Tag Archives: dating

To Kiss Or Not To Kiss

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My first kiss from anyone other than a relative came in first grade.  It was right after school and this girl named Lori came up on the playground, grabbed me and kissed me. . . ON THE LIPS.  It was scandalous but it wasn’t sex.

I want to write today about kissing.  I want to say up front that I’m not expecting everyone to agree with what I say here today and that’s ok.  I’ve been on every side of this in my 20 years of singleness.  I’ve messed it up on both sides. So let’s get real.

First a brief Justin kissing history.  In high school, I kissed exactly one person.  Not because I didn’t want to, or because I thought it wrong, but because I didn’t know how to go about it and I was not super popular with the ladies.  When I got to college that all changed and I kissed pretty much every girl I went out with, usually on the first date.  It was fun.  I didn’t fool around with them, and I didn’t have sex with any of them.  I don’t think it scarred anybody.

Then came my 20s and what I call the religious dating revolution of the 90’s.  This was led by I Kissed Dating Good Bye and other such books.  As I shared in an earlier post, I dated (courted, talked with, whatever she called it) a girl who went by a book with a chart.  No kissing allowed.  Now a lot of this made sense to me.  I’d seen a lot of people fall into temptation.  Then and now I get the argument.

I went ten years without kissing anyone.  TEN years.  

Now this started out as a religious “date right” decision.  Then there was a time when there just wasn’t many options and my head was buried in ministry.  But when I looked up after about five years I was in a new city, 31 years old, and had no confidence in this area of my life (not to mention no physical intimacy).  I had new reasons for not kissing.  In the back of my head was still the religious reasons, including “guarding the girl’s heart” (which mostly guarded her heart from liking me – ha) and frankly it had been a long time – could I deliver? I think it hurt me and helped keep me single.

Then I went on a date with a girl who pretty much did what Lori did in first grade – except in a car.  It was still scandalous, and it still wasn’t sex.

Sense then I’ve been on a lot of dates and God has walked me through a lot of stuff.  I’ve maybe kissed a couple of people I shouldn’t have and maybe even missed it when I should have.  But here’s what I’ve come to believe.

I think kissing is ok.

In fact I think if you haven’t kissed by the third or fourth date you are in trouble.  You are quickly approaching the no chemistry zone.  Now the exception might be if you have both talked about it and said you don’t want to – that’s totally fine – your call. But I’m saying I think kissing is fine, in fact I think it’s good.  I don’t think it’s sex or has to lead to it.

I’ve already talked about not having sex outside of marriage and I want to talk more later about having some healthy physical boundaries but when it comes to kissing I say yes please.

But. . . some important parameters.

First off, if you are not interested in the girl, then don’t kiss her.  For the love do I need to type that?  We’ve all had dates we just weren’t into. But here is where the third date thing comes into play.  If by the third date you don’t want to kiss her, then probably it’s time to not date her.  Sometimes we are passive about ending stuff.  More on that soon.

This brings us to point two.  This all assumes that the reason you are dating is to find someone to marry.  I’m not talking here about running around kissing different random people.  That is definitely not ok.  I’m talking about you are trying to find a spouse and you meet someone you like and it is progressing.  I think it is ok, good in fact, to kiss that person.

There are lots of traps that you can fall into, for example kissing all the time and never actually talking.  But there are traps with being so religious that you don’t have any physical contact.

So, what do you think?  When is it ok to kiss?  Is it good, bad, or does it even matter? What does a kiss mean to you?

What A Girl Wants – Attraction

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I once chased a girl 2000 miles.  Yup you read that right.  Here’s the super short version. There was this girl I really liked.  She was a strong Christian and I was totally taken with her.  We communicated some and then she moved 2000 miles away.  She cut off communication and I showed up in her town a month later.  She was of course shocked but she met me and we went to dinner.  She asked why I was there, and I said, “Because I want you to know that you are worth coming 2000 miles for”.  She was moved by that, and I went on to share more.

The next day we went to a great show and then had coffee.  She said she felt the need to respond, which I agreed would be good, Ha.  She said, “No one has ever come 2000 miles for me.  But I’m just not there.”

