Finding Momentum

I’m con­tin­u­ing an entry detail­ing new (and always-humbling) insights into myself, life, God, and affec­tion as Sarah and I con­tinue our dat­ing relationship.

On friend­ship and fig­ur­ing each other out

What Sarah’s help­ing me real­ize is that any roman­tic rela­tion­ship must be, at its foun­da­tion, a great friend­ship. At the begin­ning we both assumed we were fan­tas­tic friends, which was true in the sense that we’d known each other for a long time and had been involved in sim­i­lar activ­i­ties and shared sim­i­lar world­views and had mutual friends and sim­i­lar the­olo­gies and had a blast hang­ing out together. However, I under­es­ti­mated how much of a “soul-connection” and a chem­istry there was to build.

How would you describe chem­istry? It’s like “click­ing” the way you would with your best friend. A friend is some­one who knows you, who knows when you’re lying, when you’re putting on airs or when you’re wear­ing a mask. A friend is some­one who you love spend­ing time with, whether it’s pro­duc­tive or waste­ful. A friend is some­one who shows you their human­ity and gives you an authen­tic look at their ugly sides and fears and inse­cu­ri­ties. A friend is some­one you can be your­self around and know you’re accepted for who you are.

Quite frankly, we’ve had our share of strug­gles fig­ur­ing each other out, and that’s made us real­ize that we’ve got a long ways to go as a friend and as roman­tic inter­ests. I think we both were frus­trated by a lot of Totally Nor­mal fric­tion points. You know, the lit­tle stuff that results in con­ver­sa­tions which leave nei­ther of us feel­ing heard or under­stood. I can be overly ratio­nal and logic-driven; she can be overly feelings-centric and impul­sive at times. I had trou­ble adapt­ing to her play­ful, button-pushing per­son­al­ity and she often felt sti­fled by my straight­laced by-the-rules phi­los­o­phy. We come from fam­i­lies with dif­fer­ent cul­tures and gen­er­a­tional dif­fer­ences. The list goes on.

We both agree we’ve got a lot to learn about each other, and it’s been hard accept­ing that fact in light of high expec­ta­tions. There is that expec­ta­tion that we’re the clos­est of friends, yet we’ve had tons of times where she feels like I don’t get her. We’ve been acknowl­edg­ing that we’ve really got to give each other a lot of grace and for­give­ness in the times when we feel unheard, and we need to be patient. It’s been tough, but we know it’s worth it.

I’m learn­ing how to be a good friend

I’ve begun to real­ize how impor­tant it is to be a good friend. As I’ve men­tioned pre­vi­ously, I’m start­ing to real­ize how my self-sufficiency neg­a­tively impact my friend­ships and rela­tion­ship with Sarah. There’s a dis­tance that I’ve main­tained with other peo­ple, a dis­tance that I eas­ily main­tained when­ever I got involved with too many activ­i­ties and gave lame excuses of “I’m too busy” to hang out. Maybe I’ve got a deep fear of inti­macy (maybe, but I don’t think it’s totally true). Maybe I’m too task-oriented or goals-driven, so much that I have to get involved with 999 dif­fer­ent things at the expense of my friendships.

I’d like to change. I’d like to be that friend who knows another at a heart level, who can tell when a friend’s lying or hurt­ing with­out any words. I’d like to kick it with a buddy sim­ply for the sake of kick­ing it with him, no mat­ter what I’m miss­ing out on. I’d like to be a heck of a lot more trans­par­ent with peo­ple about my hopes and my fears.

The hor­ri­fy­ing depths of emo­tional intimacy!

I know it means that I really fully open up to Sarah and tell her about my thoughts and inse­cu­ri­ties and dreams. It means telling her always what’s really on my mind. There’s this emo­tional vul­ner­a­bil­ity and inter­de­pen­dency that I’ve never revealed to any­body (except God and my journal) will open up grad­u­ally (and when appro­pri­ate), with time, to friends and to Sarah.

It’s scary, but I know once again it’s worth it. It’s like I’m slowly able to take a step back and see who I am, warts and all.

But it’s actu­ally tons of fun

Seri­ously. Dat­ing is great. It’s loads of fun. I think Sarah’s play­ful side brings mine out as well, and we have a blast from sim­ple things like tak­ing walks (just laugh­ing about ran­dom things), to try­ing out new places to eat (and since our stan­dards are so low, everything’s deli­cious), to play­ing sports (it’s my dream to beat her once in bowl­ing. And ten­nis). I feel totally at home with her.

One thing I totally like about her is how she reminds me of infi­nite reser­voirs of Grace–every time I tend to get down on myself, she reminds me that I’m not too far away from God’s love. And it’s because she’s grounded in it–she depends on it, like air for breath­ing. Not only that, but I’ve been really blown away by For­give­ness. When we wrong each other, we apol­o­gize and for­give. And let me tell you that it is the most amaz­ing feel­ing to be for­given by some­body you’ve wronged and it always gives me this sen­sa­tion that the Father’s for­give­ness is far weight­ier and far more sig­nif­i­cant than I had imagined.

All this to say, it’s been a hum­bling nine months. When I first started dat­ing, I only had a rough idea of what it meant to be work­ing things out to this detail with some­body else. I knew that dat­ing would be awe­some and it would be rough. But it wasn’t till I actu­ally got up close and wran­gled with these issues did I real­ize how much junk there was to work out in me. Sarah and I have a ways to go, and this process of patiently work­ing things out between us has been tir­ing, but it has been good.

I’m thank­ful for this girl.