Guarding Your Heart

Okay, so I believe I promised to over-analyze this article about “guarding your heart.”  I like it because in some interweb circles, the phrase (and even the concept) of guarding one’s heart is taking a hit, often because people decide it means “be emotionally inaccessible.”

Deborah Fileta writes, “Just like physical intimacy, emotional intimacy is beautiful and binding in the correct context, but can be just as harmful and heartbreaking when it moves too deep, too fast.  Here’s the thing about dating in an emotionally healthy way: It’s important to make sure your emotional relationship is growing proportionally to your level of commitment.”
Yes on so many levels.  The key is the proportionality to the level of commitment.  This is why emotional intimacy of a deep kind is appropriate in certain friendship and family relationships.  These relationships can have a strong level of commitment and an assumption of permanence -- in a way that a dating relationship cannot.  A dating relationship is not meant to last: it is meant to end with engagement and marriage or with a break-up.

So far so good.  But then Fileta moves into concrete advice, and I strongly disagree with her first piece: “Play together... don’t pray together.”  The assumption is the prayer is deeply intimate in a way that suffers no gradation.  I fail to see how a couple could be on a trajectory for a Christian marriage if they do not learn to pray together.  Like physical and emotional intimacy, spiritual intimacy should grow and develop throughout a relationship, which means laying groundwork from the beginning.  So yes, spending time in deep prayer with a person you only started dating might be dangerous emotional territory -- but saying an “Our Father” together at the end of each date can focus the relationship on God in a very intentional way.  And as the relationship grows, the type of prayer can change to reflect where the two of you stand before God.

The second piece of advice is straightforward enough -- “Know When to Open Up and When Not To” -- I just wish Fileta had applied it to prayer as well.  In general, this section of her post could be a concise summary of what is meant by the phrase “guard your heart.”

The third bit of advice wins a “yes-but-no” from me: “Avoid Talking About Commitment Before You’ve Actually Committed.”  Absolutely avoid naming your future children, decorating your future house, and choosing the song for your first dance.  If you’re like me, you’ll think about these things, but it’s healthy to limit those thoughts and especially not to have a conversation as a couple about them.  Those things will come together when that future actually comes about.  That being said, I am an advocate of knowing early on where the other person stands on questions such as marriage, children, career goals, and the trajectory of a dating relationship.  Not in specific terms, but some of these things can be deal breakers, and it is foolish to get into a dating relationship thinking it doesn’t matter if your partner dislikes the institution of marriage or never wants kids -- unless you feel the same way.  And even if it’s not a deal breaker, it is important to know where these major areas of conflict will be.