Wisdom – galloblog

Gallo claps back at a her own video

👏👏👏

I stumbled across an old YouTube video that I participated in 6 years ago. It was a google hangout (remember those?) that some friends and I put together to discuss the perils and philosophies of Christian dating.

It was personally cringeful. Mostly because I couldn’t say 1 sentence without using “like” 7 times. Get a grip, Dr. I was also apparently cursed with a bad phone and bad cell service so my most frequent contribution was “What?”

But it did make me laugh out loud several times. What silly gooses. I almost wished we could do a follow up discussion since now we’re all married, I assume happily. Unfortunately due to budget restrictions of Galloblog – and more importantly, a complete failure to maintain adult friendships – I have instead spearheaded this opportunity to do my own personal follow up and answer the questions I now think are more interesting.

What belief did you hold about dating when you were single that you do not anymore?
Great question. There are two major things. One, I used to think I wanted someone who fit snugly into my single life. I had no idea that so many ideas of “must haves” were not musts at all. When you fall in love 100%, it becomes way less about how they fit into your current life and way more about how you’re going to live together as a unit. Two, there is a relationship prosperity gospel that goes something like this : if you get right with God, He will bring you the right person. This is false. God doesn’t withhold relationship blessings because he is waiting for you to achieve an upper echelon of Christianity. That’s not to say that being close to God doesn’t have relationship benefits, but you can be absolutely saintly and that does not mean God owes you a dang thing, much less an awesome relationship. The opposite it also true -you can meet someone at a “low point” and they bring you up and out and you have a fabulous relationship. I think Christian leaders often ignore this element because they think their message to 16 year olds (prone to savior complexes and general goofiness) shouldn’t be adjusted for nuance and more depth when they’re talking to actual adults. But I digress.
If you had the chance to meet your spouse earlier and bypass the relationships you had in high school, 20s, etc., would you? I actually would not. I’m glad I got the chance to learn and grow before I started dating my husband. I wouldn’t be the same person if I had bypassed all of those relationships and so the question is somewhat meaningless. I will note that my husband said he would, if he knew at that time that I was the most perfect person ever (wording mine). That was so sweet, I wavered in my resolve a bit. But I can say with definitiveness that I’m a *not* plagued with regret that I dated prior to my husband. Some relationships were better than others but “ it was what it was” and we’re all marching to the future now!

3. Did you date differently with your spouse, or were they just different?

A little bit of the first, a lot bit of the second. The main thing I did differently when I started “hanging out” with my hubs is that I cleared the field, so to speak. I remember thinking to myself this might not turn into anything, but if it does let’s make sure it is free and clear of unnecessary drama. I wish I had done this with others too. I think I hurt people with the technically-correct-but-not-wise insistence that I didn’t owe anyone any devoted attention until we were in an official relationship. So I used to go on casual dates with multiple people. Again I wasn’t technically wrong, but it could get confusing for all. Another thing I did was allow things to progress naturally without constantly checking our relationship status. It didn’t matter, because he wasn’t being handsy and I didn’t have to decide if I needed to cool it with Jo-Jo because me and future hubs were getting more serious. So that carefreeness about relationship status allowed everything to be fresh and frickin fun. But, I would never ever claim that we got married because I used a different strategy at the beginning of our relationship. It worked because we both wanted it work, because we loved the socks off each other. And we loved each other because our souls fit together like peas and carrots. I hope you’re crying right now because that was freakin poetry.

I apologize you didn’t get to hear me say this on a live video but I’m starting to think that’s not the best media for me to shine. *snorts*

Privacy is not shame

There are many behaviors that were historically taboo, but currently are widely acceptable. For example, a woman showing off her delicate ankles used to be considered quite provocative. Then of course, a woman wearing slacks was seen as very inappropriate because I suppose it revealed women actually had legs instead of an amorphous blob of flesh (?). In some societies, it’s shocking for a man and woman to hold hands in public.* It’s easy to mock the idea that these innocent body parts and behaviors could ever resemble anything remotely titillating.**

Now, many people have adopted this idea that any sense of propriety is absurd, misguided, or somehow promoting the subjugation of women and other bad things. We have Kesha going to lunch with her mom (!!) wearing basically a mosquito net. Furry conventions exist. There are mothers who think that sharing pics of their bosoms is fine as long as their baby is somewhere in the vicinity. And if you dare suggest like “yo, maybe keep that to yourself?” then you will be accused of being a rude, closed-minded, patriarchy-promoting, homophobic, bigot-y poop head.

