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Why Date?

Is it really worth it?
Nov. 6, 2011

Some people claim that seduction tactics don’t have to be uncaring. Earlier this year I went out with a woman who knows one of the best known, and published, leaders of the Seduction Community whom she claims is a very “nice” man. According to her, seduction techniques can be used to care for women. Her son, she says, has mastered Ladder Theory and the art of seduction, and uses them to lure women into relationships they might not otherwise choose but where he believes they will end up happy. No doubt, this is true. After all, seduction tactics are just that… tactics. And like any other strategy they may be used for selfish or unselfish reasons. In principle at least, playing a woman to a place where she believes she is happy might be one way a man could care for her.

Assuming of course, that you believe women are playthings…

I don’t.

And no matter how desirable a woman may be or how happy she thinks she is in my company, I will never be content in a relationship with her if I have to rob her of her dignity to maintain it. That which does not honor and guard her fullest humanity and womanhood, the image of God in her, is not love, and I have no interest in offering her anything less than the highest kind of love I know of… one that is honest, tender, passionate, and trustworthy. A love that embodies the fruits of the Holy Spirit to the highest degree I am capable of as a mortal man (Gal. 5:22).


Which brings us back to the original question—one that has been directed at me time and again by family, friends, and most of all, by the men I know. Why date?

Why would a man like me—one who is not willing to be a player or emotionally distance himself to at least some extent from the women in his life—continue reaching out to women only to find himself in a mine field of arbitrary pickiness and fragile, unexamined "chemistry" that inevitably leads to abandonment and disappointment? What is the point of flinging one’s self against a dark mountain when it never seems to lead to anything but blood and tears? After much reflection, prayer, and discussion with others, for me it ultimately comes down to three things;


First, because choosing to date is an act of faith.

Hope is braver than despair, and it is the path we were created to walk. All my life I’ve had a deep desire to love, nurture, protect, and share the journey heavenward with one woman. I cannot believe that God is a dilettante game player who would create such a desire in me if He had no intention of seeing it fulfilled, in my life and in someone else’s.

Years ago at the height of the Cold War I read of an anti-nuclear activist who was questioned as to why he kept on fighting a losing battle for nuclear disarmament and peace-building when nothing ever came of it. In response he said, “Well… I guess I’ve never been as concerned with being ‘successful’ as I was with being faithful.” In the end, faith isn’t a matter of believing in something without proof… it’s it’s trusting in someone without relenting. It is trusting the path that God has called us to walk, even when the Promised Land is nowhere in sight. Choosing to date in spite of the relentless disappointments is to hold onto the fact that in the end, He is bigger than all the brokenness that surrounds us—that in spite of all apparent evidence to the contrary, there are women in the world who are not privy to the status quo, and He is able to lead me to someone who longs for the kind of love I do and will give a guy like me a chance. It is being faithful, if not successful.


Second, because the act of dating itself (or engaging in any relationship for that matter) is where the answers are to be found.




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