Dating is a scam.
I’m just going to come right out and say it. It is literally a scam. And I’m going to show you why.
It starts like this. You meet someone out and about or online. You’re attracted to them and make plans to connect. This usually includes a contact exchange either social media or phone numbers. Once you make this exchange, you part ways in hopes that you’ll get to spend time with one another again. Typically, women prefer for men to make the first move, but nowadays, women are more liberal and may initiate first. You make plans for dinner and set a date.
The day comes for you to meet up. You’ve got on something that he’ll be sure to remember and he will do his best to make a lasting impression as well. You might have even put on something that you would consider “sexy". Remember this for later.
You meet up and the date goes well. You spend the evening in conversation getting to know each other more. The check comes and more than likely you, as the woman, expect the man to pay. If he’s a gentleman, he will pay and have no expectation of anything in return. If he’s a solicitor, he’s expecting a transaction. And if he’s a loser, he splits the bill.
Here is where it gets tricky.
At this point in the evening, if all went well during dinner, the man may want to continue the vibes elsewhere. A late night car conversation, a night cap at either his or your place, or plans to see each other again soon.
Depending on how you have presented yourself at the initial meeting and now the date, that has a major impact on this next decision. If you’ve presented yourself in a way that doesn’t diminish your character, standards, or value, he will bid you a shalom and make plans to see you again. But if you’ve presented yourself as a woman of the night, a gold digger, or a straight up harlot, I’m sure he will not want the night to end. After all, he did pay for your company. Remember that sexy outfit you had on? Yeah, maybe that gave the wrong impression. And this is why I believe dating is a scam.
Most men of the world today expect something in return for their output. And women in the world seem to be on board with this sentiment. I was scrolling on Instagram and came across a post that troubled my spirit, especially because I remember existing in this realm. Today’s society breaks down relationships into 4 stages: Talking, Dating, Dating Exclusively, and Relationship.
Talking
Talking is the first stage of a relationship (by worldly standards). At this stage you’ve exchanged numbers, spent time together as friends, and maybe even had sex. This is the stage where you test the waters to see if there’s a growing interest.
Dating
Dating is the second stage of a relationship. You spend more time doing things together such as movies, bowling, concerts, dinner, etc. You are still considered just friends in this stage but have developed a mutual interest in each other. You are still allowed to talk to other people.
Dating Exclusively
This is the third stage. You are dating, however you have cut off all other people you were interested in and have decided to focus on getting to know each other better.
Relationship
This is the last stage of a relationship. You’ve made a mutual agreement to become a couple. You have committed to one another and any similar communication or interactions with others would be considered cheating.
Now let me get into the reasons why dating is a scam.
At the very first stage, you’ve already shared the most intimate parts of yourself with no commitment, no understanding, no plans for the future, and little to no knowledge about each other. I’d like to think that we hold ourselves to higher standards than this because when you think about it, who are the only people who easily give their bodies up in exchange for a nice meal or attention. Right. Now unless prostitution is your career by choice, I would not recommend falling into this scam. You are very vulnerable to STDs and STIs, pregnancy, and abortions at this stage which makes you highly susceptible to continuing the cycle of broken families in our community and our nation.
The only person you should be sharing your body with is your husband. Now of course, some may say I have a one-sided, biased, old-fashioned, closed-off view of things, but sex is an act instituted by The Most High that is reserved only for husband and wife and also to be used to replenish the earth. Not to be used as a pastime for people you don’t even know.
The order of these stages are completely warped. How are you sharing your body with someone before you’ve established a commitment to each other? So does that mean since you’re just in the talking stage, that you are also sharing your body with other people you’re talking to and is that man doing the same thing? That’s just too many bodily fluids and germs for me.
I saw nothing within these stages about marriage. Is that no longer a priority?
Society used to teach that dating was a mechanism of finding your future husband or wife. Marriage was always the end goal of dating. But today, it doesn’t even seem like it’s a means to an end. It’s a free for all. And if marriage just so happens to come into play, then that’s cool. But if not, that’s even better. The freer you are, the more space you have to “explore.”
In pastimes, if a man was interested in a woman, he had to go about it the right way. First of all, he needed to have himself established because as long as a woman was unmarried, she was still considered to be a part of her father’s house. If a man comes along and seeks to marry that woman, he has to go to her father first. Because one day she’ll belong to her husband’s house.
Obviously, we have become far removed from this standard due to Black men’s high incarceration rates, the war on drugs, the removal of fathers in the homes due to welfare programs, and promiscuity leading to increased single-parent households. A lot of women today don’t have a father that a suitor could go to for permission to court their daughter. And even if the father is in the home, they don’t seem to care about their daughter’s dating life until a man is “serious enough” and wants to marry her. Yet, she could’ve been having sex with this man (and many others) for months and years, and her father acts oblivious to this fact.
I also find it interesting the double standard that exists in the home when it comes to dating and marriage. Parents will encourage their daughters to practice safe sex in their relationships and singleness, but discourage their daughters from marrying “too early.” Many parents will tell their daughters to wait a little while, live your life, and explore before settling down. Now you tell me what explore means?
Another contributor to this separation is that women today have all of the same freedoms and capabilities to provide for themselves as men do. Here enters the “I don’t need a man” archetype. I’m not saying that women need to go back to having zero rights because that’s not even Biblical. But what I am saying is that just because a woman has a career, education, and maybe even her own assets does not mean that she is better off without a husband. I’d also like to put a disclaimer that some women are intended to remain single, but YAH’s original design did include a man and woman together.
I’m not writing this to disparage anyone because this was me. I didn’t realize the scam that the “talking stage” and dating actually was until I took a step back from it. It seems as if society today encourages commitment after you’ve already shared the most sacred parts of yourself with so many other people.
So how do we avoid the scam?
Thankfully, The Most High leaves room for repentance for His children who seek to be close to Him and live a life He would be pleased with.
It is up to us to teach our children to prioritize and save themselves for marriage and value themselves enough to not want to freely become one flesh with strangers. We have to display examples of healthy relationships to them by maintaining the order The Most High set for a husband and a wife. As the next generation of husbands, wives, fathers, and mothers, it is up to us to set a standard that sets our children apart from the world. Many of us have unfortunately been corrupted by society and have had to do a lot of rehabilitation, detoxification, and therapy to be where we are today. But if we are able to keep our children shielded from this scam, we are that much closer to restoring our community and creating a future we want to see.
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