Chapter 14: Do Like Your Momma Told You

 

    Italian mothers give wonderful love advice to their children: “Never go out with anyone unless they’re someone you would marry!” Usually this counsel is given to their daughters, but it applies to their sons as well.

    Momma knows all about infatuation in a young person’s heart. She was young once, herself! Plus, she remembers your episodes of puppy love from earlier days. She loves you, so she’s always looking out for you (Proverbs 6:20-24).

    Momma knows that if you meet someone new and feel an attraction, you’ll think it over very clearly . . . for a little while. But then infatuation may cloud your mind. Relationships are like that! And it may not be long before you’re looking through rose-colored glasses.

    In other words, momma sees a ‘window’ for clearheaded thinking which may not last for long. She wants you to think this through dispassionately while you still can, and try to project some outcomes. If you don’t, your objectivity might quickly slip away and you’ll start kidding yourself over the whole thing. And just a few weeks later, you may be dope-slapping yourself and saying, “Aaack! And I knew better! I should have listened to Momma!”

    So let’s bring momma’s advice to a modern scenario and apply it to a meeting on the Internet. Perhaps you’ve read the profile of someone who interests you, or you’ve received an email from them. You’ve been thinking of writing or responding. But before you take one more step, try asking yourself the basic question: “Based on what I know of this person right now, how far could this relationship go before it fails?”

    If you can answer that question in any way, “Thus far, but no further”, then there’s really no point in beginning at all. Why should you waste your time and theirs when you already know it’s impossible?

    For example, let’s say that one of you is conservative but the other is liberal, or that one of you is a Christian but the other is not; or perhaps there’s an urgent moral question over which you disagree (Amos 3:3; Second Corinthians 6:14). Those issues are too important for you to compromise and you can already see that a clash is inevitable. So why would you even begin? Don’t you think it will catch up with you?

    Yes, it can be fun to flirt in the meantime and it’s flattering when someone flirts with you in return. That’s the temptation that momma is talking about! So allow me to spell this out for you in broader terms, based on the principle that time and youth are diametrically opposed forces:

    Let’s say that you’re 30 years old and you go ahead and start that relationship anyway. Within two years it fails—just like you always knew it would. Now you’d be 32 years old, still single and starting over again from scratch. And isn’t that a lovely thought? Do you really want to do that to yourself? Or how would you feel if someone else did that to you?

    Beyond the question of time is a very personal consideration which is compounded by time. If you already know the relationship will fail, then why would you put someone else’s feelings at risk? If it’s destined to fall apart anyway, it could only become more painful as you prolong it. Better to break it off at the beginning while it’s small, and minimize the pain. Not to mention that you could be the one who suffers the heartache by that time!

    I learned this principle when I turned 30, myself. It took a cold, sober assessment and an honest appraisal, but it was worth it. Not only did it save me from heartache and confusion (well, most of the time!) but it helped me deal with a life of being single in the meantime. I honestly hadn’t met anyone whom I thought would be an excellent match for me.

    Or here’s an even worse scenario: Sometimes a person will flirt with someone whom they really shouldn’t, and they’ve always known it, but before they can gather their wits they find themselves too deeply involved to back away. They’re afraid of hurting the other person’s feelings now. So they’ll hold their breath, close their eyes and keep on taking those steps until they find themselves walking down the aisle with them. This they’ll do, even though they’ve known from the beginning that it was hopeless. It happens every day!

    I recall a warm afternoon in a busy hotel lobby, many years ago. A new bride and groom swept past; but as I looked in his face, I was shocked by the ghastly expression: “Aaack! What could I have been thinking!” And his new bride followed him in a rustle, flustered in her gown—a blushing bride indeed. And every other face in that lobby was stunned, with mouths dropped open.

    Allow me to use this story to impress you with another truth. Believe it or not, there is something worse than being single and lonely. It’s being married to a person you’re miserable with (Proverbs 25:24; 27:15). Life can become a terrible burden, and the fear of divorce is always near you. Contrary to popular belief it’s better not to love, than to love and to lose (Matthew 19:10).

    So please take some advice from momma and think it all through from the very start. Ask yourself the basic question, “How far can this relationship go before it fails?” and be honest with the answer. If this counsel seems terribly sober to you, it should; but not surprisingly, it’s patterned after Jesus in His relationship with the church.

    In the days of Jesus’ ministry on the earth, as the kingdom of God drew near, people began to feel its pull in their hearts. But He told them to stop, evaluate the situation from afar off and count the cost before proceeding (Luke 14:28-33). If they weren’t prepared to go the whole distance from the very outset, then it really wouldn’t have worked out in the first place (verse 33). It didn’t mean there would be no trials along the way, but it did mean that they needed to see enough hope in it right now, based on what they already know, to make it worth the sacrifice.

