[This is part four of a series on Dating and Relationships:  bypassing Christian rhetoric and examining the best models for interactions between men and women with candor, honesty, and directness.  Tough questions are encouraged, controversy is invited, and the submission of differing opinions is welcomed -- so please feel free to comment as often as you'd like.]

Looking back on my own experiences in the realm of dating and relationships -- as I suppose it would be with any similar kind of retrospection and introspection -- I have mixed feelings.  Embarrassment is mixed with sentimentality.  Shame is mixed with pride.  I have to shake my head with dismay while I simultaneously shake with laughter at my own story.  I'm sure you know how this goes... For me, as I consider the story of Marci and me, I can clearly see that there are things that we did poorly -- and things that we did well... And while I worry that I might come across as hypocritical (somehow encouraging people to do as I suggest, but not as I have done), I hope that my personal experience can be instructive for others trying to navigate the complicated course of dating and relationships.

Thus, if you will, I would like to look back on the last 15 years of my relationship with Marci and suggest three things that I think we could have done better... and three things that I, personally, wish every couple could experience for themselves, just as we did.  Maybe you will agree with my assessments; maybe not... At any rate, I will start with the things that I believe we did poorly...

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First, I wish we would have established better communication about our relationship.  This would seem to go without saying in the context of relationships... but my experience is that nothing should "go without saying" in the context of relationships!  Of course, part of the problem is that Marci and I were just teenagers when we started going out (and largely incapable of adult interaction, on certain levels) -- but regardless, we would have benefitted significantly from better communication with each other.  There were a lot of things that we never found out about each other until after we were married -- such as our biggest areas of personal struggle, the ways that we most positively complement and/or negatively enable each other, and some of our most basic expectations for life together.  Naturally, we talked about these things on some level -- but more often than not, we kept things rather vague and shallow.  In some areas of our relationship -- such as our physical interaction or sharing (or not sharing) "bad news" with each other, for example -- we even learned negative patterns for deliberate miscommunication (things that have taken years to sort out, in the time since we've been married).  So yeah -- to say the least, Marci and I could have had better communication along the way.

In retrospect, I wonder if part of this could have been solved by also having better communication with others about our relationship -- other men and women on a similar journey, or (ideally) even further down the relational road of life.  But we never really thought about it at the time.  During those crucial early years of our relationship, Marci and I didn't have much in the way of people who would ask us the really tough questions about our relationship and be able to challenge us and teach us as a couple.  So at least for me, if I could do it all over again, I would want to figure out a way to have better communication about our relationship...

Secondly, I wish we would have established better boundaries.  This applies emotionally, spiritually, and especially physically.  To be sure, I believe that a husband and wife are meant to be one flesh -- and are meant to share deeply in all aspects of life together -- but I've come to firmly believe that this should not happen until all the vows are said and the relationship has been officially joined.  Thus, boyfriends and girlfriends -- even fiancés and fiancées -- need to consciously think through concrete, practical, workable boundaries for these various aspects of relational connection (and, let it be said, these boundaries depend heavily on the aforementioned better communication with each other and with other men and women who will help to "referree" any potential out-of-bounds issues).

From my own experience, I've learned that explicit physical boundaries are extremely important -- and I do mean more than "no sex before marriage."  From our dating years, Marci and I learned self-centered tendencies and bad patterns for communication about our physical relationship (basically not talking about temptations and troubles that we were having, perhaps in some vain hope that if it wasn't spoken it wasn't actually real!) -- and these patterns followed us into the early years of our marriage.  I think that establishing the physical boundaries is a largely subjective process -- with each couple needing to determine what is "too far" for them -- but the main goals need to be protecting each other from lust and the temptation to go too far.  Not to be too crude, but I challenge any guys that I'm counseling through this phase of life to pay attention to their own personal arouse-o-meter (if you know what I mean).  If the arouse-o-meter has been activated, then they should probably draw a boundary line in front of whatever set it off.  Seriously.  This may sound dramatic, but as time has gone on -- understanding the consequences of my own trespasses along the way -- I've understood more and more why physical boundaries are so important in a dating relationship...

As for other types of boundaries... on the emotional level, it seems to me that Marci and I were way too quick to start talking about "what it's going to be like when we're married" and "what are we going to name our kids" (like, within the first six months of our nearly five years of dating and engagement).  Looking back, I can see how we would have benefited from establishing boundaries to avoid casual flippant discussion of such major life issues and create opportunities at the right times to deliberately and systematically discover new emotional territory together... Then, on the spiritual level, I wish we would have established guidelines with a rather different objective -- that is, means for stimulating, encouraging, and fanning the flames of spiritual dialogue in the context of our relationship (as opposed to means for fighting fires, like I've discussed in the areas of physical and emotional boundaries).  If we could have had some better boundaries in place for our relationship, I can only imagine how much we would have been benefited over the last 15 years!

