Truth from the Heart: Dating

On Love, Dating, and Breaking Up

6:00:00 AMCatherine Beigel

A Clean Slate: When It's Time to Give Love a Second Chance

6:00:00 AMAnonymous

Dating can be gut-wrenching. I mean, really, really gut-wrenching.

Unfortunately, many of us don’t need to be told this. After countless failed relationships, disappointments, messy break-ups, struggling with long-distance, or battling with chastity, it is so easy to become jaded when it comes to finding “the one.” We become so angry in our pursuit of a lifelong partner that we can even forget why it is we desire love in the first place; or worse: we start believing that we don’t deserve love after all.

The hardship of rebuilding, learning to love again, to surrender, and to trust another person after a major heartbreak is difficult and often painfully crippling. This has been especially thematic for me lately, as one of my good friends has started dating again after an unexpected split with her longtime boyfriend.

After months of tears, retail therapy, late nights talking through every detail of her breakup over glasses of wine, and evenings “treating ourselves” to a night out on the town, the one issue that she remained hung-up on was this:

it is hard to give someone a clean slate and a fresh start when we are so used to being hurt and disappointed by others in the past.

In all of her desire to move forward, her eyes have been fixed on the past. Since Guy 1 treated me this way, Guy 2 will likely be no different. Guy 1 struggled with [insert flaw here]; Guy 2 probably sucks at that, too.

You get the point.

And don’t get me wrong — I’m not criticizing my friend in the slightest! I think it’s only natural that we become guarded and cautious as we try to move forward. There is only so much that one heart can take.

I would just like this post to serve as an open letter of encouragement to my Friend. Let this be one of those little daily reminders:

love deserves a second chance.

In classic-Hannah-fashion, I take a lot of my dating cues from Dietrich von Hildebrand, who never fails to call me out of my own jadedness by reminding me that “love always assumes what is best in the other…Love entertains the more favorable opinion toward all that is doubtful” (1).

Conceptually, most of us would probably agree. Practically, however, it’s a little bit “easier said than done.” What does it look like — giving love a second chance? —giving men the benefit of the doubt? —jumping into a new relationship without the baggage of past relationships clouding one’s vision?

Per usual, the answer goes something like this:

we must be willing to surrender.

To my friend: I get it; I really do. Surrender is hard. It’s scary. Surrender can feel a lot like trust-falling off of a platform without any view of the people catching you at the bottom. And it’s okay that you feel this way; but don’t allow yourself to stay trapped in the feeling. We must be fearless in our pursuit of love if love is what we truly desire.

Love by its very nature is generous. This means that surrender looks a lot like actively choosing to forgive men in general. One man, the wrong man, may have let you down. But this cannot be held against all men, for “love’s generous credit is intimately bound up in its surrender” (2). If it is a generous love you wish to receive, it is a generous love that you must be willing to give.

The payoff, Hildebrand says, is all the greater for it; for in loving generously, one becomes “oriented completely toward the other” (3). Instead of being oriented toward the past, we are oriented to the present. This is intimately bound-up with Hildebrand’s deeply held personalism, for if we are truly responding to the value of each and every person that we come into contact with, that means we must be willing to see each individual as their own person in their own right. Just because Guy 1 failed doesn’t mean Guy 2 should be treated with contempt or skepticism. Doing so would only allow the pain to win.

Today, I just want to invite you to let love win.

This is not the end of your story. Don’t ever forget that the world is still full of beauty, your heart is full of love, and people often tend to be more kind and generous and good than we give them credit for.

This isn’t some lofty, conceptual truth either; but a real invitation to live our philosophy of personalism. After all, what good is a belief-system if it cannot be a truly lived philosophy? Realistically, “love reckons with the possibility that there may be imperfections which must be faced as unpleasant but temporary facts, even though it will never be prejudiced by them. The loving credit does not dwell in an ethereal or unreal region. It does not mount Pegasus. Rather, it fortifies itself on ground which is altogether real” (4). Be fortified in the truth that you are deserving of a fresh start.

