When I attended Big Christian U. (name changed to protect the etc.), we had an interesting problem.Guys were not asking girls out and... that's it. And when that rare eventuality arose, according to my female friends, a favored line was, "I think God wants us to be together." The favored reaction was an internal dialogue of, "Must get away from the crazy person."

I had one friend who believed that you shouldn't date until you could provide for a wife. And even then you shouldn't date, you should court, by which he meant, ask a girl's father for permission. So dating in college was right out. I had a girl I knew tell me that you should get to know a girl for several months before you asked her out.

I watched countless numbers of my friends hem and haw and "befriend" girls before beginning a tentative relationship that ended in heartbreak. I was called disrespectful for flirting (although the girls in question didn't voice the complaint). We had a speaker in chapel even mention the "not asking out" phenomenon, who suggested that a guy find out a girl's schedule and run into her "accidentally", to much murmurings of "stalker" [Incidentally, the speaker in question was an older gentleman who was a very solid guy otherwise].

When I asked girls out, and they actually went out with me, it seems that most of the time they thought I wanted to be friends. How emasculating is that by the way?

Talking to ministers the answer was always some variation of "God has somebody out there for you." Of course guys often got devastated by breakups thinking that the one God had for them is now gone and they're doomed to a life of loneliness.

The fruits of all of this was, to my view, a madhouse. We all were trying to play a game where the rules were constantly changing. Not that I didn't see some good relationships of course, but the general rule was that nothing went well on purpose. I remember talking with my father about this one evening and his response was that Big Christian U. was some sort of hive of insanity.

There was no standard "societal" procedure to begin a relationship with a girl, and the attempt to introduce one ("courting") seemed, at least to me, to be contrived and disconnected from reality.

In the absence of a structure, the only real solution is to find the "rules" that all forms of male/female interaction have abided by historically. Forms may change, but there are commonalities that stretch across the majority of them. Fundamental principles, that, if known, can help successful relationships with women to begin.

Nearly every society in existence has had some sort of concern with perpetuating itself. Every society has an inherent incentive, if it believes in itself, to ensure that mating goes off without a hitch, families stay together and that cultural values are imparted to the young.

The American church's general answer appears to be summed up in "God has somebody out there for you." Or a set of rules, like the one CD I got from my "courtship" friend entitled "Biblical Rules for Dating" and managed not to quote the Bible a single time. All of this seemed to be code for, "I don't know, and can't really be bothered to find out." Not, of course, to impugn anyone's character, I'm sure it was the best answer they knew, it just wasn't really good enough to actually help.

What I found though is a better answer. One that can actually help. Just ask yourself one question, "Should something this basic have to be so confusing?"