Tosin’s List: Part 3: Desirable Characteristics

HUGE HUGE PROVISO!
Before I publish this post, I want to make it clear that I know that I really, really, have to write a post about my own determination for myself as a wife. I want to be an outstanding wife to an outstanding husband. While being fully human, and imperfect, and flawed, I want to still be the embodiment of all his sweetest and deepest dreams. I know that in a way it cannot come across well if I sit down and spell out my requirements for all that he has to be, without writing the accompanying post about who I want to be! While I am putting this post together, what I will say is this: Trust me baby, I will be so worth it! Waiting to read the post will be worth it! Marrying me will be so worth it! After Jesus I am going to be the best thing that ever happened to you! Trust me! You think it is for nothing that I have been pursuing this God for so long and with such intensity?!!! No baby! My utter determination as a woman and as a wife will be not only to keep a broad smile plastered all over your face but to keep you thanking God and praising God and full of unending joy that He made our paths cross. This is why I have to be so careful about the person I marry. I cannot waste all this effort on just anyone, you know!

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This is one of those spontaneous blog posts…sincerely,it is close to midnight, I have work tomorrow and I know I really should go to bed just now. HOWEVER these thoughts have been humming in my mind, and I would like to express them, to at least draft them out in writing before I forget them!

Desirable Characteristics:
1. Huggie-Wuggie!
I would love a man who expresses love the same way I do, whose “love languages” exactly map on to my own! That is, a man who is tactile and touchy and huggie. Also a man who values spending good quality time together This is quite funny – I’m bursting out laughing as I think of it! I recently saw a photo of a celebrity couple, and the way they were interacting with one another, and the position their bodies formed seemed to be taken straight from a Huggie-Wuggie post, so much so that I almost asked myself whether they had been reading “Huggie-Wuggie”… – ha ha ha! No seriously! SERIOUSLY!!! I actually stared at the photo – ha ha ha! Perhaps that is a little implausible…perhaps! But sincerely, I would LOVE a man who is almost gooey that way. Staring deep into one another’s eyes, holding hands. My “secret” fear is that I would marry a great, sensible Christian man who is way too sensible and focused on holy things to waste time “lovey-doveying” with his wife.

I don’t want to force a man to contort his nature to express this if it is not naturally him. That is why I would LOVE a man who naturally speaks that language, who is all about hugs and touches and snuggles and hoodies! And so many hugs – did I already say that?! Big question that occurs to me just now: would I definitely be able to tell this about him before marriage? Looking around the people I know now, can I easily tell the people who are tactile, if disciplined about touching the opposite sex, versus those who are actually not that tactile? See, I am “touchy” but I keep my hands to myself, obviously at the moment I don’t have anyone who is actually mine to touch. By the grace of God, that will be one of the best things about marriage, finally being able to release my fingers. On the other hand, while I would love this characteristic I know it is not really a necessity or something I can insist on – or is it?! I mean, if an amazing man is right there, who pursues God and prays and is totally sincere and has outstanding character and he and I are going in the same direction – then obviously I am not going to walk away from that, am I? – even if he is a little hugging-challenged! But I might try to discreetly teach him what I know, and I’ll probably find myself praying very hard! Sometimes people talk about being “touchy” with one another as a function of being in love, in that the more in love you are, the more touchy you will be; “they can’t keep their hands off one another”. However, I don’t think I completely agree with that. There might be some truth in it, but I think that some people are just more naturally touchy, in that they express love and intimacy that way – and as shocking as it is to me, some successfully and happily married couples do not particularly value deep emotional interaction or intimacy in their relationships.

A non-drinker
Once again I know I cannot really insist on this in the face of compelling excellence but I had the incredible privilege of growing up in a household where my parents were passionately anti-alcohol. You could almost say that we were religious about it – ha ha ha! My parents actually teach that Jesus did not drink wine, but rather grape juice – ha ha ha! I would not go that far. And yet looking at the destructive effects that alcohol can cause, I can understand why people would be so antagonistic against it, even to the extent of almost changing the Bible. I don’t see any necessary aspects to it (now) – at all. Back in Bible times, as well as being used for drinking and social gatherings, wine was used for medicinal uses, as in the story of the Good Samaritan, and as in Paul’s exhortation to Timothy. Then too they were hampered by lack of technology meaning that they could not produce and store fruit juices the way we can now. So fermentation into alcohol might well have been one of the few options available to them for preserving juices. But in the intervening two thousand years science and technology have jumped ahead so that now we simply don’t have to drink alcohol. We no longer have to use wine for medicine. At social gatherings, we can enjoy a glittering selection of delicious drinks that do not have any alcoholic content at all. This of course does not mean that it is wrong to drink or that it is sinful to drink, rather that it is not necessary in the same way it might have been thousands of years ago. That said, I am not preaching that Jesus drank wine only because it was necessary; for all I know even if He came down to earth in our time He might still have turned water into wine as His first miracle, even at a technologically sophisticated wedding of our generation.

I would prefer to marry someone who did not drink because alcohol is such a temptation. Life has always been stressful, of course. However, in our times not only do we have increased technology but we also have less social cohesion and community spirit. In times gone by people might have shared more stresses and strains of life with their local community, helping to ease the burden of various challenges. In our times however, this community support is just not available in the same way. Due to time constraints that we all face we just do not have the same time available to develop those kind of close friendships where we can unburden ourselves to one another. I think that having less access to community support would increase the temptation to turn to something like alcohol in times of difficulty. If this grows to become a big issue in someone’s life then it invariably causes pain, not only to the individual concerned but to other people around them. With the “help” of alcohol it is so much easier to destroy yourself, if not in a swift instant through something like drink-driving, then perhaps over a long period through health issues caused by heavy drinking, or someone could emotionally destroy themselves through the erosion of their family life and friendships. Or you could destroy someone else’s life and then have to spend the rest of your own life or many years of your life in prison. You know, in my family and culture smoking is also heavily frowned upon. But at least smoking “only” kills you. It does not cause you to become violent, it does not influence you to make stupid decisions, it does not cause you to lose your mental focus or concentration.
Once again drinking (or not) is not something I could insist on. However, I would rather have someone whose life like mine was completely removed from alcohol and any of those implicit threats it brings to family life. Although I cannot really insist on it it is relatively easy to choose to hang around people who don’t drink.