ZANELE: I haven’t been in a relationship all my life. I have never dated but it’s not like I don’t have feelings at all. I really do. It’s just that I always hold myself back and be like “no.”
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So my question is, is it normal to have never dated by the age of 18?
The person you love at sixteen is different from the person you will love at twenty-one and sometimes at twenty-four.
This is because what you value in life and in people matures with age.
At your age, most young people are dating for wrong reasons because they still have immature values of life.
For example, they date for bling and prestige. They want to show off to their friends the kind of guy that they have, or to show off what he buys for them.
Unfortunately, nothing comes for free. Sometimes they give sex and lose their virginity – the reason they lose it is because they are still too immature to keep it.
They don’t value it yet because their personal value systems are not yet fully developed.
Some girls of your age date for exploration. Like we discussed earlier in this book, exploration is a totally wrong reason for dating.
The guys you meet when all you want is to explore – are totally different from the guys that you meet when you want to settle down.
So by the time you will settle down you will find you totally know nothing about good man. In fact you know everything about guys who play and break your heart, and you will start believing all men are the same.
Yet the truth is, when you are an explorer all you meet are explorers – man who show up in your life merely to see, take and leave.
Some will say you need to know boys better: the truth is, a dating relationship is the most difficult place to know a person’s character.
That’s because in dating we always reveal our best sides whether we want it or not.
The best time to know boys is right now when you are not dating any of them. Just observe how boys are treating your sisters, dumping your friends, and cheating.
In all this I hope years from now you will finally notice that good guy who will be twenty-five and you are twenty-one; and he is still single because he was building his life and getting himself ready to settle down.
You will see by the way he has lived his life that he doesn’t take love for a game.
I have received messages from girls who have been dating ever since they were teenagers.
They are twenty-eight now, their beauty is fading, sexiness is disappearing, they lost their virginity, have given away sex, been heartbroken again and again. They text me,
“Sir Moffat dating doesn’t work, can’t you just find me a good man among your friends? Someone who wants to settle down and build a life.
Someone with a wedding deadline in his mind, and family in his dreams.”
I texted back, “What’s the problem, why are you saying this?”
“I have lost my life Moffat, with guys who can’t take life seriously.
It’s only now that I look back and find my happily married friends never dated that much.
They just met a good God loving guy who had marriage in his mind, a year down the line they were introduced and in the second year they settled down.
I know every marriage has its ups and downs but it’s better because you will be going somewhere.
Look at me, I’m twenty-eight and for almost ten years of my life I have been stepping in and out of love.”
You rather have the ups and downs of a marriage that take you somewhere, than have the Ins and Outs of dating relationships that keep you going round in circles.
For now let all men be simple colleagues and friends with a distance. Love when you are ready to get married.
Don’t let anyone lie to you, there is nothing to hurry for and you are not missing out on anything that you can’t have when married.
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