I assumed that it was all a part of Christian courting. Until, that is, Ryan was on top of me.
Okay, maybe it was a red flag when he asked me to turn out the lights. But still, it’s not like he declared the intention behind that request. He didn’t say, “Hey, could you turn out the lights? ‘Cause I want to…”
There was no explanation offered for what Ryan was planning to do once our setting was intimate enough for his tastes. There was only a cute little blanket fort and a little less ability to see than usual.
He’d told me all about the youth ministry degree he was working on just the week before. That was collateral for my innocence, was it not?
I had hoped so; but things continued to intensify, and I had to pull back and ask.
“So, hang on — sorry,” I said. “I’m just, a little confused.”
There was a pause. Ryan’s breathing was heavy. “Okay … ?”
“I just thought … well, I didn’t expect this. Aren’t you in school for ministry?”
“Ohhhh … yeah, about that …”
Ryan proceeded to lay out for me what he had consciously neglected to mention earlier: that he was in the midst of a profound struggle concerning his faith, and as a result, he was not actively holding to the guidelines it set out for him. I wasn’t a believer at the time, only feeling pulled towards what I knew to be truth, so we went back to kissing, and things progressed from there. In every sense.
Reflecting on the evening and on the entire relationship later on, I realize that I shouldn’t have pretended I was okay with how enthusiastically Ryan had educated me about his degree path and then how casually he had followed that up by taking off his own pants in my bed. I knew that Ryan was acting inconsistently with the values he had professed to hold close, and I wasn’t okay with that.
But, somehow, I’d fallen in love that night. I couldn’t say no to him, and he used me thoughtlessly for the rest of that summer and a good part of the next. What resulted was an exceptionally deep hurt to my heart — one that took its time healing after things finally ended between us. It was the large number of sexual encounters that were peppered throughout that relationship that formed the cornerstone of the hurt.
I expect that Ryan is as ashamed of those encounters now as I am, because he’s engaged. He’s getting married next month to the lovely Christian girl who was one of his closest friends throughout the time he messed around with me.
See, Ryan came through that rebellious searching stage, but when he reached the point of readiness to commit I was in no condition to be anybody’s girlfriend. I was in shambles, a wreck of raw nerves, my head spinning with what I’d been through as I had given everything in the hopes of my love being returned.
Ryan decided it was time for him to start dating somebody more seriously, saw another girl over my shoulder, and moved on. Now he’s engaged, and me? Well, I’m writing this column.
I learned a lot through that relationship, though: recently I dated a nice guy from my university who was in a very similar stage to where Ryan was at when we were a couple, and, like Ryan, he constantly wanted things to go further physically than I was comfortable with. I said no to him, but he would ask again. And again. And again. After a few months of saying no I was tired of it and let him know things weren’t going to work out.
But guess what? There are no hard feelings. If he was to come out of that stage — that searching stage which I’ve begun to think is a rite of passage for nearly all Christian men these days — we would still have a solid enough friendship as the basis of our acquaintance that we could get back together. And I am sure, from personal experience, that that would not be the case if I had let things go where he wanted them.
Because of this experience I am fully comfortable calling my Christian guy friends on their crap when I see them in that blue period. I did this just recently with a 20-year-old buddy of mine who was messing with a girl’s head by alternately hooking up with her, telling her that he’s a Christian and has to stop, and then doing it again (with absolutely no intention of dating the girl). When I heard that this young woman had asked for a good-bye kiss in public the last time they’d seen each other, thinking that because they’d been intimate the week before that it would be alright, and that he had denied her, that was it. I sat the guy down and gave him a piece of my mind.
And you know what? He listened. He thanked me for being so honest and for giving him the kick in the pants that he needed, and then he proceeded to conduct a clear and kind conversation with this girl in which he let her know that he couldn’t spend time with her any more because he couldn’t keep hurting her. She was upset of course, but as much as I would have hated to hear the same thing from Ryan when we were together, I really do wish he’d had the guts to say it. It would have saved me a lot of pain.
Ultimately, when guys are in that stage of not knowing what they believe, they just need listening ears and responsive communicators. They need the women they know to pray with them, and they really, really, need us to give it to them straight. Not knowing what they believe easily becomes an excuse for them to be thoughtless in an area that has always had hard and fast rules. It can also be a lot less difficult a time for them and for the women they date if friends will be honest about what they’re seeing.
When Ryan screwed around with me, our mutual girlfriends all knew what was going on and hated him for it, but none of them sat him down and told him it needed to stop. Don’t be them in that situation.
And don’t sell yourself short, either. You deserve to be treated properly. If you love a guy who’s rebelling against his faith, recognize that he’s a wild card right now and stick to both your physical and emotional boundaries. Talk to him, and be clear that you know what you believe and that, if he wants to be with you, he needs to invest in knowing what he does, too. Trust me, you won’t regret it.
Flickr photo (cc) by Steff Ling