I’ve told this story in many contexts and I’m always amazed at how many women say, “If someone would do that for me, I would be in.”  You know what I tell them?  I say, “No, actually what you mean is if the guy who you want to come 2000 miles for you did it, you would be in.”

As I’ve talked about before, we as guys have about zero understanding of what is attractive to women.  We latch on to various misinterpretations and then try too hard to fulfill them.  We think if we are nice enough, or cool enough, or strong enough etc that we will be attractive.  We also hear women talk about what they want and we think we understand but we don’t.  This is especially true in Christian circles as I’ll come to in a second.

Gentlemen, time to pay attention.

Women say all sorts of things.  They might say for example that they want a guy who is: a true gentleman, a good communicator, in touch with his feelings, is strong, is passionate, is sensitive etc.  But that is not exactly what they mean.

David DeAngelo gets it right when he says,  “The REALITY is that when a woman says one of these “I want a guy who” statements, she actually has an IDEAL guy in mind, who ALSO happens to be a one of these things”

In other words she wants someone who she is attracted to who also has this or that quality. And guess what – it is no different for Christian women.  When a woman says, “I want a guy who is in love with Jesus” or “who will lead our family”, or “who has passion for the church”, what she means is “I want a guy who I’m attracted to who also has those qualities.”

Let that settle in men. If you don’t get this you will constantly be beating your head against the wall.  You’ll keep trying all the wrong things.  You’ll continue to be frustrated as you watch women choose to marry people who are not as strong in those areas and you’ll wonder what the heck just happened.  You’ll keep getting, “He’s a great guy. . . I just don’t know”

Look, you can be as solid a believer as you can be but if you don’t know how to pursue/interact/attract women then it probably isn’t going to matter.  

Now some guys get this and instead have a commitment problem (as promised more on this later), but there are a whole lot of us who struggle with this.  Typically no one, and certainly not the church, helps out.  The first step is realizing that if I’m in my late 20s or older and single not by choice or calling – chances are I might be misunderstanding attraction.

Just flip it around fellas.  Let’s be honest, when you think about the woman you want to end up with you think about certain qualities but it assumes you are attracted.  This is just reality.  So when you are filling out your online profile and say you want a “proverbs 31 woman” (which by the way if you are putting that in your profile that is a sign you definitely don’t get it) what you really mean is you want a woman who you are physically attracted to who also has those qualities.  You aren’t looking for just any woman who has those qualities.  Guess what, same thing for the ladies, only it doesn’t have as much to do with appearance.

The point is – attraction matters and if you don’t accept that as fact then you are going to miss it.  No one I know has married someone they weren’t attracted to. Being “christian” enough, or really any other “enoughs”, isn’t going to change that.  The good news is that even though you can’t make someone attracted to you, you can work on becoming more attractive.

Do You Want To Get Married? Really?!

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One of my favorite scriptures is the story in John 5 of the man at the pool.  So here’s the story in a nutshell.  There was a pool near the sheep gate in Jerusalem where many disabled people went.  They were there because they believed that when the water was stirred, that the first person in would be healed.  Now there was a man (an invalid) who had been there 38 years.  Then Jesus shows up and learned his story.  Jesus then asks the man, “Do you want to get well?”

Now this seems like a very odd question.  I mean here is a guy who has been sitting by this pool (where people come hoping to get well) for 38 years.  I mean obviously he wants to get well right?  But maybe Jesus is on to something here.  Jesus realizes that maybe this guy has become comfortable. Maybe, even though originally he wanted to walk, now he had lived this particular way for a long, long time.  Walking would change everything in this man’s life.  Everything.  Jesus wants to make sure, “Do you still want that?”

The man’s response is classic.  Here is Jesus with all the ability to help him and he says essentially, “Hey yeah – I need to get into the water – could you help me do that?”  In other words, “Hey Jesus, help me heal my way”  He had become focussed on getting in the water, even to the point of missing out on being healed.  The means had become the end.

This has so many implications there’s not possibly room here to discuss them all.  

We are all wounded and we are all seeking to get well.  Most of all we all have things that we think will heal us, and often we end up asking for those instead of healing in any form Jesus wants.