I think part of the outrage here is that when I suggest someone not go public with their body – or what they enjoy doing with their body – it’s interpreted as me casting shame. And that has a certain logic – we often hide parts of ourselves that we are ashamed of. But saying “keep that to yourself” doesn’t necessarily mean I don’t approve. It doesn’t necessarily mean I think what you’re sharing is fundamentally gross.

I think about it a different way. Take the word treasure… or savor, maybe. When I’m savoring a moment with my hubs, it’s not a public thing. It’s private. And if I went public and posted something like “my husband just gently caressed my derrière,” it would be met with indifference at best and voyeurism at worst. So, I don’t share those sorts of things because it gives other people the opportunity to evaluate it (even ignoring something is a vote of value, just negative!). It also detracts from the moment itself because it wasn’t meant for anyone else. Sharing that moment would dilute and cheapen.

Although I do not advocate putting cauliflower in your hair, I do advocate to “keep it secret, keep if safe,” when it comes to these little intimacies.

So even more so with our bodies and sexuality, aye? All morals aside, I don’t want to know what gets you sexually revved up. I don’t need to know what your nips look like. I don’t need to witness your tender family moments. Am I repulsed by these things? Sometimes, not always, it really depends. But it’s actually the beauty and specialness – or at least, potential beauty and specialness – of bodies, sexuality, and intimacy that makes them cringey to witness in public.

Don’t exploit yourself, your body, or your privacy by offering it to the public like a desperate sacrifice to the gods of attention and validation. Treasure it. Savor it. And if you find that you cannot savor or treasure your body, sexuality, intimate moments without sharing them with the world, well.. maybe that’s something to mull over during your next poo time.

❤

— EDITORIAL NOTES —

*My family visited Zimbabwe when I was 9, and I remember the local friends we knew there warning my parents to not put on this shocking display of affection.

** speaking of, I always thought titillating was a particularly unchaste word. [blushes]

Mawwiage, is what brings us apawt today

Hellur! Tis I, your deadbeat blogger emerging from the silent ashes as a gabby, married Phoenix. Completely re-charged and in charge! *brushes off cereal crumbs with quiet dignity*

I have a few musings on marriage. Or, more precisely, on the decision to get married.

Everyone has a range of time in their own minds in which they think is a reasonable time to get engaged or married after the “start” of your relationship. For some, anything serious before 1 year of good ol’ fashioned dating is irresponsible and impulsive. For others, there’s no reason to keep dating after you’ve had 2-3 grueling dates in which you both outline your worldviews, faith, life plans, and toilet-paper-on-the-roll orientation preferences. The 1+ year crowd likes to wait and see how people and relationships play out over time. The intense interview crowd sees dating like skirmishes. Get in and get out – either through fading back into the forest of singleness or diving straight into the pool of eternal promises.

From my perspective, each person can take their own relationship at whatever pace they want, as long as the other party (or parties, for you polygamists out there ! jk jk) is fine with it. I think what rubs me is that most people – and ALL female relatives – think the appropriate range of time for dating they have conjured in their own minds should be the appropriate range of time for all couples, in all situations, of all backgrounds. So if any couple “rushes” according to the Cautious Connor’s, or dawdles, according to the Rushing Reginald’s, their relationship is doomed. DOOMED!

To me, it just completely depends on the couple. I have friends and acquaintances who made a short work out of dating, and their marriages seem to be just as stable and happy as any others. For certain personalities, age groups, etc. this is perfectly acceptable.

