Come one, come all! Essentially anyone can post in here - I truly do appreciate the wisdom of our married folks here. When MariaRegina suggested starting a thread like this, I thought it was a wonderful idea - it really is a positive thing for single Christians of
any denomination to have a place where they can air their gripes, their joys, their amusements, and their struggles, and hopefully this can be one of those things if people would like it to be.
As for me, it has been a long, strange trip - for the first 22 years of my life, I had just kind of coasted through, not interested at all in any sort of romantic relationship. I loved the stories of love, and finding someone who you are "meant" to be with, but when it came down to it, I had no real desire to date. When I was 19, I began seriously discerning a vocation to religious life. I visited a few convents and spent a great deal of time with nuns, trying to get a feel for the life. At 21, I fell seriously ill and ceased discerning altogether. Just as I had begun to stabilise, a friend I had known for a couple years expressed interest in me, and, for the first time in my life, I found myself feeling as though I would like to pursue a romantic relationship.
He was of no faith - in all honesty, he turned out to be rather anti-theistic, rather than simply atheistic or agnostic. I am a fairly easy-going person when it comes to the beliefs of others. I tend to be interested in what they believe, rather than feeling threatened, frightened, or put off by it (it's the religious studies degree working its influence
). The only time when I become seriously hurt is when people begin intimating that having faith in something greater than myself makes me somehow inferior, weak, needy, and defective. That is the sort of person that my (ex) boyfriend turned out to be.
In the long run, the relationship was not a positive experience, though not because he was so critical of my faith. For almost the entire duration of the relationship, I felt very lonely - our worldviews clashed and he was entirely unwilling to communicate effectively, and he wanted things out of the relationship that I did not. We broke up after exactly one year.
Presently I do not wish to get into another relationship. I am open to being with someone again, if the right person comes along. I am a very monogamous person, and very loyal, so the "dating scene" as it exists in the social sphere just isn't for me.
I hope that this does not sound bad - but I really do think that if I date again, I would very much like to date a Catholic. It was just so exhausting and isolating to date someone who did not agree with me on very fundamental things... who saw the world so differently. Relationships are meant to forge bonds, to encourage affection - and I think one of the best ways to do that (at least for me) is to ensure that you both share common ground on the things which you hold most dear. It varies from person to person, of course - some souls are stronger than others, given to weathering storms more stalwartly than others.
Since we are so close-knit here, I hope that you do not mind me sharing so much.
