The Dating Disease

No one knows when the epidemic started. But it spread rapidly and was discovered all at once all over the world. It infected young and old and crossed international borders. The devastation broke up families, caused best friends to abandon each other, and un-measurable heartache. The dating game is now a disease and wrecks emotional havoc on the human heart.

This phenomenon is not unique to America. I have friends in Germany, Latin America, France, Japan, and even neutral Switzerland that all attest that dating is horrible. Symptoms include ghosting, bread crumming, one date willies, long drawn out breakups, repeated makeups, and more time spent analyzing symptoms than living.

Articles are starting to pop up with cures for the above list of dating symptoms. Most articles deal with avoiding the symptoms. These are not cures if you want fulfilling lifelong relationship. The only way to cure dating rather than avoid symptoms is with healthy platonic friendships. If you can find un-infected ones. The worst part is that the cure itself has its own issues.

Platonic friendships are infected by the transient delusional realities of social media and a consumer driven culture. Most communication happens through electronics. Interpersonal communication has mutated from an in-person eye to eye communication of events that requires intention and care, to the upload of a simple photo / or status share with no particular ‘friend’ in mind as the recipient. Without a specific intent, the communication becomes insignificant to a relationship.

Friends become commodities. A seemingly endless supply exists through dating apps / friendship apps, and the ease of adding someone on social media. One can try on friends like one tries on clothes. Don’t like how they respond to your complaints? There is that one acquaintance you had in high school you can meet again. Do they expect you to grow up and occasionally disagree with you? There is that other person you met at the bar last week. No permanence. No humility. No self-sacrifice to stick by your friends.

Friendships should be for life, at least a few of them. You should have a few friends that know everything, you intentionally make time for, plan trips with, bring up the difficult conversations, allow to call you out, and call them out. These types of relationships are difficult, time consuming and require you to sacrifice your own wants and needs for theirs.

The lack of these tightly connected relationships allows the infection of romantic relationships with the feelings and desire for support that should be held by lifetime friends. This emotional attachment is more than a dating relationship, or any romantic relationship, should bear on its own. The emotional attachment to an innately unstable relationship is what causes most of the pain in dating.

Each relationship needs to have an emotional, physical, and time commitment that is equal to its permanency. If the relationship has no permanency or commitment, don’t give up the emotional parts of yourself that are important. Is the friendship permanent? Then you should actively seek them out to share in person the important parts of your life.

A dating relationship is not permanent. When it is given the same amount of emotional and energy input as a permanent relationship, it causes the pain and sickness. The only way to make dating less painful, is to treat it like dating, and treat your best friends like best friends, with energy, intention, and dedicated love.

Love is Simple

Hollywood produces a steady stream of movies that portray stories of fantasmagical proportions. Heroes such as James Bond and Captain America are both larger than life, but are portrayed in a very rapid carefully strung together story line with a seemingly endless rising action. Even true to life stories are cut and edited to grip the audience. Even the most mundane become spectacular.

A simple father becomes a hero to find his son. A child becomes a king. Several ordinary men save a country. Most significantly love is built up to almost scripted perfection. Though some hero stories are based on real life, and some real life love stories are worthy of the big screen, these are few and far between, and are, in actual life, more filled with the mundane than the spectacular.

In real life we eat pizza, cook soup, walk past stores, sleep, clean, drive, make coffee, and work for most of our lives. Love is involved in simple flowers, chocolates, a smile, a clean dish, a folded article of clothing, a short walk and a hand picked flower, kisses on the cheek, and even a slice of cheese.

Love can be very simple. All of the large plans, carefully thought out trips, and adventures lose their luster if we cannot say I love with the very things that we touch and do every day. And that is why, I love country music.

To be continued…

Gay Marraige

I was at a LGBT workshop put on by the Flood church this last Sunday. It was a very well done conversation that highlighted several key points that should be considered when talking about the Church, Christ, and those with varying gender identities.

I seek to only highlight one thought from the discussion. Identity. The individual who shared, who himself was a man who was attracted to other men, and is also a brother in Christ emphasized one very important point. Ones attraction to one sex or another, heterosexual, homosexual, or bi sexual, or ones identifying as male or female is secondary to ones identity in Christ.

As a Christian, it is our relationship with Christ that defines us first, everything else comes from that.

For those that do not know Christ, lifting Him up and leading them to Him is the first step. For if they do not believe or know my Christ Jesus, why should I expect them to live as He calls me to?

I am very guilty in letting titles or identifying traits define me; male, adult, employee at such and such a company, boyfriend to so and so, brother, sensei, extrovert, etc. But first, my identity is in Christ, and I must live like Him.

