Sheila: Welcome to the Bare Marriage Podcast. I’m Sheila Wray Gregoire from baremarriage.com where we like to talk about healthy, evidence-based, biblical advice for your sex life and your marriage or your dating life as we are talking about today. I am joined by my daughter, Rebecca Lindenbach.

Rebecca: Hello.

Sheila: And this is the episode that we have shied away from doing.

Rebecca: Despite the fact that you have hounded us for it for many a moon.

Sheila: Well, I mean I’ve always been kind of hesitant to do this one too.

Rebecca: Well, and we have good reason. Both of us got married incredibly young to fantastic people that we are still married to.

Sheila: Yes, and so did your sister. And so it’s just like this isn’t something—dating as an adult and going through a prolonged period of singleness is not something that we’ve ever had to deal with. But we get so many questions about it, and so I thought you know what? Let’s just tackle it. Last time we did an ask me anything—I put up on Instagram ask me any question, and I swear half of them were about dating.

Rebecca: So we’re going to let you know we’re not going to speak from personal experience except for if we say this is personal experience. We’re mostly going to be talking about what we found in our research because we have done a lot of research on the effects of certain things, and we’ve seen patterns in our qualitative research of people who were—got married later or who got married not at 20 like me.

Sheila: And we’ve really had some discussions in our patron group about this, and you can join our patron group too. That’s a great intro to it for as little as $5 a month. You can support us at patreon.com/baremarriage. The link is in the podcast notes. You get access to our exclusive Facebook group which has several hundred people, and you get exclusive podcasts that only our patrons hear where we go a little bit more unfiltered and all kinds of stuff. So we do talk a lot about dating there, and I thought what we could do today is some of the big picture questions. So here’s what we’re not going to tackle. We are not going to tackle things like what should my physical boundaries be in dating, how do I handle sexual urges if I’m single because quite frankly this is something that we didn’t have to navigate in the same way. And I just feel like there’s a point in the New Testament where it says that we are a body, and we each have different roles. And as someone who has lived through the death of a child, I really don’t like it when people who haven’t tell me how I should be grieving. And so I don’t want to do this for single people. But what we can do and what I’m hoping to do is give you some research-based advice and just thoughts on how to actually figure out who is a good partner and how to make yourself into a great partner. So that’s what I want to do today. Big picture first thing is a plea. Can we please, please, please stop saying that the reason you’re single is because God is keeping you single because you just need to learn something and you need to learn to be satisfied in God Himself. Once you are satisfied in God Himself, then the right person will come along.

Rebecca: And this is a very common platitude, which always makes me just cringe because here’s the thing. No side in this—the side that is saying well God just needs to teach you a lesson frankly or the side who is like no God is not keeping you single, whenever we say what I’m about to say next, both sides get mad. Dating is a numbers game. And often it’s that simple. If you are in—and we can get into whether or not it should be a numbers game. We can get into all the idealistic pontifications. At the end of the day, we are living in reality, not in ideology land. And the reality is that dating is a numbers game, and there are fewer frankly good partners who are male according to many studies than there are women. And so if you are a single—especially a single woman—who is like I’d make a great spouse, I’ve been looking, and I just haven’t found anyone. God is not punishing you or not dangling some carrot in front of you being like, “Oh, if you just learned a little more patience then I’ll give you a husband.” He’s not doing that, but also there are things that we can do because it’s a numbers game. We don’t have to just wait around for frankly God to deliver a vending machine boyfriend.

Sheila: And that’s what we talked about in She Deserves Better is the idea of the princess in the tower dating method which is if I just go and do more devotions and get closer to God then God will deliver me this husband at my door, which totally doesn’t work. But the other thing that really gets me about this idea that God is just keeping you single because you have more to learn is that it implies that those who are married somehow learned all of these things.

Rebecca: Yeah, and that’s obviously not true.

Sheila: I have a very difficult time believing that married people are more spiritually mature than single people. There is—I don’t know of any evidence for that. It bugs me that the elders’ wives are considered the spiritual leaders of the women in the church in these male-only hierarchy churches because just because a guy is on the elders’ committee does not mean that his wife is spiritually mature. And you just know there are a ton of widows and divorced women and single women who have walked closely with God for decades and know a whole lot more, but they’re never asked to lead or considered leaders. It bugs me when people say that. Okay, so I wanted to get that out of the way. There was a post on Threads that went viral recently just this week. I hear her heart in this where a woman said, “As a single woman of God, I am not okay. I am praying for connection, partnership, emotional security, physical touch, and my best friend for life, everything. If I hear one more person say, be patient God will bring him when you least expect it, I’m going to explode.”

Rebecca: We are so bad at grieving with people who are struggling. Because that’s what that is. Oh, be patient, God will bring him. Okay, no that’s spiritual bypassing. That’s saying hey your pain is uncomfortable for me so I’m going to give you a little nicety that you can hold onto instead of—we’re going to derail this conversation. I’m going to throw a great, big, red herring in the way so we don’t actually have to address what’s being addressed here. This woman sounds like she’s not sitting here like under any delusions. She’s like I’m praying, and it’s not happening. And no one wants to sit with her in that discomfort and that grief.

Sheila: Yeah, and so we just want you to know that we see you. We hear you. We feel you, and we hope that something we’re about to say may be helpful. So let’s jump in, and I thought we could start with two competing ideas that seem like they’re in opposition. But actually they go together, and I do you want to start with one of your friends from Ottawa.

