Dear Pastor Jackson,

I am a fan of your column and really do enjoy reading the answers you give to people’s questions. Pastor, I have a friend who would really like to get your advice but she keeps putting off writing you, so I decided to write you instead. She has been in a relationship with her boyfriend for the last four years and although they have their little problems things are all right. {{more}}

The problem is that her first love lives away and after five or more years of not hearing from him, he recently contacted her. Pastor they have been talking and he even told her that he regretted that they were never really together and that it was destiny that they had hooked up after all this time.

He lives in Canada and now wants her to just drop everything and go meet him. Now she and I have been having it out because although I am not crazy about her present boyfriend, I think it is crazy for her to do what she is thinking about doing. She doesn’t know this guy and what he has been up to in his life but I am afraid that she may very well just do it and follow her dream. How can I help her to think straight?

Hello,

You can’t help her think straight. You can only talk and hope that better sense prevails. It is real romantic to fathom a long lost love interest calling you out of the blue and offering a chance at the romance you did not fulfill in the past; but to me it sounds like your friend may be heading for a bad fall.

The scary thing for me is the fact that she is actually considering such a move after being in a relationship for four years… it might be best for her boyfriend that she really goes because her sense of loyalty and faithfulness are none existent.

Listen, in the end your friend will have to make her own mind up, but I agree with you and in fact I pity her for allowing herself to be so vulnerable.

Whatever she decides… even if she decides not to go when all is said and done, this process has pointed out some real flaws in her concept of relationship and commitment, some serious flaws.

What did the last four years mean to her? Is this an indication of unfulfilment in this relationship? She needs to talk to her current boyfriend and deal with these questions. In my book, she needs to call this foreign love interest and let him know that she is not prepared to live in the past.