Tell Me a Love Story: Learning About Relationships From Strangers on the Internet

by Ben Howard

It's no secret to readers of this blog that I'm a bit of a hopeless romantic. I'm a sucker for romantic comedies and I even caught the Bachelorette bug for the last half of one season (Let's all have a moment of silence for Jef with One F). So when my friend Joanna sent me a link to the blog/experiment 40 Days of Dating it took me about five minutes to become completely addicted.

The concept behind the experiment is relatively simple. Two friends, New York-based graphic designers Jessica Walsh and Timothy Goodman, have issues with relationships. In order to sort through these issues they decide to date each other for forty days. They see each other every day, go on three dates a week, and go to see a couples therapist together once a week. At the end of each day they fill out a questionnaire reflecting on what they did that day and what they learned.

So far this probably reads like the pitch for a revamped version of When Harry Met Sally and that's true, sort of. I was initially fascinated by the mere "Will they or won't they" facet of the experiment. I'd read through the questionnaire and try to decide if one of the two was falling for the other, or, hopefully, that they were both falling for each other.

However, as I've continued reading through the days (Day 16 posted today), I've become fixated on a completely different aspect of the experiment. I'm continually fascinated by 40 Days of Dating because it highlights, perhaps inadvertently, how two people can have wildly different responses and interpretations to the same event. When you read the questionnaires, it puts in stark relief how deeply these dueling interpretations of events are shaped by perspective and context.

It's not that Jessica and Timothy have wildly diverging interpretations of events, but they do focus on different aspects and see differing significance in the same tiny situations. For instance, there is the Bread Pudding Incident on Day Ten. Jessica and Timothy attend a Knicks game together and during the evening they buy bread pudding which Tim eats by himself.

In Tim's point of view this is all that occurs. He wanted the pudding and he ate it. However, Jessica sees this incident as something slightly more. She says that "Tim is not very good at sharing." This small event, which Tim views as meaningless, has meaning to Jessica. There are other similarly small incidents like this, as well as larger fights and disagreements which really underline this divide in the way that people view the same reality.

I find this all so interesting because I think it magnifies the importance of communication, and on a grander scale, community in general. Communication is essential to understanding the experience of the other even if we're experiencing the same events. The concept that one view of reality is the objective view, or the true view, is deeply narcissistic and problematic. We need to listen to ourselves and learn from experiences, but we also need to listen closely to those closest to us to learn from theirs.

This is obvious in romantic relationships, but it's also true in wider communal interactions. For instance, there has been so much conversation is recent weeks about issues of race and justice. The easiest way to undermine these conversations, to shut down dialogue, is to assume that the experience of white middle to upper class Americans is the experience of all. It is impossible for us to inhabit the context of another person and experience the world as they do. What we can do, what we must do, is communicate openly and honestly. This means we must listen, but it also means we must share.

It may sound strange to extrapolate from a rom-com style blog experiment to deeper, far more entrenched problems like race relations, but I don't think it's that far of a step. Relationships are the bedrock of our society, whether they be romantic, personal, or civic. Open lines of communication are essential whether you're trying to heal the worlds problems or just date for forty days without killing each other.

Peace,
Ben

*All images are from the website 40 Days of Dating.*

Ben Howard is an accidental iconoclast and generally curious individual living in Nashville, Tennessee. He is also the editor-in-chief of On Pop Theology and an avid fan of waving at strangers for no reason. You can follow him on Twitter @BenHoward87. 

 

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology.

You might also like:  

• Confessions of a Hopeless Romantic: The Bachelorette and Online Dating
• A Swiftian View of Relationships
• On Pop Theology Podcast: Episode 31 - The Wonderful, Magical World of Online Dating

On Pop Theology Podcast: Episode 32 - On Modesty, Dating, and Being Single in the Church w/ Emily Maynard

by Ben Howard

Ben sits down with writer and blogger Emily Maynard to talk about modesty culture, "Christian" dating, and being a single twenty-something in the church. Emily takes us through her experience with modesty culture and the frustrations it's caused. Also, we'll confront the idea that marriage is the highest calling in the church and discuss why "Christian" dating advice is just so bad. Have a listen, laugh a little, and we hope you enjoy!

Follow Emily on Twitter @emelina and check out her website Emily Is Speaking Up.

You can download the podcast by clicking here. Or you can subscribe to the podcast by searching "On Pop Theology" in the iTunes music store. If you download the show through iTunes, please be so kind as to rate and review us. We want your feedback and it helps the show to grow.

Also, remember to "Like" On Pop Theology on Facebook and follow us on Twitter @OnPopTheology for all the updates, posts, and links throughout the week.

