Relationship pressures

By Alyssa Tarmey

Why is there so much pressure?

The pressure to date, the pressure to prepare yourself for someone else, the pressure to become “marriage material” – since when did finding your partner become a part of our college curriculum? I don’t remember reading that on the syllabus.

Date week? Seriously? Let’s put together a week where we will pay for you to find your spouse. I have absolutely no opposition to the free events that you’re offering us, but there is no need to literally set up a week that pressures us to date.

It is not fair to continue to pressure us to believe in empty promises. It is not OK to constantly say, “Be patient. One day God will send you your spouse.” We do not know this – God never promised us marriage.

People tell me stories all the time about their spouses and how they met while attending Oklahoma Christian University. These stories are beautiful, and I am very happy for these couples. But not everyone falls under this same Christian culture expectation of getting married before walking across the stage at graduation.

It is not OK to continually attempt to persuade and pressure us into believing one day we will be married, and in the meantime we need to search as much as possible until we find the spouse God made for us.

People are getting engaged and married left and right. I am happy for you. Marriage is a beautiful thing. But is it something everyone should be pressured to find?

I was able to be content with my relationship status – or lack thereof – for the longest time. But it was all an unrealistic happiness: I was living with the thought and security of God sending me a spouse one day. I was expecting God to provide me with something He never actually promised me. I had no real faith in Him, and no real understanding of the fact that God will give me what He wants me to have when He wants me to have it.

Under this constant pressure, accepting this reality – God’s plan and not mine – is difficult at best. I fear I am becoming emotionally numb, unable to recognize true love.

For the longest time my main focus was preparing myself for this unrealistic love that God was supposedly planning for me. Meanwhile, I forgot to love myself in the process. There were definitely moments in life where I’ve felt happy with who I am, but, overall, there was no real love for who I am in God’s eyes. There was no independence in my love and my relationship with God. I was just preparing my heart for a man. I made a special place in my heart for some fantasy person – a place that has become a void that I have continually filled with sin and shallow forms of love.

I have been pushed towards and taught so much about marriage and how I need to prepare for it. I have reached the point to where I think I am ready for marriage mentally, but I am nowhere near ready emotionally. Marriage is such a big commitment, and I have barely found out who I am in God’s eyes. I am just now slowly starting to understand His plan for me and the person He sees me as.

Many young Christian couples who have fallen under this pressure and gotten married within the Christian schools’ expectation (“ring by spring”) sometimes tend to find themselves unhappy or emotionally unstable within their marriage because they were not ready for what they were pressured into.

Nobody wants to talk about the reality of this. Nobody wants to admit how much it hurts, how much pressure we feel, nobody wants to admit the loneliness and the fact that we are not living up to the expectation that we were taught for so long.

Well, I’ll be the first to admit it: this sucks. The realization that I will be walking away from Oklahoma Christian without that special person that I was so pressured to find, slightly destroys me.

I do not want to be discouraged and have the wrong idea of marriage and dating. I do not want to have a negative mindset about the life God wants for me. I am tired of spending countless nights begging God to provide me with something I was not guaranteed.

I want to be able to reflect on my time spent at Oklahoma Christian feeling happy and content. I want to be able to believe being single is OK. I want to be able to find peace in knowing all of my concerns are taken care of by God.

I know that much of this may be the cliché response of a single person. Trust me, I’ve heard it all far too often. I know it’s hard, it sucks, and life can become quite lonely at times. I am not going to lie to you and tell you it will be OK to leave here without a spouse, because honestly I can barely believe that myself.

If you are feeling any of these pressures know that you are not alone, we all feel the pain, the emotional destruction, and the disappointment of these pressures.

Stop listening to the burden our social structure puts on us to date, rise above the emotional pain that comes from these pressures. Try to find happiness in who you are in God’s eyes.  Fill that void in your heart with God’s unconditional love, find out what makes you happy and do it.

Don’t let this pressure consume your college career, rise above “ring by spring.”

 

Alyssa Tarmey is a senior at Oklahoma Christian University.