How come so many times when you love someone you feel as if you are in a cage? Wouldn’t it be nice to find someone who could love you with an open embrace like God loves us?

I have a wonderful situation in my life. I have a sweet man who I care for very much and he has said that he cares for me also.

He respects my values and although we are attracted to each other sexually we have not engaged in premarital sex.

We have known each other for close to a year and seem to be dancing in and out of each other’s life. He needed to walk away from the relationship for three months and during that time I started dating a former boyfriend. He also started dating someone else. We kept in touch though because we both still cared for each other.

His relationship ended fairly soon. I was glad, that woman would have made him miserable. My relationship ended after six months. I am thankful for the time I spent trying to make that ex-boyfriend happy. I am more grateful that I realized that the things which I would have had to do to make my ex happy were the very things which made me miserable. It took a lot of prayer to walk away for the second time but I know that it was the right thing to do.

I found that the relationship with this sweet man was vexing me somewhat. He did not call me every night. (Which used to drive me crazy when my ex boyfriend did that.) He did not demand to know what I was doing every spare minute. (If my ex did not know what I was doing he always accused me of cheating on him.) He did not ask me out a lot. (But when he did ask me out we always had a good time.)

I prayed and thought about this a lot and realized that I needed to qualify the relationship with this man. I needed to know what my boundaries were. So we had “the talk.”

We agreed to date but not to be committed. We were not married and we were not going to act as if we were. We were both free to date others but we would still date each other when the desire arose.

It is a bit scary to be in a relationship such as this but it is also a walk of faith. For if I am to be with this man I know it is God and not under his or my control. I believe the reason why this works for us is because we have not become sexually intimate. In other words we have not acted like we are married when we are not married. It makes more sense to me than any other relationship I have had since my divorce.