God's Love

Why is a man that operates in God's Love on my list of what I prefer in a man? Because God's love is not controlling or manipulative. It's freeing and allows a person to be true to themselves. And for the greater good of the relationship, both parties need the freedom to choose the other person each day. Each day we wake up, we make a decision to follow Christ or not. The same holds true of a relationship. Whether or not the other person performs the way we want them too, you have to be committed to stay and engage life with the one you chose. 

Too often, it has become much easier to give up on a relationship and leave. In other words, it's easier to tell the other person that they are no longer "right" for you or not really the "kind of person" you were looking for. A man that operates in God's love will look past his feelings to his commitment level to determine his course of action for that day. He knows that he can't make the other person stay if they aren't also committed to the relationship. Knowing this fact, there's no reason to try and control or manipulate any situations that may arise. He's willing to communicate with the other person to find common ground for sustaining the relationship.

I look at my own life and my relationship with Christ when I embark on a new relationship. There have been plenty of times when I didn't want to choose His way for my own. But with each new day, He still chose me and allowed me the freedom to make the choice to either leave Him or stay. He revealed to me how controlling and manipulating people would never get me the desired results I wanted. Therefore, allowing a man to leave who is not fully committed has gotten easier to do. A man that operates in God's love is a joy to be around and makes engaging the relationship an enjoyable journey.

Integrity

By today's standards, to say that you love someone could have so many different potential meanings. That's why, looking for integrity in a mans life is important to me. Integrity is the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles. It's basically who you are when no one is looking. You doing what's right regardless to whether or not it benefits you. Meaning that your yes means "yes" and your no means "no". So often, a person says that they love you when in fact what they could really mean is, "I want to be with you as long as my needs are met regardless of your needs." To me, a man's integrity will not allow his words to be merely for show.

When you enter a new relationship, you are cognizant of the words you use. You don't want to offend or run off the person before they've had a chance to really get to know you. But if you are a person that lacks integrity, pretty soon, your words and actions will start to contradict each other. You may insist that you will call or come by, however, days later the other person still has not had any contact with you. Then when your other "interests" have fallen off, you come up with what you think is a good excuse for not having kept your word to call or come by. In reality what you are saying is "I can't be trusted to keep a promise. Whatever I have to say to keep you in my life, I will say. But don't expect me to really do anything to keep you there." This shows a lack of integrity.

I know you may be thinking, it was only a call or a visit. But how often do the little things that aren't dealt with in a relationship escalate into major issues and conflicts? Sure, no one will get physically hurt by a missed call or visit. But the level of trust that could have been built in the relationship suffers. So, a man of integrity will not only keep his word, he understands that his character suffers when he doesn't. This man will not only be interested in what he can get out of the relationship but willing to contribute to it as well. 

Faith

I know you may be wondering, "how does having Faith affect whether or not I find Real Love?" Well let me begin by explaining that Faith is a process that involves four components: 1. You have to hear God's word on a matter. 2. You have to believe that word; independent of your situation or circumstances. 3. You have to confess the word that you heard and believe. 4. You have to put corresponding actions with those words.  

For many years, my concept of love was what I read in books, saw on TV or heard my friends say was love. But for me, doing what I read about, saw and even heard about from others never yielded the fulfilling relationship I so desired. Once I found out about the process of how Faith works, I determined that I would believe God for a rewarding and fulfilling relationship. Therefore, I look for Faith in a mans life as opposed to his material possessions. Because I know that when he operates in Faith, nothing is impossible for him to achieve and have in life.

I want to share with you a principle I learned through something that recently happened to me that confirms and supports the Faith process in regards to exercising Faith for a relationship. I recently met a man who has Cerebral Palsy (CP). Years ago, I worked in an environment of people diagnosed with CP. So I know the range of the disability.  But I'd never met anyone who made me laugh as much as this man did. Although he may have been limited physically by a disability, it was pretty obvious that he didn't allow it to keep him from choosing to live a happy life. Because of his limited speech ability, I purposed to listen and really hear each word that he spoke. It took some effort on my part but I eventually understood him perfectly. But not only that, he was able to stand his ground and not let me just give up on trying to understand him. He would say "no" when I asked if we could move on to another topic when I couldn't fully understand what he was saying. How often in dating relationships do we not really take the time to understand the person we allow in our lives. So that when we come against an obstacle, it's easier to give up and think the relationship couldn't possibly work. But what if it could? No matter the differences or obstacles.

That's when I began to clearly see that to take God at His word that marriage is possible for me, I couldn't be moved by what I saw. Here was a man that didn't fit any preconceived ideas I had of what a perfect mate was like but he was able to communicate with me on a level that men without a disability failed to do. I realized that even though I confess the word regularly, my actions didn't fully line up with my confession. I'm learning to not limit God's ability to provide the kind of mate I desire no matter the package he may be wrapped in. That Faith gives you the staying power needed when things look nothing like what you are trusting God for until what you are believing for is manifested in your life.

Real Love

I started this blog by discussing relationships; mine to be exact. I wanted to set the foundation before revealing the reason that pushed me to reveal my inner most struggles that started me on this journey of sharing my life to the world at large. Now that the Reason is known, I pondered "what's next?" Due to the limited number of rewarding, fulfilling and all-or-nothing relationships I've had in my life, from this point on, I want to explore more. As you can see from my previous blogs, so many other factors contributed to the make-or-break, pass-or-fail and even the win-or-lose mentality I carried into each relationship. So, if you like me want to explore more, keep reading and Enjoy the Journey!

My quest for that one true Real Love experience has taught me one very important lesson. Each and every relationship is different. That's why you can't look at someone's good or bad relationship and determine that your relationship will be just like that. We are to take their example and not imitate their behavior but learn from it. Will what you see in them harm, hinder or encourage and inspire your relationship? People are always in a learning stage in their life; whether they want to admit it or not. But when two people come together at a time when their learning coincides with one another, that makes for a meaningful relationship: Because they both are willing to put in the time and effort to make the relationship work. That's why we've seen people we were in a relationship with with, leave us and then go on to find someone else and their relationship seems to work. It's not magic; maybe they learned from the relationship they had with you and when they entered the next one, they applied the principles learned. Whereas, you are stuck in the hurt you felt from the breakup and refuse to learn how to do better with the next person.

Needless to say, I didn't get to this point in my life without a lot of conflicting emotions. Surely, the next guy knew not to do "that" to me. What if he didn't? Didn't I learn from my past relationships that I had to communicate with the person I'm with and not assume that he knows everything about me? Right now, the greatest joy I'm experiencing in new relationships is getting to know the person. Why? Because it's so much easier to see if I "fit" his lifestyle rather than trying to make a place for myself with someone just to say I have a man in my life. I learned from my Pastor that we should compromise standards; he no longer has to be tall, dark and handsome. But we should never compromise morals; he will always have to be a man of Faith, integrity and the God kind of Love -Real Love!