You will inevitably fall in love with him.
Think about it: two relatively inexperienced young people, caught up in each others' arms, facing the uncertain future with heightened spiritual sensitivity and a predetermined expiration date for their relationship. Of course they're going to fight to make it last. Of course every moment (which is one moment closer to the last) is going to feel precious, stolen against time, sweeter than any love song, more magic than any ride on a Persian carpet. And finally, you know they're going to talk about the future - it's humanity's favorite thing to do when nothing about the future can be determined.
So there will be big dreams. There will be glossy ideas. When the boy helps you wash the dishes before going home one night, you'll imagine what it would be like to see him leaning against the counter, dish towel in hand, for the rest of your life. You'll go to sleep dreaming of him in the kitchen with you and four children running around 10 years in the future.
When a mission is coming up - especially when both of you are about to leave, as was my case - the future is so uncertain that anything is possible, and holding on to any kind of daydreamed future is preferable to butting up against a blank one.
You will inevitably cry for missing them.
This isn't necessarily a negative thing. When my first boyfriend left on his mission, I walked inside the house with tears falling down my face, turned on the CD he gave me, packed for college, left the next morning, unpacked, went to classes, celebrated my 19th birthday, and didn't stop crying until just before his first P-day's email came, at which point a new round of sobs burst out. Over the next few months, I learned so much from missing him.
I learned to listen to the Spirit as He whispered to me what things were and were not appropriate to write to my boyfriend. I felt maternal and domestic as I mailed him birthday and Christmas packages. I became more sensitive and aware of others' suffering and formed a bond with the woman who I thought would become my mother-in-law.
Most importantly, as I struggled to fill the hole in my heart and abate the loneliness of my soul, I learned to pray to and rely on my Heavenly Father more often than before. My testimony of Christ's Atonement and His understanding of our situations grew. These were all skills and character developments that came in useful as I served my own mission and taught and succored those suffering far greater sadness than I.
Letters can be a distraction.
We all look at life through lenses. When I first arrived to Guatemala, it could not have been more clear that my lens at that time of my life was Facebook. Everything interesting that happened somehow got formulated into a mental Facebook status...that I never got to post. As I stood in the shower recapping one of my first days in the field, I remember seriously considering asking my mom to update my status. Then I decided 18 months would be a long time to live with this attitude and I'd accumulate far more statuses in one week than I'd remember by the time Monday rolled around.
The point is: if you're living life thinking in terms of what you will tell someone, life's experiences are cheapened. When an investigator says their first prayer or a convert shares their testimony in sacrament meeting, your first thought as a missionary shouldn't be, "Oh, I've gotta tell [insert name of significant other here]!" That kind of thinking takes you out of the moment and location God has put you to live in, something church leaders have advised us against in recent conferences.
While my significant other[s] and I were good at limiting our communication during our missions, I saw other missionaries who lived and died by what their girlfriends and boyfriends wrote each P-day. Christ should be the center of our lives - always, but especially during the mission - and having a significant other is no excuse for not keeping our covenant to always remember Him and keeping our promises to leave behind all personal affairs and serve God's children with all our might, mind, and strength.
Now, for the most difficult part and the reason I started this post:
They will come home changed, and thinking you are part of the problem.
I was one boyfriend's first relationship and the last in a long line of girls for the other. But when it came time to getting back and getting to know each other, none of our memories of daydreamed futures or romantic car rides seemed to have much substance when held up to the light of the post-mission day. We each had changed in subtle but essential ways. We knew more of what we wanted and didn't want for our lives.
Suddenly, the act of imagining a future together carried a lot more weight and wasn't as fun or careless as before. A marriage that was previously considered longingly but was unfortunately (and safely) buffered by two year postponement could now immediately be brought to fruition. In fact, everywhere we looked, parents, friends, institute teachers, mission presidents and old companions were encouraging us to find that special person and make sacred covenants.
I ended up wanting to marry my first boyfriend. The mission had calmed my rebellious/afraid side and the Spirit taught me that marriage and family truly are the most important things. If he had taken the time to look, my boyfriend might have seen that. But he came home home three weeks before me and was also changed, eager to start life anew. I think he regretted the indecision and mediocrity that had plagued his previous life and was ready to be an adult, a man. He remembered the Victoria I had been before: admittedly, not the most maternal or devoted to the home. He knew that wasn't the kind of companion he wanted and the Spirit urged him to look elsewhere.
He did, and is now happily engaged. Thanks to the Comforter, I am truly happy for him.
But knowing that I, as a pre-mission part of his life, was deemed unacceptable (just like the Facebook profile he abandoned to make a new, post-mission one), hurt. Had it not been for the consolation of the Spirit and the trust in God I learned to cultivate on the mission, I would have spent months of rainy days listening to break-up songs and sneaking bites of chocolate. But, God is great, and I worship Him.
When my second boyfriend got home six months later, it was the same kind of thing. We hadn't expected to date, but began spending more and more time together, with the same kind of connection has before. There arose a point when I was ready to move into a relationship with him. But when I brought it up, it became obvious that he had decided to move on. Though he was still attracted to me, and we could talk about anything, we just spent many nights on unofficial "dates" while he adjusted to life at home and I resigned myself to being his friend.
In the time that's passed, I've come to see in him some of the same changes I saw in the first. He has repented of the frivolity and time-wasting or his pre-mission life. He wants to start over with the Lord's help, entering into the ever infamous "adulthood." To him, that means a new job, possibly a new residence, and definitely a new girlfriend.
It's hard to accept that there is nothing "wrong" with me - no reason he and I shouldn't be together - except that I am a relic of the pre-mission life, a reminder of an epoch of immaturity.
Boys change on their missions. So many of these changes are desirable and good. But to the girls caught in the cross hairs of the men's pre-mission lives, these changes can be devastating. Nevermind that we've changed too, that we're mature, that we're ready to form a family. Nevermind that they professed their love so profusely and that is burned into our memories, no matter how much time passes. No, it's time to put away childish things. ... It hurts when you realize that means you.
So, use your agency, and listen to the Spirit.
While it does work for some people - and I offer a heartfelt smile and genuine congratulations to them because, thank goodness, at least it worked for somebody - waiting for a significant other during the mission isn't always going to be a successful venture.
Do I regret my relationships with young men before we served? Not in the least. I learned things from them that I would have learned no other way. They and the experiences we had formed me into a more mature and empathetic person - and I certainly needed that as I served the Lord on my own mission.
But as outlined here, hoping a relationship of a few months will last over a two-year break and all the character change and spiritual development that comes with it may be overly optimistic.
Regardless of how my faith has been tested in this, I know that Heavenly Father will provide an eternal companion for all of His children in His own due time. I trust that He knows who is right for whom, as I saw with the dissolution of my first relationship. If it works as you wait for a missionary, fantastic! But if it doesn't, I hope that you, like I have striven to do, will be able to find peace and hope in all things related to relationships.
And not that I go around getting fake IDs...
...but this song kind of describes what I've been feeling lately. I may have listened to it on repeat while writing this post :)
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