Samuel Brebner

December 20, 2019 By Samuel Brebner

What To Do On Your First 4 Dates With Someone

Dating as a young Catholic can feel like walking a tightrope.

In the modern culture of ‘Netflix and Chill’, you want to be intentional about actually getting to know the person you’re dating. But in a church culture where people start freaking out about finding their soulmate from age 22 onwards, you also want to keep things low pressure.

So, how do you find the balance? How do you date in a way that is both intentional and low-pressure.

Well, here’s how you could do it on your first 4 dates:

DATE 1: GRAB COFFEE TOGETHER

The goal on your first date should be to create a low-pressure opportunity to get to know each other better. Trial and error (and error and error and error) have revealed to me that the ideal setting for accomplishing this aim is getting coffee together.

Why coffee? Well, going out for a 7-course degustation menu at the fanciest restaurant in town isn’t my definition of relaxed and low-pressure. Meeting up at the local café, on the other hand, is perfect.

Besides, you’ve successfully navigated grabbing coffee in everyday life many times before. You can definitely pull this off while in the presence of your potential future soulmate (woah, woah, woah—think low-pressure thoughts!).

DATE 2: SHARE A MEAL

Congrats on making it to Date No.2! You’ve survived the inevitable awkwardness of working out how to greet your date for the first time and things obviously went well enough to merit a second date.

Your goal for this date should still be getting to know each other. Chances are, unless you were good friends prior to dating, you still know very little about the other person.

Even if you were good friends, there can be a lot of value in giving yourselves the chance to get to know each other in this new context. My girlfriend and I had known each other for nine years prior to dating, but on our first few dates, everything felt very new and very different.

At this point, I’m all in favor of taking things up a notch and going out for a meal together. Yes, it’s a more formal setting, but by this point, the two of you should know that you can carry a conversation for more than 30 minutes.

If things continue to go well, you’ll get a chance this evening to answer one of the truly soulmate defining questions: is he or she the type of person willing to share their dessert?

DATE 3: DO AN ACTIVITY

Time to stop staring into the other person’s eyes across a table and actually go do something. You want to find out what this person is like in different situations. Are they adventurous? Competitive? Artistic? A nature-lover? Unequivocally opposed to any form of physical activity?

The best way to find out is to embark on an activity together. Steer clear of going to the movies and instead do something that is going to encourage conversation—visit a museum, go on a hike, or play a round of mini-golf.

DATE 4: DO SOMETHING IMPORTANT TO YOU

As you start to think more about the prospects of a romantic relationship with the other person, Date 5 can be an opportunity to introduce something that is important to one/both of you.

For me, one way I’ve done this date is to meet up one morning and go to Mass together. Not only does this incorporate something important to me (my faith), you can follow it up with the most important meal of the day: brunch.

This is just one example. Others might be volunteering a day together at a local charity because helpings others is important to you, or organizing a group activity where your date can meet some of the important people in your life: your friends.

CONCLUSION

By the end of Date 4, you’ve hopefully got a pretty good idea of whether you can see yourself in a romantic relationship with the other person or not. You’re on your own from here.

For Date 5 and beyond, the best advice I can give is to keep being intentional. Be creative when planning dates, do things you haven’t done before and look to create opportunities where the two of you can get to know each other better.

Finally, don’t stop dating. I’ve been with my girlfriend for over a year and we still look forward to date nights every week. I know couples who have been married for 20 years and dating is still an important part of their relationship.

Your first four dates are hopefully just the beginning.

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Samuel Brebner is a Catholic speaker and writer from the sunny shores of New Zealand. He works for Real Talk, a Catholic organization that speaks in high schools across Australia and New Zealand on the topics of love, sex and relationships. He writes to encourage young people to be all that God created them to be. For more of Sam’s writing, visit his blog https://parttimeprophet.com.

May 4, 2017 By Samuel Brebner

Hate the Game

At some point, you’ve probably heard the phrase “Don’t hate the player, hate the game.”

I have. I’ve gotten it from a friend justifying a spontaneous hook up with some guy she barely knew at a party. A couple of times, I’ve heard it from people who made a habit of leading others on, just for the attention. Once, tragically, it was all the explanation a friend could give me right before he cheated on his long-term girlfriend.

So, I figured it was about time I took them up on the offer. This post is about hating the game.

“The game” is hookup culture, the underlying societal pressure that encourages people to have casual hookups on a fairly regular basis. A “hookup” could mean sex, making out, or something in-between. What it definitely means is physical intimacy without commitment.

In his book If You Really Loved Me, Jason Evert noted that the idea kicked off in the 1960’s with the “free love” movement, which assumed that if there were mutual feelings between two people, then they should feel free to have sex. There was just one fatal flaw: the promoters of this so-called sexual revolution had no idea what “freedom” or “love” actually meant.

Like Jason, I absolutely believe that we should be free to do whatever love is calling us to do—provided it really is love that is calling us.

