Navigating Singleness and Dating

When you're a deconstructing, egalitarian, purity culture survivor

How do you navigate dating and singleness when you’re a deconstructing, egalitarian, purity culture survivor?

OH MY!

This month we’re starting a Mini-Series on Egalitarian Relationships. Here is the plan for the series:

• February 7: Navigating Dating and Singleness

• February 14: 10 Questions to Ask When You’re Dating

• February 21: How to Have an Egalitarian Engagement + Wedding

• February 23 at 7:30pm EST: Live workshop and Q&A for paid subscribers

• March: Egalitarian Marriage and book club for The Marriage You Want by Sheila Wray Gregoire and Dr. Keith Gregoire

• April: Continue book club

• May: Continue book club, live book club meeting for paid subscribers

Our content this month culminates in our first live quarterly meeting for paid subscribers on Sunday, February 23 at 7:30pm EST. (And yes, it will be recorded and made available later.) I’ll give a brief workshop/training on the topic of relationships, then we’ll have some time for AMA (ask me anything) and group discussion.

These quarterly live meetings were inspired by my launch team book club, which made the topics more embodied and was honestly both encouraging and fun!

While this post is free to everyone, the live meetings and some content are for paid subscribers only. You can subscribe for $5 per month or $50 for the year. Paid subscriptions aren’t meant to be a barrier or a huge money-maker for me, but merely to provide me some privacy on the internet and to help fund some of the costs of my online business. And if you can’t afford a subscription, I’m happy to extend it to you for free. Just email or message me!

Now, read on for an overview of what we’ll cover in the live meeting, plus some valuable resources and a Mind-Body Practice specifically for emotions.

---

Singleness

Singleness is a a valid and valuable life station—one that is not less than marriage. Some people choose to remain single or find themselves single but do not struggle with intense longings for marriage. I validate this path and want to create space in our live meeting to discuss singleness not just as a “holding pattern” or stage, but as a lifelong vocation or life status for some.

But for those who do want marriage or a life partner, how do you cope with the ambiguous grief when life doesn’t turn out like you expected?

Ambiguous grief comes when there is a physical presence but an emotional absence, or an emotional absence with a physical presence. Examples of this include an aging relative with Alzheimer’s who is physically present but not emotionally present, or a future spouse who is emotionally present in your hopes and dreams but not physically present.

If you struggle with grief over your singleness, I validate your feelings and hold space for the pain you feel. If you’ve read my story in Recovering from Purity Culture, you know I have my own experiences of grief and struggles with prolonged singleness. As someone who married later than purity culture promised, I felt the pain of the Fairy-Tale Myth and disillusionment at the false promises of the sexual prosperity gospel. And I am mindful that I speak from a different perspective now as someone who hasn’t been single for a decade.

For all of us, I find it helpful to hold space for our emotions and validate the both/and instead of choosing either/or emotions.

I offer some advice for dealing with competing emotions in my book:

We can practice validating our emotions, grieving our losses, and accepting that we can have both struggle and joy, both contentment and sorrow. We don’t have to discount our feelings, avoid them, or pretend they don’t exist. Look at your pain with nonjudgment. Then give yourself grace.

---

Dating

“Many Christians have no idea how to date after purity culture. The lines were drawn so clearly in purity and courtship practices—lines that provided perceived safety but which proved to be unrealistic or ineffective. Purity culture offered no blueprint for dating after your early twenties. It assumed everyone would marry their first love and have a fairy-tale ending.”¹

For Christian singles in their late twenties, thirties, forties, and beyond, dating feels daunting. Do you date to marry? Date for fun? Or something in between?

How to date when you’re no longer kissing dating good-bye is a big topic we’ll discuss in our live meeting. I admit, I am not a dating coach. But I do coach single women in my Purity Culture Recovery Coaching on the beliefs and behaviors that are holding them back from their dating and relationship goals.

So, in our live meeting, we’ll look at the topics of both singleness and dating, how to redefine your purpose for dating, and rewrite your dating blueprint so you can feel content and confident in your relationships.

