So did stink-eye, from behind me. But I pressed on, writing that check and talking while I wrote. Then I tore it out of the book and slid it across the counter. But the cashier handed it back. As the elderly woman rolled her eyes, the cashier pointed out my mistake.

Continue reading “The Lost Art of Patience”