So I was discussing with my homegirl this afternoon, she's 22, she started by asking me as a man, what I could infer her as a woman. Then went on to say how the men she's dealt with were telling her she was "wifey" or "the best thing in their lives" but they put no action behind it.
I stopped her in her tracks and asked her if she knew what she wanted out of life. She stumbled a bit. Had an idea but nothing concrete, gave vague answers like "happiness" and "success." I kept drilling down asking for specifics and she couldn't give me any.
I told her that the mistake we young people make is expending a lot of energy trying to merge paths with other people when we have no clue where we were headed in the first place. Everyone you meet is on a path ESPECIALLY we young people, the vast majority of people you meet are wandering, they had a path and got knocked off somehow and now they're just trying to pull things together to make some semblance of a decent life. The issue is that majority of our young people don't know themselves, they don't know their purpose, who they are, where they are headed, how they'll get there. They are trying to find it all out as they go along, yet they insist on bringing people along on their journey with no destination. The obsession comes because a romantic relationship is really just a cry for control, you haven't been able to control anything else in life so you focus a great deal on how to get a mate; the one thing you think you can control.
Think of how detrimental that can be.... two people, one (or both) of which walking separate paths with no respective destinations, merging paths together, wandering together. It may sound romantic or poetic but it usually doesn't play out that great practically.
So I went on to tell my friend that it's been my unequivocal belief over the years that people without knowledge of self and a strong sense of purpose should not link themselves to others intimately or romantically.
This doesn't mean that you should be anti-social... But it does mean that expending serious and precious energy on people when you haven't even done the work to know who you are and what you want, is counterproductive. Scripture asks "how can two walk together unless they agree?" In spiritual context, this is "equal yoking" or the practice of building relationships with people of the same spiritual maturity and wisdom. But I think it goes for relationships too.
How can two walk together except they agree, but furthermore, how can two agree if they do not know who they are? This is why lots of relationships go sour ; because people change. The 20s are some of the most evolutionary years of your life. You literally take off childhood for good (sometimes reluctantly) and put on adulthood. You blaze a new trail, you make your own decisions, call your own shots and begin to become who you'll (essentially) be for life. That's important work to do, you know? And we give so much of the energy we have away to others trying to make ourselves good mates when we aren't even solid individually.
So my ultimate advice to my friend was to transfer all that effort she's putting into figuring out people who probably don't even know who they are, to trying to learn herself and find contentment in her own choices and outcomes. I told her that it's merely a possibility that God created her to be a spouse. But a CERTAINTY that He created her to do a specific work that's birthed from her purpose. So from that perspective I ask, which should receive more of your time?
A word they say is enough for the wise!!!