Tag Archives: relationships

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A portrait of pain: words from before the blog

This morning I remembered something I wrote about two years ago about friendships, relationships, and isolation. It was before I started writing in this space. The style is different, it’s really a journal entry, not something written for publication. It is also rather maudlin in places. For that I don’t apologise but ask that you understand it is a portrait of a moment in time. Is it true? No, in that it contains a lot of lies I told myself. Yes, in that it is how I felt. I was interested in a girl and she was not in me, I had had some struggles with my friends. And I was alone for a day in Spain. I have not edited it apart from grammar and spelling, it is what it is, it is a portrait of pain.

The words that would soothe this troubled mind, The ones I hunt for, search for, long for. The words I think will take away the pain, all the hurt. The words that will bring clarity out of confusion. The form of letters brought together in phrases and fragments and rarely, carefully, composed sentences that stop short of extended prose but lacks the beauty and grace to be poetry.

But it’s not the words that require attention. But the troubled mind. Torn between dreams of grandeur and doubts of inconsequence. A mind that won’t stand still. Not for a moment. That will not settle, that refuses to be stilled. A torment of thoughts and emotions meshed together. Thoughts that refuse to leave and emotions that I am not sure are there.

Dangling in my mind. Taunting my solitude. Tempering my calm, peaceful, afternoon. Beneath the trees in Girona’s historic quarter. As I ponder why do I need both isolation from people and affirmation from them of my worth? If, in fact, it is their approval I want. Because I am not certain that I am able to receive it. I am not sure that I have the capacity to believe that anyone would recognise anything of worth in me at all.

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Is finding a wife like shopping for shoes?

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Are you looking for a wife? Or, are you happy being single?

That wasn’t quite the question put to me but it sums up the sentiment. That it is a choice. And that either I am happy being single or I should start shopping.

Because that seems to be the mentality. Looking for a spouse attracting the same approach as I might take to hunting down a new pair of shoes, or maybe to give it a little more seriousness, similar to buying a flat.

Maybe I should confess that I’m not very good at buying shoes. I don’t find the process difficult, it is not a particularly complex task to complete. I just don’t do it. I have a smart pair and a casual pair and wear them until their resemblance to footwear is solely a historic recollection. I also have sandals for the summer, slippers for the winter and climbing shoes for, well, climbing.

But last year I bought a flat and that was a big decision, it was a task I gave myself to. There were things to do, some time consuming but mundane, others swift but significant. Putting in an offer, signing for a mortgage, collecting keys. There were words spoken and written, the handover of a set of metallic objects. Yet it was much more than that, the simple acts were imbued with significance, they meant something because of what linked them together, where they came from and what that signalled.

So I wonder, is finding someone to spend the rest of your life with like buying a house, and stripping the complexities away to push the point, is it like shopping for any other item?

When I go shoe shopping it’s not for a luxury, but for something I urgently need. Therefore I refuse to let myself come home empty handed. And when I bought my flat I had decided I was going to do so, I took some time but eventually made a decision. It was a big decision but it was not an irrevocable one. I can sell, I can let. It is a material possession.

When we buy something we choose to get something over nothing. We decide that while there are better or worse options, having something is better than having nothing at all.

I don’t believe that getting married is more important than getting married to the right person.

I don’t think getting married is like buying shoes, or a flat. Finding someone to spend your life with is not a consumer experience. It is a dance of emotions and expectations and hopes and dreams. It is prospect that absence may take the place of something.

Maybe it is like Schrödinger’s cat. Until you open the box you don’t know if the cat is dead or alive, so by some ridiculous chain of logic which I cannot begin to fathom, the cat is both dead and alive. Maybe you can be both living life to the full as a single person and want to get married. And until something happens you are both.

If I’m in a relationship it’s not much good living life to the full in my singleness, I don’t think that relationship would last very long. But until that point I am living in a contested reality, there are alternative routes that my life can take and I need to be open to pursuing either while acknowledge one would close off the other.

And that can sometimes stop you from opening the box. Not wanting to close down options can prevent you from making a choice. Sometimes I can be paralysed by indecision, and the multitude of options, and potential future options can cast me in formaldehyde and root me to the spot. Sometimes I wish it wasn’t a choice.

