Posted on

“Assumptions are the termites of relationships.”

A version of this post originally appeared on the blog in 2010.

– – – –

Have you ever been on an “I’m not sure if this is a” date?

We are probably usually far more sure than we say we are. But we deny we are sure so if we learn one of us doesn’t want to date the other, it doesn’t sting.

Imagine you’re a college kid. You show up first, slip into Starbucks, and slink into a big, black velvet chair. You (usually pretend to) read (who can focus at a time like this?). You try not to look at the door. And you think.

Do I buy my drink?

Do I wait to let him pay?

Does he want to pay?

Is this a date?

If only he’d been explicit.

“Can I take you out on Friday?” instead of “Want to grab coffee on Friday?” Is that so hard?

He shows up. You smile. He’s nervous.

So it is a date.

You walk to the counter. You ask for tea. He asks for coffee.

“Together, or separate?”

He looks at you.

Brother, this ball was made for your court. But he has assumed the choice is yours. Shoot! You panic.

“Separate!” you say. Did you really have any other viable option? If you had said “together,” he’d think you think you’re on a date. And that’s the last thing you want him to think you’re thinking if you don’t know whether he’s thinking it, too.

You both pull out your wallets. So it’s not a date. He smiles. Did he smile because he’s relieved? Is he offended and the smile was fake? You assume he’s happy to be out with a friend.

You assume.

And “assumptions are the termites of relationships.” (Henry Winkler)

But it doesn’t just happen among college kids on awkward first dates. This is at work and at church and in grad school. It’s in public places and on the road and at parties. It’s in marriages and families and circles of friends.

Imagine a world where we could be bolder.

Where we could communicate when we once were too afraid to do it.

To ask what someone’s intentions are (instead of guessing). To share our true feelings (instead of stifling them). To reject ambiguity (instead of using it as a preemptive defense against rejection). To explicitly identify our needs (instead of waiting for the people who can meet them to read our minds).

We assume and we act on that (which is code for “we do what presents the smallest risk.”).

But our avoidance of risk is what makes taking risks unbearable.

Our caution in effort to avoid the sting of rejection enables us not to try.

Perhaps we are too cautious.

Perhaps what we fear only stings so much because we’ve been too cautious for too long.

Posted on

Is attraction enough?

FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Once, I sipped a water in a cruise ship bar and made eyes with a cruise ship drummer.

A good looking cruise ship drummer.

Who wasn’t wearing a wedding band.

Whose eyes’ contact with mine resulted in warm and fuzzy feelings.

This, I think, is the coveted “love” at first sight (which, to clarify, isn’t actually love).

It is instantaneous, inexplicable attraction. It is why when I met the cruise ship drummer after his set, I didn’t care that he hardly could speak English. It is why I wasn’t embarrassed by my embarrassing opener: “I don’t speak Spanish.” Not much matters except for attraction when we think the existence of attraction is enough.

But attraction alone doesn’t matter much. It is neither warm feelings nor fuzzy ones that deem the pursuit of a relationship necessarily advisable. Which is why I am mildly alarmed by the frequency with which relationships are pursued based solely on warm and fuzzy feelings.

This is when we are self-focused daters. When we want what we want because it feels good, not because it is good. When we date someone because we are attracted to him or her.

This is not to say we should date people to whom we are not attracted. (Awkward!) It is to say that attraction is not enough (especially if it’s inexplicable).

It is never enough.

The outcomes of self-focused dating vary. Maybe you get lucky and wind up with somebody good. Maybe you fight to sustain or revive an irrational relationship. Maybe you marry a person who, outside the attraction, you don’t even like.

But I can’t even tell you how much this hurts my heart.

My hunch is, in a culture as distracted as ours, most of us are satisfied when looking at, being near, talking to, or sleeping with him or her feels good.

Which is why few people probably stop to consider the magnitude of the self-focused pursuit and maintenance of relationships; to consider what it means that we are more concerned with how good somebody makes us feel than with whether he or she is mature enough to be a spouse.

Than with whether we become better or worse people by being with each other.

Than with whether he or she would be a good parent.

Than with whether we are being fair to our future kids when our future kids will grow up and turn into one of us.

My attraction to you and yours to me doesn’t render us prepared to be spouses or parents. My attraction to you and yours to me is necessary but insufficient for a functional relationship.

“But it feels good.”

But “it feels good” isn’t enough.

Posted on

“Do Christians idolize virginity?”