Rebecca: Yeah, I had a friend in Ottawa who I met—she was in her early 30s at the point that we met. And a couple of weeks after I got to know her, she came and said, “I’m engaged,” and we were all so happy for her and everything. She started telling us the story of how she met her now fiancé, and she pretty much had been one of those girls who just had not really had a solid relationship in her like mid to late 20s, and she’s sitting there. She’s like, “I’m 28. I want to get married, and I want to have babies, and I don’t want to have to get married and then immediately have babies so I kind of have to get going now.” And she just decided that her rule for herself was that she would go on a date every Thursday as much as was within her power. So she was on every dating app, every dating website. She had a very specific bio so she tried not to attract. If anyone gave her creepy or scary vibes, she was like, “Heck, no,” but if it was someone like, “You seem like the most boring person in the entire universe, of boring planet, and yeah, I can’t tell anything from your profile,” you still give him a chance. Okay, one of those guys ended up being her now fiancé who just could not write a bio to save his life because he was incredibly awkward and very self-conscious, and was like, “I like rocks, and sometimes I read.” Like very, very sweet, very boring, but in real life, they super clicked. But she said that she went on over 100 dates before she met this guy, and then that was her match. And she decided that was worth it for her to do it, and that was just a method that I had never heard someone just explicitly do mathematically. Like she was sitting there and was like, “I have to go on a date every single week as much as possible,” and she did it for two years before she met him at 30, and then she was engaged. 

Sheila: And she never went on a second date with anyone else, right?

Rebecca: Oh, she went on a couple, but there wasn’t any other long stretch relationship. It was kind of like talking and then we found it. We found it, and then we got engaged. I thought that was very sweet.

Sheila: I remember when you first told me the story too you said she kind of treated it like a part time job.

Rebecca: Yeah, that was exactly her perspective.

Sheila: Okay, so I work full-time. There have been plenty of times in my life where I work fulltime, and I’ve had a part time job so this is just going to be my part time job.

Rebecca: She just spent all day Saturday pretty much flirting with people and making dates on these apps.

Sheila: She decided this was important to her and so she prioritized it.

Rebecca: I need to say this because you all are going to be able to sense it. I am so uncomfortable doing this podcast. So is Mom. We have been like let’s not, but we are doing this because people have asked. So if you’re mad, you cannot come to us and be like, “You got married so young. You can’t say that.” We are only doing this because we were hounded to do it. We will do it this time. I don’t know if we will ever do this again. But the point is there are many people who believe that they are prioritizing things in their life because of how much thought they are putting behind it, not how much action they are putting behind it. And this is true about a lot of things. There are a lot of people who say I’m great—I’m very focused on having a budget because they think about it a lot, but they don’t actually budget. They don’t actually say no I can’t buy that because it’s not in my budget. And those ones who are actually on a budget see those people and know what I’m talking about. And there are people who think about spending time with their family and think about prioritizing their family but never actually spend time with their family. And so if you actually do want this to be a priority, you do have to do things that show it’s a priority not just think about it a lot and talk about it a lot.

Sheila: Right, now along with that, we had a question on Instagram when I put this up in my stories saying, “What does the Bible say about women pursuing men in this context?” of if you’re going to prioritize, if you’re going to go online dating, if you’re going to start conversations, is that okay? Or where you’re just not online, if you’re at a work situation or there is someone that you know, can you pursue them? And I just want to say the Bible was written in a totally different time.

Rebecca: And even in that, I’m sorry, Ruth is uncovering Boaz’s feet. I’d like you to read some commentaries on that happening.

Sheila: On what feet actually means. Anyway I think sometimes we’re afraid to do something if the Bible doesn’t explicitly say it’s okay. There’s so many things the Bible doesn’t talk about because it was a totally different society where women had no rights. So let’s just think of principles and fruits of the spirit and things like that.

Rebecca: You also get to loosen up a little bit. I’ll be very, very—say this in the most loving way. If I was there, I’d take your hand, like you can let go. If we’re worried about can I text him first because the Bible doesn’t say, “Thou may text him first,” even if that was the woman. In all love, it’s not that serious.

Sheila: It isn’t. Now here is though one of the things I really wanted to share, and this is brilliant. I think it was one of our patrons who put me onto this a couple of years ago, but it’s a dating method where—and it especially applies to online dating, but it can apply to other kinds of dating too—when you’re trying to find that needle in a haystack so there’s so many people on these dating platforms, the majority of them are disgusting. They are not people that you would ever, ever, ever match with so how do you find that one person in this haystack that you actually would match with, and the answer of course is you—

Rebecca: Burn the haystack.

Sheila: You burn the haystack.

Rebecca: That’s the method. They call it the burn the haystack method.

Sheila: Yeah, and it was started by Dr. Jenny Young. She’s got a lot of stuff online about the burn the haystack method. I don’t know if she has a book out yet or if she’s currently writing a book. I read a bunch of her stuff. I watched a bunch of her videos, but I love the concept. And here’s how she explains it, and I’ll just read you a bit of what she wrote. “I know that there are good men out there. The question is how to find them. I began my strategizing by reading tons of literature and self-help advice to single women, and what I found is that we are primarily given two pieces of advice. One make yourself as appealing as possible to as many men as possible, and two give everyone a chance. It’s really hard to tell from a dating app what someone is actually like in real life.” And that is true when it comes to the nerdy guy. It isn’t true when it comes to things like—

Rebecca: Values.

Sheila: —values and character.

Rebecca: Yes, and there are some of them where it’s like they just don’t have a very appealing profile, and you only have a maximum of 200 words to tell somebody your entire life and why you’d be a good fit. It’s different than if you’re like, “I really want to marry someone who values rights as a woman,” and they’re like, “I think women shouldn’t vote.” Don’t give that guy a chance.

Sheila: And so this is the point you want the guys who would say, “I don’t think women should vote,” to not even show up, like to not even respond to you. You want to be so unappealing to people that you would never want to marry that your time is not wasted on them.

Rebecca: I also think it’s easy to do this because with dating profiles it’s often difficult because you have to be so extremely—you would also have people you wouldn’t match with on the other side.

Sheila: And she does. She has a lot of advice on how to set up your profile, what to do with your picture. Go Google it yourself. We’re not going to get into that kind of detail here.

