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yoking and other complications
Dear OneMan,
I've spent some time trying to believe in Christianity, long enough to know that there's a popular and Biblically-based doctrine against being "unevenly hitched". So, when I meet fun, attractive Christians of a certain level of commitment, they may as well be lesbians or cousins or something... I can let myself love them to bits as friends, but for the most part I keep any thought of the romantic stuff out of the way. This has worked to keep things from getting messy for me and the occasional cute, committed Christian that wanders by. Essentially I've kept that doctrine by acknowledging it, even as I left a bunch of stuff I couldn't deal with behind.
I'm a 23-year old student, just to situate all this, and she's a bit older (25 or so) but also studying at the same university. We've grabbed food together, run around town with friends, done stuff in groups, kept each other honest while studying, all the rest, and she's sweet, articulate, cultured, cute, open-minded and considerate... and a committed Christian to boot. Fine, I think to myself... she's fun to be around and my (open) agnosticism doesn't seem to bother her (although we do debate the Big Issues in conversational tones), she definitely makes me feel good to share a species with her. So we hang out from time to time, chat, all that. Er, man, was I dense.
So now I have this three page e-mail printed out and read a few times, and it turns out my density has kept me from picking up on the fact that she's been thinking of me as relationship material since, well, something like July.
Fine, you might say, can't lump all Christians together, and *Rebecca doesn't seem to be in the yoke-sensitive camp. Well, you can get a lot of details into 23k of e-mail and she is in the yoke-sensitive camp and it's been eating away at her. Her Christian buddies are understandibly leery of the whole idea, and for me it kinda reorganizes everything... but she's thinking differently. I'd gotten pretty good at applying my yoking filter but she's sort of making it irrelevant... but I'd feel a little weird helping her dismantle a practice she still obviously respects to some extent. At the same time, she really is wonderful and this whole yoking thing sometimes feels like a medieval tradition whose time has come. Yarg, new and exciting dilemma... of the sort that's more fun to contemplate when it's hypothetical.
I can't honestly convert as it stands, and I won't dishonestly convert. She's not asking me to, which is to her credit.
So, I can freak out and run in circles, I can say she's wonderful but this is crazy, I can say I had no idea and ... yes!, or I can hop on the next plane to the French Foreign Legion recruiting centre and pretend this all never happened. Or I can do something more subtle I haven't thought of... you get the idea.
Advice, relevant questions or a good slap upside the head... I await your reply.
Yours spazzing out,
Dense Heathen
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Want to answer more questions in the Relationships category?
Maybe give some free advice about: Love Life?
Spazz....BREATHE, lol. I was once asked if I had 26 sheep and one died, how many would I have left. Of course I answered 25. After which, I was befuddled to hear that the answer was 19! In an honest attempt to regulate the joke to logic, I spent the next two days in a cerebral stupor until I relented and asked how in the hell he came up with 19. The second time...as he spoke slower, I heard it. If I had twenty SICK sheep. You know what? I simply overthought it. I think this may be your dilemma, as well. I don't think the decision to make is yours. You, after all, are agnostic, and obviously intelligent enough to know the difference between agnostic and atheist. Nevertheless, the decision to make is hers. You can't be "responsible" for her rapid decline in the theological realm...only she can. Just like you can't MAKE me rob a bank. It's something I wouldn't do...PERIOD. If she felt the same way, then there's nothing you could do to thwart that. So, don't blame yourself on that one. All you can do as a gentleman, is ask her if she is SURE that's the decision she wants to make. After that, you're off of the proverbial "hook". On an aside, judging from your eloquent description of her, sounds like you found someone we'd all like to meet. Don't rack your brains over one sick sheep. Enjoy it, her, and yourself.
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