Here’s hoping 2017 brings you blessings, joy, and a whole ‘lotta love.

_______________________________________________________________

Dietrich von Hildebrand, The Dietrich von Hildebrand Life Guide, 55.
Ibid, 56.
Ibid.
Ibid.

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Christmas culture Dating

Baby, All I Want for Christmas is You: The Consumerism Dating Culture

6:00:00 AMCatherine Beigel

Christmas time. The most wonderful time of the year. Somehow it also seems to bring out the radical consumerism that has become one of the hallmarks of American culture. In my family, the wish lists have all been neatly organized on Amazon with links to make sure there are no mistakes. My sister wants a titanium steel apple watch series 2… 42mm, please don’t bother with 38mm.. with a saddle brown leather band. With all the specifications, and expectations preset it’s a borderline disaster when she opens it Christmas morning and someone accidentally purchased the exact watch in rose gold.

Much like the consumer society of Christmas, we’ve begun to turn our romantic relationships into an itemized checklist. I’m all about the gingers, and a sense of humor is key. I want someone with a sense of adventure and some muscle tone; although, if he spray tans and goes to body building shows he’s not for me. I could go on, but the point being, we try relationships on to see if they fit based on a preassigned set of qualities. Similarly to how it usually turns out when I’m shopping, the latest clothing fads don’t actually look that good on my non-model body. Yet somehow we’ve allowed ourselves to idealize love, and have begun to base our desires off of what mainstream culture tells us we need. Turning the beloved into a product who satisfies our needs and expectations predefined by Cosmopolitan magazine has removed from him or her the value of their individuality. What happens when they no longer make us look good? Or when our desires shift? Do we throw them away and move onto the next relationship?

It’s time for the revival of love. A love which sees the broken aspects of a person and continues to love them anyway. Discovery of the imperfections of the other is not the moment to walk away, but an opportunity to enter into fuller deeper, truer, love. Love cannot become a checklist. A person will never fit into a box that way.

This is not to suggest that a consumerist approach to love is something new in the 21st century. It has been a wound in the side of man throughout history. As individual beings we naturally seek the perfection of ourselves, and desire our own happiness. If something were to jeopardize the happiness we seek, it is left behind. This is not an act of love but an act of nature. When approaching love we fall into the pitfall of using it as a means to achieve this happiness we seek. Hildebrand says,

“There is no more basic misunderstanding of love than the idea that it involves the surrender of oneself to another person in order to achieve happiness.” (3)

It is this notion I often fall into as well. In pursuit of my own happiness I look at what will make me happy and then set out in pursuit of finding a partner who will satisfy those desires. If this sounds familiar, I would not be surprised. It is a mindset perpetuated by our culture. However, it reveals our lack of understanding of love’s true essence.

“Happiness does not come from union with another because of the love I bear him. Happiness is love’s outcome, never its motive… It is therefore love’s essence, wherever it is found, that the loved one seem precious, beautiful, and worthy of love.” (5)

It seems then that I could still search out one who possesses qualities that I view as precious, beautiful, and worthy of love. I think that there is some truth in that. There may be a specific kind of person with whom I would be better suited to see their beauty, preciousness, and worth. This does not mean I can condense these qualities into an all-inclusive list. The human person is irreducible. Capable of being understood, they cannot be comprehended. There is a unique unrepeatability within each person and an infinite depth. Hildebrand discusses this in the language of value,

“This has to do with something central, a datum of worth, which is actually supplied by many vital, spiritual and moral values. This datum can never be reduced to such values, nor ever be formulated as they can. But this is because a person’s overall beauty cannot be classified.” (6)

Woah I almost lost myself in some of the philosophical language, but please bear with me and let me explain. Each individual is in possession of unique set of values based in their individuality, but their worth as a person cannot be reduced to these virtues alone.
Applying that to love, we love when we see the preciousness, beauty, and worth of the beloved. I'm not in love with a mop of ginger hair. I’m not in love with a sense of humor. I’m in love with a person. I perceive and respond appropriately. Not as a means to my own happiness, although that is an effect of the love.