Rebecca: Here’s one of the examples that is personal experience. I broached within the first two times that I was really talking to someone their views on women. Every single time. Immediately then. If it was like I don’t know if I’m into women pastors, awesome. I will be happy to keep being your friend, and we will not be meeting in any date capacity again unless I am able to convince you in 20 minutes that you have been wrong for your entire life, and you repent and apologize. And that was just my vibe. It worked great. I also met amazing egalitarian men who I’m still friends with because it was like we can go on more dates. Then when Connor came along obviously he was onboard. So there’s this level where you don’t always have to be like the first stage. I think that’s often where people get hung up because I see a lot of people who don’t like her method get mad at her for two reasons. First of all, because dating apps are just impossible. You’re not going to—you could say for example—with politics, you could say, “I don’t want anyone who is this politics,” and you’ll still get people coming through who are that way. But you can do that with the conversations as well. And so that can be helpful. But the other reason that they don’t like her method—should I share the other reason why?

Sheila: Sure.

Rebecca: I think it’s funny is a lot of people say I did it, and then there weren’t any—I didn’t find anyone. I’m like because it’s a numbers game. You don’t—you aren’t guaranteed—this is the hard thing about dating.

Sheila: Yeah, I have an internet meme that I saw yesterday that explains this perfectly, and it’s a visual thing but I’m going to describe it. So they had eight women on one side and eight men on the other. And the first—the top guy was saying oh man I had to go take out another Nazi today. The other seven men—

Rebecca: All had swastikas.

Sheila: —all had various symbols beside them that were racist. And so it showed all eight women going after that top man, and that’s the problem is that today especially in the young male culture—and we’ve talked about this on our podcast just a couple of weeks ago on why evangelical women don’t want to marry evangelical men—and this is why we talked about it a lot. It’s a huge issue in South Korea which is where the 4B Movement started. We talked about that on our Barbie podcast on the Barbie movie podcast—is that young men are increasingly joining more of this incel group that is quite misogynistic.

Rebecca: And by young men we don’t mean 18. It’s also just single men in their 30s too. By young, we just mean the average person who is texting us asking for us to do this podcast is in their late 20s. We’re saying the men your age.

Sheila: Yeah, often aren’t a lot of men who are healthy on a lot of these dating apps because often healthy men do get snatched up because again numbers game, right? And you also see this on dating apps a lot because when people’s relationships end—so let’s say that you’re 44 and you get divorced, often the men will go immediately to dating apps, and the women just won’t. The women are like I’m never getting married again, and so the numbers on dating apps are often overpopulated by these men who have come out of relationships and the women who are staying away. And so that’s why on pretty much all dating apps men outnumber women.

Rebecca: And that’s why we’re talking about this burn the haystack method. It’s not that the reverse of the princess in the tower dating thing where it’s like if you just work hard enough, if you just have the right strategy, if you just do this God will—there is someone out there for you. No, the point is that it is a numbers game. There are not necessarily enough good people to go around, and so the burn the haystack method makes it more likely that you won’t waste your time on a bunch of bozos you are never actually going to end up with before you find the right guy, but it also might still mean that they’re snatched up before you get there. I don’t know what to say to that because it’s just unfortunate, and it is one of the things where I’m like—my gut reaction is if you’re one of the people who’s listening and you’re like 22 and you’re like I need dating advice, get out there. It’s easier when you’re 22 than when you’re 32. Statistically speaking it really seems like it is, and I know that’s not a super happy joyful message. It’s not that you can’t when you’re older. That’s not what I mean at all. It’s not like if you’re 35 and you haven’t found your person yet, you won’t. You totally absolutely could. It’s also like I’m just not going to be here and tell you the same crap that everyone does to just be like, “The right person is out there.” I don’t know, and it’s okay to sit in that discomfort and that grief and that stress. And I just want you to know that I’m not here like minimizing the pain of the uncertainty, and that’s all. I actually feel that quite extensively.

Sheila: But I think here is one of the big things that I really want single people to hear because it’s a hard thing to hear. But I think you need to have a greater fear of marrying the wrong person than of not marrying at all.

Rebecca: We have found that repeatedly that people who pretty much marry so that they are not single—we just see it go wrong so often.

Sheila: And almost all of those women will tell you I will never get married again or I wish I hadn’t married.

Rebecca: Yeah, and we hear from a lot of women who have deep, deep heartache over how they didn’t get married, and they didn’t get to be a mom in the way that they wanted to be. But at the same time, both pains are hard, but also being married to someone who abuses you and your children because you just didn’t want to be single is a whole level of hard and guilt that I—those women would not wish it on anyone.

Sheila: Yeah, and even if we’re not talking about abuse, even if we’re just talking about being married to someone that you really can’t respect or that really makes your life much smaller than it could have been. It’s just hard.

Rebecca: Or you marry someone who like—who, yeah, you get to be a parent but also like they make parenting miserable. So it’s like you got to be a parent but they also feel like they kind of stole part of that from you too. It’s so complicated.

Sheila: And so we’re just trying to say as you go into this dating conversation just remember that the worst scenario is not being single.

Rebecca: No, and that’s easy for us to say.

Sheila: And I know that’s easy for us to say, but I think that gives you some power back. I think that gives you some ability to say no wait, I have a choice here. I’m not desperate because I know that in the end it is better to be single than to be with someone that isn’t good for me. So I am only going to get married if this is someone who is good for me, and so I’m going to be on the lookout for that but at the same time I’m going to be making sure that I’m okay.

Rebecca: And that you’re not settling.

Sheila: Yeah, which we’ll get to in a minute. But I do want to just say this thing about like what I do like about the burn the haystack method is this idea that you have to attract as many people as possible. And what we’re saying is no you don’t. You actually only have to attract the people that you would actually work with. You want to physically repel in some ways the sexists, the misogynists, etc. etc. because we do get questions like how do I bring up egalitarianism in a healthy way or without scaring him off? It was like if it would scare him off—

Rebecca: You don’t want him.

