Ideally, the best situation would be that there’s a young man or young lady in your parish whom you see every week and whom you get along with well. Over time, it just becomes natural to go out to a movie or something and then the time you spend with this person is really fulfilling.
Well, if that worked, you wouldn’t be wasting your time on a dumb blog like this one. If you’re going to a healthy-sized parish, chances are that there’s maybe two eligible people your age and they’re both kind of odd. If you grew up in this parish, you probably know both of these people like they’re your cousins, and dating someone who put a frog in your hair is kind of gross.
If you do find someone in the parish you like (and congratulations if you have!) I can offer two tips:
Men, if this lovely lady’s family goes to church at the home parish, consider mentioning to someone “older, wiser” in her family that you’re considering asking her out. This is an easy way to find out if she’s seeing someone, and it makes you seem less sneaky. I did this once, and her brother-in-law (who was in his mid-30s) told me it’d be all right if I asked. The girl herself told me that her schedule was too busy, but that she was very flattered by the invitation.
Flattered? Flattered? How could she use a word like flattered? Okay, I know I promised to make this blog enjoyable to read, and not include angry screeds, but I just need to take a moment to vent here. Flattered is a word that I would like to have removed from modern English. Maybe it meant something back in the 13th Century when it first got into English, but now it serves one and one purpose only: for girls to tell dweeby boys to buzz off. Okay, rant over. But that does lead me to Tip No. 2:
Ladies, if the boy asking you out is absurdly shy and inarticulate when he does it, consider giving him a chance anyway. I know that women want their men to be strong, successful and confident, there are a lot of really great guys out there who have no clue how to start a conversation. I bet it’s your radiant beauty that makes him so nervous. If you blow him off, you’ll never find out.
The Church Youth Conference / Camp
Here you have two or three days (or maybe a week) in which you can attend seminars about church living, make friends, play games, play pranks and make a total idiot of yourself. It is an odd place to look for love.
The events that happen early on in a conference create a dynamic between people that is difficult to undo. Allow me to give two examples…
· At one ski retreat I attended, there was a handsome young fellow who spontaneously composed an Orthodox rap song for a girl and sang it for her. This had no particular effect on that girl, but it made every other girl at the retreat want him. (He had his heart set on the subject of the song, though.) With the girls all googly-eyed over the one boy they couldn’t have, none of the other guys had a chance.
· At a summer camp I attended before I was Orthodox, the counselors decided to have us play a card game in which we were not allowed to speak. The rules were given to us on slips of paper. Shortly after the game started, people were giving each other angry glares, fists were banging on tables and players were stomping out of the room. The trick was that each of us had been given a different set of rules. (I guess the point was to teach us the importance of agreeing on rules.) For the people who stomped out of the room, that became their identity for the rest of the camp – the temper-tantrum types. A few events had “typecast” them into a role that people expected of them. (Sort of like high school.)
So the moral of those two stories is…
Whatever happens, don’t take it too seriously. If you’re wound too tight, you’re going to react badly when something happens that you don’t like. If they want to go to restaurants and malls when you want to go to museums during the free time, that’s just too bad. If their church service isn’t the way it’s done in your traditional home church, just get over it. And, if you go to the conference with the attitude of “having the right” to play the field of eligible ladies / bachelors, you’re going to be disappointed.
A few other bits of advice:
· Be friendly with the clergy, but don’t identify with them too much. I was at the introduction social at a college conference once, and I was chatting with a pretty girl from Massachusetts. I was talking about my studies and my hobbies, and I almost had her convinced I was a normal guy when Fr. Thomas Hopko walked in, and exclaimed, “How’s the book coming?” (Fr. Hopko had reviewed an as-yet unpublished manuscript of mine about my Peace Corps service in Ukraine.) I told him about the progress of the manuscript, and I asked him about a few points I didn’t understand from one of his books. Soon we were talking happily about how to best define post-modernism in an Orthodox context.
This was a mistake, as I discovered that this made me weird. The normal college students at this event were all kind of afraid of Fr. Hopko as he possesses an intelligence and an oratory ability far beyond the average parish priest, and the ability to carry on a conversation with him makes you a “nerd.” Not only that, half of the people at the conference were priest’s kids, and the ability to get along well with the clergy makes you “establishment,” too. After that, the girls all treated me like I was one of their teachers. I didn’t get a single phone number.
