Profile September 14, 1992 Issue

Dating and relationships (part two)

with contributions from Julia Schechtman Pabst, Michael Pabst

Editors' note: We often get inquiries about dating, relationships, and marriage. This is a challenging issue in the 1990s, and in response to questions that have been raised by our readers, we recently spoke with a married couple, Julia Schechtman Pabst and Michael Pabst. This is the second part of an interview that began in last week's Sentinel.

Julie, how did you feel a relationship with someone else would be most beneficial to you?

Julie: I didn't hunt for a husband or ask God for one. I trusted that prayer would best show me whether I could bless and be blessed in that sort of bond. But I had been suffering for a number of years from a pernicious sense of loneliness, which had led me to do some things that were pretty dumb. It's helpful to watch your motives, that you don't do something out of selfishness, or because you want to enjoy someone's admiration. Maybe you have two steady boyfriends at one time, or you're stuck in a relationship that's not going anywhere but you continue out of habit, or you sense you shouldn't be in it anymore but you're so afraid of being lonely, of the vacuum that you imagine yawns ahead of you if you should get out of the relationship. Or you might get into one only out of loneliness. Maybe you ignore intuition that says not to get involved, or you don't feel drawn to the person for the right reasons, but you think, "Gee, it's better than nothing." And I've found that those are all motives that need to be uplifted. One thing I discovered is that selfishness is punished. God doesn't punish it; it punishes itself. You're not usually aware at the time that that's what's going on. You're suffering from things, not necessarily major things, but maybe general dissatisfaction, or you're struggling ineffectually with this or that, and you don't make the connection that...

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