Catholic Dating: Occam’s Razor

Since beginning this series a couple of weeks ago, I have received a lot of positive feedback. This has come almost exclusively from the ladies. Well, let’s see how long that lasts… 😉

So far in my response to the question Why doesn’t that nice Catholic boy ask me out?”, I have omitted a rather obvious possible answer: he doesn’t want to.

Occam’s Razor states, broadly speaking, that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. So, if a gentleman doesn’t ask out a lady, the simplest explanation is that he’s not sufficiently motivated to do so. It’s tough, I know, but it’s a legitimate explanation.

On the whole, when someone wants something, he seeks it out. If he doesn’t, then the chances are that he doesn’t really want it enough. So, in general, if a guy really wants to ask a girl out, he will. If he doesn’t, then he won’t.

Friendship to Romance?

Why am I saying this and running the risk of offending my female readers?

I’m bringing this up because in the past when I’ve heard the fairer sex complain about a guy’s lack of romantic advances, I’ve sometimes felt that they were willing to accept any explanation other than the simplest answer. These lamentations have sometimes turned into complicated defenses for a guy’s apparent lack of romantic attention. Could it just be that he didn’t want to be more than a platonic friend?

He's Just Not That Into You


A guy and a girl can get on well as friends but the chemistry might simply be insufficient to motivate the guy to elevate the relationship to a romantic level. In my own life, I’ve had female friends whom I thought were kind, intelligent, funny, beautiful inside and out….yet that hasn’t meant that I’ve automatically wanted to move things to a romantic level. I can think of some whom I’ve really wanted to like in a romantic sense, but after spending some good time together, realized that I was just trying to manufacture feelings that, unfortunately, just weren’t there 🙁

This only becomes a problem if the gentleman’s intentions are not effectively communicated to the lady…

Chaste but not chasing?

I would suggest that problems of this sort are exacerbated in a Christian context because of the prized virtues of charity and chastity. Christians are called to love authentically and purely. This stands in stark contrast to secular society. Jesus calls us to serve and seek the good of others rather than to grasp and be consumed by self-interest. The trouble with loving in this way is that it can look an awful lot like romantic advances…

This misapprehension has got me into a lot of trouble in the past. For example, I remember one time when a female friend had been ill with the flu, so I stopped by with some supplies. These actions were misinterpreted as romantic advances, resulting in a rather awkward conversation a week or two later. A good number of my male friends have run into similar kinds of situations. As a consequence of such experiences, I’m now more careful with things like this (or at least I try to be), although it’s frustrating to have to be so guarded all the time.

Giving too much away

There are a couple more dynamics that I’d like to mention before closing…

We talk a lot about physical purity, but not so much about emotional chastity. As I mentioned above, oftentimes a guy can be completely unaware that one of his female friends has romantic aspirations towards him. Unfortunately, however, sometimes he does know, but he doesn’t handle it appropriately. Sometimes he’ll just keep her dangling, simply because he enjoys the attention. I’m ashamed to admit that I have been guilty of this.

Other times, a guy will “emotionally espouse” himself to a girl. He does this so that he can get from her all the emotional intimacy and support that he would from a girlfriend, but without the hassle of actually having to date her. I’ve heard this referred to before as “The Friendgirl”.

What’s to be done? Ladies…

I would invite the lady to consider the possibility that the reason why that nice Catholic boy hasn’t asked her out is because he doesn’t desire a romantic relationship with her. This isn’t a criticism of her, it may simply be that he doesn’t have any romantic feelings for her. Alternatively, he might just be too dumb to realize how great she is! She shouldn’t be too quick to look for excuses for a guy if he has failed to ask her out.

Additionally, I think it would be unwise to assume automatically that kindness shown towards her by a guy automatically means he is romantically interested. He may simply be trying to be a good friend and a good brother in Christ.

Lastly, I would suggest that she should be on her guard against allowing herself to become “The Friendgirl” I describe above. Quite frankly, she deserves better.

What’s to be done? Gentlemen…

With regards to the gentleman, I think the first issue here is prudence. Be careful. Consider how your actions may be interpreted. In my example above, had I brought some mutual friends with me to drop off the goodies for my sick friend, we most likely would not have had that awkward misunderstanding.

The next major issue, a regular in this series, is communication. Now, personally I hate awkward conversations about feelings (yuck!), but sometimes they just have to be had. Having been on both sides of such unpleasant conversations in the past, I can at least say that it’s always been a great relief afterwards to have cleared the air.

Finally, guys, please consider whether or not you have turned any of your female friends into Friendgirls. If you have, you must stop. Don’t be selfish, you’re hindering her from finding the man who will treat her as she deserves.

The article Catholic Dating: Occam’s Razor first appeared on RestlessPilgrim.net

13 comments

  • Oh my gosh David, my favorite post yet! I alternated between feeling “OUCH” and thinking “AMEN!”, over and over.

    “Sometimes he’ll just keep her dangling, simply because he enjoys the attention…..a guy will “emotionally espouse” himself to a girl. He does this so that he can get from her all the emotional intimacy and support that he would from a girlfriend, but without the hassle of actually having to date her. I’ve heard this referred to before as “The Friendgirl”.”
    — AMEN, a million times over. I confess that I was guilty of this in my 20’s towards men. After some very difficult lessons I learned that this behavior is not Christian, not true friendship, and can cause much pain.