· Don’t be shocked if other people at the conference don’t share all of your values. At this same conference in Washington, DC, a group of PK girls was trying to recruit others for a night on the town, going to clubs. I would have gone if I hadn’t been totally tired from traveling in to town that morning.
The next morning, I asked one of them how it had gone, and she said,
“At first we were really disappointed because it turns out that you can’t go into a strip club in the District of Columbia if you’re under 21. But it was okay because we found this other club where people just took their clothes off when they danced.”
I just sort of stared when she said that. I could understand the hormones that would make a boy want to go to a strip club, but it’s our job to resist that. But why a girl – any girl – would even be interested in doing that boggled my mind.
· Hang out with people of your own sex more. You have a better chance of actually making a friend this way, and hanging out with a group makes you look, you know, normal.
· Sometimes, you’re going to strike out no matter what:
At a conference in San Francisco, I met a tall, beautiful young woman from Canada. I told her a little about my Peace Corps service, and about how I lost weight in Ukraine because the diet is better.
“Now you’re slim,” she said.
“Not quite,” I said. “My ideal weight would be 230.” (I’m six feet nine inches tall.)
“What?” she said incredulously. “That’s how much I weigh. Are you calling me fat?”
That didn’t get any further.
8 comments:
What a great idea for a blog! Thankfully this isn't my "problem" anymore as I'm engaged to be married this fall.
Back when I was still "looking for love" one of the things that frustrated me was the almost uniformly bad and unhelpful advice I got from other Orthodox Christians about finding a spouse.
I met my future husband only after I stopped listening to that advice. I gave up waiting for an Orthodox single guy to come across my path. I resigned myself to the fact that Orthodox single men are few and far between. I made the decision that I would no longer date Orthodox men just because they were Orthodox. For me that meant that I wouldn't date guys with bad jobs. (this got me into a bit of trouble with some folks but my theory being that my father had a job that allowed him to support a family so why can't I expect the same from the guys I date?)
So I had to go out into the 'wider' world to find someone. I did on-line dating and met a lot of guys. None who were Orthodox. I met my fiance and we hit if off from the beginning. The on-line 'pious' would have warned me to stay away from him. He had no religious background at all. He'd never been baptized and he was divorced.
Now we're engaged to be married and he's preparing to be baptized into the Orthodox Church.
The point of my story being that you don't know where you will meet someone. I'm afraid that there are lots of single Orthodox women who've converted to Orthodoxy who will be lifelong spinsters because they're waiting around for the perfect Orthodox man to come through the doors of their church.
What I find interesting is that when you ask couples at church how they met their spouse, invariably it's the "normal" way, i.e. at a bar or in college.
I've heard that some people are told that they can't do on-line dating by their priests. I completely disagree with that. On-line dating is the modern version of what our parents did. Back in the 1950's when my parents got married, everyone got set up on one date after the next. It wasn't "casual" in the sense that there was sex. It was a way for people to meet lots of different people and to eventually pair up with a final one who they married. What is untraditional about the dating scene today is that people don't date. You hang out together. In contrast, with on-line dating you're dating. There's never any doubt why you're together. It gives you the opportunity to meet lots of different people.
I remember being told that there lots of great, Orthodox single men and when I'd ask for specific examples they'd get quiet. I can't think of any single Orthodox men I've met at my church who were over 30.
orthodox, single, and reading... keep up the posts, I'm hoping I can find something useful from them
hey, i like this blog too! I stumbled upon it on OC. i just wanted to say i agree with what Jennifer wrote. I used to think that way when I first started college (17), that the "perfect religious Orthodox man" would somehow appear in my life if I prayed hard enough. I was determined my prayers would be answered and this would happen. However, I am a junior in college now(20), and have slightly more life experience in the past three years. I am now very open to marrying a convert and feel inside I may actually do this. With the strict Orthodox faith I grew up in, God will use me to bring my spouse to Orthodoxy. How beautiful! I am currently with someone who is not Orthodox, but was raised with a conservative Protestant background. I realized that with the values and knowledge of the faith I have, God has better plans for me than I had for myself – because I was open to His will and not demanding my own! God Bless+
Re: Emily
I can only offer the advice that my own Dad gave me (and he's not affiliated with any church): You should be trying to accept her for who she is, not for who you'd like her to be, or how you'd like to change her. Very true.
