View all articles
The Games We Play, Part 1
Many of us have been or are currently a part of the "dating game." We are trying to figure out how to be successful at relationships, and how to avoid being hurt in the process. Lindy thinks we should drop the game and get to the point.
Good Words
"Losing Our Promiscuity." It sounds a little odd, but it's the title of an amazing article I read eight years ago. 1 Paula Rinehart's thoughts stuck in my mind in a way most periodical pieces don't, and a recent conversation about sex and relationships inspired me to reread it.2 (Fortunately, the unique title makes it an easy target for Google.) This time, it resonated with me even more than before — maybe because I've had eight years to test and prove the writer's observations.
Rinehart finds such fitting words to describe the tangled web we call the Christian dating culture. We've all observed it. We've all tried to navigate it. Most of us have been supremely exasperated by it at some point. And yet, it's hard to say just why. Rinehart suggests that the unique culture in which we Christians date and mate is, in part, a product of our reaction to the secular society around us:
Every culture has a means of recognizing the delicate, breathtaking dance that takes place between a man and a woman — getting to know someone, liking what you experience, falling in love. … But while a longing for romance persists [in the larger culture], the dance is disappearing with heart-rending speed.
The world has turned the age-honored mating ritual on its head, she says, and made sex a precursor to commitment, rather than its consummation. We who follow Christ know — at least in theory — that promiscuity isn't an option. But (too late!) the rug has already been yanked out from under us. And Rinehart is my hero for her description of what's happened within the Christian subculture as a result:
[I]n Christian circles the dance has to be scripted because couples simply don't know what to do with each other. What does a kiss mean? How does a person express an interest in seeing a relationship become more serious? It is impossible to gain accurate bearings from the outside culture; by those standards the relationship would have been sexual long ago.
Christians talk about having "DTR's," defining the relationship talks, because it is such a challenge to read each other's cues accurately. Everything is worked out, negotiated, and agonized over in an effort to create the dance and to keep from stepping on each other's toes so badly.
Are Ya Feelin' Me?
Negotiating. Agonizing. Not knowing what to do with one another. Yup. That describes most of the time I spent in Christian dating land. Given that we have so few resources to help us dance through the relationship minefield, our attempts to do so are bound to be awkward.
You might be surprised to hear me say that we lack resources for navigating our romantic relationships in a God-honoring way. After all, you could fill a library with the how-to guides that have been written on the subject. But in some ways, those are more a part of the problem than the solution. To borrow Rinehart's metaphor, they've attempted to teach us the steps. But instead of an artful dance, we put them together and get something else…
Not A Dance, But A Game
Ever played Dance Dance Revolution? In the arcade or on your Wii, this game requires you to perform a series of steps in time to music. It'll get your heart rate up. It's a good excuse to laugh at your rhythmically-challenged friends. And if you follow the instructions exactly, you'll almost look like you're dancing. Almost.
In the same way, it's possible to follow all the relationship books' instructions, but still miss the point. You think you're dancing, but you're really playing a game.
Dating As A Spectator Sport
I admit that I spent a good part of my 20s doing exactly what I just described: trying hard to get the steps right, but making a mess of the dance as a whole. In the four years I've been married, I've been able to observe my single friends as they've stepped onto the dance floor. As I watch them, I hope I'm more objective than I was when it was my own habits I was critiquing. And I want to say that I've observed more than a little game-playing in the Christian dating culture. Unfortunately, playing games in that context usually means we're playing with each other's hearts.
And here are some of the games we play:
It's Not a Date, Really
The relationship guides tell us not to date recreationally. They warn us not to be "that girl" who always has a boyfriend because she's insecure, or because she's desperate to get married, or just because it's the thing to do. And that's good advice, since we can only be made complete by God — not by a boyfriend, fiancé or husband.
But when we latch onto just that bit of wisdom without having a vision of the bigger picture, it throws us into game-playing mode. We hang out endlessly and noncommittally with single guys. But hey — at least we're not guilty of being casual daters.
