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Am in a complicated relationship with a girl I really like
Male 24, from Nigeria.... There's this girl am friends with, we are both in higher institution, both in the same class and both live in the same hostel.... She's very smart, honest, beautiful she has alot of good qualities, and I started crushing on her, on a faithful day I decided to tell her how I feel about her and I did, that day she and I had a romantic time together but the next day she started acting cold towards me, I asked her why,she said she regrets what happened between us the previous day... A few days later we had another romantic moments again kissing touch and other stuff but no sex... The following day she acts cold again,I asked her what's wrong,that's when she told me that because she's a Christian that her religion condemn such act, and non of the church members are allowed to marry or date anyone outside the church(which am obviously not a member)....we've been at it for about 2-3 months now, and I now like her so much, but the relationship is just so complicated,she always says she's not my girlfriend but whenever she doesn't see me she calls, whenever I call her she comes,whenever I touch her she doesn't stop me, at times she will be the one that will start touching me and being seductive, there was a day she tells me to get myself another girlfriend that she's trying to put an end to our relationship but she can't do it herself.... At times she makes me really happy, other times she makes me sad and depressed... Just yesterday she told again to let her go,but I don't want to let her go... The truth is that I don't want to be in a relationship That is not going anywhere.....I love her but I don't know what to do.
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Its a situation where other than talking to her in depth about this (information gathering, not pleading with her) there is nothing much you can do. Because of the beliefs of her church, she may not buy it totally but will force herself to fit the mold that others have told her she must do, thus date and marry a guy who is a member of her church. SO I will explain what you are up against when it comes to the church but telling my stories will make this very long although I think its important to know many churches can really be like this.
I come from a Christian background. You only said you were not a church member but nothing of your beliefs or whetther you attend a different church. Therefore I don't know if you know the following but I will share it with you. Dating and marriage are closely controlled by some church types in the main stream beliefs. The church preaches that both the male and female must remain pure, untouched by another, before their marriage. This means no sex. However, since the biggest fear and with good reason is that dating someone who is not of your beliefs but likes you, means there is too much temptation to remain celibate until you marry. This mean a person who decides to never marry is in a bad spot. Its almost like one is being forced to marry to ever have a sexual relationship. My church when my girls were entering teen years had a program and ceremony they would hold where teens got to wear a promise ring, and no one had a dating partner, it was trying to convince teens with the dangling of a ring before them, to say the oaths of promising to remain pure and not have sex before marriage, to save themselves for their mate. The deal is not
just about the fear of sex before marriage but also about being unequally yoked. This comes from talk of a pair of oxen doing heavy work and both are needed to be of equal size and strength and some how it is turned to only have meaning about who you marry.
At this point, you can tell I am not fighting hard to side with the girl you met. I'll tell more of my story so you understand what I have learned.
I will start with the fact that I am a behliever in God and have a personal relationship with him. I have learned most of what I know now at age 61 from the last 25 yeara of God basically home schooling me as the churches where I should have been learning were too corrupt, off track, or close minded. Take something simple like being able to sit and ask God something inside your hear and have Him respond with the answer in your head. My pastor back then had a renowned womank pastor come teach an all day seminar which I attended, and it was on how to hear from God and what we were asking is a word from God for the partner we had for the part. The gal was younger, a teen, I was around 30. I watched all the people gathered and most did not know what to do, had no clue, couldnt successfully do the simple task. It takes having a brain wired to hear from God by simply talking to him often, some call it praying but when I converse with a person I am not praying, I am conversing back and forth. I have found I recieve pictures in my head easily. So when I asked for a message/word to pass on to the gal, God showed me a Red Ball of yarn. That was familiar to me, I have leftover red yarn in my craft closet. God asked me what feelings I had connected to that yarn. Well, recently, someone left the doors open, cat got in and dragged out the yarn to play with. When I got home the whole living room was covered in unraveled yarn. I was fristrated at having to ravel it up again. Then God said, she feels the same, like her life is coming unraveled. Tell her I know and I am here and it will all turn out okay in the end and her life will be intact again. So I told her and her eyes popped open wide in surprise, How did you know how I was feeling? She got nothing as many others too.
