The simplicity of Alex and Cory’s chat really gets to the heart of the matter. The 2 boys lived in a boy’s home. Yes, they saw girls from the girl’s home at regularly schedule times that were supervised, but staff was always watching. Home visit represented freedom for the residents. It was a part of their program and transition back into normal life. Girls are a part of normal life. It’s good that Alex was excited about seeing and talking with girls again. God put that longing for interaction with the opposite sex deep in our hearts. Alex says, “I’m allowed to talk to girls on home visit.” Cory in a very cold, matter of a fact way tells Alex, “Like they would talk to you.”
This video was shot on SD back before HD was common. At that time, people weren’t nearly as concerned about pictures of themselves appearing online. Both of these boys have now grown up. I’ve lost contact with them. I hope they don’t mind me using their chat in my blog.
To this day, I still laugh when I think of their conversation. It’s so innocent and yet at the same time, so reflective of the struggle that many guys face. We have doubts about ourselves. We know we are weak, but we don’t want others to know we are weak because they might reject us. We try to put our best foot forward. Maybe she will talk with me. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t. We learn about ourselves and about girls.
Some guys excel at talking to girls; others don’t. It’s okay. We all have different strengths and weaknesses. Much of society tends to write guys off as lust driven perverts and I suppose there are a lot lust driven perverts out there, but we should aspire to higher ideals. About a week ago, I asked my wife what women are attracted to in men. She told me it’s not what the guy looks like that’s most important. He should be kind and not mean. Women don’t like mean men. She also told me that he should be responsible. The girl wants to know that he will take care of her.
Sometimes guys know this about women and they will pretend to be kind, nice, responsible… to get a girl. It may or may not work, but if he was just pretending there will definitely be problems down the road in their relationship. Our goal should be to treat girls well because they deserve to be treated well. Even when they behave poorly, they have inherent worth and deserve to be treated well. That makes great sense in theory, but putting it into practice is another matter. We have to believe we have something valuable to offer. If we don’t the right kind of healthy girls will see though, and Cory’s word’s, “Like they will talk to you”, will ring true.
Hopefully you will find guy/girl friends that will embrace you where you are on your journey. This can truly be life giving, but at some point you need to grow into the kind of person that is less needy and more life giving for others. If you are married, hopefully the girl who wants to talk to you the most and the one that you long to talk to the most is your wife. If it is not, be careful because you are especially vulnerable. There will be other pretty girls who will want to talk with you and you will want to talk to them. Marriage Intelligence is an excellent book for fixing problems in marriage. We all long for companionship on life’s journey. If we hang in there, keep the faith, and stay in fellowship with brothers and sisters God will bring about restoration. It looks different for different individuals. My wife and I finally enjoy being married. She is the person who sees the good, bad and the ugly of who I am and still loves me. It feels good to be able to say she wants to talk to me and I want to talk to her.
