Believe in You Read online

  Lauren

  The most important thing in a breakup conversation is to be honest. If the guy has real problems that are ruining the relationship, he needs to know. He might ruin future relationships if no one ever tells him what he’s doing wrong. Also, I know from experience that there is nothing worse than someone either randomly disappearing from your life without telling you why, or ending things without giving you a reason.

  Be respectful. Don’t call him names or be rude about his shortcomings. Even if he did something really bad, it’s better to keep the conversation about how his actions made you feel and why it wasn’t okay; don’t resort to name-calling and yelling.

  Be firm. If you know you want a relationship to be over and that it’s not good for you, don’t let him push you into prolonging it, even if he says, “I will change!” or “Just give me time!” You’ve made up your mind. If you don’t want to be with him, that’s not gonna change no matter what he says.

  HOW TO GET OVER SOMEONE

  A broken heart can make you feel like you are literally dying. Whether you’ve broken up with someone or he’s broken up with you, it’s going to hurt. But whether he let you down easy or completely shattered your heart with an out-of-the-blue breakup, you can pick yourself up again and take steps to heal. Here’s how to begin.

  He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.

  PSALM 147:3 NIV

  Lauren

  Let yourself be sad about the breakup. Let yourself be mad about it. Let yourself be happy about it. Whatever you feel about it, let yourself feel it—because even if you think you have no feelings about it, you definitely do. If you are really upset about it or mad or disappointed, that’s okay. You have these feelings for a reason, and if you ignore them, they will not go away. If you ever want to move on, you have to express them. Here are some ways you can express your feelings:

  •Go on a long walk and listen to songs that describe how you feel about the breakup.

  •Get a notebook and dedicate it solely to writing about how you feel about the situation.

  •Talk to your friends about it. Tell them, “Hey, look: I really need to talk about this, and I just need you to listen.” Tell them the whole story, even if they already know it, and everything you think and feel about it.

  •Put away everything that reminds you of your ex-boyfriend, and let go of the past. Do a full-on cleanse, and think of the future.

  Dani

  This section is not for advice on how to get over a guy who’s great and you’re still good friends with. This is for people who need to get over the kind of guy who ruins lives and creates rivers of tears.

  The first step to getting over an ex like this is cutting all ties. This sounds extreme, but if you’re heartbroken, you have to take extreme measures to move on. Delete, unfollow, block, whatever you have to do to make sure you never see anything he posts on social media.

  Also, do not stalk him. Don’t ask other people how he’s doing. You don’t need to know if he’s found someone else. Get involved in your own life instead of trying to keep up with your ex’s, through social media or otherwise.

  Remember: you must express your feelings if you want to move on. During the day, you can feel free to be fun and carefree and excited ’cause you’re newly single and—whoo!—life is great. But at night, it is on. Cry your eyes out, write dramatic letters to your ex (never share these, ever), and be super expressive. Overly expressive.

  * * *

  The best way to get over someone and get him out of your head is to keep his name out of your mouth!

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  The best way to get over someone and get him out of your head is to keep his name out of your mouth! When you put a stop to all contact, that is when the real moving on happens.

  But it only happens when you want it to. You only move on if you genuinely want to. If you don’t yet want to, find the reason to, because I promise you—it’s there.

  SETTING BOUNDARIES

  Katherine

  Setting physical boundaries in dating is an incredibly personal, sticky subject. Many people feel a lot of shame even just thinking about it. I was hesitant to write this section because I know how touchy it is, but I thought that it might be beneficial to simply share my personal story and my thoughts on it.

  Growing up as a teenager in the mid-2000s, my main lessons in dating came from Seventeen magazine and reality TV shows. The message I got was, “Do whatever you want with your body!” While it is true that we can make our own choices, no one talked about how serious it is to hook up or have sex and how vulnerable and life-changing it is. In middle school I started hearing stories with graphic details about who had hooked up with who, who was “a thing,” and who was dating . . . until they broke up two weeks later.

  Whenever anyone talked about who had done what with whom, they always had these mischievous, scandalous expressions on their faces. The way they talked about it made it seem dirty and bad. I didn’t really understand what all of it meant, so I decided to stay far away. I held hands with a few guys in early high school, but that was pretty much it.

  Until I met . . . him. I was seventeen, and he was the first boy I ever really fell for. He had a reputation for partying, hooking up with a lot of girls, and generally being a “bad boy.” I was completely the opposite. I had already decided I was never going to drink, I never went to parties, and I had zero experience with guys physically. He and I started hanging out all the time, and I was obsessed with him. I thought about him constantly and wondered when I was going to see him next.

