DEAR BOUNDLESS ANSWERS

I'm the boyfriend of the girl whose question you answered in Not Feminine Enough. We have been in a struggling courtship for 15 months now. It is now starting to become more grounded as we have let go of what you could call emotional and sexual baggage; as of lately, things are starting to roll towards a healthier direction.

To go ahead and reiterate a point she made in her letter to you guys; YES I do stink at communicating what I think and even worse so, what I feel.

We started our relationship off in a very odd way. We played a lot of basketball together and hung out a lot with a mutual friend of mine as well as some other people. After developing somewhat of a weird friendship, my girlfriend expressed her affection for me by verbally telling me that she liked me as more than a friend. Where her overall outward appearance was not something I was drawn towards, I was drawn towards other things about her.

Both of us had just come out of 1-year relationships that both ended badly and were both physically involving. When we entered into this relationship, we both reverted to our relational behavior and quickly got physically involved. We are both aware of the consequences of our actions and know that the sexual interaction has made us stick emotionally in a way that we are not able to handle.

When I told her that I was not attracted to her, what I was really feeling was I felt her lack of embracing her God-given role as a woman was pushing me away slowly as time went by in the relationship. I mean, how is a guy supposed to confront that? The other option was breaking up. As far as seeking out God's will in all of this, I was in sin and was not sensitive to the Spirit. If I was walking according to His will though, I doubt I would have been in sin like I was. A good old fashioned battle of flesh vs. spirit.

To make things clear: I truly desire to walk with the Lord every day until I die. That doesn't mean I do every day, but I do struggle and wrestle to get back up to just be with Him. I want His love to dominate the relationship that my girlfriend and I have together. I want Him to be glorified in our relationship and in my life. I have always tried to be a servant leader in this relationship even though I know I have failed. I want to serve God and her. I want to keep her pure. I want to be pure. I want to grow. I want her to grow.

I did not know what to do or how to go about certain things in this relationship. All I knew was in my mind after about 6 months of courtship, "I just am not attracted to her physically unless I am being sexual with her." I did not want that. I wanted purity and always have. There have been times where I have seen her embrace her God-given secure femininity and I am just wowed as a guy. I am just blown away by the whole package, inside and outside.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and I really do appreciate the ministry that you all serve.

REPLY

Well, for claiming to not have much good communication between the two of you, you both certainly are communicating well with me! I'm proud of you for following up and for your sincere desire get clarity on your relationship.

There are a couple of things that I want to address, but I don't want to skip over the significance of your decision on physical intimacy. As you've discovered, physical intimacy outside marriage brings into relationships confusion, not clarity, every time.

I'm not telling you anything you don't already know and haven't read on Boundless multiple times, but it's worth repeating. It confuses the heart to put it in a place and expose it to feelings out of context, or in the words of Solomon, to "stir up or awaken love until it pleases."

You have a relationship that seems to have a little potential, but you're not sure how to move toward reaching that potential. In terms of fire, let's say you have a little match flame.

Now, you could prepare a safe place to build a fire, go look for some wood, slowly add a few small sticks, then some little branches, then bigger branches, until you have a nice, warm fire that you've nurtured into existence and is now nurturing you with its warmth and light. Or, you could just splash a cup of gasoline on the match and see what happens. What happens is that you get a short but significant blast of heat and fire that burns the hair off your knuckles.

In relationships, physical intimacy outside of marriage (stirring up or arousing love before its time) is throwing gasoline on a fire. There is a quick blast of heat, but it subsides quickly. Oddly, once it burns up, it can douse the fire completely until there is nothing left — except a few scars.

Nobody likes sitting around with cold hands and burned knuckles, so we strike another match and throw another cup of gasoline on it. We get a hot blast. The fire goes out. And we repeat.

If you're stuck in that cycle, you will be constantly frustrated because you are clouding your ability to see things clearly, and as you mentioned, you are putting yourself in a place where sensitivity to the Spirit of God is dulled. This is especially true as a man relates to a woman. You're not married, but the principle in 1 Peter 3:7 comes to mind: "Likewise, husbands, live with your wife in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered."

So, step one is to draw some boundaries with regard to physical intimacy so you can at least think, pray and hear God as clearly as possible.

Next, you described your relationship as "courtship," but I'm not so sure. Are the two of you really actively and intentionally moving toward marriage? Or, are you still trying to decide whether to take the relationship to that level? I get the sense that you're somewhere in between, and I think that's the problem.

The purpose of courtship is to intentionally move toward marriage, so much so that you have a general idea of when marriage is most likely to happen. I don't think you're there yet. On the other hand, with as much time as you've spent together, you're well past that initial "dating" phase of getting to know one another.

My hunch is that the relationship is trying to pull you further down the road toward courtship, but your concerns about her (legitimate or not) are holding you back, so you're beyond dating but not yet courting, just sort of hanging there in limbo, trying to keep the flame ignited with some gasoline splashes of physical intimacy. Meanwhile, you're waiting either for her to change or for your feelings about her to change, or at least for your feelings to be more consistently positive.

You've got a decision to make. You need to decide whether she is someone with whom you can picture yourself growing old and leaving a legacy that brings glory to God. If your answer is "yes," then start courting. If your answer is, "yes, if she would only change this or that," then your dating phase has served its purpose. If the things that are concerns for you are deal-breakers, and your heart isn't changing about them, and she's not changing, then you need to consider drawing the relationship to a close and moving on.

You've stumbled along for 15 months. Now you've got some direction and focus and a bit of a game plan. I'm not entirely comfortable putting a time limit on it, but it shouldn't take another 15 months to figure out whether the two of you should pursue marriage with one another. Once you've gotten rid of the gasoline, you can see if there's enough wood there to build a long-lasting, life-giving fire. I think you'll know soon whether to set a steady course toward marriage or bring things to an end.

Blessings,
JOHN THOMAS

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If you have a question you'd like John to consider for this column, please send it to editor@boundless.org. Please note that all questions selected for "Boundless Answers" may be edited for clarity and privacy and become the property of Focus on the Family.