I have debated for a long time as to whether I should take a
shot at writing about this particular subject or whether I should afford it to
linger and stew for even longer within me.
This is probably, in all my life, the thing that I have been struggling
with the most and, honestly, it is the reason why my blog has the title that it
has. Bear with me and pray for strength
for me as I try to lay bare my biggest struggle for all the world to see. I hope that what I write actually makes it on
to the internet and doesn’t lay dormant in a file deep within my computer,
never to see the light of day. A final
disclaimer before we jump right into my greatest apprehension: I write not this
for pity, for attention or for someone to necessarily save me. I write this to empathise with others who
struggle (you are not alone) and to humanize myself. One of my greatest objections of social media
is that it seems to spur us on to only ever show the very best of ourselves to
the quiet, onlooking world. We tell
others of our achievements, our strengths, our beauty, our intellect, our happy
disposition, but never do we tell the world of that which bothers us, our
insecurities, our fears and the pains we carry in our ostensibly smiling
dispositions. I hope through this
writing to give myself less reason to fear and more reason to have the courage
to do what I really want to do – to get to know the hearts of the hundreds of
faces that pass me by every day whether it be to abate my singleness or whether
it be for His Kingdom.
As some of you may know, I have been single all my
life. It’s a topic stirs up a mixed
reaction within me. I feel proud that I
have avoided relationships that could have hurt me and removed my naivety about
people. I tend to give people the
benefit of the doubt and see the good in others, probably because no one has
ever really hurt me to an unforgiving degree.
Had I been grievously hurt, God knows how negative I may have been about
people. On the other hand though, I feel
a deep sense of longing that I have never truly taken the chance of getting to
know someone beyond “How are you?” “What is your favourite band?” and “Who are
you voting for?”. That said, I am drawn
to deep conversation and really getting to know people’s stories, but I must
admit that this has been primarily limited to males. I cannot say that I have ever had a female
best friend; friends, yes, but best friend, no.
I think this to be quite tragic, actually. How can I go about this life and experience
it in its entirety if I never get to know half of the human race? Believe me, women are fascinating to me. I spend a disproportionate of my time
considering their nature and trying to learn about them through vicarious
means. As much as I have come to know
about the fairer sex through alternative mediums, the second-hand knowledge
just doesn’t seem to hit the spot. I
desire for more. I desire to touch, to
feel, to see, to smell these majestic creatures, to use way too dramatic and
poetic terms. But I fear! I am crippled by inaction! I state that I desire to know more, but my
actions show avoidance rather than action or even curiosity. I berate myself so, so often for that. My head can be a violent place sometimes –
primarily towards myself. I can be quite
the perfectionist and thus I oftentimes have little mercy for myself. I can be quite understanding and gracious
towards others, but for myself, I set cripplingly high standards which make me
feel like a failure so often. I can
probably rattle off a long list of all the failures I have had (relative to my
own standards), when, in reality, I have much to be proud of.
One of the most crippling, heart-wrenching things that I
hear about myself (and this happens every now and then) is if someone says they
want to get to talk to me, but are too intimidated. This actually happened only minutes before I
started writing this post. I was told by
an admirable fellow at the lunch table that some of his female friends want to
talk to me, but are too intimidated to me.
My first reaction to this is to sink into a hell-hole of grief and
misery because I know (and I told the admirable fellow this) that there may
never be communication between myself and his friends because I am probably
more scared of them than they are of me.
Just writing that sentence is like feeling a fiery dart sear through my
soul, but it is quite true – at least if one considers my actions. I think a well-adjusted guy would have
reacted to the statement by the admirable fellow with something to this accord,
“So, do you think you could introduce me?” As much as it is my desire to ask
the selfsame question, my immediate reaction is one of lamentation rather than
action. Maybe the key for me is to
simply stop these negative cognitive distortions and rather let instinct take
over. The instinct knows what to do, but
the heart is heavy.