For those that are not Christians reading this, please, don’t be shy about reminding my brothers and sisters where their identity is, gently of course. 🙂

The Church and Marraige

On Marriage: To the Church, with Love

It occurred to me recently that I present my blog as a culturally involved blog, and I have not been culturally involved much at all recently. In fact, I haven’t been very involved in anything but work and close relationships. So much so in fact, that it was a few days after the recent supreme court decision to mandate the allowance of a man to be married to a man, and a woman to be married to a woman, before I heard the news. When I found out, my response was, “really? I didn’t know it was being voted on. Oops. Should have kept up on the news more.”

As a devout Christian, it doesn’t bother me in the slightest that our government legalized it. I am not one of those Christians that happily adds a rainbow to his Facebook page to show support. I am not one who calls out that America is going to be under God’s judgement for this. I hold that the Bible says that the act of homosexual intercourse is a sin. However, it is also very clear in Scripture that though we are to uphold God’s truth, we do not condemn those who do not know Christ. They don’t believe in my God, so why should I hold them to His standards?

However, here I speak to the position of the church, not individuals (I believe there are slight nuances in how each should present themselves). I do not believe that the church should ever have spent much time fighting against what the government calls or does not call marriage. Because, Christians, in case you didn’t know, what the government calls or doesn’t call marriage has no effect on what God calls marriage and its place in the church.

It doesn’t change how husbands and wives should love each other or how the church should be taking care of widows and orphans. What the church should be fighting for is simply their right to continue to worship and serve God without hindrance. Pastors should never be required to perform marriage ceremonies for a couple they don’t believe should be married (homosexual or heterosexual), or host the wedding in their building. I believe that a good similar analogy would be that doctors, who take the Hippocratic Oath, should never be forced to practice euthanasia. It would cause them to act in difference to their beliefs and their character as they had made a promise. Do you think that is a good analogy?

Governments will do what they do. Our hope as Christians is that we may worship and serve him freely while showing care for all people, without acting against our conscious, or character of love and mercy as shown to us in the person of Jesus Christ.

(Note, I am not saying that we are close to churches being required to officiate weddings they don’t believe in. There is a lot of fear mongering out there of, “flaming liberals” trying to force churches to officiate homosexual unions. I have never met a homosexual who believes this, and to my knowledge these are the rare extreme, not the norm.

Furthermore, if I worded something poorly in this article that unnecessarily causes offense, please, leave a comment or shoot me a message.)

When Friendships in Christ Fail

I have this almost constant battle in my mind of what should happen, and what actually does. One of the most difficult for me is relationships with Christians that fall apart. Everything in me screams that we are supposed to love each other and that Christ at the center can fix it. I hate saying goodbye to anyone. And even years after I lose contact with a friend, I still think of them fondly, regardless of what brought about that change.

He came to set us free from our sins, and really it is our sins that break relationships because if we were all perfect, we would all get along. Even within the broken world I so desperately want my relationships with my fellow followers of Christ to be different. So at the recent loss of yet another close friend (I remember each and every close friend I have ‘lost’ to a relationship breakdown, and I think of them throughout the year) I must ask myself, what am I to do? I cannot make others happy. I cannot control their actions, so when they wish to leave, I must let them leave and live in peace. But how shall I respond.

At this moment, I cry. I cry because I see that is what Christ did. When I read the story of Christ raising Lazarus from the dead, I don’t believe that he was crying because his friend died. Christ new that he would raise Lazarus. Crying over his death doesn’t make sense.

Christ tells them that he is glad that he was not there in order that they may believe, and that his sickness would not end in death, but was for God’s Son to be glorified through it. Christ tells them that he is the resurrection and the life, and not that he is the life that will bring Lazarus back from the grave then, but eternal life for, “they will live even though they die.”

When he saw them weeping, even after he explained this, he began to weep. Not because he was sad for his friend, but because his dear children did not believe. They did not see the truth of life that he had brought. In a sense he is crying because his relationship with them was broken, or at least very childish. Rather than having belief in who he is, which is required of eternal life. So he weeps.

I may be stretching this exact passage a bit, but if we look at a lack of faith as being a broken, or at least immature relationship with Christ, and that is what Christ weeps over, then we to in being like God are to cry over broken relationships.

So, as I continue to wish that Christ would return and make all things right so that I can have wonderful perfect relationships with my friends, I do what I must now, which is cry my temporary loss of relationship with them.

A Moment of Courage, I don’t usually have: Open

I used to think that close friendship with another person meant that I knew everything about them. I asked them questions. I feel their pain. I tell them what I am excited about for the future. That is it. The closeness meter is determined by how much I see them cry.