Although, of course there are the couples that rush into things and realize they don’t know each other and have made a terrible mistake. At best, they can sometimes turn the boat around and sail into a wonderful marriage, but often they sink as soon as they realize the other is a bit of a dud when they’re not in active woo mode.

My husband and I probably took a longer-than-average time to get to the point of engagement, and I’m actually very grateful we dated as long as we did. I can’t speak for my hubbadubs, but I needed the time. I needed to know how we reacted to each other when one or both of us was going through a hard time. I needed to know that it was love I had, not a love-y feeling. I needed to know I still loved him when he wasn’t showering me with attention. To me it was great, and I don’t think I would have been able to say “si” to marriage without that knowledge and experience.

For some though, the stretches of time just reflect true dawdling, or a reservation with the relationship itself. Can’t commit, but don’t want to quit. I’m sure some people thought that was the case with my hubs and I, and to them I emphatically flick my hair in defiance.

So my avid reader, I present the case that there are many reasons to take a short or long time to get to the point of engagement, and a relatively fast or slow journey is not necessarily a “warning sign, ” or cause for worry among loving friends and relatives. This is especially hard when you or someone close to you has experienced the “bad” form of fast or slow – you are hypervigilant and ready to warn someone you think may be heading in the same direction. I’m here to tell you to take a deep breath, relax, and let each couple be the pace setters for their own relationship.

Red White And Blue Wow GIF by Bomb Pop - Find & Share on GIPHY

Eye hope this helps

Dear readers and internet bots,

I have been writing a post for the past month that I kept on writing, deleting, and re-writing. It was going to be about racism, marxism, Christianity, freedom, all that stuff. Then I realized that there are many people out there with (relatively) huge platforms that are already expressing my opinions on the matter, and with much more eloquence and prudence than I can muster right now.

The news has made me a hot little potato. I feel like I wake up angry and go to bed anxious most nights, and very rarely from personal life matters. It just seems like everything sucks, but no one can agree on why it sucks and how to change it. In fact, ways i can think of to make it suck less would be used as evidence for many other people on how it’s sucking more.

Eeks.

What to write during such a time as this?

I have only one tiny positive thing to say or recommend during times like these.

Look people in the eyes

This is probably what I look like these days.

That’s right. The only bright spots I’ve had recently in the public domain have been when I’ve made eye contact with some stranger and shared a laugh about something. I had an appointment the other day and the attendant woman cracked me up with a raunchy story, and then I bonded with the front desk lady over how long higher-education degrees take and was able to give her a word of encouragement. These little brief flashes of positive human interaction bolstered my spirits and helped me have a little less deep disgust and dislike for the general population. ( keepin it real!)

I’m sure this will come across very naive and over-simplistic to many, but if it impacts one person then that’s good enough for me. If you are currently depressed/anxious/angry/all the bad things right now, I highly recommend limiting yourself to consuming any and all news (including “news” from social media friends) to 1-2x a week, and try to stop seeing all people as disgusting potential carriers of disease and look them straight in the retina. And I don’t know, maybe try to be kind or something.

We are all being squeezed right now. The harder you’re squeezed, the more of what’s deep inside you comes out in your words and action. That’s why we’re seeing a lot of fear, violence, hostility – it’s not new, it was there all along. Just hidden. But let’s try to be optimistic and assume that there’s some admirable, great qualities deep inside people, too. Especially if you carry the spirit of Jesus within you, may the light and hope that’s inside you come out!

The death of a dream

WARNING: If you can’t tell by the title, I’m in a melodramatic mood.

I’ve come to the realization that I’m an absolute nutto about my career. I’ve known for many years that I don’t want to be a professor, but now the reality of cutting the uni apron strings is really setting in. Tying to map out my “next steps” has not been a delight. It has been more of a drudgery. It has brought out all sorts of feels – anxiety, sorrow, guilt. Eeks.

