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A Study of Lousy Loving Principle #1

     She called and asked me out for coffee. But when we met up at our favorite coffee shop, it was apparent from her bruised face that this was not going to be a morning filled with idle chit chat and pictures of the new baby. I was immediately alarmed by her appearance, and wasted no time in asking what happened.
     “Teresa, you just don’t understand.”
     “Explain it to me.”
     “He loves me. He just doesn’t always get it right.”
     Oh, now I understand. I can relate! My husband doesn’t always get it right either. He complains if I leave an empty sweetener packet on the counter, but he NEVER recycles his soda cans. He just lines them up in a tidy row on the same counter that he so obsessively guards against used sugar packets! I like to go to bed early and get up early – he likes to stay up late and sleep in. I like mayo on everything – he’s a mustard kind of guy. I think he gets this stuff wrong. He loves me – but he doesn’t always get it right. I understand husbands not getting it right, but what does that have to do with her swollen face?
     “He’s a good guy. He’s not a bad guy, he just makes mistakes. He’s sorry! Punching me in the face was a big mistake. But he’s sorry! Why are you making such a big deal out of this?”
     Uh oh – maybe I don’t get it. I understand the arguments that arise from differing preferences. I even appreciate the interchange of ideas about values – shared and otherwise. I do not understand when a wife calls a guy “good” who has just punched her in the face. That’s not good. That’s wrong. That’s disrespectful. Darn right he’s sorry! He’s a sorry husband for harming his wife. But he’s also wrong.
     Sorry often means – sad I got caught; worried that consequences might follow; wish I didn’t have to discuss this – sorry isn’t the same as wrong. Wrong is full acknowledgement of bad behavior and a humble willingness to repair the hurt and move toward reconciliation. It is not just saying “I’m sorry.” Her bruises make it more than clear that she was married to someone sorry. His unwillingness to admit wrong makes him bad at love.
     This is a case of lousy loving – but it is not the first instance of love run amok in this marriage. Lots of people have bad experiences with love because they refuse to face the truth when it is first presented to them. Long discussions revealed that this dude was a bad boyfriend. He was possessive, jealous, and even aggressive. He was a bully – but he never hit her. His behavior as a husband is predictable if past history is examined in the light of truth. As we sat over our tepid coffee, she continued with her story. Oh so many warning signs had been present throughout their courtship and she ignored them.
     “But he never hit me,” she whispers – I suspect more to herself than me.
     I was reminded of this verse: They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.*
     “This really is my fault. These two kids wear me out. I haven’t been as…willing…lately. You know, in the sex department. And he hates the way I keep house. He gets all agitated when he walks in the door and there are toys strewn around.”
     A time out is immediately called in the conversation as I challenge her assumptions. This is not where the fault lies. Young mothers do get too tired some nights for intimacy. When toddlers are present, toys do get left out. (That’s why you have children when you’re young; hopefully you still have the agility to catch yourself as you trip over the trucks!) She got a shiner not because she was a bad wife, but as the result of violating Lousy Loving Principle #1.

Lousy Loving Principle #1
Failure to heed lousy loving
warning signs and respond appropriately

     Part of the package that comes with bad loving is failure to heed warning signs and respond appropriately. (They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.*) I’m old, but not so old that I’ve forgotten how flattering it feels when someone is jealous for your undivided attention. It’s romantic – at first. It makes one feel – chosen. But jealous, aggressive, possessive dating relationships are not romantic - they are early warning signs that this is NOT a love connection. People who end up in pain over a love relationship often ignore these signs and proceed without caution. (They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.*)
     Lousy loving isn’t limited to romance. I accidentally ran into some lousy loving just this week. I was sitting by the hotel pool, minding my own business and reading a good book. A mother and two young daughters are also poolside. Suddenly, a whirlwind of activity captivates my attention as a dad enters the pool area with two young sons. I don’t know who was wilder – the dad or the boys. These guys needed serious supervision!
     Hotels have very few pool rules. This crew ignored even those paltry few guidelines for safe swimming. I was pelted with squishy balls, splashed, and even fallen upon as these boys raced around acting like, well, boys. As a mother of two boys and a very playful husband, this behavior didn’t really surprise me – but I was amazed at their wanton disregard for others.
     In their exuberance, the two boys upset the two dainty sisters, and one began to cry. This fueled the furnace of the youngest son, who began to taunt and tease. Obviously, this isn’t good (predictable, yes; developmentally appropriate, probably).
     What happened next was a classic case of lousy loving. The mother of the two girls let this go on for as long as she could stand it. Finally, she politely asked the dad if he would stop the son’s teasing of her daughter. I thought she did a great job. The dad disagreed. He let loose on this mom and defended the child’s blatant bullying with a ferocious protectiveness.
     I believe this dad demonstrated Lousy Loving Principle #1. He has been given clear warning signs that this young boy needs some guidance about how to respect others, and this dad is failing to heed them and respond appropriately. (They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.*) Children need guidance. Parents have the grand privilege of studying their children and looking for opportunities to provide it. On this day, dad missed the mark. If he doesn’t get his act together, there is going to be more trouble ahead – for the kid, the dad, and the unfortunate people that will cross their paths.
      If we are going to love others well, we must acquire the skill sets necessary to make decisions about how to relate to each other. The hotel has established rules for pool use; if everyone abides by them, all participants can have a reasonably good time poolside. It’s the same in relationships. There are just some basic guidelines about how to treat others and how others should treat us that must be followed to avoid needless pain and suffering.