Thirdly, when looking back at some of the things that could have gone better in my relationship with Marci, I really wish that I would have been more of a man!  Don't get me wrong -- I'm actually not one of those old-school believers in the idea that only a man can initiate dialogue about a relationship (I don't know where I'd be in life right now, if Marci hadn't summoned up the courage to ask me out, in spite of my reticence back in the day)... Personally, I don't think it's wrong or inappropriate for women to come out and share their feelings with men, under certain circumstances.  But as a guy who played the more passive role in the beginning of my own relationship with Marci, I have to admit that I sincerely regret being so spineless, nervous, reticent, shy, withdrawn, and passive in the early days of our relationship.  From the earliest moments following the Fall of Mankind in the Garden of Eden, I believe that God established men to be leaders and initiators.  I've heard, in fact, that it's hard-wired in our chromosomal make-up... Not that women cannot take the lead when men come up short!  Biblical precedent is relatively abundant, in fact, if you consider women like Tamar, Deborah, and Ruth...  All the same, I believe that men are specifically designed and specially intended to initiate and lead, and specifically so, in the context of relationships.  Especially speaking from personal experience, I feel that Marci and I would have gotten off to an even better start if I could have been strong and courageous in initiating dialogue about our relationship.

Fortunately, God can redeem (and has redeemed) even those parts of our lives where we've screwed up.  Even so, if you'd like to save yourself some headaches in the realm of dating and relationships, I would urge you to consider some of our mistakes and learn from them...

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On the flip side of things, however, I genuinely believe that there are things that Marci and I did well -- extremely well, in fact.  I can't really take credit for having any keen wisdom or insight as a scrawny sixteen-year-old (as mentioned previously, I didn't have much of a plan going into things).  Nevertheless, we were blessed with some fortuitous strong points to our relationship, even from the very earliest days...

One of the first positive points that I think of in regards to the early days of our relationship is that we had fun.  I feel very fortunate that the process of Marci and I falling in love was so unscripted, so mysterious, so exciting and fun.  Of course, this is the way that most people typically envision the process of "falling in love."  But over the years, as I've seen other couples come and go, I've been surprised to see how difficult it can be for some.  Some couples seem to be in serious dialogue, not unlike a job interview, from the moment that they sit down to dinner for their first date.  Some couples seem to be quarelling and bickering almost as much as (if not more than) cooing and making goo-goo eyes at each other.  Some couples seem to analyze their relationship endlessly, without getting a chance to just enjoy being with each other... And while these things are not, in and of themselves, entirely inappropriate actions or bad tokens for the ultimate fate of the relationship (and actually, if I were to take my own advice on the poor aspects of the dating relationship between Marci and me, we might have ended up with more of a relationship that looked like one of these scenarios!) -- I have to say that I feel bad for couples who do not get the luxury of enjoying the pure "puppy love" stage of a relationship.  I think it's a gift from God to have someone with whom I can laugh and relax and enjoy life together -- and I would encourage any men and women who find themselves in the process of dating / courting / relationship-building to balance fun with wisdom during the early days of a relationship...

Secondly, we wrote letters.  Personally, I think that this was one of the coolest things that Marci and I did during the early days of our relationship.  It sounds so anachronistic, so Victorian, so different from today's typical pattern for relational development (and in fact, it was a different time -- before the mainstream assimilation of mobile telephony, e-mailing, text-messaging, and internet-chatting)... But I think our letters turned out to be such a meaningful and romantic part of our story.  We learned a lot about each other through our letters -- perhaps even more than we would have learned through regular conversation (as writing tends to provide more of an opportunity for forming one's thoughts ahead of time, sharing information that might not otherwise come up, and giving awkward young lovers a chance to wax poetic to one another!).  There's just something to the written word -- and especially hand-written letters -- that cannot be easily quantified... something personable, something tangible, something meaningful communicated by the time and attention dedicated to writing out thoughts in pen and ink.  Those letters that we wrote throughout the first two years of our relationship were especially formative to our fledgling relationship, and I'm so glad that we did it.  Not only that, but we now have shoeboxes full of the letters, which are a great memento for us and maybe even for future generations.  I would totally recommend this to anyone who is (or who might someday be) in the process of developing a relationship....

And finally, I consider it a blessing that we took our time.  I might have just as easily written this as one of the thing that we did poorly -- as I've come to realize that a delicate balance between decisiveness and patience is necessary.  But there's something to be said for allowing plenty of time to observe each other in different seasons of life and come to a place where we were making a genuinely informed decision about spending the rest of our lives together.  Marci's mother once relayed an old American proverb stating something to the effect of, "Do not marry anyone with whom you have not yet observed the passing from spring to summer to autumn to winter and back to spring," and I think there's really something to that.  For Marci and me, our dating period allowed ample opportunity for us to do this -- which was especially important since we were just teenagers when we got started.  We got to spend time getting to know each of our families.  We got to observe each other in times of stress and in seasons of boredom.  We got to share a number of significant life milestones before marriage.  And thus, we avoided a number of the classic pitfalls that plague relationships.  Many couples rush into relationships... and then find themselves rushing quickly out of that relationship.  Or couples pressure themselves to advance to a certain stage of relationship within a certain period of time... and then miss out on the joy of the process itself.

Now, I don't know if I could (in good conscience) recommend a four and a five year process of moving from intrigue to dating to engagement to marriage, like we did (although, in defense of my own situation, I also wouldn't recommend for people to get married before the age of 21!).  Still, it's good to take some time and figure things out as you go.  Once a man and a woman have definitely decided that they are meant to spend life together in marriage -- which, I believe, is the goal of dating (or whatever you call it -- I think they should deliberately pursue this formalization of the relationship as soon as practically possible.  Like I said, it's a balancing act... you want to allow for plenty of time to get to know each other while not creating unneccessary tension and temptation to cross some of the aforementioned boundaries... But it's a worthwhile balance to attempt to acheive.

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So now you know where I'm coming from on the more experiential end of things.  In the next episode of this series, I'll get into my thoughts from the principally-motivated side of things... So stay tuned!