The Toxic Nature of Counterfeit Love (PART 2)

Continues from previous blog...

Everything accelerated really fast. After meeting that day it didn’t take long for us to profess our undying love for each other. As much as I wanted to be “hard to get” we are older now and we know what we want, and if you’ve got it you feel that there’s no time to play games.  But there’s a thin line between really loving a person and being intoxicated by counterfeit love. This guy had really good intentions for us- to build us a house, to marry me, and to raise children. Here’s another nature of a toxic relationship- everything happens really fast! He wanted us to get married this December even though we didn’t really know each other, and his reason was getting to know someone is a lifelong learning process and you can never get to know a person in a few months or a year. Which is true- but you can look at their habits and fruit in those few months and decide whether you want to spend the rest of your life with their character.

The guy really did good gestures for me like picking me up when I went home for the weekend, taking me to his friends, calling all the time to tell me how he wants to marry me and how he wants me to be the first person he sees every morning and evening. There was no denying of how we felt for each other but it was short lived. Another nature of toxicity in relationships is that the attention and compliments you receive initially fade away really quick. A person strives to get you but fails to employ the same methods to keep you. Once they get you they have a potential (knowingly or unknowingly), of making you feel really worthless and unattractive. Most people stay in such relationships because they are still glued to the compliments they received when they were being pursued hoping the person would change. They fall in love with potential and not proof whilst continuously feeling disappointed by what they’re getting from the relationship.

I honestly believed that this guy was the one I wanted to be with not only because he had convinced me the first time when he came to me that I am his wife, but because he had the attributes that I like in a guy. In matters of sexual purity I expected him as a mature pastor, to take the lead and protect my purity. I expected him to understand where I come from and lead me to where I desire to be (A strong and powerful relationship with God unhindered by sexual immorality). But already I was seeing red-flags when I’d tell him that I’m in bed and he’d say that he wishes he could sneak in. He invited me to sleep over at his place as we spoke over the phone, and that person who came to me with a bible was turning out to be someone different. The flirting sounded good from a boyfriend but that’s not what I needed! So being clouded by emotions and infatuation, I sought counsel from my Godly friends. One told me that the fact that he’s a pastor and asking me to sleep over shows exactly what his intentions are, and I should run! “Which dumb pastor would ask his girlfriend to sleep over?,” he asked. I didn’t really take my friend’s advice, but I laid some ground rules which I sent the guy of what I expected from our relationship like not sleeping over at each other’s places and kissing before marriage, and being alone in a room for long periods of time.

“A prudent man sees danger and takes refuge, but the simple keep going and suffers the consequences”- Proverbs22:3.

A toxic person does not really have your best interest at heart, everything is about them. They don’t take your wishes and concerns seriously. They pretend that they understand but deep- down they are driven by a need to gratify themselves. What they want is not primarily for you, but for them. They want marriage and children for them, so that they can look good in people’s eyes. They want marriage to please themselves and have a trophy wife but not willing to meet the demands of scripture to “love their wives as Christ loves the Church”. Christ strives for the purity of His Church, Christ desires that His Church abides in Truth; Christ listens to His Church when it cries out to Him. From a pastor, that is what I was expecting.