Finally, if you'd like to stream the podcast, you can do that here:

Peace,
Ben

If you have any questions, comments, or if you just want to say hi, you can contact us at onpoptheology [at] gmail.com.

You might also like:   

• On Pop Theology Podcast: Episode 31 - The Wonderful, Magical World of Online Dating
• On Pop Theology Podcast: Episode 30 - Coming Out in the Church w/ Registered Runaway
• On Pop Theology Podcast: Episode 29 - DOMA, Prop 8, and Exodus International
• On Pop Theology Podcast: Episode 28 - The Church Is Johnny Cash

Confessions of a Hopeless Romantic: The Bachelorette and Online Dating

by Ben Howard

I don't watch the Bachelor or the Bachelorette with any regularity, but that doesn't stop me from enjoying the show when I do. In my defense, I love sports and the sport of competitive dating is no different. But I also love fairy tales and the Bachelor/ette is, at its core, a fairy tale. It's a fictional story of people who fall in love in a magical land and live happily ever after. The show ends happily ever after; pay no attention to the broken engagement behind the curtain.

I've always been a hopeless romantic at heart, so I often give myself over to fairy tale daydreams of love. I don't just want love and a wife, I want a story, and a good one at that. I want one of those stories that you tell your kids for like eight years and becomes the basis for a hit sitcom on CBS. Simple enough, right?

But there's another side to me that's deeply rational and a bit cynical. This is the side that is over fairy tales and the artistic machinations of love. This is the side that talks me into signing up for dating websites.

Everybody has a dating website. JDate if you're Jewish. Christian Mingle if you're a Christian. OKCupid if you're poor and/or bored with normal humans. Personally, after a fair amount of internet dating experimentation, I've settled on eHarmony. It's like dating, but with more math and less of that messy personal interaction.

Seriously, it's fantastic. You can work through a list of potential matches to see which one's short answer writing style sets your heart aflutter. Personally, I weed out all matches that set off personal pet peeve alarms. This includes anyone who says they read Captivating or Twilight unironically as well as anyone who refers to God with capitalized pronouns (unless they were feminine pronouns, then I might be intrigued).

I've even re-worked my own profile multiple times. I've written it serious and straight-forward, manic and ridiculous, gentle and sweet, and, most recently, semi-honestly. I use the best picture I've ever taken as my profile picture, even though it's more than two years old and it only shows half my face. I just really want people to see the best version of me, which coincidentally, is only tangentially related to who I really am.

This is insane. This is ridiculous. This is real life.
Sometimes I'll joke that I really want to start a relationship six months in, or better yet, like six years in. I want to be comfortable and vulnerable with the other person now. I want to trust them now. I want them to understand my weird quirks and my occasionally bizarre anti-social behavior now. I want to be known, but I don't want to go through that messy, awkward process of letting someone get to know me.

I'm caught in this trap, really we all are, between who I am and who I'd like you to think I am. The first is comfortable for me, but I'm scared you won't like it. The second one causes me deep anxiety, but I enjoy the affirmation.

Though this seems disingenuous, I'm not certain that it is. Maybe we have to let people get to know our somewhat artificial, definitely superficial selves before they can get to know the beautiful/frightening person on the inside.

I've had friendships that were birthed out of emotional difficulty. They are wonderful and I love these friends very much, but there is a problem. It's hard to be normal friends with them, it's hard to just hang out. We can talk about life and death and pain and suffering and I know things about them and they know things about me that I wouldn't share with another soul, but a normal conversation sometimes eludes us.

I don't think we earn the really valuable, long-lasting relationships we crave unless we go through the mess and anxiety of learning about each other slowly, over time. I think we need the often frustrating path towards trust and friendship and love. We don't need a fairy tale, because they aren't real, but I don't know if we need formulas either, because they aren't true.

Love is insane. Love is ridiculous. Love is real life.

Peace,
Ben

Ben Howard is an accidental iconoclast and generally curious individual living in Nashville, Tennessee. He is also the editor-in-chief of On Pop Theology and an avid fan of waving at strangers for no reason. You can follow him on Twitter @BenHoward87. 

 

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology.

You might also like:  

• Why I Love Happily Ever After and Why I Need Something Else
• Heaven and How I Met Your Mother
• God is NSFW

A Little Crazy Behind the Eyes: The Bachelor and How to Date 15 Churches at Once

Apparently "Worth the Drive"

by Amanda Taylor

My parents packed up and carried off their three little girls to church every week, every Sunday morning, every Sunday evening, and every Wednesday night for my entire childhood. Thirty-five minutes it took to get to the modest, small brown building on the left-hand side of North Court Street in Circleville, Ohio. Thirty-five minutes to get there, thirty-five minutes to get home, every week through the cornfields and past the paper plant to sit in the pew right behind the 85 year-old woman who’s had When the Roll is Called Up Yonder memorized since 1936.

