Be the Kind of Person You Want to Date

The dating scene can be hard to navigate these days.

I mean, it’s been a while for me, being married almost 7 years now. But I remember what it was like, trying to find the type of rare person who checks all the right boxes, and is single, and who you have chemistry with, and who likes you back...

With more people delaying marriage till much later, or not getting married at all, who knows what anyone’s even looking for? And throw the importance of faith and shared morals and values into the mix and you’re kind of searching for a needle in a haystack here.

In a culture where real love and commitment and self-giving and sacrifice are often not understood, it may be hard to find a good person. So what to do?

Well, on one hand I recommend a pretty light-hearted approach to dating. One in which you can go for coffee or dinner with a variety of people without any presumptions that this is going to be a relationship. (That comes later.)

But on a deeper level, what you can do is focus on being the kind of person you want to date. Here are a couple of examples of what I mean:

1) Be cultured
Arent we naturally more interested in people that appreciate things like art, literature, philosophy, cuisine, etc? Well, don’t just look for a renaissance man (or woman), be one! Put down the PS4 controller or turn off The Bachelorette and sip up some real arts! If you’re at university, take an elective that is totally outside your wheelhouse. Take Intro to Poetry! (I did, and my wife totally thought it was a move to win her over. I can’t remember if that was a motivation or not…)

2) Help out in the community
You want someone with a big heart, right? How big is yours? Do you make time to volunteer in your community? Shelters, soup kitchens, Big Brothers or Big Sisters, or something else? I once hear a saying, “A man wrapped up in himself is a very small package.” So open up.

Also, you tend to meet really great people while volunteering. Maybe even your future spouse!

3) Give your whole heart to Jesus
When I met my wife she was very involved in the Church. She was instrumental in my conversion, and I greatly admired her and desired to be with someone like her. But in the early days of our friendship I became aware of the fact that part of the attraction was that I wanted to be holy, and thought that dating someone who loved God like that would help me be holy.

But you know, you can’t really piggy-back on someone else’s relationship with God. You have to enter into that relationship yourself. You have to make that the primary relationship in your life, not the secondary.

I realized that God was asking me to come to him directly and give him my heart, and receive his love directly. This was a crucial realization.

Funnily enough though, putting Jesus first also made me more attractive to my future wife... 

I don’t pretend to think it is easy to find the right person, but you can put your ducks in order for when you do find him or her by being what you are looking for.  

Virtue attracts virtue. If you want to find Mrs. Right, be Mr. Right.

Right?