The anxiety I understand. I expected some anxiety about changing careers, especially since I spent 10 of my 30 zesty years in the same field. The sorrow and guilt, though.. they have taken me by surprise. Where did this devilish duo come from?

Well, one factor is a somewhat absurd but persistent idea of mine that I’m letting down little Gallo du ancienne- the spunky optimist who set her sights on curing Alzheimer’s disease when she was a delicate 16 years. I can imagine her being disgusted with Gallo du présent for quitting her dream. “You’re there! Why stop now?” she would demand. Similarly, I also feel like I’m letting my Grandpa and Grandma down. Grandpa had Alzheimer’s disease, and a prevention or treatment would have changed his and my grandma’s life. They would have been so excited to know that my research was in Alzheimer’s disease, and maybe a bit disappointed that I’m choosing to leave it.

On top of that, there is the jadedness (jadosity? Jadociousness?!) of academic research. Yes, I’ve completed experiments. Yes, I’ve analyzed data and wrote up manuscripts that were published in peer-reviewed academic journals. Do I think my research has significantly advanced the field of Alzheimer’s disease? Not particularly. My entire academic career was way less impactful and dynamic than I hoped it would be.

That is my summary of gloom, my friends. I bring all of this up because I think it’s worth noting that there is actually a degree of real grief involved in burying a dream. Especially when that dream was tied to specific people that you love(d). And – it’s difficult to create a new dream (or goal, for you less romantic types) when you don’t have the advantage of boundless optimism, time, and naive willingness to be poor for several years as you work your way from the ground up that you have when you were a youth.

Nevertheless, she perspired. Wait, that’s not right. She.. resisted.. the man! No, she insisted on having her own way!! She desisted.. the pity party?! There you go. Okay leave encouraging comments! Thanks! ❤

Do you suffer from delusions of petiteur?

My very first “about something” post for little Galloblog was titled “Dismounting the activism high horse.” I wrote about how I had stopped feeling the need to use my social media accounts to change the world. I recommended shifting the focus from grandiose goals for world change (“I’m going to combat world hunger!”) to realistic goals for changing your immediate surroundings (“I’m going to bring dinner to a struggling family I heard about from a mutual friend”).

I still agree with that post, to a certain degree. But I also wonder if I’ve gone too far in the other direction. Should I ignore the ills of the world? Can I really do nothing positive to help people that aren’t in my immediate circle? Mais non! Consider the following brilliant points:

One, there is a circularity to this thinking. My former conviction to focus on those around me has also fostered a callousness and indifference to The World. I know I can’t stop poverty or racism or men wearing crop-tops, so I don’t let myself think or learn about those social ills. I hate knowing about a problem and not being able to fix it. I’ve convinced myself I can’t fix it, so I ignore it. But of course my astute readers can see the circularity here – we ignore problems so they persist, they persist so we ignore them.

Two, occasionally one person or a handful of people actually do something that is good. Women and men did come together and advocate for women’s right to vote in the United States, and now women can vote. That didn’t solve all inequality and sexism out there, but it was a good thing. Something that was worth knowing about and fighting for.

Three, sometimes even meager improvements – in relation to the grand scale of the problem – are very impactful to certain individuals. Chemotherapy didn’t cure cancer, and many people still die from cancer. But the development of chemotherapy as cancer treatment has allowed some people with cancer to live much longer than they would without. Does more still need to be done? Of course. But chemotherapy was worth working on.

Finally, sometimes you have to do the best you can with what you know, all the while knowing that you are also going to introduce some new or different bad in your attempt to bring about good. The medical community has made great progress in treatment and prevention of infectious diseases, so now we’re much more likely to die from horrible chronic diseases. Still, I’m extremely happy that dying from diarrhea is no longer a major threat to our society.

