Happiness

Picture the scene: you’re on the train or the bus, thinking about joining a dating website, and contemplating which one to choose. Or perhaps you’re feeling disillusioned because you’ve been online for a while and you keep meeting people who look great in their profile, but turn out to be everything you don’t want in real life.

One of the things I hear more than I would like to are stories from Christians who say how upsetting their experience of dating a Christian was. While it’s true that no-one is perfect, some dating decisions in church cause a lot of hurt and are unloving. We need to talk about it, and we need to: Say It Isn’t Okay, Tell God We’re Angry, and Talk About Wider Fulfilments.

Most of us hope that our future will include love and marriage. After all, that’s why we’re on a dating website: to meet a life partner! But the church’s focus on married couples and families means that many of us grow up believing we won’t be fully-fledged adults until we manage to secure a spouse. It’s easy to pick up the idea that life doesn’t really begin until we get hitched.

In order to find love, we have to expose ourselves to potential hurt. We have to open our hearts and be vulnerable. The problem is it doesn’t always work out. We might decide the relationship isn’t right, or the person we’re falling for might want out, leaving us with a bruised or broken heart. How do we come back from this?

So a few months ago I came across an article about ‘China’s leftover women’. These are women over the age of 27 that are not married. The article resonated with me because it is so similar to what myself and thousands of other women in different parts of the world have experienced; that feeling that you haven’t quite made it unless you’re married, no matter how successful you are. What I found saddest about the article was the fact that the parents did not help the issue but instead added to the pressure. Parents that make their daughters feel like failures just because they are not married appear to have no idea the negative effect that it has on their self-esteem.

‘My boyfriend has hinted that he’s planning to propose,’ said the email. ‘I’ve always wanted children and, at 32, I probably shouldn’t leave it much later. My friends at church are all getting married and I’m worried I’ll be left on the shelf. Yet something’s holding me back…’

I attended a friend’s wedding recently. It was beautiful, as well as emotional. As I looked at the bride walking down the aisle, looking regal in her wedding dress, eyes fixed on her handsome groom, I couldn’t help but remember my own wedding. Walking towards my soon to be husband all those months ago, I remember being so excited and thinking, ‘I can’t believe this is finally happening!’ I had wanted to be married for a long time and when that day finally came, I was filled with too many emotions to put into words.

Recently I was speaking to a friend about marriage, and as I listened to them talk about how much they wanted to be married, I felt like I was looking at a younger version of myself. I could definitely relate to the longing and desire to have someone to share your whole life with. This was me only a few years ago. I gave her some well-meaning advice which I hope she took on board, but it got me thinking; if I could speak to my younger self, what would I say? What would I want her to know? So, I wrote a letter.