Sheila: —you don’t want him.

Rebecca: The best is when we get messages from people who are like we’ve been dating for five months. I’ve started to broach the topic of women, and he just kind of brushes it off like I’m worried about ruining my relationship. Girl, I will come there and ruin your relationship for you. Absolutely not. You’ve been dating this man for five months, and you have not talked about whether or not he thinks he should be your leader. I am so sorry, but I will come in there and scream into your relationship with my full chest that if you’re a sexist, get out now.

Sheila: Yeah, or maybe it’s not that. Maybe it’s politics, it’s other values, it’s how you give to the poor, whatever it might be, bring it up early. Because if this is essential to who you are, if this is essential to your view of what God has called you to in the world and your identity, then you don’t want to be with someone who doesn’t share that and who’s actively working against it. And so I think sometimes we’re afraid to bring these things up because then it might turn them off because we’re so clinging to the idea that maybe I have a relationship. It’s like no, no, no. You’ve got to let go of that, and you’ve got to say no I’m going to be true to what God has called me to. Now please hear what I’m not saying. Picture Jeff. Jeff installs air conditioners, and he runs his own company. He makes a good wage. He’s 32-years-old. He hasn’t dated much, but he’s started getting into the dating pool. He’s grown up in an SBC church, but he doesn’t really care where he goes to church. He believes in Jesus, but he’s open to whatever. And you bring up the idea that you think women can be pastors, and he’s like, “Oh, yeah, I don’t.” Is he though willing to have a conversation about it? Because so many people have just never thought about it, and if he’s not particularly wedded to his church, if his church was just more cultural, you may find that if you talk to him, he changes his mind. Like you said, if you listen to me in 20 minutes because I have talked to so many people who did actually change their mind. They just literally never thought about it because they grew up in that culture.

Rebecca: Yeah, I think it’s so different these days. I’ll be honest. I think this is where we differ. I’m like if in the year of our Lord 2025 you are still attending an SBC church and haven’t thought about it, you’re not doing it on purpose—

Sheila: I think it’s different in the sense—I think it’s different in parts of the U.S.

Rebecca: That’s also the whole reason is those kinds of parts of the U.S. you absolutely should not marry any one of those men. I’m sorry. If you are so steeped in that culture, think about that culture. The culture is poisonous. We’ve found that. There are certain areas of the U.S. quite frankly where their entire culture about women and marriage is just toxic. It’s like everything that seems like it’s a little bit of an issue, but you can get over this is these insurmountable mountains in these subcultures.

Sheila: I would say—yeah, okay, so you can listen to either one of us. We disagree.

Rebecca: I think this is a situation where like oh, you’re now on probation.

Sheila: Yeah, you can be on probation. You can certainly be on probation, but I’m just saying that a lot of people have never thought about this. It’s only when they get in a relationship that they actually even start thinking about anything to do with gender. And yes, that’s a red flag. They should have been thinking about it all the time. They should have been thinking about racism. They should have been thinking about justice issues, but they didn’t.

Rebecca: Yeah, I think that is too much for me. I’m sorry. We are five years out from George Floyd. We are six years out from Botham Jean.

Sheila: George Floyd was on my 50th birthday.

Rebecca: He was, yeah. And Botham Jean the trial was as I was waiting to deliver Alexander, and that’s why he is always connected to my boy in my head. And I’m going to cry again. Anyway—gosh darn. At this point if you are dating someone and there’s a value that is important to you they haven’t thought about, I think there has been too much in the news, too much in the culture, it is not something that is something you can just be I haven’t thought about it because that belies something about you as a person.

Sheila: Yeah, you’re probably right.

Rebecca: That’s going to tick some people off who listen to the podcast, but that’s—go research it then. I don’t know.

Sheila: Yeah, you’re probably right. Okay, let’s talk about numbers games though a little bit more. Let’s say that you are in the place where Jeff has his air conditioner thing, in the middle of SBC, Southern Baptist country—

Rebecca: Move. Sorry.

Sheila: That’s what I was trying to get you to say. That’s what I was trying to get you to say. Yeah, is that some of you need to move.

Rebecca: I know that’s flippant. I know you guys say that’s so hard to do. But you know what? At some point if you’re sitting there and you’re like—I moved. I’m going to be honest.

Sheila: Well, I made sure you and Katie both moved.

Rebecca: I moved.

Sheila: We live in a very—

Rebecca: A very affordable, a lovely small town. Instead I moved to a city that was far less affordable.

Sheila: But very multicultural, very professional.

Rebecca: And had different people there, and a lot of people—we get messages from people saying yeah I live in the middle of insert whatever location here, and everyone I’ve ever met is just incredibly sexist, and I can’t—I always feel like people don’t take me seriously in my job because I’m a woman and all the men that I meet don’t really take me seriously. Then just move. Even if it takes you seven months to find a new job and relocate, at some point if you are someone who is single and you don’t have kids who have school zones they have to live in, and they have friends they don’t want to leave, if you are truly a single person, you have the capacity to move, it is genuinely better other places if you’re looking for somewhere that treats women well. Again that’s going to make people mad. 

Sheila: But seriously the number of people, like the number of young people in my small town that I have tried to encourage to move to Waterloo, to Ottawa, to Toronto temporarily—

Rebecca: We live an hour-and-a-half from Toronto.

Sheila: Like just go to a place where there are so many different churches, where there’s so many different cultures, where people think a little bit differently and you’re—because there’s not a lot of single people in our town that are Christians. There just aren’t, and if you are in a smaller place where there aren’t a lot of Christians or if you’re in a bigger place where the culture is just—

Rebecca: Very sexist.

