Recently a friend and I had a discussion about love, dating and marriage.  It was an awesome conversation.  The question that rose out of it was this: What do you do when you are looking for your wife but realize that you couldn’t marry the girl you are with?  Over the years, I have had that conversation with a lot of guys who have come up through our ministry and a lot of my friends.  I have seen guys avoid conversations and stay in relationships they knew could not go any further.  They were afraid of hurting the girl by breaking up.  Instead they hurt her by staying in something they could not sustain.  Worse, I have seen guys get almost to the altar, knowing in their heart they could not marry that girl but feeling bad because they had done what was expected of them.  They had chosen to get engaged to keep everyone happy, to please her, to fulfill others desires.  They had abandoned their own sense of knowing what they needed to do for themselves. It caused amazing hurt and devastation as they had to acknowledge that mistake and break off the relationship. So what do you do in that situation?

The answer seems so simple, but the circumstances are often very complex.  The answer is that you must be honest.  You must be wise and honest.  Maybe the process needs to begin long before you are in a relationship, any relationship.  Perhaps it should start with you and God.  Scripture tells us that God wants to give us the desires of our hearts.  In fact, it seems to indicate that he actually places those desires there.  So, if God is the author of all good things in our lives, desiring for us to desire the right things, then we should start by seeking him before we even date.  In fact, in most Christian circles, I feel like people jump from a first date to wondering if they will get married to the person.  There is this strange pressure to think about that rather then the ease and comfort of just getting to know someone.  So first, seek God.  Tell him you don’t want to get ahead of him, just date for a while.  Another thing you could do to help you in advance of having to deal with this ominous circumstance, is to keep the relationship incredibly pure.  You have to be cautious with physical intimacy.  For some people, this really requires wisdom.  For some, sitting next to a person they have feelings for can cause them to feel a physical rush.  That happens.  For others it’s situations like laying down together, making out etc.  Seek God’s voice on this stuff.  Seriously, he has something he wants to tell you about that in your life.  Avoid the false intimacy that comes with physical contact in a relationship.  Those feelings are there for a reason but they are actually there to bond you to each other in an indescribable way when you get married.  Those feelings and desires cause an incredible intimacy intertwined with all of who each of you are, spiritually, emotionally, physically and intellectually. It’s there to help you love your spouse.  It’s there to help you experience a little of heaven on earth.  The apostle Paul describes marriage and intimacy as a great mystery. What an awesome thing God has created. 

So let’s say you have done all that and yet you are there.  You are in that awful circumstance of someone loving you more than you can love them.  You are in full future mode.  People are assuming you will marry her.  She is waiting for you to take her ring shopping.  You had conversations about what you would name your kids and how many children you think you would like to have.  Or maybe it hasn’t gotten that far yet.  You just know there is an expectation.  You can’t date her anymore.  You need to move on. The realization that you can’t marry her has slapped you in the face!  You know she is not the one.  What do you do?  Pray for wisdom again and for words that will be kind.  Pray that your emotions will be free and that you can express yourself the way you need to.  Then tell her.  It probably won’t go great.  It doesn’t usually. She is going to be hurt. You will be hurting.  There may be tears.  It won’t be fun at all.  It’s necessary though.

My friend reminded me the other night about a story I told him of when a girl had that convo with me.  He reminded me I was bitter and hurt.  It’s true.  I was.  She was honest.  I needed that.  Could you imagine what would have happened if we went into marriage that way?  Can you imagine what it would be like if you stood at the front of a church waiting for a bride to come down the aisle that you knew you didn’t love with every fiber of your being?  No matter how hard that discussion will be, you have to have it.  Be honest.  It’s so simple yet so difficult.

A friend of mine broke off his engagement one month before the wedding.  It was the hardest thing he ever experienced.  She was crushed, blown away! Her parents were pissed at him.  They yelled at him, told him he was an awful person.  I wonder what they would have done had he married her and then divorced her.  Did that somehow seem like a better solution to them?  People are strange.  He did the right thing ultimately.  If he could write this, he would tell you to start a lot sooner than he did on asking God to intervene in his dating relationships.  He would tell you to seek God and to ask for wisdom, to keep your relationships pure and to not get too far ahead of yourself.  Most of all, he would tell you to be honest to avoid the huge hurt that can come when you have lost a sense of what you need and what you desire in a future bride and just start going through the motions, doing what you think is expected of you.

Guys, seek God, seek his wisdom.  Keep your relationships pure physically and don’t buy into a false intimacy that has you committing things with your body and words that you can’t live up to when infatuation diminishes and the truth and difficulty of actually loving someone replaces it.  Be honest.  Most of all, be faithful to God and he will help you through each of these circumstances.  It’s probably going to happen.  You can start to be ready long before it does.