One Skill Essential For Feeling Lucky at Love

     Picture yourself surrounded by a circle of yellow tape (like they use on crime shows) that says, “Do not enter.” Imagine that this yellow tape is your personal space. It’s a clear demarcation of where you stop and others start. Pretend that all of us are surrounded by the same warning tape. As we go through our day, our tapes bump up next to each other. Sometimes we choose to enter into a committed, intimate relationship, and our yellow lines scoot up real close to each other. Strangers aren’t allowed that privilege. Consistently practicing Lousy Loving Principle #1 (Failure to heed lousy loving warning signs and respond appropriately) hinders the decision making process that determines what kind of access we allow others to have into our space. (They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.*)
     My best friend and I go shopping. The dressing rooms are crowded. We decide to share a dressing room – close quarters and kind of revealing – but we’re best buddies and feel safe being that open with each other. Another day I’m by myself in the dressing room. While in mid-zip a stranger bursts through the dressing room door. I don’t know that lady at all – she’ll have to wait for her own dressing room. Choices must be made about how much of my space to share. Letting some stranger see me trying on clothes would be just plain creepy.
     Today I was out shopping for a party dress. Distracted by all the glam, I ran smack into a lady carrying evidence of a successful shopping mission. I apologized profusely as I helped her gather the packages that I had so clumsily knocked out of her arms. I ran right over her yellow tape! It was not a pleasant experience but the situation was made tolerable by my immediate admission of wrongdoing followed up with attempts to make it right – by picking up her packages. Both of us recognized that we were too close for comfort – and backed off. If I hadn’t responded in an appropriately contrite fashion, I would be in danger of violating Lousy Loving Principle #1!
     Last night my husband and I were working out at the fitness center. He walked by and gave me a gentle smack with his towel. I smiled. Twenty eight years of marriage, and my husband is still flirting with me. He ran over my warning tape – and I liked it! If the stranger next to me had picked up his towel and wacked me with it as he was getting off his treadmill, I’d have had him arrested for assault. Why? - Because that guy would not have had permission to cross into my circle of me. If I let some stranger cross uninvited into my space, again, I am in danger of violating Lousy Loving Principle #1.
     When we consistently find ourselves in loving relationships that hurt, chances are we have failed to heed lousy loving warning signs and respond appropriately. We have either NOT made wise choices in who we allow access into our space or we are violating other people’s space and they don’t like it. (They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.*)
     My coffee drinking buddy had warning signs that she was dating a guy who would run over her yellow warning tape without remorse. He would violate her personal space and treat her like property instead of another human of great value. She allowed this to continue because initially the closeness felt good. But when it started getting ugly, she pretended it wasn’t so bad. She made excuses, minimized the pain of love going wrong, and continued down a path that eventually had her face meeting up with his fist. (They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.*) This is not the normal kind of pain associated with love; in fact, what they have going on isn’t really love at all – it’s Lousy Loving Principle #1.
     The young boy at the pool was running wild into everyone’s space. He was bashing through our warning tape with great abandon. This caused problems. Eventually someone pushed back, which evidently proved embarrassing to the father of the boundary-less boy. The boy’s dad - instead of respecting the right of others to say “Get out of my space!” – demonstrates his own disrespect for boundaries by acting just as aggressively as the young son – using words rather than squishy balls and water fights – but with the same effect. Mom and daughters are forced to leave the pool in order to feel that their yellow warning tape won’t be violated. When faced with Lousy Loving Principle #1 everyone loses.

