Right Man, Right Woman

Probably, there were not many of us so tied up in knots over this as I was. Probably, most of the students who went through Mr. Nielson's eighth grade don't even remember the series he did on "Right Man, Right Woman." (Probably even fewer students know that he was a Bob Jones grad, or care.) But me? Well, I took it seriously.

Right before my fourteenth birthday, in the year when my sister had her first baby and I took to riding my shiny white and blue 10-speed as often as I could, all the way to where they lived in The Duplex (so called in our family, as if there were only just that one duplex in the world) ... in the year immediately before everyone in our high school group at church and our teachers at our Christian school and the counselors at camp and all of my peers became obsessed with our "dating standards" (not banners we carried, not any sort of minimum requirements for potential dates, but how much we would be willing to "do physically" while on a date) ... the very first teacher on the topic was Mr. Nielson.

I took copious notes. He passed out reams of ditto machine copies of instructions and Bible verses and concepts and warnings. God, he told us, intended for each of us to get married. Further, God had one perfectly "right" man for each woman and one perfectly "right" woman for each man. This is in the Bible. This is what God says. This, students, is the most important thing for you to know in your life.

I would like to thank Mr. Nielson for mentioning to us that we would change more in the years between our 18th birthday and our 22nd or 23rd birthday than we would for the rest of our lives. I'm not at all sure that that's true, but I am sure that somewhere between high school and adulthood, a few seismic shifts happen, and it is probably a good idea to wait until after the continents have settled into place before choosing a Mate for Life.

I would also like to flick Mr. Neilson's nose (and the noses of all who followed after him, carrying on the refrains of the chorus he set in motion for us). There were a few omitted and rather important bits of information.

First of all, it is not in the Bible that we are all meant to get married, or that we are all meant to "know" who the Right Man or the Right Woman is by means of some interior process of Finding God's Will for Our Lives. In fact, the notion of falling in love with The Right One is so new to the world that the shine hasn't even worn off of it! Why, it's not even Christian! It's Say Yes to the Dress, and a burgeoning wedding industry ... it's Disney movies and romance novels and the eradication of tribes in favor of individuals in a post-Enlightenment universe of ideals. It's also a little sex-crazed and adolescent. So that's the first thing.

But the second is worse. Way worse. Quick, sharp flicks all 'round for anyone and everyone who ever taught me to look for signs and wonders from the supernatural realm, either in the Bible or in My Heart.

Neither holy writ (from an era of arranged marriages) nor my fiercely romantic heart were ever meant for this sort of job. Holy writ teaches only that the spouse is supposed to love the one you're with (once you've been properly joined in the first place) and is stubbornly silent on the matter of Dating Standards. There's no How To Choose a Mate chapter and verse. There just isn't. And as to My Heart? Well, what if the guy I "feel" is the Right Man happens to be behaving otherwise? What then? Call me vain and full of conceit, but I had more rather more self-esteem than to be grabbing at an escaping man.

The alternative to his trying to get away is, of course, just as problematic. What if he thinks I might be The One, and I know for sure that it would be a disaster? What if he's sure of it? What if he has been praying, and GOD TOLD HIM that I was the one for him? What then?

It would be decades after my own marriage before I got any clarity about any of this. It's possible to get married, stay married, and have a happy life, even if the bride believes with all her being that it is supposed to be a matter of the Right Man and the Right Woman in the Right Marriage. But it sure puts a huge demand on the poor guy who wants that girl. For us, it started with a letter.

* * * * *

A summer of Friday night conversations, and it was time for me to go back to the humidity, hairspray, and assigned dinner table seating in the Gulf Coast. It was time for this interesting intellectual to go back to Seattle to start grad school (getting a Master's Degree in Comparative Lit - whatever that was). Bible studies were over, I had an even deeper certainty about being certain about the Sovereignty of God, and an even stronger determination to find my own Right Man (and a growing suspicion that he was not a student at my school).

We stood at the front door, just as we had on all the other Friday nights, but this time we were trying to delay. All at once I realized that I did not want to stop talking with this man. And, besides, I had a lot of guy friends. My best friends had always been guys. Other guys write to me at school. Some of them had even come to visit me there. So, of course, there's nothing wrong with asking him. Mortifying if he doesn't want to, though. But I don't want to stop this conversation. He'll leave, and our conversation will be over. He doesn't know how to get hold of me there. Even if he wanted to, he couldn't, unless he had my--

"You don't have my school address."

"No, I don't."

"Wait. I'll give it to you."

"Okay."

So I did.