Now that you know a bit about me, when I was your age, I remember a church picnic at a lake where we were told by church officials that we had to wear tee shirts over our bathing suits if we went in the water. I refused. It was a ridiculous try at talking about modesty. They should have been born a hundred years ago. If all the women from church wore tee shirts, about all that covers in some of the skin but when wet, it clings to your body accenting the curves and everything a male likes about the female body. They believed church females shouldn't be of the people of today, trying to turn on the males with how they dress. And besides the wet tee shirts, there were many many more non church people at the same park and lake beach and those women were dressed the way the church didn't want us dressing. The men from church could not be sheltered from what they would see. Instead they should be teaching starting with older children before puberty, on how to handle those kinds of feelings. No one teaches anythin like that in class style or books that I have seen yet. So church people are on their own and they will make up their own rules, which may not make any sense at all. A guy could not whistle at a female if he liked how she looked without the girl breaking down and crying, frightened but not sure why. My oldest daughter witnessed this when she was out evangelizing on a youth based outing. A guy whistled and the girl freaked out. If she had been told to simply appreciate the fact he found her cute or sexy but she doesn't owe him anything, no smile, conversation, no stopping, etc, then I am sure she'd have simply walked on unfazed by it. I am sharing of course much of the other nonsensical stuff I've come across that theres a good chance your girls church believes also so you know what you are up against.
I attended a wedding of another young couple at church. At the point where they should kiss at the end, the gal couldnt do it. Not because she was embarrassed but because she was terrified of the unknown, for she had no idea what holding hands together, putting an arm around each other, or a kiss felt like. They had been engaged and done nothing at all, likely due to parents taking the no sex rule and twisting it to say that no one should hold hands or kiss before marriage. Many of course shrug their shoulders and pretend for the parents and have a happy life. This gall actually fainted from her terror in her own wedding and that brought it to an end. They were considered married without the kiss. Then a few months later, we heard they got the marriage annulled because they had never had sex. Oh and another thing, if one doesnt have a partner or is too youmng to have a sex partner yet, the prescription by most is to masturbate. But if you attended my church, you were told it was evil and bad, to not do it. What sexual release does a person have then? None. This is how some are guided unwittingly into looking at porn and other such stuff and many living in guilt because of something natural. A woman I knew well told me once that she feared she was a bad person, that her christian life was pretend all because the man she was married to, both had sex back in High School and College and were not married then. Her husband believed he was okay with God now after accepting Him as his Lord who died for his Sins. The husband and son alwayss looked robust, but she looked like a walking skeleton, like a caved in, deteriorating cancer patient just before death, (I know how it looks as someone in my family had cancer) She looked that way because of her anxiety and her thoughts kept eating at her and she developed diseases, not cancer though, and it didnt have to be this way.
I am all for a person recognizing there is a creator and learning to slowly get closer to Him in their own way and time. God knows the hearts of all of us. I also believe that a married couple is one unit, not two separate people and should be addressed as a couple. SO another thing that ate at me was when there was a criticism against me, church leaders did not say a word to me but in secret went to my husband and told him what I did and he should get me back in line.
Right now, it sounds like your girl isnt thinking for herself at all. She may believe or is just choosing to go through the motions of believing all she is told. This is why she is hot one day, cold the next because like my emaciated and ill female friend, she is fighting a war in her mind for what she has been told to follow and uphold compared to what she is experiencing.
I cant say that the two of you are perfect for each other because there is so much more than just the external things that draw ones interest. It takes unconditional love for ones partner. I never had that in first marriage and was verbally mistreated. I waited til my children were adults before I left and divorced. Not only was I mistreated but he confessed to a mental health Doctor that he had never been in love with me. Oh well that explained why I had a terrible sex life with him. I knew Christian woman who had husbands who didnt attend the church, any church, but some of these husbands treated their wives as wonderful as if it was God himself. They had vibrant sex lives as well with no guilt. My youngest asked me at the point I quit attending church, if it meant taking off her promise ring and aftger a discussion, she decided to do it as well. The older ones just took theirs off, but they didnt
do that to have sex either. I had changed my view of sex before marriage. And explained to them that if I have done so before my marriage, I would at least have noticed that warning sign, that the sex wasnt good, we were a mismatch. Not wanting to be a hypocrite, I told my daughters to watch how many dating girls who have new boyfriends every coouple weeks and lots of breakup and check how their grades on tests are doing. They reported those girls suffered so bad they could not concentrate on school. I told them no boyfriends for the dating deal but it was important to have male friends to learn some things about how the other sex thinks, understands and comes to conclusions, that sort of stuff. Told them a male friend is welcome to come hang out at our home when we the parents were home, its not different really than having girlfriends over. I told them to tell me at the point a male friend and them might become so attracted to each other that it was a matter of time until they had sex, and I would make sure they were put on the pill and had condoms on hand for the guy. It wasn't my ideal wish outcome but it was wise. None of them had boyfriends until they graduated, their choice.
