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A couple years ago I was in a relationship… I think.

The guy I'd been casually seeing for several months cooked me amazing meals, wore cool shoes, and volunteered at a local homeless ministry. Unfortunately, he also called so infrequently I sometimes wondered if we'd stopped seeing each other and I'd just somehow missed the breakup.

I tried calling him a few times, but always got his voicemail. And it always seemed to take him just as long to return my call as if I'd just waited for him to call me in the first place. Many times I felt like Bridget Jones, circa The Edge of Reason movie, when she checks her answering machine for messages and its stiff, automated voice tells her, "You have no messages, not even from your mother." I think it even calls her a loser. Nothing like getting insulted by your phone. But with each passing call-free day in my own phone face-off, that's what it felt like—an insult.

After many months of sporadic communication and even more sporadic dates, I broached the topic as he and I were hanging out in a coffee shop one night. I voiced my need for more communication. He told me he wasn't ready to be exclusive. We both adjusted our expectations, and things got better for a while. He called more; I expected less. We settled into a syncopated rhythm of occasional fun.

But something gnawed at the back of my brain, a niggling annoyance I couldn't quite put my finger on. The guy went AWOL for a couple weeks, and my frustration set back in. I've always wrestled with the balance between giving a relationship enough time to develop and not sticking around too long. When do little problems pile up enough to warrant "calling it" like emergency room physicians? "Time of death: May 27, 2005. Cause of death: Neglect."

It wasn't until I was having dinner with Shannon, a single female friend who was going through an uncannily similar situation in her own dating life, that things came into focus. When I caught her up on this new relationship, including my frustration over the lack of communication, I finally heard it as if in third person: This guy who'd gotten to know me fairly well over the past several months still preferred to keep his options open instead of giving our relationship an honest try. What else did he need to know about me? Why was trying to have regular communication with him like trying to pull teeth? And, most importantly, why was I putting up with this?

Suddenly it became clear: The problem wasn't too infrequent phone calls but too little self-respect on my part. So in our next phone conversation—two weeks later, I might add—I ended it.

In a post-mortem conversation with a singleton friend a couple days later, I verbally dissected the whys and hows of the relationship's demise. I berated myself for putting up with his lack of presence in the relationship until I blurted out, "I think it's just that for a while he embodied hope."

And there it was. The guy hadn't represented capital-H hope like he was my savior or anything, but hope in something I've longed for for some time now: a lasting relationship moving toward marriage. And walking away from this person, this possibility, meant reconfiguring hope in this arena of my life. Hope for this dream fulfilled would have to shift from a real flesh-and-blood person with a face and a name to a nebulous, nameless, faceless guy who may or may not show up somewhere in my future. Not such an exciting trade. But as I looked at all this relationship was—and wasn't—I knew it was the trade God wanted me to make.

Since walking away from the relationship, I've watched this embodiment-of-hope phenomenon affect several single friends. One, who had denied her hope for a relationship for so long, finally opened her life and heart to a certain someone. And when he failed to be the man of her dreams, she was crushed. Not just because the relationship didn't work out, but because this guy had embodied her hopes and dreams for relationship, companionship, intimacy, and family. Heavy, gut-level stuff—the kind that's tough to give up only to be back at square one.

I also hung out with a guy friend who'd gotten married a few years prior. As he and his wife interacted with one another, I saw the strain and sense of putting up with one another. I knew he hadn't dated much before marrying this woman; she was his first girlfriend. And I knew his feeling that she might be his only hope for marriage had at least partially inspired his proposal—even though she wasn't always kind to him and they're mismatched in many ways.

Driving home that night, I determined to be aware of this phenomenon the next time a romantic prospect came along. To separate the man from the hope. To weigh each for what they are—a person who may or may not be a good match for me, and a dream that, through important and foundational, should be just one of many driving my life. To call on capital-H Hope to carry me through when hope for earthly things shifts and reconfigures and sometimes disappoints.

And never, no matter how pervasive the Christian dating drought may be, to put up with a sub-par dating potential because he gives me a face to envision when I hear love songs or picture my future.

Especially when I start being insulted by my phone.

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