I kissed dating goodbye 1

A friend of mine at discipleship group passed me the book I Kissed Dating Goodbye by Joshua Harris quite some time ago. I have heard quite alot about this book in my Christian circle at church. I thought I would give this book a read because I have been interested about relationships recently and I thought that perhaps, this book would give me some good sound Christian advice about how to approach relationships. I am not sure how appropriate this book would be to my needs though. For one, I haven't even greeted dating hello! But maybe it is better to start off that way. Perhaps there may be something questionable about dating as our cultural paradigm towards relationship.

Now, what describes my reaction when my Christian guy friends tell me that dating as a concept to approaching a relationship is wrong is, "How are you going to find the person of your dreams if you stop dating?" Joshua Harris has a reply to that on page 26 where he was appearing a guest on a late-night television show called Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher. Joshua says, "Well, it's not quite as simple as just 'not dating. The idea is that a lot of the things we do in relationships today are motivated by selfishness. We're starting what we can't finish, we're pursuing romance when we're really not interested in commitment."

Joshua Harris lays down what he call the Little Relationship Principle: The joy of intimacy is the reward of commitment. He elaborate by saying that this little principle is a practical way to practice the Golden Rule in romance - it's deciding to do what's best for others by never asking for intimacy that you're not able to match with commitment. It doesn't mean that he has no relationships with the opposite sex or no intimacy, but rather appropriate relationships and appropriate intimacy. So a guy and a girl meeting over lunch isn't the issue. The issue is whether the intimacy in your relationhsip is appropriate to your current level of commitment.

Joshua makes the point, dating tend to skip the friendship stage of a relationship (page 38). Have you ever known someone who worried about dating a longtime friend? If you have, you probably heard that person say something like this : "He asked me out, but I'm afraid that if we start actually dating it will change our friendship." What is this person really saying? People who make statements like this, whether they realize it or not, recognize that dating encourages romantic expectations. In a true friendship you don't feel pressured by knowing that you "like" the other person or that he or she "likes" you back. 

With regards to Joshua Harris' point, I ask, how can relationships form without any initiative on either party in making romantic gestures? If I just sit back and take no romantic initiative towards a girl whom I am attracted to, will things naturally proceed towards a relationship? Some of my guy friends would use this term 'friendzoned' to describe the ossification of a platonic relationship where it would be then become impossible to ever get into a romantic stage. I am not sure how right they are, but I suspect that they got their idea from watching too many episodes of How I Met Your Mother.

Can I just be myself and hope that I shall find romance? I suppose I find myself having mixed feelings about such an approach. On one hand, I believe and trust in the will of God and his providence, and I don't want to come off as aggressive on things pertaining to relationships. There are certainly things about a relationship that are not within my control. On the other hand, there is just something about just being myself that I think is kind of too passive in nature and not conducive towards romantic relationships. I have a friend who would tell me, "You can't just sit on your butt and do nothing and expect God to drop a girl down from the sky".

On a related note, I am not sure how my peers actually get into relationships. It is a mystery for me. The thing which perplexes me is how their relationship transit from the friendship stage to romance. How does it actually build up between them? How do they reach the point where they have some sort of formal understanding between them that the relationship between them is a romantic one? Or if it must be declared, at which point in the friendship do they reach a consensus that there is romantic interest between them?

I suppose I kind of get the idea from watching Romance movies like 500 days of summer. There is a certain unexplainable moment of intimacy, that stems from a certain choice of language, or action, or from a moment of prolonged eye contact, which makes things 'feel so right'. I am not sure what are the sentiments of my peers here in Singapore. There might be a certain cultural norm that governs romantic impulses that I am not getting.