True Love Dates Quotes

“Fix your eyes on Jesus and the plans he has for your life. Look ahead, and run after him with all your heart. Then look around. Whoever has kept up with you, marry that person.”
― Debra Fileta, True Love Dates: Your Indispensable Guide to Finding the Love of your Life

“Dating with no regrets means keeping your focus on Jesus, so that no matter what happens in your relationships with others, your relationship with God remains intact.”
― Debra Fileta, True Love Dates: Your Indispensable Guide to Finding the Love of your Life

“Your longing for an intimate relationship with another person is something you were created to feel. It doesn’t mean that you are unholy or that you haven’t let Jesus fill your heart the way he should. It means you’re human, created in the image of God, a God who loves, who connects, and who longs for relationship himself.
Jesus can never be your boyfriend or girlfriend because we was never intended to be. A significant part of your heart was designed specifically for just him, but there is a part of your heart that was designed specifically for others.”
― Debra Fileta, True Love Dates: Your Indispensable Guide to Finding the Love of your Life

“what matters is not who initiated but how we responded thereafter. We both responded with affirming words and validating actions. We invested in the relationship equally, together giving and receiving. We kept communication open the whole way through.”
― Debra Fileta, True Love Dates: Your Indispensable Guide to Finding the Love of Your Life

“Focus on whom God has made you to be, rather than on whom he has made for you to be with.”
― Debra Fileta, True Love Dates: Your Indispensable Guide to Finding the Love of Your Life

“What if our loneliness is the result not simply of needing a partner but of needing people? We are made in the image of a relational God; it makes sense that we possess the desire to be together.”
― Debra Fileta, True Love Dates: Your Indispensable Guide to Finding the Love of your Life

“When we see marriage as our sole purpose, we find ourselves with nowhere to go when we finally arrive.”
― Debra Fileta, True Love Dates: Your Indispensable Guide to Finding the Love of your Life

“More important than who initiates a relationship are the mutual love and respect that are exchanged from that point on.”
― Debra Fileta, True Love Dates: Your Indispensable Guide to Finding the Love of Your Life

“It’s easier to show aggression than it is to feel insecure. It’s easier to push people away and to live alone than to be emotionally exposed and vulnerable.”
― Debra Fileta, True Love Dates: Your Indispensable Guide to Finding the Love of Your Life

“the success of a relationship is determined not by a lack of conflict but by how well a couple works through conflict.”
― Debra Fileta, True Love Dates: Your Indispensable Guide to Finding the Love of Your Life

“Your story has far more to do with finding God’s unique calling and purpose for you life than it does with finding the love of your life.”
― Debra Fileta, True Love Dates: Your Indispensable Guide to Finding the Love of your Life

“Because I had no awareness of who I was or what I needed, I found myself settling for a mediocre relationship rather than holding out for what was best.”
― Debra Fileta, True Love Dates: Your Indispensable Guide to Finding the Love of your Life

“The result of immersing yourself in God’s love is that it requires you to trust — trust in a God who loves you enough to meet all of your needs, trust in a God who knows what is best for your life, trust in the one who promises that his will is good, pleasing, and perfect (Rom. 12:2), trust in a God whose love is matchless.”
― Debra K. Fileta, True Love Dates: Your Indispensable Guide to Finding the Love of Your Life

“Let me repeat that feelings are not the foundation of a relationship, but they are an important launching point. There will come a day when you are married and will have to learn to love someone even when you do not feel like it, but that time is not now.”
― Debra K. Fileta, True Love Dates: Your Indispensable Guide to Finding the Love of Your Life

“Time and time again young men and women tell me they are in a relationship with someone who looks “so good on paper,” but the feelings just aren’t there. Rather than being excited and full of anticipation, they feel apathetic and confused. For some people, the problem stems from within. Fear of commitment and trust issues stunt their feelings. But for others, the lack of emotion is a sign that something is not as it should be in their relationship. Something is missing.”
― Debra K. Fileta, True Love Dates: Your Indispensable Guide to Finding the Love of Your Life

“It’s important to be excited about your new relationship. It’s important to feel a connection, an attraction, and a joyful anticipation of what’s to come. The absence of those feelings and that excitement means something is missing.”
― Debra K. Fileta, True Love Dates: Your Indispensable Guide to Finding the Love of Your Life