But the choice is what gives it meaning. The choice to take a risk and do something you don’t essentially have to do. Doing something you could live without, doing something that will limit your further choices, doing something that will stop you from always thinking that something better could come along.

Because getting married isn’t a step in life improvement, it isn’t a way of becoming more complete. It isn’t an accessory to make you more glamorous, or an investment to make you more secure.

And it is neither mail order nor magic. It is not a formulaic process or the result of an abracadabra. Relationships do not just happen and we cannot script them.

But we live them and we love them, and in them we find life and we find love. And if that’s how you think about your shoes I recommend some therapy.

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What do single Christians want their church leaders to do?

SinglenessTonight I went along to a Christian Connection event reporting back on a survey of 3000 people, mostly users of their dating site, about singleness and the church. David Pullinger analysed the data and presented results focusing on what single Christians appreciated about church, and what they found difficult.

The results are still being finalised, and more formalised reporting will come in due course, and some of the results have already been reported. But a couple of comments immediately stood out.

  • Only 1/3 of single men aged 30-44 socialise with their friends at least once a week. This is a significant drop from those younger than this and is not matched by a similar decline among women.
  • Single women often find married couples reticent to offer hospitality, and this seems to be related to a perceived threat to their marriage. Single women often work, don’t care for children and as a result often find they have more in common with the husband than the wife. I’m fascinated to look into this more and eagerly await seeing the data.
  • And there was a list of twelve things single Christians would like their church leaders to do, in order of importance…
  1. Give talks about singleness
  2. Organise or enable social and fun activities
  3. Hospitality
  4. Provide models of singleness
  5. Pray personally or in the church
  6. Be inclusive in all church activities
  7. Organise or enable single groups
  8. Be in contact, through phone, email or text
  9. Provide or facilitate practical help
  10. Provide practical help in finding a partner
  11. Knowing and recommending singles events
  12. Seeking the single person’s viewpoint

It’s an interesting list, and some I certainly agree with. But in all of this I had a recurring question, is there a danger of entrenching an identity of singleness, and possibly as a result seeing identity defined by the absence of a partner, rather than the many other things which make up the individual’s character.

Is singleness something which should be seen as an identity? If you’re single is it a label you use or appreciate? Or do you think it can do more damage than good?

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We need to talk about singleness

singleFirst up, a confession: I was once a junior chess champion. I even got a medal for it. So there’s nothing wrong with joining a chess club to find a date.

I don’t think we talk too much about relationships. But I do think we’re not very good at talking about relationships.

The conversation might vary depending on who it is with, it is different with married friend to those who are also single. But there are some people who I know I will pretty much have the same conversation with whenever I see them, especially if I don’t see them very often. Miriam Skinner’s comments about ‘Martin in the blue jumper’ hit a little close to home. I’ll mention someone in a slightly off-the-cuff but almost obligatory response who I have taken a fancy to, who will then be brought up when I next see someone even if it’s a year later.

Miriam’s article is amusing and clever and filled with plenty of wisdom. But I think I disagree with its core message – that we talk about relationships too much. I don’t think we do, I think we easily slip into stale formulaic conversations that you could record in advance and hit play when the questions arise, and that needs to change. I also think we need to match our words with action, so that frustration is not left to fester.

We waste a lot of breathe and emotional agony on shooting the breeze, feigning sincerity when we speak barely masked gossip. Discussing the relative merits of courting over dating, contemplating whether to use an internet dating site, analysing the minutia of the actions of the opposite sex. Looking for clues about where romance lies and where it leads. Asking each other for advice which more often simply serves as affirmation for our intransigence.

I have a rule that I’ve developed over the past few years: most people who are single would rather not be. Rocket science, I know. Some people are happy – or content, to use the phrase de jour – in their present singleness, and a few think that is how things will always be. But for most people I know, even if they don’t see a relationship as important at the moment envisage themselves at some point with someone, or might like that to happen. I can say I am content being single and would yet might not want that to be the end of the story.

And I do not think that is a problem.

The Church should value and affirm singleness. And not just as a stage of life to exercise patience in. The Church should be aware of the ways its structures, processes and events can sometimes become hard to access for those without families or a husband or wife. I’ve heard of dinner parties that suddenly open up when the first ring goes on the finger: ‘my fiancé and I’ is the password to a new social circle.

