The Sin of Dating
Michael W. Smith circa 1988, I2(eye) album. I cranked it up, this was my life’s anthem.
It's over the line, a shadow of doubt
From outside looking at the "in crowd"
(Tempting voices are calling you)
They look mighty fine
A sight to behold
But all that glitters is not gold
(Still those voices are calling you)
All you're missin' is a heartache
A disillusion for a keepsake
A life of living with your own mistake
All you're missin' is a heartache
The water is high, you're out on a limb
Well, if you take the fall then it's "sink or swim"
(Clouds of reason will follow you)
You're kissing the dark
You're courting your pride
You wonder is it greener on the other side
(But they have nothing to offer you)
Whenever I had to explain why I never had a boyfriend, I straight-up responded with “All I’m missing is a heartache.” I thought it sounded sophisticated. Probably it sounded pretentious, but for sure, it was a satisfying answer that kept people from probing further. Additionally, I just wasn’t that boy-crazy, and I possessed a deeply buried subversive inner-feminist who was smug about not needing boys to validate my worth. That, and having a thing for girls that kept me seeking out friendships with the closet-lesbians.
Protecting myself from a broken heart was the veiled surface of my participation in a larger and far-reaching revolution at work. 1984 Elisabeth Elliot published Passion and Purity, and in 1997 a young Joshua Harris published I Kissed Dating Goodbye, closely followed by a courtship handbook called Boy Meets Girl. The fundamentalist Christian community as a whole was wrapping a big ol’ chastity belt around the preceding decades’ free love movements and encouraging young people to enlist in the anti-sexuality crusade by practicing abstinence, wearing promise rings, signing purity contracts, engaging in courtship, protesting liberal sex education and free condom hand-outs, fighting to revise abortion laws, preventing AIDS, villainizing Planned Parenthood, and shutting down the homosexual agenda. It was a massive political movement that began with leveraging youthful malleability.
Disinfecting an army of young people from their hormones nearly looks good on paper, and does execute on some level under extreme circumstances, but results in a fair amount of pain and eventual dysfunction. If you’ve ever had a burning desire for someone, you understand its potential to be the very worst kind of torture. The natural obstacle course of human development commonly involves surprise-games of hormone hot potato, if you will allow me this stupid analogy:
A hot flaming desire swoops down at you from out of the blue and you’re obligated to do something with it. You juggle it between your hands so it doesn’t scorch you, but damn it would be such a relief if you could just toss it back and forth with an interested partner. But if you’re conscripted in the revolution, you must play by a new set of rules. In the unfortunate case of flaming desire, there are a total of two options. Optimal option number one: throw that sucker back out into the cosmos by asking God to have mercy and to please remove the feelings of hot desire altogether. If God is not kind and doesn’t take the molten thing from you, then you’re obligated to stay in the game and hold that mother fucker in your hands while it sears and smolders. If you can’t seem to carry out gameplay in a platonic manner, you risk being tossed out with your potato all together unless you get permission for optimal option number two: ask the rule-makers to employ the wet blanket of courtship between you and your interested party (whether they understood through osmosis that you wanted to play with them or not) to smother the fire and reduce the burn.
Got it?
Marriage-intended courtship was the purity movement’s one solution to “you make me so horny.” Sometimes courtship led to the marriage of two sexually illiterate people now bound to enjoy each other in bed no matter what, and other times courtships ended because God told someone it wasn’t meant to be, or both parties realized they weren’t a match, or one of them was dealing with too much sin, and the other was more godly.
Once I did have a crush on a brother in the Lord, and as soon as that hot potato reached my hands, I freaked out and immediately ran to the rule makers with it. The pastor’s wife told me to pray and ask God to take the feelings away (because we were in a special leadership program and courtship was not available). Thankfully that worked. Another time, I fell in love with a sister in the Lord (a bit of a loophole; us girls were quite affectionate with one another) and held on to those feelings no matter how badly they burned. We were spotted for playing out of bounds and the regulators were quick to sever us, but there was nothing God could do to take away my feelings this time.
Out in the world, no one else played this game as we did, and participating in life and activities outside my Church were problematic to my commitment to Jesus. I felt like I was living a double life. Or a lie. One of my more memorable classes at community college was a combined science and English course. I sat next to a guy who wore a plaid shirt, glasses and had thick dark curly hair. He was outdoorsy and nerdy, but my kind of cool, and most importantly, he was good at science. Score. I needed him, and I allowed myself to befriend him while trying not to encourage him. But I didn't understand what that meant because flirting was not in my skillset; I couldn't distinguish between being warm and friendly and flirty and slutty.