One of the big traps we as singles can fall into is the idea that if I get married it will heal me (make life ok, fix my sexual problems, solve my loneliness, bring me happiness, fill my heart, etc).  I know for me there have been plenty of times where I feel like if Jesus would have asked me, “Do you want to get well?” I might as well have answered, “Yes, I want to get married.”  But marriage is not the answer to any of those type of questions. The questions that marriage answers are “Who will I marry?” or “Will I get married?” It doesn’t answer the big questions.  Only God can really do that.  And if I’m looking for marriage to do that I will screw up my search for someone to marry and/or I will have a really hard marriage.

However, as you stay single longer, there is another very real question here.  “Do you want to get married?”  You might say, “Jesus, seriously, I’ve been trying to do that for 20 years.  I mean I’ve been on good dates, bad dates, blind dates.  I’ve been on every dating site and been set up by everyone in my life.”  To which I think Jesus would still be smart to ask, “Yeah but do you want to get married?”

It’s a fair question.  After all if you are in your 30s or older, you’ve lived a certain way a long time, and marriage, changes everything.  The question is “Do you still want that?”  or maybe a better way of asking it, “Do you want that change now?”

I think it is extremely important that we ask this question because the answer changes things.

If your answer is no, you need to ask why.  There are some bad reasons.  For example, are you just being selfish or are you just really scared that after living a certain way that you won’t be able to do it.  It is legitimately scary, but that’s not a reason to say no.  But if the answer is no and you feel like Jesus agrees with that answer (it might be good to ask Jesus, “Do you want me to get married?”) then you’re going to need a new approach.  For one, quit dating.

But if the answer is yes, then you might need to change your approach as well.  You are going to need to be prepared for the fact that Jesus might actually give you what you want, in a way that you didn’t think of.  You need to be able to say, “Jesus I do and I will do it however, and with whoever you want me too.”

So, first, do you want to get well?  What is the “pool” you are counting on?  Is it marriage? Second question, “Do you want to get married?” And are you willing to do that any way Jesus wants?

Passivity Is Killing Us

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So yesterday was father’s day and that made me think of men and the struggles we often face.  One of the areas we really struggle in is our passivity.  It’s pretty much an epidemic really.  We so often fail to engage where we should.  Sometimes that comes from laziness but often times it comes from fear, and our number one fear is failure.

We are all passive in different places, mainly the places we don’t feel confident (which is a lot of places for most of us).  We of course try to only operate in the places we feel confident but that usually fails at some point.  When we don’t know what to do or are afraid to fail, we go passive.

One place that most men are passive though is in relationships with women. This goes all the way back to the garden.  In Genesis, Adam and Eve are in the garden when Satan tempts Eve to eat the fruit.  I’m not going to go into the female part of this here but I want to touch on Adam’s part.  Adam was literally right next to Eve as this is going on.  It’s not like she calls him over and says, “Hey come check out this fruit”.  No, Adam is “with her” and in the Hebrew it says he was literally with her, right at her side.

Adam is there and he does nothing.  He doesn’t lead, doesn’t confront, doesn’t rescue Eve, doesn’t stand up and say, “Hey go back to Hell.  We are following God”.  He goes passive.  Ever thought about why? I’ll tell you why.  He was more afraid of Eve than God.  I have a mentor that says most men are afraid of their wives.  I like to joke that I’m afraid of my wife and I’m not even married yet.

This leads to all sorts of trouble in marriage.  Husbands can become passive and then aggressive to make up for it.  They hide in work.  They can fail to lead their family.  Mainly there are just whole areas where they check out. But this is also extremely important as a single.

As a single person I think it is much easier to keep ourselves in situations that we feel confident without facing our fears.  There is often no reason bigger than ourselves to face them so we just don’t.  This is why having people that know your story, including where you are passive, is so huge.

And when it comes to how we approach women, it just creates one mess after another.  It can keep us from pursuing women that we really want to.  If we do pursue, it can lead to doing it in a nice guy, aw shucks kind of way at best, or make us creepy at worst.  We end up chasing instead of pursuing and that is not where you want to be – trust me I’ve spent way to much time there.