Being in a relationship does not remove our need for God, it does not lessen out dependence on him, but I don’t think it needs to be a trade off. I think you can want a lot from romance and get even more from God. In some way the closeness of our human relationships with someone else reflect the way God makes himself known to us, and wants to know us more. We get to have both.

Here’s a hunch I have no way of verifying: if you get married the conversations don’t go away. The same sort of inquisition the Spanish would be proud of probes into new areas, and probably the banality of formulaic conversations won’t go away either. It might be a children, or buying a house. It might be about your sex life, or lack thereof. It might be about lust. Because that doesn’t go away either.

How do we talk about relationships in a way that is not formulaic and does not suggest that the shift from single to married is somehow answering a problem? I don’t know. It is hard.

But not talking about it won’t make the longing many people have go away. But it might, and I absolutely do not consider this to be what Miriam was saying, make people less willing to say words that are hard to say. To admit frailty in knowing who they like and whether they do. To say the person who caught their fancy last week is not in the picture any more. To speak of fears and hopes. To verbalise feelings and emotions that might get lost in a vacuum of solitude.

We probably need to cut out a lot of the crap from our conversations. The flip side is that we do just need to get on with stuff. Relationships, and I don’t just mean the romantic sort, are best built when we do something. As much as I like a relaxing evening in the pub there is something productive about activity, even if it’s playing games or cooking food. Much more if it is some sort of quest, some daring adventure, overcoming foes and reaching for the prize. Sorry, got carried away there.

I don’t mean just guys man-ing up and asking girls out, I mean helping each other, being the go between like we did at school discos when we were twelve. We could even set up our own dating service, I’m thinking ‘Church’ would be a great name for a place to meet and introduce people.

And when talking about relationships…

  • Accept that Sarah, the short brunette mentioned last week might not be someone’s eternal destiny
  • Talk about specifics, don’t let conversations become generic and repetitive, ‘oh there’s someone I like but I’m not sure whether they like me, or if I like them enough’.
  • Talk about beauty and attraction more than lust. Attraction is a good thing.
  • Talk about faith and where our identity and security is coming from (see I agree with Miriam there too).

Christian Connection has carried out research into the views of single Christians in the UK and are presenting the findings at an event in London next Tuesday (23rd April). I’ll be there and having seen a sneak peek of a few of the findings I can assure you it will be fascinating.

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Affection, ambiguity and Anna Karenina

I had planned to read much of Anna Karenina over Christmas. That didn’t happen: between being ill, cooking food, playing with my nieces and defending the ending to Downton Abbey’s Christmas special, I managed a scant 60 pages. However in those early pages of this Russian masterpiece I came across a line that struck me with considerable force.

“But Levin was in love, and therefore Kitty seemed to him so perfect in every respect, so transcending everything earthly, and he seemed to himself so very earthly and insignificant a creature, that the possibility of his being considered worthy of her by others or by herself was to him unimaginable.”

Anna-Karenina-Poster-–-Pure-Love-460x650Two things immediately strike me from this passage, firstly, the early throws of affection limit our ability to think clearly. And secondly, sometimes when we like someone so much we find it hard to conceive that they might feel the same way.

It’s that moment when you meet someone and suddenly they become everything that matters. All else fades away. Except it doesn’t, it just retreats into a corner of your self which you allow to go untended for a while. They capture your imagination with an unreal sense of importance, you are for a short period of time infatuated. You see only their positives, only the things about them you want to be true. As Levin did with Kitty you see them as perfect. If you know the story of Anna Karenina you’ll know it’s not quite as simple as this, in fact, if you know anything about the interaction between any two people you will know it is never as simple as this.

No person is ever perfect, and no infatuation is ever pure. There comes a moment when you realise things about the person who has so exclusively dominated your attention which draws your attraction away from them.

Doubt sets in. Maybe it wasn’t to be. Maybe the infatuation was an illusion. Maybe, echoing Levin, you think they could never reciprocate the emotions you feel for them.

