The college years, apart from being inundated with inhumane workloads, are garnished with girl-guy relationships. It’s obvious, the desire to love and be loved especially on a college campus with several hundred young and ambitions single people. The dating culture has always left me perplexed; stereotyped by holding hands, back rubbing, even kissing, the picture painted is a nice lush experience void of effort and commitment. Consequently, this nonchalant attitude has most of the relationships at this stage breaking as fast as they form. Looking at some of the reasons why this would happen consistently, will help us tackle the problem from the roots.
1. Building the relationship on the wrong foundation.
Christ shows the importance of choosing a good and solid foundation in the parable of the man who built his house on a rock and the other on the sand. When the rains came down and the floods went up, the house on the sand came tumbling down. The question we need to address here is; does liking someone precede loving him or her? According to the eight people I asked, it seemed unanimous that liking precedes loving someone. Is this biblical? What’s wrong with it anyway? This is what people do, right? Well taking a closer look could lead to challenging results.
Liking someone, builds off the qualities the other person possesses. They could be incredible swimmers, catastrophically beautiful, even outrageously smart, but if these qualities alone form the foundation upon which you determine to enter into serious relationship with them, what will happen when you find a better swimmer, or an even more beautiful person? Do you abandon ship and swim to the next best one across the waters? This is why Christ mentions love as the basis of all true relationship. Agape (Greek for unconditional love) loves not because of what can be extracted from the other party but to give to the other person in any and every circumstance. It always looks outside itself and not to self. It is this heart attitude that sustains Christ’s love for the church even though filled with sinners. So there you have it. Agape must, of necessity precede an attractive liking to a potential boyfriend or girlfriend. It is this misunderstanding that has led to a lot of the failed relationships and is the fundamental principle that if missed all else is set off kilter.
2. Understanding the depravity humanity
Almost as imperative as being founded on love is to a good relationship, is an understanding of humanity’s depravity. People are sinners trying to be saintly, and not saints with occasional sin. This is a major premise that if missed, leads to a disastrous relationship end. Many a people have engaged in relationships thinking, ‘Oh! They are so sweet, they would never hurt me?’ or ‘He is so kind he wouldn’t even hurt a fly!’ And though these statements seem innocent and ‘cute’, they represent the deception of the heart. Humanism, that took root during the renaissance left major bruises in the cultural body that we are still treating. If people think they are innately good, then they can never understand when people show who they really are and indeed are surprised at people’s sinfulness. This selfishness in each other, if unexpected, can and has devastated relationships because people are expecting only or mostly good out of sin filled vessels.
3. The ‘Me’ Syndrome
The reasons that now follow are only symptoms of a depraved stricken humanity and its failure in applying Agape for restraint. I have termed this next one the ‘me syndrome’. What I mean by this is, people who are looking for a mate or someone to fit the list of qualities and descriptions they have carefully thought through, but don’t understand what they really need. Having a list of quality traits is not necessarily bad, actually, it is a beautiful thing to have a clear understanding of what you need and are looking for in a mate. But like all things, sometimes good is the enemy of best. A closer look at this approach reveals the false idea that the list is all inclusive and inerrant. Frequently, I have interacted with people who have on a ‘shopping list’, meticulously picked out their future spouse to the point that even to imagination of such a person is impossible. What people need to realize is that though it is beneficial to have a generic outline of the kind of person you want, people don’t exist in a ‘ready to use’ mode, and neither do they come with microwave instructions!
People including you, are constantly growing and changing. The ‘good’ person you thought you were last year was not really good and in any case has changed this year (hopefully for the better). So an appropriate use of the list of qualities is required to avoid disappointment. Many relationships fail merely because people are not willing to grow together and help each other mature and be better people through the process. People are not as interested in the work involved in growing together; as they are in finding the finished product, which unfortunately for many is inexistent.
Continued in Part 2
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