But I don’t think even the players are kidding themselves that “the game” has anything to with love. The guy looking for some company on Tinder at 2am likely wouldn’t say he’s searching for “true love.” People grinding on a dancefloor generally aren’t convinced their soul mate is hiding somewhere amidst the sweaty bodies.

In the past, I think I used hookups like a kind of shield. “The game” was a good way to avoid my deeper fear: that I actually couldn’t handle a lasting relationship. It was also an attempt to find self-worth. I got it into my head that if a lot of people wanted to hook up with me, then it was because I was worth a lot.

In reality, I found the opposite to be true. See, in a way, this kind of sexual “freedom” was just proclaiming myself to be available for free and usually, when something is free, it’s because it doesn’t have any value. So, the longer I lived like this, the less self-worth I had.

Now, I’m not saying that a person who lives like this is worthless. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. Your kisses, your body, and your heart are an infinitely big deal. That’s why its messed up when people act like they aren’t.

See, when we consider hook up culture, it’s really important to think about sex. Writer Frank Sheed said that “modern man practically never thinks about sex.” Players will fantasize about sex, they’ll joke about sex, but they never actually pause to think “What does sex mean? What is its purpose?”

A huge part of sex is vulnerability—imagine if someone looked at your body and instead of taking you into their arms, they laughed at you. Or they took a snapchat to share with their friends. Or they recommended five, 30-minute sessions of high intensity cardio a week. The thought is terrifying, its sickening, and the reason why is because you’re putting it all out there. In that moment, you are totally giving yourself to the other person.

When you give yourself to a person is this way, a bond forms. I’m not just being poetic here. When two people have sex, they release a hormone called oxytocin, which works like a kind of chemical superglue, psychologically bonding the two lovers together. It’s called “making love” for a reason.

Unsurprisingly, breaking this powerful neurological connection often causes a lot of emotional pain. Our bodies, like our hearts, are not made for casual hook ups. This is one of the reasons why Catholics (and a whole bunch of other people) believe in saving sex for marriage. It’s not because physical intimacy is dirty, bad or impure. It’s because sex is good, it’s sacred, and it has the power to bond people together.

Intimacy is meant for so much more than just a “game.”

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Samuel Brebner is an under-graduate, studying theology and law at the University of Auckland. He lives in New Zealand, loves to surf, and hopes to challenge youth to be everything God created them to be. Samuel works part-time with Real Talk, a Catholic organization that speaks in high schools on the topics of sex, relationships and personal identity. For more of Sam’s writing, visit his blog https://parttimeprophet.net/.

April 17, 2017 By Samuel Brebner

Love Is Simple

A couple of years ago I was sitting on a couch, listening to few of my friends discuss the idea of marriage. One of the pair let out a sigh and said, “Is loving only one person for the rest of your life even possible? It just sounds so complicated.”

As far I was concerned, that was my cue to rain down my Catholic viewpoint on the total awesomeness of marriage. But alas, before I got the chance, another friend jumped in and said something that left me totally speechless. “Actually”, he replied, “I think it’s really simple, and that’s why it’s so difficult.”

One of the most well-known bible verses of all time is 1 Corinthians 13:4-7. It goes like this:

“Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

It’s a beautiful passage but it leaves something out, something that had never occurred to me until that conversation 2 years ago. Love is simple.

Now, when I say “love,” I’m talking about more than the warm, fuzzy feeling you get when you’re around that special someone. You know. When you see them time stops. They somehow make you feel confident and nervous at the same time. When they’re around suddenly everything is perfect—not even the imminent decline in the polar bear population due to the gradual melting of the ice caps can bring you down.

While these feelings of attraction are often given the label of “love” I think they are better described as “being in love.” Now obviously these feelings can be pretty amazing—they’ve captured the imaginations of poets, playwrights and sparkly-vampire-fiction-fangirls across the ages. Nonetheless, real love is far more than a spontaneous emotional reaction.

So then, what is love?

To love is to desire the good of the beloved. This is a desire which manifests itself in our thoughts, our words and our actions. Love is not something that just happens. Love is something we do. It’s a decision we make to do what is best for the other person. Love is a choice.

Love finds its simplicity in being absolute. It is all or nothing. If I commit to loving a person “sometimes” then I have not really committed to loving them at all. If love only lasts in a relationship until the feelings fade, then you can be sure it was never really there to begin with. Pope John Paul II puts it like this, “The person who does not decide to love forever will find it very difficult to really love even for one day.”

It’s no surprise then that when we decide not to love, things become complicated. This is often the consequence of choosing lust over love. If love is simple, black-and-white, then lust is 50 shades of grey.

Lust is something we hear a lot about. Billboards are plastered with phrases urging us to “lust” after this burger, this bikini or this BMW. Lust is portrayed as some kind of edgy, uncontrollable desire that we really shouldn’t bother trying to resist. Magazines like Cosmopolitan even offer “lust lessons.”

