Outdated: Find Love That Lasts When Dating Has Changed

by Jonathan "JP" Pokluda

it’s nice for them to be surprised when you propose, but it shouldn’t be a shock to them.

And for clarity, just use the word date. As in, “Would you like to go on a date with me?” Leaders remove confusion. Men, you can be better leaders by removing confusion.

You should date intentionally. Dating isn’t something that happens by random chance. You don’t accidentally end up dating someone, or at least you shouldn’t. It should be a conscious decision to go on a date with someone.

One thing the Bible is exceedingly clear on, though, is that big decisions should not be made in isolation. To give just a couple of examples, Proverbs 12:15 says, “The way of fools seems right to them, but the wise listen to advice,” while Proverbs 15:22 states, “Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed.” When we’re making important decisions, whether in dating or in any area of life, God wants us to listen to wise counselors.

after the so-called “sexual revolution” of the 1960s, divorce rates doubled, followed by an ongoing decline in marriage rates.1 Currently, 40 percent of children in the United States are born out of wedlock, without a stable, married, two-parent family; in the 1960s, at the start of the sexual revolution, that number was just 7 percent.2 Besides those births, there have been 60 million US children killed before birth via abortion since 1973.3 Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), which would be almost nonexistent if all people were monogamous,b are instead at record highs,4 with something like 20 million new infections in the country each year.

Scientifically, sex releases hormones that are designed to “rewire” the brain, creating a lasting bond with the person you are with. These hormones, such as oxytocin and vasopressin, make you feel a strong attachment to your sexual partner, while becoming relatively less interested in pursuing another man or woman.9

tragedy of having tens of millions of children killed before birth is directly related to the modern prevalence of sex outside of marriage. It’s sick that we’ve twisted something as beautiful and wonderful as pregnancy, where new life is created, and turned it into a negative consequence to be avoided (or “terminated” if we can’t avoid it).

the actual evidence shows that people who wait until marriage to have sex end up with more stable marriages, are more satisfied with the relationship, and are happier with the quality of sex after marriage.

lust is sex with someone else in your heart, and masturbation is sex with yourself.

Every morning, I would pray for God’s help in keeping my eyes and thoughts pure.

Why do you want to get close to the edge? Is it because you want to jump off? If you desire to jump off, then you really need to come down off the roof completely, before you get hurt.

marriage isn’t about sex.

as 2 Corinthians 7:10 says, “Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.” You can avoid worldly sorrow by trusting that “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1) and “if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Cor. 5:17). You are not defined by your old self; just commit to truly making it your “old” self.

Up until a generation or two ago, the idea of living with your boyfriend or girlfriend without being married to them would have been almost unthinkable.

for young adults ages twenty-five to thirty-four, cohabitation is now seventy-four times more common than it was fifty years ago. For people ages eighteen to twenty-four, it is ninety-four times more common.1 Today, about two-thirds of married couples have lived together with someone, though not necessarily their spouse, before walking down the aisle.2

Think about how meaningless this makes some of our most cherished and romanticized traditions. “You may now kiss the bride”—you’re being given permission to kiss, yet you’ve already done far more than that. Carrying your new bride over the threshold—to the place you’ve already been living together for three years.

As many studies have consistently shown over time, people who live together before marriage are more likely to divorce.

If cohabitation was truly a precursor to marriage, then you would expect the huge increase in cohabitation rates to also lead to higher marriage rates. But the opposite has happened: in the past fifty years, the percentage of young adults ages twenty-five to thirty-four who are married has fallen by half.

For people ages eighteen to twenty-four, the number of married couples has dropped from 39 percent to just 9 percent.8 That’s because cohabitation isn’t a precursor to marriage; it’s a replacement for marriage. It removes most of the motivation for getting married.

only about half of all cohabitating couples ever do get married.

roughly half of all couples who live together break up before marriage,

you should trust the One who created marriage to know what is best for you.

He does want you to wait until marriage before living as though you were married.

