“Should I stay, or should I go?” runs through the mind of the dating teenager. As a teenager myself, I can relate to the pressure to conform to society and seek out a lovely young lass I can take with me to a movie or out for dinner. Society feeds us so many images of the “yovely couple” (young and lovely couple), and makes us feel inadequate when we are the only one of our friends to not be dating.
Single Guy
However, secular society is usually wrong about a lot of things. As a Christian, I know this, and I’m sure that you know this also. God doesn’t want you to seek out everyone and their sister to date. He wants us to be content with what we have and who we have in our lives. God wishes us much happiness, but you must ultimately trust in his great plan for your life. The prior sentences don’t mean that you should just accept being single though, but rather you should actively seek out quality relationships from which to grow. How does one accomplish this? Well, I have an anecdotal poem from my “archives” that I have written. Read it over, and I’ll explain the applicability to your life below:
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” Good-bye fair dear.
Farewell for good.
I shall not see you much anymore.
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For we have diverged,
and I can no longer keep you within grasp.
You have floated to a new consciousness,
and I haven’t been able to follow.
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Day and night you weighed on my mind,
but that is the past and has gone.
I will divide us into two and let you be free.
For you think you have released me,
but I hadn’t released you.
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Now, my thoughts will be freer
because you will not be in them.
And my actions will not hesitate
to show what I’ve learned
That is: “You are fully liberated, and I have followed that.”
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For what you don’t know is the confusion
that I felt, or the guilt for something that
apparently you have come to terms with.
For loving someone as a friend is not a crime,
but loving a friend as a lover makes one wonder
if the original foundation has not been shattered.
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In our case, I think it wasn’t strong to begin at all.
I think our young attractions pushed us together,
but we realized early on that the glue was weak.
Your sneaking suspicions and my uneasy feelings
did not make for a strong relationship.
For I think we both knew that it was not meant to be.
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And with that, I can only wish you happiness in your life.
Whether it is with your Kevin, or with someone else.
Make the most of it, and blossom in the sunshine of a new day.
I respect you, but I must not think about you any longer.
For as you moved on so quickly, I have also.”
[September 19, 2010]
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I wrote the above poem a few months after getting out of my last relationship about nine months ago. Let me relate my story to you. I met a girl, who I really liked, so we dated for a while, but I was often left wondering where I stood in the relationship. I found myself still attached to her, but I realized that I had to break it off when I knew she wasn’t the girl I fell in love with. For, you see, and I hesitate to write this, I was a bit desperate to want to be in a relationship because of the constant reminders from friends, family, and most importantly, the media that I was single. Every image I was fed by society was that being single was an undesired state, but in actuality a lot of people are single.
After our relationship ended, I was unconsciously hung on the idea that maybe I was inadequate for a dating relationship because I found myself trying to change the girl I was dating, albeit not to a large extent, but I was trying to mold her into the perfect girl for me. I fell in love with an idea, and when I realized that I didn’t love her for her, I ended the relationship to her dismay because although she was happy, I was not.
So, why is it important for you to care about a teenager’s stumbling through the dating world? Well, I should only hope that I can instill in you a greater sense that being single has a strength to it. For one, God ‘s plan doesn’t involve everyone being in a relationship all the time. He wants us to appreciate what we have, and he blesses us on his own time-scale. God wants us to accept others as they are, and only when we can appreciate another one of his gifts (mainly the person we choose to date or are attracted to) and not try to change them to fit our liking, then we will understand more deeply God’s message. Once a person tries to change his or her partner to fit his or her liking or fails to recognize the beauty that has been bestowed upon and within that person, then a person has no business being in a relationship with that person.
Rest assured that God wants some people to be single. If you feel like all your friends are dating and you are left in the cold, don’t despair. Use the time that you are given to develop what you want to see in a partner, what you would bring to a relationship, and what you hope to gain from a relationship. When God knows you are ready, then he will prosper you in many ways. In the meantime, keep putting yourself out in the dating world, explore the many people that God provides to you for dating, develop personal connections with these people and keep your faith in the man above that you will one day be united with your one true hope and light.