In reality, lust is about using people. To lust after someone is to treat them like some kind of object for our own pleasure. It is often a lot easier to give in to this desire than it is to authentically love someone. It’s also a pretty sure fire way to mess up your life and your relationships.

Hook ups, friends-with-benefits, and other arrangements based on lust are often put forward as being satisfying and uncomplicated. However, often they are the exact opposite. At times in the past when I was involved in the above, I would constantly find myself caught up in questions like “What is the point of this whole thing?” “What if I want more?” “What if she wants more and I don’t?” “Do either of us really care about each other?”

In contrast, relationships based on love are accompanied by a beautiful clarity. Rather than having this nagging confusion at the back of your mind, there is an assurance that you will both fight to do what is best for the other.

If we’re being honest, I think many of us like “complicated” a whole lot more than we like “simple.” Complicated gives us something to hide behind. It’s much easier for me to say that I can’t attend/give/commit/care when I’ve got the excuse of being busy/stressed/ late/just-not-in-the-right-place-right-now. Simple, on the other hand, can be hard. Simple might require us to be there always, to give everything, to commit anyway or to care unconditionally.

There’s no 12-easy-steps-to-success for loving others. We can only, simply, love.

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April 17, 2017 By Samuel Brebner

One Knight Stand

If chivalry isn’t already dead, then at the very least, it seems to have passed its expiration date.

Gone are the days of the chivalrous knight in his shining armor – a knight who would slay any number of dragons to rescue a beautiful princess. A knights who would pull out a throne for the princess to sit upon during the following banquet, pay the full bill for said banquet and then, at the end of the evening, would walk said princess back to the portcullis of her own castle.

For many men, their reluctance to display chivalrous behavior is linked to a concern that women now view such acts as embarrassing or even insulting.

The notion that chivalry is sexist is a belief subscribed to in many branches of feminism. Chivalry, it is claimed, relies on a gendered premise that women are weak and need protection. Thus, while chivalry might be benevolent (at best), ultimately it just puts women down.

In part, I think this problem with chivalry stems from a reluctance to actively recognize the differences that exist between the sexes. It’s argued that chivalry is unnecessary, because if men and women are equal, then there should be no substantial difference between the way men behave towards women and the way women behave towards men. This kind of thinking confuses equality with sameness. In reality, while men and women are certainly equal in dignity, we are not the same.

One of the most obvious differences is physical strength. A quick glance at a Belarussian female power-lifter would reveal that strength is not the exclusive domain of men, but even so, this trait has always been associated with masculinity.

Strength has been an important aspect of chivalry since the Middle Ages, when knights would swear an oath to defend to their uttermost the weak, the orphan, the widow and the oppressed. Chivalry was fundamentally about men using their strength to serve and protect others.

To be sure, this argument would be a lot easier to make if I was a 6^th century knight driving off hordes of invaders who sought to burn and pillage. These days, there are very few women out there who actually require a man’s physical strength to get a door open or pull out a chair. But there’s a deeper symbolic significance to these acts.

At this point, I want to share a story from the life of Samuel Proctor, a 20^thcentury Christian minister. One day, Proctor was in an elevator and a young woman entered, so he tipped his hat to her. She was offended and responded by asking, ‘What is that supposed to mean?” to which Proctor replied, “Madame, by tipping my hat I was telling you several things. That I would not harm you in any way. That if someone came into this elevator and threatened you, I would defend you. That if you fell ill, I would tend to you and if necessary carry you to safety. I was telling you that even though I am a man and physically stronger than you, I will treat you with both respect and solicitude. But frankly, Madame, it would have taken too much time to tell you all of that; so, instead, I just tipped my hat.

Ultimately, chivalry isn’t about performing certain courteous acts; it’s about a mindset of respect. A man should not perform chivalrous acts for women because he thinks “they can’t do it themselves.” He should perform such acts out of love and service.

This point is particularly important as we seek to address our culture’s huge problem with the objectification of women. Chivalry places a very special emphasis on the way men treat their female counterparts. The chivalrous man is called to uphold the value of women as human persons, not as objects for his pleasure.

To all of my female readers, I think that one of the saddest aspects of the disrespectful behavior some men exhibit towards the opposite sex is that far too many women tolerate it. In a society where this tolerance exists, alongside a widespread male perception that chivalrous acts are offensive, it isn’t surprising that the way men relate to women has degenerated.

However, a woman who sets her standards high will be far more likely to attract men who are willing to meet them. You deserve chivalrous men in your life, men who will respect you and authentically care for you. Don’t give up on that. Don’t settle for less.

And to the male readers: Saint Josemaria Escriva once said, “There is a need for a crusade of manliness and purity to counteract and nullify the savage work of those who think man is a beast. And that crusade is your work.”

Live a life that demonstrates chivalry. Make your stand.

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