Perhaps this blog post did not convince you to throw out the list of qualities you desire in a significant other, but I’m not sure if I intended you to either. However, I hope you and I together can continue to cultivate an awareness for the value of fellow human persons. Perhaps we can open our options to appreciate values that would have otherwise gone unnoticed, and to learn this Christmas Season what it is to love another for their own sake.

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(1) Image one
(2) Image two
(3) Dietrich von Hildebrand, Man, Woman, and the Meaning of Love pg. 11
(4) Image three
(5) Hildebrand, pg. 11
(6) Hildebrand, pg. 13
(7) Image four

Dating featured Hildebrand

Why it Needs to be Okay to Talk about Sex

11:48:00 AMAnonymous

Dating featured love

Myers Briggs: The Formula for the Perfect Relationship

6:00:00 AMCatherine Beigel

Dating dietrich von hildebrand featured

He has a Great Personality

6:00:00 AMCatherine Yanko

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“Well, he has a great personality.”

At one time or another, we have all been in that situation. A friend asks you about another person and you try your best to come up with something nice to say. This back handed compliment is one that we liberally give to others but you certainly never want to receive yourself. But why not?

One could certainly say this aversion to the compliment of one’s personality is due to modern man’s limitation of attraction to the merely physical realm. But, I think it reaches further than that. The modern understanding of personality is really what gives this compliment such a negative connotation. Amidst a plethora of personality tests, we have allowed personality to be rigidly defined in hopes of total self-knowledge. We restrict the backbone of the person often into four letters of a Myers-Briggs test, two words for their temperament, and so on. We seek to define ourselves and others in terms easy to understand and fit into. I am not trying to say all personality tests are bad. There are situations when these tests can be quite beneficial. What is dangerous is that we abandon our individuality for socially constructed definitions. Who wants to be as simple as a textbook definition? Our fulfillment as individuals cannot be in these group stereotypes but only in an individual understanding and appreciation of our own personality.

A definition I find more integral in its understanding is that presented by Dietrich von Hildebrand in his book “Liturgy and Personality”. He says, “A personality in the true sense of the word is the man who rises above the average only because he fully realizes the classical human attitudes, because he knows more deeply and originally than the average man, loves more profoundly and authentically, wills more clearly and correctly than the others, makes full use of his freedom; in a word- the complete, profound, true man” (20). That definition is well-worth being read twice for its abstract and profound character. To Hildebrand, to say someone has a great personality means much more than they have no attractive physical attributes as it does in the modern conversation. Rather, to have a great personality means to be fully alive in one’s humanity. From this point, Hildebrand works to break down what exactly this means.

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Evaluating this idea of personality first in a negative sense Hildebrand says, “The average man, the inoffensive, colorless, ordinary man without a clearly expressed individuality is not a personality” (19). Having a personality does not mean to merely go with the status quo. It means to come alive to receive and defend values. To this defending and receiving only an individual can respond for their self. Thus, the person must be content with their own individuality within society. Someone with a personality sacrifices any humiliation and shame that may come with fulfilling their individual call to respond to truth, beauty, and goodness.

The next mark of personality for Hildebrand is acting out of freedom. This is not the modern notion of freedom often understood as license, that is to be able to do whatever you want. Rather, this freedom is one that allows the person to choose good without reserve or enslavement to one’s appetites. Hildebrand says of the person having a personality, “A person is a being who ‘possesses himself’, who does not simply exist but who actively achieves his being, and has the power to choose freely” (19). This does not include the person that impulsively asserts himself over others out of fear of not being seen or trivialized or the person who remains inactive amidst the chance for greatness. Rather, this man reaches outside of himself to those transcendents: to that which promises him fulfillment. The man who fully possesses himself can experience truth, beauty, and goodness in a wholly receptive and present manner. This reception then shapes him into a personality.

