16 Things I Think are Pretty True for Single People

1. I encourage you to reject the soul-mate trope, a kind of romantic-Calvinism that says God (or the universe) has predetermined that one person for you and you only.

2. No one signs up for it, but if you're intentional and choose to be present, there are things to learn amid your loneliness. (I call this the pedagogy of absence.)

3. There's a weird kind of encouragement to take from the following, but some of the loneliest people I've ever met were married.

4. Jesus was single.

5. When you date, don't pretend to be smarter than you are. (If you're married, go ahead and pretend to be smarter than you are; you probably need all the help you can get.)

6. If someone you're dating keeps telling you that you're defensive, you might be. Or it might just be that you're being provoked. There's a difference between being defensive and defending yourself.

7. Everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial, which is to say, getting naked with someone physically without getting naked with them emotionally might not be your best move. Then again, it happens all the time, so give yourself grace and grow from your experiences.

8. You can deal with a lot in a relationship. Really. It's more than you would've imagined. However, if you realize that the other person is using shame or derision, feel free to draw some hard and fast boundaries. (If they don't know what the word derision means, don't shame them. Shoot 'em a link to a dictionary.)

9. What you fight about is important, but it's probably less important than how you fight.

10. Do your romantic difficulties create character or reveal character? Yes.

11. If you think you only have one chance to get a hit, of course, you'll be afraid to step up to the plate, but there's always another inning coming, which is a baseball metaphor way of saying that your dating life, your career, your theology ... it’s not over yet ... life is nothing if not another chance.

12. People in relationship are entangled within each other's desires. There is nothing you can do about this. You will, at some level, desire the desire of the other. The key is to determine what their desire is. If it's something that includes you being empowered, flourishing, and having autonomy, then you've got a good chance of being happy. If it's not, nah.

13. If you aint happy before you get a partner, you probably won't be happy after.

14. Be forewarned: Love will probably ask you to embrace the stuff you want, but even more, it'll ask you to embrace the stuff you don't want.

15. Outsourcing your validation is the number one way to never feel validated.

16. Bonus: One time, in an argument, I adopted an air of moral superiority about something my partner said. And then I was like, "I don't think Jesus would've talked like that." And then she was like, "Yeah, and Jesus was never married, was he?!" And I've just always thought that was the greatest response.

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Have you watched/listened to the conversation

Tori E. Owens

and I had with

Rev. Benjamin R. Cremer

? It was very good.

And just when you thought it couldn’t get better, this Friday, at 1PM central, we’re hanging out with Mattie Jo Cowsert

God, Sex, and Rich People

.

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