How do you know if someone likes you?
Question:
I am a senior in college. There is a girl that I like who just started attending school here whom I am trying to get to know. It seemed she liked me in the beginning, but it seems she doesn't really like me as much now. It seems she is trying to avoid me now. I've tried to be as friendly as possible to her. If I talk to her, she will talk to me. How come she never actually comes and talks to me? How can you really tell if you are driving somebody crazy? I apologize if I drive people crazy, but after that apologizing is a waste of time. I like her, but how can I know whether she likes me or not? I can't really tell.
I am 21 and I don't want to be single for the rest of my life. My last girlfriend really treated me like trash and told me that I was hard to be friends with. She really hurt me. I have never been so hurt in my life. When I attend worship, it seems like only old people actually care about me. The young people treat me like trash. I taught the teen Bible class at my home congregation this summer and they treated me with disrespect. I'm not teaching them anymore if they are going to treat me with disrespect. There was one girl that I told to get out if she wasn't going to listen because she was being very disrespectful. If people are disrespectful to me when I teach a class, I ask them to leave. College professors will do the same thing. I'm not kidding either.
Right now, I am trying to find a spouse. There is no congregation with women my age anywhere. Where and how do you find a spouse? I am feeling very lonely and sad right now. Please help me.
Answer:
I've lost track of how many times I've been told by young men that they are having a hard time finding young Christian women. I can sympathize as I grew up in small congregations and it always seemed that there were far more boys than girls in most of those congregations. What I learned to do was travel frequently to neighboring congregations. If there were meetings going on or a get-together of some sort, I would be there even if I had to drive several hours to make it. While I did, over the years, date a few girls, I did not find the woman that I ended up marrying until I had almost given up. I moved to a state where there happened to be only one single Christian woman my age in the entire state and it turned out that we got along wonderfully.
Do you have some male Christian friends who live in other regions? Ask them to let you know when there is something going on in their area and go visit them for a week or so. While you are there you might just run into someone interesting.
In the case of this one girl whom you are interested in, it appears that the interest is one way. Taking your own description, you say she appears to be avoiding you and only speaks to you when politeness requires it. We can rule out that it is shyness because she was more interested in the beginning and lost interest over time. That does happen. Marriage is a two-way relationship and requires that the man be interested in the woman and the woman be interested in the man. Since that isn't the case here, I would say you need to continue looking.
In regards to whether you are "driving people crazy," I can't answer that question since I don't know you personally. If there are elders at the congregation you attend, it might be a good question to ask one of them. They might be able to give you hints on things you can do differently to get along with other people better. I would also recommend doing personal studies of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon. These books are packed full of information on interacting with people, including what to look for in a spouse.
In regards to the teenage class, again this is something I can fully comment on because I am not able to observe your teaching style. I would say that it is sometimes difficult for a young man, barely out of the teenage years to be seen as an "authority" by those who are only a few years younger. Much depends on the topic. Sometimes just a bit older is seen as being better able to understand. But the fact remains that teenagers can be a hard group to teach. They are just developing the ability to reason well and so they tend to approach subjects with skepticism. It takes a different style to interest teenagers than younger children. Another problem is that you are teaching a class in your home congregation where everyone remembers you as a child. That is also a difficult attitude to overcome. You'll find it easier to teach in other congregations where people are not as familiar with your background. It is the "no prophet is respected in his own town" syndrome.
Teaching isn't always natural, so when you run into problems, it is good to go and talk with one of the elders and ask for pointers. Or, search out past teachers of that same class who were particularly good at it and find out what they did to facilitate learning. One hint for your consideration is that respect is earned because of what you can offer another person. Respect is not something you can demand and receive simply because you demand it.
