Emotional Purity, by Heather Arnel Paulsen
The first two or three chapters of this book are fabulous and exactly what I needed to hear. The book talks about the importance, not of sexual purity, although that is important, but of emotional purity. It is about meeting a guy and not immediately tacking his last name onto yours just to see how it sounds, but instead being so grounded in carrying the name of Christ that a guy down here on earth gets to be just a guy, and not your savior from singleness.
After that, I feel that the book goes downhill. My biggest issue is that it is riddled with split infinitives which are a pet peeve of mine, and which cause me to get really distracted. My second biggest issue is that the author seems too perfect, as if she is simply parroting back all the things that she has ever heard in church. She is a too-perfect Christian. I know I'm flawed, and I feel like I could never reach her level of perfect-Christian-ism. My third problem is that the book is geared toward people who are single. It states that single people must remain pure before marriage (and why), and completely leaves out the fact that most single people today have an intermediate step before marriage that is often referred to as dating. There is no explanation as to how to remain emotionally pure (translate: distant) and still go through the dating/engagement process without scaring the person off.
Further, in relating her personal story, the author reveals that she basically skipped the entire dating process and went from meeting her future husband, straight to planning the wedding. This is not a realistic view of relationships today, nor is it something I find myself wanting for my own relationships. I want a guy to prove he's worth my time before I start planning a wedding.
Women as post-it notes. The author makes the argument that the first time you get attached, you stick nicely, but the next time, like a post-it, you will be less likely to stick, and the time after that, if someone were to stick you to a fridge, you'd fall off, especially if one of the surfaces was a dirty surface. (The moral of the story being that you should save yourself emotionally and stick only to the guy you're going to marry.) What the heck? Women are not post-it notes! In all my relationships I fell for the guy just as deep as the last. Yes, it hurts, but so does childbirth. Doesn't mean you should avoid it. What's more important is that as deep as I feel for each guy, I still healed. Healing takes time, and it seems that a lot of Christians would rather give up on dating than take a chance at something wonderful and spend time healing if it doesn't work out. It brings to mind the truth of the old quote, "Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." (Note: I didn't split my infinitives!)
To sum it up, this book basically just states that its ok to be single. Its not really about emotional purity as much as it advertises.
