She's Not The One

Finding "The One", the baffling lie in Christian doctrines of dating, and why you're probably still single.

I believed the majority of my Christian life, that there was "the one". 

I thought i'd found "the one" several times. I did find one, just not "the one" our of many "the ones". ! I found the wrong "one". 

My first girlfriends last name was Wong. My parents really loved her. My dad used to ask about her multiple times a year up until he passed. I hadn't seen her in years and she had gotten married ten years ago.

My mom used to joke, if we ever talked about her, saying "She was the Wong woman". A play on her last name being Wong, in exchange for the word Wrong. We'd laugh. I'd say, "Yes, she was the Wong woman". But in my mom's heart,  she like my father, always hoped she'd be "the right one".

There were many opportunities available to have made her "the one", for over thirty years following the time she originally broke up with me.  But one thing stood in the way.  God.  Not only God, but also Character flaws I knew I couldn't be happy living with.  I imagine we would have had a lot of fun having sex while that was the highlight of the marriage, but its what would happen after the sex got old, routine and we actually had to talk and depend on each other that concerned me the most.

It was probably around six months' before our relationship ended that we were sitting in the parking of her apartment building in the massive 1974 Newport Chrysler my parents gave me.

We had gone out somewhere and done something, I can't recall what it was, but it wasn't a good experience. In the past, I'd have tried to talk to her about the experience and why it displeased me, but I was just tired. I was tired of trying to communicate with her, only to get shut down. I hated arguing, and arguing was how she expressed herself.  She was rarely wrong in her own thinking and only apologized when she thought I might just walk away.

Even though those arguments almost always resulted in a make-up make out session, it just wasn't enough at that point. I was beginning to dread seeing her, especially after she had pulled away and refused to see me for a few weeks. The only thing that made her come back around is I made a decision not to chase her, pursue her, call her, etc. That's when she started calling me and bugging me.

Our relationship had become much like the volatile relationship i'd observed between she and her older sister.  The two of them lived absent their parents for various reasons. 

After three years of dating,  this "relationship" had more arguments than pleasure. I hated it, I hated how her influence in my life had began changing me.  I didn't grow up in an argumentative household, over time I found i was starting to yell, become defensive, unhappy and discontent and unsettled.

In all sincerity I believed I loved her and wanted to marry her anyway. That would have been a horrible mistake. I was only waiting for a few things to happen before I would propose, we were all ready "pre-engaged" a horrible thing to be, in hindsight. Regardless, I wasn't seeing the things happening in my life, her life of the relationship changing. 

First, I wanted to see her sister who had assumed a parental role in her life, give me her approval. That never happened.

Second, I wanted to feel that she believed in me as a person. That didn't happen

Third, I wanted to hear a "yes" from the Holy Spirit (God) about her. That never came, instead I got a "no".

We were sitting in the car one evening.  Her sister still at work.  Talking.

I opened up about the things on my heart,  that I loved her,  that i was frustrated and tired of arguing, that I felt it was important that we had her sisters blessing for our relationship.

Up until that time,  her sister saw me as a threat to their isolated world of being dependent on each other.  I being a Caucasian and native American Indian, and they being Chinese from Hong Kong.

We had taken a break for a few weeks, her idea, so i'd been praying about all of these concerns on my heart during that time. 

In the past, one of us would play fake peacemaker and we end up making out, only to restart this whole cycle of contention over again. Something was different this time.  

I had only experienced the presence of God a couple of times up to that point,  and nothing like I was experiencing that evening in the car. 

While she were talking about her hopes of a future together and how she wanted to approach it, I was very clearly hearing the Holy Spirit inside of me telling me,  "She's not your wife". 

I wanted to ignore it and blow it off like random thoughts.  The Holy Spirit began reminding me of things she had said, or that I had seen her do that I hadn't ever given second thought about. As those things became clear for the first time that they were deal breakers.  Not because I thought God had some great ministry or special life purpose for me, but because I knew my relationship with God was very different from her perspective of what that meant. Different from how I knew I would live out my life and future relationship with God.

