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Dear Christian girls,

Lately I’ve had a few conversations about dating with friends. And though not true in every situation, somethings have caught my attention and honestly, leave me less than impressed with how the Christian culture has often a warped view on relationships. While I know the blame certainly lays on both sides, let me speak to the women.

Now, I know that not all of you look at things this way. I am sorry, I am not trying to make you feel bad, nor am I trying to blame you. In fact, we as Christian boys have to apologize to you for how the Christian culturalism has warped our view of relationships too. For so long, the Christian culture has taught us to stay pure. And, those intentions were good! When our adolescence changes our hormone levels, it’s really good to hear and be taught to hold back our temptations and our physical urge.

But, as humans love to do, we create rules to protect the rules. From our desire to stay pure, we kissed dating goodbye. To kiss dating goodbye, we denied of our desire to pursue the women we wanted. To deny our passion, we filled a need by instead finding female friends. In creating rules for rules, we somehow forgot how we were supposed to act when we were ready to invite dating again.

A lot of us Christian boys that were affected by the Christian culturalism know very well how to make Christian female friends, but we somehow lost our way of pursuing the girl we were meant to pursue. We are sorry that we give false signals to you. We are sorry that we send signals but we don’t act on them. We are sorry that we don’t know how to go beyond the friendship stage. You’d think that we would get better when we ask and you say yes. No, it’s hard then too. Because we are so worried about purity, we don’t know if we can say a certain things to you. We don’t know if we can say that you look great or a shirt looks nice on you. Often we err in being more modest because we are essentially afraid of being “too much”. When Christ has modeled his love for us by pursuing us and died on the cross, we should model our pursuance of you like that too. We just don’t know how we are supposed to do that without crossing the line.

We admit it; we don’t pursue the way we should. Even in dating relationships, we should be pursuing you more and demand more of you. Please do understand our hesitance– we want to honor God before our relationship. After all we are only dating, and we want to ensure we honor God. We know you appreciate that. But, nonetheless, we don’t pursue with the zeal and passion like we should.

While we work on that, can we ask something of you too? We notice that your view of relationship may be tarnished by the Christian culture too. We know that you also kissed dating goodbye. But, you still want to get married. So, somehow dating has become a wrong thing to do. Casual fun dating isn’t what we want either. But, could you see the issue there? If dating isn’t allowed, but you still want to get to know us better before getting married, do you see that you put a tremendous pressure before and during the relationship because “failure is not an option?” You expect us to pursue you, only if we are absolutely sure that we are supposed to get married. And once we are in a “dating” relationship, the only noble way of ending the dating relationship is with an engagement ring. Shouldn’t dating help us discern whether we were really meant to be married? Can’t we try if we are reasonably sure? And, we are sorry, we are not attuned to our emotions as you are. We don’t know that you are the right one as fast as you do, simply because we really don’t know what we are thinking and simply put, we are just so excited to be in a relationship with you that we don’t really function too well. Be patient with us, and allow us to lead the relationship.

We also see that sometimes you expect relationships to resemble stories out of fairy tales. If we are the right one, we hope to be your prince charming and your knight in shining armor. But, realistically, most people who are married tell us that relationships are never perfect. Sadly, our brokenness play a big role in our relationships. We want to lead you by showing each other how broken we are. We also want to love you and be loved so that we know that someone love us despite our brokenness. But, in realty, we deal with our brokenness every day. So, can you assess us and the relationship without all the fairy-tale ideals that you created? We are not perfect, we never will be. It is not even fair to compare us, probably in our 20’s, to that mature, godly mentor/father that you look up to who has 30 years on us – that is 30 years of time to mature and grow! How could we be like that? Ask his wife what he was like at 25 yrs old? Ask his wife what he’s really like now? Take that list, those non-negotiables, and ask yourself, “is this fair to ask of someone?”, “do I myself meet my own non-negotiables?”, “what would this look like in our broken, sin-riden reality?”, “if someone is growing towards this, is that enough?” Do you see that we created these kinds of unattainable ideals to protect rules? You created these fairy-tale ideals so that you protect your hearts from love. You protect your heart because you want to stay pure. We don’t pursue like we should because we want to stay pure. The goal is noble and the same, the methods are questionable.

You may have a picture of your prince-charming that may not be attainable. You may have ideals that may not be uncovered until years into your relationships. Let me warn you, if you don’t work to break down your ideals now, you may very well go through shock once you’re married and see how idealistic and high your expectations were. Love-at-first-sight is a myth. Love isn’t an emotion. Love isn’t a formula. God loved us out of himself – out of who he is, not out of who we are. He loved not because we had chiseled chins and we had a great personality. Love is a choice. We don’t mean for you to say yes to every man that asks you. But, if you see any potential of us being the person God has for you, can’t you at least give it a chance? Don’t rely on your perception from far away. See us, spend time with us, let us lead you so that you can experience who we are. And give us grace as you do.

I know not every one of you is like this, and I know not every one of us suffers this too. But, those who are not suffering knows what this letter speaks of. Can’t we fight this Christian culture so that we can strip ourselves of all that is not from God? Can we feel God’s freedom and let His spirit dictate our conscience?

Yours truly,