The Importance of Emotional Chastity in the Dating Process
In my first article, Dating with Purpose, I provided the big picture of how youth, with the assistance of their parents, can navigate the rough waters of relationships and approach them with maturity and purpose. This article delves deeper into how to interact with other people in appropriate ways. We all have a desire to be loved. In pursuit of that love, we are tempted to give ourselves away and surrender to another so as to have our physical or emotional need for love satisfied. This can be done in two ways. One is by surrendering your physical self, which we hear about often, and the other is by surrendering our emotional self.

I have found that preparing a relationship for a friendship and leaving the romance out completely or at least to a minimum during this beginning friendship stage is very important. Often when relationships begin with the romance, the friendship is never able to develop and couples find themselves with people they don’t really know. So what does a chaste friendship look like? Well first, one has to limit the amount of contact to allow the relationship to have time to grow. Starting out a friendship with someone by spending part of everyday together would clearly promote an emotional attachment. If a young person is not sure how much time is appropriate, they should talk to a trusted adult, like their parents. In fact, a key to developing mature relationships with the opposite gender is having a great parent/teen relationship. Children learn much about what a healthy relationship looks like by the example that adults within their lives provide for them. If they see constant arguing, bickering, back stabbing, and gossip, then they will probably mimic these poor interpersonal relationship traits. Parents are always teaching their children especially through their actions. Mature relationships are built on healthy friendships and sometimes these trusting friendships blossom into marriage.
Practical Advice

If you become romantically drawn to a friend, don’t share it with them or your friends right away. This usually leads to gossip about how “She likes him. Does he like her? Have they told each other?” and this makes friendship difficult to maintain. Relationship gossip to teenagers is like a kid in a candy store. They’ll eat it up and consume all of their time with “Who likes who?” In one of my daughter’s friend’s experience, conversations about teen romance are circular, leading nowhere except down a hill of fantasy and illusion. My daughter Ellen has had her share of dealing with emotional chastity in her relationships and has experienced what it is like when relationships are not kept emotionally chaste. She says, “Even though emotional chastity can often times be harder to maintain then physical chastity, it is so important! I made the mistake of becoming emotionally attached too fast in a previous relationship and now it is harder for me and this guy to be just friends anymore.” Emotional chastity is not just a stuffy old fashioned idea that doesn’t relate to society anymore. It is something that should be practiced in all relationships, even ones that may not lead up to marriage.
