Auntie Seraphic & the Melty Smile Admirer

Dear Auntie Seraphic,

I'm in my late 20s. I'm a nurse and loving it! My flatmate knows every Catholic person in town. I go to pretty much every social event that I can and meet new people and am loving life. I, of course, have my woe-is-me searching single days/hours then I snap out of it. It's usually hormone induced and cured with a glass or three of red wine and some chocolate or retail therapy (don't mind being single as long as I have good shoes)!

Now, let me tell you about Mr. Melty Smile.

A bunch of people went out for a late night breakfast after a church concert, and this thirty-something guy with a smile that made me melt leaned over the priest next to me and introduced himself. Turns out he goes to the same Mass and I've met his mom at the local "gin and tonic of good will." The next few times I saw him we had a chat. Then he gave me a usb thing with orthodox sermons downloaded on it which I promptly lost, confessed, got another one, found the first one, returned the second. He's offered me rides...

Now, other boys at church have been trying to set me up with blokes. I told them that I already liked this one--probably a bad idea as one of them decided to tell his now ex-girlfriend who in turn I think told Mr. Melty Smile who now just isn't quite the same after long conversation with aforementioned.

This past weekend I had a party at my place, invited nearly everyone I know here, and about 40 people came, including Mr. Melty Smile. He brought his guitar because I told him that someone else was bringing theirs and at the end of the night he played Spanish guitar music to me . . . Well I was the only one in that corner anyway. At about 10, he abruptly left when his ex-girlfriend came in with her boyfriend, but not without giving me a kiss on the cheek and saying goodbye.

The next day he came up to my sister and me after Mass to say hello and politely refuse my sister's invitation to breakfast . . .

I've read your "Crushing the crush" blog and have been hell bent on getting over him since. Every time Mr. Melty Smile comes into my head, I pray to St. Joe as patron of unrequited love to free me. But then today I re-read and am asking for clarification of whether or not I can crush away. Oh wise Auntie Seraphic, what should my plan of action be??? I'm having drinks on Saturday together with, like, 80 friends. Do I invite Mr. Melty Smile or what?

Melty Smile Admirer

Dear Melty Smile Admirer,

Excellent that you love your job. As a nurse, you serve people and yet make enough money, and that is basically the secret to a happy life: service, but not slavery. And a great flatmate is worth her weight in rubies. It strikes me that you are pretty Seraphic and therefore when a good marriage prospect comes along, you will be able to make your decision to marry him with a free heart, and not from loneliness, desperation, age-panic or any of that bad stuff.

Crushes are painful, and they are like headcolds. They come, some linger on longer and more unpleasantly than expected, and then they go, soon to be replaced by a new one.

Now what to do about this young man, Mr. Melty Smile.

At first the signs looked very good. His leaning across priest to introduce himself was excellent. Little giftie of USB of sermons--also excellent. Rides--very good. You gave him a party invitation--very good, for the closest Old-Fashioned Girls can get to asking chap out on a date is inviting him to a party. Then the ex-girlfriend arrived and he took off.

Crash. That was bad. And it suggests to me that he is not 100% over ex-girfriend. The guy showed what looks like clear interest in you, but the timing may be wrong.

The breakfast thing---I wouldn't sweat that, as he might have been very busy. But on the other hand, he might have been all miserable about the ex-girlfriend.

So I would not do any more invites. He kissed you on the cheek, and he knows you like him enough to invite him to a party. So that should be enough to give any suitor encouragement. Now it is up to him, and you have to wait. Waiting sucks, but this is what you have to do. Do not pursue (and party invites are now pursuing). It could be that he needs to get over ex-girlfriend for a few more months before starting something with you.

My husband, after an inital rash of emails, blog comments, etc, went more or less radio silent for five months. It was because he was dealing with stuff. And then I came to Scotland at the end of September 2008 and met him in person and we fell in love and got married and here I am.

Moral of story: if a man needs some time, he needs some time. So pull back a bit and see if Mr. Melty Smile invites you to some party himself in the next few weeks or months. If he doesn't, he's just not that into you, as they say. Which, although the idea may be sucky now, will be less sucky in March or April when you have met other Melty Smiles or when this one finally has dealt with his Issues.

Grace and peace,

Auntie Seraphic

Dear Auntie Seraphic,

Oh no! I got your advice too late and invited him. He said he couldn't come because of a conflict. There is a church thing he wants to go to. (I knew he was going but I figured I'd ask him anyway.) It may be cancelled though...

Seraphically,
Melty Smile Admirer

Dear MSA,

Okay, back right off this one. Baaaaaack right off. He knows you think well of him now. That's all any interested guy needs to proceed. He might come to your party, but considering that the ex-gf turned up at your last one, he might not.

