Looking at things from a different angle
This past winter, I spent a lot of time reflecting on my celibacy in this blog. (The embarrassing proof) It was a hard, rough examination…who am I kidding, I was just the guy in the corner shouting, “God, why am I still single?” But after some reflection that only the changing seasons, I have come to realize that, even if I met the woman I love now, I couldn’t be with her in the way she needed it. I couldn’t be her head.
There are a couple of things pushing this for me. One, a fellow former homeschooler who told me that moving out of her parents house helped her in her search for love (she is now married). Two, Adriane Dorr’s blog post about how men need to step up and take the lead in relationships (although this had more to do with relationships in the church). Initially, I found Adriane’s post to be caddy, but it ended up growing in the back of my mind. In a world where even the LCMS finds itself with internal dissent against the order of creation and God’s blessing of male and female, the world needs Christian men to be assertive husbands and fathers, who read devotions to their wives and children. Even if I didn’t agree with Adriane entirely, she had a point.
I have realized there can be an innate dysfunction in a relationship when a man doesn’t take the lead. It was something that grew in my mind, challenging the ideas that I had. As a nervous guy, I felt that there wasn’t any harm in a girl asking a guy out if he was a little nervous, or if she had a greater social standing and was attracted to him. But a couple can establish their relationship patterns early and never get out of them. Even if the standing changes later in life, a couple’s dysfunction can be traced back to those early days.
If I do get married (big if), I hope when a girl looks at me, she doesn’t see someone who she has to push in the right direction. I hope, when the right time comes, I step off the ledge and be the right guy of her. I can only hope between now and then, I make enough good choices so I can be that guy, even moving out of my parents’ house if that’s what I feel it takes. I just hope temporal needs don’t get in the way.
Oh, and Adriane, you win.
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Derek Johnson
No contest here. I’m glad you’re working through all this. That’s half the battle in my opinion!
You sir, are a hero.
I completely disagree with this. A relationship is about loving equality. Not some sort of arbitrary role-playing.
I respect your beliefs about gender, but I disagree. I believe that the model I described above is an innate part of the human condition. I’m not saying that one sex is greater than the other, just that men and women have innate roles with which they need to serve each other.