    “I would invite the lady to consider the possibility that the reason why that nice Catholic boy hasn’t asked her out is because he doesn’t desire a romantic relationship with her”
    — Ouch, but AMEN. 🙂

    “I think it would be unwise to assume automatically that kindness shown towards her by a guy automatically means he is romantically interested. He may simply be trying to be a good friend and a good brother in Christ.”
    — Amen, but men and women often speak very different languages. A simple compliment, invitation to an event, body language, etc can all be easily be misinterpreted by both men and women. So, as you suggest, communicate and have that awkward conversation sooner than later!

    p.s. all this offered in my humble opinion, but also from difficult lessons learned. 🙂

  • “Additionally, I think it would be unwise to assume automatically that kindness shown towards her by a guy automatically means he is romantically interested. He may simply be trying to be a good friend and a good brother in Christ.”

    Very true. However, as a wise woman once wrote, “A lady’s imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony, in a moment.” 🙂 We women are blessed (or perhaps cursed?) with the ability to over-analyze everything (I essentially spent every waking hour of my senior year of college — you know, minus time in class, at my two jobs, serving as social chair for the Catholic Student Union and in mass…although if memory serves I was probably thinking about him then, too — parsing out exactly 24 emails and two in-person meetings with a guy I had a crush on…I shudder to think of my silliness at the time), so while you are right in saying men need to take care their actions aren’t misinterpreted, you’re also correct that women have to be realistic, and not see every friendly gesture as some sort of declaration.

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  • Bravo, David! You are delivering on your promise to write–and rather well, I must add. Keep it up!

  • Sometimes I can’t help but to treat and think about these type of situations as a problem to be solved. Like what actions to take and what would its effect be? Say this or do that, how would the person react, what will be the reaction from others, etc. Being very careful with my words and actions.

    There has been times that I have prayed on it, and decided to take no external action but to continue to pray. Deciding to take no action isn’t the same as inaction. If I decided differently, maybe it would have been more fun, but may be not what would have been the best in the long run. Praying for wisdom and insight not only in my daily life, but in whatever may come in the future and how I can affect it.

  • This post was forwarded to me from a friend and I wanted to say, thank you for being so open and honest.

    This is the advice I always give to my girl friends and have to remind myself of frequently. At the end of the day, I want to be pursued. If I expect to be pursued, I should also know that a man is going to want to pursue when he is ready and willing.

    Some women will undoubtedly still have the tendency to think this way, so I think it is crucial that if a woman talks to her girlfriend about a particularly guy who’s just not acting… her friend should be honest. I can recall one of my girl friends calling me out (in a polite way) on how I viewed my frustrating friendship I had with a certain guy. I appreciated her asking me the question, “Has he made an effort to ask you out on a date? Has he called you?” I had to be honest with myself in answering that question. This and other questions like “Have you been initiating the conversations? Have you been initiating the hang outs?” are very important distinctions that some girls can ignore are not realize.

  • David,

    Good post.

    I would just try Occam’s Razor the opposite way: With a few exceptions, notably being called to the priesthood, a Catholic man’s ‘natural vocation’ is to marriage, and thus the super-majority of single young adult Catholic males are going to be looking for a spouse.

    That means that if a Catholic guy is frequently hanging around single women, he is almost certainly on the look out for a potential spouse. Occam’s Razor here says: Let’s not kid ourselves.

    So what’s keeping the guy around if he really isn’t interested? Nothing. He only sticks around because he either is interested in someone or wants maintain the social connections to meet someone. If there are genuinely decent women in his crowd, the main reason why he hasn’t asked a woman out is because he’s worried he cannot provide for a family. He feels inadequate. Otherwise, he’d take that risk of asking out more often.

    There’s no such thing as a single young adult Catholic guy just looking to be friends with lots of women.

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  • Great post David, but I need to comment on the emotional intimacy piece. I also wrote a bit about Manly Modesty (with special focus on the emotional side) and have definitely been down that road before on multiple occasions, but we also need to remember that we are called to be brothers and sisters in Christ and IT IS OK to have serious conversations with our brothers and sisters. I think a huge part of our problem in society and in Catholic dating culture is that we associate any forms of closeness/intimacy with members of the opposite gender as only appropriate in romantic exclusive relationships. That kinda sucks for single people who want to have a heart to heart conversation. I think our culture creates a void of authentic relationships which encourages people rush into bad relationships just so that they have SOMETHING. With smaller and smaller family sizes, there aren’t nearly as many Catholics who have a blood brother AND sister to talk with about things and even if they do, they may or may not be close. I would offer the litmus test that if you would feel comfortable with your actions/ conversations/ relationship with a blood brother/sister, then you are probably acting appropriately.

    That being said, I could not agree more that communication is key. Since I do my best to act as gentleman around women (and in general), I got in the habit of mentioning to women that I saw regularly that I do in fact hold the door, walk closest to the road, offer to lift heavy objects, and generally show deference to all women that I meet. Now that I am engaged, I make sure that my fiancé makes it as a topic of conversation quickly as well. I am not going to stop being a gentleman because it can be mistaken for a romantic advance, but I will do my best to make sure that women know I am acting out of respect instead of romantic interest (and hopefully encourage them to raise the bar).

    AMDG

    • > I think a huge part of our problem in society and in Catholic dating culture is that we associate any forms of closeness/intimacy with members of the opposite gender as only appropriate in romantic exclusive relationships. That kinda sucks for single people who want to have a heart to heart conversation.

      While I agree that it would be nice if this wasn’t an issue, it is. I would therefore say that having such conversations should not be undertaken lightly because it is EXTREMELY easy for such conversations to be misinterpreted.

      As with my “sick friend” example, I would suggest that this is most easily remedied by adding more people. It’s much harder for intentions to be misconstrued when conversations are taken out of the one-on-one setting.

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