This goes without saying, but I am no expert on love + dating + marriage + quotables like “the heart wants what the heart wants”. Nah, I am actually here to tell you all that “the heart should want what the spirit needs” and it probably won’t be all sugary, fluffy, and sweet like the advice we see on Twitter. So, fair warning, this may or may not be everything anyone wants to hear. Like I say in most of my blog posts, I am here to share my truths (and your truth, if fitting). So, part of my truth is that I was in relationships for majority of my teenage years, and over the past few months I realized that it was time for me to be single for a while, i.e. I am living my best life please don’t talk to me. Just kidding (but not really). I could write a whole blog post on singleness, but what I will say is that being single allows you to step back, analyze, and learn. Think about it like this: To prepare for a game, a sports team usually spends time watching the footage from their past plays (and even the past plays of other teams). This is how the players learn, grow, and improve their game. Think about dating the same way. I mean, let’s face it, the game hasn’t changed much at all. During this period of singleness, I played back my past dating experiences, relationships that I have seen succeed, and other relationships that I have seen fail. The thing that I have realized about millennials is that we have a hard time with this little thing called commitment. Either there is a lack thereof or we find ourselves beating a dead horse. We live in a generation that treats everything like it’s disposable. I have discovered that our generation is full of too many people “talking” and too few people actually experiencing love for what it is. I have begun to ask myself: Do we truly know how to love one another? Do we even know what love is? These are such magical questions, and I have been on a quest, for quite some time now, to figure out the answers. Before I dive into this post, I want to make it COMPLETELY clear once again that I am not an expert on dating. Truthfully, I have made almost all of the exact mistakes that I will be telling you all about today. I have fallen in love and fallen out of it. I have experienced passion, desire and not-so-pretty heartbreaks. But, in the past year or so, I have also been able to experience the greatest love story of all (don’t worry, I will talk about that at the end of the series), which has fueled me to write this post about love today in the most honest and raw way that I possibly can. I am about to share with you all, in a simple format of “Do’s and Don’ts”, a few things I have learned about love and how to date right. Don’t: Treat your relationship like it is a marriage I understand that most people “date to marry” but no one ever said it was smart to “date like you are married”. I have grown to realize that this defeats the whole purpose of dating and honestly takes a large amount of fulfillment out of it. When I got to college, I realized that it was normalized for couples to spend every night with each other. It was normalized to share passwords, share locations, etc. Like…Wow. This is so counterproductive because we are essentially staging commitment without vows + a ring being involved. I’ve experienced and seen this lead to a world of trouble, heartbreak, and even abuse. There is a time and a place for EVERYTHING. Marriage is a form of commitment that will unfortunately, one day, take away from your time with yourself, your time doing what you love, and your time with God…being committed to one person is a beautiful thing, but why rush that? As young adults, we must fight to discover ourselves and the world. It is more rewarding when this is an independent process. What sort of longevity could be cultivated from fully committing yourself to someone who, most likely, still doesn’t understand themselves? I feel like we should take the whole word “commitment” out of dating. For those of you reading this and thinking that I am saying, “Oh, word? No commitment? I can rock with whoever I want, whenever I want?”, pump ya breaks. Instead of being in a committed relationship, you should be in a focused relationship. Focus on YOU, your morals, and your time. Greater commitment leads to greater access. Protect yourself. Do: Know what you want, don’t settle for less I feel like men do this better than anyone else, but it’s okay to date around and search until you find the right person for you. If you take the physical out of the equation, you might stop calling men dogs and start calling them smart. Girls, I know y’all are like “excuse me?”, but I am here to give you all the truth. Straight no chaser. I can say with conviction that most adult women know what they want. I know I personally have a list in my head (with deadlines) of the things that I want. However, the problem arises when we get to our 20’s and, rapidly, we feel rushed to settle down. Now, all of sudden, that list of things we want goes out the window and you stuck looking like this: To my girls, you deserve exactly what you want from a person. Act like it. Honestly, date like a man who doesn’t give two craps about settling down, and you will find yourself in more meaningful and focused relationships. To my men, be intentional. Be straightforward when dating, and be sure to tell women what you want and where your mind is at. And to my sisters and my brothers, do not settle for anyone or anything! Don’t settle for immaturity, infidelity, lack of communication, and lack of respect. Know what you want for yourself and take all the time you need to find that person. Don’t: Fall in love with the idea of someone Are you really in love or are you in love with the idea of being in a relationship? One of the reasons why I logged off twitter for so long was because everything I was seeing about love was, frankly, so meaningless, deprived, and malnourished. I distinctively remember a girl tweeting “issa husband” because her boyfriend bought her flowers, surprised her with dinner, and gave her a massage. NEWS FLASH! This is what your significant other is supposed to do! Similarly, if she would’ve surprised him with dinner and a massage; that is what is supposed to occur when you love someone. There is a stark difference between loving someone and being in love. We are called, as humans, to love everyone. However, it is quite easy to assume that you are in love with a person when you are actually just in love with the idea of them. Sometimes, we can get so obsessed with the idea of falling in love and being in a relationship that we often inaccurately ascribe normalcies as being extraordinary. Sometimes, this causes us to end up with the wrong person because we “think” we fell in love. How do you know when you are in love with someone? I am still struggling to understand that for myself, but I am convicted to say it’s deeper than good conversation and surprising someone with dinner. Instead of asking yourself if you are in love with a person, ask yourself this: “How is that person feeding my spirit?” Does that person match your energy? Do they know what makes your spirit happy? Do they know you to your core? As humans, the desires of our hearts are tasteless and malnourished, just like those tweets I mentioned earlier. So, stop listening to your heart and start listening to your spirit. Do: Date someone your tribe can vouch for Every time I have become interested in a guy, I ask my friends + mother + cousins what they think about him. I don’t necessarily introduce them, but I do give them the run-down about who I am potentially about to deal with. At the end of the day, your tribe (aka your people, shooters, riders 4 life), can often see things that you can’t see. They also may know something about that person that you don’t know. If you find yourself struggling to tell your tribe about who you are dating or if you find yourself omitting information, you might want to stop dating that person. 9/10 they aren’t the one. If they can’t be a part of your community, how can you happily exist together in the long run? Ask yourself these questions: Does this person have a good reputation? Do they care about people? What were they like in their past relationships? You should date someone with proven character. Don’t be afraid to get to know them through other people, and don’t be afraid to seek approval from the people who love you most. So, to conclude, I hope you all enjoyed the first post of this two-part series. Take the time to absorb, meditate, and give the heart what the spirit needs until I share part two. Truthfully, Olivia
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Olivia McPhaulWriter. Christ enthusiast. Zealot of love. Offering my truth and sharing my imperfect journey in womanhood. Archives
May 2019
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