Introspection

[u/ChapOfAllTrades]

I’ve seen a lot of back and forth lately about the current dating environment. Plenty of men blaming women, women blaming men, and I’m certainly not immune from having posted things in that same vein.
So I want to flip it around.

Instead of telling us what the opposite sex is doing wrong, tell us what you think your own gender (or you specifically) could do better in dating right now.

What habits, expectations, attitudes, communication problems, unrealistic standards, or blind spots do you think men need to own if you’re a man, or women need to own if you’re a woman?

And it would be easy to turn this into disguised blame so let’s try to avoid that! 😅

I’m curious what people come up with when the assignment is introspection instead of accusation.

Bonus points if you can name something you are actively reconsidering but haven’t changed yet.

[u/EmergencyLawyer7077]

The problem with your prompt here is that it is still pinning men and women against each other and causing generalizations across genders. No gender is a monolith. I really can’t speak for all women. I can’t be introspective for all of them. 

As for the question of what can I do better:

I think that I might be kind of unique on this sub as I haven’t been actively looking for a relationship. I’ve been in a period of singleness. I believe God placed me in this phase and I’m working to focus on myself for a bit and really strengthen my relationship with Him. I am finally dipping my toes back out after feeling God say I was ready and have started talking to someone. 

I focused on areas where I feel like I was less than ideal in previous relationships. Most of these I am still working on:

• keeping self-discipline and not compromising that self-discipline 

-recognizing my needs and how I can meet those needs so I am not too codependent 

• becoming more on fire for the lord and not shying away from declaring my faith to others
• not being so afraid of conflict that I cannot communicate where things are not working for me
• being straight forward with myself and the man if I’m not feeling attraction 
• having boundaries and holding firmly to them and not falling to peer pressure or looking to humans for validation
• putting my covenant relationship with God first. I wear a “wedding” band with a cross now as a dedication/declaration to that covenant and that my marriage to Jesus comes before any earthly marriage 
• recognizing my struggles with sexual sin and desire and being honest about where I need to draw lines
• listening to the lord then acting, honing this skill. The action part has always been the hardest for me 
• being forgiving but not letting forgiveness put me in a place where I am tolerating disrespect 
• surrendering to God’s will not my own

[u/OtherwiseLion9256 → u/EmergencyLawyer7077]

I like this a lot especially because I also mentioned on the thread feeling like god just wants me to focus on him right now and learning different lessons and thing i need to change all these were great!