Choosing to believe

The last few days have been a little difficult for me. Well, actually the last week has been difficult and it probably has to do mostly or all with my self-esteem struggles. When I first came to Korea, and probably before, I wasn't as careful about the settings in which I encountered female students or how many students I met with. This means that sometimes I have been seen in public with only one student which led to all kinds of rumors. I should have learned through all of this but it took the insight of my girlfriend, who is much wiser than me, to come to this realization that I need to change my habits of meeting students one on one, particularly at a restaurant off-campus.

This issue was difficult for me to confront because I have found the most satisfaction in my job by developing relationships with students. I think that part of this is healthy and part of it is unhealthy. Perhaps the healthy part comes from a huge sense of gratitude for my professors who invested in me. On the negative side, it probably had something to do with my need to be affirmed.

After telling Sinae my struggle about this issue of a low self-esteem, which was later complicated by my accountability partner strongly urging me to find a group of guys to meet with as well as students not trying to practice speaking in English at a time when I was emotionally drained, I realized that when I am hurting Sinae is also hurting. That means I need to be even more aware of my own healthy well-being because when I'm not it will cause conflicts between Sinae and I.

With all of this in mind, I made a conscious decision tonight to believe I am a good person. This came after realizing that Sinae really loves me and that if I tell her I don't think I am a good person then in a sense I am calling her a liar or perhaps myself a liar because I am telling her that what she sees is not what she is getting.

As I think more and more about getting married to Sinae, I worry a lot about my habits as far as cleaning and cooking are concerned. Since I didn't grow up with a model of men helping in the kitchen in my immediate family, I am worried that I will slip into those kinds of habits and that Sinae will love me less or find out that she didn't marry the guy she fell in love with. But tonight I decided to make a concerted effort to be the guy that Sinae loves. Interestingly enough, I found that I had more energy tonight after not having to fight the inner struggle about whether or not I am a good person. That of course does not mean I am flawless but at least at my core I am a good person. I'm not sure what that sounds like theologically, but sure there is a sense of goodness even when one is still tainted by Original Sin. I'll save that discussion for a later post since I had an interesting discussion about that with my office-mate today.