www.byzcath.org Forums General Discussions Town Hall Question About Love

Hello everyone, I'm not sure if this belongs here or in another section, but I'm just going to say this here since I'm not looking for prayers, just legitimate advice from fellow Christians.

So, I've been in love with my best friend for about 3 years now. We've known each other 6 years, I actually proposed to her in 2011, she turned me down, but we had a two day long talk on why we can't be together. She has a 6 year old daughter, and is going to have another daughter in June. The children's father is a monster and abusive, but my friend says she can't split up her family. She encourages me to be her friend and move on.

My problem is, how do you move on from someone who meets everything on your emotional check list? I really, really have no clue how. I tried dating sites, a lot of them actually, nothing happens. I never get anywhere. I can't help but feel that I am destined to be alone. However, I see all these miserable people in the world, people who already have kids, can't get married, can't raise their kids right, all those horrible things that have contributed to the degradation of parenthood. At least my best friend is a good mother.

All I ever wanted out of life was love, marriage, kids. I had dreamed of a job in academia but I was rejected for graduate school and just gave up. I'd rather work at McDonald's the rest of my life and come home to a family I love then work myself half to death getting my Ph.D, teaching classes, making decent money, and come home to an empty house.

I don't feel angry at God or anything, and I maintain my prayers, but I can't help but feel lost. Not abandoned, no, not abandoned ever, but just lost. One of my good friends is a Muslim who I tutored in English over the summer and she always says "Just pray, keep your traditions, things will work out." I want to believe her words, but it's been years now. I just feel lost.

Does anyone have any advice for me? Any great insight about love that I'm missing? My best friend says I have qualities that women want, yet, why doesn't she want me? How do I move on from something like this yet still preserve my friendship? I am just lost. The world I once live in crumbled rapidly. Please, any advice from wiser, more experienced, and more pious souls, would be greatly appreciated. Thank you, have a blessed evening, thanks for reading my long sad story.

Eastern,

Your objective of a family and a good wife is good and eventually you will find it if you are objective.

I don't know your friend's relationship with the father of her children, but I assume it is a marriage or a live-in relationship. Either way, it appears that it is a dead-end; your singular pursuit is keeping you away from your goal of a good family life. It's like wearing blinders, one can't see the surrounding world when only looking straight ahead.

Taking a biblical simile, your goal is somewhat like David's pursuit of Bathsheba.

May God guide you.

Eastern:

Glory be to Jesus Christ!!

My son seemed to be in a similar place about seven years ago. He thought he had to put a time table on his life. If he wasn't married by the time he was thirty he felt he'd be a failure in life and as a man. He was in a very poor relationship and thought she was the last person in the world. He was sure that this was the only person for him, even though we, his family, could see that this was not only wrong but we could all see the potential for a very miserable life ahead.

My advice, as his father, was that the Good Lord would send him the right person to be his wife in His Good Time. And His Good Time would not be rushed and would not be forced and would not be something he would direct.

I was right. When he least expected it and in a place he least expected, along came the very person who has made his life what he wanted it to be and more. They have been married five years and are expecting their first child in June.

So my advice to you is to step back and let the Good Lord send you the woman He has in mind for you. As for your friend, she already told you that she would not accept your proposal. You cannot change her. You cannot help her. She has chosen what she has at this point in her life. You have to accept that. She has. Some people cannot break free from poor relationships. This may be her case. But your life is not meant to save her. Only the Good Lord and she can change things. It's time to move on.

It might help if you stop thinking about this person and let the relationship become a tad more distant. This is draining you and that is not spiritually good for you.

Seek out your pastor and have a couple sessions to talk about this. It seems to me that there is something that makes you cling to this dead-end situation. Find it out and deal with it.

BTW, this is not love--this relationship with this woman that you describe. It's something not healthy, but it's not love.

You'll be in my prayers.

Bob

See, I don't want to leave her entirely, I want my friendship preserved. I owe her a lot too, for things that are between me and her, but serious things that would have resulted in my academic career dying prematurely. Another problem is the old thing I was always taught "friends don't let friends do drugs." That is how I treat her, "friends don't let friends get abused." She accepts it, I can't, it is wrong.

However, I have come to slowly realize that we can only continue on as friends, and that I am able to accept. What is the most painful part of it is the whole "why am I single" piece. My friend, she says I have so many great qualities and tells me to get out there and look, and I tell her how and we reach the dead end of "how." I cannot get over the "how" the "method." I do not know these things.

As for how healthy our relationship is, without me, she'd be even more lost, without her, I'd be even more alone. I told her so long as she has the other half of our best friend locket, the half with my name on it, I will never abandon her. I keep her half with my spare necklace crosses, so I always know where it is. The returning of my half of the locket to me would be the equivalent of the papal bull that started the Great Schism.

Now, the next part, the whole "wait and let it happen" approach, I've been doing that for years. I've been active too, I've been on dates, all sorts of things, nothing seems to take hold. My friend, and my therapist (shocker there that I'm in therapy) are absolutely baffled as to why I fail. I guess that is what is hurting me the most, the "why."

Also, I do my prayers, I am religiously active, but I don't pray for God to send me love, I just thank Him for what I have and apologize for any sins I've committed and can remember at that time. I will not beg Him, I will humbly wait, or humbly, actively try.