It finally occurred to me that being close to someone means that they need to see you to. As you are. Hurts, pains, and failings. It can’t be them finding out, it needs to be you telling them. Otherwise, when the dark days come, and they do come, you won’t have anyone that knows how to help you, and you won’t tell anyone.

I am deciding that the, “others need to see you” is going to become, “I am going to show myself to others.” Unfortunately the timing of it goes that when I am ready to share something, something interrupts. Or I mentally just tell them as though I am teaching a lecture. More emotionally draining is the realization that I may not be around my most committed friends, whom I believe deserve to see me, when I am ready to share. This is usually why I refrain from sharing in these moments when I so desire to be known, “This should wait for my best friend.” So I bottle it up and forget.

Today, I decide that I must speak.

I must be found.

And I pray to God that it goes well, because my other fear is that talking about my mental demons will open up for others the same chasm I fall into.

I Did Something Human

I did something interesting today. I did something human. What I did is totally normal and most everyone partakes of it every day and at least every day. But to me is quite peculiar.

I hunted for parking for twenty minutes (normal for San Diego, although it is a work day, so shouldn’t people be working?). I met Allison to go snorkeling (I like snorkeling). I found that I had lost one of our snorkels and one of our masks (about the fifth thing I have lost this week (wait, its Monday…). I complained about the water being cold (cause I am a wimp). We got gelato. We talked about food, social events, friends, and children. Then I left.

I didn’t ask how she was doing. I mean I did. I just didn’t ask two, three or four times. I didn’t pry into events that I knew were going on. I didn’t try to work through some emotional trauma. I didn’t talk theology or philosophy. I just enjoyed my friends company and made a memory.

As I was driving away, I felt almost as if something was amiss. But, at the same time, it felt like a success. I had done something new. I just simply enjoyed time with another human being with very little analyzation of the situation, conversation, or them as a person. I didn’t try to infer habits from child hood or figure out why she liked certain things. It was weird, bizarre, and slightly uncomfortable. But rather nice.

So today, I bid you, go do something fun, make a memory. And just enjoy another human being because that is what we as humans are supposed to do.

(I may make this a new series “I Did Something Human” which would take an odd look at what we think are rather normal behaviors, point to their quirks, and then point to their necessity. Thoughts?)

Listening Part 2

I love hanging out with people who are blunt and simply call things out the way they are. I have several close friends that happily inform me, at the moment of observation regardless of whether it fits the current context or not, that, “your balding,” “you swim slow,” “you laugh really loud,” or, “you talk too much.”

Although some may find this offensive, I find this rather comforting. I always know where I stand with them. There is no guess or wondering if I am doing something right or something horribly wrong. Unfortunately this stems more from a lack of desire to listen closely to those who are not so forward.

I have many friends that are rather quite. They will inform you of everything you need to know, they just are not forward, firm, or loud about it. If I am tired, distracted, or not really paying that close of attention I usually always miss what they are communicating. This usually leads to friction, mis understandings and the need for scheduled conversations.

When it comes to listening, I feel that it is my job to listen in the language that the other communications, just as much as it is their job to realize the times when I may need them to spell it out in a bright neon sign instead of quite whispers.

The only issue, is that for those that are more quite or imply, I can also have the opposite tendency to pick up on things that they never intended. The whole picture needs to be in view. How do we learn? Only through experience.

Do you have any insights or stories of listening well to those who are more reserved?

Listening part 2 (this one is boring)

Listening can be very difficult. Not that there is any difficulty in actually hearing things, but in actually understanding. I am sorry to say that today I am rather un imaginative, so I hope that this is not to boring. But I see listening as taking on several parts, and all of these are realizations that I have had in the last few days.

I need to practice listening with my ears, as well as my eyes and body. Not only do I need to engage them with my whole person, posture and eye contact, but I also need to watch what they are communicating non verbally. I might miss something important.

I need to be comfortable with the relationship. If I am worried about losing a friend, or already concerned that the other person doesn’t like me, I start to think up many things that are not even a part of the conversation. Do they really mean what they say? Are they holding something back? Am I good enough?

Along with that, I need to be comfortable enough with myself that if they are wrong about something, that I am willing to let that go as I am listening. When I start to argue with them, in my own head, and defend myself, I stopped listening and starting fighting for what is mine.

I want to be the person who is a servant to others, who is willing to let what he wants go in order to be there for someone else.

It is only just recently that I realized, that in any good relationship there needs to be the security that even if something is wrong, (since we are human there always will be) we are confident in the character of the other person and the relationship itself. Trust truly is the foundation of any good relationship.