Legion of Dating
l/dating
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About
This is the home base for everyone in the dating community, the real value we aim to provide with your subscription. We're not selling you a fantasy. We're giving you real support in your journey. This is a space for the articles, the resources, the real conversations, and the stories that remind you this is actually possible. Under the resources tab, you will find honest writing on long distance discernment, chastity, standards, visits, who moves, involving family, and the waiting stage. Written without pretending any of it is easy and without pretending you will always do it perfectly. You will also find people further down the road than you who are willing to share what they learned. People who got it wrong and rebuilt. People who are where you are right now. Ask questions. Share your story when you're ready. Post anonymously if the situation calls for it. If you are here, you already know that the person you're looking for isn't always going to be just around the corner. This is the community for people who have accepted that - and are taking it seriously anyway.
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@gabrielstcharles17dThoughts?
Saw this post, which was likely targeted towards a secular audience, but was curious about everyone’s thoughts here
@gabrielstcharlesJun 4“The right person”
“The right person will not…” “The right person will…” That’s the advice Catholic social media bombards us with. But do we ever ask if WE are the right person? Have we sorted ourselves out before seeking to bring someone else into our lives, who’s going to have to deal with you for the rest of their life? It’s worth taking a good look at ourselves, and thinking about what we need to sort out. Here’s what I did when I was single, and had just gone through a terrible breakup. 1. The healing phase First of all, I had to learn forgive and let go. Prayer helped, but spending time with friends and other people is crucial. The best remedy for pain? Serving others in need. There’s something about serving the less fortunate that reorients your perspective. Needless to say, you need to go no-contact with your ex. Depending on the way things ended, it would be good to agree to a period of healing. We’ll be coming out with a course/sidequest diving more into this. 2. Speaking to real people about it Sometimes all you need is someone who will listen, that’s essentially what a therapist is anyway. What makes someone a good listener? Someone who listens without judgment or bias, and doesn’t try to project their own personal opinions on the situation. Someone who helps you to discern what God might be trying to do in your life. Yes, sometimes you do need to rant to friends, and that’s okay. But speaking to a real spiritual director is crucial. Find a priest, a nun. Be respectful of their time. If you say you need an hour, stick to it. In this season it’s easy to spiral in your head, so verbalising your thoughts brings a lot more clarity than you think. 3. Work on yourself At a certain point, you need to stop blaming your circumstances, your ex, or even God for the fact that you’re single. You need to realise that God gave you free will, and that while you can’t control whether someone will show up, you can control if you’re going to be the one who will show up in someone else’s life. This could mean working on becoming more attractive, getting real feedback from strangers who aren’t afraid to hurt your feelings. Moving to somewhere with more prospects, or even just getting your own car so you can drive out 3 hours for Mass or join young adult groups. Being single is the time to focus on your goals. Travel the world so you have interesting stories to tell the next person you meet. Become the kind of person you’d want your spouse to be. 4. Change your mindset After my experience with my ex, and having been on many dating apps, I started to believe many lies about myself. One of them being that I only attracted broken people into my life. This was a hard one to wrestle with, because the solution to that isn’t just denying the realities and patterns. It was accepting that yes, this has been a pattern. There must be something about me that is attracting all the wrong people, and I need to fix it. Sometimes it isn’t anything that seems tangible, but I truly believe that people do have an “aura”, a combination of factors that lead to a final result. And for that to change, you just need to do the work. 5. What I did For me, that was getting a whole new life. I started doing all the things that I thought "we" were going to do together, but by myself. It's true that time heals all wounds, but what you do with your time affects how quickly and how well you heal. I was very fortunate to have the opportunity to move to Paris for a year, and I immersed myself in a new passion, Baroque art. I joined a boxing gym, and every day I would go sit in a beautiful Church and just spend time with God. I moved to Paris knowing that the language barrier would be the hardest challenge. Going from someone who was known to be a great orator, to becoming some foreigner who couldn’t speak the language. I had to grow beyond myself, learn a new language. Got a healthy routine in, attending morning Mass at Notre Dame everyday. I eventually met my now girlfriend when I least expected to, when I had just lost my day job, and in the most unconventional way. And yes, I know that it all sounds incredibly privileged, and this is like the equivalent of going to a fancy rehab on a private island. But my points still stand. If you’ve been finding that you haven’t had much luck with dating, perhaps it’s you that needs to do something radical. What was that quote about the definition of insanity? I’m rooting for all of you.