“John met Deb at a church conference one summer. He describes the moment he met her as “instantly falling in love.” In fact, he called his best friend, who lived across the country, to tell him, “I’ve met the girl I’m going to marry.” John had been saving his heart for that special someone. He was selective in his dating endeavors and had never really been in a serious relationship. Even though his heart told him to just go for it with Deb, his head told him to wait, and he pursued a friendship with her after the conference was over. He called her, visited with her, and got to know her as he would any friend. He made sure not to lead her on with flirtatious language or touch, and he tried to get to know her as a person. Five months into their friendship, his feelings for her grew stronger and stronger. Through their friendship, he learned so much about her, and with every passing day, she seemed to fit more and more into the mold of the woman he had always dreamed of marrying. Not only did he feel that he loved her, he truly liked her and felt that their friendship was ready for the next step. He asked her to enter a dating relationship with him, and she accepted. Their friendship was a solid foundation for a healthy dating relationship that eventually led to an incredible marriage.”
― Debra K. Fileta, True Love Dates: Your Indispensable Guide to Finding the Love of Your Life

“I agree that though statistics are important, they aren’t everything, and there are always exceptions to the norm. But if dating is essentially a practice run for a lifelong marital commitment, why not take your time and be sure you know what you are getting into? Why add more risk factors than you have to? What do you have to lose? Each season of dating offers a spectrum of discoveries that will lead you either one step closer to true love or two steps back. Each season illuminates potential risk factors and provides the opportunity to water and nurture the seeds of a relationship to see if they will grow and mature into a flourishing lifelong commitment.”
― Debra K. Fileta, True Love Dates: Your Indispensable Guide to Finding the Love of Your Life

“I also know such couples. But they are not the norm. Research on courtship indicates that couples who were together for a substantial period before marriage are less likely to divorce than those who rushed into it.”
― Debra K. Fileta, True Love Dates: Your Indispensable Guide to Finding the Love of Your Life

“Healthy relationships are founded on who the relationship partner actually is, not on who they could become.”
― Debra K. Fileta, True Love Dates: Your Indispensable Guide to Finding the Love of Your Life

“My husband and I have been planning a big trip for a milestone anniversary celebration. Given the amount of money we’re thinking of spending, you’d better believe that we have spent hours researching, making lists, making phone calls, asking questions, and discussing what we want as we choose a destination. Anyone planning to spend a lot of money on a memorable trip would do the same thing. If people put that much planning into a trip that will be here today and gone tomorrow, how much more should they invest in thinking through the qualities they want in a lifelong partner?”
― Debra K. Fileta, True Love Dates: Your Indispensable Guide to Finding the Love of Your Life

“As the months and years went on and their relationship unfolded, Denise started longing for something more. Sure, she loved Ryan’s allure and the way he made her feel, but something seemed to be missing. The more she got to know him, the more it became obvious that they had nothing in common and that they were headed down separate paths. She longed for someone to challenge her, to sharpen her in her faith, to share her passions, and to propel her forward in life. But Denise felt trapped and obligated to stay in the relationship because of how much time and emotion she had invested in it. Thinking of starting over was just too much for her to bear. She reminded herself that Ryan was a “good enough” guy. And he was. But unfortunately, all too often Mr. Good Enough ends up taking the place of Mr. Right.”
― Debra K. Fileta, True Love Dates: Your Indispensable Guide to Finding the Love of Your Life

“This saying challenged me to keep focused, to know my vision, and to look ahead to God’s plans for my life. No distractions, no pit stops, no wrong turns. It wasn’t until after I decided to pursue God’s purpose for me that I eventually came face to face with the man of my dreams. As we were both looking ahead to God’s plans for our lives, our stories collided in a miraculous and unexpected way.”
― Debra K. Fileta, True Love Dates: Your Indispensable Guide to Finding the Love of Your Life

“So many men and women come into my office broken and discouraged because their life’s purpose is wrapped up in a relationship that has failed them or let them down. This is not the way God intended it to be. Finding true love may be a beautiful portion of your story, but it was never intended to be the grand finale. It’s too easy to work so hard on this one section of our story that in the meantime the rest of the book never gets written. God’s plans never play out in our lives because we are so fixated on finding love that we don’t take the time to look at where we are going.”
― Debra K. Fileta, True Love Dates: Your Indispensable Guide to Finding the Love of Your Life

