The Right Person Myth...

As a culture, we crave the concept of love. As a culture, we are driven by a desire to experience lasting relationships. This reality is evidenced by the programs that have dominated television in recent years. Whether it is "The Bachelor"; whether it is "The Bachelorette"; whether it is “This is us”, television is dominated by shows surrounding the theme of experiencing love and lasting relationships. The same can be said for movies and music.  

This is the case because there is something within every human being that desires to love and be loved. You see, human beings are relational beings. All of humanity was created for relationships; we were created for a relationship with God vertically and for relationships with other horizontally. That is why the most painful emotion is loneliness. Loneliness is the most painful emotion because when we are lonely we are outside of what God designed us to be. Our hearts are designed to love and be loved. Our hearts were created to experience lasting relationships. And deep in the core of our beings, we crave love and lasting relationships.

Yet, while our culture craves love and lasting relationships, there is an increasing sense in our culture that love and lasting relationships are unattainable. There is an increasing sense of skepticism that one can truly experience a loving relationship that will last a lifetime. This is especially the case amongst those in the gen x or millennial generations, who have looked on as their families were negatively impacted by the increasing rates of divorce. Those who are in their 40’s or younger have seen the devastation of the decline of healthy, lasting marriages.

As a result, many have come to the conclusion that it is better not to marry than go through the pain and strain that comes from the broken marriages that they have witnessed. So, on the one hand, while people try to avoid the commitment that comes with marriage, on the other hand, they desperately desire to experience a committed relationship with another person that is marked by love. However, while avoiding marriage, those who avoid marriage are unable to avoid the hurt and pain that comes from a relationship that do not last.

So, are lasting relationships no longer possible? Are love and lasting relationships attainable anymore in the fast paced, short attention span culture that we live in today? What chance do singles have when it comes to experiencing a lasting relationship?  

To answer these questions, we are going to spend the next four weeks discovering what the letters that make up the Bible have to say about love and lasting relationships. We are going to discover how we can experience love and lasting relationships. We are going to discover how men and women are to treat one another when it comes to love and lasting relationships. We are going to discover the role that sex has in love and lasting relationships. And we are going to discover what we need to know before we make decisions regarding love and lasting relationships.  

And my hope and prayer is that God would move in our heads, our hearts, and our hands, so that we would be able to experience that love and lasting relationships that God has designed us to experience. In addition to what the letters that make up the Bible have to say on the issue of lasting relationships, this series is influenced by the contributions of two individuals to the discussion of dating and relationships.

The first individual is a man named Chip Ingram, who wrote a great book on the issue of dating and relationships called “Sex 180”. The second individual is a pastor named Andy Stanley, who, also influenced by Chip Ingram, preached a sermon series on the issue of dating and lasting relationships. And much of what we will talk about during this series is influenced by their contributions to the discussion of dating and relationships.

This week, I would like for us to spend our time together addressing and attacking perhaps the most prominent and powerful myth about relationships. This myth is celebrated by our culture and spread by Hollywood. The myth that I would like to address and attack is the right person myth. You see, as far as our culture is concerned, the secret to finding a lasting relationship is to find the right person.

In other words, if you would just find the right person everything else would fall into place. And this myth is the central theme to almost every romantic comedy made in Hollywood. So let’s take a minute and expose the myth of the right person. To help us do that, I just want you to take a minute and think of your favorite romantic comedy movie. Guys, if you are like me and are not into chick flicks, think of the last romantic comedy movie that you were forced to watch. Do you have a movie in mind? Now think of the plot of that movie as we look together at the right person myth.

The first step to love and lasting relationships according to the right person myth is that you have to find the right person. You need to be on the lookout; you need to be on the hunt; you need to be scoping out all the potential candidates. You need to be at the right place at the right time to find the right person. You need to be wearing the right clothes, you need to work out and stay in shape, you need to look and act the right way.  

Then, according to the right person myth, once you find the right person, the second step is to fall in love. For the right person to be the right person, there has to be love there; there has to be that ooey, gooey feeling; you heart just beats faster around them; you can’t stop thinking about them; there just has to be that chemistry. There has to chemistry emotionally. And there has to be chemistry physically. You know that chemistry that you just can’t keep your hands off of one another. There is an uncontrollable passion to be together and to “be together”.

Then, according to the right person myth, after you find the right person, after you fall in love, the third step is to fix your hopes and dreams on that person for fulfillment. Because the right person will meet all of your needs. The right person will be that knight in shining armor that will fill that empty space in your life and satisfy the deepest desires in your life.

But what happens if the person you are with does not meet all your needs and fulfill all the deep desires of your life? Well, according to the right person myth, then you have not found the right person. Who you thought was the right person was really the wrong person. According to the right person myth, the key question becomes “Is he/she the right person for me?”.

And if it was not the right person, then according to the right person myth, the relationship “was just for a season”, “guess it was not the right one”, or “he or she’s not coming through for me”. So, if the relationship does not work out, then you simply go back to step one and begin to search again for the right person. Now, let me ask you this question: Have I just described the plot of the romantic comedy that came to your mind? Is that not the plot of almost every movie from Hollywood? You see, this myth is celebrated by our culture and spread by Hollywood.

But unfortunately, the right person myth is just that, a myth. And the reason why the right person myth is a myth is in the results. Here are some statistics that bear out the utter failure of the right person myth: According to the most current statistics, approximately 46% of marriages end in divorce. In addition, the group entitled “divorced” is the fastest growing segment of the population in the U.S.  Finally, 1/3 of divorced women live below the poverty line.  

Now a natural question that comes to mind is “well Dave, if the right person myth is a myth, then how am I supposed to go about dating so that I can experience a lasting relationship? If the right person myth is wrong, then what is right? Is there an alternative?” If those questions are going through your mind, I have some good news for you. And that good news is that in a section of a letter that is recorded for us in the Bible called the book of Ephesians, we see a man named Paul provide for us an alternative to the right person myth.

Tomorrow, we will look at that alternative…