On dating out of loneliness.
"Loneliness is one of the most painful yet necessary experiences in life. People feel incomplete, empty, or even starving inside. It is also a strong motivating force, just as food hunger is. Loneliness can make us do almost anything to fill up the hole inside. It is easy to see how, when you find someone you are drawn to, you can quickly fill up your life with that person.
Loneliness is stronger than resolve, willpower, or discipline. People will promise themselves not to get too involved, and find that their promise melts when their relational hunger meets a person they desire. All of a sudden, they are spending every evening together and settling into a pattern of being a couple.
Loneliness is not the enemy here, however. When we are lonely, it is a signal that we are alive. God created us with the drive to connect and be attached to himself and others. It is a good thing, because loneliness ultimately leads us to relationship, and that is where God wants all of us. We are all members of one body (Ephesians 4:25). Relationship cures loneliness.
However, dating is not the kind of relationship that cures loneliness, and that is the real problem here. Relationships that resolve loneliness must have certain elements, such as safety, unconditional love, and deep commitment. These elements help the person take in the love they need, get connected to life, and stay in relationship. Dating does not have these elements. At least at first, it is exploratory and low-commitment in nature. So lonely people often get deeply and quickly connected to someone. Then, when conflicts arise, they are devastated because they invested such deep parts of their hearts and souls in the relationship.
If you are getting too close, too soon out of loneliness, use it as a signal to get connected with some good, solid, non-dating relationships. Deal with loneliness before it backfires on you. […]
Your aloneness makes you get involved in relationships that you know are not going to last. It also keeps you from being alone long enough to grow into a person who does not have to be in a relationship in order to be happy. There is a very important rule in dating and romance: To be happy in a relationship, and to pick the kind of relationship that is going to be the kind you desire, you must be able to be happy without one.
As Psalm 1:3 says of the person who is growing into all of God’s ways and law: "He is like a tree planted by the streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Whatever he does prospers." The whole life is a full life. And the by-product of fullness is that the fulfilled person is also a very attractive one.
Dating was never meant to cure aloneness. It was meant to fulfil adult needs for male-female romantic relationship on the way toward marriage."
– extracted from p. 165, "Too Much, Too Fast", Making Dating Work: Boundaries in Dating, Dr. H. Cloud & Dr. J. Townsend