In a post today on Rachel Held Evans’s fabulous blog (1), she posed the following questions:

“Does the Christian culture idolize virginity?”

and

“How should our narratives surrounding sex, virginity, and purity change, particularly as they concern women?”

I feel compelled to respond.

Whether the Christian culture idolizes virginity depends entirely on your definition of “the Christian culture.” I am reminded of the book The Purity Myth by Jessica Valenti (2), which I read in 2012. In it, Valenti decries what she interchangeably refers to as “the purity myth” and “the virginity movement,” for maintaining the myths that men are uncontrollably interested in sex and women aren’t interested all, for shaming women who have sex outside of wedlock, and for fostering hierarchical relationships (in which men have authority and women submit to them).

Like Valenti, I neither believe that men can’t control themselves nor that women don’t have sex drives.

I am opposed to shaming people who have nonmarital sex.

I am so opposed to hierarchical relationships that I had to stop reading blogs by the people who are for ’em, for the sake of my health (I’m lookin’ at you, Tim Challies.).

But I’m also a 27-year-old virgin.

Who sometimes speaks to youth groups about saving sex.

Who won’t date guys who can’t handle no sex until marriage.

I don’t save sex because I will be “impure” if I don’t. I save sex because I believe saving sex aligns with love like Jesus defines it.

And because “in not knowing what I’m doing [on my wedding night], I can express confidence in my spouse’s commitment to me. In not knowing what to expect, I can infuse my vows with authenticity.”

And because the pursuit of premarital sexual compatibility is at the expense of something more valuable. Because “maybe it’s to a relationship’s disadvantage to pick a partner with whom you’re effortlessly sexually compatible over a partner who is willing to work through conflict. Maybe we do each other a disservice when we search for consistently gratifying sex but avoid opportunities to become people who can communicate when it isn’t. Maybe how willing we are to practice and communicate, and to be uncomfortable and vulnerable in sex [i.e., on the wedding night, if you haven’t slept yet with the guy or the girl you just married] predicts how willing we’ll be to do those things in other parts of a relationship.”

Valenti reserves the right to define “the purity myth” and the “virginity movement” however she wants. But in the book, she did it with disregard for shades of gray. The truth is this isn’t always either/or. It can be both/and. I both am a proponent of chastity (and therefore of abstinence until marriage) and agree that most of what Valenti decries in the book should be decried (I decry it myself!).

All of that is to say this:

If you define “the Christian culture” the way Valenti defines “the purity myth,” then the Christian culture puts virgins on a pedestal. It says “Girls have to cover up so boys don’t objectify them,” which implies it’s the woman’s fault if she stumbles, and it’s the woman’s fault if he stumbles. It perpetuates the maintenance of gender roles at the expense of authenticity. It always says you’re “good” until you’ve had sex, and never says you are still good afterward.

But is that Christian culture the same one that walks the narrow road?

I have a hunch it isn’t.

Which brings us to RHE’s second question: How should our narratives change (presumably in order that they won’t perpetuate Valenti’s purity myth), particularly as they concern women?

We must include men. The “Christian culture” – as implicitly defined by the bloggers RHE quoted in today’s post – takes the onus for upholding purity and puts it on women. Women have to cover up so men don’t sin. Women have to be virgins for their fathers first, and then for their husbands. The result is stuff like the kind but frustrating emails I get in which fans of my work write they wish more women lived like I do, that if all women were chaste the world would be a better place.

As if men have no influence on the state of the world.

We must talk more about sex. People who host purity balls, or call sexually experienced single people “damaged goods,” routinely say “don’t have sex until you’re married” but provide few reasons other than “God says so.” They say “don’t have sex until you’re married” and never talk about sex. But is sex what sex is in our culture because kids got too much accurate information about it?

And we must be explicit. The world doesn’t get to define chastity. I get to define chastity. (Technically, the Catholic Church gets to define it, and I get to borrow its definition. But you catch my drift.) And I have to define it explicitly. The chastity Valenti describes is not the chastity I practice. If I keep my mouth shut about the difference, then I say “I practice chastity” and a lot of people hear “I promote rigid gender roles.” The result, when we aren’t explicit, is a world (plus a segment of the church) that thinks “Christian culture” is a culture that damages women.

If that is “Christian culture,” I frankly want no part.

– – – –

1. Click here to read the post on RHE’s blog.

2. Click here to read what I wrote last year about The Purity Myth.

Posted on

The goal of chastity.

I have suspected for awhile now that there is little clarity in our culture regarding the goal of chastity.

