5 great ways to make time to date

Time is precious. 24 hours in a day can seem too little as we fill it with work, family, friends and hobbies. How easy it is to make time to date too? Trying to find time to spend with God seems to be a challenge, let alone start a relationship or online dating. When everything else already needs to be scheduled into our busy lives, how do we make time for getting to know someone new? It’s a balancing act, but God knew exactly how many hours we need in a day – we just need to make sure we use them wisely! So how can we make time to date when our lives are so busy?

I had to rethink so I could make time to date effectively. Before I first started dating my husband after meeting on Christian Connection, I was fed up with the amount of time that I thought I had wasted trying to find someone, going through the same conversations, the same small talk, the same ‘getting to know you’ tactics.

I was on tour in a show at the time and hardly saw my family and friends, so my time off really was precious, and I wanted to spend it with them. However, that time away from home was not wasted as otherwise I would not have gone online when I did and then found my future husband and gone on our first date! It was also important to me to find a life partner so using some of my time off for going on dates was a step towards that. It took me long enough to create an online profile, let alone start scrolling, writing, keeping up with messages, meeting up for cups of tea and starting all over again!

Make some healthy Swaps

Try swapping some of the time you spend on social media looking at other people’s lives, for looking through Christian Connection or responding to messages, involving yourself in your life rather than someone else’s. To really get to know someone you need to put aside some time to be able to respond to messages and answer questions, as well as ask your own questions. Delving in deeper, understanding who they are, their past, their faith, their walk with God, all takes time, and relationships are more likely to develop if you take the time to listen and understand and respond.

If someone feels that you don’t have time for them to get to know them and focus on them, there’s a possibility that they will look elsewhere. Sometimes this means a sacrifice – when we were dating, we were opposite ends of the country and my husband had to sacrifice early nights in order for us to be able to talk after I finished work late at night, and I had to sacrifice lie-ins in the morning in order to be able to speak to him before he started work. If we didn’t use our time in this way, we would never have spoken to each other and developed our relationship. Further down the line, consider how you can manage your time and where you can give your future partner a bit more time to prioritise them.

Rethink your priorities

Work out what are the priorities in your life and how to balance them. For example, do you really need to watch second football match of the week, or binge a Netflix series when you could use that hour to create an online profile, chat on the phone to a prospective date, or make time to meet in person?

God, family, church and friends are all priorities but one day a future partner could potentially become your family, so it is worth investing the time to find one. Have the long-term view to help you to prioritise your day.

Put God first and then it’ll be easier for the rest of the day to fall into place. Practically writing down what you want to achieve, organising your week, who to see and what time you have helps to focus what time you have left. To truly get to know someone, you need to invest time and it has to be a conscious effort.