At any rate, this guy has had enough encouragement to know he can ask you out for a coffee without you laughing at him. So he will if he wants to. If he doesn't, forget him. As I like to remind everybody, I didn't find Mr. Right until I was 37 and he mysteriously came with a flat in a Historical House.

Grace and peace,
Auntie Seraphic

For lots more Auntie Seraphic, go here.

*******
There is an interview with me on the Novalis website! Scroll down while looking to the left, find "Interviews" and when you see a name you recognize (hint: a lady's name), click on it. I mention you guys. Yes, I do!

Girl Time

I believe strongly that while a woman in the West can get along fine in life without a man, she can't get along without getting along with other women.

This belief will be greeted by cries of woe from those female readers who don't feel comfortable in groups of women. They will say, "But I never know what to talk about with women" and "Girls were mean to me in school" and "I'm a tomboy at heart." Frankly, I think these internalized messages are damaging.

As a child, I believed firmly in the tomboy concept. Tomboys were girls who climbed trees and wanted to solve mysteries and looked down on girls who cried when they skinned their knees and were interested in clothes. The tomboy was, in short, someone who had internalized sexist messages about women, rightly rejected them, but wrongly sneered at girls who seemed to fit girly stereotypes. Personally, I found the idea of the Superior Tomboy comforting because I was not popular at all with the girls in elementary school, girls who seemed to fit the girly stereotypes, girls who sneered at my clothes. High school, where I found girls who shared my intellectual interests, was a relief.

When I got my B.A. and a gap-year job as a receptionist, I was horrified by female life in the office. Women in the office talked about babies, husbands, childbirth and recipes. I turned up my nose at this low-brow chat and longed for my M.A. year and intellectual conversation.

But years later, when I was working at another receptionist job, and found myself "down among the women" again, something in me had changed, melted, disappeared. In the file room, floors away from the manager, we laboured away, talking of babies, husbands, childbirth, recipes, diets, horoscopes, and celebrities.

My co-workers had not been to university, but they had very rich emotional lives. Most were also good at their jobs; one was a genius at getting mentally ill people off their meds in the reception room to calm down. The recipes were delicious, and the horoscopes were good for a laugh. I had a tedious job, and it would have been a lot more tedious were it not for these women.

The only woman who was really out of things was a doleful woman from India who talked only of the servants she used to have and who refused, categorically, to carry boxes. She obviously thought she was too good to carry boxes, and from an Indian point of view, as I explained to my co-workers, she was, but this cut no ice with them. They thought she was a snob, and that was that. If I had bored on about my university career, I would have been labelled a snob, and very rightly, too.

I learned a lot from these women that came in very useful when I began my M.Div. Hitherto, I had always gotten along with "girls like me" (i.e. brainy, ambitious and roughly my age). But a year spent with older, less educated women made me appreciate other kinds of women and their gifts. At theology school, I met elderly nuns who could barely spell but had lived lives of so much spiritual richness and adventure, they made my jaw drop. I met nurses who confessed their awe of theological study, even as they nailed sophisticated concepts with startling flashes of insight. I made friends with younger women, too, and admired the ones who were pastoral geniuses as much as the ones who were prize-winning scholars.

When I began my Ph.D. at a place where pastoral studies were firmly divorced from the rest of theology, I missed the pastoral geniuses with my whole heart. I was one of a group of hardworking, steely-minded, intellectual, unmarried, (very probably) frightened women, and it was a year before I made a single female friend. And, believe me, I tried.*

Women breaking into male-dominated fields, like Catholic theology and physics or the academy at all, are often terrified of looking like airheads. We often shut off and reject our softer side, the fun things, the frilly things we don't want our male colleagues to know we care about. I once joked about reading Cosmopolitan in the student lounge; I never dared. And for all I know, this is wise. Career counsellors warn women not to bring baking to the office, not to be the "mom". But I think it can hurt a woman to be too dismissive of those things that most women I have met find interesting: the baby chat, the men chat, the recipes, the fashion mags, the celebrity gossip. These things may not be very important in themselves--the flotsam and jetsam of cultural life--but they create a social glue between women.

What does it afford a woman, if she should have a stellar education, if she cannot look down at a crowded cocktail party and say to the stranger before her, "You know, I really love your shoes"?

*Some points I am duty-bound to make:

1. My classmates were all very nice.
2. Other foreigners did very well there and seemed to fit right in.
3. I may have frightened them with the vehemence of my classroom arguments; I am certain I unnerved some professors.
4. I may have annoyed some by presuming that Catholic PhD students don't regularly commit sins as serious as premarital sexual intercourse or, if they do, that they are sorry. I have a very funny story about that. Well, it's funny NOW.
5. It was the wrong place at the wrong time.

So To Whom Should Men Talk?

