Last updated on October 9, 2020
Question:
I found a crush from an on-line game I play. There’s a virtual partner thing where we become a couple in the game. She is from another country. She and I love to role-play. She shares similar hobbies with me: coffee, webtoons, anime, and k-dramas. She’s Christian, and I wasn’t. But it took some time to accept it.
The problem was a conflict between us, but I managed to fix it by getting her sister’s and a friend of hers approval. I was in the process of converting to her religion, which is Jehovah’s Witness. During one ride from town, my brother who blasts Christian songs, played a depressing one. It made me think of how I will see a friend of mine now? He thinks of me as a brother he wished he had.
At the same time, I wanted to be with her — help all her pains and problems; help her when she is down. She suffers from depression, anemia, asthma, and fibromyalgia. She thinks that I shouldn’t lose my friend, who doesn’t like Christians. She doesn’t like that I’d be causing problems because of her, and she doesn’t think she is worth it. What am I supposed to do? Still, she is my first love and made me learn more Spanish along the way, so I could motivate her not to be sad all the time. She makes funny jokes. She likes being realistic, even I may have fallen into that trap. I loved all the nicknames she gave me. I’ve even promised that I’d pray for her.
Answer:
Let’s be realistic. You like a girl you met online, but you not have met her in person. You know a bit about what she has told you, but you haven’t been able to make your own observations. You haven’t met her friends or her family. In other words, there is potential here, but since people are known to lie, you can’t be sure whether the impressions you have about her are real or not. Time will help, but you’ll need to go and met her if you remain interested.
Becoming a Jehovah’s Witness to impress a girl is a lousy reason. I disagree with the teachings of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, but religion is about what you are confident is true. At the same time, to reject Christianity because a friend doesn’t like Christians is also a poor reason. This should be about what you see to be true and not about the impressions you make on other people. If you decide to become a Christian, and I would urge you to learn about true Christianity from the Bible, then it becomes a part of who you are. Your friends will either accept or reject this reality.
As a comparison, one of these days you will pick a woman to be your wife. You don’t pick a woman because it makes your old girlfriends jealous. You don’t dump a girlfriend because some of your friends don’t like her. You pick a woman because you want to spend the rest of your life with her. When you do get married, you will find that you’ll lose some of your friends because they aren’t interested in the marriage scene and they can’t adapt. But at the same time, you’ll gain new friends.
I know it makes you feel good to be a knight in shining armor rescuing this damsel from the distress of her depression, but this too is a poor reason for dating a girl. Her depression will keep resurfacing. And dating her won’t cure her physical ailments. If you find you love her despite all her problems and you are willing to deal with them for the rest of your life, then you are looking at the situation realistically.
Take this situation slowly. Don’t be in a rush to make this work because there are many reasons why it might not work. But if your love for each other continues to grow, even as you get to know each other better, then you may have something.