Single and Dating Again

What is the best way forward after a breakup or divorce?

When relationships don’t work, there is often a sense of loss and heartache. Being single and longing for connection may mean you’re willing to compromise your standards in order to deal with loneliness or fulfill your need for intimacy.

Today’s hookup culture promotes a consumer mindset that encourages you to get your needs met without considering spiritual, intellectual, or emotional compatibility. But that can lead to unwise dating decisions and further pain.

In this last episode of our series, Making Marriage Work, John and Shay sit down to discuss:

• their own personal stories of painful breakups

• how long it takes to heal when things don’t work out

• 4 steps to healing from divorce

• how to know you’re ready to date again

• areas of compatibility that are important as you look for a spouse

Four Things to Do in the Aftermath of Divorce – and One Thing to Avoid

It takes a substantial amount of time to work through a divorce – at least 2-3 years to have truth and grace given to you by God and others, to heal from the hurts of the divorce, and to be able to truly give your whole, healed self to another person.

Many times, people rush into the next relationship, especially if their spouse has moved on with someone else. That can be extremely painful. You may be spending far less time with your kids and have a lot more time alone, and there’s a darkness there where God can meet you, as you do 4 important things during this time:

1. The first thing you can do during this time is grieve the relationship. Divorce is often someone’s first encounter with unjust suffering, and that can be a shock. When a marriage disintegrates, everyone contributes in some sense to the breakup of the relationship, but in another sense, you may be very much the victim of it.

2. The second thing you can do is leave the final judgment to God. Even if you don't believe in heaven or hell, there is always someone in a divorce that firmly believes in hell because they want the other person to go there! The anger directed at you might be overwhelmingly hurtful. Like Peter writes, we need to learn from Jesus who “entrusted himself to God who will judge justly”, rather than lashing out or seeking revenge.

3. The third thing you can do is let go of bitterness. It is a process, not a one-time event, and it can take a long time. Letting go of bitterness doesn’t mean you trust your ex-spouse; you can still have healthy boundaries in the relationship after you forgive. But you can learn to forgive as Jesus forgave you. You’ll know you’ve let go of bitterness when you’re tempted to speak ill of your spouse to other people and you choose not to - that’s a good sign.

4. A fourth thing that you have to do to heal from a divorce or serious breakup is to face your own part in the dissolution of the relationship. Even though you might not have been the ultimate cause of the divorce, you can still examine yourself, mistakes you made and things you wish you had done differently. The idea of learning and growing, even though you’ve been hurt, is a good practice to have in your life.

An important thing to avoid when you start to date again, even though this principle is counter-cultural, is including sex in the relationship. Sex is designed by God to be contained within the safe boundaries of marriage. If it’s not, you get really hurt. You get torn apart.

Tragically, sex today in our culture is seen as transactional. It’s seen as something you can do without knowing the other person or having any kind of commitment to them. But sex binds us more powerfully to the other person than you realize, and also clouds your judgment.

The latest research on hookup culture reveals that people have to shut down their emotions and not connect to each other on a soul level in order to have sex, often using alcohol. Sadly, when young people have used alcohol in order to have meaningless sex, and then they experience sex without alcohol and within the boundary of marriage, they realize too late the reverential, holy, spiritual nature of the sexual bond. God puts boundaries around sex, not to take away anything, but to protect us.

Why Didn’t Your Marriage Work?

Before you start a new relationship, learn all you can from your previous marriage. Take ownership of the part that was yours. Until you've done that, it’s likely that you’re going to transport all of your contributions to your previously failed marriage into your new relationship. Second marriages are just as vulnerable to divorce as first marriages.

Unless you work on yourself, you may be thinking that you finally found your soulmate, but soon, the problems you had in the first marriage will begin to show up. If you were married to an abusive spouse, you need to ask yourself some difficult and painful questions: “Why was I attracted to this person?” “What red flags do I need to look for when starting a new relationship?”

How Do I Know if I’m Ready to Date Again?

If your first marriage was a biblical divorce – your spouse is a non-believer and they left you, committed adultery, or broke the marriage covenant through on-going, deliberate sin and desertion - you are free to remarry. But let’s say that you’re a couple that divorced for what we would call ‘unbiblical’ reasons. You didn’t get along, you were young, you gave up and found it easier to divorce than work through your issues. Do you have the freedom to remarry?

It's a difficult subject and every situation is a little bit different. We encourage you to discuss it with someone who is wise and spiritually mature and use a lot of discernment before moving forward. If your marriage doesn’t work, you can consider remaining single because the Bible affirms singleness and the goodness of it. Give God time to work in your life, and look for the benefits of a season of singleness where you can focus on personal growth.

As you make your way down the dating path, there are 5 categories of compatibility to keep in mind:

1. Spirituality – The person you date must be a believer. Not just in words or occasional church attendance, but someone who organizes their lives around the person of Jesus and his calling for them. They need to acknowledge Jesus in every area of their lives. No one is perfect, but they need to have a heart for Jesus and make learning the Word a priority.

2. Emotionally – Do you enjoy being around this person? Are you safe to reveal vulnerable parts of your story? Do you laugh with them? And also, can they laugh at themselves? If they always need to be right, or continually dismiss or minimize your feelings, that’s a red flag.

3. Socially - Do you like your partner's friends? Have you spent time with this person in varied social contexts? Do you like the people that they give themselves to and let speak into their lives? This includes their family; not that you can hold them accountable for all of their family’s beliefs and actions, but you want to see that they have healthy boundaries and understand the dynamics in their family.

4. Intellectually - Do you respect how your partner thinks? Can you have intelligent conversations with them? Do you have similar educational backgrounds or goals in life? It’s not that you must match in every area of interest or educational level, just that you are aware of those things as sometimes they can be a problem.

5. Physically - Are you attracted to them? There needs to be a spark there. God designed us for this. Adam was enthralled with Eve. It’s not shallow to consider this category. There needs to be something about this person that fills you with delight.

One element that is often overlooked but that is foundational to all these other categories is that when you are in a serious relationship with someone, you need to understand their wounds, how they have been hurt, and how they’ve matured and grown through those wounds. Many people go into marriage not realizing that they’re marrying someone who has been wounded. One of the beauties of marriage is that you are committing to help the other person grow and become more like Jesus.

The Single Life

Singleness is a good thing; a time for personal growth and reflection, and an opportunity to prepare your heart for whatever the future holds. Maybe for some of you, it’s best to be single right now. There are good things that go along with that. Being single doesn’t make you a second-class citizen. You may be in this position the rest of your life. But you can still serve the kingdom and have a fulfilling life.

For some of you, if you had an unbiblical divorce, you may or may not have the grounds to remarry. If your partner has remarried, that frees you to marry. But has there been sufficient time and growth in your life as a Christian to prepare you for remarriage? Far too often, we see people jump into the next relationship have never asked important questions about their new spouse: Are they are Christian? Do they possess narcissistic traits? Are they aware of their wounds and weaknesses? Asking these questions may seem ‘negative’ but they will save you from a world of heartache.

There Is Hope!

Whether you’re married now or single now, your destiny is to be single in heaven. You can practice for heaven now as a single person as much as you can as a married person. If you don’t remarry this side of heaven, you’re not missing out on anything. You’ll be fully united to Jesus in heaven and there will be no unmet longing. Singleness is the season God has you in for right now, but that could change. While you’re waiting, use this time to pursue spiritual growth, healing, and self-awareness so that you are ready for a relationship if God brings one your way.