“In a recent viral article for British Vogue; writer Chanté Joseph asked the question; Is it embarrassing to have a boyfriend now? The article has provoked a huge response, both positive and negative, and is basically a meme now. As it continues to spark discussion and debate, it’s fair to say that we are standing in the midst of a cultural moment…” Read more at Woman Alive Magazine.
“In my favourite local cafe, I pause mid-step to take a sip of the coffee I’ve just ordered. Setting it down on a table, I slide into my seat and turn my attention to the music playing over the speakers. It’s always good in here. It’s one of the reasons I like this place…” Read more at Seen&Unseen.
“Alan Carr is the winner of The Celebrity Traitors 2025! As it became clear who had won, it was all smiles and relief. Until he revealed the shocking truth to those gathered, he was in fact a traitor!” Read more at Woman Alive Magazine…
The Creative Act: A Way of Being – written by music producer Rick Rubin – is not only beautifully designed but a unique and enlightening perspective on creativity.
It was also great to listen to Rick being interviewed on Jay Shetty’s On Purpose podcast. I found it inspiring stuff (also providing me with some useful thoughts for a content strategy I’m working on for a client). During their far-ranging conversation I was really pleased to be reminded of one of the best approaches to FEEDBACK I’ve ever heard.
I first came across this approach reading Tara Mohr‘s brilliant book Playing Big a few years ago. (I love these connections). The advice she gives, which Rick Rubin echoes, is this:
“Feedback doesn’t tell you about yourself. It tells you about the person giving the feedback. In other words, if someone says your work is gorgeous, that just tells you about *their* taste. If you put out a new product and it doesn’t sell at all, that tells you something about what your audience does and doesn’t want. When we look at praise and criticism as information about the people giving it, we tend to get really curious about the feedback, rather than dejected or defensive”.
Tara Mohr
Reframing the purpose of feedback in this way makes ALL the difference. Tara offers further advice (see below) on navigating feedback in this article and in her book.
“1. REFRAME the feedback: The feedback doesn’t tell you any facts about you; it tells you something about the perspective of the person giving the feedback. Reframe the feedback as information about them. What does this tell you about their priorities or preferences?
2. Is the feedback truly RELEVANT? Women forget to ask this, and instead feel they have to incorporate all feedback. We need to ask: is this feedback essential to incorporate in order to achieve my goals? Those goals might include professional ones (like getting work published) or personal ones (like a loving relationship with family members.) If the feedback is not truly relevant to your aims, you have permission to not attend to it.
3. REVISE your approach. If your answer to #2 is yes, then you can think about how you can revise your approach to work with/relate to this person more effectively, now that you know more about their needs and perspective. Going back to #1, the feedback isn’t a verdict on how you measure up – it just tells you how to be more impactful in your relationship with them.”
Ultimately feedback needs to serve you. So by getting curious about the person giving the feedback, and taking on board the aspects of their feedback that best serve you, you’re less likely to invest so much weight in their opinions. Effectively you ‘unhook’ from the power that either their praise or criticism might have, and you’re able to determine how best to utilise it.
© Alexandra Noel – All Rights Reserved 2023
A Little Life, the book by author Hanya Yanagihara and now the play, directed by Ivo Van Hove, have acquired not a little notoriety. Both are sure to divide opinion and have definitely got people talking.
It was with some trepidation that I agreed to go and see the play of A Little Life over Easter weekend at the Harold Pinter theatre.
The friend who invited me gave appropriate disclaimers and warnings about the content. This included the fact that the seats she’d managed to get for us would be right on the stage, front row. We would almost be part of the play ourselves.
In the name of being culturally brave I said yes. And in the face of reports of the book’s traumatising effect, which would only be heightened in the play, (plus a lot of nudity – apparently) I decided that it was All Art Anyway, and the best way to approach it was as an opportunity to have a significant life experience. Neither of us had read the book yet, so we committed ourselves to that too. We formed a book club and read the not-so-little, A Little Life. Mainly as an exercise to prepare ourselves for the play.