I got on with this guy though, and he was into me. Not only did he save my ass in science class, but he was a competitive mountain biker, and I happened to love mountain biking. The science portion of the class proved challenging enough that he and I set up extracurricular study groups with other students (my finely honed skill of asexual group activities put to use). It cut into my Church service time, but I was ready to justify it. What was the point of going to school if I wasn't going to pass my classes?
And then I started spending time with just him. He took me mountain biking and we had a blast together. He had a few different bikes, full suspension, and custom-built by him. He proudly showed off the bikes and half-finished frames he had hanging in his garage. One bike, in particular, he won as a prize from a race. He would usually loan me one of his bikes for our adventures, and it was a hell of an upgrade from the zero suspension TREK I borrowed from my brother. He patiently encouraged me down slopes and paths I never would have dared on my own. I recall careening down a hill and flipping my (his) bike over a sagebrush. The bike went flying as I jumped off mid-air and miraculously landed on my feet, running downhill in my continued momentum. As if I choreographed a stunt.
Whoa! Are you ok?!
He stopped and turned when he heard me yelling in the air behind him. I assured him I was good and we both laughed, I recovered his bike and we continued.
That was pretty awesome!
He yelled back at me.
He taught me how to carry a bike on my shoulder and climb rocks with it. A mountain biker is not deterred by fences, streams, or other non-cycle friendly terrains.
I've never been with a female that I could also go mountain biking with.
He said one day as we looked over the top of a hill, ready to bomb down it.
Uh oh. I was in trouble.
And then it happened. He asked me out on an actual...date.
As I matured and had experience with real feelings, Michael W. Smith’s advice felt less sophisticated than it had when I was a teenager. I wasn’t up for such ridiculous naivete anymore and decided that I could still see a movie with someone in a platonic manner just as I could go mountain biking. So I accepted as a normal person would, and decided I wouldn’t have to whip out my rule book unless the occasion required.
The night of the date we had some time before the movie, so he drove us up to the top of one of the hills we liked to ride. He killed the car engine. It was dark and we could see the stars. Thankfully, we had something intelligent and distracting to say about them on account of our science class. But as the reality of the situation set in, my mind began taking frightening leaps; we're in the middle of nowhere. He could rape me if he wanted to. Do I really know this guy's character? My nerves forced me to speak up to protect myself. It was suddenly a rulebook moment in my mind. I had to let him know this wasn't going anywhere and imply that nothing better happen tonight!
Um, I need to say something....just so you know, I don't really date.
Silence, then
...Oh-kaaaay...
I mean, I really like hanging out with you and I'm having a lot of fun mountain biking, but I can't be more than your friend.
He was caught off-guard.
Yeah, ok. It's just that I think it's cool that we can do stuff like this...
He seemed disappointed like I just ruined a perfectly great moment.
I don't remember what film we watched that night, but I wasn't good at acting normal after my precipitous little speech. I drove home that night berating myself for it. Why did I have to ruin it with him? Yet I was also proud of what I had done because I kept myself pure for Jesus. And, it made me want to cry. Why couldn't I have a cool guy friend? I've been having such a good time.
The only way to know what to do was to consult with a regulator, so I took a meeting with the youth pastor.
Honey, it's not possible to be 'just friends' with guys at your age.
She said with her gentle but firm voice and always that look of pity that embarrassed me and made me feel small. As if explaining to a little girl that she is now a grown woman and had to act like one.
But I wish it wasn't that way!
I whimpered, feeling very much like throwing a little girl tantrum.
Why can't it just be like when we're kids, why does it have to change?
This news broke my heart. I wasn't going to be able to maintain idealistic friendships with guys. I must shield my emotions - this part I knew already. Unguarded emotions lead to romance, flirting, and a whole unthinkable world of trouble. Unguarded emotions were the gateway to falling into sin. Unguarded emotions led to unguarded moments, which led to being eliminated from the game and sent away from the church community entirely. I’d seen it happen to others. I came out of this lesson more confused and frustrated than ever.
If you have sinned, slide forward.
I would say to Michael W. Smith that unrequited love is the worst kind of torture. A heartache I might have missed if I was allowed to date. When I finally did start to date at 31 years old, I engaged in remedial lessons that required a team of non-church friends and “Sex for Dummies” to help me figure it out.
In case you’re wondering what that looked like, you can read about it in The Sin of Sexing post. It was dramatically freeing. The agnostic man I had premarital sex with is still my husband and we have a relationship that has weathered long distance, two counts of immigration, my bisexuality, my crazy church history, cultural differences, kids, starting life over, surviving America’s 2008 economic crash, and opening our relationship to ethical non-monogamy. We are strong, we give each other the love, freedom, and respect to live as autonomous individuals. We consider ourselves lucky to have such a partner to do life with.
Thank you, Dating. You might be awkward, but you’re not that evil after all.