Sometimes things just don’t work out, the affection you felt at first fades and there isn’t the substance beneath, substance which would hold something more long lasting together. And that’s okay, at least, I’m starting to learn that it is okay. For too long I’ve lived in a halcyon state where I think the right relationship starts in a certain way and if it doesn’t carry on then I must have got something wrong at the outset. I’m less sure about that, I think part of working out how the intricate jigsaw puzzle fits together involves the messiness of agonised, attempted and aborted efforts at getting to know someone and whether there is a future for you and them.

When I’ve written about relationships I often keep it incredibly abstract, not wishing to involve myself or anyone else in the thoughts and ideas I set out. But time for some honesty. This messy state, where you are trying to work out if there is the beginning of a relationship emerging, is where I’ve been these past few months, and it’s largely why I’ve avoided writing about relationships. And I look back and I don’t have any regrets. I’m surprised by that, if I had thought at the start that it was going nowhere I probably would never have set out along this particular path. Yet that’s exactly what I’m learning: we do not know where we are going to end up, and if we live in the fear that a vague proto-relationship may fizzle out, then we are better off not even getting out of bed.

The other thing from Levin’s thought process, that of feeling unworthy of another’s affection, also resonated as I reflected on my situation over Christmas. I had doubts about parts of me I never usually thought about. I worried about how I looked, whether I was sufficiently articulate, funny, insightful, whether I was showing enough compassion and attention – or maybe too much attention. I found it hard to believe that me as me would ever be enough.

Strangely, in a line being drawn beneath the situation and agreeing it wasn’t going to go anywhere I did not feel vindicated in my doubts. The fact that a potential something turned out to be nothing did not persuade me of my lack of worth but encouraged me to be confident in who I am.

Funny how the messy stuff sometimes works out. I’ve learnt that dealing in ambiguity is okay, it requires honesty and openness, but sometimes accepting things aren’t clear is the quickest way of casting light on a confused and complex situation. Sometimes clarity doesn’t come, sometimes it is elusive, sometimes it just doesn’t work out.

 

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Quarter life crisis – a community called love

One of the things that I’ve highlighted as a defining feature for the lives of plenty of people in their twenties is a lack of commitments. This can take the form of getting married and having families later, changing jobs frequently, and being unable, or unwilling, to buy a house. The composite effect of these trends is a generation that is transient and is always open to change. But moreover, change is championed as a good in and of itself, decisions that could tie you down are delayed in order to be able to change at a moment’s notice.

I don’t think this is all bad, I think there are in fact very good things to be said for an attitude that is willing to experiment, and a flexibility to change when that is necessary. But it can also have a corrosive effect. It can shun stability as boring or constricting, it can limit the depth of relationships, and it stands in the way of developing community.

We’re so open to change that we no longer know what holds us together.

In the absence of married and family life, not only is permanence a luxury, but community is harder to form. I may have plenty of friends, I may have a diary full of social activities, and facebook notifications inviting me to more, but am I part of a community that invests in each other and cares and grows.

There is something about being part of a family unit that makes the development of community easier. And as you grow older and more people shift into that camp the remaining options become sparser. This is on top of the life in a city such as London where people frequently work long hours, commute considerable distances, live far apart and have hectic social lives. Where in this space does the energy and capacity for community?

A contradiction is at work here, I want to be a part of something, I want to know people and I want to be known. But I don’t always make the sacrifices necessary to make that happen. I tick the box to say that I want it but my priorities tell a different tale. We turn creating community into a purpose that we can reduce to defined functions and complete. We will spend time with people, we will eat together, we will be accountable to one another. We will do so much while still failing to build a community of love.

There are two things that mimic community but in my experience tend to fall short. The first is friendship groups and social activity and the second are church small groups. I think they come at the need from two different directions, friendships are built on time and communal activity, small groups based on defined purpose and structured meeting.

And we avoid intentionality, whether it’s in friendships or in church small groups. We like things to go with the flow, intentionality in friendship seems forced, and our church groups are too often simply a secondary reprise of the Sunday before. We can do a lot of stuff, whether it’s social or spiritual activity, but that doesn’t by itself translate to community.