Sheila: —very sexist, get out while you can. If this is important to you, if it’s important to you to meet someone, then it might be time to leave this. And like Rebecca—Rebecca came back because this is a very affordable place.

Rebecca: And I fully plan on kicking my children out when they’re 18, in the nicest possible way. Go, meet city people.

Sheila: And hopefully they will come back.

Rebecca: Exactly.

Sheila: But go and move. And when it comes to college and university too and we’ve talked about this a lot on the podcast, but please don’t assume that going to a Bible college is going to be your best way to find a Christian husband.

Rebecca: Yeah, we have a lot of people who listen to the podcast who are actually really young which wouldn’t be unexpected, but we have a lot of people who are like I’m 18. I read She Deserves Better, and it changed my life, and if you are going to go to a Christian college and university, don’t assume that’s necessarily going to mean you meet the best Christians.

Sheila: Because remember, most Christian universities, they’re predominantly female first of all so they’re heavily weighted towards—so again numbers game.

Rebecca: They also tend to be highly, highly overrepresented amongst people who have more traditional values on men and women which means you’re much less likely to find a Christian who believes you are his equal at a Christian school than at a secular university.

Sheila: Yeah, because pretty much all secular universities have Christian groups on campus, like Intervarsity Christian Fellowship. There’s other ones too, and the people who come out to these Christian groups are often really seriously committed to their faith because they’re making the time on a secular campus when they have lots of studies, they’re making the time to join a Christian group. And you’re going to get people all kinds of professional programs, and I mean that’s how I met my husband. That’s how you met your husband.

Rebecca: Well, and I know this is going to be something that the older singles are rolling their eyes at. I understand. We’re talking to the baby singles right now, but that’s a big mistake that we’ve seen happen a lot of times especially and this is a big one that we hear specifically in our focus groups with women who had marriages that fell apart or marriages that just are not—are dysfunctional today is that they just figured that they had the same values because they both went to the same Christian school. They laugh at it now. Obviously that wasn’t the case, but there’s such a closeknit sense of false intimacy that you can get going to these schools because they kind of allow you to stay in youth group mode for a long time versus if you’re going to a university where you have your own apartment, it’s pretty much treated like—and I get it. I know this is different in the U.S. so I’m speaking from a Canadian perspective here. But go to university where you’re treated like university is your job, and you are there to do a job, and you are not being coddled. Your professor does not care if you’re having troubles with this. It’s your responsibility to figure it out, and yeah, come to office hours and they’ll help. But you’re a grownup, and you are doing this in order to get a job, and you are treated as such. Then you actually do get to figure out who you are a lot more, and you get to find people who mesh with what you are, not the culture that you’re in. Because I think there’s a lot of people who get married within that subculture, and they leave that subculture and they realize we have nothing in common.

Sheila: Yeah, and this is the thing. If you go straight from youth group to Bible college, you’ve never actually often entered into any other subgroup than the one you’ve always been in, and so it’s difficult to know who you are. That’s one of the reasons why I really encouraged my kids to leave home, get into a different city, try to find their own church which they did. You guys settled on different churches even. Like you came into yourself, and I think that’s really important. So move. Don’t think that a Christian school is going to solve everything if you’re still young. If you’re older and you’re just surrounded by people where there’s no hope of finding someone that is like you, move to a bigger city in a different part of the country.

Rebecca: Because the other thing too I will say is one of the things that’s so hard in—what we’ve seen in studies about women and singleness is women who remain single often do a very good job of creating excellent community for themselves. There are some areas that make that community easier specially communities where there are a lot of other singles. And so if you’re living in kind of like a Bible belt town where everyone gets married at 18 or like you’re—and everyone is expected to pair off and kind of do that, it also may be harder for you to find that community that makes singleness really enjoyable. And again this is not saying like not doing that (inaudible) looking at the research about women who stay single. Moving isn’t just to find a husband. It’s to find your people, your community. If you’re feeling lonely and you’re feeling just like gosh I don’t have an anchor here and everywhere I go I feel like I’m hitting up against the same problem, if you move even if your status remains the same, like your job title, your marital status, everything, you might find the community that makes all the difference.

Sheila: You know Toronto had, and this is so much fun is they had this most amazing knitting community where they had mini groups all over. They had mini conferences. I’m into knitting, but there are. There’s lots of things like that, whatever your equivalent is.

Rebecca: Well even the fact that when I lived in Ottawa, I could be part of the Celtic Society, and there is not one here. It is too small.

Sheila: Which is what? Celtic.

Rebecca: Yeah, Gaelic, Celtic cultural society. So I did highland dance and stuff like that, and Connor and I started dating pretty much at Irish (inaudible). So that was a big part of my social group, and you got to know I had older women who helped plan my proposal with Connor. It was adorable, and we can’t do that here. It’s just not big enough. So there are also benefits.

Sheila: And speaking of moving just so you know if you happen to be a nurse or a doctor, an occupational physical therapist in the U.S., there’s special programs in Canada to fast track you right now if you want to move to Canada. So I know B.C. has some really good ones—British Columbia. I’m not sure about our own province of Ontario. I’m thinking that they do.

Rebecca: I don’t know.

Sheila: I’m pretty sure Nova Scotia does but just think about that if you’re a healthcare worker, and you can even move here. Okay, now next bit it’s not always about finding a good person, it’s also are you the kind of person who can attract a good person? And so that’s the other point is how can you work on yourself?

Rebecca: Yeah, and I think we miss a lot—sorry.

Sheila: We’ve got a lot of messages to my Instagram post by a woman who said this, “How do you start dating after purity culture especially with a mental blocks and dealing with romantic immaturity in your 20s after not being allowed to date as a teen?”

Rebecca: Can I just go on my tangent?

Sheila: Yes.

