Date Before You Mate

Dating with purpose is how we get to know another person before deciding whether we want to build a life together. Attraction matters. Chemistry matters. Sex matters. But none of them alone can tell us whether two people can build a healthy, lasting relationship.

Date Before You Mate is about slowing the process down long enough to ask better questions. About the person you are dating with purpose, about yourself, and about sex, commitment, love and marriage.

Dating doesn’t have to be complicated. But it helps to understand what you’re trying to accomplish.

The first purpose of dating isn’t to decide whether someone is “the one.” It is to get to know them.

Attraction may bring two people together. Dating gives them the opportunity to discover whether there is enough beneath the attraction to build something lasting.

What are they like when they are disappointed? How do they treat people who cannot do anything for them? Can they listen? Will they apologize? Can they handle frustration without becoming cruel, withdrawn or manipulative?

Dating is not an audition for perfection. It is a process of discovering whether two imperfect people have enough in common — and enough maturity — to build something lasting.

Start Here

What Is Dating Actually For?

Choosing a mate is different from choosing someone to date.

Dating gives you time to discover who another person is. As a relationship becomes more serious, the question begins to change from “Do I enjoy being with this person?” to “Is this someone with whom I can realistically build a life?”

Chemistry and attraction matter, but they cannot tell you how someone will handle responsibility, money, children, family pressure, disappointment, illness or conflict. Those things become increasingly important as a relationship moves toward marriage.

The goal is not to find a perfect person. There are no perfect people. The goal is to know the person you are choosing well enough to make a thoughtful decision.

Start Here

How Do You Know If Someone Is Marriage Material?

A healthy relationship requires more than finding the right person. You also have to become someone capable of sharing a life with another person.

Dating naturally begins with questions about what I want. Am I attracted to this person? Do I enjoy being with them? Do they make me happy? Those questions matter, but a lasting relationship eventually asks something more of us. At some point the question begins to shift from “What do I want?” to “What are we trying to build together?”

That transition requires sacrifice. Not losing yourself, tolerating mistreatment, or giving up your identity, but accepting that your preferences, comfort and desires cannot always come first. Two people cannot build a genuine “we” if both remain primarily committed to protecting the “me.”

Love requires us to make room for another person. Sometimes that means listening when we would rather defend ourselves, compromising when we would rather get our way, changing habits that affect someone else, or carrying more than our share for a season because the person we love needs us.

A healthy relationship does not erase who you are. It asks you to become capable of giving some of yourself for something larger than yourself.

Start Here:
Can You Build a “We” Without Losing the “Me”?

Sex changes a relationship.

It can deepen closeness, attachment, and vulnerability, but it can also make it harder to evaluate a relationship clearly when important questions about compatibility, commitment, and marriage have not yet been answered.

The point is not to treat sex as something dirty or dangerous. It is to understand that sex carries more psychological, relational, and moral weight than modern dating culture often admits.

Before two people become physically joined, it is worth asking what kind of relationship they are building and what sex means within it.

Start Here:

What Changes When Sex Enters a Relationship?