I appreciate the advice, I really do. Sometimes it's just hard, especially with all my classmates getting married now. That bothers me immensely, simply because I am jealous. I am not familiar with the sin of jealousy, I never was jealous of anyone before like the age of 22. No one had what I wanted, so there was no need to be jealous. Now that I am, I feel ill, like a foreign army has invaded my homeland.

Maybe my method of self help needs a rebooting. Anymore advice would be appreciated as well. Thank you, have a wonderful evening and again, thank you for taking the time to read my words.

You will see no improvement before you have definitively ended your relationship with your friend.

She does not meet everything on your emotional checklist. She isn't yours, not available to be yours, and will never love you like a wife loves a husband.

As for all that about working at McDonalds, marriage is very much more a business arrangement than popular opinion would have it. I would encourage you to consider that you will get as good a woman as you are a man. Ask yourself what kind of a woman would want a marriage to a man who works at McDonalds and is hung up on an attached woman. Get gainful work, the kind to support a family. Get sorted out emotionally so that you have love to give to a woman who'll give you hers. Once you're an emotionally healthy man with a decent job, a good woman will find you. Do some push ups while you wait. Good biceps won't hurt any.

We have not been told whether or not she is married to the father of her unborn child.

If she is, any relationship that would lead to the breaking of that marriage would be a breaking of the Sixth Commandment.

Irrespective of whether there is a Marriage License, what is being described is essentially a "Common Law Marraige"; and the obsession described is close to breaking of the Ninth and Tenth Commandments.

There is much work to be done this Lent.

First, she is not married. She even just told me tonight he is cheating on her again, and she tried to kick him out and he just hit her again. How does a friend sit back and watch that happen? It seems woefully un-Christian to sit back and do nothing.

And Thomas The Seeker, who is the obsessed you refer to? Are you calling me the obsessed? Or perhaps the boyfriend who sees everything she does as wrong, and constantly goes through all her messages, all her personal information, just to tighten the noose around her more and more.

Thank you for the clarrification. As to thoughts which begin to take control of our minds, everyone is somewhat vulnerable, which is why God has given us the final Commandments.

Be careful that you do not fall prey to the very behavior that you quite rightly deplore in others. I write this as one has so fallen.

I think it would be very beneficial for you to have detailed consultation with your Spiritual Father.

Thomas the Seeker, yes, I agree with you about falling prey to this. I don't want to be annihilated in the cross fire, nor do I want to become what I hate most. When dealing with this level of abuse, it's not always easy to see when you're being pulled in, becoming a victim, or becoming the perpetrator.

As for talking to my priest about this, I am definitely not comfortable talking about this face to face with anyone. Hence, why I turn for advice here. Thanks for your time, sorry you had to spend it reading my nonsense.

Your pastor/confessor/spiritual father is available to you for guidance and healing. Speak to him.

An internet forum is not a substitute.

Eastern,

Reading through this thread, it occurred to me that your problem has many facets, and in order for you to "sort things out," it may be helpful to look at each of these in isolation. This seems like a good place to start:
While love, marriage and kids are certainly a worthwhile goal, you seem to have given up on a key factor in your ability to make this happen, which is the ability to support the family you dream of.

Your reference to McDonalds doesn't mean specifically that you're working at McDonalds, but the implication is that your present employment is not even making use of the degree that you now have. You say that you "just gave up," with the excuse that you didn't want to "work myself half to death," which certainly sounds like sour grapes. Now, it's not wrong to re-evaluate your goals after coming upon a major roadblock, but this is *not* the same as "just giving up!"

You may want to consider re-evaluating this aspect of your life. Since things just don't seem to be coming together, it could be because this one piece is so out of place.


Peace,
Deacon Richard

What I mean by the McDonald's comment is...

I would gladly work a terrible job, I would gladly work a 9am to 9pm as my mother did in fast food, my mother worked sometimes 9am to 12am, it was horrifying. It's why she's so sick now. But I would gladly do that to support my family if I had one to support. If I had one to support, I would also continue my Ph.D program. But if I had no one to help see me through, I wouldn't waste my time. I have had a really, really miserable time in academia and although my dream is to be a college history professor. It is a dream.

My goal is love, marriage, family. Secondary goal, college history professor.

My goal is love, marriage, family. Secondary goal, college history professor.

I wish more Americans shared your priorities. I have reservations about PFA (protection from abuse) orders but there are times when it is the only safe recourse. One has to be willing to finally cut ties. If your friend truly fears for her safety it's not just a no-brainer, but it is immoral to continue an abusive relationship. The only possible exception is if the children sufficiently benefit from the presence and support from the father.

Well, benefiting from the presence of the father is a joke. He's never around. He doesn't play with his 6 year old, he just treats her kind of like some object. He won't event touch my friend now that she's expecting. No hugs, no kisses, nothing. Also, my friend found out that her boyfriend's friend is doing heroin. She's afraid her boyfriend might be doing it as he was "gone" from Friday night till about 2 today.

I agree it is immoral for her to remain when there is a way out. I'm still searching for a solution, even if she's not. That probably makes me sound like a big fool, but...it feels right to me.

Also, thank you for appreciating my priorities in life. Not many people do and simply accuse me of being old fashioned and outdated.