Pre-dating Analysis of Asian Christian Dating

So this article is suppose to be food for thought, arising from yet another late night conversation (and set in my draft box for like a month). Seriously. Why does all the good conversations like to start at 11pm?! But yes. When this theory was developed, it was rather groundshaking for me because if it's true, it means I give crappy advices. That, and I like to write about random stuff, apparently. I'm not saying that most people are like this, just at the least, I'm like this, so it was alot of thinking for me here.

"Nice Guy" Theory of Dating
I once read in an article that examined "nice guys" in dating situations. The article was talk how "nice guys" don't like insisting on things, and rather have the girl take the initiative on things. Now, given that 1) the guy tends to be the initiator and 2) girls can't read minds (hint hint...neither can guys -_-), chances are that nothing will happen. And so the guy gets disappointed, frustrated and angry. Causes a rift in the relationship, all cuz the guy refuses to say anything. Fail. This is why communication is important.

So I thought about this article and realized that it's just a case of communication. With my friends, if I need something, I just ask for it. Isn't that the environment that CCF tries to encourage? So if we can be straightforward with our friends, why not with someone who's suppose to be even closer than friend? On numerous occasions, people have pointed out that Asian guys are non-confrontational (guys words for it) and/or wusses (girls words for it). This increases the chances that asian guys will fall to this situation, and forms the basis of ACD-Backdooring.

Premises of "Asian Christian Dating" (ACD)
So the typical chinese guy are wusses. In this context, I can say that it takes alot of guts to confess and express emotions (especially since traditionalism puts the weight of leadership on the guy. No, the Bible doesn't say anything about it. Bible talks about husbands and wives . A dating couple is no where near a married couple. Go listen to some 722 if you need clarification). But that's how it seems to be. Given that we face the pain of rejection and the stigma of social isolation from the said person (because we totally become a different person once they find out, you know? -_-), why would one willingly walk into a situation like this?

So guys would rather choose not to say anything, and put effort into getting to know the girl first. Why is that...

• The act of confession is a tremendously scary task, with a ride range of possible consequences (positive or negative). At worst, the guy would have lost a (potential) friend. A person that would cause attraction would probably have positive attributes that the guy admired (common interest, physical attraction, personality...read Theories of Interpersonal Attraction), so losing that potential is not cool, even from a strictly platonic point of view.
  
• Given that conservative Christians view dating as "courtship", implying the intent of marriage will be assessed during dating phase. This means that they would not want to make snap judgement on who to date, and only get into a dating relationship if they have a decent idea of how much they want to marry. This means that they would need to know each other sufficiently well. If this can't occur during dating phase (because it would be "too late" by then), it must happen in friendship phase. Dating becomes a method to discuss, share, connect, understand, and perhaps somewhat of a placeholder and declaration of intentions.
  
• We assume that heartbreak due to a breakup is always most painful, and that if we practice sufficient heart guarding, we can prevent the other person from getting into an emotional mess and handle all the thinking and worrying ourselves. The intention is good; these things are there to protect the girl. We like honour and chivalry. This means we continuously engage in a balance between wanting to keep the girl close (so I can get to know her, and she can get to know me) but not too close (to prevent emotional attachment before one is "ready", whatever ready may mean. I will reference 722 here. Or it could be a self-protection mechanism. What if the girl isn't that attractive after all...?). All this is amplified by the fact that traditional Christianly upbringing will tell us that girls are like delicate flowers or something absurd like that, and the weight of relationships and marriage that is placed by the Christian culture.
  

Well. All these sounds pretty good. Why not, right?

Backdoor Hypothesis- possible scenario

1. Acquaintance phase - Boy meets girl. random encounter!
   
2. Friendship phase - Gets to know her, through some given means.
   
3. Attraction phase - Notes enough attributes about the girl to be attracted. I am assuming that the concept of "love at first sight" is ridiculous. Enough said. The guy now has enough reasons to get closer, in the name of "getting to know her better," in order to assess his and her position better. Would this work out? Would this not? External consult, massive praying, endless nights of thinking...all occur at this phase.
• The guy will now suffer from self-serving bias. He will begin to look for hints that the girl reciprocates his emotions. Unless he doesn't think the girl likes him, in which case he will look for hints that she doesn't like him, making life a bit more painful than it has to. Heart-guarding for girls typically sit somewhere in this area.
• The girl is none the wiser. She just sees a guy acquaintance making the effort to get to know her better. As far as she knows, nothing has changed, and the guy is just acting like a good friend. Who doesn't want a good friend?
  