To my surprise I absolutely devoured the book. In spite of its size, I finished it in a little over two weeks, utterly compelled to keep reading. A Little Life is an irony; for the book is well over 700 pages long, and the story is one of enormous scope. Initially daunted I found myself skipping through the pages at pace, keenly drawn into the world of the book’s main characters; JB, Willem, Malcolm and Jude, as early 20-somethings (the book spans their lifetimes)… their flat-shares, first jobs and friendships. Seeing their lives and the self-sustaining world they are creating for themselves evolve, in a forever-noughties New York.
Despite the city looming large over the book, there is nothing to anchor this story to any specific time or era as defined by the events of the wider world. These are absent and it’s only through scarce references to phones or emails (or certain expressions they have) that you have any idea as to when exactly this story is set. Even so it all feels very relatable. You can see and feel Hanya Yanagihara’s New York – as timeless as it is, thanks to the visually rich and evocative prose. In some way this insulation from the outside world reflects the insularity of the group’s story and their experience together. It sets the stage for our players.
The narrative landscape at the outset is broad; it warmly opens windows into the lives of this circle of four young male friends. Their characters, thoughts and relationships evidencing themselves as they talk, socialise, and daydream on trains. On moving to New York, they party together, begin projects, move houses and start new jobs, all four of them firmly on a path towards success. Their lives revolve almost exclusively around each other. We see them all at various times through one another’s eyes; Jean-Baptise (JB) the painter; Willem the actor, Malcolm the architect and… Jude.
Jude, the mystery. While his three friends are knowable – their backgrounds, ethnicities and demographies as unavoidable as open books, they in turn know nothing of Jude and his origins. It frustrates them more than it concerns them. At one point JB takes this to task saying “…we don’t know what race he is, we don’t know anything about him. Post-sexual, post-racial, post-identity, post-past…”, christening him “The Postman”. This is a postmodernist accuracy, and yet arguably wrong of Jude for whom all these are very present, as we will discover.
Jude. The ambitious and talented lawyer; working first for the US Attorney’s Office and then later ‘selling his soul’ and moving to a prestigious corporate law firm. There he develops, over time, a reputation of being both ruthless and brilliant. As notable as it is; it is not this impressive professional life that comes to matter here, but the emerging shadows and secrets from his past. And the growing dichotomy of the man he is and the man he isn’t. At one point, Harold (his adoptive father) notes that he has never known anyone so bifurcated. It is around Jude whom this story comes to revolve. Initially told from multiple perspectives, the narrative shrinks decisively as the book goes on. In concern for one very central figure, sidelining the others, it focuses its attention on one defining story. That of Jude St Francis.
JB’s attention is an early portent of this. His artistic eye recognises early on the hypnotic centrality of Jude’s character to this group. He holds the role of the group’s observer, capturing and documenting the interactions between his other three friends. The photos he takes, and the paintings he makes from them, are enigmatic and wistful. While featuring his friends, they are insatiably focused on Jude. JB’s lens begins, inevitably, to expose what Jude is desperately trying to hide, much to his chagrin. Despite his ongoing attempts to keep them at bay, the shadows are creeping, and his trauma is seeping through the cracks.
Admittedly, the success these friends experience between them: Top Attorney, Celebrated Artist, A-list Actor and Brilliant Architect is rare to find in any one group alone. And yet, rather than these achievements, it is the shadows in Jude’s past that come to define them all, as it does him. He can never outrun them. Nor does he try to for his own sake, he copes, he manages. He will only attempt it for the sake of others – his best friend, Willem especially. He has imbibed his past so completely that it has become him, and despite so many good people telling him otherwise he cannot help but internalise its messages. That he is worthless and fundamentally flawed beyond redemption. The shame, and his belief that he was somehow complicit in the actions of others towards him, to the point of deserving them, have soaked him through. He is so utterly a victim of his past that he cannot separate himself from it. Not able to find even a millimetre of perspective. Or to see himself and his experiences with a modicum of self-compassion. He is subsumed and it is the trauma within him that holds everyone’s gaze, even though they don’t realise what they are looking at.
