what dating is not
Let’s not mince words. I grew up thinking and believing that dating relationships that did not end in marriage were wrong. The three major scripts that produced this mindset were (1) the script of shame, (2) the script of works as righteousness, and (3) the script of first love as my only love.
Shame has many ways of sidling up to us in many different areas of life. Shame around relationships meant that there was a lot of fear around “failure” in this area for me. I let false scripts determine what success and failure was, and, therefore, let them dictate my worth and make me irrationally afraid of getting into–and especially out of–relationships.
To get to the bottom of this irrational fear we have to go all the way back to how my family and my cultural history understands relationships. Specifically: sex and relationships. It’s no secret that Korean culture is largely shame based, as many Asian cultures are, but the dialogue around sex and how it’s linked to relationships, marriage, and family is shrouded in a sort of untouchable shame. We don’t talk about healthy ways or unhealthy ways of being with someone. We don’t talk about birth control or abortion. Sex education is largely non-existent in schools. Most young people are pulled into a warped understanding of bodies and hearts by their peers, together steeped in our collective values of achievement, reward, and patriarchy. It’s ironic because without a healthy education and understanding of sex we can’t possibly hope to have healthy romantic relationships, marriages, and families.
It’s not just my Korean cultural education that failed me and my family in this regard: our Protestant Christian culture failed me too. Christians also don’t talk about sex. We throw the baby out with the bath water: in our hurry to be “righteous” and without sexual immorality, we neglect to educate our young people on how God himself created sex and called it good.
Koreans don’t talk about sex. Church doesn’t talk about sex. So, given these two scripts, how is it that I was supposed to gain a healthy understanding of a social mechanism that literally influences directly or indirectly every important biological (and arguably nonbiological) relationship in my life? There’s a lack of education that breeds unhealthy ways of looking at dating, relationships, and sex, that will and is breeding unhealthy marriages. The story of how understanding sex as wrong got linked to dating being a morally questionable endeavor is tied to my family script.
As a homeschooled pastor’s kid who spoke English at home while growing up abroad, I heard many phrases repeated during my childhood that shaped the way I think about dating. Things like “date for marriage,” “imagine waking up next to that person every day for the rest of your life before you start liking them,” “guard your heart,” “don’t cry in front of boys,” “you’ll always remember your first kiss: don’t kiss someone you don’t want to remember on your wedding day,” “you know, daddy was my first boyfriend,” “fast and pray and God will show you,” and, my ever-glowing favorite, “Hope, you’re not allowed to date until you’re forty-two.” It’s unclear to me whether all of those things were explicitly said out loud to me as a kid, but they definitely capture the climate on planet dating in my family.
This is the part where I thank Mama effusively for not forcing me to read Josh Harris’ I Kissed Dating Goodbye like many of my other friends were forced to.
Both that book and my Korean and Christian family culture craft a definition of dating that focuses on how it brings shame. I remember feeling Dad’s shame when he would talk about having had girlfriends before Mama came along. I watched him lament deeply that he would remember some other woman when he thought about his first love. Mama was not condemning, but she wasn’t forgiving either.
I believed that I had one shot at a relationship, to do it right, before a shame I wouldn’t be able to shake settled on my soul. One shot to get into the ever-coveted purity hall of fame.
That’s what I believed dating was. And when my first, second, and third relationship ended in tears and not a white dress, I was overtaken by shame. I felt that I was ruined. I went near the fire that was dating and got devoured whole.
None of those beliefs are true.
Dating is not wrong. Dating is not my one-shot or else. Dating will not make my parents ashamed of me. Dating does not disqualify me from serving God. Dating and breaking up is not a sin. Dating is not inherently dangerous. God does not want my dating life or dating history to bring me shame.