  Miraculously, during the exact time that I was meeting up with him to hang out one-on-one at night (usually at a park by my house), my mom started giving me books on purity, which is a Christian term meaning to live out your sexuality in a way that honors God. One of the books mentioned saving your first kiss for your wedding day, and it immediately struck me as something I wanted to do. One night I was praying, and I felt as though God was confirming to me that, yes, this was something I was meant to do.

  I told this boy that I wanted to save my first kiss for my wedding day, and he laughed. He said he would “hire” one of his friends to come up and kiss me when I wasn’t expecting it. Ew.

  Pretty soon after that, I broke things off with him, and I’m thankful to say my first kiss wasn’t wasted on him or someone he hired!

  To whoever is reading this right now, I want to say, first of all, you are so loved and valuable no matter what you have or have not done sexually. I also want to be clear: I don’t think kissing before your wedding is bad or sinful at all! It’s just something I made a personal choice to do, and I’m very happy I did. I’m twenty-seven now and engaged, and I am so, so glad I made that decision ten years ago. Although it’s been hard and sometimes lonely, and there were times I almost broke that promise to myself, I believe it saved me a lot of heartache and confusion.

  * * *

  I told this boy that I wanted to save my first kiss for my wedding day, and he laughed.

  * * *

  I can only speak from my own experience, but I want to say that if you are thinking of saving yourself for marriage, or even saving your first kiss like me, I encourage you with all of my heart to do so. It’s a very personal decision, and I think it’s something you have to have a very strong reason for (like a promise to God and to yourself). Otherwise it’s not going to happen. Also, I suggest doing some research—something that has really helped me develop physical boundaries. I read several books, including If You Really Loved Me by Jason Evert, How to Find Your Soulmate Without Losing Your Soul by Jason and Crystalina Evert, and Captivating by John and Stasi Eldredge, as well as studied St. John Paul II’s incredible work called Theology of the Body. Those books were so important to me when I was making my decision.

  Your physical boundaries are your choice, not the guy’s you are dating. It’s so important for us girls to speak up and be extremely clear about what we will and will not do in dating as early as
possible. Before I met my boyfriend, I used to tell guys within the first couple of dates, “I am saving myself for marriage, and I am also saving my first kiss for my wedding day.” You could also use clear language like, “I am saving sex for marriage and that also includes anything below the belt. I am okay with kissing and holding hands, but that’s all. I don’t want to go any further.” I know that might feel awkward or blunt, but your body is so precious and worth it. You have to stand up for yourself, and let me be clear—you do not owe a guy anything. If he buys you dinner, you say, “Thank you for dinner.” Do you owe him a kiss? Or even a handshake? Nope. Nothing.

  Last, I want to say, if you have made choices with your boundaries that you regret, it is never too late to start fresh. You can choose any day to save yourself for marriage from now on. I have close friends who lost their virginity before marriage and then decided to wait from a certain point on, and they have said they were so happy they chose to wait with the person they ended up marrying, even though that wasn’t the case originally.

  Plus, there are a lot of unexpected benefits to setting boundaries from the beginning. The less of a physical element your relationship has, the less complicated it will be, and the more clear-headed you will be to discern if this is the right person for you. (Look up the science of sex—all the intense hormones it releases make our minds very clouded when making decisions.) Yes, you have the choice to save as much or as little as you want for marriage, but I recommend looking into it and doing the research before you make that choice. I really do believe, after doing my own research, that God created sex to be within marriage—and if you follow that plan He made, you will have a lot more true happiness and peace of mind in relationships. And I say that from my own experience!

  * * *

  Your physical boundaries are your choice, not the guy’s you are dating.

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  Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.

  1 CORINTHIANS 6:19-20 NIV

  Christina

  When it came to physical boundaries in dating, this was something I’d thought through very thoroughly. Before I got into seriously dating boys, I didn’t have much in mind when it came to standards. As sad as that is, it’s true. But as I got into the dating world, it quickly became apparent to me that there were a lot of guys out there who wanted to know exactly what my boundaries or standards were (if I even had any), and they wanted to know for different reasons. Some, so they could respect my boundaries. Others, so they could see how far they could push them. And others so that they could see if they even wanted to get involved with me at all. And that third reason particularly is what makes me so passionate about this topic.

  When I realized that there were certain guys who would completely lose interest in a girl when they realized they wouldn’t get what they wanted physically out of her—and therefore, she wasn’t worth dating at all—it made me realize two things. First, that I needed to avoid those guys. Second, that I could learn a lot about a guy by telling him my boundaries.

  * * *

  I can learn a lot about a guy by telling him my boundaries.

