Seven Years of Sorts

from the mom

I'm reading Sex and the Soul, a book on faith and sex on college campuses and how one affects the other. It is a truly frightening book and is steering me back toward a little more openness to sending my kids to evangelical colleges, which still seem to foster a Christian ethic among young adults. (I highly recommend it for parents and youth workers.)

But the real point of this post is that I've learned a new term: frugaling. Frugaling is where a male and female spend a lot of time together with no touching, and no DTR ("determine the relationship") talk. Date without dating. Now according to the book, most evangelical girls would prefer to date but most evangelical guys feel a huge pressure to marry if they "date" a girl.

Upon reflection, I guess I was an exception. I hated dating and felt a ton of pressure. (And courtship! Talk about pressure.) Back in my day we called it being friends, but I guess eventually M and I were actually "frugaling." (Now I know that) he liked me but the idea of marriage in the near future scared him. And in the beginning, I wasn't at all thinking about him romantically but thought he was interesting. So it worked. Until it didn't.

It is a long story but the short of it is that we eventually had that DTR and decided to date with the understanding that marriage was a LONG way off. (That didn't work either and we were married less than 16 months later.) So, the point?

Seven years ago we embarked on something more and I'm so grateful we did.