Friends

I just read a FB post that talked about being very careful who your friends are if you're married. If you have a "friend" of the opposite sex and you tell things to this friend that you do not tell your spouse... This is dangerous. It said that affairs don't start in the bedroom. They begin with emails, text's, calls, FB posts, and many other things that have nothing to do with sleeping together.

I personally have a rule that if I'm FB friends with a man who is engaged or married, I'm also friends with his fiancee'/ wife as well. This way, it's not a situation where only he knows me, and there's no chance that the two of us COULD say or do anything inappropriate because he has accountability, and my mutual respect for both of them is the guard that keeps me in check... I'M NOT GOING THERE! :). I once was seeing a counselor who was a guy... a young guy.

Nothing happened, except what I went in there for; he was helping me work things out... But I stopped going there. It was on the pretext of not being able to afford it, but I stopped going because I realized it was the perfect fuel for starting a fire, if you will. He was a young guy, getting his master's degree, and here I was, face to face with him in a room, alone, telling him about personal things going on at home. I'm not saying that I was attracted to him. In truth, I wasn't, particularly... but no one ever plans to do anything inappropriate, ya know? Now I'm single, of course. I knew he was not married, but did not know whether he had a girlfriend or not. Anyway, the situation reached a different level of uncomfortable when he had me doing these breathing exercises to alleviate anxiety. A great idea... But not under those circumstances. I mean, whether I was attracted to him or not, the breathing exercises had me thinking about doing things (we) shouldn't be! STOP!! :).

I realize now that whether he was single or not wasn't the issue. The honest truth is that I'm single and am hoping to find someone, and I need to take responsibility for the fact that there is a high amount of vulnerability there. Let's face it, nothing makes a woman melt more than when a sensitive guy will allow her to cry with him and spill all of her most intimate dilemmas in front of him. Be careful! :).

There's another situation in my life that I've needed to get away from. This one a bit more serious. Ladies, if you don't drive and you need rides home from church, my advice would be do not take rides home with a single guy who's around your age! Now, in my situation, I thought that this guy liked me, because he'd been talking to me at the singles group we'd started and then gave me his number. It turned out he lived right around the corner from me, too. But, to make the story very short... He had no intentions of a relationship with me... He was just trying to do me a favor. Dammit! Okay, in retrospect, I'm glad that it did not work out. But I ended up having to separate myself from that situation, because I was then left with an attraction to someone that I could do nothing about. I stuck with it for a long time, because nobody wants to leave their church... but the situation escalated, and I found it was too precarious to try and stay away from him. I noticed a resentment building in me... and I knew... This is not good! This unhealthy situation became like a rotten apple that was spoiling the whole barrel. I finally realized... This is not something that try and "solve"... sometimes, you need to just run!

Goodness! I kept thinking "what if this were your job? You wouldn't just leave your job, would you?". The answer is... No. I would not JUST leave my job. But I will say this: I think marriage is war. I honestly do. It's war, that we fight to say to our spouse, "I love you. I'm coming home to you: and I won't let anything interfere with that. Therefore, I might need to walk away from that job, because of the "fire" that has been "smoldering" that could potentially "blow up" and ruin us both. Now, I sound like I'm nuts, don't I? And here come the excuses: we need the money; I'll be letting all these people down, etc, etc. Listen ladies, that man that you have become one with... Needs you to stay that way (as best you can). If something's on fire, you wouldn't pour gasoline on it, right? Oddly enough, I learned most of these things in the church which I no longer attend :). Strange. But when there's a "war" going on, sometimes we need to take extraordinary measures to protect ourselves and others. In my case, there are two other people involved... The guy that I have no business marrying... and the guy that I someday will marry. Is being stuck on the wrong guy keeping me from knowing the right one (probably).

We live and we learn, yes...but according to Eric and Leslie Ludy, we can learn to protect our marriage before it even begins. Set guidelines for the opposite sex (friendships) and stick to them. Even before you're married. Think of your future spouse and ask yourself how they would feel if you... (fill in the blank). The book is called "When God Writes your Love Story.". Now, this is radical, isn't it it? But I think that when you find that someone you really want to love...love them radically, with everything you have! :)