    By the same principle, you should only pursue a relationship if it offers clear sailing for as far as you can see. Based on what you already know of the person, this relationship could go all the way to marriage and a lifelong partnership without any serious obstacles (Psalms 19:5). At this very early stage, it doesn’t mean that it must go this far or even that it might. It simply means that your heart is open in case it should. It allows you to pursue the relationship with good conscience and to be fair with the other person the whole time (Matthew 25:40). And it keeps you both from wasting your time.

    Your initial impressions will be modified as you learn more about each other, and that’s to be expected. You’re beginning a process of exploring personalities, weighing the possibilities and continually updating your evaluations. No doubt there are some key questions—even some pre-conditions—that you’ll need to have satisfied before anything serious can develop, which you’ll need to discuss as your correspondence continues. That brings us to your “bottom line of non-negotiables.”

    Each of us has certain issues, convictions, or conditions which are so vital that a potential partner simply must agree with them – because we, for ourselves, would never compromise. For example: you are a totally committed Christian, so they must be totally committed was well; you are pro-life, so they must be pro-life; you are committed to debt-free living, so they must be committed to debt-free living. (Those are some of the issues that Nancy and I discussed.)

    Your bottom line of non-negotiables may include spiritual, moral, or practical issues. You must decide what those issues are in your own case, and eventually come to an agreement with your partner over them. We’re talking about some make-it-or-break-it stuff here, folks, so it’s very important how you go about this. You’ll need to get to the bottom of it all, to the real, whole truth of the matter, no matter how painful that process may be.

    Your correspondence will offer two basic options for exploring this:

    First, you might find pleasant ways for offering your own opinions. But if you are the first to speak, be sure to ask for their opinions as well! You’ll need to observe their thoughts in motion to really know whether they agree with you or not. If they simply remain silent to your opinion, it does not necessarily mean they agree with you!

    Or second, if a matter is especially vital, you might invite their views first. That way, when they answer, you’ll be sure that they’re giving their true opinion. If you haven’t previously hinted at ‘the right answer,’ you’ll know they’re not just telling you what you want to hear.

    Also, for yourself, you’ll need to be reasonable. To what degree can your requirements be accepted in principle, though the reality lags behind? For example, let’s say you’re committed to debt-free living but you’ve met some­one interesting who is still paying off a school loan. Would you be willing to compromise, to accept the principle and intention of debt-free living, until the reality catches up? Could you accept it as a goal and work toward it, instead of an actual requirement up front?

    Furthermore, you should put a distinction between the issues that are truly vital and those that are merely preferences. For example, if you really love Mexican food, would it be enough if Mexican food was one of their favorites? After all, you probably won’t be eating Mexican food every day.

    Or perhaps your conditions are overemphasized? Remember the story of my friend the camping enthusiast. An unreasonable ‘condition’ could be blocking you from a relationship at this very moment; so if the Lord seems to be speaking to you about it, it may mean that He already has someone in mind for you, if only you’ll chill out and try to make a reasonable compromise.

    And in keeping with the bigger picture, you may see some compromises from your future partner in return. Both of you may learn something new and broaden each other’s horizon in those ways. Relationships do that to people.

    But now let’s turn to the other end of this spectrum. Let’s say that you’ve come to an issue that you can’t compromise and you’re absolutely sure of it. If that’s really the case, then you should break off the relationship as soon as possible. There’s simply no point in pursuing it further. But if you must do this, please be as pleasant as possible. Remember that the other person has already given you their time and as much of their attention as they could afford under their own set of convictions, and that’s something you should always have a great deal of respect for, even in disagreement. There’s never an excuse for rewarding evil for good, or for ‘dumping’ someone in a huff:

    “Assuredly, I say to you, inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brethren, you did it to Me.”

(Matthews 25:40)

    Besides, you may not want to burn that bridge so quickly. Things may not be as final as they seem, and your friend may change their mind after all! But in the meantime you really should start looking elsewhere.

    In the long run, you’ll be glad that you made such critical distinctions from the beginning. It will set your heart and mind at peace for the rest of your life and give you a foundation of hope. You’ll end up saying, “Thank you momma, you were right!” and she’ll wink at you and answer, “Bless you honey, Momma reads her Bible!”