Some big issues are worth caring about and working toward. And maybe different people are more prone to and qualified for working toward different scales of change – whether that be at the macro (world hunger!), mezzo (hungry children in my congressional district!), micro (one hungry family in my neighborhood!).. nano (hungry rats in my attic?!) level. But I doubt anyone’s off the hook.. so shake off your delusions of petiteur and do something grande. 😉

*awkwardly remounts the horse*

30 nuggets of wisdom for 30 years

My 30th birthday is just around the riverbend*, so this Gallowolf would like to cry the wisdom she’s learned to the blue corn moon. Please commit all of these to memory and send me a $30 cashier’s check every time my lil nuggets of wisdom save you from a pickle.** Thank you in advance.

Drums, please!

You don’t have to date everyone who’s a good person
Be okay with uncertainty in relationships
Don’t try to engineer and control any relationship, especially romantic
People don’t owe you affection or attention when you do something nice for them
Talk to your Grandma like a peer and be ridiculous with your nieces and nephews
Allow yourself to feel your feels

All legit, y’all.
Don’t let your feels control you
You’re responsible for your own feelings, but be aware of how you are prone to feel after spending time with any person
Spend time with people who make you feel good
You can forgive people but still protect yourself from bad characters
Most people are schmucky schmuckersons
Celebrate and hold onto the people that aren’t schmucky schmuckersons

Me holding onto someone great
People who bring exciting drama into your life are also likely to bring a bunch of hurt into your life.
Go to the arts for your dramatic fix
Finding things to laugh at is serious business
The expensive car is *not* worth it
Eating more expensive healthy food *is* worth it
Neglecting your health is not financial prudence– it’s a great strategy to make all your borderline acute health issues full blown chronic health issues
Try to find joy in challenges instead of focusing on the stress
Stop feeling sorry for yourself
You can be mature and intelligent and still wildly silly
It’s not necessary or wise to trust everyone in a Christian community
Allow yourself to dwell on and obsess about how beautiful something is
Weighted blankets are heavenly
Actual image of my mind when under a weighted blanket
It’s worth the AC cost to turn down the temp enough to not sweat at night
Allow yourself to consider you are wrong about everything
Don’t let uncertainty paralyze you
You don’t have to listen to everyone’s advice, even if they’re great people
Try
God is bigger and more confusing than you ever imagined

— EDITORIAL NOTES —

*By “just around” I mean in like 2 months. But that’s none of your business!

**Although if a Trader Joe’s kosher dill pickle was after me, I would say “take me now” and swoon at its delicious foot.

What to (and not!) learn from your past relationships

The last time I had a really bad breakup, people kept telling me “It wasn’t a waste as long you learned something from it.” I say this with full love in my heart for these people, but a week after a breakup is not a good time to hear this. I would think with great bitterness and characteristic drama, “Oh, so to learn that I’m unlovable, all I have to do is put myself through a heart-pulverizing breakup – fantastic.”

As time dribbles on, however, one does gain some perspective. Our minds sort of force us to learn something. Sometimes the learnt info is useful and helps us become a better person / partner… *BUT* I have learned that you can learn the wrong things and draw the wrong conclusions from your own experiences.

What not to Learn

I think one of the most natural things to learn from a past relationship is signs and cues that whoever you’re dating is going to hurt you. You learned that his long delays between texts meant he was losing interest, or her need for “alone time” was really her need for cheaty-cheat times. It is all too easy to transfer that knowledge – of what that speific action for that specific person meant for your past relationship in that specific moment in time – to a new relationship. So if he takes a while to respond to a text or she turns down a Friday dinner to reportedly read Brandon Sanderson in her apartment, it’s easy to think “Welp, let me cut my losses early and move on before this all-too-familiar and way-too-painful scenario plays out again. I ain’t no fool!”

Wrong Donald Trump GIF by Election 2016 - Find & Share on GIPHY

While there are probably some general signs and cues someone is being a shady dickwad, I think this sort of learntedness is more likely to sabotage potentially healthy relationships than protect your lil ticker.

Jo-Jo’s delays between texts may have meant he was not that into you, but Captain Wonderful’s delays between texts may mean he is working at his job with integrity and turned off his phone so he wouldn’t be tempted to text you every five minutes. Amber’s alone time might have been a cover-up for her skanky side hustles, but Classy Clairice’s alone time might be a sign that she knows and takes care of herself.