This game can be played two ways. On one hand, we might find a coed group of single friends who meet just enough of each other's emotional, social, physical and spiritual needs to keep any of us from actually pursuing anything more permanent — which is to say, marriage. Denise has painted a picture of that choice and its consequences here. At the other extreme, there's the crazy culture of "NCMOs,"3 hookups and "friends with benefits." We've bought into the world's lie that one can actually have physical intimacy without emotional costs. And for some reason, we think that making out without actually dating is a way to keep our hearts unattached and our options open. Give me a break.
The God Card
The relationship guides also counsel us to spend less time looking for a godly spouse and more time becoming one. And we're warned never to allow a guy to become more important than God in our lives. That's wonderful advice, especially given what the Bible says about idolatry.4 But I've seen people zero in on this concept and then do really low-down things to members of the opposite sex.
For example, there's the "I need to focus on God right now" excuse to turn someone down or even initiate a breakup. Now, I'm not saying that God will never call you to a season where you focus on Him, to the exclusion of a dating relationship. I'm just saying that too many women use this line as a cop-out, thinking that their rejection will hurt a guy less if it comes "from God."
Realistically speaking, playing the God card is just that: playing. It amounts to telling a half-truth and leaving an awkward open-endedness in the mind of the guy. And think about this: If, in singleness, we get used to thinking that pursuing God and pursuing a romantic relationship are mutually exclusive, what happens when we do get married?5 At some point, we need to stop using God as an excuse to fail miserably at loving our neighbors.
Wandering Aimlessly
The final dating game I've observed is actually the one I was most guilty of as a single person. It happens when we step onto the dance floor of dating without considering the purpose of the dance. In other words, we love the flirtation, the companionship and the affection. But we don't make the connection between those elements of dating and its purpose: to determine if the person we're seeing is the person we're supposed to marry.
I'm pretty sure the relationship books don't tell us to be so purposeless. In fact, most of them are clear that dating and courting are inextricably linked to marriage. But that hasn't stopped the Christian dating culture from missing the point. The phrase we use to sanctify our misguidedness is "I'm guarding my heart."
I've already written about the heart-guarding thing, so I won't go into it deeply. But I do want to observe that many Christian couples believe they're "guarding each other's hearts" because, although they're in an exclusive relationship, they are not talking about marriage, and they are not saying "I love you."
Excuse me! How does this protect anyone's heart? Practically speaking, dating gets people's hopes up about the future of the relationship. And this kind of "heart-guarding" totally cuts off the path to the very thing that would fulfill those hopes. Here, we're not only playing games with each other, we're playing games with our own hearts as well.
The Big Picture
Throughout this article I've been hinting at something that will probably make people mad when I actually come out with it: Dating or courting (whichever you want to call it) has to point toward marriage, or it doesn't work.
But in the Christian culture, we've gotten so caught up in doing the preliminary steps properly that we've forgotten their purpose. Because of our myopic view, we end up consuming a lot of each other's time and emotional energy and then having the kind of nasty breakups that come from playing games with each other's hearts. And guess what — we're no closer to marriage than when we began.
C O F F E E S H O PIt would be kind of hypocritical for me to tell you that there are five easy steps for fixing this problem, given that I've just spent 1,557 words telling you not to fixate on "easy steps." I think the answer lies in restoring to the Christian community a vision of marriage that is realistic, holistic and appealing.
That said, I also think there are some practical things we can do to stop playing games and learn to dance again. We'll talk about those next time.
- Read "Losing Our Promiscuity". Back^
- Hint: I think you should read it too, or else I wouldn't have led my article with it. Back^
- "non-committal make-outs" Back^
- Exodus 20:3-6; Isaiah 42:8 Back^
- To answer my own rhetorical question, I've heard several married friends say that their early months of marriage were spiritually difficult. Their struggles had to do with figuring out how to grow spiritually as an individual once they started sharing life with another person. Of course, in some ways this is just part of the practical process of merging two lives. On the other hand, I do wonder if it has something to do with this idea we've gotten that we must give up dating to truly pursue God. Back^
Lindy Keffer is a contributing author for TrueU.org. She has written for a variety of organizations, including Cook Communications Ministries, Acquire the Fire, and Focus on the Family. Lindy earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Education from Taylor University, and she currently works with college students at the Focus on the Family Institute. Lindy lives in Colorado, and, therefore, climbs lots of mountains. She has even climbed international mountains, like Mount Kenya. We're still trying to figure out exactly which country it's located in.
Back to top