Rebecca: Can I go on my tangent? Okay, I just—I get so frustrated about the over sexualization of middle school romance. I promise we’ll get to grownups soon, but you know what, you always said that you were super into purity culture and everything like that. And we super were for like all of 10 seconds, but I always was allowed to have crushes, and then you know what happened when I was 15? You started trying to find me people to date. You were like you are going to have a good boyfriend. You’re not going to have any embarrassing, (inaudible) of a boyfriend. You’re going to have a good boyfriend, and we were looking for all the eligible—it was quite normalized in our house to have these stages of relational development.

Sheila: Yeah, I used to say that I didn’t believe in arranged marriages. I would simply give you a list and you could choose from the list.

Rebecca: Exactly. Yeah, but the thing is what often happened in purity culture is the rules were the same for 11-year-olds, 12-year-olds, 17-year-olds, 25-year-olds, and so what ends up happening is you don’t get to practice when the stakes are low. So this is what’s happening is people say well I don’t know how to learn this. It’s like give yourself grace because you were supposed to learn this at 11 when everyone was a fool. You were supposed to learn this with Brent who turned out to be a total failure to launch who’s still dealing drugs in his mom’s basement kind of situation.

Sheila: Thinking he’s going to make it great on the guitar.

Rebecca: He was sweet at 11, but never—that’s who you are supposed to learn to flirt with, people who were never going to turn into something. You were supposed to like learn to flirt with people who also were learning how to flirt, and you were supposed to be able to make lots of mistakes and accidentally have that page of your journal open up so that people all saw that you had a crush on Jeremy or something and then have to live through the embarrassment for three days at school. That was how it was supposed to be, and then you are supposed to be able to start having handholding and actual dating relationships a little bit. Are we dating? Are we not when you’re 15? That’s normal. And then have it progress to be more and more serious so that by the time that you’re actually looking for someone that you do want to marry, you feel like you can put your best foot forward and be like I’m competition. Like I can throw my hat in the ring, and I just want to say that is a very hard thing for you to have not had. Sometimes that is something that is personality. There are some people who are just more reserved who never would have been as frankly heart on their sleeve and zealous about puppy love at 12. I definitely was never someone who was going to actually ever tell someone I had feelings for them, but I still got to go through it because it was allowed. So by the time that I was 16 and started actually being interested people, I knew how to approach people. I knew how to—and that’s just something that has actually been taken. And I just want to acknowledge that. 

Sheila: Yeah, and so what do you do now? I would just say hang out in co-ed groups as much as possible. Seriously. Just get to know people of the opposite sex, and this is difficult sometimes depending on where you work. Lots of people work in primarily female environments. Anyone who works with kids is going to be in a primarily female environment. 

Rebecca: Yeah, or else you’re only going to know men who are married because you know the dads.

Sheila: Right, and so that can be tough. So volunteer places. Get involved in community things. Get involved in political groups. Find causes that you support. Get on a committee. It’s not that hard to get on local committees. If you feel passionate about protecting the waterfront or—

Rebecca: And I think it’s also tricky—

Sheila: And I don’t mean that someone on the committee needs to be a romantic interest. I just mean the more that you hang out in co-ed groups in a social setting the easier it’s going to be to just to talk to men or talk to women if you’re male. Just the easier it’s going to be, and so as much as possible get yourself out there. And the more that you join other groups, the more you’re going to meet people because most people meet the person that they marry through friends of friends. So the bigger your social circle, the better anyway. But also it just helps you to have those conversations so yeah, just get out there and practice. You just need to practice, and I don’t mean that you have to practice flirting. But you just have to practice talking.

Rebecca: I think also a lot of times flirting is just being silly with friends, and I think we often turn it into something that’s a lot more seductive than it is.

Sheila: What was it? Bend and snap?

Rebecca: No one does that. No one does that. That’s why it was funny.

Sheila: That was Legally Blond, right?

Rebecca: Yeah. No, but a lot of flirting is just being friends and just being intimate in that friendship way, and so if you just get kind of more comfortable with being able to read the cues in more ways. So I’m sorry if you’re learning this on hard mode.

Sheila: Okay, another question that I asked on social media recently was what’s an example of something that people think is settling but isn’t actually settling? And I got hundreds of comments.

Rebecca: We disagreed with a lot of them. We won’t be sharing those ones.

Sheila: Yeah, I was trying to figure out how can I distill them into something to share here. But I think the thing that a lot of them had in common was that a lot of people judge character issues on things that are not necessarily character. And so the thing that everything had in common is you need to look to character which I agree with. You do need to look to character. At the same time, the best judge of future behavior is past behavior. And so you do—like to close your eyes to things that have happened in the past to people is not wise.

Rebecca: There’s also—

Sheila: That doesn’t mean—that you say that it’s a deal breaker. You definitely inves—but you should be investigating it.

Rebecca: Like for example, there’s also differences here—again, this is one of those things where I’m sorry. It’s just not fair, but there is a lot of difference between is the time that they changed from ages 16-18 or is it from 24-31? You are much more who you are from 24-31 than 16-18. I will say. There’s also differences here where people say oh he used to be like this, but now he’s changed. It’s like okay was he a dumb teenager? Or was he a grown man making grown man decisions?

Sheila: Or for instance, one of the really, really big things that you need in whoever you marry is someone who is motivated, who will take initiative to provide in some way, and this is both men and women. 

Rebecca: In your partner.

Sheila: In your partner. And even if it’s not financially, you need someone who is going to put their all into taking responsibility for the things that need to get done in life. Not always going to coast. Like someone who is coasting in a super dead-end job and they seem to have no ambition to do anything more, and they’re quite content to play video games at night. Now that person if marriage suddenly comes on the horizon, and they’re like oh wait a minute. And they go oh my gosh I need to get a better job. I need to start—if that happens, that’s great. But if it doesn’t happen, don’t assume that once they get married, they are going to change now because then they’re going to take their responsibility seriously. 