@carlos32Apr 15What's your go-to activity or place for a first date?
Just like the title asks, I'm wondering what are some of the "if in doubt', go-to, or preferred first, or second, date places or activities of y'all.
@thelegionApr 11Are Your Standards Too High?
At some point, you have to be honest with yourself. Not brutally. Not in a way that makes you feel like you should just settle for whoever shows up. But honestly. Because a lot of people wandering around Catholic dating spaces are walking around with a picture in their head of someone who does not exist - and they are quietly rejecting real people because of it. So ask yourself: where do you actually stand? Not where would you like to stand. Where do you actually stand in terms of what you have to offer, and what you can realistically attract and sustain? This is not about lowering your standards. It is about making sure your standards are actually yours - not the residue of one experience that got inside your head and rewired your expectations. **For the men reading this:** Just because one woman who was completely out of your usual league gave you a chance once does not mean that is now your baseline. That is not your standard. That was a moment. A moment is not a marriage. You can find certain women attractive and still know they are not what you are looking for in a wife. These are not the same thing. Attractiveness is real and you are allowed to feel it. But be firm - not flexible, not negotiable - on what you are actually looking for. Know the difference between a woman who excites you and a woman you want to build a life with. Sometimes they are the same person. Often they are not. Men can improve. You are not fixed. You can get stronger, more disciplined, more grounded, more financially stable, more spiritually serious. The version of you that shows up matters. Do not wait for the right person to motivate you. Be the person worth showing up for first. **For the women reading this:** Just because a man who was tall, dark, and impressive gave you attention once - even briefly, even if it went nowhere - does not mean that is your standard now. Especially if what he gave you was attention or flattery rather than genuine pursuit. That is not a data point. That is a distraction. The woman who holds out for the feeling that one person gave her years ago, while turning down men who are genuinely good, genuinely interested, and genuinely trying - is not being selective. She is being held hostage by a ghost. Women can also improve: their emotional maturity, their understanding of what a good man actually looks like in practice versus in theory, their ability to recognise substance over surface. **The real question:** Do the inner work to get clear on exactly what you are satisfied with. Not what you would prefer. Not your dream scenario. What you are actually satisfied with - what you could look across the table at for forty years and feel genuinely grateful for. Commit to that. Stop quietly disqualifying people against a fantasy. And acknowledge this: you will always find certain people attractive. That does not go away in marriage. It is not supposed to. The goal is not to find someone so attractive that no one else registers. The goal is to find someone whose character, faith, and commitment make the question irrelevant.