    And now let’s have some applications for the Internet. We’ll begin by touching on some of the same subjects, then skip ahead to related subjects:

    Before logging onto the Internet meeting services you may need to take stock to define yourself in some vital ways. Let’s begin with your bottom line of non-negotiable issues. It may be helpful to identify them and write concise little essays on those subjects. For example, if you’re committed to debt-free living, try writing a persuasive little argument on why you think that’s best, even if one must forego the convenience of credit cards. And try to use the Scriptures to support your position where possible—you want to make sure the Lord is on your side.

    Identifying your basic issues and writing about them might mean a few more days of delay, but it would be time well spent. It would help you collect your thoughts for future discussions (Colossians 4:5-6). Lots of future discussions! So be sure to keep those essays on file for later use.

    Remember, you’re likely to correspond with many persons before settling on one of them as your best possibility. This means you’ll see a large degree of repetition between your early letters as you address the same, basic issues with each new person. Are you beginning to see the point? Rather than retyping each new letter from scratch, you might retrieve information from one of your concise essays, adapt it a little, and use it over again. Just cut-and-paste, then take a little extra effort to personalize it. If you happen to be a popular person, this could even become a necessity for you. Some people get hundreds, even thousands, of letters in response to their profiles!

    Also, new issues will be coming up from time to time from people you meet, so you’ll constantly need to form new opinions as you go. It can be quite a learning experience!

    Because of all this, it would be helpful to keep some basic files on your letters. Like your essays, they’ll be a ready resource of your thoughts on many subjects, already written and ready to adapt to your future correspondence in case you need those thoughts again quickly.

    Does that sound terribly impersonal to you? Let’s think about it from the perspective of Christ and the church. Isn’t the Bible full of letters that were written to other Christians many centuries ago, but God is still using them to speak to you today? They include His ‘non-negotiable issues,’ they define Him and He never changes, so it’s merely consistent of Him to use the same words with you. But His love for each person is intimate and individual, so you shouldn’t confuse consistency with non-individual care. In like manner, cut-and-paste may not be enough, so you’ll need to tweak each letter with some personal applications.

    Furthermore, keeping an organized file of old letters will help you keep track of the subjects you’ve already discussed, and with whom. This can be important! A friend of mine once asked a young lady how her father was doing. Only after sending the letter did he realize that he’d confused her with a different girl, whose father was in the hospital. The father of this particular girl had just died. Apology not accepted; relationship over!

    Or try telling Thomas how much you enjoyed his letter, when the letter you’re quoting came from Randy. Tell Susan her smile is pretty, and then accidentally mail it to Carol. We laugh when we hear of such things, but I promise you won’t find it amusing when it happens to you!

    So use a little foresight and try to keep some order as you go. And here are two additional reasons why you should do this:

    First: if you meet someone who’s still open-minded on one of your vital subjects, you might just convince them and win them to your opinion. If the subject is really that important, this would be a bonus in itself. And let’s not forget that it could give that relationship a greater potential for success.

    Second: if things got serious with someone and you eventually married them, your letters would become a journal of your relationship. This could become a personal treasure. One day, many years from now, it may even become a family heirloom. (My own letters to Nancy, and hers to me, put together, are much longer than this entire book!)

    To some degree, your early letters may be idealistic because they’ll discuss your thoughts on important issues. Wouldn’t that be a perfect lesson for your daughter one day, when she shows her initial interest in boys? (And how wise of you to keep that in mind!)

    But if one of your relationships seems to prosper and it becomes serious enough for marriage, I suggest you prudently delete your other files.

    Now let’s proceed to something more practical. Internet relationships offer a short-term advantage pertaining to distance. They allow new people to connect quite easily, even if they live hundreds of miles away. Your circle of acquaintances could expand dramatically! The same consideration compels you to a long-term advantage: it allows you to build your relationship on correspondence, which gives you time to explore each other’s personality. Ultimately, this will create a better rapport that may benefit you handsomely for the rest of your life.

    But in the mid-term, distance can bring a distinct disadvantage. Bear in mind that if your correspondence prospers, you’ll want to meet your new friend in person very soon. Distance may hinder you in this, not only for that first meeting but for all of your future meetings, if that first meeting goes well.

    Nowadays, one or two meetings could easily be arranged, even if you live a thousand miles apart. But to become truly serious, you’ll need an element of consistency: a prolonged period of dating and courtship in person. This means you’ll have to live close enough right now to at least spend your free time together on weekends.

    So before going online, you’ll need to combine some foresight with a good deal of soul searching. You must ask yourself—quite realistically—how much would you be willing to sacrifice for the right relationship? Are you able to travel frequently and can you afford it? And do you have the time in your schedule?

