Whose Dating Advice Should You Follow?

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They see the end before you have even met your date:

“You could do better.”

“He doesn’t make six figures?”

“You should wait to respond, you don’t want look desperate.”

They are planning your future after a month of casual dates:

“You guys are perfect for each other, you have everything in common.”

“Your children are going to be adorable.”

“I mean she must love you, that epic gif has me in the feels.”

They love and want the best for you, but don’t really know what that is for you, despite really knowing you. They are skeptics and enablers, AKA your single friends.

They are the perpetually solo—your pep squad and pop psychologists. They get the ghosting, unrequited winks and shy smiles. They understand the latest object of your affection is more interested in Fortnite or FaceTune, than into you. Their sometimes jaded, dramatic, usually emphatic, over-the-top words of wooing wisdom come from a well meaning place, but have no history of happy outcomes.

You are ALL still single, so do any of you have a clue?

If you want a garden to grow don’t seek advice from someone who’s planted for years but nothing has bloomed, ask someone who has cultivated abundantly. One may know your struggle, but the other knows how to make seed take root. Enter the married friends.

Your single squad may say of the marrieds:

“They don’t understand, they got lucky.”

“They are out-of-touch and out-of-date, singledom in 2019 is sooo different.”

“They don’t get it, we do.”

They are wrong.

Some marrieds met their mate in a courtship of ease and grace, but most were not as blessed.

They got dumped on Valentine’s Day, they felt they were not attractive or exciting enough, they wondered if they were cursed or missed a calling to religious life. Most experienced a long and winding road of rejection, but resilience won out over pity and pride. At the end of the path they found their life partner, God gifted, glorious and in their eyes, truly gorgeous.

Along the way they experienced the stuff of dating legend, the universal insights, honed through decades of modern romance.

Here are the top truths I have learned from the happily married:

1, Your spouse needs to become your best friend. Your spouse should be your trusted companion. You may or may not have everything in common but you must want to share everything with each other, good or bad.

2, Don’t blame the opposite sex. Hate for the opposite sex will do little to attract members of the opposite sex. Bitterness never breeds content.

3. If it is too hard, abandon ship. Some people think their final courtship needs to be a dramatic affair with love won against the odds. Avoid the whirlwind, it’s not meant to be.

4. Games are for children. You know those couples that are always trying to manipulate and out-maneuver each other, they are never happily married. If you feel the urge to strategize, forfeit and forget-it.

5. Old school courtship. The man needs to take a chance, take the lead and follow through. The woman needs to take a chance, reciprocate with interest, and follow his lead. The medium of communication does not matter. The same pattern that played out via telegram and telegraph can play out via email, text or Skype. Just do it.

6. Don’t narrow your prospects to a type. If you keep dating people with the same physical appearance, pastimes and career and you are still single, then this is NOT your type. The most vital statistic about your spouse is if they are compatible with you. None of my married friends recommend waiting for your “type”, they say compatibility is worth the wait.

5. It is never too late to find your match. The wisest wife I know met her DH (dear husband) when she was 41. I was whining to her about still being single at 39. She mused that I could be 41, 51 or 81 when my match finds me.

8. Love yourself and God will provide a beloved. An old roommate had low self esteem at one point and was disillusioned with dating. She transformed, fell in love with herself, her body, her quirks, and then he found her and they have been wed three years.

8. Pray. My fellow parishioner advised that I pray for my husband. She discovered that her prayer for a mate had deepened to reveal what God wanted her to discern. She got the husband she needed, not what she thought she wanted.

None of these married mentors was born with this knowledge. They were once the singles, the blind leading the blind. What shifted them from solo to paired was a good dose of common sense, tradition and self awareness.

The commonality in all of their truths is that dating, society, nor the opposite sex changed for them to find a mate. They, as daters, changed and accepted what dating is and what works time and again. They perceived the way things should be, the way they wanted things to be and accepted what is true.

That is the key to happily-ever-afters. Our manners and modes of communication are ever evolving, but the way men and women find lasting love remains the same. Keep commiserating with your single friends, but keep faith according to what the married among us have found.

Find Your Forever.

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