Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Crushing On A Christian, Part 2 of 2

 Please see previous post, Crushing On A Christian, Part 1 of 2

I am in love with a devout Christian, that I will probably never be with. But that fact doesn't stop my heart from torturing itself.

 I know that I "shouldn't" still feel this way about him. A million questions flood my mind, about my motives, my state of mind, his thinking, and what to do in the future--about him or another guy I may meet:
What is it about him that drives me crazy? It is simple lust? Do I secretly want to hoodwink his Christian parents, or perhaps set him free from the notion of purity? Is my idea of him even close to reality?
I guess I'll never know.
My feelings toward him range from anger and disgust to confusion, to sadness, to burning desire. I just can't make up my mind about how I feel about him. I sometimes feel like a bad feminist, a stupid woman, for letting a man drive me crazy like this. I have dreams occasionally of saying goodbye to him or trying sneak out with him past his parents' eyes.
Am I being silly? I often ask myself. Is he really who I think he is? It is so easy to idealize someone who is far away.
(Weirdly, this is how some Christians, like myself, in the past, seem to react to God. "I keep praying, but He's not answering. Do you think he doesn't like me? Did I do something wrong?" So I guess I've replaced God with my crush. I still wonder if the perfect person I see in my mind really exists.)

I also wonder what to do if I should meet someone else. Be with a guy because he is nice and it would be good for me, or hold out for someone else to sweep me off my feet, someone who may never come?
If I choose the "healthy" option (or "settle," as the case may be), am I short-changing someone who deserves more than half of my attention? And what if the feelings for the new man never come?
I talk to others, and sometimes pursue them, with the hope that I can fall as hard for someone else, but nothing seems to come of it. Am I too forward, I speculate, or can they somehow sense that I belong to someone else? Have I been holding something back?

Maybe this fall, I think. He has my number; maybe he'll call me this fall. Maybe his parents discourage it now.
But then I wonder, how long am I going to have to wait? How many milestones will have to pass before he becomes independent enough, if he is even interested in me at all? I don't know if his parents don't think I'm Christian enough, or discourage him from dating at this point, or even if he's just not interested anymore.
Maybe I'll meet someone else this fall, someone less religious--I don't go to Bible college, at least. But is my new guy going to regard me the same way, and do I even want to be romanticized like that? It seems that, good or bad, Ben has ruined me for anything else.
Nothing can make me feel more pathetic than feelings I can't control. Fuck it! I think to myself. This is how I feel. No changing it.
I try to move on. One can try to be as realistic as possible, but what do you do when a part of you refuses to accept reality?
And how can reality possibly compete with fantasy?

Every time I decide to forget him, I know I'm just going to remember later. I've made peace with this fact, somewhat. Perhaps someday I will forget him for good, or find somebody else to make me feel this way. But until then...
 Why do people want so badly what they can never have?

Update: My feelings for Ben have changed. See the later posts, "Crushing On A Christian...No Longer," and "Left For A Loaf, Or Waiting For The 'Next' Guy," to see what happened.

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