Get Support for Singleness & Your Dating Journey
At age 22, I watched as my friends started getting married one by one. While living overseas after college, more of them tied the knot, and I couldn’t help but feel like I was really missing out. As my singleness stretched out over the years, I sometimes wondered, What’s wrong with me?
Years later, I still wasn’t married, and I had emotional scars from dating narcissistic men (many of whom were in ministry). Despite my best efforts, I found myself repeating the same unwanted dating patterns. When I dated someone healthy, I often sabotaged the relationship due to my own unresolved pain.
I loved God, I wanted to love others well, and I was doing my best—but it wasn’t working.
That all changed when I decided to try dating again while in therapy. I was able to dial down my perfectionism and approach dating as a journey of discovery, not a race to marriage. Rather than rushing from A to Z, I embraced the process, allowing trust to build step by step. I learned how to notice flags and gradually color them in as I gained more evidence, rather than making hasty decisions OR completely ignoring them. Having a safe space to process with a therapist allowed me to evaluate my relationships with clarity and confidence.
Today, I’m happily, messily, and gloriously imperfectly married, and I want to help you find fun and joy in your own season of singleness and dating.
Resource: The Intimacy Ladder by Jason and Lauren Vallotton
Book Recommendation: How to Get a Date Worth Keeping by Henry Cloud
A Special Note on Dating Apps
I met my husband on a dating app called Hinge, and I think that, done right, dating apps can be a ton of fun! More and more, this is how people are meeting. Research shows that in some demographics, more than half of single people are on dating apps. I love supporting people as they navigate dating apps. Approach it as a research project. While marriage is one possible outcome, other outcomes are learning more about yourself, growing in social skills and assertiveness, encouraging someone else, and just having a good time.