---

Resources

Here are some books and podcasts about singleness and dating as a Christian. If you know of a healthy resource, please leave it in the comments! As always, inclusion in this list does not necessarily mean I agree with or endorse all of the author’s work. I believe in reading widely to gain diverse perspectives.

Allberry, Sam. 7 Myths about Singleness. Wheaton: Crossway, 2019.

Callaway, Kutter. Breaking the Marriage Idol: Reconstructing Our Cultural and Spiritual Norms. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2018.

Harris, Kat. Sexless in the City: A Sometimes Sassy, Sometimes Painful, Always Honest Look at Dating, Desire, and Sex. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2021.

Smith, Joy Beth. Party of One: Truth, Longing, and the Subtle Art of Singleness. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2018.

Found Family podcast with MaryB. Safrit

“Why Single Christians Need Mentors”, MaryB. Safrit, Dr. Camden Morgante, https://drcamden.com/2022/10/31/why-single-christians-need-mentors/

“No One Ever Told Me That Singleness is Good”, Kristyn DeNooyer, Dr. Camden Morgante, https://drcamden.com/2021/06/28/no-one-ever-told-me-that-singleness-is-good/

“The Heart Has Room for Both Gratitude and Grief,” Camden Morgante, Her View From Home, https://herviewfromhome.com/the-heart-has-room-for-both-gratitude-and-grief/

---

Mind-Body Practice

Let’s learn the skill of pendulation, which comes from EMDR and somatic psychology. Pendulation is “tolerating small amounts of comfort and then pairing the comfort with small amounts of difficulty.” In pendulation, we “ease into the discomfort of a disturbing…emotion by pairing it with an already established resource.”² In EMDR, a resource is anything that communicates safety to yourself.

We’re going to practice pendulating between positive feelings related to our current relationship status or life station (singleness/dating/married/widowed/divorced) and more difficult ones. We’ll pay attention to our minds, hearts, and bodies, while holding the both/and of multiple emotions.

Make sure you stay within your window of tolerance—feeling safe and regulated enough in your body that you can experience both sets of emotions without becoming overly triggered.

Begin by focusing on a time you felt positively about your life station (“positive feelings”). Bring to mind the circumstances and the thoughts and feelings you had. What picture or image best captures this moment? Notice feelings of contentment, confidence, joy, gratitude, and grace. Notice what comes up in your body as you think of this time. Focus on these feelings for several minutes, allowing a sense of peace and calm to settle into your body.

Now shift your focus to a time you had painful feelings about your life station (“painful feelings”). Again, remember the thoughts and feelings you had at that time. Notice feelings of grief, sadness, loss, sorrow, anger, or jealousy. Bring awareness to your body and any sensations that arise now as you think of it. Please honor the pace of your body and stop if this feels too distressing for you.

Now go back and forth (pendulate) between the positive feelings and the painful feelings. Bring back to mind the positive memory and its feelings. Take a moment to connect to those feelings in your body. Once you feel connected to this resource, bring your focus back to the painful feelings, stopping if it becomes too distressing for you.

Finally, end with the positive feelings again. Imagine this supportive memory and its emotional state as a resource any time you are experiencing painful feelings.³

Aundi Kolber says that “grief—allowing ourselves to feel our painful feelings in a way that is tolerable to our bodies,” helps us to heal. By pendulating between positive and painful feelings, I hope we can hold space for both grief and gratitude in our life stations.

---

Next week I’ll cover more of egalitarian relationships including what topics to discuss or questions to ask when you’re dating and what helped me when I was single.

What do you think about singleness and dating after purity culture? What has your experience been like?

I hope to see you the rest of this month for this mini-series on relationships and the live meeting on February 23 for paid subscribers.

Warmly, Dr. Camden

Order my book from Amazon | Baker Book House | Christian Book | Book Shop

Work with me in Coaching | Therapy Intensives | Speaking

Check out my Website | Follow me on Instagram | Threads | Facebook

1. From Chapter 10 of Recovering from Purity Culture

2. Aundi Kolber, Strong Like Water

3. Pendulation exercise adapted from concepts I learned from Kolber’s Strong Like Water and Dr. Arielle Schwartz and Barb Maiberger’s EMDR Therapy and Somatic Psychology.