    Some further questions may be: How reliable is your trans­portation? How far are you willing to drive one way (perhaps in one morning) just to spend several hours together that same afternoon? Can you afford the price of overnight accommodations to stretch that meeting into two days? And can you do this repeatedly, one weekend after another?

    Maybe you can’t afford hotel accommodations every weekend, or maybe you have events at home that require your attention. If either of those is the case, you’d have to drive to your meeting in the morning, spend the afternoon together, then turn around and drive back home again that same evening. What sort of mileage radius does that give you to work with? Those are some of the variables you’ll need to consider from the start.

    For myself, I lived in Dallas, but I sometime visited my best friend in Houston. That made a good little day trip, so I used it as a model. An equal distance in any direction would have been acceptable to me.

    In the opposite direction, at about the same distance, was Tulsa, where Nancy was living. We met online and later in person, and I believed our relationship seemed hopeful. So I found a decent, inexpensive motel in Tulsa where I could spend my nights, and soon I was spending nearly every weekend in town.

    But keep it in mind that dating is not an end in itself. Remember what momma told you—you must look as far ahead as you possibly can. Ultimately and most importantly, would you be willing to relocate within one year if this relationship worked out well for you?

    Of course, you could meet someone who already lives in your own city, which would make this question moot. I have a friend who was that fortunate, and this will become more common as Internet relationships grow in popularity. It’s also true that your new friend might be the one who moves to your city, which would allow you to stay put. But since you don’t yet know who that person will be, you can’t count on this. So you must consider the possibility for yourself.

    If there’s a reason why you must stay in your present city, you’ll need to mention it in your profile honestly, because that means the other person would definitely have to move in order to join you (if they don’t live in the same city already). This can put a lot of pressure on them, so for this reason, many of the Internet meeting services pose this condition in their questionnaire.

    For now, let’s stick to the possibility of you relocating. If things become serious with someone you meet online, you’ll need contingency plans for moving to their city in order to pursue the relationship further. Would you be willing to do that? It may even be a question of whether you could move there. You’ll have some homework to do and some important decisions to make.

    For example, does your company have another office in that town, so that your job might be transferred? Or is your trade in demand so that you might find another job in that city quickly? That’s a harder scenario because you may arrive in your new city unemployed. So do you have enough money to live on until you can get something else going?

    In our own case, Nancy had commitments in Tulsa that prevented her from moving away. I knew this from the beginning, so for me the question was serious. I had to make contingencies from the very start, which would include my moving one day if things went well. My company had branch offices in every major city in America, so yes, there was a realistic possibility that my job could be transferred. My customer had a major headquarters in Tulsa, so that was the most hopeful option of them all. Furthermore, one of my brothers lived in Tulsa, so I had family in town if I needed them. That gave me the background I needed to become serious with Nancy, and it allowed our relationship to prosper.

    By the way, Nancy loves to kid me about those contingency plans nowadays. While we were still dating, I might have mentioned them by saying, “Not that I’m presuming on you, but . . .” and then I’d spell out the contingency. Usually this included the steps that would keep us on track toward marriage.

    “Of course you were presuming on me!” she laughs, to which I’ll answer rather sheepishly, “Well . . . it worked!”

    But on the other side, those contingencies offered Nancy a certain peace of mind. Obviously I was serious in my intentions toward her, I had thought it all through from the beginning, I had counted the cost and thought she was worth the effort. In fact, it became a long-term advantage because our sacrifices along the way made our relationship dearer. I went through all of those obstacles, week after week, just for her. On the long, lonely weekday nights between our meetings, that gave her an assurance that our relationship was worth pursuing—that there was still clear sailing for as far as she could see. We might otherwise have become dis­couraged and lost hope.

    After we’d known each other for ten months, I transferred my job to Tulsa, as I’d previously allowed for. This brought us to a much more serious phase, but not the final phase. Though everything seemed promising, we had agreed to live in the same city for a while and see each other on a daily basis, to allow our relationship a more realistic dimension than our weekend visits. Only then could we make our decision on a firm enough basis.

    Things went extremely well for both of us, and two months later I proposed to Nancy. She said “Yes,” and our wedding plans were made. Three and a half months after that, we were married—another success story from the Internet!

    In the first section of this book, we focused on you to make sure you were ready for an Internet adventure. In this section, we’ve focused on what you should be looking for in another person. In the following section we’ll talk about the Internet culture itself, so you can navigate your way to an excellent match.

    After all of this preparation, you’re finally ready to begin your adventure of browsing, typing, double-clicking, and . . . ?

    More.