Date Badly

What’s on Megan’s Mind?

I have a hard time making mistakes. I make plenty of them, but I struggle to accept that about myself, and have lived my life taking care to make as few as possible. I believe that avoiding mistakes has actually harmed me more than it has helped me, and as an adult, I wish I had allowed myself to do more things badly. I stopped learning to play certain instruments because playing them didn’t come naturally to me. I avoided sports, anything involving math, and travel to places that felt too far away. I fled from potential embarrassment like a deer running from a forest fire. In hindsight, I should have taken more risks and allowed myself to get a bit singed. I would have learned so much! I would have discovered more about myself, and I would have tested the limits of my capabilities. 

I’m now making up for lost time in my mistake-making, so have no fear for me. But one place that I can look back on and be sure that I made a good number of mistakes was in how I dated as a teenager and young adult. 

Dearest hearts, I dated terribly. And I don’t mean that I dated horrible people (generally speaking). In fact, I mostly dated great men who I respect to this day, and I’m a huge supporter of the families they’ve all built with their smart and beautiful spouses. I’m pleased with the fact that I attend church with three men who I dated as a teenager, and I’m so proud of them, in a sisterly, ‘good-on-you-buddy,’ kind of way. I’m thrilled to watch our children play together, and am happy that my husband has even formed close friendships with some of them. 

My dating mistakes had more to do with why and how I dated than with who I dated. I dated to medicate my shaky sense of self-esteem, to have someone who would make me feel desired, and to enact my version of the romantic stories I was addicted to for years. I used people to shore up my own sense of self, which was wrong of me. And I ended some relationships poorly– my most shameful experience of this was that I broke up with one young man only to start dating one of his best friends just a few weeks later. I can’t imagine what that must have done to his self-esteem, and I know it damaged their friendship significantly, perhaps beyond repair. I regret that I dated for the wrong reasons, and I regret that I chased relationships with some men who (thankfully) never returned my advances. Thank God for unanswered prayers!

I regret that I didn’t form strong boundaries around physical contact in some early relationships. I kissed too many people, without thinking about the consequences of that for them or for me. My lack of boundaries put me in a position where I could be taken advantage of, and when I dated a man who was not grounded in the truth, that led to me being drawn into a sexual relationship against my will, which left me broken and confused. I narrowly avoided disaster in that relationship, which is truly the only one I’d like to wipe from history entirely. 

Despite the heaviness of all of that regret, I do not wish to go back and erase my dating mistakes. I’m grateful that I had the chance to meet young men who were willing to endure the awkwardness and embarrassment of teenage love and test those waters with me. They taught me so much about how to communicate, how to express my needs, and how to create connection. For all of the things I did poorly, amid the mistakes I also learned some valuable lessons, ones that serve me now in my efforts to coach Singles to build their own love stories. 

I’ve heard women voice that they “Only ever want to date their husbands,” and I can’t tell you how much I absolutely reject that philosophy. What they mean is that they only want to experience emotional intimacy with the one person who they will marry, but my dears–you have to learn how to be emotionally intimate, and you often don’t do it right the first time you try. Dating, and all of the complicated communication and elicitation skills that come with it, are just that: skills. They require practice, and there really is no other place to practice the skills needed to date than by actually dating. 

Dating is worth doing, even if you do it badly! Our culture is plagued with a paralysis of connection. Every interaction feels charged, like one wrong emoji could ruin someone’s chances at a perfect love story. Ruin the love story, friend! Send the funny joke, ask the wild question, overshare something that makes you feel vulnerable. Risk rejection– it is painful, but you are resilient. You are capable of bearing that rejection and then rejecting it yourself in order to give a new connection a try. 

Say these things out loud: it is ok to make dating mistakes. It is ok to go out on a date with the wrong person. Is it ok to miscommunicate, as long as I learn from it. It is ok to make the first move. It is ok to be rejected. It is ok to kindly reject someone. If I encounter brokenheartedness, I will be ok. 

You will, dearest. You will be fine. 

Last week, we went on a vacation to the beach, and my daughter got a splinter in the sole of her foot while running down the boardwalk. The splinter was sizable, and I attempted to pull it with some tweezers. That plan failed because I could not get my daughter to relax and let me pull the splinter. “It will hurt!” she wailed at the top of her six-year-old lungs, so loudly that I was worried someone walking outside might get concerned and call the police. “DON’T TOUCH IT! I DON’T WANT YOU TO TOUCH IT!” 

“Sweetheart, I haven’t even done anything yet!” The tweezers were literally hovering in the air above her foot, not making contact with the skin whatsoever. 

“I knowww,” she keened, “I know it doesn’t hurt right now, but it’s the thought of it hurting that makes me feel so scared!”

If we were honest with ourselves, some of our hesitation around dating and making messy, teenager mistakes is that we anticipate it hurting. Frankly, it’s not even the heartbreak that scares us the most; it’s the potential shame and embarrassment that we expect we would feel if we broke someone’s heart, or someone rejected us, or we found after talking to someone for a while that we had made a poor choice. 

Shame and embarrassment are universal dating experiences. They can be minimized, but likely not avoided. The way you minimize them is by refusing to accept them as the defining emotion of your interactions. You are amazing, and there is no need to be embarrassed if someone shortsighted chooses not to pursue your amazing self. You don’t need to accept the shame for that. 

Dating is messy, sometimes. It is something we all fumble through the first time, and it’s something that even the couples who end up together can look back on and laugh and cringe over. Dating makes us all silly, and that is normal. 

It is worth doing, even if you make mistakes. Date badly, so that you can learn to date better. It won’t hurt as badly as you think it will.

Sincerely, and with love,

–Megan

Resources

I try to avoid pointing people to non-Apostolic or non-Christian dating resources; I believe that we’re trying to create a dating culture that is distinctly different from the World. That said, I am going to share a social media profile that I generally think puts out excellent advice. Jillian Turecki is a bestselling author and podcaster who specializes in dating and clarifying relationships, and I think she does a great job of creating clean, encouraging content with dating advice that is very sound. Nothing she says is necessarily groundbreaking, but her content is based on solid, no-nonsense advice about how to communicate well and ask for what you need. Check her out on Instagram, if you feel so inclined. As usual, keep your discernment dialed up, and take just what you can use from her content, discarding anything you feel doesn’t align with your values or convictions.

Announcements

I want to take a moment to remind everyone about our online course: Love Beyond Barriers. This is designed to be really more of a guided reflection and self-assessment of your dating barriers, which are behaviors that can block your ability to let people into your inner world and build connections with them. It’s available for purchase for just $19.99, and I recommend it to anyone who is concerned about rejection or has experienced it in the past; this can help you identify places where you can shift your behavior to put your best foot forward. 

Pipeline Profile

By the numbers:

• Available ladies: 180

• Available men: 38

• Matches in progress: 9 (18 people total)

We’re in the final stretch of our ladies’ intake, and I’ll admit that I’ve been too optimistic about how much matching I could do concurrently with all of these consultations. I’ve managed to squeeze in just a couple of introductions over the past week or so, but I’m feeling behind, and am meeting more amazing young men and women who I’m really eager to sit down and review as potential matches for each other. Allow me to thank you for your patience, again. I’m looking forward to finally ending the intake season so that we can get our dates rolling more consistently.

Hey Single Friend, 

Welcome to Love Notes! I’m so excited that you’re here. If you’re new: Love Notes are weekly updates from Megan, designed to give you a boost of encouragement and keep you looped in on all of the happenings at The Synchrony Project. These are always written straight from my heart, never with AI.