Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!mips!dimacs.rutgers.edu!aramis.rutgers.edu!porthos.rutgers.edu!christian From: credmond@watmath.waterloo.edu (Chris Redmond) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Anger & Dating for the first time: Message-ID: Date: 25 Aug 90 07:16:06 GMT Sender: hedrick@porthos.rutgers.edu Organization: University of Waterloo Lines: 29 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In his original posting under this heading, Randall spoke of his anger at Christian advisers who somehow persuaded him to wait many years -- I believe he said he's now 39 -- before taking serious action towards meeting "that special person" for his love life. He is angry, both at wasting twenty years and at the callousness of the teachers who advised him inappropriately (and, he says, are nowhere around now to take responsibility for what they did). The anger at that bad advice may be peculiar to Randall's case, but the other anger is something he shares with many, many Christians. We are the ones whose love lives or marriages collapsed after five, ten, fifteen or twenty years, and here we are at age 40 starting to date and try to love all over again. (Me, for example.) Of course there are constructive and destructive ways of dealing with such anger; there are constructive and destructive ways of reassessing one's life and approaching the apposite sex as one begins dating again. I would like to think that the one I've currently found is "constructive", but time will tell. Randall may find a good deal of support, good advice, and (in the non-romantic sense) love if he seeks out the company of people who are newly single, and reads some of the material written for such people. He might even conclude, as I'm trying to, that the lost time wasn't "wasted" -- just invested in something that's now gone bust. CAR credmond@watmath