Why I broke up with a Good Man

By Katrina Daroff

When I was in high school and first started exploring the idea of dating, well-meaning youth leaders kept giving me the same advice over and over, look for someone who embodies 1 Corinthians 13:4-7. I was told to look for someone who was patient and kind, someone who did not boast or compete with me. Which turned out to be a very difficult task. Actually, it turned out to be an impossible task. No one lived up to the ideal of love I had been led to believe existed until I was in my thirties and started dating him, a man I had known for a long time but never expected to be interested in me.

            Dating this particular person was exactly like living in a romantic movie, even the moment he called to ask me on a date by telling me he thought I was smart… and fun… and beautiful. He would call me to make plans and gave me time to consider the things that I wanted, he even held my hand when I was having an anxiety attack and always bought me ice cream at the end of a date. He never tried to prove he was smarter than me. He never made me feel bad for not being the cool girl I had come to expect others to want me to be. It was the first time I had dated anyone that even came close to embodying 1 Corinthians 13. It was perfect… except for one thing, he was not a Christian.

            Why does that matter? I am a 35-year-old woman. At this point in my life my dad has started telling me things like, “you should get married soon, you’re looking old,” and the teen girls I mentor tell me they have a boyfriend by saying things like, “I was going to stay single forever, just like you.” This is the age at which we start getting told not to be so picky. A good man who I cared about was offering me romance and respect, so why does it matter that he is not a Christian? After all, he might become a Christian, he was willing to go to church with me when I asked him. Who is to say that he would not eventually heed God’s call, but there was one thought that kept rattling around in my mind for the brief time we dated, a story that does not seem to relate to dating at all; the story of Abraham and Hagar.

            Abraham was a man of God. A man of great faith who God chose to use to create nations. A man who God chose to make a covenant with. He was also a man who lost his faith and tried to make God’s will happen his own way… Or was he? When I read through the story of Abraham and Hagar, I cannot help but notice that Abraham is not the one who loses faith in God’s promise, Sarah does. Sarah trusted her husband and his faith, but from what we know about her she did not have that same faith Abraham did, perhaps because she did not experience God’s presence in the same way and, because of that, she did not believe God could use her to bring about his promise.

It was not Abraham who went to Sarah and asked her for her handmaid to bear a child for them. That is a moment in the story that I never considered until I was trying to decide whether or not to develop a real relationship with a good man who I genuinely cared about.

            As Christians we talk a lot about the concept of being unequally yoked in our faith but the story of Abraham, Hagar, and Sarah illustrates what that actually looks like. To be unequally yoked is to invite doubt. Sarah did not have the same faith as Abraham and she doubted God. That doubt caused Sarah to take matters into her own hands rather than living by faith and caused her to ask Abraham to do something that went against God’s plan and had immeasurable consequences.

            Abraham did what Sarah asked, not because he doubted God, but because he loved Sarah.

            When we become emotionally entwined with someone who does not share our faith, we are not simply opening ourselves up to the argument of how to raise our children or the heart ache of not being able to pray with our partner when things are hard. We are creating a situation where our partner’s lack of faith becomes a chink in our own. We may never lose our faith in what God is doing in our lives, as Abraham certainly never lost his, but we may make a choice because of what our partner wants that will have consequences. 

If I had kept dating that person, it would have probably been good. We would have probably fallen in love and been happy, but there would have also been consequences. Choices I might have made out of love for him instead of devotion to God. I will be the first to admit that it hurts, knowing you've walked away from a relationship that could have been good in the hopes of something you cannot see, but when we trust in God, the hope he gives us is worth waiting for.