This is very likely the type of church she attends. Even if you attend and your church isn't so stuck up, there are churches that really go off the deep end in my opinion.
So what is needed here to change her mind. Information and back bone. She has only been verbally fed what her church and her parents think. She needs more information on truth of the unequally yoked story. My church approved of my marriage because it was a church my guy attended and as far as they knew, he was a Christian. That was no guarantee my husband was a Godly man who would treat me right. I once heard a sermon just about people in church who actually did not act like Christians, werent Christians. He said,
Just because you find a mouse in a cookie jar, you wouldnt call him a cookie."
So what she truly believes, her own beliefs, not what shes been taught, may exist, it may not. She may be questioning some things the church says and she should be the one to ask and find out the Pastors have no answers to lots of what they teach. I asked questions using the same sob story, story meant to make you cry and take the action they wanted which was donating to missionary work in other lands. Their story was of a mountain village so remote no missionaries had been there yet, the mountain erupts and kills all of them. So we need to keep sending out missionaries so the un-churched can have chance to hear about God and accept his son. So I asked the pastor if he could explain what happens to the people, do they get another chance because they weren't given one with no visiting missionaries and he could not answer or would not answer. If he said, "They all go to Hell, then he paints a bad picture of God and a very disheartening picture of the church and God. If he said, they all go to heaven, then he'd be going against the churches main belief that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God but his son died for our sins, paid the price so to speak for past and future sins but only if a person accepted the Jesus was their savior and had paid that price on the cross by his death. That only left, my idea which seems more like the God I am familiar with, He gives them another chance. He was stuck and could not answer except I dont know but whats important is missionary work. THats like a mechanic telling you he can't tell you what wrong with your car, but you need to keep putting gas in the tank. That is not an answer. So instead of going to church which is like Kindergarten for me and routines the worshippers know by heart for there is nothing new, just the same old stuff taught for the hundredth time, I volunteer at a community dinner for the low income and homeless in the area with my husband..it was originally his idea, and we have gone to clean the apartment of a lady of church recently released from hip surgery and she cant move much or be on her feet and so we do what she cant and don't ask money for it. Most the people in churches I have attended in the past never got involved in anything that looked like it was Jesus out there doing this stuff. About half the volunteers for the meal program do not even attend the church and I have no desire to because to me, its like going back to Kindergarten or worse the nursery which the following Bible verse talks about. Hebrews 5:12-14
For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you have need again for someone to teach you the elementary principles of the oracles of God, and you have come to need milk and not solid food. For everyone who partakes only of milk is not accustomed to the word of righteousness, for he is an infant. But solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil.
That I truly believe and is why I no longer attend, just to explain to you. This is helpful all I have told just now because it is more than likely happening to some extent in her church. Lots of what is written has the writers spin on it, such as Apostle Paul saying women should not adorn their hair. So clips and combs in the hair and pierced ears too are a no no but I don't see American women keeping their hair plain. This is one area where I think it was obvious for some church leaders that Paul was saying more what he believed rather than what he was supposed to write as told by God. Your girl could be blindly follow ing beliefs. If her parents are forcing this more than the church, and they say if she does not comply and marry in the church, then they would kick her out of the family, excommunicate her and whomever she decides to marry. That is a big threat held over the head of a twenty something female who loves her family and can't stand the idea of never seeing them again so you might start there and ask if that is going on. But you have to also ask what her church teaches, what the Bible teaches on her dating you. Dating is important to get to know a person well enough to know if they still seem like the right one to you or not. I have experienced that, someone seems perfect while on good behavior the first couple months and then they change and I dumped them, this after my divorce. I held out for a spiritual man. He doesn't attend a church as a member but he has the heart of Christ with all the various ways he is helping out others, not for money, and not for a chance to talk about God. I wish you the best!
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