She thought being a Christian was going to church services, singing in the choir and bringing food to potlucks, gossiping about church members in her circle who she was jealous of.  Not my perspective at all.

I kept quiet while sitting in the car letting her talk.  It didn't really honestly matter what she was saying at that point, it was pretty much the same things she'd said other times.  I was listening to the things God was putting on my heart, and it tore me up inside and convicted me.

The Holy Spirit didn't tell me to straight out break up with her, only that she would not be my wife and why. 

So as she finished up talking and sharing, she did something she had done many times before.  I'd call it a hook line to give me hope to want to hang on. But it totally fell flat. Then she pulled close to me and put her arms around me and her head on my chest, same as before, but I was somewhere distant and far away inside, I didn't want to make out, I just wanted to say good night and leave. I didn't even want to kiss her good night.

That really surprised her.  So she pulled away and began asking me what was going on with me, all I could tell her was I'm tired and suggested I needed to go home and get some sleep. 

I had never told her pulled away from an opportunity to make out before, so of course she would be a little confused, maybe a little worried. But I was having a God moment and the presence of God was more appealing, so I told her good night, she kissed me, got out of the car and went up to her apartment. I went home.

I never explained to her what happened that night. God was obviously in it, things shifted that night.  My heart belongs to God first and above anyone or anything else. I knew it was God because everything was being put at risk. My heart and emotions and thoughts were telling me to marry her, my spirit was telling me run.

We had both started attending a church together around that time and decided to meet with the college pastor.  I can't remember if it were my idea or her idea, but we did it anyway.  He met with us separately.  He talked to me first, then to her and when she came out she told me he had told her we should break up.

A week later she broke up with me, and despite knowing in my spirit it was the right thing to do, I didn't want to do it.  I was angry at that college pastor, I was hoping he would have given us his blessing and approval. Its ironic how many times God's spirit leads one way and I want my own way, that never ends up being a happy thing.

We got back together for a short time, and during that time I had a dream about going to Japan as a missionary. I was told to write the dream down. In the dream I saw a Japanese man who said in Japanese, "You have entered into relationship with the Japanese people".  I didn't know any Japanese at the time, so I had to search the words I wrote out the best I could online and then translate it.  

It still amazes me today that I knew no Japanese, but the man in the dream spoke actual Japanese to me that turned out to be really words.

It was a Saturday morning, and I sat out on my back porch in the sun, when suddenly my girlfriend showed up, sat next to me and asked me what I was doing. So I told her I was pondering the dream.  She asked for the details so I told her.  In a second dream that morning I had seen her get engaged to another man, and in another dream I had seen myself standing in an office desk which had a large world map behind it.  A beautiful Japanese woman was standing their with short cropped hair in a navy blue business suit.

The following day Sunday, I was waiting at the elevator at church for a friend to arrive, but before he arrived a man I didn't know to well walked up the stairs behind me and told me, "On the freeway drive to church, I felt like God wanted me to tell you, that He's sending you to Japan".  Then he walked off to the college Sunday school class.  I thought that was interesting.

About 10 minutes later, a woman I kind of knew came up the elevator and as soon as she saw me, she walked up to me and said, "God told me to tell you, He's sending you to Japan".  Then she wandered off to the college call.  This was getting really weird.

Finally, the friend I had been waiting for came up the stairs, which was odd, because he always had come up the elevator before.  He said, "Hey dude, God told me to tell you he's sending you to Japan".

This was really strange, first the dreams, then three people who I hadn't talked with about it tell me God told them I'm going to Japan?  I didn't even like Japanese people at that point, my past experiences with the American ones I knew hadn't been good.

Things ultimately ended with my girlfriend, and in her place God gave me a woman who I can honestly say was my first real friend who was a woman. She became my best friend and though attracted to her, we never took things into a romance.  We enjoyed each others company so much, it was a completely opposite and different experience than with my girlfriend.