His past, we discover, is horrifying. It is relentlessly abusive. And wholly traumatising. You find yourself asking, ‘How could one person be so unlucky?’, ‘How could he attract so much malicious intent from those charged with his care?’ And ‘how could so much abuse happen to one single person’? Jude’s trauma is extreme, and dare I say it, clichéd. Yanagihara has said that Jude came to her fully formed, (and admitted that she didn’t really research his character). His trauma is equal and opposite in its extremity to the love, friendship and success he experiences with the friends around him. ‘How could one person be so fortunate in such dedicated friends?’ It would seem that this more than adequately atones for the pain and trauma in his past, but it doesn’t. Because to him it is still present – in the chronic pain and shame. And in the very identity he has formed. The resultant trauma itself is an ongoing abuse.
The book has its share of familiar tropes, which makes it feel unreal at times. Yanagihara has commented to say that the extremes were intentional. Because of these it would almost better succeed at being a fairytale or allegory, if allowed. Good versus bad. This idea did help to reconcile what at times could feel so clumsy and far-fetched as to lack any of the nuance of real life.
Be warned, this story will draw out any tendencies to ‘fix’. It will simultaneously appeal to, and deeply frustrate anyone who likes tidy endings and neat closure, but isn’t that all of us? Whether a problem presents itself in the form of a person or an issue – we want to solve it. But what if it turns out to be a ‘gravity problem’ – a grander, more complex issue beyond our control? This is somehow the nature of Jude’s trauma. In truth it is beyond the experience and control of any of his friends, but somehow they keeping trying to fix it. They’re at risk of becoming enablers – his doctor, Andy, is a case in point. Stretching the boundaries of professional responsibility again and again in the name of loyalty and friendship, in the hope of being the one to offer Jude redemption.
We all long for redemption – it’s key to so many narratives. It’s so expected that sometimes we take it for granted. It is the concluding resolve we expect to hear at the end of a piece of music, or the neat conclusion at the end of a film, or a familiar bedtime story. But A Little Life has no resolution, no redemption – and this anticipation will simply not be satisfied. It is the discordant note hanging in the air. And it’s this that really makes this book get under your skin. It’s shocking and uncomfortable. As is the play – it’s exposing. I’m sure this is part of the reason for its popularity… it can’t help but divide opinion, to get people thinking and talking. Just take a look at the reviews.
It is so tempting to think ‘If Only’. If only things could be different for the sake of Jude and his friends. If only he could make different choices, if only he could see how much he’s loved, if only he could find something worth living for. But this is not where the story is going, and as much as you try to hold it back, there is a desperate inevitability about the trajectory of Jude’s life. The reader, the viewer – this audience watching Jude’s life unfold, unwittingly find themselves colluding with his friends in their sense of defensive hope.
As much as this is a story about Jude and how his past trauma defines him, it is also about his friends. It emerges through their own stories that there are significant reasons why they are so drawn to Jude. And why they stay. This includes Harold; losing his young son due to a rare genetic condition, he has experienced a loss he has never recovered from. And in Jude he gets to make right the failures he sees in himself and attempt to change what happened. Jude himself becomes increasingly disabled as the book goes on, both because of the chronic pain he experiences and the damage done to his body by a deliberate car accident, as well as an undefined disease he lives with. And then there’s the psychological pain, and the deliberate and brutal self-harm he inflicts on himself as much as a coping mechanism as a way to act out his self-hatred. Harold holds him through all of it, never able to make it go away.
Willem, Jude’s closest friend, his confidante and later in the book, his partner, grew up with a disabled brother, who also died young. In the absence of his parents (first emotionally absent then physically) he cared for his brother, forging the strongest of bonds with him. Only to be told, tragically whilst he was away at college that he had died. It becomes clear that it was the needs of his brother that had held his family together, and linked him to his parents. Without his brother, he is cut adrift. He partly relives this connection and bond through his friendship with Jude.
We see this most poignantly in Willem and Harold, who remain closely connected to Jude’s main narrative as the book goes on, but there are other figures, always helping, always finding a way. For without the pasts they are trying to correct, there is no story. It’s a double-edged sword, they evidently love Jude and care for him, they rescue him again and again. From himself but also for themselves. He is fulfilling a need in them. How otherwise, could they have the patience or compassion to give so much to him. As he continues to reject their help and advice, while stubbornly refusing to help himself – whether unwilling or unable to do so. And so it is that the codependencies we see in this group were already formed before they met Jude. The pathways were already trodden, through other, earlier experiences that in some way they are all revisiting and attempting to resolve.
