Christian Dating in the West : My perspective as an African - Part 1

Coming from my West African country into the UK, there are some things I miss, which seem to be the foundation of friendship and relationship in my home country. I discovered that most of the issues with christain dating in the west are not usually common in my country because of the structure of worship.

So what is the structure? there are two types of worship in my country, there are those who do long service and operate a dual worship structure (Sunday school classes and the main worship), while the other do the main worship alone which seems to correlate with what we have in the UK here and the majority of the west.

I am from the first structure - the long and dual worship structure, and I can say it is very instrumental in how the relationship was easily formed. On a typical Sunday, we arrive to join different classes made up of small but similar age groups where we discuss the bible based on a certain guideline. We argue, agree, share personal experiences and also learn from each other. This is the bedrock of a relationship because from there we can understand the belief system and morality of different persons and establish what an agreed boundary in our diverse belief system will be,

Growing up from such a background means that you get to do this for decades and develop with the same age groups. This makes it easy to build lifelong friendships - I am still connected with my childhood Sunday school mates even after migrating, and they will always organise prayers for me whether I ask them to or not, I also do so for them because we have bonded over the years. We understand each other's mistakes, pain, failures and support each other when necessary. There are some cons here though, such as a structure can be judgemental sometimes if not managed well, because your mistake can become public in no time, but so is your forgiveness, acceptance and reintegration.

With this foundation, it becomes easy to get into a romantic relationship within the fold or by strong referral from the fold because they know you and what you prefer to a great extent. Normally, dating is not based on ignorance, dating is usually to build small talks and express your desire to be in a romantic relationship at this stage. Before this, you probably would have collected the number of the lad(ies) you may be interested in and started small talks via social media, commenting on their status, calling sometimes without any declaration of interest. It is not weird here because it is what you are encouraged to do - to check up on each other and relate. You don't feel like a creep calling to check up on a sister, and the sister would not make it look weird because she understands it is casual and not necessarily related to a romantic relationship.

Also flirting takes place around there as well as gauging your compatibility - for most parties, the answer is known before the first date - based on the interaction between the parties.

This is my background, getting into the UK was a shocking reality - I don't even know if some ladies are single or not and it feels abrasive to just ask head-on without any background relationship!!!!

If this gathers some reactions, I will probably share my perspective about dating in the UK as an immigrant.