This is probably in part because there is little clarity regarding the difference between abstinence (which ends at marriage) and chastity (which never ends). But it is also probably in part because chastity contradicts the ways of life our culture encourages us to pursue (and in case it needs to be said, chastity isn’t one of them).

In other words, it’s really freakin’ difficult for the average, unchaste American to wrap his or her head around the concept.

Which isn’t an insult. (It’s an observation.)

A case in point comes from an anonymous comment somebody left on my site the other day, regarding my choice to save sex for marriage, which is rooted in chastity:

“Your options, and the available pool of accomplished men … is severely limited. 99.9% of all the men will have nothing to do with you, and you know it.”

Which is an observation. (But I think it was supposed to be an insult.)

Whoever left the comment is right, and may as well have quoted Jesus:

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it.”

1. There are fewer fish in our sea.

but

2. Chaste daters learn not to worry about finding the needle in the haystack (and not solely because we can’t find the right haystack).

The difference between people who practice chastity and people like the one who wrote the comment is this: We are ok with points 1 and 2. They aren’t.

Our ok-ness with points 1 and 2 is the result of knowing the goal of chastity.

Of knowing few people in our culture find a man or a woman dateable who isn’t going to have sex with them before marriage.

Of knowing this is a non-issue if what you intend to accomplish by dating is to meet somebody who would suit you as a spouse.

Of knowing that if you are saving sex, somebody who is not saving sex is not suitable for you.

Of knowing, when you meet someone not suitable, how to suck it up and move along.

When author Elna Baker wrote about sex for Glamour, she called virginity a disadvantage in dating. In the same way, the anonymous comment implies chastity is a disadvantage. As if the small pool of people from which chaste daters can choose is proof our way of life doesn’t work.

But the “good luck with thats” and the “you’ll be single forevers” and the anonymous comments like the one around which this post revolves are proof of this:

People don’t get our way of life.

The goal of chastity is love.

It’s about death to self and self mastery, which require abstinence until marriage, and celibacy if you aren’t married. It’s about upholding the intrinsic value of the human, which requires us neither to use nor objectify each other, which requires us to reject relationships that are based solely on emotions or sensations (to reject, in other words, relationships based solely on what use they are of to me).

And it does, in fact, mean that “99.9% of all the men” will have nothing to do with me.

Which, believe it or not, makes practicing it a lot easier.

Posted on

Love is tough.

I sat in my seat in a circle of students in my counseling theories class.

Pen in hand and a self-inventory worksheet on top of a book in my lap, I thought about the question at the top of the paper: 
What did you learn about love from how your parents treated you?
This is what I wrote:

Love requires trust (in multiple ways). Trustworthiness was expected of me, not as a condition of love but as a function of it. Love is tough. When I am loved, I am held to high standards, expected to be the best I can and not enabled to do whatever is less than my best.

I think of this a lot.

I think of it as a counselor (Ha! It’s still so new to call myself that.), in my observation of families and in my interactions with clients.

But also as a daughter. A sister. A friend. A single woman. A potential wife and parent.

This is not about one person telling another what he or she has to change about him or herself in order to be marriage material (I did that once, and it isn’t love).

This is not about manipulating a person into being who they aren’t, who you’d like them to be (somebody tried to do that to me once, and it isn’t love, either).

It is not about having unreasonable expectations (sort of like when my goal was to find – nay, be found by – a Catholic chiropractor who has dreadlocks and a Scottish accent).

It is not about relating like an authoritarian.

This is about ti voglio bene. Italian for “I love you,” but translated literally – according to Edward Sri in Men, Women and the Mystery of Love – it is “I wish you good” or “I want what is good for you.”

This is really about sacrifice.

It’s about not putting yourself between your kid and reasonable consequences for his or her behavior (because while you suffer when they do, if you always save them, they never can learn). It’s about not spoiling your kid, even if it makes you sad when your kid doesn’t get what he or she wants, or your kid’s response to “no” irritates the snot out of you (because kids who are given everything become adults who don’t want to do anything).

It’s about expecting the beloved to reach the bar (of integrity, responsibility, chastity, etc.), not lowering it for them. It’s about accepting that to lower the bar for somebody – while easy for you – is to contribute to the maintenance of his or her weakness, to the atrophy of his or her muscles.

It’s about being there for the beloved through his or her growing pains (which implies allowing him or her to grow), not vetoing somebody’s growth so you don’t have to witness his or her pain.

Love is tough.

Ti voglio bene.