Modern Romance: Advice for Dating, Singleness, and RelationshipsНамуна

“You Complete Me” May Not be the Best Phrase

Have you ever said, “You complete me”? Before I married my wife, I remember trying to be really romantic. One day, I told her how amazing she was and added some extra mushy stuff. I will spare you all the details, but I ended with what I thought was a killer line. 

Turns out, what I said was something you should never say to your soulmate. I told her, “I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with you because you … you complete me!”

What happened next didn’t exactly go as I had planned. As soon as she heard that, she said I needed to get my priorities right because there was no way that she could complete me—or that I could complete her. “You complete me” was the furthest thing from her mind.

Uh … yeah. While that was embarrassing, and funny, and a million other things, it was also true. I thought that my life would be complete if I found the right person to spend the rest of my life with, but that was so far from the truth.

Maybe you’ve thought if you only had the perfect soulmate, or the right job, or a pay raise, or the right childhood, or were born in a different country, everything would be perfect. But that’s not true. All of that is temporary. God is the only one who never changes. He is the same yesterday, today and forever.

I love what it says in 1 Corinthians 10:12 MSG: Forget about self-confidence; it’s useless. Cultivate God-confidence. No matter how much we try, we will not find within ourselves, our soulmate, or any other person or thing the feeling of being complete. It’s impossible. So let’s stop trying to make it happen and actually do something that works—cultivate God-confidence in ourselves and allow Him to complete us.

—Alan