If we don’t deal with passivity as a single guy, one of two things is going to happen.  Either we are not going to get married or probably worse, we are going to marry someone we don’t really want to or someone who is controlling us.  In both cases we end up with a situation where they are leading us.  We end up in a marriage that is all backwards where we are emasculated or where eventually we grow a pair and it all blows up in our face.  All of this is bad, really bad.

Passivity kills masculinity because it steals our confidence and leads to sin. So we need to face it head on. Here are a couple of things that have been helping me.  First of all when you are passive in a situation, don’t spend time beating yourself up over it.  This accomplishes nothing good and in fact will probably drive you to more passivity.  Instead, ask yourself where are you passive?  What situations do you shrink back from?  A way I like to ask it to myself is where do I feel like a 5 year old?  Then ask God, where does that come from?  In other words what are you afraid of and where does that fear originate?  It will probably not be the first thing that comes to mind so engage your heart, and God.

So how about it guys?  Does this resonate?  Where are you passive?  What has it cost you?  How have you responded to your passivity?  Ladies feel free to chime in as well.

Are You Disqualified From Marriage?

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One of my favorite movies is Good Will Hunting and my favorite scene comes toward the end.  Will (played by Matt Damon) is meeting with his counselor (played by Robin Williams).  Williams pulls out Damon’s file and talks about all the abuse he has faced in his life.  He then says, “Will, I don’t know a lot, but this, all of it, it’s not your fault.”  Will says, “I know” very nonchalantly.  Williams then says it again, and again, and again until finally Will, after getting very agitated, falls into his arms.  You see Will knew intellectually that it wasn’t his fault, but until that moment he didn’t KNOW that it wasn’t.

I think we do this with forgiveness.  Around a year ago I was having a cigar with a good friend.  This guy is one of the best guys I know – smart, fun, talented and a good friend to people.  Without going much into his story he has some issues with religion.  As we were sitting there discussing this I said, “You know that you’re forgiven right?”  He stopped in his tracks. He kind of tried to skirt the issue but I just kept hammering it.  A month later we met up and he said, “Thanks for screwing up my life – I mean that.”  He knew it intellectually but he just then began to KNOW it.

I bring this up because I think it relates to thoughts we can have as a single person.  We watch marriages around us and we think about all the reasons we are not married.  One of the things that can creep in is “It’s because I sinned.”  It’s as if we think somehow we have disqualified ourselves before God.  Now we probably wouldn’t ever say this but if we are honest many of us have had the thought.  God is not punishing your sin with singleness.

Now if you have unrepentant sin, that could certainly get in the way of getting married, among other things. Let’s say for example you are sleeping around, that might not be the best time to say to God, “Will you just bring me a spouse.”  It’s important to understand that how we are living affects our situation.  But that is not what I’m talking about here.

What I’m saying is that you are not disqualified from marriage because of sin.  God is not holding out on you or punishing you because of it.  It’s not a marriage qualifier.  If it was, no one, and I mean no one, would be married.  All the people you see married – they have sinned too.  You say, “Well Justin, you don’t get it, I’ve done really bad in this area of life.” You’ve slept with 100 people, dated the wrong people, had an abortion, looked at porn, or masturbated a river. . . I do get it.  God’s grace is bigger.  You are forgiven.  God is not holding it against you and keeping you from having a spouse because of it.

I think we kind of understand forgiveness as a means to salvation – which is mainly an intellectual exercise.  I don’t think we get it as a means to freedom in life – we don’t live out of it.

This is extremely dangerous as a single when we assign it to dating.  First of all as I mentioned earlier, you don’t earn a spouse.  Secondly, it can lead us to very bad choices because we have a bad view of ourselves. We can decide that we have to marry someone who has sinned the same way as us, which can lead us to bad situations and rule out people.  We can think, well I’ve had sex so I have to marry someone who has, I’m divorced so I have to marry someone else who is.  The list goes on.  That’s not a very good approach.  It also leads to the idea that singleness is a punishment from God.  But worst of all, it short changes God’s grace.  It basically says that God’s grace is good enough for salvation (a ticket to heaven) but it can’t free me from much here.  That is a lie straight from hell.

If you are in Christ, your sin is forgiven and you’re not disqualified from Heaven.  You are a new creation.  Jesus has paid for it.  Which do you think is easier, getting you into heaven or getting you married?