Rebecca: I think we see that from a lot of people who are like oh yeah, no. We really  have to really cajole him to do anything. He doesn’t have any motivation, but he says that once he’s married, like he really wants this to be a priority for him. If it’s not a priority when he’s in a relationship, it’s not going to be a priority when he’s married.

Sheila: No, and you want someone who is going to take initiative for the housework. You don’t want to be stuck with all the housework. So how do they actually live? Is their place a mess?

Rebecca: To be incredibly clear too, we’re not talking about dollar sign money. We’re talking about laziness and idleness and just general like not being motivated to do things. And there are many people—and this is what we’re saying—if a relationship changes, then that’s great because there are a lot of people where quite frankly they’re lonely and depressed. And it’s not saying that a relationship can change everything, but there are a lot of people for whom it does give them the dopamine boost that they need to get over that hurdle and actually—oh yeah, I have energy again. So that’s why we’re saying that. I’m just making this clear. This isn’t like something where it’s like oh you should missionary date in terms of this. No, that’s not what we’re saying. What we’re saying is there are people though where it might be the catalyst that helps him, but the wedding ring will not be the catalyst. If the relationship is not the catalyst, the wedding ring will definitely not be the catalyst. And that’s just the mistake that we see people making over and over and over again.

Sheila: The other big thing is someone who is divorced or has kids. Is that a deal breaker? And not necessarily.

Rebecca: Absolutely.

Sheila: Not necessarily, but I really feel like if you are a woman dating a man who is divorced, it’s really important to talk to their ex if you can.

Rebecca: Yeah, and I actually think it’s not a matter of gender. It’s important if there’s not like—if there’s not risk involved. The issue is that abuse in divorce is so predominantly male instigated so that’s why we’re stating that, but if your now partner was abused obviously you don’t need to go to their person, but the question is also like if they just say, “My ex was just crazy, and she divorced me for no reason.”

Sheila: Yeah, everybody who was an abusive person says that their ex was crazy and divorced them for no reason, and they will tell you all of these terrible stories of all the things that their ex did. And we hear from so many women who are divorced who say my ex-husband is dating someone 15 years his junior, and she has two little kids. And I just hate what’s going to happen because I can just see it coming down the pike. And it’s like you want to be talking to that ex-wife. 

Rebecca: And I do think that like there’s also a lot of red flags too. I don’t—we have some people in our lives who are the problem who are divorced. And it’s like a lot of times their social group is all the same. Like there’s those one or two toxic friends we’re like yeah they’re problems. I’ve known them forever, and it’s like but they’re problems. Why are you still friends with them? There’s these patterns that kind of keep going, and so there’s a level where—well, he’s good to me. Like okay but for how long? If he’s only good to you, if everyone else seems to be burning bridges, if he doesn’t have strong community and healthy people, if you and him are kind of living in your weird little twilight world where you’re Bella and he’s Edwards, and no one gets it except for you two, that’s a red flag.

Sheila: And then I would say things with custody can be red flags too because if he’s divorced or if she is divorced—so if you’re dating someone who is divorced or they’re separated but they have kids and they do not have joint custody.

Rebecca: And they don’t want it.

Sheila: And they don’t want joint custody, figure out why. Because joint custody is the norm usually now, and so for someone not to have joint custody, there’s often a reason or often they just thought well I can’t handle it or I don’t want it.

Rebecca: And also to know the stats. When men do ask for custody, they tend to get it. They overwhelmingly tend to get joint custody so if a man does not have any custody of their kids, it likely means they did not fight for their kids. And I know some people will be like, “Well, I’m the exception.” Okay, fine, but statistics don’t lie. 

Sheila: And do you want someone who won’t fight for their kids? You better darn well—be sure that they are caring for their kids from their previous relationship.

Rebecca: And I know that the divorced women who are listening to this will be nodding their heads and be like, “Oh, yeah.” 

Sheila: And you’d better darn well make sure that you are going to be able to be a really super good stepparent to those kids too.

Rebecca: And not put up those kids as a well you’re choosing the kids over me. It’s like yeah, they are. They should.

Sheila: But if you’re dating someone—and especially if they have a baby—if you’re dating a guy who has a baby and they don’t have, and they left their girlfriend with the baby—

Rebecca: All we’re saying is we have heard from a lot of women who have been the divorced one watching their ex date someone who now is posting about how wonderful he is and how he’s grown so much, and she’s like, “I have texts from three days ago that show he has not.” And we’ve also heard a lot of women who have ended up marrying that man who had grown so much to find out I’m just going to be wife number three. And so just don’t go in with your eyes shut. There are things that are okay to be red flags and that doesn’t mean that every single person who has that thing happening is a red flag, but it’s a red flag that needs to be addressed. And I’m very, very firm on the idea that frankly if someone doesn’t have custody of their kids, there’s probably a reason because again statistically if a man asks for custody he’s going to get it. And if someone has a literal infant with someone else, that means that they left them either when they were pregnant or when they had a newborn. That is horrifying in terms of character. And so that’s just—

Sheila: And I do not think that babies—that anyone should have a joint custody of a baby if they’re being breastfed so I’m not—anyway. But I also want to say this, we are definitely not saying that being divorced is a red flag. We are saying that being divorced without custody and with an ex who would have a different story is a red flag because there are so many people who are divorced because they were in horrible marriages. And a lot of those people would make an excellent spouse, and we have so many patrons who got remarried. And then their new spouse became the most amazing stepparent. It’s like that Brad Paisley song that always makes me cry. I hope that I’m half the dad he never had to be about the stepfather. It’s such a beautiful song. So we’re not saying don’t consider divorced people.

Rebecca: No, that’s not what we’re saying. We’re saying the kinds of divorced people that are not red flags are going to understand why you want to do your research about why they were divorced. Like that’s the thing.