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Finally, Hildebrand says the man that has truly flourished to the point of having this personality possesses a unity of style. By this he means, “rare harmony between the inner and the outer being in those men whose speech, expression, movements, external style of life are organically molded by their inner attitudes” (23). What happens in the heart of this person transfers to the exterior with organic authenticity. This person does not “fake it” to create a faux self-image but rather naturally reflects his or her interior life. To this, I think of the mother so overwhelmed with love of her child that she cannot help but kiss his sweet face. Or, the viewer of nature who cannot help but gasp in awe. Personality brings with it an incredible ease in the connection between one’s internal and external lives.

This harmony is certainly very attractive. Who does not want to be able to trust another’s exterior intentions and motives as pure? But Hildebrand says there is a qualification of this unity still, it “must be the expression of the true, authentic atmosphere of a life rooted in the metaphysical situation of man, of an attitude open to value and responding to value, and permeated by the supernatural world” (23). Thus, someone who displays their reservation to values and closed off nature does not meet this virtuous unity of style common to those who possess a personality. It excludes the person who cannot help but gossip in spite of their neighbors or who fills up with rage to the degree that they are physically violent. The person of personality reacts to the world in freedom, responding to what is good.

With these marks of personality in mind, I find it very hard to be offended by the compliment of having a great personality. In reality, I find it to be the most attractive of qualities a person can possess. There is nothing backhanded about complimenting someone on this basis of personality as someone who is fully alive and able to respond to values with this unique unity of style. I think what is most tragic in this situation is not how many people we give this compliment to but how so few people possess this personality. As I read Hildebrand, I found so many ways in which I am lacking on these fronts and even had a hard time thinking of others who possessed these characteristics. In its scarcity, personality becomes all the more attractive and important. After all, it is only the true personality that finds fulfillment of their humanity.

contraception Dating featured

Contraception Heals?

6:00:00 AMEmma Lindle

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I have a friend who used contraception in high school to try to heal the relationship with her boyfriend. They had been dating for a couple of years. During this time, they had been able to support each other through different circumstances in life, and had grown as friends. I’m not sure of all the details, but after three years her boyfriend wanted to end their romantic relationship. It was difficult to gently restore the companionship that was born from their time dating. It seems it was even more difficult to work through feelings of abandonment or rejection after they decided to break up. Easy access to contraception and the desperation to not lose her friend led her to believe, “if I have sex with him, we will be bonded together and our relationship will be healed”. She chose to have sex, but their relationship wasn’t healed. The problems they faced in their relationship were heightened, not helped, by this choice. They were also personally wounded.

Contraception has made sex a more popular and easy solution to many problems. We all want to love and find union with others, but love is hard to identify when the difficulties of life hit us. For example, a wife struggles with postpartum depression and is ready to give up the effort needed for Natural Family Planning. The benefits of not using contraception can seem so small compared to the benefits of its use. Why should we continue to be faithful to this practice? Does avoiding contraception really do us any good? Is it worth the fight?

In a published dialogue entitled “A Moral Evaluation of Birth Control”, a student discusses her beliefs about birth control with Professor Fritz Wenisch. The article is beautiful because her initial points are not well formulated, and yet Wenisch takes each of her concerns seriously and respectfully. They begin with the foundation that abortion is wrong and should never be committed. There are contraceptives that work as abortifacients. For example, the IUD works under the same principle as abortion. It does not prevent conception, but prevents implants a zygote, whose genetic code is totally distinct from the mother and father. Thus, the child dies.

It seems many of our friends and family members are on the pill, and maybe you are yourself. Abortion is not often one’s intention when using the pill, and though it can work as an abortifacient, even when it doesn’t, even if there was a way for it to work perfectly and the woman’s body would always be tricked to thinking it was pregnant, it isn’t worth using. Why this is the case is what I would like to discuss.