Me, I'm a woman's woman. I love men, but to me men are not mates, in the British and Australian sense of the word. My idea of a good time is not going to a bar with all my male pals discussing politics, playing pool, and scoring off points. You will never, ever hear me saying, as some women do, even to other women, "Frankly, I prefer the company of men."

Well, good for you, Suzie Q. Me, until recently I could never get around the "hotness" and "boring" factors. Men were hot, or they were boring. If they were hot, they were distracting. If they were boring, they were boring. Of course, there were always exceptions to my limited rule: my kinsman, some male professors and mentors, some priests, some very young men (here the maternal instinct kicks in), a very few colleagues. Now that I am married, I regard my husband's friends as friends, hairy friends I can't ever borrow clothes from.

I was told, in my undergrad days, by a very flirty and observant actor I was directing in the college play, that I had an invisible electric cow fence around me, keeping people at a distance. Little did he know that my invisible electric cow fence was up so much around him because he was really hot, and that made me nervous. Gord chatted up girls all the time, and girls really liked him, and sex--the archenemy of Nice Catholic Girls--was in the air.

But now I am 39, and I am not afraid of young men anymore, and I finally understand that men are not just scary but scared. So I will turn my attention to the problem that many young men have of not having anyone to talk to about personal stuff.

This is not a universal phenomenon. I live in Scotland, amongst a hairy, warrior race. And Scotland, like England, has a tradition of the Best Mate, or as they say around here, Pal. Englishmen and Scotsmen meet each other all the time for long conversations over pints of beer or ale. For many, the pub is a daily ritual. And for many, this is a daily MALE ritual.

"If you're not married, and you have no girlfriend, who do you talk to about personal stuff?" I asked the hairy warrior in the kitchen. He will be surprised to hear himself so described, but you should see him at the rugby, bellowing out "Flower of Scotland."

"Your best mate," he said. "Your pal."

And I know that in Canada, when utterly flabbergasted by life and women,a university man will turn to his best pal and confess what it is that is weighing so heavily on his mind. And the best pal gropes for helpful words, even if they are only, "I don't know, man. That's crazy."

But in the United States of America, home of the brave, land of the free, there is a curious kind of Stoicism that makes men think that talking is something that women do. Talking is a weakness. Feeling is a weakness. Friendship, even, is a weakness. The most devastating film about Americans I ever saw was The Company of Men. It shows the flip side of Shane, the Lone Ranger, Lucky Luke--all those solitary, heroic cowboy figures. Scotsmen are haunted by pibrochs; American men are haunted by John Wayne.

So to whom should American men talk? And to whom should any man talk if he doesn't have a wife or a best pal? Here is my list:

1. Your pastor. Most Roman Catholic priests are not just priests. They are Single Men. The next time a priest comes to talk to your group, don't ask him if he wishes he could get married. He will just see this as a "Married Priest" question. Ask him how he deals with being a Single Man. Ask him who he talks to when life gets him down or women act crazy. Then listen to the answer.

Meanwhile, I like to joke that in order to learn how to listen as well as a woman, a man has to get an M.Div. When he's not saying Mass, a priest's No. 1 job is to listen to people like you. Meanwhile, the problems of a young man are probably a lot more interesting than the problems of the elderly ladies who flock to him, and I speak as one who hopes to be an elderly lady one day, so no disrespect to elderly ladies.

2. Youth ministers. Nowadays we have youth ministers as well as priests to listen to and counsel young men and women. Make sure you talk to one who has been properly trained. Make sure they have "M.Div." or "S.T.B." or the local pastoral equivalent after their name. And I'd go for one over 30. I would not talk to a "peer minister" if you paid me. I once talked to a peer minister, and it turned out he was my ex-husband's best friend's little brother, and he stared at me with big frightened eyes. In the list of Catholics whose pastoral stupidity tempted me to give up on Catholicism, he is No. 1. So find a professionally trained adult, please.

In Toronto, we have the Office of Catholic Youth. We also have Catholic Family Services. Most dioceses offer Pastoral Services and sometimes even a youth hotline, so have a look and if you're going bonkers, and can't find a priest, try giving them a call.

3. Older male relations. This is a tricky one because we have expectations about the older generation that they so frequently disappoint. My mum is not like Marmee in Little Women (which turns out to be good, since the real Marmee hated Catholics), and your dad is not like Beaver's Dad in Leave it to Beaver. Your dad might even be an aging hippy who has given you bad advice your entire life. But I am relatively sure my dad, who is not an aging hippie, could give my brothers good advice, if pressed. So if you have a great relationship with your dad, your uncle or your granddad, you might want to ask him your overwhelming question, a question which he may have been half-expecting you to ask since you were 13.

If this question is about you fearing you are gay, though, be very, very careful. I'm mentioning this because I know one guy who told his father he was gay, and his father beat him up. For anything having to do with gayness, I would choose your mother first. Of course, it depends on your mother. But if you really are gay (and not just 14 and worried because you really admire your male friend or an older boy or A-Rod), your mother probably knows already. Many mothers are psychic about their children.