In the end it is JB who has seen it all clearly – observing with the distance and perspective of the artist over many years, producing a vast body of work in the process. And it’s interesting that it is JB who frustrates and challenges Jude the most. He sees through him. And he won’t let Jude be a victim, he won’t pander to him. At times it seems cruel, but in doing so he just might be the one who loves Jude the most. He sees that Jude is complicit in his own suffering. Clinging to his own narratives, his own beliefs and the conclusions he has formed about himself to obscure the truth. The truth that he is valued and loved and redeemable. As a result he remains a victim and prisoner of his past. Never transitioning to become a survivor and overcomer. Either because he won’t or just can’t, and we will never know. This is the greatest tragedy of A Little Life.
Seeing the story living and breathing on the stage added solidity and shading to the characters. Sitting on the stage brought the story to life even more and dispelled some of the extremes of the book. It brought out the subtlety and nuance. These could be real people. All with their own stories, hardships and traumas. It was invigorating to be so close and feel part of it – the action so near you could reach out and touch it. The actors’ skill in portraying these characters was unmistakable. They were captivating – incarnating and inhabiting the characters, and embodying their pain and frustrations. No more than James Norton as Jude, but also Luke Thompson as Willem and Zubin Varla as Harold. While unfortunately more peripheral, but no less present; Omari Douglas as JB and Zach Wyatt as Malcolm shone in their roles too, as did the rest of the cast. The staging, and clever touches which included cooking on stage added to the sensory nature of everything happening in front of us. Which ran to the scenes of abuse which couldn’t appear more realistic.
Here was a piece of Art. If treated as such, A Little Life becomes less about the integrity of the narrative and character arcs; or about the wondering Why and If Only. And more about the place and response of the ‘viewer’ in interacting with the story and its themes. Could the book be designed first and foremost to elicit a reaction, to unsettle and to cause the viewer to become uncomfortable, agitating those deeper questions and frustrations? To hold up a mirror.
In this it reminds me of artist, Anish Kapoor’s work. Marsyas, his 2002-2003 Tate Modern installation, monumentalised the disembodied sinews caused by self-flagellation. Stretching out across the huge space of the Turbine Hall, were taut ribbons of red resembling huge pieces of muscle and tissue. You could almost feel it in your body. Later his retrospective at the Royal Academy featuring malleable sculptures of red wax moving through the galleries in negative space, so viscerally representative of blood and tissue. They produced a strong, almost guttural reaction in the viewer. The associations were many and varied. A pellet of red wax fired periodically against a wall – evoked a sense of shock and associations of bodily suffering, war, death, atrocities and pain.
Is this the purpose of A Little Life? Primarily as Art, to evoke such a reaction, so visceral and bodily, to the painful results of a life of trauma that has no resolve, no possible redemption. Being beyond escape it leaves a desolate, empty aftermath where all efforts have counted for nothing. Are we in the place of Jude’s friends as they are reduced to powerless observers? Their good and desperate interventions only ever delaying the inevitable, never stopping it. The hopeless trajectory is set and in the end there is nothing they can do. There is no redemption.
Seeing the play over Easter weekend highlighted a poignant contrast for me. In the Christian faith Easter Saturday is traditionally the darkest day of all. Jesus lay dead in a tomb, all hope was lost. He had been whipped brutally and repeatedly, the skin ripped from his back. He had been ridiculed and abused, to then be nailed to a cross and left to die, hanging by his hands until his lungs were crushed under the weight of his own body. Crucifixion was reserved for the most despised and maligned in society. Jesus’ followers and disciples had been so full of hope, but they were left standing bereft in the bleak reality of his death – how could this be the end? So desolate, so empty, so pointless.
In the case of A Little Life, that is the end. It offers us no redemption. And forces us to confront the reality that there are some things that cannot be rescued or redeemed, such is their inevitability. And that is true. It just makes the tragedy of Jude’s life even greater.