You know you are forgiven right?  How would you date different if you knew you were free?

Unequally Yoked – What Does That Even Mean?

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One of the phrases we tell Christian single people all the time is to not be unequally yoked. But I think sometimes we take this to mean things that it doesn’t.  If we get this wrong it can lead to a lot of traps both as the person who is “further along” and as the person who is “not quite there” so to speak.

Now this saying comes straight from scripture.  Paul is writing to the Corinthian believers (2nd Cor. 6) who lived in an extremely pagan society.  They were a mess themselves and obviously still working out what it meant to be a believer in such a setting (kind of like us actually).  Paul is talking to them about being holy and set apart in lifestyle, thought, and deed.  He knew it would be easy for them to combine (yoke) pagan ways with their new found faith, and therefore fall away from true holiness.  So he says to them, “Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness?”

Now you’ll notice of course that Paul did not say, don’t talk to, don’t love, or don’t have contact with unbelievers.  That would be impossible and it wouldn’t advance the kingdom. He is saying we shouldn’t be tied to or partnering in their ways with them.  We are set apart and we need to live that way, not taking on pagan ways.

It’s important to note that this particular scripture was not really talking about marriage. However, there is no way to pretend that this idea does not apply to the main partnership that many of us will have.  Paul says this in 1 Cor. 7 when he says that an unmarried is free to marry but it must be to someone who is in the Lord.

But here is where this gets tricky as a single person trying to navigate dating and the search for a spouse.  We can take unequally yoked to a whole other level.  We can take it to mean that we must be in the “Same Place Spiritually”.  In other words, at the same maturity level etc.  Here’s the problem – What the heck does that even mean?

First of all no two people are in the exact same place in their journey with the Lord. Everyone has a different story, different gifts, strengths and weaknesses and so on.  You are not going to find someone exactly equal to you.  Secondly, people have ups and downs in their journey.  Part of the advantage of having a partnership (marriage or even community) is that you can take turns helping each other when one is down and the other is up.  Finally, our view of ourselves comes into play here.  If I have too much self righteousness going on, I can unfairly judge another’s walk as inferior to mine.  Or if I view myself as bad or not very mature – guess who I will end up dating based on that (future blog on this).  The point is the idea Paul is talking about is not that I need to find someone exactly where I am at – because I’m not going to.

So what is Paul saying?  Really he is saying at it’s simplest form that we need to date (and therefore marry) people who are believers.  I’ll go out on a limb here and take this a step further.  It think it is about direction.  If you are going to make it in marriage, you need to be aiming for the same thing.  In order to be in it together you have to be going the same direction and hopefully pushing each other there.  You need to be good for each other’s walk with Jesus.

Our first call is to follow Jesus, period.  We need to date people that are serious about that call.  If we don’t we are setting ourselves up to be forever single (by the way some of us keep choosing people we know we can’t marry on purpose – even it is subconsciously) or worse, for a really tough marriage.

When you think of being equally yoked, what comes to mind first?  Do you date only people who are good for your walk with Jesus?

Are You Dating Anyone?

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There’s a group of older business men that I get the opportunity to meet with a few times a year.  These are men that I look up to and frankly most of the time I have no business being in the room, but hey they like me, and if they invite me there is no way I’m not showing up.

But a funny thing happens every single time.  After all the hand shakes and back slaps as we sit down with a drink or cigar or whatever, when the conversation turns to me the first question every time is “Are you dating anyone?” or “So hows the love life?” It’s always without fail the first question.  Now these guys love me and they are genuinely interested. They’re not just making small talk.  They are being intentional and asking for real, which I appreciate and am honored by.

However, I feel like this is often the first question married people ask single people in Christian community.  And if its not the first question you almost never leave without it being asked.  There’s this assumption that if I’m single then I must be wanting to be married and I must be wanting to talk about it.

