- Men who are very legalistic in their beliefs - spend all their time arguing about and pontificating from scripture
- The true Christian men I have met move very, very slowly. About, oh, 50 times slower than any non-Christian (or quasi-Christian). They take a long time to start up conversations, a long time to call, a long time to go on a first date. We are talking weeks here.
some men also talk out both sides of thier mouth they say they want a Christian woman but when u get to know them they dont know what they want.
Even the men i for a fact that goes to church when u go out with them they r like a octupus or they act like they r afraid to touch u i just dont understand why they cant find the happy medium.:prayingf:
I think a lot of the problem is that guys are constantly taught way too much dating theory and not enough application. They hear all about respecting women, and so they think it's the right thing to do to slowly court you over the next two years before they ask you out on the first date. They have good intentions, but somewhere along the way they never really learned what to do with those intentions. Maybe it's because dating is so discouraged in contemporary Christian culture during middle and high school years so they never really develop their skills. Heck, even in college, guys are often encouraged to basically be ready to marry a girl before they ask her to coffee.
The only way to get out of this cycle is for pastors and parents to break it. Maybe I could write a book. I could call it, "Make a Move Already" and it would be a huge hit.
Here's one more frustration: (If the guy I'm talking about reads this, he'll know I'm talking about him...maybe he'll learn from it!)
A guy acts interested. He contacts me first online, then answers every email faithfully. We move to IM, and that goes really well. He is not the only one to initiate conversations, but he often seems to be eager to chat and will initiate if I don't. He suggests moving off the dating site to regular email or facebook. Sounds great to me, so we go for it. Chats become frequent over the next couple weeks. We know there's a good bit of distance between us, but things are going great online...the next step seems to be a phone call. I give him my number after he asks for it. He never calls. Weeks go by. We are still chatting nearly daily online. He gives every indication that he's very interested in me, and I'm quickly growing to like him very much. If only there weren't 500 miles between us. I'm willing to work around that, he indicates that he is too. He still doesn't call. 4 months later, He finally says that he doesn't think he'll find a wife online (but...that's what he first said he was looking for?), and feels that he needs to stay single for a while longer while waiting for God to bring someone into his life the old-fashioned way. So my whole mindset changes. We stay online friends, but I quit wasting my time chatting with him about serious things. (Things that I was only chatting about because I thought there might be a chance for us, and I felt there were questions I needed ask before considering a 500 mile drive or plane flight.)
I move on to another site.
I wink at a guy. (This one only lives 1.5 hours away, so I'm optimistic.) He emails me back. We email and IM for 10 days. He asks to talk on the phone; he's willing to call me, or he can tell me how to call him so that my number stays hidden. I let him call me. He does so exactly when he promised he would. We talk for a long time, and he asks if I'd be comfortable meeting. Not a date. Just a casual meeting as friends to see if we get along as well in person as we did online and on the phone. We meet a week later. And talk for 3 hours. We have our first date the next week. 3 months later, we are still seeing each other at least once a week, talking on the phone regularly, and emailing back and forth a couple times a week. That's in addition to the fun lunch-break IMs we exchange a few times each week at work. We've met each others families. We've gone to each others churches. We've met each others friends. We enjoy being around each other, and online communication is no match for actually being together.
This guy's approach is totally different from the first guy's. Both attracted me in similar ways at first. Both are good strong Christians. Both seemed eager to get to know me. Both are great guys. But one of them wasn't willing to work for me (ie. take a step of faith and call me, come see me, invite me there). I feel that I was simply a fun distraction from his daily life. The other guy wasn't willing to drag things out. Either he wanted to talk to me and meet me and see if things might have a chance of working out, or he wanted to move on. I found that I appreciated that. I know the distance may have had a lot to do with the first friendship failing, and the lack of distance might be helping this new friendship. But I trust that God already knew that.
Wow. This turned out longer than I expected it would. But now you know how one guy frustrated me for a long time, and how I probably foolishly let it go on for months in hopes that something would change. Then I met the "real deal" and fully realized what a real relationship could be like. I don't regret "meeting" the first guy. We still chat on FB once in a while, and share prayer requests. He's a nice guy. If he's ever in the area, I'd still like to meet him. But I don't want to date him. He had his chance.
