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...

Your experience is being defined by those selfish motives...?

Julie: Exactly. The selfishness is casting the same coloring over everything you do, and it's limiting your viewpoint, limiting your spiritual sense. I think, not only is moral purity a cornerstone of relationships but so is unselfishness. It sometimes takes a while to wake up. I dated a very nice guy in high school, but after a couple of years I realized one day we had outgrown the relationship. I knew we should end it, but I was afraid. I had great concern for this other individual; in fact I was frantic. He was so unhappy at the thought of our breaking up. I thought, "How is he going to be able to go on without me? He has no one else; he doesn't even believe in God." I seemed responsible for his happiness. The thought came very distinctly from God, "You trust Me to take care of you; now, trust Me to take care of him." I was comforted and could obey. But months later we got involved again. And we were not really happy or in harmony with each other. Then I got a letter from my grandmother, who knew nothing of what I was going through, and there was one sentence in her letter that said, "Stay close to God." My whole heart responded, "Yes." And that just broke what had kept me chained. I was able to break it off permanently that time.

Interestingly enough, before we had got involved again, he had already felt moved to go see an old acquaintance. After our final breakup he fell in love with her and married her. They've been happily married for a number of years. And I rejoiced over it with all my heart. So you see that God had already fulfilled that promise and had cared for my friend's needs. And I also was cared for. Unexpected new activities, friendships, and opportunities opened up. My life grew more interesting. I think my stand for what was right allowed more substantial, more varied, activities to appear in my life. I learned you can trust God to speak to all the people involved, and to give them what's really going to bless them and lift them into a higher sense of their true identity and individuality.

When it became clear to you to end that relationship, it sounds as if the biggest problem was in still being drawn to it, even though you had already felt, as a result of your prayer, that it was best to do otherwise. Could you explain a little more how you handled this?

Julie: Well, it took me a long time to realize that it was habit that was drawing me back, and loneliness. Also I was clinging to that bit of good I'd experienced because I couldn't see how there could be more good. But a closed fist can't receive. I also didn't realize that I was personalizing the good qualities I saw in my friend instead of realizing they come from God, and God promotes their development. But when my desire to draw closer to God grew stronger, that freed me from the feeling that habit was stronger than I was. The yearning to draw close to God or to express more of His nature is an incredible catalyst.

There's another thought that sometimes ties us to a relationship that isn't best for us, and that's the notion "Well, I know this relationship isn't great, but he or she will change through my influence." Or the feeling that you want to rescue the good you see in someone attractive from degenerating. But it's really always God's influence that rescues and fosters. Realizing that fact is a great support to the good that's expressed in the other individual. But it's not always wise to be in a relationship, in spite of seeing good there. In some instances it could be likened to finding yourself in a burning building. You're not going just to stand there and blandly say, "God is ever present, and so I won't move!" No. If you understand God's ever-presence, that knowledge will guide you to safety. God knows what is right for our progress, and He lets us know.

It gets back to what we were saying in the first part of our interview, about how in Science and Health Mrs. Eddy says, "Spirit, God, gathers unformed thoughts into their proper channels. ..." The mistaken notion that you are ultimately responsible for another's growth is an adulterated, personalized view of what is really God's activity. He "gathers unformed thoughts into their proper channels." God does it, not us.

Julie: Yet we're always responsible for following God's directions. That takes moral strength. It's expressed in obedience to the moral code—the Ten Commandments, premarital and extramarital chastity. Especially when your whole culture may seem to deprive you of support! Morality is the expression of spiritual law governing human life. That's the rock under our feet. And it takes moral strength to follow God's guidance in other ways. I think that simply the desire to express more purity or more obedience or more joy makes room in our thinking for God's molding influence to be felt in our lives and relationships.

If you go to any movie theater, watch almost any television show, or read just about any magazine, it appears as if the benefits from breaking those Ten Commandments are much more than the moral strength and spiritual dividends gained from following them.

Michael: But breaking the Commandments is often done with the motive to improve your physical and emotional ease and does not help you see yourself as a spiritual being, God's idea. Moral failings are connected to a lot of problems. The search for physical and emotional ease in matter can never give you the satisfaction you have when you experience a spiritual healing, when you get a new outlook, when you see beyond what you see with your physical senses. You have to use spiritual sense.

Julie: Material sense is always trying to argue for itself. It puts forward all kinds of arguments in whatever way you are most susceptible, to convince you that it is genuine, that it is legitimate, that it has some sort of fulfillment to offer. The thing is, of course, when you get to the end, you discover it doesn't. You feel empty. And trying to fill up with more matter or more sensation just gets you more emptiness. It's like putting a bunch of zeros next to each other.

What if people have spent a lifetime trying to find fulfillment in that way. Are they worthy to go forward and try it another way?

Julie: Oh, yes, they've always been worthy.

Michael: All the time in which they looked in a different direction, all that time in which they looked in a different direction, all that time they were, in reality, spiritual and loved by God. So they have not lost anything. They just haven't seen it, although this awakening is possible every moment.

Well, what if someone does come to the realization that his or her strength is in the moral code that we've just been talking about? What about the past? Is that person tied to the past?

Julie: No! Because once you glimpse a little bit that Spirit, God, is so much more natural and fulfilling than anything material, and you want to bring that into expression in your life, that helps you to begin to see that whatever you did in the past that was not like spirituality, wasn't really you, wasn't real.

So you think God wasn't keeping score, somehow giving you a permanent black mark?

Julie: Right. Many people in the Bible made mistakes but were able to turn their thinking around and glimpse and live something of their true, spiritual nature in such a way that their experience still blesses us today.

Getting back to marriage, would you say that one of the ways to judge a marriage is whether it blesses others?

Michael: Well, after all, Christ Jesus said, "By their fruits ye shall know them." And our marriage has certainly made us stronger, and that in turn, we feel, has helped us to help our environment—the mental, moral, and physical environment.

Julie: But that's not to say that a marriage doesn't sometimes meet with opposition or face challenges. You can't necessarily judge a marriage by whether your relatives are unhappy about it because they may want your spouse to have more money or a prestigious job or better looks. I think you have to judge it by whether you have the intuition that God is promoting progress. Do you feel God's direction, "This is the way, walk ye in it" (Isa. 30:21)?

Could you tell us one way you can sense that?

Julie: Well, you need to feel that the relationship supports your growth. One thing we noticed when we started dating each other was how well we were praying. I could feel my spiritual perception get sharper. My spiritual growth really took off. I didn't have to justify the relationship to myself, to search or wish for better qualities to be present in it. It expressed spiritual harmony and progress. It already glorified God.

Michael: Emotions were not high; it was always calm. Calm, but never dull! It just felt right.

Editors' note: There are, of course, many individual approaches to dating and establishing happy, progressive relationships. Yet Christian Scientists have discovered that the best basis, as in any human circumstance, is to start with prayer. Prayer is what gives direction to our lives and fulfills us, by establishing in thought and in our hearts, our essential relationship to God. In our realized unity with God as His reflection, His loved child, we discover completeness and a solid sense of worth—whether or not we are dating or have a marriage partner. God remains the constant companion for each of us.