Complacency

Complacency, here is what I am feeling.  I have been single for a little while now, and almost happy about it.  I enjoyed the life of un-attachment; I reveled in the illusion of total control over my little life.  As I was walking home from the library tonight, a little in a daze and my mind full of acetal anhydride and other silly chemicals dancing around my brain.  I came upon a realization, a grain of truth if you will.  I was playing back past relationships in my head, I realized that part of what I enjoyed about the relationship was the chase, the hunt, and the all out pursuit.  It was a challenge, it did not matter how much they did or did not want my affections.  Once the challenge was over I felt almost a let down from it.  I guess that is a lot like the “search for the golden hared woman” out of Wild at Heart, you see someone across the room, you pursue until you find that she is not quite the perfect beauty you thought she was, than on to the next. 
            I do not like the idea of comparing myself to that kind of attitude or actions.  It seems so negative and just downright mean.  Sometimes the truth hurts.  What I was feeling was a little different in that the change was not in her but in me.  Once the relationship was well established, she no longer demanded the effort, so I no longer gave it. 
As soon as this thought process, processed, an answer came to me.  In the “perfect” relationship, I would never want to stop trying, or perhaps she would never let me get away with less than 100%.   
The question that I want to ask is “why divorce”, or sometimes “why not divorce”?  Have you looked around the Christian bookstore lately?  There is no shortage of books that tell you how to get the right person for example “How to avoid Mr. Wrong” or the ever popular “How to find Mr. Right”.  I think that these two are about my favorite.  How much do these people actually know, how much of this junk is for me and how much is not.  There has to be something going on, books get published just to contradict the last book of a different author.  This is almost like school were big-brained people publish papers and other big-brained people read the paper with the intention of going out and disproving them.  All this has left me a little confused, puzzled and even perplexed about who to believe and who to disregard. 
All this point specific advice and still Christian divorce rates are about the same as the national average.  Are we just not reading what we should, are they not telling us what we need to hear.  Perhaps something entirely different, look at the attitude of most Americans, there is a level of complacency, laziness, and dispassion that is unsurpassed in history.  From needing escalators to move us up and down stairs, to needing motorized wheel chairs for people who are to fat to walk.  Lets face it we are just as lazy as we can be in our daily lives.  We are thinking  
 Complacency = A feeling of contentment or self-satisfaction, especially when coupled with an unawareness of danger, trouble, or controversy.  Not too many people go into marriage with the idea of breaking it up after a couple years of effort.  Perhaps people enter this idea of marriage being passionate about the other person, soon the realization that the other person is just that, a person sinks in and the newness wares off.  Than it is back to the lazy old self of not caring, not loving, not helping the other person, and all you are left with are two people who have to live together, and hate every second of it. 
So I guess that I am worried about my history and pattern of complacency, and where that might lead me in my life.  On the positive side, realizing the problem is the first step in the solution.

 

-“Be on your guard, stand firm in the faith, be men of courage, be strong.  Do everything in love”  1cor16:13 (Gena)