The pill and other contraceptives interfere with the coming about of a good,the child, for the sake of a lesser good-worry free sex. This choice, to seek the lesser good, appears harmless yet, it is still wrong and harmful. . With an IUD, the child is living and dying, but with the pill, the child isn’t formed. Still it is a choice made by men and women, and our choices educate us on who we are. You gain the opportunity to have sex without the fear of pregnancy , but the personal rejection of human life is still bound up in this choice. These misguided choices prove to be detrimental for our humanity.

Man is educated, he can reject the opportunity of a human life for the sake of a lesser good. This leads him to believe in a dependence upon pleasure, security, and affection that makes him doubt his capacity to come out of himself and give himself to others.

Man begins to forget his power for self-giving love.

Professor Wenisch explains the sound logic behind this conclusion. He gives the example of a wealthy man who wants to donate money to a college student. The wealthy man is not obliged to give the money, but it is a good action he is doing. It helps him see himself beyond his own securities and as a good for another. One of Mr. Cash’s employers finds out about his money and persuades him to buy a pleasure cruise instead. There seems to be something wrong with his employer’s action. He interrupted the good of the student’s scholarship for the sake of a pleasure cruise. Analogously, the couple using contraception interrupts the good of the child for the sake of worry-free sex.

It is not wrong to interfere with the coming about of a good if the purpose of the interfering action is as significant as the good interfered with. Contraception is often chosen by the unmarried who want to avoid having children.In this case, the greater good of the child is being interferred with by a lesser good of a desire to feel united to the other or for pleasure. In other instances of contraception, the good of the child is being interfered with for the sake of the mother’s good. The good of the mother and the good of the child are equal goods, but is the good of the mother really at stake? Is contraception necessary for the mother’s good? If contraception isn’t necessary for the mother’s good then there is a more fundamental reason contraception is being chosen.

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Wenisch gives an example of a man who is invited on a last minute ski trip, but he doesn’t own the proper clothes. He desires to ride down the slopes in the crisp air, but without warm clothes he would be risking his life. He goes to borrow clothes from his neighbor, but his neighbor isn’t home and so he steals the clothes. His neighbor is angry when he returns home and sees him wearing his clothes. The man explains, “I had to steal them to save my life.” His neighbor is not satisfied. His explanation doesn’t seem to be true. He stole them for the pleasure of the mountains. His life would be safe if he had stayed home or planned a later trip with his friends after he had time to buy the proper equipment. In a similar way, the mother’s life could be spared if they abstain from sex, even if just for the time she is fertile. This self-restraint may feel almost impossible, but it can be practiced. Freedom to engage in sexual intercourse when it’s best for the wife can be found. This option allows us to choose the good of the spouse, or family, without rejecting the life of the child.

This story reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend who had been engaging in sexual intercourse with her boyfriend for some time. I asked her if she had ever thought about stopping, and she said, “I don’t know if that is possible”. Her circumstances are distinct from those battling with contraception, but that same feeling of impossibility seems to be felt by couples in these particular circumstances.

The feelings of impossibility can be lessened with a remembering of one’s dignity. Contraception goes against who we are because it is a personal choice for worry free sex over the life of a child. This choice is an expression of a lie man believes about himself that he is made solely to gratify himself. His primary capacity is not to love another. His primary goal is to make sure he is affirmed, accepted, or numbed by pleasure. This is not love. Contraception is presented as an easy solution to many difficulties, but these hardships cannot be healed by contraception. We must believe we are made for more! No matter where we are, our capacity to love cannot be taken away. We have the freedom to begin to choose it, to begin to choose the child, or the discipline of Natural Family Planning, over the choice for worry free sex.

On Love, Dating, and Breaking Up

A Clean Slate: When It's Time to Give Love a Second Chance

Baby, All I Want for Christmas is You: The Consumerism Dating Culture

Why it Needs to be Okay to Talk about Sex

Myers Briggs: The Formula for the Perfect Relationship

He has a Great Personality

Contraception Heals?

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