Friday, December 28, 2018

Why the ‘rules’ don’t always apply — one man’s opinion

A few weeks ago I was privileged to counsel a young woman on a Christian singles page on Facebook concerning her love life — she was falling for a fellow member of her church’s worship team whom she always thought of as a brother but simultaneously noted that he was acting strangely and “pulling away” from her. So I asked her a few questions — and discerned that he too was becoming smitten with her. I was frank in telling her that she needed to tell this guy how she was feeling about him.

Of course, she didn’t quite get it at first because she had fallen into the trap of thinking that she should wait for him to make the first move, and frankly, she was scared to death — something to the effect of “what if he rejects me?” She even noted that he was happy being single, was even planning on moving to another country, likely for mission work, and had turned down two other women whose eye he’d caught. Nevertheless, I persisted, telling her that “He may want to take you with him.”

It thus gratified me when she later told me that I had been right all along on all counts. She hasn’t yet mentioned any marriage plans but did hint that for several reasons he was actually afraid in his own right to tell her how he felt about her.

So why do I bring this up? Well, I’m on a couple of other Christian singles pages, and conventional wisdom, at least from women, goes that a Christian man should have the confidence to approach a woman in whom he’s interested and ask her on a date. As a man, I can tell you that it will never work that way.

Why not? Because men who do that are either excellent actors — and, trust me, most of us aren’t — or truly not emotionally invested in having a relationship with a particular woman. In the latter case, asking a woman on a date turns out to be no big deal and he can take or leave her and find another.

I was recently convicted of having done this. Over the past 10 years or so I’ve had a number of short-term relationships that have always fallen apart for one reason or another; though I did and do enjoy dating for its own sake at times, in those cases it was too easy. While I was certainly open to the idea that I had found “the one,” after they collapsed I found that I wasn’t all that heartbroken. Perhaps the amount of time we didn't spend together didn’t lend itself to a more intimate relationship; I can only speculate.

You see, men really do have ego issues when it comes to dating. When a guy sees someone he really likes he often does get tongue-tied or otherwise act unusual; in the case I just described, the guy she liked started wearing cologne, which he had never done. (Think of the old Rickie Lee Jones song “Chuck E.’s in Love.”) Whether women realize it or not, a woman saying “no” to a man’s interest — and I wish someone had told me this when I was younger — is absolutely devastating, and after a few times of being shot down, which most every man’s experienced unless he finds the right one very early, he’s almost afraid to try again. An in a case of irony, he often shuts down his heart and becomes “cool” — and gains interest.

I hope you see where I’m going with this. The very expectation that a man will be strong and confident when he approaches a woman actually can mean a lack of authenticity on his part, the very thing that will turn her off down the road.

I had to laugh when I first saw the meme “I don’t need to flirt — I will seduce you with my awkwardness.” Because if a man turns awkward in dealing with a woman, it’s a sure sign that, to borrow the phrase from the movie, she has him at hello.

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