Today my friend told me that a girl he has been dating for one month broke up with him last night. He was extremely upset, feeling lonely and abandoned. I proceed to ask him the reasons his girlfriend wants to break up with him, his answer was “she thinks that I cannot be a provider, I am out of job and she is not willing to wait for me until I am financially stable. Plus she wants to get married in two years time and do not believe I can afford to buy a property for her. She knows that I cannot provide all these to her and she isn’t going to hang around and wait so she put a stop to it”
This friend of mine and his now-ex-girlfriend are both Christians. But what went wrong there? Sometimes we need to look into the root of a relationship failure, could it be because the intention of starting a date right from the beginning was all a mistake? Could it be someone wants to be with you just because all they need is companionship without acknowledging the needs for commitment whatsoever? Does that someone thinks very casually about relationship and once they find out you cannot be the provider then even that one month of going out could not be sustained?
Note the term “date”, in Part I we looked at ‘dating’ and how it was different to ‘courtship’. Dating is somehow a worldly game that people play and in the end got themselves battered, feeling betrayed, used and even abandoned. The essential elements in ‘dating’ are:
- commitment free – you don’t need to talk about or consider about getting marry at this stage;
- you are able to jump into a relationship from friends to boyfriend/ girl friend overnight;
- if your partner has cheated on you, you cheat back!;
- if you don’t think him or her are financially well off enough for your standard, you can just walk out, easy!
You can see that when you ‘date’, you are not protected from anything. There is no guarantee of happiness ever-after and no guarantee of life-time companionship! And that is all because there is no solid ground of building that relationship upon on let alone talking about commitment to each other! You usually feel lonely or missing some part of yourself when you are away from each other, you felt that it is love that draws you two together. When you feel that lust and love has greatly outweigh the committment level, you will feel angry and used. If you do breakup, you usually find it very difficult to get over things left off from that relationship or almost impossible to forget that person.
However, if you do commit yourself to God and play by the rules of ‘courtship’, you probably will find a smoother road to finding a life partner. Usually in 'courtship' you begin interest in each other on a spiritual or emotional basis, then gradually move on to a more deeper level of emotional committment when both parties are certain of God's leadership with a view towards marriage. Some essential elements in 'courtship' are:
- God planned, men do not intervene;
- Both parties in the beginning seek God's will in the relationship;
- relationship begins when a man is financially sufficient, able to be a provider and take the lead in the family and has a view that the Lord will be the head of the family;
- when a woman is ready and prepares to be a helper in the family, a mother, a person to serve her husband with full understanding and love of the Lord as the head of the family; and
- the relationship will take place mostly at church, in church ministries, at home and in family activities.
I encourage people who are reading this now and has experienced the rough patch in your life living under the 'dating' system to turn to our father Lord for guidance in healing a wounded soul for "he may lift you up" and "cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you." (1 Peter 5:6-7)
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