Kyle wants to set me up with Kathryn. It’s a nice gesture, and she’s really sweet, but… no.<\/p>\n
I haven’t steadily dated anyone (to the point of having a “girlfriend”) since Erin and I broke up in September of 2002 after dating on-again off-again for about 2 years. I think this is the longest hiatus I’ve had since I started dating in the first place (Adria, summer 1996). <\/p>\n
I don’t think I’ll ever date while I’m still around here, in this area. It almost feels like there are too many unconscious expectations placed on the concept. Of course they shouldn’t have too much of a bearing on the whole thing, and they don’t, but I’d be lying if I said they never crossed my mind. I do sometimes wonder what the church body, my family, my group of friends, etc, would think if I started dating so-and-so. Would she fit into my circle of friends (as much as I have one)? How would we complement each other vis-a-vis the church? What would people think? What if I wanted to date somebody who wasn’t from around here? A different denomination? A different mindset completely? How would a substantial age difference be viewed? And so on and so forth… These are some of the questions that run through my mind occasionally. They don’t matter in the long run, of course, but when one is completely unattached, one can’t help thinking about all the variables involved in a relationship, even the minor ones such as these, and how in an ideal scenario it would be better to avoid arousing the objections of others altogether, if possible. Some conflict is a healthy thing, of course, but these are the things that have more potential to turn into longstanding issues. But who knows.<\/p>\n
I feel so stagnant here sometimes. My family is pretty well-established in the church and in the community at large (especially the homeschool community) and many times I’ve heard phrases like, “Oh, you’re one of the Suffern boys,” or “Your mom\/dad is so great,” or “I know your brother! I did [X] with him recently,” and while I’m amazingly honored by such things, sometimes I want to be just me, unattached, a singular entity making my way in the world, making my own ties in the church and in the community. Sometimes I just want to be far away and call home and tell my parents I’ve met somebody and not have them privy to the whole process of establishing the relationship in the first place (which they inevitably are through any number of sources). I don’t know. Now that I write these things out it all seems so awfully trivial. I love my family, and when it comes down to it they’re really not overbearing at all. But it doesn’t lessen the desire to move away, to feel the thrill of “me vs. the world” in a broader sense, to have less of a circumstantial safety net, as it were. And I have a feeling all that will come to pass sooner rather than later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kyle wants to set me up with Kathryn. It’s a nice gesture, and she’s really sweet, but… no. I haven’t steadily dated anyone (to the point of having a “girlfriend”) since Erin and I broke up in September of 2002 after dating on-again off-again for about 2 years. I think this is the longest hiatus […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=759"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2146,"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/759\/revisions\/2146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=759"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=759"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.boldulysses.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=759"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}