I’m beginning to think that the starting point for developing an authentic community is a willingness to prioritise, so that while other things will make their calls on our life, the community to which we commit does not suffer. The social dimension of the gospel means that we cannot live out our faith alone, or in narrow silos unconcerned with each other. It needs an integrated space where we may live different lives, and work out our own stories but we can come together, and in doing that the stories of our life will always be changed.

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Dating by numbers

Some time ago Portsmouth University advertised its courses with the slogan: “What comes after the Internet?” Unfortunately the answer does not lie in any of their courses, or those of any other university. Innovation cannot be taught, only inspired and encouraged.

Many things in life are not located on any map, there is no guidebook, no ‘x’ marks the spot. They cannot be summed up in a whistle stop visit or captured on a postcard. There is no one hour audio guide available in ten different languages with special versions for children in German, Italian and English.

Romance is one of those things.

We want answers to all of our questions, but the more we look the more we find more questions to our answers. I flippantly wrote my guide to Christian dating recently, it took me quite a while to write and I removed bits I thought were too quirky or liable to misinterpretation. And still a few people thought it was out of line, they were fuming until the humour hit, if it hit at all.

I wrote it because I felt there was a need for clarity in the romantic interactions between guys and girls in church. I’ve got a couple of half written posts stored where I try to bring light to the subject, plus a short story that I hoped would illustrate with ease what I was struggling to say. In the end I opted for satire. I hoped to gentle show the eccentricity of our habits, but inadvertently I think I took on another liability we too easily slip into: wanting step-by-step instructions for every part of life.

I’m currently buying a flat and no one has told me how to do it. All the easy guides I find are either too complicated or don’t fit the specifics of my situation. Everyone I ask adds more factors into the equation. And I end up doing things in the wrong order and then rushing to catch up.

When it comes to relationships I want the idiot’s guide. I want the full colour illustrated edition with helpful footnotes and explanatory captions. I want it to be a dot-to-dot drawing, or one of those paint by numbers kits. I want someone else to do the hard work for me.

The latest talk in the Love is a Verb series focussed on singleness (more on that soon) and dating and the part that hit me hardest was exactly this point. Expect mess.

In the confluence of emotions and attraction between two people there will be mess, and the awkward outworking of this in thoughts and words and actions will not be straightforward. A bit like the reason no one can provide a simple guide for house buying because the exceptions out number the rules, no one can tell me how a relationship can and should pan out.

I tell someone I’m interested, but they are not. As hurt overshadows hope I wish it could be easier.

As the the girl I like walks off with another, I want to know how to stop this happening next time.

But maybe some things in life should be hard. Maybe the challenge and the climb, and the opportunities to bail out make the summit more of a joy.

Maybe the mess of the beginnings will remind us that mess is not washed away by rings and ceremonies and matching bible covers.

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Beauty, lust and attraction

My view of what makes someone beautiful is distorted. It swings like a pendulum. From beauty in the eyes of media buyers and fashion columnists, to a rejection of physical attraction as somehow beyond the realms of what I am supposed to feel.

Sara, in her guest post focused on the former trend, so I’ll give less attention to this. But I will say a bit because I’m a guy and I see things a bit differently. I guess this is sort of a part two to her post at the weekend.

It will come as a shocking surprise to no one that the way I look and think about women is not always with the purist motives. I could blame it on a culture that has promulgated the Barbie doll image as the best way to get attention, snag a husband, and achieve generic happiness. I could blame it on television programmes that slip sex scenes into disconnected plot lines. Or the magazines that brandish nearly naked women as the way to get ahead. Or I could go the whole hog, blame the internet, it’s turned porn from the furtive acts of men in trench coats to the very next thing you see on your screen.

Last year a survey of Christians in Northern Ireland found that 65 per cent of men under 35 have intentionally accessed porn. It was more prevalent among church leaders, who also had a higher rate of affairs. Gareth Davies has recently suggested it might need addressing in sex and relationship education at schools due to the harm it causes.

Porn does things to your brain. It makes you think something is normal which is not. It provides a go to destination for lust and temptation. But it does something more. It alienates relationships from sex. It offers what you think you want in a way that comes without a cost. So when we look at an attractive girl we see sex, and when we encounter the challenges of living life with other people we opt for the easy casual disconnected option.

