I’ve already said that my year off from dating taught me how to be a better friend to guys. That statement isn’t entirely correct. And it sounds kinda goofy.
It taught me how to be a better friend. Period.
My friend circle includes girls, too, ya know. I wasn’t good to them before because I was too busy chasing guys. Chasing guys meant…well, that was all I was really preoccupied with as far as my social life went, so it kinda figures I wasn’t trying that hard to be anyone’s friend. It’s kind of embarrassing to admit, but that’s what it was.
So now what?
I guess I’ll continue taking in the rain and hope I produce a crop useful to for whom it is farmed. Or as my mentor person puts it, I’ll be hanging out in God’s workshop.
I’ll be letting you know how that goes.
Okay, so my dating sabbatical started on 28 February 2009.
10 months in, around Christmas, I tried to cheat by cutting it short. Bad idea. Or a good one, depending on how you look at it.
The short version of the story goes like this:
I get set up on a blind date. I go on a blind date. It was okay. Two days after the blind date, I go on another “date” with an old friend who was in town from grad school. Because of the blind date I went on two days before, I come to the realization that I have romantic feelings for this friend. I tell him that. Things don’t go well. We don’t talk anymore.
I wrote about this event around New Year’s while I was still grieving the loss of that friendship. At first I was depressed, thinking it was all my fault. Then I got angry because I felt used (I had been rather unfairly toyed with). Then I got over it.
It felt kind of like karmic justice for all the times I’ve used someone else for my own personal satisfaction. Yes, I know karmic justice isn’t Biblical, but you know what I mean.
My point is that I understood for the first time what it felt like to be used. Now I know more than ever to never do that to anyone again. Or at least I hope I know better now.
So in the long run, what happened–and the sadness, anger, and grief that came with it–was for the better. It was another lesson for me in what it means to love my neighbor and I ended up not cutting my dating sabbatical short. And now I get to write about it.
I think I’ve already established that I like boys.
A lot.
I used to think I was the kind of girl that could use a guy and be okay with it. Actually, I thought I could actually enjoy it. Every time I tried, though, things would either get really complicated or my conscience just wouldn’t let me do what I thought I wanted to do.
Also, I just wasn’t very good at being…promiscuous. I’m not exactly smooth enough to talk a guy into getting into bed with me.
I like to think that by God’s providence, my successes were very much few and far between. The few successes I did have weren’t nearly as fun or gratifying as I thought they would be. Total bummer, right? (Haha. Yeah, right.)
A little over a year ago, before I gave up running from Christ, I met a cute Christian boy who I would have loved to have violated. Shortly after, I had a one-night-stand with a guy whose bed I had no business being in.
A lot of other things outside the realm of boys happened, too, but those two things definitely contributed to pushing me back to the Cross. Recommitting my life to Jesus wasn’t the end of my guy-related woes, though. Sexual temptation would still prove to be an issue later on, and I would give in to it once or twice before finally deciding that enough was enough.
And so on February 28th, 2009, I decided that if I was ever going to get over all this crap, I needed to keep myself away from the source(s) of my temptations for a good while. A year seemed so far away at the beginning, but here I am–a year later–wondering where all that time went.
by Vy on 28 February 2010
One year ago today, I told myself, “That’s it. I’m done wasting my time chasing boys. No more of this until next year.”
I mean, I’m not going to go out and find me a boy to marry tomorrow, but that’s not the point.
I was never very good at maintaining friendships with guys. My boy-crazy nature would always make me think in terms of black and white–I was either pursuing this guy romantically or I wasn’t. Just being friends with a dude was unfathomable to me.
Taking a year off from pursuing guys romantically has really helped me separate myself from my boy-craziness and my black/white mentality. That’s not to say I don’t still get distracted by pretty faces, but I have a lot more self-control now than I did a year ago. I’ve also learned what it means to love a guy as my brother–loving him God’s way. That is, I’m no longer looking to simply use him for my personal satisfaction or gratification.
Half of this learning came from talks with my mentor person. The other half happened during the actual applications of what I learned from my mentor with some of the guys that are in my life. I don’t mean to say that I’m the perfect friend to these guys…but I’m a much better friend than I would have been one or two years ago.
And when I finally do meet Mr. Right, I’ll better know how to engage in a relationship with him that will not only be fulfilling for both of us, but will glorify God and help both of us draw nearer to him together.
This is just the summary. I’ve omitted a lot of details for the sake of coherency. I plan on revisiting some of the more significant events that have occurred over the course of my sabbatical in the next few blog posts. This is gonna be interesting–probably more so for me than for you.