@thelegionApr 11Chastity: The Honest Conversation
Most Catholic resources on chastity in dating take one of two positions. Either they tell you it is entirely possible to never stumble, and if you follow these five steps you will arrive at your wedding night without incident - or they quietly avoid the topic because it is uncomfortable. This article is going to take a different position. You might fall. Most people do, at some point, in some way. And the question nobody asks - but everybody should - is not just whether you fall, but when. Because the timing matters enormously. When you fall early - before you have genuinely discerned whether this person is right for you, before you have built real depth and trust, before you have any clarity about the relationship - you introduce a kind of attachment that clouds everything. Physical intimacy creates a bond. That bond does not disappear when the relationship ends. And if the relationship ends, the mess is worse: more confusion, more heartbreak, more difficulty trusting your own judgment about the next person. When things get hard and heated - when you feel like you cannot hold back anymore - it does not always help to frame it as the forbidden thing you must not do. That framing can work against you. It is in our fallen human nature to desire the forbidden. Calling something forbidden can make it feel more urgent, not less. A more honest reframe is this: delay. Not forever. Not as a rule you are white-knuckling your way through. Just - not yet. Push it further down the road. One more week. One more visit. One more honest conversation first. And here is the beautiful irony that most people never get to experience: the longer you delay, the more likely you are to want to do the right thing anyway. Not because the desire disappears - it does not. But because at some point you look at where you are and you think: we have come this far. We have waited this long. Why would we not just wait a little longer and do this properly. The delay itself becomes the argument for more delay. That is not a guarantee. But it is what faithfulness, practiced persistently over time, tends to produce in people who are genuinely trying. Every week you hold is a week in which the relationship either deepens genuinely or reveals itself as something less than you thought. Every month is a month in which you learn who this person actually is, without the confusion that physical entanglement introduces. Other Catholic sources will not tell you this because it sounds like permission. It is not permission. It is honesty about what is actually at stake and why the Church's teaching, even if you fall short of it, still deserves to be taken seriously on its own terms. Which harms a marriage more: going too far early, before you are sure, entangling yourselves in something that may or may not become a vocation - or falling closer to the altar, when both of you have already discerned and chosen and are committed? The question answers itself. Pursue chastity fully and without apology. And if you are genuinely trying and you stumble - go to Confession, get back up, and ask yourself honestly whether you delayed it as long as you could. That is what the pursuit looks like in real life. Not perfection. Persistence.
@thelegionApr 11People Change. That's What Marriage Is For.
Here is something no one tells you clearly enough: you cannot know who you are marrying. Not fully. Not permanently. The person you marry at 27 is not the person they will be at 37 or 47. You know this. But most people act like the goal is to find someone who will stay exactly as they are. It is not. The goal is to find someone who believes what you believe about marriage - that you find someone you align with and you make it work, no matter what. That the changes are something you face together, not something you cite when you are leaving. It does not matter if you have dated for six years or six months. People still change. Time before marriage does not insure you against the changes that come after. What insures you - as much as anything can - is character. The person they are in how they handle difficulty. The person they are when things are not going well. The person they are in Confession, in prayer, in how they treat people they have no reason to impress. Everything else is risk management. You cannot eliminate the risk. You can only manage it thoughtfully. You are not looking for certainty. You are looking for someone whose character gives you confidence that whatever comes, you will face it together. This is why the obvious things matter: do not marry someone whose foundational beliefs are unstable or malleable based on culture and trend. Do not marry someone who has no faith, or a purely convenient faith. Because when things get hard - and they will - you need someone who has something to hold onto that is bigger than their feelings. You marry someone of genuine faith and character, someone who believes in the permanence of what they are choosing - there is less margin for error. Not zero. Less. That is the best you can do. And it is enough to act on.
@thelegionApr 11Who Moves?
Nobody wants to talk about this early. It feels presumptuous, like you're planning a wedding on the second call. But the question of who moves is not a wedding conversation. It is a third-visit conversation at the latest - and ideally earlier. Here is why: if you wait until you are emotionally deep in before you discuss it, you will find that both of you have been quietly assuming the answer without saying it out loud. And when those assumptions surface, they create conflict at exactly the wrong moment - when the relationship is at its most vulnerable and the stakes feel highest. Talk about it before you are there. There is no rule about who should move. There are, however, practical realities: visa pathways, career flexibility, family obligations, financial anchors. One person's situation is almost always more movable than the other's - and that is fine, as long as the decision is made explicitly rather than arrived at by default. The person who moves needs to be chosen, not defaulted to. This distinction matters more than it sounds. If one person moves simply because it was always assumed they would - because of gender expectations, because they earn less, because they said early on that they were flexible - that assumption will resurface in the marriage. Resentment does not announce itself. It accumulates quietly and then arrives at full volume. Make the decision together. Name it explicitly. Make sure the person who is relocating is genuinely choosing to do so and is not simply going along with what seemed inevitable. And plan the practical side seriously: visa processing times, legal recognition of marriage certificates, the emotional reality of leaving community and family. These are not obstacles to love. They are the project that love becomes when it is real.