4. Popular Girls. No, I am not crazy. I'm talking about your female friend who has a boyfriend or a husband already. Even teenage girls have maternal instincts and can mother a teenage boy a bit. But the ones that always end up doing this are the girls everyone seems to see as "just a friend."

I have too many long-term Single women friends who suffer from being the one whom the cute guy calls to moan about his life, but never the one with whom he falls in love. So don't do that to your non-attached women friends. Call up your married/always-dating female pal instead. The one caveat is that she might tell her husband or boyfriend roughly what you said. You can swear her to secrecy re: boyfriend, but not re: husband. But don't worry about husbands because the one thing a husband is likely to say to your woes is, "Poor bastard", and then he will forget them.

Make sure your gal-pal really doesn't mind counselling you, though, because if she does, she won't tell you. She'll tell her boyfriend, and he'll tell you. Which will suck. Yes, it sucks that so many girls can't just tell you stuff like that to your face. I'm sorry. Anyway, ask: "Martha, I'm freaking out. Do you mind if I bounce this off you?" "Oh gosh, Jimmy, I'm really busy" means "No". Try another gal-pal with a man of her own.

5. Municipal (Youth, etc.) Hotlines. No, they aren't going to be orthodox or understand what you are going through as a Catholic man. (Christian services will understand what you are going through as a Christian man, though.) But they may be good at general advice, like how to talk to girls. I have called up Crisis Hotlines twice in my fraught pre-Seraphic life, and the ladies were very good. The first one was tremendously consoling, and the second one was merely bracing. She explained that I was not being stalked. She told me what stalking was really like, and I was, like, "Oh."

6. Therapists. I visited a therapist until she disclosed that her lover had finally been kicked out of his religious order and dismissed from their college. But before that, she was really helpful. No, I'm serious. She really was. The great thing about therapy is that when you pay someone to listen to you, they have to listen to you. Pick carefully, though. Freud hated Catholics. But there are Catholic and other Christian therapists, so find one who will be sympathetic to your desire either to be or to become sexually abstinent until marriage. Private therapy costs a lot of money, but state-funded therapy rarely give you a choice of therapist. Always be careful whom you let into your head.

I hope this is helpful, boys.

Anger Goggles

It is a cliche that women get sad and men get angry. It is also a cliche that women blame themselves when something goes wrong, and men blame the equipment or other people. (This is why baseball fans shout the cruel taunt, "It's not the bat; it's the batter!") Women internalize their disappointment. Men externalize. Or so it is in Canada and the USA, the two countries I know most about.

Because I began my blogs assuming I was writing for women, I haven't thought too terribly much about how men approach Singleness. For one thing, young men are not under the same pressure to marry. They can have children, for example, up to half an hour after they are dead. And they are not under the same social constraints as women, since they can actively seek spouses without anyone suggesting that this is psychologically unsound, unmanly, etc.

Mary: Hey, Tom! How about coffee?
Tom: Hey, Mary. Sorry, can't do it. Later!
Mary (thinking): Oh, that was stupid of me. Stupid, stupid, stupid! Why didn't I let him approach me first? Maybe I'm too ugly? Maybe he likes blonde girls? Ugh, I hate myself.

Tom: Hey, Sandra! How about coffee?
Sandra: Can't, sorry.
Tom (thinking): ...
Tom sees Fiona.
Tom: Hey, Fiona! How about coffee?
Fiona: Sorry, Tom! Got class now.
Tom (thinking)...
Tom sees Siobhan.
Tom: Hey, Siobhan! How about coffee?
Siobhan: Great! You paying?

Actually, men can take this too far. I once had a downstairs neighbour who chatted up all the waitresses in his favourite bar. He asked one for her phone number, and she wouldn't give it to him. So he asked the next one for her phone number, and she got mad because he had just asked the first girl. And he was annoyed that she was annoyed. As far as he was concerned, since the first girl had said no, it was full speed ahead.

"But they were both in the same place at the same time," I said, exasperated. "The second one would think you were just looking for anybody."

"Hey," said my neighbour. "It's a numbers game."

But then there are men who act the opposite way. They don't even bother trying. Or they sort of try for awhile and then give up. For all I know, there's a guy in New England who will never try again because he met me through a Catholic dating site, drove to Boston to take me to coffee, and discovered he had forgotten his wallet. Ouch. Meanwhile, he had anger issues, as I discovered from subsequent Catholic dating site internet chats, so I quit talking to him completely.