“A Church Alive is Worth the Drive.”

What is a “church alive?” That phrase has continued to silently whisper in my ear, haunting me since its plastic black letters first appeared on the church sign out front 22 years ago. By many of today’s standards, this church was deadern’ a doornail. Small, both cramped and yet somehow drafty, adverse to change, enthusiastic about routine, skeptical of outside influence, a lover of How Shall the Young Secure Their Hearts.

It is as objectionable to me now as it is entrenched. The comfort, love, and safety I feel in that small Church of Christ setting is something that I am certain will never be replicated, but it is also confining, and limiting, and maddening. So where do I belong? How do I practice this faith in a way that will honor my parents’ commitment, as well as the great blessing and curse of my own?

After swim practice in the fifth grade a friend asked me what religion I was, and when I answered, “Church of Christ,” they told me that wasn’t a thing. Feeling bad for me, they asked if I was, you know, Catholic or something? I pondered, unsettled, and panicked and then asked my dad on the way home from church the next Sunday, Hey Dad? Are we Catholic? Only years later did I realize how incredible my question sounded to him, once it became a running joke through our entire extended family that I might be “the Catholic one,” but that I wasn’t sure.

A little crazy.

Perhaps this confusion about belonging burrowed a little too far into my heart and mind, because now I wonder all over again “what I am.” I must go to church; I have gotten this far.  But the decision of where that will occur is another matter entirely. I find myself, having watched The Bachelor a time or two, seeing parallels between my pursuit for a church community and the latest Bachelor’s quest to date 15 women at one time. Every single option is beautiful, though it carries with it the subtle suspicion of crazy behind the eyes.  

For the record, I don’t think it’s normal to date 15 people at one time. The idea of getting to pick your soul mate while chaotically making out with as many people as you can get away with in the meantime is insanity, which I presume is why it makes for such good television. The human emotion on display is very raw (reference ugly cry here) but it’s expressed in the midst of an entirely orchestrated and fake environment. How do you honor what is real within a production?  

Doesn’t church educate me about what is true and eternal in this human experience through the mechanism of a production? Are churches focused on creating an environment that draws you in and convinces you of their authenticity and relevance, in a great bid for relationship? If The Bachelor is how we are normalizing relationship building in society, is not the church susceptible to similar whimsical and fleeting ideas of commitment? I don’t know how to date 15 churches without inherently judging them all and committing to none, and I’d appreciate being able to blame reality television if at all possible.  

In participating in all these competing religious environments however, I’m struck more by the similarities than the differences. I notice the love and the passion and the cold indifference, coexisting in foldout chairs and velvet-lined pews. I see and experience comfort in the routine, and feel resentment in our complacency. I feel music wash over the body gathered, the rhythm of the words fusing the masses, the repetition calming and steadying, and maybe the drums, either loud and accosting or beating out any worry and tension we’ve brought with us that day.  

The uniting of many for the glory of one is very powerful, and critically important to the practice of faith. We humble ourselves before what is perfect in the hope that we may rest in it, for just a moment, to carry away to the corners of our world whatever remnants are gracious enough to linger.

Person or symbol?

Watching the black smoke turn to white this week, I found myself humbled by the Catholic faith, connected to it. This is the uniting of many, centered, focused on who will lead them in pursuit of the glory and honor of one. This is not political posturing or parochial strategy or a statement to society as much as it is the body of Christ, a church alive.

The press surrounding this important and significant changing of the guard is chilling; it’s analytical and manufactured, yet it reminds me too much of my pursuit of a church community. We have already stripped Pope Francis of his humanity and understand him instead as his geography, his routines, his Jesuit background, and his political implications.  

The Catholic faith quickly becomes a body we review as we would another social psychology case study, peering in upon its internal strife and posturing, labeling so much as scandal and tawdry. We turned church into The Bachelor and asked ourselves if our favorite contestant won. How perilous to think of faith as something that can be contained by policy and bureaucratic refinement or understood by the world’s standards.

In the end church is a production of sorts, an orchestration of people, ideas, action, and relationship, to say something to the world and to the individual about the Creator. It is inviting us to see its relevance and look past its flaws and, more than anything, is asking for participation, for faith, to just show up to own version of a modest, small brown building on the left-hand side of North Court Street.

“It is to provide an example that submitting to the practice of worship and the leadership of those in charge is a Christian teaching about humility and submission to God.” My dad said that.

Amanda works in “community development” and no, she doesn’t know what that means either. Forever the critic. And enthusiast. Never one for dichotomies. Follow her on Twitter @tayloram03 if you’re not into receiving tweets.

You can follow On Pop Theology on Twitter @OnPopTheology or like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/OnPopTheology.