Dating is toxic and needs to go
We need to kiss dating goodbye, for real this time
When I was a student, there was a popular book among young Christians called ‘I Kissed Dating Goodbye’ by Joshua Harris. The book argued against dating and other things such as kissing before marriage. Although I think it was more popular in the States, it was around in the UK as well. (I remember a friend gave me a copy which I thumbed through but never read). Although the author has since retracted the book and issued an apology, I think there is some merit in the idea of why we need to say goodbye to dating — but for very different reasons.
If you’ve been following Sacred Musings for a while, you’ll know that one of the things which concerns me most is the breakdown of relationships between men and women. (I’ve written about this several times, for example here). This is not simply an academic issue or an issue in certain groups within society. As I write this, I can think of several people close to me who are either divorced, separated, or in unhappy marriages. The number of younger people (let’s say, in their 20s or 30s) I can think of who are happily married is vanishingly small.
What I’d like to do in this post is examine the concept of dating and how it has had the opposite effect to what is intended.
Note that I say the concept of dating: I’m not going to focus on online dating as such. We’ve all read pieces about Tinder and other online dating apps, and we’ve all heard the horror stories. I’m sure I don’t need to convince you that there are serious problems with online dating. What I’d like to do is focus more on the concept of dating itself. Technology and dating apps put these problems on steroids, but the problems existed before that.
So, what are the problems with the concept of dating? There are two that I want to mention.
Problem #1: It is self-focussed
The problem with dating, essentially, is that it focusses you on yourself and your own preferences, rather than the other person. Obviously dating apps massively exacerbate this: what hair colour, what eye colour, tall or short, and so on… the focus is on your desires about a partner from the outset. But the problem is not with the apps themselves but with the attitudes of the people who use them.
I was particularly struck by an article that I read in The Times the other day - Inside the lives of 12 single men. Let me bring a few quotes from that article to show what I mean:
[One man said] And while I don’t expect please and thank you in the bedroom I like to feel my partner is at least “present” afterwards. Sophia just reached for her phone. If I’m being honest, I felt like a vending machine.
[Another man said] People say that men behave badly when it comes to dating, and of course I’m no angel, but in my experience women can be just as brutal. At my age there are a lot of options — the choice on apps is endless — and the experience is quite intense. You go on so many dates and everyone is constantly having conversations with other people, looking over their shoulder to see who might come along next. Nobody wants to commit early on.
Those are just two examples. Both of these men felt the pain of being treated like a vending machine or a shopping item. Rather than being treated like human beings, they were being treated like things. The lack of commitment mentioned in the second example is sadly typical: why commit to any one person when another person who fulfils you better might come along any moment?
People say the opposite of love is hatred — and there is a lot of hatred in the world, for sure. However, I think we need to remember that treating someone else as a bit player in your own life — disregarding their feelings, ambitions, goals, duties, and so on — is also not loving. Love is not treating other people as instruments to make ourselves feel better. In fact, as Jesus demonstrated, true love is laying down our lives for the good of others:
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. 1 John 3:16
Jesus Christ shows us what true love is. And, even better, we can experience true love in him, because he loves us, if we are willing to repent of our sins and put our faith in him.
Part of the problem today is that people simply don’t know what love is, because people have rarely experienced it. Most people experience some love from their parents, but even then a lot of parents are too busy with their own relationship issues to give much love to their children. Children are often seen as something to have for one’s own happiness rather than people to be loved in their own right. And a lot of parents spend far too much time on their phones rather than spending time with their children.
I don’t know whether I am alone in feeling this, but it seems to me that a lot of people today don’t really care about me and my feelings but are happy to take what I can give without actually caring about me. I have felt over the last few years that a lot of people have ‘used’ me, without loving me. I’m not talking about dating here (!), just the world in general. Using rather than loving others is the modus operandi of this world — and it’s one of the key ideas that lies behind dating.
Before we move on, I just want to reiterate that dating apps have made the problem worse — much worse — but the problem is a problem within the concept of dating itself. When it comes to dating, the focus is on your own needs: you feel lonely, and you want someone to come and be with you so you won’t feel lonely any more. I don’t believe this is the right attitude. However, prior to dating apps and the current insanity of the world, I’m sure that many people had good experiences with dating and found genuine love that way. I appreciate that the picture here is nuanced.
