The Tower of Babel

Hey Single Friend, 

Welcome to Love Notes! I’m so excited that you’re here. If you’re new: Love Notes are weekly updates from Megan, designed to give you a boost of encouragement and keep you looped in on all of the happenings at The Synchrony Project. These are always written straight from my heart, never with AI.

What’s on Megan’s Mind?

I think we’re all talking past each other. I’ve had the experience lately of posting a reel on social media discussing dating communication tips for men, and receiving a barrage of comments from male viewers about how rude it is for a woman to be advising men to change anything about their behavior. Similarly, I’ve fielded hundreds of questions from women saying something to the effect of, “I thought I was being perfectly reasonable in this interaction, but he ghosted me right after–am I wrong?” It seems like the potential for miscommunication runs wide and deep in our present culture, like a river overflowing its banks and threatening to sweep us away. 

We all probably learned the Genesis story in Sunday school about the Tower of Babel, a structure so mighty that it threatened the very hierarchy of the universe. That is, until the project ground to a halt due to…communication issues.

When you state it like that, it seems almost silly. But if those primordial builders could be deterred from the greatest construction project of their lives by something as small as communication problems, it’s not hard to imagine that modern dating and family-building could be sent off the rails by the same set of issues. 

Here’s how it happens: young women are schooled from a young age about what dating communication should look like, albeit by terrible teachers. Their tutors are often books, movies, television, and people slightly older than they are, as well as the curated, Insta-perfect relationships that exist only on social media. There’s often a void of voices explaining what Godly pursuit of marriage looks like for young women, but plenty of voices warning them of the dangers of stepping outside of their feminine calling or assuming the authority of a man in their family and relationship. The result: they wait for the right combination of direct, emotive, romantic sweet nothings to fall from the lips of an attractive suitor, and in the absence of those words, a dating interaction can feel cold and unsafe. 

Young men learn how to speak to women from watching men around them speak to women. If they don’t have many men around them, they learn what not to say from listening to the women they care about bemoan the men who should have been there. If these young men are lucky, they have pastors, mentors, teachers, or coaches who demonstrate great communication with and about women. However, many young men have almost no template to base their relationships on, not even the worldly, Hallmark-movie templates that their female counterparts use. They feel that their approach is awkward and often misunderstood, and any rejection from the object of their affection feels like a direct affront to who they are trying so hard to be: a man worth loving. To make matters worse, a growing community of angry men with deep emotional wounds is flourishing in online spaces, fueling the flames of each other’s frustrations. 

We all want to build the same things. We all want strong, Apostolic families. We want loving homes, meaningful relationships, rich intimate lives, and unconditional positive regard from our spouses. But our building projects are being dismantled in front of our eyes because we’re talking past each other, trying to communicate expectations in a language the other gender was never trained to understand. 

How do we overcome this? We have to adopt a new language.

For centuries, in hubs of commerce, trade languages and pidgin dialects developed to bridge the gaps in understanding between two groups and allow them to collaborate. They didn't have to be fluent speakers of the other's mother tongue; they just had to understand the significance and nuances behind a key set of shared vocabulary. Just enough depth to see from the other person's perspective and negotiate a fair deal.  We are building a new language for Apostolic dating, day by day, by increasing the level of empathy that men and women are bringing to the dating space. If we all understand the meaning of "values alignment," "preferences," "emotional safety," and other terms you'll hear us repeat ad nauseum in our podcasts (and here, in our Love Notes!) then we can begin to speak to each other in a way that we're more likely to understand. And that’s the first step to building a love that lasts, for all of us. 

Sincerely, and with love, 

–Megan

Resources

If you want to understand more about the expectations placed on men and boys in Western society and the resulting emotional complexities they face, I highly recommend I Don’t Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression, by therapist and researcher Terrance Real. He’s not an Apostolic author, so take his assertions with a grain of Holy Ghost salt. 

Announcements

No new podcast episode for this week--sorry, folks! Our next topic that is queued up (unless something else pops into our notes that we feel like has to take precedent) is "What does it mean to 'feel peace' in a dating relationship?" Stay tuned! And please subscribe on YouTube if you haven't already; it really helps us out.

If you or a female friend are interested in working with me for matchmaking, this is a friendly reminder that we will be re-opening our matching pipeline for new female clients later on this year! You can add your name to the waiting list by visiting https://www.synchronyproject.com/for-her and filling out the form. Please note: there is no seniority to the waiting list; when we re-open for female applicants, everyone will be able to sign up!

Gentlemen: you can get started with matching at any time, for free. Go to https://www.synchronyproject.com/how-it-works to get started.

Pipeline Profile

By the numbers:

• Available women: 153

• Available men: 25

• Matches in progress: 4 (8 people total)

This week was slower for me in terms of matching and communication, as I was out of town for Friday-Monday morning. I'm playing catch up!