Seven years later I went to Japan, the Japanese man in the dream turned out to be the pastor of the church whose English School I would be working with.  The Japanese woman in the dream would turn out to be my second girlfriend who I was short-term engaged with. The last day of my third time in Japan, she had cut her hair, was wearing that navy blue business suit and had met me at my old office where they had put up a big world map in front of a desk.

After returning from Japan the first time, I came across my first girlfriend at a Michaels craft store. She was working there doing flower arrangements.  She took a break and we went next door and had lunch. It was an interesting experience, because seeing her again after eight years it was clear to me again that "She wasn't the one".

She took interest in my having gone to Japan and made a statement about how she could be a missionaries wife. But something about the way she said it felt flat, empty or void of any sincerity. Her only interest felt like it was coming from a woman who wanted to get married and would pretty much at least initially go or do anything to make that happen.

She had to get back to work, so I told her it was nice to see her again, gave her a hug and didn't give any indication of interest.  Didn't give her a phone number, or otherwise.

I saw her several other times over the next two decades, coming across her at a hiking area where she had become the nature center's director.  By that point, if there had been even a little indication of approval from the Holy Spirit about her, I'd probably have pursued her, because I'd been waiting a long time as well, but nope.

I saw her one final time, and a short while later received a marriage announcement card from her with a photo of her and her new husband.  They had gotten married by some strange environmental spiritist by some pyramids somewhere in Mexico where she had visited before.  From what she wrote, it was definitely not a Christian marriage ceremony, but some kind of new age ceremony.   

In some ways it all suddenly made sense.  She'd always been into botany, and what I had seen about her "Christianity" was very vague. She wasn't one of the ones.  As I write this in 2024, I am still single and never married.  She's been married probably about fourteen years now. I am thankful that God kept me from marrying her, even though as I become older some of the skepticism has started to return that I felt when that pastor told us to break up, and the dreams and people telling me I would go to Japan.  I completed all those things thirty+ years ago, and while I did have two girl friends since her, the Holy Spirit told me clearly the same thing about both of them, "She's not the one".

It was my mentor who passed away many years ago now who told me the best advice I have ever received.  First, people have free will.  Though I sometimes find that difficult to resolve against the Holy Spirit saying, "She's not the one". It does make sense. I could of married my first girlfriend after Japan, she would have said yes, but seeing what was exposed later about her involvement into spiritism and the new age, I am thankful I listened to the Holy Spirit.

My mentor also said, "There is not, the one. Instead there are many possible ones".  Again, since we have free will, that would make sense. Unfortunately it took half my life to find someone who would say it.  I'd been raised in multiple Christian churches all with the same mystical indoctrination that God has one specific person, one perfect person, a "the one".  That is such a oppressive burden some churches and their leaders place on single.

In my observation, most of the leaders in churches I've been in leadership in or attended, the mass majority of the married couples met before they asked Jesus into their hearts, before they were involved in a church, many met at college, etc.  Small minority met within a church, and all of the Christian women I have met in churches in California have either had severe emotional or victimization issues, the unrealistic "the one" ideas, or had secular views of requirements for a man they would marry for things like educational level, financial status, housing status, etc.  

Gary Smalley in his book "Love is a decision", which I highly recommend reading before you get engaged, suggests that every morning, every new day, a spouse has to remake the decision to love their spouse.

The Apostle Paul essentially said, "If you want to get married, get married, if you don't want to get married, don't get married".

So ultimately, there is a lot of freedom and free will. The exception is when the Holy Spirit says, "She's not the one", or "He's not the one".  The other exception is that they be "equally yoked".  Equally yoked means they have a relationship with Jesus Christ, are at a similar passion and commitment place in their pursuit of God, have equal dreams and visions.

Other than those two exceptions, you're free to marry who you want, that wants to likewise marry your.