Modern Romance: Advice for Dating, Singleness, and RelationshipsSample

How Do You Know if You Should Keep Dating Your Boyfriend or Girlfriend?

Ah, dating. The excitement in feeling that initial rush of attraction. The hopeful anticipation that your crush could like you back. The exhilaration of discovering the feeling is mutual! It’s thrilling to picture happily ever after when we’re caught up in the initial bliss of knowing that someone likes us back. But relationships are always more complicated than we assume they will be. We are all imperfect people wanting to be loved.

With that being said—how do you know if you should keep dating your boyfriend or girlfriend?

Start by considering how God loves you. After all, He did create love, romance, relationships, marriage, and sex. He’s pretty intentional in His design of romantic love. Check out 1 Corinthians 13. It lays out exactly how God loves you. Now, a human being will always fall short of loving you perfectly (because, sin). We will always be let down by less than godly love, but the person you’re dating should be humbly and passionately working to love you in the ways described.

So, for example, you may want to keep dating someone if they:

• Speak kindly about you when you’re not around
• Treat your server with respect at dinner
• Sit with you in church and discuss the sermon with you on the drive home
• Value you far beyond your physical appearance
• Patiently listen to your long-winded roommate’s story of waiting at the DMV
• Regularly offer their seat to little old ladies on the subway

However, you might not want to keep dating someone if they:

• Order the most expensive thing on the menu and then suggest splitting the bill down the middle when all you ordered was a salad
• Take credit for a witty comment you said earlier when it was just the two of you
• Think the free bottomless cup of coffee is the best part of a worship service
• Regularly cut people off in traffic
• Act more interested in body contact than eye contact
• Seem to take a little too much pleasure in the heartbreak of reality show contestants

Also, relationships work both ways. So ask yourself, “Am I loving in the patient, kind, not self-seeking, not easily angered sort of way?” Assuming you decide to keep dating, it only makes sense the best way to keep them is to love them like God loves them.

If you find yourself in a dating relationship that lines up nicely with what the Bible says about love, Ephesians 5 gives a great picture of how a dating relationship should progress to marriage. C’mon, it’s a short passage. Give it a read.

You are worthy of being loved well. God loves you well. As you continue dating, know that God loved you first and that He wants to be involved in your relationships.

—Beth