Let me also interject, if I may,* that it can be a very dangerous game to discuss your significant other’s behavior with other people. Because just as people are prone to inappropriately generalize their past experiences to ruin their own relationships, they are equally prone to inappaoprirately generalize their past experiences and unintentionally ruin your relationships. So don’t let your best friend’s experience with a McDouche give you a frantic paranoia about your current partner. This can happen in like manner —

You (unconcernedly): “Yeah, Captain Wonderful and I haven’t been texting as much lately.”

Your best friend: “Oh no. I remember when I was dating McDouche, he started texting me less when he was pursuing another woman.”

You (concernedly:

What to Learn

I think what has been helpful to me is to learn what you can “deal with,” and what you can’t. What’s a deal breaker, and what’s not. Think about your own role in things souring, and how you could do things differently.

Par example —

You may have always loved country music. Maybe Jo-Jo hates country music, and never wanted to go to concerts with you. When you and Jo-Jo were dating, that drove you crazy. So you can learn that country music concert attending is a really big deal to you.

As for your own role, this is much harder and annoying to do. But you can learn that in the past you were too uncomfortable with relationship ambiguity early in the relationship. You picked apart and over-analyzed the relationship so much that it snuffed out its ability to develop organically. So you can learn to relax and enjoy the flirty texts and awkward silliness of a budding relationship without constantly pulling the relationship emergency break to have a long, drawn out convo about how, where, why your relationship is going.

So sure, learn — but learn the right stuff! RESIST PARANOIA !

Paranoid Classic Film GIF by Warner Archive - Find & Share on GIPHY

— EDITORIAL NOTES —

*Of course I may, it’s my blog! papow!

Don’t let others frame your life questions

When I was in high school, people were always asking me

“Where are you going to go to college?”

zacefronconfused — Like any high school student knows what to do with their life! and if they do, no one likes them!

Once in college, they asked

“What’s your major? How are you going to use that?”

Once in grad school, it was

“When are you going to graduate?”

Once graduated, people became bored with my career trajectory and began an assault of inquiries about my relationship status.

“Who are you dating right now?”

“Why aren’t you dating anyone?”

“What are you doing to snag a man?” *

Now that I’ve been dating an amazin-raisin feller for a few months, I’m starting to get the

“So do you think you two are going to get married?”

Anddddd I’m not there yet, but I’ve heard married people complain they get hounded with

“When are y’all going to have kids?”

And from there , who knows – probably constant badgering about when you’re going to buy a house, make a star athlete out of your kid, retire, etc etc etc

Ayiyiyi! Too many nosy presumptive questions!

Just imagine if every time a soccer mom asked me when I was getting married, I said “I don’t know — when are you getting your PhD?” Of course that would be mighty rude, because that’s obviously not their priority right now.. and getting a PhD likely does not fit into their life goals at all. Their question was of course just as rude because getting married *obviously* wasn’t my top priority in my 20s, and who’s to say it fits into my life goals at all.** But I wouldn’t be that snarky because I choose to take the high road! #holy

*anyway*

Regardless of the intent of the questioners, it’s distressing to answer over and over and over again “I don’t know,” or “not anytime soon,” or “when I receive a direct word from the Almighty.”

If you’re constantly hounded by any one or more of these questions, I encourage you to pump the brakes, be still, and actively reject the latent assumptions built into these questions. They are

1) you *must* finish / do / choose the activity in question and

2) you are “falling behind” or a failure of a human being if you don’t tick off the running list of normal human activities in the order and time frame that suits all your friends and family.