By contrast, Easter offers us hope and healing. Easter Sunday marks the day that every seemingly inevitable trajectory towards death and destruction was turned around. Jesus, who had died on the cross, was resurrected to life, transformed and renewed by God’s power. And because of that it fundamentally shifts the end point of our past pain and trauma. And the power it has to rob us of the goodness of life now and in the future. This may surprise you to hear but it was an unavoidable connection for me to make between the play’s conclusion and the good news of the Christian message being celebrated that weekend.
The irony of Jude’s suffering – which served no ultimate purpose, was so jarring against the passionate death of Jesus. Who chose to suffer and died willingly, giving up his life for our ultimate redemption. Then against the odds, rising again, carrying us with him in his resurrection to renewed life.
© Alexandra Noel – All Rights Reserved 2023
I totally missed the hype around Normal People when it arrived on our screens in April 2020, during the Pandemic’s first lockdown. Looking back I’m not sure where I was at the time, it seems it was all anyone was talking about. Perhaps I was in some kind of twilight zone, unsurprisingly. And thanks to the warped passage of time over the last couple of years, it feels at once very recent and like aeons ago. In any case, this is for anyone who like me, arrived to Normal People a little late, and loved it all the more.
Normal People follows Marianne and Connell’s relationship, journeying from high school, through university and out the other side. It took me just three sittings to watch the 12 half-hour episodes, and by the end all I was able to do was sit in stupefied awe and message a friend three words, “I am ruined”. Reflecting on the story and characters afterwards turned into late night googling and review-reading to discover whether my experience matched how it had been received. Several days after watching it I was still immersed in the heady, heavy atmosphere it evoked, and the visceral sense of awakened memories and emotions of youth. The ache of nostalgia, in its every sense.
Ah the nostalgia. The story made me remember my first loves, and those seemingly insignificant things that infatuation focus-shifts into the foreground – hair, skin, a way of glancing, a piece of jewellery… they become so meaningful. This can only be how Connell’s chain got its own Instagram account. We all know the significance of those small things, as did the directors – evidently, who highlighted them beautifully. I remembered that same stomach-lurching frustration I saw in the characters. Being unable to either communicate or comprehend yourself – let alone your attraction for someone, and their’s for you. The pain of youthful insecurity came flooding back, like looking at old photographs of your teenage years. Along with a wave of regret for opportunities both missed and unseen. This was scripted hindsight – exploring and understanding afresh what it is to grow up and know who you are; shot through with its unmistakable vulnerability.
This was particularly well observed in Connell’s wrestled journey – from barely knowing what he thinks or wants in school, to making significant choices and beginning to find his voice at university – learning to formulate his thoughts and articulate them. And then to own and develop ideas, expressing them evermore confidently. He travels through two juxtaposing contexts: at school he easily wears the persona handed to him of the cool, easygoing, affable guy who everyone likes. He appears to fit in so effortlessly, is popular and draws people to him like a magnet – he has a self-effacing charm. Meanwhile Marianne is an outsider, so accustomed to not fitting in that she even despises the idea, and refuses to compromise herself, transforming it into her armour. Her eye is still drawn to Connell, for all the reasons he’s so likeable, and yet she also sees who he really is, that he is shy and creative, and she accepts him for it.
Moving to Dublin for university, it is Connell who arrives at Trinity College as the outsider. There is a struggle to reconcile the role he’s played at school, with its easy advantages, with the bigger reality of where he is and who he is becoming. It is Marianne who fits in here, contrasting so strongly with Connell as they seemingly swap places. In Dublin, she exchanges her small town isolation and awkwardness for a new confidence and ease, it is here that she belongs. There is an ever-changing dance between the two characters through their contrasts of light and dark, a stark yet fluid chiaroscuro. Never quite belonging in the same world as each other, but nonetheless sharing similar experiences. This provides a foundation for the empathy and understanding at the heart of their relationship. Despite Marianne’s own dark troubles, she acts as a perfect foil for Connell, believing in him and coaching him towards self-actualisation. And Connell’s need for Marianne, his sense of tortured concern for her wellbeing is ultimately what pushes her towards self-acceptance and wholeness.
