Expert: Griff Ruby - 5/18/2009

Question

     I am an interpreter with the USA army overseas. I may stay here from one to five years. I am making good salary, and I am willing to stay here as long as the company or military keeps me. The Lord have saved my life here in several dangerous occasions, so please ask your churches to continue praying for USA military and the civilians working with them in war zones. This Army base is like a huge prison. I can not go outside alone unless I am with a convoy of troops or in a helicopter with comrades.

    I am almost 34 years old. I have been single all my life. I was always praying to receive some wisdom, guidance, and discernment from God to know how to treat women, and to make some friends, but I never had any women friends.

    John Powel, a theology professor from Loyola University once said: when true love is missing in human life, it is usually because people have either selfishly or timidly kept the doors of their heart locked and barricaded. This is perhaps what was happening with me. I was rejecting women all the time. As much as I needed them and loved them, I also rejected them in the same quantum. I wish if I could consciously accept my fear and my anger and let them go for good. I had several opportunities before, but I did not recognize them. It would be a big loss to not have a romantic bond.

    God blessed me with many things I want like health, traveling, adventures, nice salary, but I wounder if he want to choose a mate and vocation for me, or I have to develop certain skills and discipline myself to earn a poor selfless woman.

Thanks for being a volunteer to accept and answer questions.


Answer
My apologies for the delay.
I really don't know what I can do here, since I have not seen how you are with women, let alone know what inner reasons might drive you to have rejected them and what these rejections might have been like.
It is however my observation that "True love" can be missing from a person's life merely because they have not found the right person.  I was older than you are when I first found the woman that would become my wife.  It just took longer.
However, you do mention that you have been rejecting women, and I think that does have to be looked into.  I know there have been some that I have rejected over the years simply because they had no morals and wouldn't want even to "wait until marriage" let alone show proper discipline and decency in marriage.  Some displayed a "grab-ass" attitude that I have never cared for, and some I could just see some agenda in their eyes, a plan of sorts that didn't involve living happily ever after together.  And still others simply showed themselves to be worthless in the home.
Perhaps some have also been rejecting you?  I know I often was, and the worst part is never being told why.  The person just leaves, or never wants anything to do with to begin with.  Such is life.
One good idea might be to sit down and think carefully what you really would want in a woman.  Try to define the sort of woman you would not reject.  In doing so try to strike a balance between the general desperation approach of being willing to take on just anyone on the one hand, or demanding such stratospheric perfection on the other as to rule out every actual woman who has ever lived.
If you cannot even do that, then this would be something to talk to a base counselor about.
On the other hand, if you can come up with some "reasonable" personal consensus of what you really need and know you should accept in a woman, then the question becomes, Would you even reject this woman though you know you should accept her?  Would your fear and anger (whatever they are about) somehow get in the way of that?  Then again this would be something to talk to a base counselor about.
But if looking inside yourself you see no reason to expect that the right woman would be rejected by you if only you could recognize her as that right woman, then perhaps the problem is merely that you have not found her yet.  In this case, don't be afraid to use the resource of the Internet or pen pal clubs or the like to find who you are looking for.  In many of these venues you can lay out exactly what you need or want in a woman and only those who match that description would be sent to you.  It really is the best way to go.  I know some people seem to think that relationships should just spring up spontaneously without this artifice, and maybe some people really do just get so lucky, but probably not as many as we think.  How many times has someone said to you "we met on an airplane" or "we met in a bar" and what they are not telling you is that this meeting took place only after months or even years of correspondence?
I think I have taken this as far as I can from such a distance and knowing so little about your situation.  I hope this has helped, God bless!