I have been on more dates than I can remember. Tried every trick in the book. Signed up for all the dating apps. Let the boys slide into the DMs. Let my friends and family set me up. But there comes a time when you just get tired of it all. Dating is exhausting. And I’m exhausted.
There is such a thing as emotional fatigue. Psychologists confirm that online dating has numerous effects on our mental health. The Calm Clinic explored five symptoms of online dating. I would dare to say that we’ve all experienced at least three of the five.
First is repeated rejection, which is surprisingly or not, more common in males than females. Some websites agree that somewhere around 70% of men get rejected before the first date. Guys are putting themselves out there and three out of four times, no one will even respond to their message. That sounds painful.
There’s also the fact that a lot of people lie about themselves on these dating websites. This inevitably has an effect on our trust levels. And can definitely affect our self esteem if we are treated differently when people realize we are not who we sold ourselves out to be. The last two are loneliness, and anxiety tied with depression. They’re just the ordinary risks of dating. So why is it so common? Why do we allow it? And how can we date differently?
I call this: dating before Jesus. Before I truly understood the character of God. Before I truly understood why I’m even dating in the first place. There must be an end goal to it all. If I’m just dating for fun, then I should have no concern with the risks outlined above. In the end, though, I don’t think a lot of us are really just dating to pass the time.
I hope that’s you reading this. That person with an end goal in mind for dating—the end goal being marriage. And here’s my take on setting and meeting goals. You have to start with the big picture. Then you break it down further and further into bite-sized steps. Here’s the disclaimer: there’s really no guarantee that you’ll get exactly what you want. The hope is that along the way you discover who you are even more, and how to love people better. That’s dating after Jesus… and more to come on what that looks like in the next post.
Living Thirty Three 