A lot has been said about the sex in Normal People. How true to life, how honest it is. No secret has been made of how key having an intimacy coach was to this. Despite this and maybe because of it, the sex itself was not the focus. Instead, the way it was portrayed allowed Connell and Marianne’s sexual relationship to become a vital storytelling device, and a vehicle to communicate the intricacies of their characters, emotions and connection, as well as essential components such as consent. The characters spoke to the audience through these moments of intimate choreography, and in so doing it formed an integral part of the story rather than an entertaining flourish.
In the end, the tragedy of Normal People is also it’s hopeful resolution. The goodness in Marianne and Connell’s relationship is the very thing that will break them up, and possibly separate them forever. It will launch them into their futures, to follow two very different paths, and we never quite know if they will converge again. Resolution for these characters is suitably contrasted; for Marianne it is to stay where she once wanted to escape from, for Connell it is to leave and break new ground. It’s a familiar theme – it reminds me particularly of La La Land, where there is the same bittersweet acknowledgment between the main characters that despite their love for each other they must part ways. One must follow her dream which has finally come knocking, and one must follow his which he has finally yielded to, meaning they must separate and cannot continue on the same path together.
This serves to illustrate the important part people can play in our lives, accompanying us on our journeys for a while and contributing to futures they may not necessarily be in, but nonetheless helped shape, and vice versa. The seasonality of such relationships and friendships, even the good ones, can be painful but also joyous as we release each other to become the people we always knew we could be.
© Alexandra Noel – All rights reserved. 13th May 2022.
Remember that break-up letter you wrote (or thought of writing) but never sent – which served as catharsis and closure, more than as a means of communication? After that bad relationship ended (badly) which you knew you never should have been in.
And remember that feeling you had deep down, that told you so clearly that something wasn’t right, but you couldn’t quite prove it. Literally it ‘told you so’.
All the things you wish you could have said with calm certainty at the time but couldn’t. Well, here’s how that might go…
Dear Ex,
I’ve seriously wondered whether I should write to you, but I’ve decided it’s important to bring things to light. I’ve realised that I was intuitively aware at the end of our relationship, and with increasing clarity since we broke up; that you had been seeing other women while we were still together. Obviously I can’t know the details without you telling me but my guess is that it started in early December and culminated with our break up. I was highly conscious that the dynamic between us was changing during December and that things increasingly didn’t add up. Then the energy and connection suddenly disappeared in early January, of course this was because you had rejected me and become involved with someone else or were in a new relationship – before we had officially broken up.
As part of exploring a relationship and dating I thought I had been completely honest and upfront about communicating my values and expectations. While you did indicate your own approach, I didn’t receive the same level of openness from you. We always seemed to find communication difficult, and we often got caught in a cycle of talking about our opposing perspectives, with no resolution; rather than being able to openly establish if we were compatible and a relationship was viable. In hindsight it now seems like this was a smokescreen to avoid dealing with any sensible talk and exploration of compatibility and commitment.
You turned on me after Christmas, pushing me away, provoking me in order to force a break up and then finally using the argument we had where I laid reality for us on the table, against me. You blamed me for your withdrawal of affection, using me as a scapegoat – rather than taking any responsibility for yourself. In the few weeks that followed you used your new involvement/relationship to taunt me and deliberately wound me – you wanted me to know that I had been replaced. I not only found this incredibly devious, but also cruel. I never meant you any harm, and in fact against my better judgment I chose to think the best of you right up to the end. I now realise that this was a big mistake.
We were probably both aware that a relationship between us wasn’t going anywhere, and that as well as having little in common, we also had very different values and perspectives on life and relationships. With this in mind I find it even more difficult to understand why you didn’t simply end things when you realised it wasn’t going anywhere for you and had begun to explore other options. For my part, although I was still hopeful something might change, I could have acted sooner to end things. I just had so much on my plate with a new job, moving house etc that I couldn’t really face a break up as well until the new year.
However, all this would have been nothing compared to the sting in the tail that it was to realise with absolute clarity that you had cheated on me, had overlapped me. The fact that things weren’t going well anyway doesn’t serve as an adequate excuse and although this might be normal for you, I see it as cowardly to end a relationship in this way; it goes against basic human decency, maturity and respect. It was deeply hurtful.
