The dating game can be hard enough, what with brutal trends like ghosting and a competitive romance culture where every crush has a rival one swipe away.
Throw the fact you’re Christian in the mix too and things can get interesting.
I’m a 27 years old, straight and female, with a strong Christian faith. So strong, in fact, that my faith is integral to everything I do, believe, think and feel. It’s the foundation of my values, morals and it informs every decision I make in life. Intense, eh?
When I’ve told people I’m dating that I’m a Christian, some have been put off – and understandably so.
The connotations around the word are that I’m boring, old-fashioned, deluded, dowdy, self-righteous and hypercritical. Non-believers can sometimes see the church as a judgmental, harmful religious place, and think that Christians live on some kind of superior morality.
When you’re in the fragile, early days of getting to know someone, let alone trying to start something romantic, this is the last thing you want them to conjure up.
I would bring my faith up when it felt natural and didn’t force it into conversations. I’ve had positive experiences dating both Christians and non-Christians and have been in love a few times with people of different faiths and beliefs.
However, a few atheists I dated found it ‘naive’ that I believe in God. One date told me I had been brainwashed.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the question I would get asked by guys the most was ‘what are your thoughts on sex before marriage?’ Or rather, ‘when can we have sex?’ When I gave them my answer most men ran away. (Not literally… at least not all the time anyway.)
I believe sex works the best within the safe place of marriage. For me, sex isn’t just a physical and emotional act, but a spiritual one that exceeds a certain level of intimacy. I can’t ever just see sex as ‘no strings’, which means I’ve never had a one night stand.
Sometimes I’ve wondered if I missed out on that sexy as hell, raunchy one-night stand you see in the movies. Is it ever as fun as that? I guess I’ll never know – but personally, I’ve found not having one-night stands very empowering.
There’s a misconception that Christianity is full of rules and holds you back from living the best life you can have but for me, my faith is full of freedom.
There are boundaries but these boundaries are rooted in love – just like you have certain boundaries in a relationship. You wouldn’t cheat on your partner because you love them, for instance.
Dating as a Christian in a secular society definitely has its challenges but I wouldn’t want to be in love any other way.
I met my now boyfriend within the first couple weeks after I moved back to my hometown Liverpool, after years of living away in London. I’d just got out of a relationship and wasn’t interested in anything serious, so I wanted to keep things light and have fun dating people on Tinder.
However, I knew shortly after meeting him it was going to be anything but light. We fell for each other pretty quickly.
He isn’t Christian, and when I told him I was he told me he thought I had been indoctrinated! I laugh as I write that.
We have a mixed-faith relationship: my faith is extremely personal to me and we work together in peace and private.
He holds pretty liberal views and even though we occasionally have disagreements in what I call ‘a clash of world views’, on the whole, we’re a good match and very much in love (which always helps).
The tough bit? When I see him stressed or hurting, it’s hard not to reach out and pray for him. It feels like I’m fighting my instincts. All I want to do is put God in the centre of our relationship, particularly in those moments.
He is very supportive and I still pray when I’m around him. He understands what being a Christian means to me and in times where I’m finding it difficult to make a decision, he will often say to me, ‘Let your faith guide you’.
It always helps and ultimately, that respect he has for my faith is one of the reasons why I love him. Although we don’t always agree, there is a huge amount of respect between us for each other’s values and beliefs.
Being in a mixed-faith relationship has taught me that although there’s compromise along the way, with the right person, there’s also a great deal of love, patience, kindness and learning.
Like it says in 1 Corinthians 16:14, ‘Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.’ And that’s what we try to do.
Last week in Love, Or Something Like It: Abuse convinced me that true love was all about the other person’s pleasure
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Love, Or Something Like It is a brand new series for Metro.co.uk, published every Saturday. If you have a love story to share, email rosy.edwards@metro.co.uk
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source https://metro.co.uk/2019/10/12/in-a-mixed-faith-relationship-true-love-is-about-compromise-10475533/
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