  * * *

  I made the decision to save myself for marriage at around age sixteen or seventeen. I was NOT always planning on this, but the more I researched it, the more I wanted to make the decision I did. Speaking from my personal experience of waiting till marriage, I believe that when it comes to specific boundaries, this can vary from person to person based on how different physical actions affect them. For instance, some people can have kissing as a part of their relationship, whereas for others, kissing someone can be too much and tempt them to want to go further. You have to know yourself and what actions will express genuine affection versus lead you down the wrong path. For me, it all came down to asking myself one question: What is the end goal here? Mine was to find the man who would stand by me for the rest of my life—my life partner. My teammate who’d be by my side through thick and thin, who I could trust with anything and everything, and who would love me at my worst and most vulnerable. The man who would see the darkest and weakest parts of me and still choose me every day, regardless of how he felt about me at that particular moment.

  I made that goal at a young age, and I realized I was embarking on a challenge. I knew that to make such a life-changing and big decision, I had to keep my eyes wide open and be very particular and selective. I did not want to be blindsided and become infatuated or delusional about a guy and think he was so amazing when he was clearly not. This was something I noticed happening around me with my friends, and I even fell into it a few times before I snapped myself out of it. I’d see my friends become obsessed with some guy who was not even treating them well and didn’t deserve their constant affection and attention, and I’d wonder what the heck was going on—until I found myself in the same situation. It was then that I realized how much attention and affection from a guy can cloud your judgment! It can feel so good to be liked, touched, or paid attention to by a guy to the point that you basically forget how to think. All you can focus on is how good it feels to get their affection and when you can get it next, and this scared me. I didn’t want to be in such an infatuated mind-set when trying to discern whether a guy was actually treating me right and if I should continue dating him or not.

  Knowing that and keeping in the back of my mind that what I really wanted at the end of the day was to be truly loved, I decided that I needed to be clear with guys on my physical boundaries right up front so I could eliminate the ones who didn’t respect me and find the man who would truly love me. I wanted to be able to focus on getting to know each other deeply and authentically without too much physical affection to get me overly excited and confused when I was trying to make a very important and life-changing decision. However, this didn’t mean I decided never to touch the guy I was dating. I love physical affection, and there are so many ways to be caring and loving physically that create connection but don’t get me too excited to think straight. Holding hands, hugging and kissing (if that feels right for you) can be great ways of expressing affection without heading down the wrong path. And that’s where the “it can vary from person to person” part comes in. Some people need stricter boundaries than others depending on how physical affection affects them. Weigh the pros and cons and consider your end goal, talk to your parents or a trusted adult, realize how important your love life truly is, and make the decision for yourself.

  * * *

  Attention and affection from a guy can cloud your judgment!

  * * *

  From my personal experience, this was a decision I made first based in logic and reason and then later based on my religious beliefs. It took me some time to learn about the spirituality of it all, but by the time I did, I was hooked. I started studying sex and waiting until marriage from a Christian perspective, and I was shocked by how different it was from what I had learned previously from the world. Before, it had seemed like Christian teaching on sex was just a bunch of rules to follow. I didn’t understand why I needed to follow them. But after really looking into it, I discovered that God has a plan for the human body and sexuality. His plan is to give us freedom from the enslavement of lust, which basically means using another person as an object for our own pleasure. I believe we were each made to give ourselves as a total gift to the person we marry. God’s plan can sometimes seem mysterious, but He knew what He was doing. I can say now that if I were to go back and do it all over again, I would 100 percent make the same choice to wait until marriage.

  I hear the argument a lot that people don’t think they’d truly know each other or know if they’re compatible if they wait until marriage to get physical, but now that I’m married, I can say that it was the deep talks, tough things we went through together, and vulnerable moments of opening up to each other that led us to becoming truly known by each other. I
am happy to report from married life that my choice turned out to serve me immensely throughout my dating experience, and it did not hinder the “getting to know each other” process at all from my perspective. On the contrary, I believe it allowed us to get closer because we focused more on exploring each other intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually than physically. I firmly believe that this decision led me down a very good path, and I’m so grateful for teenage Christina doing all of her research and making that decision.

  * * *

  I believe we were made to give ourselves as a total gift to the person we marry.

  * * *

  HOW TO ENJOY BEING SINGLE

  If you are currently not involved in a relationship, please know that being single can be a powerful, strengthening, and even fun and enjoyable place to be. That’s not just something we say to make you feel better. It’s the absolute truth. Here are some of our experiences being single.

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  Being single can be a powerful, strengthening, and even fun and enjoyable place to be.

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  Katherine

  I’m twenty-seven, and up until I was twenty-five, I was pretty much always single. So I know this territory well. Not gonna lie—there are moments where it feels like you’re in an echoing cave of loneliness, and you want to scream. There are times when seeing all of your close friends get boyfriends and not having one yourself can make you feel worthless and terrified. You may be thinking, What’s wrong with me? Answer: nothing. You’re fine. Deep breath.