@thelegionApr 11Involving Family Across Cultures
One of the stranger experiences in long distance Catholic dating is introducing someone to your world who has never been in it - someone your family cannot meet for coffee, cannot observe at Sunday lunch, cannot form an opinion of through ordinary proximity. You are asking the people who know you best to trust your judgment about someone they can only see through a screen. That is genuinely hard. Do not minimise it. Involve your family and close community early - not in the sense of making formal introductions before you know where things are going, but in the sense of not keeping the relationship a secret. The people who know you well are a resource, not a threat. If they have concerns, those concerns deserve a hearing. Sometimes they will be seeing something you cannot see because you are too close. Sometimes they will be reacting to unfamiliarity rather than to a real problem. Learning to tell the difference is part of the discernment. If your family is not supportive - either of long distance relationships generally, or of this person specifically - take their concerns seriously without letting them make the decision for you. A lack of blessing from family is not nothing. It is also not the final word. The other side of this is your partner's family and culture. Pay attention. Different cultures carry very different expectations around courtship, around the role of family in choosing a spouse, around what it means to bring an outsider in. What looks like hesitation from their family may simply be unfamiliarity. What looks like warmth may be performance. You need time and patience to understand the difference. The families are coming with the person. You are not just choosing someone - you are choosing the ecosystem they grew up in and will always carry. That ecosystem is worth understanding before you commit to it.
@thelegionApr 11START HERE | You Couldn't Marry the Boy/Girl Next Door
Let's be honest about why you're here. It's not because long distance is your preference. Nobody's first choice is airports and time zones and falling for someone who lives fourteen hours away. You're here because the local option didn't materialise. Because you looked around your parish, your city, your social circle - and either there was no one, or there was no one right. And after a while you accepted that the person you're looking for is probably not within walking distance. That is not a failure. That is a correct assessment of reality. Catholic communities are small. Genuinely practising Catholics who are serious about their faith, serious about marriage, and at the right stage of life are a minority within a minority. The odds that the right person for you is also geographically convenient were never particularly good. The fact that you're willing to look further is not desperation. It is just logic. There is a version of this story that people tell themselves quietly - that being on an international Catholic dating platform means they couldn't cut it locally. That this is a last resort. That version is worth rejecting entirely, because it will quietly poison how you show up here. The people who find something real through long distance are almost always the ones who stopped treating it as a lesser option and started treating it as the actual arena. They brought their full selves. They took it seriously. They didn't spend the whole time with one eye on the door in case someone local came along. The distance is not the problem. The smallness of the Catholic dating pool is the problem - and the distance is the solution to it. You couldn't marry the boy next door. Fine. The boy next door probably wasn't right anyway. Head over to the resources tab for the rest of the series!
@thelegionApr 11The Waiting Stage
You have said yes. The date is set. You are engaged, certain, and still living fourteen time zones apart. This stage is its own discipline and it does not get talked about enough. The engagement period in a long distance relationship is not the coast-to-the-finish-line phase that people imagine. It is, in many ways, the hardest phase - because the end is visible, the commitment is made, and yet the day-to-day reality of separation is exactly the same. You cannot celebrate over dinner. You cannot process the stress of wedding planning in the same room. You are doing the most intimate and high-stakes preparation of your lives apart from each other. **Some things that help:** Have a clear closing date. Know exactly when the distance ends. Not approximately - specifically. This is not just logistical. It is psychological. The waiting is sustainable when it has a real endpoint. Stay connected to the version of your life that exists right now - your community, your friendships, your work. The temptation in this stage is to treat everything around you as temporary, as just filling time until real life begins. That is a mistake. Your life is happening now. The person you are during this period is the person your spouse is going to marry. Keep investing in the relationship through the waiting. The engagement period can create a false sense of security - you've decided, so the work is done. It is not. Keep having the real conversations. Keep learning each other. The closer you get to the wedding, the more important it is to be honest about fears, expectations, and things left unsaid. And when it is over - when the distance finally closes and you are actually in the same place at the end of a normal Tuesday - give yourselves grace. That adjustment is real. You have been conducting a relationship through screens and airports. Learning to be ordinary together is its own beautiful, unglamorous work. It is worth all of it.
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