A Small Dose of Reality

Matt wrote a blog about how we idolise relationships and this is my response:

There is nothing inherently wrong with relationships. Nothing inherently wrong with getting married or falling in love, I just want to make that clear. The problem comes when we idolise it. Where our one goal in life is to get a boyfriend/girlfriend, get married and maybe have kids. The problem is when we are so fixated on this “perfect” future that we forget that maybe this isn’t the plan for our future.

This view is not just a problem Christians have and, if anything, it is ‘stolen’ from the worldview of relationships. We are constantly being bombarded with ideas of love, perfect relationships and romance. A happily ever after ending rarely has a single man or woman triumphing at the end.

Books and films are some of the worst offenders. The majority of them have a relationship as a major plot line. Even an action-adventure story tends to have some sort of romantic thread and songs are no better. It’s so rare to find a song that isn’t about either love or break-up. These songs tend to go on about how much someone is in love, wants to be in love, or misses being in love. Name me more than two popular songs that don’t have even a thread of love in them and I will be amazed.

Magazines are just as bad. With quizzes to find out who your celebrity boyfriend would be or gossip about celebrity love ‘news’ you can’t escape. Even girls younger than seven have been affected by this ridiculous hype with three year olds crying about their love for Justin Bieber. We can’t escape this culture where having a boyfriend/girlfriend is considered the ‘norm’ while not getting kissed until you’re over twenty is deemed “weird”. (This is stupid, in my opinion.)

It worries me when I see thirteen and fourteen year olds with boyfriends or girlfriends. They’re unlikely to see it as a relationsh8ip should be seen and so often just end up bragging about their ‘relationship’ and how many kisses they’ve had and such. At that age you’re still going to change a lot. You haven’t finished growing, your personality is still developing, so how can you know that your ‘relationship’ is going to work? And what is the point of a relationship if it has no future?

This idea of love and romance is fed into us daily and it’s so hard to escape. We need to remember that there isn’t actually anything wrong with being single; we need to focus our attention away from the pursuit of a “better half”. Having a relationship doesn’t solve all your problems and often just creates new ones.

DFTBA, Terrie, I have not forgotten.