I was saved, and baptised in the Holy Spirit when I was in preschool. I was raised as a perfectionist Christian so it was easy for me to place myself on a pedestal and be frustrated with the ways of others that struggle. I had been drilled with the philosophies of respect and love and adoration for my fellow women and I wanted to be loving and respectful. Christian women in high school dated and married bad men who were not Christians. Many of them came back battered and abused by their non-christian husbands. But around when I was 26 years old I realized that most women were not capable of being perfect and it appeared that girls, ladies, women were not interested in a good moral man. So around 26 years old I began trying to be less than what I had been aspiring to be. I began trying to be less than respectable because that is what it appeared that women wanted. Christian women did not respect my respectable ways. So I have since changed. I no longer go out of my way to open a car door for a woman if she can open it for herself. This has led to my being, at least in my mind, to be a disrespectful man. Which I don't like. This has caused me to really loose interest in christian women all together. They just seem so shallow always wanting the non-christian man. Trying to be less of a perfectionist and quite accepting leads to being accepting of too much.
Who do you want in your life? I don't believe that we will ever find someone that is the perfect image of what we can imagine. There has to be difference there somewhere because none of us have ever walked in the same shoes, or even realize how many miles we have walked in them. I was also raised with manners, being polite by opening doors for women, or in any situation for all people. Don't lose that part of you. I think that it is the good that is in us, that no matter what the situation, we strive for that good that is there. It can only bring out more good.
I also hear what you are saying about your perception of life when it comes to how christian women have married "badboys" so to speak. I have seen something similar in the past and learned that when I start grouping people together, it kind of takes away from the individual, making it seem like they are just part of this same group. I know that life is harder when I had done this in the past. By doing that, I took those individuals out of the well worn shoes they have walked in, and put a pair on them that matched up with a bunch of others. I started to categorize people, and the more I did that, the more negative I got about those certain people that I was doing that to. The focus here is that I was the one that was doing it. That is something that I can change. Everyone has to walk in their own shoes and experience life in how they go about it. It is not something we can control. But we can change ourselves and the way that we think for the better. But we won't be able to do that if we are focusing on the lives of other people and the way they go about living. We have to go about our lives, going after our own aspirations, the ones that make us more of who we are, as better people, find the way to love ourselves first before we can ever find a person to love for the rest of our lives. We need to become more balanced in our own lives.
Trying to be a perfectionist about things is not going to help in any case either. Yes, it is good to try and do something to the best of your ability, but no one is perfect. Who can say what is perfect? Who wrote those words in a book? No one. All we have on this earth is society to tell us what to strive for, what would be considered a "perfect" life. I think that a lot of people use that word for themselves as a cloak, somewhere to hide from their true self. They don't like what they see in themselves or don't know who they are, and they don't think that others will either, so they go around town pretending they are these confident, perfect people to impress who? The other confident, perfect people? What is the gain out of that? Just a bunch of smoke and mirrors. There isn't any character to these people because they don't even know who they are, to strive to be more. They somehow try and show to others that they are on the top of the world, that they are the ones to be envied. If these people don't change, they will forever live a life of imprisonment within themselves.
You sound like a good man that wants a great relationship. Just to be honest with you, if you think that you are perfect, and don't have any ideas on how to become even better, then life is over. You would not have any room to grow. Be like the plants of the earth and find ways to grow as an individual. Be as tall as a Redwood if you like. Just don't be perfect. If the women that are on this site are all grouped up in that category, then your mind will not change about christian women. I know they are not all the same. Finding one that strays away from the crowd, make that leads their own path away from the crowd would be one that I would consider. No cookie cutter for me please.
