Dating & Relationship Advice

We all desire to be in healthy relationships, and whilst we cannot always just make it happen, there are several things we can do to give ourselves the opportunity or increase our chances of finding one. When you’re looking to be in a healthy relationship, it is important to put yourself in the right environment – physically, socially, and even mentally – to enable that to happen. So, how do you improve your dating environment to ensure you’re in a space that helps you find a healthy relationship? And how can you overcome any limitations to enable this?

Dating with a heart that’s both open and protected may sound like an oxymoron but being able to strike this tricky balance is key to finding healthy love. Our hearts are precious, on a physical, emotional and spiritual level. They pump blood around our body, they connect us to others through love and they connect us to God. They are also easily hurt or wounded, especially when it comes to romantic relationships. It’s not called heartache for nothing, and many of us will have experienced some level of heartbreak. But if past heartache leads us to become overly protective of our hearts, we risk sabotaging our chances of finding true love.

Time is precious. 24 hours in a day can seem too little as we fill it with work, family, friends and hobbies. How easy it is to make time to date too? Trying to find time to spend with God seems to be a challenge, let alone start a relationship or online dating. When everything else already needs to be scheduled into our busy lives, how do we make time for getting to know someone new? It’s a balancing act, but God knew exactly how many hours we need in a day – we just need to make sure we use them wisely! So how can we make time to date when our lives are so busy?

So, you’d like to meet someone with faith, someone you could come to love and maybe, just maybe, share your life with? Congratulations and welcome to a life-changing journey! Like any journey, physical or emotional, it’s vital to look after yourself along the way. The key to this? Be gentle with yourself. It’s a great way of balancing your emotions and inner resilience. If you’re wondering what gentleness with yourself looks like in practice when you’re dating, here are some simple but effective ideas.

Whether you are dating, in a relationship or married for a long time, one of the main keys to a successful relationship is finding ways to show appreciation. If your ‘appreciation box’ is filled up, you’re more likely to give out love more easily. If your box is empty, then it’s very hard to maintain a healthy relationship. If you appreciate your partner, then they will feel loved and filled up, ready to show you appreciation. If you feel appreciated by your partner, then you are going to find it much easier to show love and appreciation and be happier in a relationship or when dating.

So, you’ve been dating someone for what you consider a good amount of time, and you really like them. You know that you would like to explore the possibility of marriage with them, but you’re worried about bringing it up, for fear of sounding too keen, or too pushy perhaps. Don’t panic, you’re not alone! The marriage conversation is one that any serious Christian relationship is likely to have at some point, but it can be difficult to know when to bring it up. So, when exactly you should you begin?

There’s nothing like a global pandemic to get us thinking about what we really want out of life and for many of us, one of the top priorities is to find love. I know from experience that it’s all too easy to abandon our boundaries and let go of healthy relationship practices when we start to feel a sense of urgency, especially faced with post-pandemic dating. So how do we balance the passionate pursuit of a partner with the patience that’s required in order to find the right match?

Before I met my husband, I was saving myself for someone special. My parents had told me to make a wise choice when choosing a life partner and instilled in me only to go out with someone who I could actually see a future with. I don’t think I really appreciated all that meant until now, five years on, and it’s interesting to reflect on things I wish I knew before I got married. I started thinking about new relationships and what advice I would give someone looking now for the best chance of a long-lasting relationship and marriage.