Dating and all that…

I cannot offer any woman the kind of love she needs… and the kind I want to give her… unless I am the man God created me to be whether she is in my life or not. If I am to meet her face to face I must have a face of my own… one that is truly mine to give her.

There’s no point in pretending otherwise.

Words are sacred

They have the power to make known, and guard life’s most priceless treasures… and the power to destroy them. Love… Passion… Intimacy… Caring… No matter how sincere we are and how good our intentions may be, when we use words like these carelessly… without weighing their cost, or the value of what they guard… we cheapen them, and erode their power to enrich and protect us. Do this long enough, and soon love becomes mere sentiment, passion becomes lust, intimacy becomes self-indulgent drama… and it gets progressively harder even to tell the difference.

Eventually, the day comes when we can’t tell the difference between love and an emotional $5 roman candle that lasts just long enough for a one night stand, after which we wake up the next morning and find ourselves on the Internet trying to fill the void with another $5 roman candle… And when it comes time to deliver the real thing… we haven’t got the clarity, the centeredness, or the strength of character to do so, and everyone ends up wounded and impoverished.

Every minute we spend glibly chipping away at a sacred language, the meter is running… and when the time is up someone has to pay. Is it any wonder that the Bible makes so much of controlling the tongue?

If I guard my words they will guard me, and the women I date. The things I say will have meaning. They’ll reveal rather than dilute and cheapen the things I cherish most… and, I believe, the things that most women cherish as well.

And if I am patient enough to wait for a woman who will do the same I won’t be disappointed.

You don’t know anyone until you’ve spent time with them in person.

Most dating sites are careful to protect the privacy of their members. For obvious reasons, this is in everyone’s best interest. We all know about the bottom feeders I referred to earlier, but even for the rest of us sometimes anonymity can bite back.