I don't like angry men. They scare me. I'm not Lauren Bacall, surveying angry men coolly through cigarette smoke, knowing I can protect myself with my magic female power. No way. The more advanced part of my brain knows that male frustration is usually a lot more light than heat, but my reptile brain shrieks, "Run away! Run away!" And the prejudices of my reptile brain are reinforced every time an angry Single man shoots up a lot of people or writes his angry screed to the advice columnist: ("I'm a nice guy, how come only the bastards get girls, maybe I should be a bastard too.")

However, I have a husband and a dad and brothers and nephews and male friends, so in honour of them I want to rise above my fear of angry men and try to see beyond the anger to a man's sense of frustration and helplessness. I don't know whether I should use a soothing maternal tone or a bracing drill sergeant's shout. In ministry school, I was taught to listen, not to advise. Sigh. Unlike Michele Fleming, I'm not paid for this.

Well, if asked by men for advice about meeting women, I would say that the first thing a man has got to do is take off his anger goggles. Angry men get blind to their mission. They lose their powers of observation. For example, a man who is angry because women don't talk to him, fails to notice when women are talking to him. A man who is angry because he hasn't met anyone special, fails to notice that he has met three or four women who might be special. A mild example of this would be the male reader who leaves comments in my comm box, is addressed by the nice young Single Catholic women who read my blog, and then does not bother to reply to them.*

The extreme example, and I mean extreme, and I am putting him in a whole different paragraph from my male readers, whom I don't want to insult, is the Health Club shooter. The Health Club shooter was so obsessed with the fact that he hadn't had a girlfriend in 20 years, that he got upset that he was being distracted by a woman who was nice to him from his plan of shooting women in his health club.

Now, yes, the man was probably insane. But I suggest that he drove himself insane. How tragic that he did not take the approach of my happy-go-lucky downstairs neighbour, who cheerfully hit on every woman that moved, in the hopes that eventually he'd be lucky. Like too many men, the HCS seemed to think women were supposed to just fall into his lap.

Bitterness makes Single women unpleasant. Anger makes Single men blind. And I would love to reach over to every angry Single Catholic guy and take his anger goggles off. Searching Single Catholic women go to Catholic events with strong hunter-gatherer instincts. (I still have my radar up when I go to a new parish; I think a lot of young married women are like that. We're just so used to checking out the talent that we can't turn it off.) We surreptitiously scan Catholic crowds for men our age. If we see one who strikes us cute for some private reason (I'm an eyebrow woman myself), we check him for a ring. If he looks at back, we look away because we are afraid of looking like brazen hussies. But then we sneak another look. And the smart man catches the second look and does something about it.

The operative word for female behaviour at Catholic events is surreptitious. Women are subtle. We don't shout "Notice me." If we're dying for men to notice us, we express it through clothes, not words. But religious Catholic girls are in a bind because we want only Nice Catholic men to notice us, and so far there is no outfit, short of a white mantilla, to draw only the eye of a Nice Catholic man.

But men, unfortunately, are not usually as subtle as women. They aren't as quick as we to read faces, gestures, tone, atmosphere. And when they are angry and frustrated, they are slower than ever.

Men like game plans. So here's a game plan, boys. Don't go to Catholic social events for the content. Go for the women. After I wrote "The Spring Roll Guy and Mr. Bargle", some chivalrous woman wrote in furious that I thought the men were just there for the girls. Well, the men should have been there for the girls. If a Single man really wants to hear about "The Role of Catholics in Political Life", he can sit at home and listen to a podcast. And, incidentally, the event I was talking about was a lecture on the "Theology of the Body." Robert F. Kennedy! (This is my new fake swear word.) When my pal Boston Girl went to a T of the B lecture, she wore a tight shirt unbuttoned down to there.

And a Single man at a Catholic event should engage. If there's a break, ask the girl next to you if you can get her something from the buffet. Ask if you can get anyone a coffee. This makes you look like a nice guy. You probably are a nice guy. But how can we tell unless you start doing nice stuff right away?

*If I never answered the people who wrote in my combox, I would not be married today.

American and Irish Distributors

Goodness, poppets, I am not a salesperson at all. I do not understand the inner workings of the publishing industry, the wheelings and the dealings and the goodness knows what.

However, I do understand about the annoyance of shipping costs, especially for students and other poor folk, so I have enquired, and the American distributor for my publisher Novalis is Twenty-third Publications. So far I don't see Seraphic Singles on their list, but perhaps if you all emailed them, demanding it, they would put its photo up, or something.

"Pat": Pat, this here is another email for that Seraphic Singles book.
"Mike": Maybe they are thinking St. Bonaventure, the Seraphic Doctor?
Pat: No, they keep saying something about a cartoon lady with red hair.
Mike: Hmm. Better call up Lauretta at Novalis.

And the Irish distributor for Novalis, whom I imagine covers the UK, too, is Columba. I don't see my book there yet, either, but if you send them an email, they will no doubt get all excited about your 10 quid or 12 euros or whatever the price turns out to be. I would. And I would spend it in a way any Single would approve: paying off loans and buying shoes.

