• You’ve got to have CHARACTER and CHEMISTRY.
• Get in environments where you are chasing the same cause and the other person has a character being shaped by God. They re not perfect, but they are perfectABLE.
• Ben talks about how he is an introvert and how he sometimes is slower to opening up to people, but the friendships he builds over time are very deep. After a first date often he would say “I don’t know?” At the end of a first date ALL you have to know is if you want there to be a second one.
• Ben also talks about a time him and his wife Donna took a break. It was a time for Ben to really figure out if he wanted to be with Donna, because he was not fully sure. During that time came to a point where he realized he TRULY missed her. He did not just miss having a person, but he missed HER, her thoughts, her wisdom, her communication. They were not a perfect sync up in every area.
• “Knowing the best about her I know and knowing the worst about her I know, life WITH her is better than life without her“

• If you are feeling inside yourself “I am just not committed to this person” you NEED to listen to that.
• There are two pieces to this puzzle, first the INTERNAL piece. When you hit conflict is your response, “I WANT to get past this conflict and I WANT to get back to unity with you”? Or is it “I want to get out of here?” You need to establish internally if there is a deep and lasting commitment
• Then, the EXTERNAL piece is “Can we communicate in a healthy way when we disagree?” You want to be able to communicate CONSTRUCTIVELY not DESTRUCTIVELY.
• Do you yell scream? Are you or the other person too rash? That is not healthy.

“You want to marry and EQUAL. Two healthy people running together through life.”

• “You don’t want to get into a dating situation where you are the parent or savior of the person you want to marry”. That will NOT be a marriage of equals. You will LIMP through life.
• “You want to marry an EQUAL. Two healthy people running together through life.”
• You want to do ministry together, but you don’t want to date ministry.
• We need to be STUDENTS of ourselves. We should want to constantly be learning and growing and refining. Dating tends to surface things in our hearts and minds and we have to be able to be students of ourselves enough to address these things.
• Jesus raised up leaders “I trust you with little things and if you can handle it I will trust you with more things”. This is how we should approach vulnerability. Share little things and see how they handle it, and then proceed forward.
• We all want to be FULLY KNOWN. You want to be able to share with someone. You want to be able to slowly, incrementally open up. Eventually over time someone knowing the good and bad about you but chooses you is SO powerful.
• “When someone sees you at your worst and still says “I LOVE YOU” that is such a healing thing.”You want that. Do not settle for less than that.“
• It’s also important to check in with YOURSELF on how you respond when someone is vulnerable with you.
• “The PERSON will never be the problem, the PROBLEM will be the problem”. We have to dissect why the problem is happening and stop placing blame on the other person.

• Put the first thing first. Make the decision now that I don’t know if I am going to get married, but I want to be more like God. You are going to find your deepest satisfaction WITH him.
• Get good at being single and LOVE everybody you come across and as you do that get mentors and friends and then MAYBE eventually you will get a husband or wife.