I can't say anything negative about your plans, but if being able to convert this guy some years in the future is part of your requirement for being happy, you're setting yourself up for failure. It would be a blessing if he did convert, but if you're going to marry him soon, you need to assume that he won't, and then ask yourself if you think you can be happy that way, with two religions in the house.
I'm going to write a chapter later on about Missionary Dating, although I don't know too much about it personally. Being Orthodox made me too weird for any of the non-Orthodox girls to take me seriously.
When I decided that I wouldn't limit myself to dating Orthodox men, at first I choose only men who were religious, mostly Roman Catholics. But then I decided that a serious RC was never going to become Orthodox. My fiance had no religious background which I think made it easier for him to embrace Orthodoxy.
There are lots of intermarried couples in Orthodoxy and it's not the kiss of death for a marriage but you have to remember that the person you marry has to have been baptized or you can't be married in the Orthodox Church. In the case of my fiance, he wasn't baptized so he either had to get baptized into Orthodoxy or go find some Protestant minister to baptize him. It was easier to become Orthodox. But he was willing to get baptized. Someone else might not have been willing to do that.
Obviously "missionary dating" worked out well for me. I suppose that's because it was God's will. I suspect that more often than not it doesn't work out. Even though I decided to date non-Orthodox men I don't know if I really thought through what it would mean to have a non-Orthodox husband.
I guess what I would recommend is that if you decide not to limit yourself to Orthodox men, it might be better to look for guys who aren't religious but who will be drawn to religion as soon as they're properly exposed to it. That kind of guy is probably hard to find but probably easier to find than a single Orthodox guy.
Yes Thomas, your dad is very right. I understand the fear you have for me of having getting my hopes up, not accepting someone as they are, and possibly giving in to having two religions in the household reluctantly. My parents are of two differing Christian denominations, and I am afraid of this happening to others as well so I understand where you are coming from. I am afraid they will go through what my parents went through; all the arguing about religion and going to church alone. It hurts children as well, as I can testify. I am sure there are some people however that are not as bothered by two religions in a household, but this is my opinion from experience.
This boy in particular is my best friend of a couple years… Originally I was not interested in him as a potential partner. I would talk about my faith occasionally as I normally do with friends. Yet as we got closer, my faith really began to fascinate him and didn’t turn him off at all, surprisingly! It is his fascination to become Orthodox on his own that made me begin to desire him romantically. I was attracted when I saw his own interest in converting - I wasn’t trying to act as a missionary in any way! He understands how consuming Orthodoxy is in my life, and actually respects me for my “weird” eating habits, modest dress, prudish ways of “having fun” for a college student, friends with monastics, etc. We have discussed that I would only marry someone Orthodox (as if he couldn’t have guessed…lol) I understand he may not choose Orthodoxy, but in this case, he has given me sufficient reason to believe he is definitely considering it at least.
So I guess I'm one of the "missionaried": I grew up Catholic, went to a Catholic university, and met this tall, strange graduate student who avoided certain foods in the dining hall at particular times and prayed ginormously long prayers every single day. We did break up, but we got back together, and in 2004, I was chrismated into the Orthodox Church, we got married, and he went to seminary. (It was quite a momentous year.)
When we were dating, though, it was a given that if we did get married, one of us was going to convert. I never imagined it would be me. But then, as a former Catholic, I'm still all: "Wait, I'm *married* to a priest?"
I honestly have to say I take a little offense at the nerdy comment. The reason is that, from here, it almost reads like you're suggesting if you're nerdy, you'll never find romance.
This, I plainly think is untrue; I'm sure there's plenty of nerdy Orthodox people to go around, and there's no need to "become somebody you're not" and hide a part of the true person you are, just to find a special someone. If you're not being true to yourself around the person you're dating or are interested in dating, are they going to be in love with you, or the person you're pretending to be?
But then, that's just my two cents.
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