So take heart! Your life is not anyone else’s life. Sure, you want to check in with trusted people who love you to make sure you’re not doing anything obviously destructive (e.g. staying in a toxic relationship), but other than that… you have so much freedom! Even if the questioners are simply trying to be friendly and interested in your life, don’t let them get to ya!

the-sound-of-music — I want this to be you, not caring when other people are uncomfortable when you deviate too much from their own life path

— EDITORIAL NOTES —

*Writing this blog, obvs *snorts*

**Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. You’ll never know until I’m deadz bwahaha

For the love of Chick Fil A, please no more Christian dating books

I C A N N O T T A K E A N Y M O R E C H R I S T I A N B O O K S A B O U T D A T I N G.

upsetgirl — It’s too much y’all. (pixabay image, edited by moi) Also note that I didn’t include the Meaning of Marriage by Tim Keller because that book is FIRE

Is it because my heart is hardened?

Is it because I’m living in sin and want to avoid conviction?

Is it because I am resistant to wisdom?

No. It is for this simple reason — in no other area of Christian life have I seen Christian wisdom take such a phariseeical turn so quickly.

The authors are not necessarily to blame for this, but I think this is what happens — a Christian man/woman/couple figures out a way to date that seems in-line with the Christian faith. They then share their insights and wisdom from their own personal experiences. Christians read these books, and instead of seeing them for what they are – musings by good but still-being-sanctified people – they see them as RULES that we all must follow, lest we be pegged as pagos. #pagopegged #ouch

But let’s all take a step back and get a little perspective — in biblio times, dating didn’t exist. You were a child, then boom you go through puberty, then boom you are married. This doesn’t mean that the Christian faith is irrelevant to how we date, but it does mean that pretty much any *specific* dating advice is just that – advice from humans – not the Word of God.

So let’s not perpetuate self-righteousness and phariseeism by acting as if the compilation of some Christian dude’s musings on dating is The Way the Truth and the Life. There is probably wisdom in many Christian books on dating, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that if you don’t follow that author’s recommendations you are rebelling against the God of the universe. For example – In Single, Dating, Engaged, Married,* Ben Stuart talks about how he would always tell his now-wife Donna the next time he was going to contact her. He saw this as a sweet way to reduce her stress – she didn’t have to worry about if / when he was going to contact her, she already knew – “I’ll call you tomorrow.” I agree, that is sweet. Does that mean that if a guy doesn’t communicate like that to you, you should kick him to the curb? No! It’s a nice specific example of how Christian faith can play out IRL, but it is by no means a rule.

Side note 1 – many dating books are probably somewhat useful for high-schoolers who are still living with their parents, and truly have zero life experience to help them navigate dating with wisdom. But there are some dating practices that are absurd if not impossible when you are living on your own (e.g. the dude asking the Dad’s permission to date). So let’s recognize that not ALL Christians get married when they are 19, and what worked for a man dating his wife in undergrad may not be useful for a 29 year old woman.

Side note 2 – I’m also getting cranky with Christian women who assume they are entitled to impart their sage dating advice. I don’t owe it to you to spill all the beans of my romantic life just because we are both Christians, and frankly many of you haven’t earned the right to tell me what to do or hear the intimate details of my life and heart. If you are concerned about my dating choices, how ’bout you pray for the Spirit to convict me directly instead of appointing yourself as my accountability supervisor. I suggest with all the gentle love I can muster that you are just as likely to turn me into an anxious self-righteous snoot pants than to protect me from harm. Just sayin’. As the modern sage John Crist would say, “check your heart.”

I plan to approach dating with the freedom Christ gained for me, as captured by the idea “Everything is permissible, not everything is beneficial.”** Earlier this year I demoralized a dating decision and thought “I can date this person if I want. We could have wild sex every night and guess what.. I would still be a Christian. Jesus might be grieved, but he would still love me. Now, knowing this, do I want to? What would be the consequences?” And that actually led me to a healthy decision that was MY decision, not a half-hearted, dutiful response to the pressures of others.

Okay.. that’s all! Be free!

— EDITORIAL NOTES —

*At least he talked about this in his Single | Dating | Engaged | Married sermons when he was preaching at Breakaway. I actually never read his book because I heard it was basically the written version of his sermons. 😀

**1 Corinthians 10:23