The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; surely I have a delightful inheritance. I will praise the Lord, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me. I have set the Lord always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Psalm 16:6-8 NIV

     I love that verse! “Boundary lines” literally means a rope, a chord, a measured portion. I believe that the writer of Psalm 16 is making a profound theological point. I hear him saying that one of the things God provides each of us is a large roll of yellow warning tape. He expects us to use it. Interestingly enough, I think the psalmist is also acknowledging the fact that lots of us are lousy lovers. So God not only provides us with the tape, he is willing to instruct us – daily – on how to use it.
    This is a crucial point that I don’t want us to miss. It’s no small thing to learn how to use our boundaries wisely. We need God desperately to guide us in love.
     I need God to direct my paths as I love my children. Concern for them is natural. Obsessive worrying about their well-being is lousy loving, and may cause me to run all over their space.
     A natural part of the falling in love experience is the desire to spend every waking hour together. But my friend in the coffee shop experienced this in the extreme. Her beau resented time spent away from him. What she needed was godly discernment. This was not the blossoming of young love; it was the birth of obsession.
     Youthful exuberance at a pool is normal; but it is not healthy to allow that exuberance to go unchecked. Parents need to know when to say when to too much of a good thing. It takes great wisdom to know how to teach our children the art of loving well.
     Some people have proven that they can be trusted bumping up close to our circle of self; but there is danger in letting strangers too close. Too much distance and we find ourselves alone needlessly. Not enough distance and we’re dangerously vulnerable. God can help us sort all that decision-making out.
     Psalm 16 gives us more useful information. According to this passage, God intends for our yellow tape to fall in pleasant places. He desires for us to live and love well. This is very important. God desires for us to have a delightful inheritance. He intends for us to treat others and be treated by others with respect. This is a nonnegotiable truth. Part of our loving well requires us to carefully guard ourselves. We cannot tolerate anyone who enters into our intimate space and treats us disrespectfully. The opposite is also true. It is never OK to enter into someone else’s space and treat them disrespectfully either.
     Lousy lovers lack the ability to move with agility among others. They miss the cues that something is “not quite right.”

• The young woman missed the clues about the kind of man she was marrying.
• The young boy failed to recognize the signs that his play was hurting others.
• The dad ignored the boy’s bad behaving.

     If we want to be “lucky in love” we must learn how to get along with others!

• I apologized and retrieved strewn packages when I violated that lady’s space while shopping.
• The lady who burst into my dressing room quickly exited while apologizing.
• The mother of the young girls protected their space by confronting the boundary violators and then choosing to remove the girls from danger when the bad behaving continued.

     I truly do not think there is any grander, more epic adventure than learning how to love and be loved. I also believe that God can teach us how to love well. But we must be willing to follow his instruction. If you have a pattern of painful loving, I pray that you will accept his help.

Study Guide for Lousy Loving Principle #1

Failure to heed warning signs and respond appropriately

     This may be hard to hear – so take a deep cleansing breath. You are not equipped to run your own life. I know this flies in the face of a culture that teaches us to chart our own course, become the masters of our own destiny and other such self-reliant nonsense. I hope you will realize that this is good news. Finally! An answer that explains why your best laid plan has not produced the intended results. There is someone who is highly qualified to guide you through life – He is God, your Creator. Read the scriptures below, taking time to really wrestle with them. Think hard about what this means for your life if these words are true. If? Yes. If. I know that you may doubt whether there is a God. If He exists, you wonder why He hasn’t made your life a higher priority! I’m not asking you to cast aside your doubts without serious consideration. But instead of focusing on what you don’t know or understand, ask yourself one question: what if this stuff is true?

• God formed the earth…He did not create it to be empty but formed it to be inhabited. Isaiah 45:18 GWT
• I am your Creator. You were in my care even before you were born. Isaiah 44:2a CEV
• You saw me before I was born and scheduled each day of my life before I began to breathe. Every day was recorded in your Book! Psalm 139:16 LB
• Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love. Ephesians 1:4a The Message
• You know me inside and out, you know every bone in my body; You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit, how I was sculpted from nothing into something. Psalm 139:15 The Message
• I have carried you since you were born; I have taken care of you from your birth. Even when you are old, I will be the same. Even when your hair has turned gray, I will take care of you. I made you and will take care of you. Isaiah 46:3-4 NCV

