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okrox -> RE: In Praise of Casual Dating (6/28/2008 9:41:56 AM)
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What I Mean By Casual Dating
Imagine you are the HR person at a large, successful corporation and you are looking for someone to fill a very important position. How do you go about it?
Let's say you decide to look through the resumes that you already have on file. You throw out any whose aren't the EXACT qualifications you have in mind. (MUST be a prestigious degree from only certain universities, must have the exact amount of experience, must be the exact demographics, must belong to all the right professional organizations, and on and on.) Oh! Goody! Look! Here's a perfect resume. Call this guy in. Interview him, call his references (They are all glowing of course.) You give him a physical, then you hire him on a probationary period. Full-time, just no "benefits" ;-)
You then send him off to corporate headquarters for six months of training. It's looking good. You order his stationary with the company letterhead. Suddenly his probationary period is up, and it's time to decide whether or not you want to hire him.
Gee, he's not quite as wonderful as his resume and references suggested. But, well, you do have all this time and money invested in him. And if you don't hire him, you're going to have to go back to that old file of resume's and start this whole long process completely over. That would be a bummer...you really, really need to fill this postion...Oh, it will be alright. He's surely got as much invested as you do. Surely you can make this work. You hope. Yeah. Hire him. Yeah. That's the thing to do.
Is that how you would do it?
Or. instead, would you advertise the opening as soon as possible through every professional networking means you can think of, gather as many new applicants as you can, cull through all the resume's, tossing out the obviously inappropriate ones, and getting a nice stack of possibles?
Then, maybe you'd call all of those in for aptitude and personality assesments. You could skim off the top of those results and tell the rest, "Thank you for your interest here, but we feel we are not a suitable match." With your smaller group. you could call them in for a preliminary interview in front of a panel. You could choose the top three out of that group. Then, if you sent THOSE three for training, when the time came to offer the job, wouldn't you be confident that you had put in every effort to find the very best candidate available?
Now.
Ask yourself.
Which way makes more sense? But which way do most people date?
Someone asked about me dating "just for fun". That's accurate, but it's also not accurate. It's more like, I look at each individual date as, "Hey, at the very worst, we had a fun time today." (Notice I said "we". I try very hard to put my date's well-being near the top of the priorities here.) But make no mistake. While I am having fun, I am also intentionally looking for the best husband God's got for me. I am just being very, very pro-active about it.
Am I trying to overstep God's leading here? Never. I'm just working alongside Him. Doing everything I can do on my part, trusting Him to do His part. I think there's a lot of biblical precedent for that in other areas of life. Why should I be so passive about this one?
Also, I think some people were wondering about hurting other people in this process. That is a consideration that is always on my mind. But, if you go back to the hiring analogy, it is a professional courtesy to let people know about your hiring process, and where they are in that. It keeps the suspense bearable, and lets people know how aggressively they should be pursuing other options at the same time. I am very upfront about my dating "process." I let men know that the first few dates are nothing more than the beginning of a long vetting. The first date is just going over the resume. Nearly every man I've gone out with has seemed to appreciate that. It takes a lot of pressure off.
Now, be assured--I don't think I am All That. I have had LOTS of men withdraw their resume's at the earliest possible opportunity! Oh well. That's business.
And, yeah, some who have gotten a little further in the process were a little disappointed that they didn't make it to the final interviews. But I think they will tell you that I did not lead them on, or play games with them.
I am not sure--I think I may have stolen this analogy from the "How to Find..." book. I can't remember! HA! But it's one that makes a lot of sense to me.
I just think that if you really, really want something, it's fine to let God know that you want it badly enough that you're willing to put some sweat into it. That's all I'm doing. I'm STILL, at the end of the day, saying, "If it's your will, God." Because He's God and He knows what He's doing and I don't. If I never marry, oh well. God's grace IS sufficient. In the meantime, I am getting to work.
And it IS work. One guy I went out with had the same philosophy. He said, "I am working at this like it's my second job. I think I am putting 40 hours a week in on this." Good for him. He knows what he wants and is willing to work for it. Can't God be honored in that?
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