No news yet on other countries. I think the Germans and Poles and other intensely exciting people are holding back, watching the market with beady eyes to see if you all buy the book or not. If you do in sufficient numbers, they might hand their copy of the book to translators. I was about to say cute, male, Catholic translators who would email me for clarifications, but then I remembered that I am married now and don't think like that anymore. Mental habits are hard to break.

Fun Fact: About 50% of readers of "Seraphic Singles the Blog" are Americans.

Cognitive Dissonance?

Update: You can pre-order Seraphic Singles now by way of novalis.ca! Tip: this may be easier over Firefox than over Internet Explorer. The book comes out on March 1!

Okay, so you've met this great Catholic guy. Your friends like him. You like him. You hang out a bit. Then you go for coffee. You both have fun. You hang out some more. Then you end up having dinner. It's fun, too. He calls you every second day. You get together once or twice a week. You're even thinking of taking swing dance class together. Your friends ask, "Has he kissed you yet?" and "Do you think he's the One?"

Meanwhile, you're discerning, and good for you. You're praying about it. You're saying, "God, is this the guy for me? Can I keep seeing this guy? I really like him, so I hope so. Should we be in a relationship? I feel a kind of spark..." And you think God is saying "Yes." Of course, you really WANT God to say "Yes", so... Hmm...

Then the great Catholic guy kisses you at the door, and you tell your housemate, and she high-fives you, and now you have to watch out because your hormones are going wild, and you're really looking forward to your next date, and then he tells you that he's really excited because he's going to Rome that summer as part of his discernment for the priesthood.

Welcome to Catholic life in the 21st century, my little chick-a-dees!

I think I've told you about the girl who believed the Holy Spirit was calling her to marry this friend of hers, "Tom". Tom did not agree. "Cate" was very upset that Tom was so deaf to the call of the Spirit that he did not hear Him calling Tom to marry Cate. Cate was very frustrated that Tom was ruining her vocation to marry him. But then Tom married someone else and had five children, and somewhere in there Cate got married to someone else and had three children.

Discerning your vocation is both A) a process and B) an inside-outside activity. God calls you inside your head, and He also calls you from the community. I suddenly had a big suspicion that I had a vocation to marriage after all when I fell in love with B.A., and then I was confirmed in this vocation when B.A. asked me to marry him, and then I accepted this vocation fully the minute I married B.A. in church, surrounded by approving friends and family. The role you play in the community is not up to just you.

So when you are discerning your vocation, you're never 100% absolutely sure until you are at an altar taking vows. You have to proceed from a position of 50%-80% sure. If you think you might be called to become a Benedictine nun and you've been praying about it, and talking about it, and going through spiritual direction, and you're only 80% sure, 80% is good enough for you to join the Benedictine novitiate. Or so would say Fr Stephen Wang, author of How to Discover your Vocation, which is published by CTS. (I got it from the back of my UK church for ₤1.95. It is excellent, except for ending before getting around to vocations to the Single life.) The novitiate is where you will progress to 90% or where you will discern that you'd feel happier out of the novitiate.

Now when you are 80% sure that the vocation that will bring you the most happiness and fulfillment is marriage, you continue your discernment by praying about it, talking about it, going to spiritual direction and keeping an eye out for someone to marry. And just as people interested in religious life visit religious orders, people interested in married life visit (or date) other people interested in married life.

Dating is, therefore, part of the process of discernment of a vocation to marriage. But it does lead to temptations, just as (I suppose) a visit to an order with a well-stocked liquor cabinet and snob appeal can lead to temptations of another kind. You need a certain amount of inner freedom in order to truly discern God's call, and getting attached too quickly through sexual stuff is the fastest way to wreck your inner freedom. God calls you to be open to other people, but He does not call you to occasions for sin. Nor does He call you to be a scandal for others by being all kissy-kissy in Catholic dorms.

Anyway, if you think you should date a guy, and somewhere along the line it just doesn't feel right, then it should be just like visiting a religious order that doesn't feel right. You might really enjoy your time, and you should leave as friends, but it is not that big a deal. It only becomes a big deal if you fall into sin or make promises you can't keep or just keep hanging out because you don't want to move on. But if you don't move on, you can't hear God's call and you can't find out where (or with whom) you're meant to be. My cardinal rule is, "If he doesn't give you a ring after a year of dating, you're through."

Yes, of course there will be disappointment. Nuns and monks put up with disappointment all the time: they're getting older, the postulants are getting fewer, and lovely young thing after lovely young thing comes, eats, stays a while, and then leaves. Too many who want to stay are bonkers or just a bad fit, and have to be asked to leave.