But, as always, I believe Christians have a duty not simply to be pragmatic but ask what the Scriptures would have us do in an ideal world. And I believe that, in an ideal world, if we truly loved other people as we should, there would be no need for dating. I will explain that statement in the next section…
Problem #2: Treating romance differently
Another book about men and women that was popular back in the 1990s (published 1992) was, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. It was about how couples communicate in marriage, and paying attention to the way that men and women are different. (And it’s yet another book I’ve never actually read!)
Why do I bring up a book that was published over 30 years ago here? Because I think a lot of the ideas behind dating assumes that there is something different / unique / special about romantic relationships compared with any other kind of relationship. Note there that I said ‘romantic’ relationships: people are happy to have work colleagues, classmates, friends and neighbours of the opposite sex. But they ringfence ‘romantic’ relationships, put them in a separate box, and treat them differently to any other kind of relationship.
Why?
Why not simply seek to love others as you have opportunity — same-sex AND opposite-sex — and, if you find a friendship developing with them, pursue it? At the end of the day, a romantic relationship is not substantially different to any other kind of relationship — it’s just a friendship.
My wife and I have been married now for nearly 20 years. I was saying to her the other night, I think the reason why our marriage works is not because we have some kind of magical special chemistry which other people don’t have. It’s because first and foremost we are friends! I like talking to her, I often share what’s on my mind with her. She shares with me too. There’s nothing special about it — it’s friendship. You could say that every marriage is really just an intimate friendship.
Ultimately, I believe in the New Creation there will be ONLY friendship, based on Jesus’ words in Matthew 22:30. I wrote a very long piece about this on my blog a few years ago. I need to revise it as my thinking has developed since then, but with that caveat you can read it here.
What I’m really saying here is, ‘dating’ forces people into an unhealthy view of relationships from the outset. When you go on a date with someone, you’re not looking for a friend — you’re looking for a romantic partner. Not only so, but you’re often looking for someone who meets your preconceived ideas about a romantic partner. To my mind, it imposes a heavy burden on the relationship from the outset. It’s hard to imagine what it must be like to meet someone for the first time and wonder whether they might live up to your expectations and even be “the one”!
Why not simply look at other people as potential friends, and pursue those relationships where things seem to ‘click’?
Is there a better way?
I think there is a better way than dating, and I’d like to close by outlining what I have in mind. Imagine a community where people of all ages rubbed shoulders together: men and women, young and old. Imagine a community where people were expected to love one another, and where friendship between individuals and groups was encouraged. Imagine a community where it was simply normal for men and women to enjoy one another’s company — individually and within groups — and where it was the done thing for them to meet up for coffee and a chat. In fact, imagine a community where people were encouraged to see each other as friends and spend time building those friendships.
What I am describing here is nothing more or less than what the church should be. The only thing I missed out is the empowering of the Holy Spirit: love does not come naturally to us, but is a gift of the Spirit. The church, therefore, should be the most community in the world.
Sadly, too often it is not — and I think part of the problem is that the church has bought into “dating”. A lot of Christians seem to treat relationships between men and women as some kind of dangerous no-go zone, apart from romantic relationships. This should absolutely not be the case!
While I was at theological college, there was a strange atmosphere when it came to men and women. It was only some years afterwards as I reflected on the experience that I was able to see what the problem was. Men and women were expected to maintain a kind of ‘safe distance’ in their relationships. It would have been on the verge of scandalous for a man to befriend and go for coffee with another man’s wife, or for a married man to befriend a single woman. Men and women were encouraged to see each other only as potential vessels of temptation, rather than as people to be loved. Sadly, this is the kind of attitude I’ve seen in churches far too often.
It wasn’t always like this: when I read the works of olders writers such as Jane Austen, I’m often struck by how much more normal it was for a man to talk to and consult with a woman he wasn’t married to. We tend to think of those days as being more prudish and less free, but in some ways I think we have less freedom now. I don’t believe we in the modern world realise quite how much we have lost over the years.
In a nutshell, what I am saying here is that we need to eradicate dating — but not in some kind of legalistic, “no dates allowed” kind of way. Rather, we need to replace it with a vision of healthy, loving, community where relationships of all kinds can be formed naturally.
A moment ago, I mentioned how love is not something which comes naturally to us but is something we need the Holy Spirit for. This is something which God has helped me to understand over the last few years, and it started with thinking through the relationships between men and women. It’s actually how I start my book, Confused by Grace, and you can read a free sample of the introduction and first chapter from that link.
God has given the church something far better than anything that the world has to offer — the gift of love, in the power of the Spirit. I believe that if the church is to wake up to that calling, it will shine out like a lighthouse in today’s dark world.
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