My life is full of my spiritual practices—they guide all that I do. It’s beautiful and enriches me, but being religious certainly has an impact on my dating life—sometimes for the worse. It can be a struggle dating as a woman of faith.
- I live a particular lifestyle that most people won’t fit into. Having faith in God (amongst other things like being sober) has led me to live a humble life. I don’t want a fancy job, lots of money, or a crazy lifestyle. Rather, I’m happy with the simple things. When someone asks me what I do, I want to answer “whatever God has me doing” but I know that’d just make things weird.
- I feel a little shy about sharing that I go to church. I sometimes call myself a Catholic, but I’m more of a buffet-style Christian. Nonetheless, I often go to Catholic mass because it brings me great joy and helps me feel connected to my higher power. I’m nervous to share this information with someone I’m on a date with, though, because there’s a lot of stigma and distaste for organized religion. It’s tough because going to church is a huge part of my practice and it doesn’t necessarily mean what people assume it means.
- Spirituality talk isn’t always a popular table topic. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes I get lucky and find that the other person is psyched to talk about spirituality. But more likely, I don’t bring it up because I don’t want to make someone uncomfortable if religion or spiritual matters aren’t their jam. One of the good things about online dating is that sometimes I can gauge from their profile if they’re down with a higher power. Though even with meeting through apps, it’s seldom visible from their profile.
- I’m supposed to trust that God will be the matchmaker. This is one of the biggest struggles I have. I’m still getting over my go-getter tendencies where my solution to any problem is to run at it full-speed. That’s not really how trusting God works. Rather, trusting that my higher power will be a matchmaker looks like a whole lot of waiting around for whatever the right moment and right person are supposed to be.
- I’m even supposed to have faith when I hate being single AF. It’s easier to have faith that God will match me with the right person when I’m talking to cool people and have a date or two set up. It’s even easy when I’m starting to like someone. Trusting God gets hard, though when I experience rejection, dry spells, and hopelessness around dating. Even when I’m feeling self-pity around being single AF, I’m still supposed to have some faith in there.
- I’m only up for serious dating—not anything casual. This is perhaps my biggest struggle in being a spiritual person. For myself, I believe in divine matchmaking and in dating to be in a relationship. I don’t date for any other purpose except to find a potential partner. This means I’m not interested in anything casual or ambiguous and I’m definitely not interested in hookups. Unfortunately, though, tons of people my age are just looking for something casual. The struggle is real.
- I have super high standards. My standards are sky high for who I’m willing to let into my life in a romantic capacity. They’re not too high, I just know my worth as a human and I’m only up for someone else who can also see it. This is a struggle because it weeds out so many people that I often fear I’m going to be alone forever. I have to trust, though, and know that I can’t settle.
- I refuse to settle for less. God made my worth clear to me. My higher power has shown me that I’m so lovable and worthy of care. I can’t abandon that for someone who I think is attractive yet we have no compatibility. I also definitely can’t look at someone and say, “You’ll do.” I know that my God wants me to have the absolute best match for me. This is exhausting sometimes, though because it seems I’ll never find someone.
- Partners don’t always understand that God speaks to me through my intuition. Having faith in something bigger than me means that I trust my gut over all else because God speaks to me through my intuition. The struggle with this is that my partner may not understand, leading to confusion when I say that I “just have a feeling” about something. I may not be able to explain my logical reasoning, but I know when something isn’t right.
- It’s hard to find someone else who’s spiritual. It’s not a requirement for me to find someone else who also practices a religion or religions, but it would be really nice. This is hard, though, in a time where there are tons of atheists and agnostics. I have a difficult time finding someone who also has faith in something greater than him or herself.