Meanwhile now-married me was disappointed when I dated some nice guy, and he broke up with me, and many nice guys have been disappointed when I dated them and then broke up with them. It would have been better if I had been a better Catholic and thought of dating not as a social accomplishment proving my worth as a woman but as a way of discerning my vocation and helping male friends discern theirs. There would have been less kissy-kissy and fewer broken hearts.

It could be that I was Single for so long because God wanted me to shape up my ideas. (And it could be that my husband was Single for so long because God wanted him to shape up his ideas, too.) Blogging "Seraphic Singles" and "Still Seraphic" was part of my own process of discernment. It also--and this is crucial--made me stop thinking about my own life and more about the lives of others. I admired famous Single people and acknowledged that many of them were nicer and braver people than I was and that I should be more like them. I read email from Single people who were sadder and lonelier than I was, and I learned to appreciate even more what I already had. I even got to the point where I could honestly stop praying "St. Anne, St. Anne, send me a man" and pray "Lord, Thy will be done." And, to my great surprise, God's will was for me to marry a certain Scotsman we call B.A.

God can do whatever God wills. And your discernment of God's will for you may take many winding paths. Don't get frustrated. Don't blame yourself for chastely dating X, Y and Z any more than a now-Jesuit blames himself for having hung out with the Franciscans, Benedictines and Spiritans first. Your vocation is not absolute until you take vows. Even an 80% devotion to the Single Life is not absolute, unless you take vows of perpetual celibacy. And even as Seraphic Single, I never got to 80% myself.

Update: It's February 1st. Have you decided to which Single friends you're sending Valentine's treats yet? Operation Valentinus is underway!

How Not to Be Crushed by Crushes

Almost everyone gets crushes. What is a crush? A crush is a strong, usually inordinate, attachment to another human being. It is not necessarily sexual. Most twelve-year-old girls who get crushes on older girls either already or eventually get crushes on boys, too. My very first crush object was Speedy Gonzales, the cartoon mouse. My second crush object was a little boy named Richie. Like Speedy Gonzales he was short. He had long eyelashes, too. Strange that I can remember that after 32 years, but there you go.

Crushes are uncomfortable, and if unrequited, they become acutely painful. In an ideal world, you would never get one until you were 26, had an income, got a crush on a cute person at Mass who got an instant crush on you, too. Then, after some shy glances across a crowded parish hall, he/she would come up to you and chat, and eventually ask you for coffee, and then for dinner, and then, after six happy sinfree months, to marry him/her. But this is not an ideal world.

If the adult you has a crush, the best thing to do is to get rid of it as soon as possible. Either turn your crush into courtship or let it go. Let it go onto the breeze. Yes, this IS easier said than done.

Crush into Courtship

If you are a man, you traditionally have more options than women do. If you see a girl, and find her attractive, the most proper thing you can do is find a mutual friend and ask for an introduction. This mutual friend may also be a helpful source of information. He or she might be able to warn you right away if the girl is engaged or almost-engaged or has a lousy reputation for breaking hearts left and right.

This information should not be taken as a challenge but as a caution. Meet the girl regardless, but use your head. Meanwhile, in Catholic and student activities, you can usually skip the formal-introduction-by-a-mutual-friend-stage, and just talk to the girl. Actually listen to what she says to get clues to her character. Charm is deceitful and beauty is fleeting, and go look up the rest in Proverb 30.

If you are a woman, you can do things the old-fashioned way and be safe, or you can do things the feminist way and fall flat on your face. Again, the most proper way to meet someone is to get a mutual friend with insider knowledge to introduce you.

It's less traditional, but you do have the power to go up to a man and say "Hi". In general, a man who is very much attracted to a woman looks at her a few times before deciding if he should go up to her or not. (Keep an eye out for this guy before going up to Mr. Cute Guy You Saw First.) If you go up to a guy and talk to him, and he keeps looking at another woman, forget him. Forget him NOW. But if you are at a party glancing at a man, and he keeps glancing at you, and you like the look of him, smile. This should be encouragement enough. If instead of coming up to you he shyly ducks his head and runs away, well, uh... Maybe he'll screw up some courage later, like when he grows up. Boys seem to take longer to grow up. And how annoying is that?

Both men and women can say, "I'd love to continue this chat over coffee..."

The courting man then adds, "How about Tuesday? What's your number?" The courted woman, if she's NOT interested, can now say "Oh, Tuesday's not good. I'm so booked up right now. I don't know when coffee could happen. I'm so busy. I'll get back to you." (This is "no" in womantalk.) But if she is interested, she can say "Tuesday's bad. Maybe Saturday? Here's my number."

But the courting woman should add, merely, "...sometime. See you!" If the courted man is interested in the courting woman by the end of their little chat, he will ask her for her number/email or look her up on Facebook. And he will say/text "What about that coffee?"