“your story has far more to do with finding God’s unique calling and purpose for your life than it does with finding the love of your life.”
― Debra K. Fileta, True Love Dates: Your Indispensable Guide to Finding the Love of Your Life

“Birds of a feather flock together.” That saying is true in so many ways. The reality of dating is that you are attracted to people who are similar to you, similar not necessarily in appearance or personality (though that may be true) but in health. I can’t tell you the number of times I have counseled men and women who have asked me through tears, “Why am I always attracted to the unhealthy ones?” The simple answer is that what you believe about yourself is what you will get. Your beliefs and view of self are so central to determining the kind of person you will relate to. They act like lures, drawing people to your side. Your level of emotional health and self-esteem will always attract others who are in the same category. Healthy people will marry healthy people because you will always end up with the person whom you believe you deserve. It’s a simple equation, though we tend to complicate it. It’s almost as though human beings are magnetic. We attract people who are similar to us. Not only that, but studies on dating1 have shown that we even tend to date and marry people who are similar to us in appearance and style. If something as superficial as physical appearance holds that much power, how much more magnetic is the influence of our mental and emotional world?”
― Debra K. Fileta, True Love Dates: Your Indispensable Guide to Finding the Love of Your Life

“A thought-provoking passage in the book of James challenges us to get real with how we look. Not on the outside but on the inside. It talks about the importance of spiritual growth and explains that a person who listens to God’s words but doesn’t change is like a person who looks in the mirror but walks away, forgetting what they saw (James 1:23 – 25).”
― Debra K. Fileta, True Love Dates: Your Indispensable Guide to Finding the Love of Your Life

“Looking back on her life and the factors that affected her decisions was a really important step in Lisa’s healing process. She began to expose faulty ways of thinking that she had never questioned before. She processed this new information and allowed it to transform her life. She started making decisions based on the truth that God had shown her through his Word and through counseling. Lisa is proof that when you know better, you do better. Her new understanding had a profound impact on her life; slowly she began looking at dating in a new light. She made up her mind not to settle for less than God’s best, and she took the next few months to invest in herself by allowing God to heal her emotional wounds before she reentered the world of dating. This, my friends, is the ultimate goal of dating yourself. It is the art of digging deep and taking a hard look at where you have come from in order to light the path to where you are going. It is the process of learning from your past as you are empowered to choose your future. It is the opportunity to get real with yourself in the most intimate and transparent way. It is the journey of taking the pain of your past and turning it into perspective as you make changes for a healthier future. It’s time to look forward and be freed.”
― Debra K. Fileta, True Love Dates: Your Indispensable Guide to Finding the Love of Your Life

“Lisa opened up about her mother, a Christian woman who was content with being miserable in her marriage. As Lisa was growing up, her mother had always complained to her about her marriage, but never made the necessary changes. Unknowingly, her mother conveyed the message that settling in relationships was inevitable, that a perfect relationship could never be found. Lisa had taken this message to heart. If God’s best didn’t really exist for her, she might as well settle for someone who was “good enough.” Lisa’s relationship with her father had also played a role. She spoke with tears in her eyes about the distance she felt from him, never feeling loved or appreciated, respected or adored. He took care of her physical needs for food and shelter, but her emotional needs were left unmet. No affection, no praise, no connection. She was hungry for that kind of love, and shortly after she went off to college, she began to take it from anyone who offered it.”
― Debra K. Fileta, True Love Dates: Your Indispensable Guide to Finding the Love of Your Life

“For the first time in many years, Lisa had entered into a season of singleness. She had a history of dating the wrong guys, one after another. With the perspective allowed by her pause from dating, Lisa realized that the people she dated were nothing like the man she had always dreamed of marrying. She had a tendency to settle, living in the hope of what she wanted the relationship to become rather than seeing it for what it was. When I met Lisa, she was ready to make some discoveries about herself. She was sick and tired of doing things the same old way and was ready for a transformation. And she was willing to do the work that this required. After I took some time to understand Lisa’s life and her past, it became clear to me that many of the patterns that were holding her back stemmed from things she learned in her family of origin. The dynamics of Lisa’s relationship with her parents and of her parents’ relationship with each other had set the stage for her future relationships in a way that she never could have imagined.”
― Debra K. Fileta, True Love Dates: Your Indispensable Guide to Finding the Love of Your Life