In See Me Naked Amy Frykholm tells the story of a man addicted to porn:

“Pornography had provided Matthew a safe place, deep inside himself, for pleasure. But the connection to another human being was part of the fantasy. Images of naked strangers provided the illusion of openness, as if the woman whose photo he looked at was making herself available to him. Pornography had the capacity to make him feel both fleetingly alive and simultaneously numb. Fantasy replaced the nuanced intimacy demanded of him in his everyday life.”

As well as being a guy that finds girls attractive, I am a single guy that finds girls attractive. I may have been a little less than serious with my step by step guide to marital bliss, but there are things that are in my mind when I weigh up if I’m interested in a particular lady. And physical attraction is on that list.

Should it be?

Should I find girls attractive, and should I use that judgement to decide who I want to spend my life with? I think so. I think otherwise I am abusing beauty in just as destructive way as the covers of magazines that portray a mirage of beauty painted onto a hollow shell.

Appreciation of physical human beauty is supposed to be off the reservation. It is akin to lust. It is gazing at what causes us to sin. So we should cover it up and avert our eyes. Beauty is not without consequences. I am guilty of only a little hyperbole.

Because when I walk down the street and I see a girl sunbathing in the park my eyes linger longer than they should. When I’m standing in church supposedly singing songs of praise to the God I love, I find my love annexed by the girl I am presently smitten with. My appreciation of human beauty is so often lust, it is so often unhealthy, and it ingrains in me a suspicion of that particular emotional reaction. When I see something that is beautiful I think that it is wrong that I have come to that conclusion based on my instantaneous and almost involuntary registering of attraction.

There is such a thing as lust. But beauty isn’t just found in those people to whom we are attracted to, or to use the infantile but efficacious expression, people we fancy.

Why has my view of beauty become so defined, so contingent on a message that beauty is a sexual thing, and sexual things should be desired after, and if I want something sexual then I should be able to get it? How have I let myself become consumed by a vision of sex that is so commodified and mangled into a shape that serves what I think that I want in that particular moment?

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A guide to Christian dating

© April Killingsworth

Christians need a helping hand to get on the relationships ladder, and I’m here to provide it.

I look around my church and see many eligible men and beautiful women who are not in relationships. I’m tempted to suggest arranged marriages – either by the wisdom of the elders or drawing of lots – but I suspect that my guide will prove far more productive. This is written for men (although I’m sure everyone can learn from its wisdom) but any offers to provide a companion piece for the ladies would be gratefully received.

Step 1. Find someone you like

There are plenty of girls around but making your mind up can be difficult, so here’s a little crib sheet that you can score potential marks out of ten.

  • Attractiveness – do you like the way their earlobes hang?
  • Personality – how many times an hour do they make you laugh? (laugh-o-meters are available from accredited retailers.)
  • Intellect – can they recite the books of the Bible backwards?
  • Spirituality – check out their prayers for buzzwords: propitiation, justification and atonement in the same sentence counts double.
  • Holiness – how important is God in their lives: do they carry their study bible everywhere they go? (You Version on the iPhone is indicative of a consumerist, easy, faith)
  • Testimony – will your life stories mesh together to provide a beautiful symphony of the Lord’s work?

I will leave to you what counts as a datable score in each category.

Step 2. The after church mingle and other appropriate social contexts

Once you have a particular girl in your sights the next task is to find ways of maximising social contact without disclosing your interest. The most obvious device to use at this juncture is the ‘after church mingle’, I would suggest you use this open social environment to test the waters of your potential date. If you are fortunate to attend a church with many mid-week activities you can maximise your engagement with the opposite sex, and if you diarise with skill you could scout out multiple marks at once.

A particular challenge in this regard is breaking down the inevitable cliques that develop in church. If the girl of your dreams always sits at another table when you go to the pub after church you’ll have to take additional measures. I would suggest segueing into a conversation by inquiring of them whether they enjoyed the prayer meeting last night, or other suitable occasion that provides a spiritual cover for gentle flirting. If there is an opportunity to discover where else you might happen to be in the same place together all the better.

Step 3. The pre-date

Anyone new to the world of Christian dating might be surprised by the tortured agonising that goes on before a guy asks a girl out. In the language of contemporary Christianity this is described as discernment. You have to make sure that the girl likes you before you let her know that you like her.