Unfortunately, this is another thing our generation is notoriously bad at. We don’t do a good job of ending relationships. We break up by fighting; we break up by cheating; we break up via text. We come up with lame excuses:

We have rebound relationships that are doomed from the start, because they are really all about our ex, not the new person we are with.

if the end goal of dating is marriage, then you should break up with someone as soon as you know you’re not going to marry them.

If the relationship is not heading toward marriage, you should break up now.

If they say one thing with their lips but their actions say something different, believe their actions.

There should be a one-strike rule in dating: if they strike you once, it’s over.

I don’t think people would willingly make the choice to marry an abuser, but they do sometimes make the choice to marry someone with a known anger problem, not realizing that anger problem is likely to turn into abuse soon after.

habits don’t magically change when someone walks down the aisle; they are still the same person and are prone to doing the same things.

I often get emails that say, “My boyfriend is looking at porn. What do I do?” As I’m a former porn addict myself, here’s what I read when I see that: “My boyfriend is cheating on me repeatedly with many different women. What do I do?” The answer to that question is a bit more obvious: you break up.

In dating, there can be a huge sunk cost of emotional investment and time spent together as a couple. You may think, If we break up, all of that time and effort I’ve put into the relationship will go to waste. But that’s the thing: it’s already gone to waste.

Leaders remove confusion, and there should be no confusion over where the two of you now stand.

If it’s fully over, then leave no doubt. Quote Taylor Swift if you need to: “We are never, ever, ever getting back together.”

And no ghosting; that has to be the worst possible way to break up. It’s not even technically breaking up. If the other person can’t tell whether you are breaking up with them or if you are just dead, that is the opposite of being clear.

Jesus says to love even your enemies and “do good to those who hate you” (Luke 6:27), so no matter the circumstances, that is how you are to treat your ex.

You leave them better than you found them. Literally, you want their future spouse to be glad that their new husband or wife dated you first. Think about that. That’s a revolutionary idea. That’s completely countercultural. Instead of evil exes and broken hearts, we’d have old friends who lovingly, intentionally helped us become better people.

more ready for his eventual bride than he was before meeting her. She didn’t want to be on the list of the baggage he would take with him into another relationship.

I replied, with some choice language (I wasn’t following Christ at the time)

we started building our relationship on the solid foundation of Jesus Christ. And with our lives built on that Rock, it finally made sense for me to kneel before Monica and offer her a rock.

If both of you are fully devoted followers of Christ, desire to get married to each other, and are committed to making marriage work, you should get married. It’s a simple decision at that point. It is easy to know whether those things are true for yourself; the harder part is knowing if they are true for the person you want to marry.

when you agree to marry someone, you give them a massive amount of power over your life.

That’s what dating is for: you want to observe their life enough to be confident that they are committed. You date just long enough to figure that out, and then you make the decision to get married.

“For lack of guidance a nation falls”—or a future marriage fails—“but victory is won through many advisers” (Prov. 11:14).

Although any two Christ followers can commit to each other and make marriage work, the more aligned you are on your expectations and goals, the easier it is.

Arguments about how to manage money are consistently cited as a top reason people get divorced.1 So, at some point in your dating relationship, you need to talk at length about how you’re going to handle earnings, savings, spending, and debt. Remember: after marriage, it is not your money or their debt; it is our money and our debt. The two of you become one unit financially.

I always say that if divorce is an option, then you really need to write that into your vows: “For better or worse, unless you cheat on me with my best friend,” or whatever the exception might be. I’m not kidding. Don’t make a vow unless you mean it. If you don’t want to include divorce in your vows, then make sure you are both committed to making marriage work no matter what.

In past generations—almost every past generation, back to the beginning of time—marriage was the foundation of adult life.

Today there seems to be this pressure to have everything together first. You need to already have the house, be advanced in your career, make this much money, have paid off your debt, and be able to afford a multicarat ring before you get married. Instead of being the foundation of adult life, marriage is like the furnishings.