     I don’t think it is a coincidence that my friend with the black eye grew up in a household where her father was disrespectful, controlling, and possessive of his wife and children. He regularly came home from work and raged against the world. On several occasions he lashed out in anger by physically abusing either the wife or the children. This behavior was tolerated by my friend’s mom. Leaving home at an early age, my friend vowed that she would do it differently. And she thought she did. Remember her whispered cry, “But he never hit me”? Here’s the problem many of us face. We know the things that happen in our families growing up that we don’t like – and many of us vow to never repeat it. But there may be many examples of bad loving that we don’t recognize. Yelling, screaming, treating each other without respect – it may be normal, but is it right? If we don’t know any other way to live – aren’t we bound to repeat it?      My friend only understood the careless kind of loving that she saw in her family growing up. She didn’t like the physical abuse, but she accepted the loneliness as normal. So when that bad boy showed up and gave her loads of attention – she willingly jumped from the frying pan into the fire.
     She had no frame of reference for a Creator God who had cared for her since before she was born. No one taught her that the quiet whisper of uneasiness she felt was a gift from God, calling out to her the good news of a better way to love. She didn’t know that a Higher Power had wonderful intentions for her life. My friend in the coffee house did the best she could trying to avoid making the same mistakes she’d seen her family make. She didn’t ask others for help or explore other options for how to live and love. Frankly, none of that even occurred to her. She believed that it was her job to figure it out. Can you relate to my friend?

• “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11
• Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God - this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is - his good, pleasing and perfect will. Romans 12:1-2 NIV

1. I wonder how you feel about your life. Are you optimistic or fatalistic? Do you feel hopeful or hopeless? What’s working, and what’s “not quite working” in your love life?

     My friend failed to heed the early warning signs and respond appropriately. Hindsight is 20/20 and with the perfect clarity that only hindsight can bring, my friend wishes she had dumped this guy after date number three. But she didn’t. If she doesn’t learn how to ditch principle #1, she’s destined to repeat this mistake again. The blessing in this story is that she accepted her part in the problem, and was willing to get on with finding a solution.

2. How have you experienced Lousy Loving Principle #1? Write down some examples of that principle lived out in your life.

     Don’t lie to one another. You’re done with that old life. It’s like a filthy set of ill-fitting clothes you’ve stripped off and put in the fire. Now you’re dressed in a new wardrobe. Every item of your new way of life is custom-made by the Creator, with his label on it. All the old fashions are now obsolete. Words like Jewish and non-Jewish, religious and irreligious, insider and outsider, uncivilized and uncouth, slave and free, mean nothing. From now on everyone is defined by Christ, everyone is included in Christ.
     So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It’s your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it.
     Let the peace of Christ keep you in tune with each other, in step with each other. None of this going off and doing your own thing. And cultivate thankfulness. Let the Word of Christ—the Message—have the run of the house. Give it plenty of room in your lives. Instruct and direct one another using good common sense. And sing, sing your hearts out to God! Let every detail in your lives—words, actions, whatever—be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way. Colossians 3:9-17

3. Are you willing and ready to accept the challenge of finding God’s solutions for you?

Application

     One of the common threads that ran through our lousy loving story in this section was disrespect. The husband disrespected his wife and violated her personal space with violence. The father and his boys were disrespectful to all of the other pool users. Distracted, I didn’t pay enough attention and disrespected a lady’s right to walk unimpeded. A lady rushed into my dressing room without an invitation.
     Below are some warning signs that you may be in a danger zone of disrespect. I’d recommend that you use this list to check yourself for any indication that you too are practicing Lousy Loving Principle #1. Ask the Holy Spirit to show you how this list might help you identify anything that needs to be addressed in your love life. If you’re disrespecting someone else, stop now. Run hard after a solution; find someone who can help you learn how to love well. If someone else is treating you disrespectfully, pause to prepare, asking God to show you how to lovingly deal with this issue. Find someone to help you sort out your part, and begin formulating a solution. Lousy Loving comes naturally to us; if we want to feel “lucky” in love – we’re going to need some assistance!

Red Flags Of Disrespect

• Jealous and possessive
• Refusal to take “no” for an answer
• Invades personal space
• Allows another to invade their personal space, or the personal space of someone they are responsible for (parent allows another parent to hit their child)
• Failure to encourage growth and new experiences – in self or others
• Holding too tight – not making space for separate interests
• Criticism (even joking)
• Aggressive, intimidating behaviors
• Isolating from others
• Limiting social interactions
• Negativity
• Constant correction
• Rigid and unwillingness to compromise
• Outbursts of anger
• Unrealistic expectations
• Demand for perfection
• Problems named but never solved
• Problems never named – denial
• Lack of support among family members
• Conflict is the norm
• Lack of joy and acceptance within the family

* 2 Thessalonians 2:10, The Message