In general though, I can say that I have a hard time in
giving compliments to people. The main
reason for this is because authenticity is important to me. I do not want to compliment something about
someone unless I am sure that I really do like that aspect of them. Considering this in a male-female interaction
paradigm, I think many conversations are started by men towards women because
they might compliment the woman on something.
I most certainly see many beautiful women in my meanderings in this
life, but I don’t know if I have ever told an acquaintance or a stranger that I
thought she was beautiful. My
rationalization for this is because I don’t want my very first interaction with
someone to indicate that what I value about her is her appearance. I mean, yes, the beauty is what drew me to
look at you and is most likely what spurs the desire within me to bridge the
gap between us, but I try so very hard to treat people in a Deontological
way. I mean by this that I treat
everyone I come across not as a means to an end, but an end. In other words, even if nothing else comes
from our brief or lengthy moment of contact I had you for a moment and that is
all that should matter. If something
extra such as a hug, a friendship, a relationship comes forth from it, then
that is absolutely a bonus. I will admit
that the deontological approach to treating people is extremely hard. I so often want more than just the person
from an interaction. I am someone that
really likes to be touched. I might not
always show this (probably because of being untouched for so long), but almost
every time I am touched by a female I am in a dream-like state for a little
while. How can I keep to this philosophy
then if I so desire a something as simple as touch? God knows how this virgin would react to an
embrace, a kiss or sex! I would like to
know too, believe me. All shall be
revealed in its good and intended time.
To bring this point to a close, it’s hard not to compliment
someone on appearance if that is by far and away the most salient
characteristic about that person. The
end result is that I say nothing due to this moral-neurotic holding pattern
(when I could have remarked something about her shoes, for example) and the
person walks on, out of my life forever and I did not have the guts to
communicate a simple gesture which would have afforded that moment of eye
contact to proceed onwards to who knows how long.
The tragedy and triumph about being a man in the society and
times we live in is that your limit is your courage do and to act (relationally
speaking). This is great when you have
the courage and take appropriate action, but absolutely tragic when you don’t. No matter how successful, attractive,
distinguished, good, rich, etc. you become, if you don’t have the courage to
face rejection and talk to a woman, you almost certainly will never have one in
your life. God did say that it is not
good for man to be alone and I know that life is better together than alone;
therefore I need and want more female influence in my life. It will never happen unless I develop the
courage to change that.
I know within my heart of hearts that I have much life, joy,
growth and wisdom to bring to any person that comes across my way on this good
earth, but even more so to a woman with whom I get to share intimacy with. A tragic life is one without intimacy. In spite of all the academic and sporting
strivings I have made, my life lacks intimacy and therefore I am
incomplete. Corinthians 13:1-3 sums it
up so, so well: “If I speak in the tongues of men or of
angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal.
2 If I have the gift of
prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith
that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to
the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have
love, I gain nothing.” Just
reading this passage is a tear-jerker for me.
I do understand that it doesn’t necessarily specifically refers to
romantic love, but I think we can all agree that romantic love is certainly a
part of love. I am missing that aspect
of love and I will never be complete therewithout regardless of moving
mountains, fathoming all mysteries and giving everything to the poor –
therewithout I lack.
You have my utmost gratitude for making it
this far. I will probably end with this
paragraph. I think I still have so much
more to say on this topic – I wrote much, but didn’t say much at all though my
period of lamentation has passed and my ideas and feelings have past as well.
However, this is the first step in me being more honest of what I lack. I have never publicly admitted to what I
admitted to in this post, so, regardless of what this day further brings, I can
have some pride as to the small step taken by the post, but the giant leap that
is hopefully in progress.
I feel somewhat embarrassed that I have made such a big deal out of something that is actually easily fixable. There are people with significantly worse struggles than my own who cope with it just fine. However, this struggle is mine and it affects me and therefore I do have the right to feel duly affected by it.
We march
TheLonelyman