The very worst thing you can do, as a Single person of marriageable age, is do nothing and yet let your crush grow and grow without ever really getting to know the person you have a crush on. Your imagination will build an imaginary person to go with the near-stranger you think you're in love with. And eventually you will either grow angry with this imaginary person, or you will grow angry with the real person for not being the imaginary person in your head. Deliberately feeding an inordinate desire is a sin. Pray for detachment, and don't you dare get angry with an innocent person for your own out-of-control need for him/her to "love" you. Don't beat yourself up, though, either. Go chat with your confessor. He'll probably be nicer to you than you are.

Crush Crushed

If you are not in a position to pursue honest courtship (e.g. being under 18), or the guy/girl you admire is just not appropriate (e.g. a priest, married, on drugs, of poor character, engaged to someone else, twenty years younger or older), the only thing to do is to kill the crush. The three ways I know how to do this are as follows:

1. Get picky.
2. Find someone else.
3. Laugh at it.

1. Getting Picky

Our crushes are usually based on first impressions or just plain old wishful thinking. I adored Richie because he was short and had long eyelashes. But Richie wasn't very nice to me: when I teased him (in a lovestruck kind of way), he said really mean things that hurt my feelings. This proved a good cure.

But more often the people we get crushes on are actually nice, if only in a polite, decent-human-being kind of way. A friend of mine had a crush, when we were 13, on an older altar boy at church. And the way she cured herself was to fixate on something about him she really didn't like: his beaten-up trainers (running shoes). Whenever he came gallumphing down the aisle with crucifix or candle, she forced herself to look at his shoes and thought "Ugh."

But even more than dirty shoes, it is the content of a man or woman's character that can really heal a crush. Some of the men I was maddest about were dead boring. Yak, yak, yak. Me, me, me. Another turned out to be nasty (of the scary, "I love you, you bitch" type of nasty). Once you really force yourself to see what your crush is really like, you are on your way to healing.

To go back to feelings, if being around any man or woman makes you feel really badly, it is a sign to stay away from them. Never mind about "becoming friends."* Stay away. Be polite but reserved. Spare your time and energy for people who are dying to spend time with you, like your parents, or your pals, or that cute person by the punch bowl who keeps sneaking peeks at you. You will not find Mr/Miss Right if you're wasting all your time on Mr/Miss Wrong.

Finally, the whole point to The Rules, which so many people hate, but which contain a lot of sense, is to get women to start admiring the men who admire them and to stop admiring men who don't give a damn. The book helped me; it might help you.

2. Find Someone Else

Most of us long to be loved. It is a little sad. Our warm, generous impulses towards others sometimes mask a need for others to love us. That sucks. Only the greatest saints know that God's love is truly enough. I'm thinking St. Thomas Aquinas; I'm thinking St. Ignatius of Loyola; I'm thinking St. Teresa of Avila. Most of us don't get there in this life. Nope.

Well, anyway, I once had a terrible crush on a seminarian. I felt so bad about it, that I prayed and prayed and prayed to be freed from it. And then I promptly got a crush on someone else. Unfortunately, he was married. So I prayed and prayed and prayed to be freed from that, too. Life is difficult. Have I mentioned this? Anyway, if you are fighting a crush, don't spend hours mooning over the person's picture, listening to sad songs or reading sentimental poetry or sinful (i.e. most contemporary romance) novels. Go hang out with your real friends.

3. Laugh at it

The most embarrassing part of Seraphic Singles for me is the story of my crush on Max the Much Younger. But it was something I could write about with a sense of humour, and I still giggle over it after repeated readings. It was painful to have a crush on Max the Much Younger, but I knew it would be much more painful to have a real relationship with Max the Much Younger. Even if I did manage to squirrel him away into my life, I would have lived a hell of jealousy because of Max's great youth and beauty, a beauty not invisible to other, prettier, and younger girls.

Knowing from experience that crushes come and go, I decided not to bother fighting this one. I wasn't going to follow Max around town or anything, and I certainly wasn't going to ask him out for dinner. I was just going to put up with my crush on Max as if it were a minor, and not entirely unpleasant, illness (like being drunk). How it all ended, I will let you read for yourselves in my book. For now I will just repeat: crushes come and go. Sometimes we are emotionally helpless and the best we can do is to fervently pray, "Dear God, this feeling is too much for me. Please take it away!"

Married people and people in consecrated life also get crushes. But if they have any sense they 1) don't tell 2) don't feed them 3) don't worry. Crushes come and go. Don't make yours into something bigger than it has to be. This too shall pass.


*I think men are the caffeine in the cappuccino of life. They are sexy and fun and life would lack zip without them. I am in love with my husband, and I enjoy spending time with him and his male friends. But for a real heart-to-heart chat fest, for real you-go-girl friendship, for hugs without hesitation, give me a woman friend.