A decade or so ago dating was rather out of fashion, and the old fashioned notion of courtship came back into vogue. This tendency has now faded and replaced with an exhortation to guys to be direct and ask girls on dates. However, there remains a scepticism about asking girls out on a date with only a cursory post church mingle to ascertain your spiritual compatibility. This is why the pre-date is vital.

The pre-date can takes a variety of forms, the most common is the, ‘let’s meet for coffee before church’, but its more sophisticated proponents would also demonstrate the carefully orchestrated ‘walk to the station together after church’. Such circumstances are vital to ensure that you can savour a few moments of the person’s undivided company. Because of the prevalence of the pre-date and the myriad uses to which it has been put, for example providing friendship and company as well as testing out potential dates you may wish to provide an alibi for your coffee: planning an event or discussing important pastoral issues are common devices.

Interlude

At this stage in the process it is usual to participate in that vital aspect of informal church communications: the accountability partner. Through this sharing of dilemmas you can gently inform other people of your interest and if the networks work to their optimum capacity you can ward other potential suitors off before you mark is aware of your intent.

Step 4. The date

If all of the preliminary stages have been completed with due care and attention the ideal situation is that without having to disclose your interest you reach a point where your mark has provided a cast iron guarantee of their mutual desire for a relationship.

Unfortunately not all situations work out quite this well, which incidentally is the stimulus for an audit of relationships in church with the intended output of sharing good practice. This project goes by the name: Good Operations Statement of Sexually Interested Parties.

It is therefore often necessary to take the step of asking a girl out on a date. I am aware that this is an unorthodox and confusing practice so would like to off so high level guidance on how to do this. I would suggest: “Hi Gertrude, would you like to go out for dinner on Friday?” (If the girl you are interested in is not called Gertrude it might be apposite to use their name instead.)

During the date there are various things to bear in mind. It is vital to allow the direction of the Holy Spirit to function to its full degree so we would suggest not planning too precisely what you do, you do not want to be guilty of quenching the Holy Spirit. Once you have begun dating, everyone in the church will begin checking their diary is free on Saturdays nine months hence, so you don’t want to waste time dilly-dallying. Get to the core issues straight away, I would allow only a couple of preliminary questions before inquiring of the status of their walk with God. Good phases to throw into the conversation at this point include: “God’s calling on your life” or “His Will for your life”. From my vast experience I find that a simple “Tell me about your faith” works well. While prophesying on a first date may seem a little too much, if the Lord is directing you to share your vision of marital bliss I do not wish to stand in your way.

Step 5. The relationship

After a couple of walks around the park praying together and conversing with the Holy Spirit you may wish to start consider this relationship a Relationship. While you may have previously been going out with this delightful lady, only now are you ‘Going Out’. Please remember the important difference, and although you may still go on dates you are no longer ‘Dating’.

It is necessary to carefully articulate the terms and conditions of your relationship as it has been reported that some ladies are unaware they are in a relationship at this phase. One way of indicating this progression maybe through subtle physical gestures, such as holding hands, or even a peck on the cheek if you are feeling brave. As a last resort you could of course talk about the status of your relationship.

It is not essential to start scouting wedding venues as soon as you progress into this stage but depending on your timing, budget and aspirations it’s never too soon to start. As you are a Christian you clearly do not suffer with issues of lust and temptation, so it is not to dispel these urges that you might consider swift nuptials. Instead it is to honour and uphold the biblical command to go forth and multiply. Some things are a burden you must carry for the kingdom.

Step 6. Marital bliss

Once you are married all of your problems are solved.

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Broken Cameras and Gustav Klimt blog survey

I love writing this blog, and I hope you enjoy reading it. I love it even more when people get involved, so now I’m asking for your input.

I’ve put together a short survey with a few questions about the blog in general and then about relationships in particular. I hope that by asking these questions, and by you answering them, I can write better and serve you more closely. They’re not meant to pry, and if they come across like that, just slam your hands on the keys and enter a bunch of junk. That’s what I do most of the time I try and write.

The survey will only take a few minutes and the answers can be completely anonymous.

Take the survey