• Given this, chances are, the guy will sit here at this stage for a while. Complacency is a powerful inertial force to overcome. Lets keep it safe. Why not?
4. At some point, he sees enough evidence that she likes him, or he can't hold it in anymore... "the heart wants what it wants!" -> confession event
   
• The girl is absolutely floored. Given that she did not have the same assumptions, she did not consider him in that fashion at all. Off the top of her head, not being prepared for this outcome, her reply is no. Or that she needs time to think about it. But we'll say it's a typical girl...and she says no. Rejection isn't something easily taken, nor delivered, especially between friends.
5. The guy is devastated. He pulls back, because obviously, it'll be too painful to be near her. He now have several options. Ignoring that he just totally confused this friend of his, he can...
• Pretend he never said anything. Push aside some emotions. Attempt to keep the friendship. If he got this far, they should be decent friends by now. Set aside himself for the girl he had pledged to heart-guard. There'll be some adjustment periods, and this process will be long and perhaps a bit ackward, but the two of them would've kept a good friend at the end of the day. Yay. Happy ending. Not quite. Emotional attachments takes a while to overcome, especially if the girl starts to date some other guy.
• Get mad and frustrated. After all, wasn't she responding properly?! Totally thought she liked me back...darn that self-serving bias. Confused? Probably leads isolation...wants recovery time. Fair enough. In the maintime, both people lost a friend. Adjusting to losing a friend is often an emotional process, giving rise to more confusion. Possibilities such as the pressure to date (in order to maintain the friendship) may become a concern.
  

Conflicts

• The people described in these premises have a tendency to date for courtship. That means the process of getting to know each other better has been pushed more more into friendship phase instead of dating phase. Given that some people closely relate courtship with marriage, one logically would want to know the potential partner as well as possible before proposing anything. However, by moving the "get to know" stage into the friendship phase, "dating" sometimes becomes a general acceptance that the couple is married. This is a problem. The attachment, commitment and emotions attached to a married couple cannot be transfered to a dating one..."dating" is not a biblical state. I think that's something people forget often...that dating != married (lack of commitment), that passages like Eph 5 (wife, submit to husbands...) don't apply here. Remember...she is not responsible to the guy. She is responsible to her father.
• The alternatives then, is to date to "get to know" someone. However, point 3 of "Why get to know the girl first" states why this is hypothetically a bad idea. If people just started dating to see how things go, in a closer-knit environment like CCF, breakups tends to lead to ackwardness, people leaving the fellowship, etc. This is why they suggested us not to date classmates, back when we first started Engineering, because we'll see the same set of people day in and day out...

Solutions

There is no real, clear solution. This entry describes a general situation, in a very general way.

The best one can do is probably step in before one suffers from self-serving bias too much. Any given friendship/relationship must be firmly rooted in mutual trust. Thus, by keeping something significant like this from them, in a way, you've told them that you can't trust trust them with this (perhaps you can't, but that's another issue). It is probably a good idea to make sure both people are on the same page (prevent point 3 in "Backdoor"), in trying to figure all this out. Supposely, "knowing is half the battle."

But be ready for the consequences of your actions. Let your yes be yes, and no be no. Consider not pitying the guys you reject, because that'll just make things harder for him on the long run. I believe that if two people want to maintain a friendship badly enough, they can work though anything...hopefully even the ackwardness of a rejection.

What should you have gotten out of this?
No, I'm not saying confess like mad. One should keep in mind of the fact that we suffer from self-serving bias. That if the girl doesn't know what's going on, it is easy for her to write things off as a "brotherly" thing, and thus approach the entire situation with a very different basis. And that something like this is definitely as difficult for you as it is for her.

[Edit] Videos...
So I was just shown a series of Wong Fu shorts that fits somewhere into this general realm of things. It was amusing to watch, and I'm sure many people who'd be reading this would relate, so linking...
Wong Fu - Just a Nice Guy: Part 1 (Problem), 2 (Lesson) and 3 (Risk).