Sheila: Yes, exactly. Exactly. Okay, I also want to say two more things quickly. And one of them—this is the hardest lesson to learn I think is that you can love someone who is amazing and that person may choose not to invest in the relationship and not to love you back. Or may even choose to love you but not invest in the relationship. And that’s a hard thing to walk away from, but there are people who value things above relationships. Maybe they value their education, their work, whatever, and you’re looking at them, and on paper they are amazing. They are a really, really good person. But they aren’t putting the work into the relationship or making commitment, and I would just say you give people a certain amount of time, and it can be different for everyone else, but you do not give people years and years and years of your best years of your life thinking that one day they will see how great you are and they will settle down.

Rebecca: I think if you ever have to feel like you have to convince someone that you are a catch after you’re already in a relationship. Like there’s a point where yeah, you’re not together yet, and you’re like hey choose me. But once you’re in a relationship if you’re having to fight for their attention, for their love, if you’re doing all of the work, if you’re feeling insecure about how much they are into you, how much they value you, that is a sign that something is not healthy, and we just hear so many stories from women who married the person who was more in love with their job than they were them, and that didn’t change when they became parents.

Sheila: But I’ve also heard from so many people who have been with this guy for seven years waiting for (crosstalk).

Rebecca: And then they break up.

Sheila: And they don’t, and that’s—you shouldn’t have to wait. And I know there’s a lot of single women who are like but no one has ever really loved me, and I just want to say that I think that is the story of everybody until they get married. For so many people, for you and Katie, I know you both felt that way. Like I’ve never really been pursued because until you found the right person, you hadn’t. And so that’s a hard place to be, but just don’t sell yourself short.

Rebecca: Again I just—being people who research relationships, we hear hundreds of stories a month. Much less—not even talking about the times that we actually do specific studies into this kind of thing, and I do want to just caution people that there is a deep, deep loneliness that comes from being married to someone who you can never really be sure really loves you. You’re like—and that is something that many, many people are dealing with, and many, many people are struggling through. And so it’s easy—and again this is where—I warned you at the beginning. You’re going to hear me just be super uncomfortable this whole time because I know this is something that is very difficult to hear from people who got married so young to people who were just their person. I had it easy. I know that. But at the same time, one of the reasons why I was able to find Connor and grab onto him so fast was because I was fully, fully ready to be single, and I really do believe that. I turned down a lot of other people who were interested because I knew they would not be good fits. And I had a whole plan that I was working toward that would be my single life plan, and I’m so glad of that because in our research I have just constantly had that belief that I had as a 19-year-old, as a 20-year-old that there are worse fates than being single out there. Being single would mean that my life had a different adventure than I expected was very much my mentality. I’m glad I had that because the research we’ve done has only proven that to be correct. It’s just that we know a lot of very, very happy single people, and we also know a lot of people who are married who would be much happier single who got married because they believed they would never be able to be happy single. And now they’re like no I would be happier single.

Sheila: So I guess to wrap up I think what we’re saying is to prepare to be single. Prepare to be single. Work on yourself. Be the best version of yourself. Have fun. Live a big life. Get involved in things. Make friends. Invest in your community. Do all of the things that give you that social support. I guess to wrap it all up we would just say this. Remember what Rebecca said in that you can have a rich life single and build that rich life right now. Don’t wait for it. Find your people. Build your social supports. Volunteer. Get your community, and yes, if you want a relationship, by all means, prioritize that. But never sell yourself short. And remember that you are important just as you are, and someone who doesn’t see that isn’t worth your time. You’re worth more than that. So I wish we had easy answers because it is a numbers game.

Rebecca: So like we said in the beginning, we only did this because you guys made us. I want to be very clear. As someone who receives much pushback and hate because I answered questions you forced me to answer, we only did a dating podcast because every single time we do an Ask Me Anything over 50% of the questions relate to dating. So if you don’t like our answers, then stop asking us to answer dating questions. Flat out, okay? But also you are allowed to both recognize that it is better to not settle and it is better to be single and also grieve what you wanted. Yeah, like and people who are just trying to placate you and be like it’s not that bad. Smile you have nothing to be sad about, like that’s not what we’re saying. What we are saying is that just if you are in a position, we feel like you have to grieve the life you wanted and that’s valid, like even if you do get married after finding yourself, there’s people who wanted to be able to do 20s with their person. Like you are allowed to grieve that. You’re allowed to grieve if you have a fantastic second marriage. You’re allowed to grieve if your first wasn’t what you wanted it to be. We often skip the grief part of these conversations, and you are allowed to grieve when something doesn’t go the way that you want. It’s actually therapeutic. It’s good, gets the emotions out. Don’t allow desperation to make you make a decision that future you will have to grieve. 

Sheila: Yes, things like me. Exactly. 

Rebecca: Yeah, so it’s a hard combo.

Sheila: It’s a hard combo, and we hope this helped. I don’t know what everyone is going to take away from it. Maybe the big thing is to move.

Rebecca: And all I’m saying is we had so many messages from areas and I’m just like I don’t understand why anyone is still living there if they believe certain things, like all I’m saying is that it baffles the mind. And again it’s not like we’re making like 200,000 a year. We’re making the same amount that we’d make at a Burger King somewhere else. Anyway, just a whole thing. I know this is complicated. I’m not trying to be glib, but also at the end of the day, gosh darn, if everything is terrible maybe you need to change.

Sheila: Yeah, maybe we just all need to change. So there we go. Those are our thoughts on dating. Hopefully you will find a person and if not we get the grief. We get the grief. Take care. Next week we are going to be listening in to my friend Marg Mowczko who is from Australia, and I have met her twice in real life which is so cool. And she is my go-to for everything about women in the Bible, and she’s going to be talking to us about headship. And then we have two more podcasts before we’re gone for the month of July. We’re going to take the month of July off, and then we’ll be back in August. So yeah, so stay tuned next week. It’s going to be fun, and we’ll see you then. Bye.

Rebecca: Bye.