There are some serious problems with this.  First of all while most single people do desire a spouse, it is not all that we are thinking about and doing with our life.  For example I have a lot going on in my ministry and in other areas of my personal life.  It would be nice to be asked how some of that was going first.  Heck ask me about my new car or how is stuff at my house.  Part of this by the way is that we never ask each other the deep questions like how we are doing with Jesus, what are we fearing right now, what is hurting us or firing us up etc.  We like to ask the easy questions. (Are you dating anyone is often an “easy” question as is how’s the wife and kids – especially when really we often don’t want the real answers)

Secondly we as singles have to fight against having our identity in our singleness.  We have to fight to follow Jesus first and have our identity in that – let’s talk about that.  We need your help here.  We have a lot going on besides our desire to be married – ask us about it.

Now before you go being mad at married people for asking this question all the time it’s a good idea to ask yourself if that is what you always talk and think about.  If it is always what seems to be most important to you, then the people who love you will always be asking you about it first.

What I’ve realized with these men is that over and over again it’s what I’ve brought to them. In fact they have walked with me through a lot of my relationships and lack there of.  If when they ask me how I’m doing, I always lead with that area of my life, then I have no right to be frustrated by the fact that they always ask about it.  In truth there have been many seasons in my life where the “search” has dominated my thoughts, emotions, and identity. I’ve set them up to ask about that first.

The point here isn’t that we don’t need to spend time talking about this area of our life because we most certainly do.  It’s just that we need to ask more questions about more things.  We need to have some conversations where we don’t talk about it all.  We need to not fall into a default mode of talking about dating and/or lack of dating and therefore accidentally defining ourselves or others by it.  Single people need to not be defined by singleness and to be honest married people need to not be defined by marriage.  We need to be defined by Jesus.

Married people – what do you ask your single friends about?  Single people – do you always lead with your dating life?

North Oak Trafficway and The Church of the Hot Chick

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I went to high school in a small town about 30 minutes north of K.C.  There wasn’t a lot to do there so when my friends and I got our licenses we would cruise down to North KC. We would hit the mall or whatever but eventually, almost without fail, we would cruise North Oak Trafficway.  Now the reason we did this is two fold, first we were bored but also it was to see who else (i.e. girls) were also cruising around.  We’d pull up next to a car of girls and then they’d drive forward and we’d cruise by and so on.  Rarely did we actually talk to them, just kind of window shopped.  We’d do the same thing by stopping at places like Sonic where there was a girl on skates that we could look at  – again not really to do anything.

We were kind of like the dog that chases cars.  Great idea, really attracted to the car, but no idea what to do if we actually caught it – and we’d probably just get run over anyway.

The amazing thing is this same thing happens in our church communities all the time. Especially in what I call the Church of the Hot Chick.  These are the churches where all the “hot” young single and married people in town hang out.  My church is one of these.  Now what happens is that we guys know that available women go there and then because more guys go there, even more women go there etc.  The problem is that for the most part all we do is look at each other.  People literally drive 30-40 minutes to come to church so that they can sit in the same room with the Christian “Hot Chick”.  But they don’t do anything about it.

I’ve had this conversation with a few different women.  I asked one twenty something friend of mine who I think is really attractive, “So is it kind of like a meat market for you at our church?  I mean do guys always ask for your number and stuff at church?”  She just stared at me and said, “No because it’s not like any guy is going to actually do anything about it.” I had the exact same conversation with a woman I went on a date with who attends one of the other “hot person” churches in town and she said the exact same thing. She said, “I’ll be sitting there in Church with no one next to me and no one ever sits next to me or says hi.”

Why is this?  Now maybe part of it is not wanting to “hit on” anyone at church, which is fair. But the reality is that most guys are scared.  We have grown up knowing how to look but not ever really being taught how to approach, and certainly not how to talk to, women.  It’s like we are still cruising the road – except now it’s sit in the back so you can see them, watch them during the communion line, or stand in the foyer in the back and hope for a reason to talk to them.  It’s the exact same thing, except now you are 25, 30, or 35 years old. Hows that working out?

Look I’m not suggesting that you go and get numbers at church. I’m not saying we should see a church service as a singles bar, and for heaven’s sake I’m not suggesting you should ask out a new girl from church every week.  I know there are guys that do that (I’ll get to you all later) but what I am saying is that we need to learn to engage the opposite sex in a normal, non threatening way.  And if we can’t learn that in our church community then where exactly can we?