I hope that in future you can find it in yourself to treat the women you date, and break up with, better. But I also want you to know that despite the pain you have caused me and the lack of closure it produced, I forgive you, and in all sincerity I hope you find what you’re looking for, and can be happy. Given all this, friendship isn’t an option, so I respectfully ask that you don’t contact me again, unless it is to apologise.
Wishing you all the best.
© Alexandra Noel – All rights reserved. 11th May 2022
This article was originally published in 2016 as ‘The Two-Timing Texter’ for Girl About Town on Threads UK. Read on below:
I was fairly late to the dating game. For a long time I believed that my future husband would just pitch up at the right moment, without much action needed from me. Not much action that is, apart from focusing on being faithful and good, and waiting patiently for Mr Right, without complaining too much. I wasn’t hung up on it, but if I’m honest, deep down that’s what I believed.
After years of Not Much on the man front, apart from a few flirtations and a bit of heartbreak, something in me snapped. I was totally disillusioned, [as a Christian this was] mostly with God, who I thought should have brought someone along by now. I’d been good, I’d made sacrifices! And He’d let me down! I felt disempowered. I hadn’t felt permission to try, fail, and then do better next time. I wasn’t a complete rooky, but I’d never learnt how to make confident decisions in this area of life, and I wanted to get experience. I wanted dating to feel more ‘normal’.
So in protest I rebelled – against waiting, and against being faithful and good. It was a bit chaotic at first, but I got something out of my system. Then I became more intentional with my dating. And so I went online. I filled out my profile, then held my breath and watched to see what would happen.
I got in touch with a guy who’d sent me a great first message: a bit forward perhaps, but I liked his honesty. After a couple of failed attempts to meet up, we arranged a date for after work the next week.
I was on holiday with a big group of friends at the time, and mentioned my date with this guy, let’s call him ‘Jonny’. He even lived round the corner from my office – fancy that?!
Later that evening, a woman I’d only met that week on the holiday drew me away for a chat.
“This guy you’ve got a date with next week, he wouldn’t happen to be called Jonny Smith, would he?”
Um, yes. Why do you ask?
“Um well, I’ve been dating him for the last two months.”
Oh.
The small size of the Christian dating pool had exposed this guy’s two-timing. So what to do now?
I texted him the next day, and after a lot of excuses and wrangling I received a grovelling apology written in excellent ‘Christianese’. Words like ‘sacrifice’, ‘integrity’ and ‘altar’ featured heavily. Needless to say, I didn’t go on that date with Jonny. But he did contact me a few months later to say that he’d now broken up with the other girl, and would I meet him after all? Not a chance.
There are more stories I could tell; but after my first foray into online (Christian) dating, I’ve definitely learnt a few things and gained valuable experience. Here are a few things I’ve figured out:
• Although it’s important to get experience, dating for experience-only is not a good idea. You’re likely to make compromises with who you date, and what you expect from them. Date people who you genuinely fancy and could see a future with.
• If something doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t. It’s important to listen to your ‘gut’. How we feel about things is valid, and can even be a warning sign. Listen to yourself and trust your instincts.
• Involve your friends. We need community – one of the catches I found with online dating is that although you get to meet a wider group of people and create more opportunities, it’s as if this takes place in a vacuum. You often only have a profile, some photos, and your limited experience of someone to go on.
• Even though someone ticks the ‘Christian’ box, and plays guitar in the worship band, and says grace before a meal, they can still lack one major thing. Character. When it comes down to the way someone behaves towards you, how much they value you, and what you can expect from them, it takes character to set someone apart from the rest. It really is as important as they say it is. Oh, and a whole lot of chemistry.
There’s a lot of good Christian teaching on this subject, but some of our understanding isn’t always 100 per cent biblical. We may have absorbed a mixture of Christian culture, interpretation and Church rhetoric as well, which has shaped our values. It’s always worth questioning things, and with the help of the Holy Spirit, weighing them against the Bible. I’m really struck by the stories of women in the Bible, and how Jesus empowered them, even if their culture didn’t. There are lots of stories of women being audacious – for their culture and their time – in their boldness. If you feel disempowered, and find yourself obligated to take a passive role in dating look again at those biblical stories.
© Alexandra Noel / Threads UK – All rights reserved. 2nd March 2016.
Alex Noel 