He's Not "The One"

Through the past two months that I’ve been in a relationship, a few times someone will teasingly ask me, “So, do you think he’s the one?” I know they’re being cute, I know they’re excited about what’s happening in my life, but that’s actually a very hard question for me. It confuses my heart, and I never really know how to answer it without a long explanation.

Before I start ranting about everything wrong with life, let me tell you a couple things about the sweet guy I’m dating. He’s loving and compassionate, the kindest person I’ve ever met, and truly my best friend in a unique-to-him way. We’ve already failed each other, disappointed each other, had a few difficult conversations, and had to humbly accept grace from each other. Ever since I start liking him a good while ago, I’ve never been able to look at another man like I look at him. Do I hope and want to end up with him? Well, suffice it to say I wouldn’t be dating him if I didn’t.

But all that said, I really don’t like the idea of seeing someone as “the one.”

First of all, talk about pressure to perform. It’s like culture has conditioned people to believe that you walk around for the first stage of your life looking for that perfect person who you’re supposed to spend the rest of you life with. Once you find them, sure it’ll be a lot of hard work, but everything will turn out in the end because it always does, and if it doesn’t, then ooops, sorry, that person wasn’t The One.

I think of someone holding me to that standard and it makes me shudder. For someone to only love me as long as things are working out is such a skewed perspective, and it’s wrong. It makes me shy away from the thought of revealing my whole heart to someone because I would still have to face the concept that it might not “work out” and suddenly this intimate bond I’ve made with someone, this permanent, lifetime covenant I’ve bound myself to, would be broken. Man, that’s scary.

All of this doesn’t communicate selfless love; it communicates selfish love. It communicates the idea of someone being your “other half” and completing you. That concept conjures up in my head the image of one of those two-necklace sets where one half of the heart says “TRUE” and the other says “LOVE,” or something to that effect. Not that I have a problem with those. I don’t (totally wore a best friends one with my bestie in 6^th grade). What I have a problem with is when people don’t expect more out of love than to make themselves feel better, feel complete. It’s when they only have that little necklace, and not the meaning behind it. The necklace looks pretty and makes you happy, but in this context it’s not nearly as important as it could be.

To look at someone and question if they’re The One in such a context as this is a selfish way to think of someone (I’m NOT saying that you shouldn’t ponder if someone is worth marrying – keep reading J). In this form, in the form the world presents, it’s asking him to fit into my box of who I think he should be instead of looking at him for who he is and asking myself how I can care for him as him. It’s comparing him to a list of things that I think I want, instead of looking at the unique person he was made to be. It’s objectifying someone. It’s making a person – an individual human being with a beautiful heart, sharp mind, and unique set of emotions and thoughts – no more than an object for my personal pleasure or happiness.

So quite frankly, uhm, no. Just no to this whole idea.

He’s not “the one.”

He’s not my “other half.”

He will never complete me.

Why?

For so many glorious, breathtaking reasons. To begin with, I already found the One, the Faithful and True One. He knows me in a way a man never will. He knew me before I existed, made the very depths of me, teaches me how to love, heals brokenness, fills me with compassion, and whispers my name to me in an incomparable way. He keeps me moving forward through this period of life that is ruining me. He’s peace during choking anxiety, comfort during rolling waves of high emotion that leave me in tears, joy in the midst of pain. He’s the only One my heart is looking for.

If I were to look for that in a man instead, two things would happen. First, he would fail. Not because he wouldn’t try, because I know he would, but because he’s broken and human and imperfect. Vice versa, I would fail if he expected that out of me, for the exact same reasons. I don’t say this to make less of him, me, or us as a couple, but rather to cry out about the need for the One who will never fail. Second, it will cheat both of us individually and together out of experiencing the grace that Love gives us when we inevitably fall and fail.

The truth out of expecting a man to be my other half is that I’m once again cheating myself out of something greater. Human beings realize on some level that part of them is missing. As a people, as individuals, we’re always on a search for something or someone to fill a void we feel in our hearts. Often, this comes out in the form of looking for that missing part in a guy. This is also the problem with looking to a guy to complete you. In doing all of this, I am forgetting that the truth is that my “other half” I’m looking for, the One I truly need, is actually my Whole. He’s my Savior and my reason for continuing to live each and every day. He doesn’t just complete me, he consumes me.

Girls are hard-wired to look to guys for so many things. We long for that emotional connection, that life-long partner, someone who will love our kids passionately, someone we can depend on through thick and thin. I think that’s a good thing to desire, and I think God designed us to want that. I constantly see Him bless so many people I know with thriving marriages that only get better, richer, and deeper as time goes on.

Should I be asking myself realistic questions about if someone is a good choice of life long companion? By all means, yes. Yes, yes, yes. The last thing I want to do is walk naively into a hornet’s nest of problems that I should have paid attention to and either fixed or walked away from. I definitely believe in weighing a person’s character, questioning who they are, testing as thoroughly as possible how we are as a couple, and ultimately taking the whole thing before the Lord. I do believe in asking myself if it’s realistic to marry this person. I’m blinding myself if I don’t do that. But look at how different that is than how the world sees it.

The desire between the two viewpoints is completely opposite, and that’s what I desire to convey. I want to communicate the idea that it’s not about me, not about making me happy, not about finding someone perfect for me. It’s about glorifying God and knowing Him. Man, and it’s good to date a guy who feels the same way. In our friendship and now in our relationship, we’ve spoken truth into each other’s lives and spent time in deep prayer for the things that are important to us. I can honestly say that sometimes his love for Jesus overflows into my heart and makes me love Jesus more.

I don’t think that a lot of the things God has blessed us with in these short past two months would have happened if we were looking to each other to fill the things that only He can fill. I don’t know about you, but the blessings that following God brings aren’t something I want to give up just because society tells me to view my man a certain way. More than that, so much deeper than that, the love God brings when He’s my One is richer and more sustaining than anything else ever could be.

So no, my boyfriend isn’t “the one.” He never will be, just like I’ll never be “the one” for him. Both of us have already found the True One.