I dated my wife for six years before we got married. We met in high school. For those years, I was very much in love, but also was very broke and very jobless. Since husbands are providers, I couldn’t sign up for that responsibility until I had an income. Eventually, thank God, I got there. My only frustration is I couldn’t marry her earlier.

Professionally, I’ve taught and worked with high schoolers and college students as both a teacher and a professor for over 20 years now. I have watched a lot of young people get the love bug and experience a lot joy, beauty, and good and others a lot of pain, confusion, and heartbreak. With two decades of front-row seats, I’ve developed some opinions.

Nobody asked, but I am giving them anyway. The following are seven pieces of unsolicited dating advice that could ensure a lot of good and help avoid a lot of bad.

1. Don’t Date Non-Believers

Why would you go on a road trip with someone who is heading to a completely different destination? Dating isn’t just hanging out, but taking a journey toward a potential destination called marriage, family, and a shared life. If Jesus Christ is the center of your life, the Sun whom all other planets in your life revolve, and the person you’re dating doesn’t worship him too, you are not on the same road. Heck, you’re not even sharing the same universe. You might enjoy the ride for a while, but eventually the GPS is going to ask you to make a turn that only one of you wants to take.

This isn’t saying that non-believers are terrible or inferior in value. It’s simply acknowledging they, by definition, serve another god. Jesus doesn’t play nice with false gods so, in love for Him, believers shouldn’t date those who love them.

If you want to road trip to Canada, don’t jump in the car with someone heading to Mexico (2 Corinthians 6:14-16).

2. See Dating as a Road, Not a Destination

Nobody camps on the freeway. The freeway is not a destination, but how you get to a destination. Dating works the same way. A lot of students treat dating like a status, a category, or a social achievement. “I have a boyfriend” or “I have a girlfriend” becomes the whole goal. Once they reached it, they just stay there. Indefinitely. They’ve foolishly believed being in a relationship is itself arriving.

It is helpful to not see dating, therefore, as a status, but an activity; as something you do to gain clarity about someone. Your goal in dating should not be companionship for its own sake, but something you do to figure out: is this the person I can confidently give my life to? Do we worship the same God? Do we have the same values? Is this someone I want my future daughters or sons to be like? Have I seen enough of their character to know what kind of person they are and want to become? Seeing dating not as a relationship, but an activity toward a potential relationship (i.e. marriage) will sharpen your focus, guide your actions, and make you hungry to not merely feel nice, but to learn crucial truth about the person with whom marriage is a possibility. It turns a relationship from a cul de sac to a highway that’s going somewhere.

3. Character > Rizz

For the uncool adults: “rizz” is what young people currently call charm or charisma. The magic that makes people melt for you. Rizz is fun. Who doesn’t want to be charming or be with a charming person? I get it. But rizz fades. Rizz does not take out the trash. Rizz does not sit with you in the hospital. Rizz does not apologize well or show up consistently or love you when you’re not at your best.

Rizz is fine and good, but not the goodest.

When it comes to dating, getting your priorities right matters more than most people realize. Before you pursue anyone, make two lists: principles and preferences. Preferences are optional. Principles are not. Know your preferences, but never let them crowd out your demands for principles.

How attractive someone is, how tall they are, how effortlessly cool they seem: none of those things compare to the character of the person you’re actually dating. Before you ask “Are they cute?” ask “Are they kind? Are they honest? Are they someone people trust?” You can enjoy rizz, but you’ll have to live with character. Evaluate accordingly.

4. Good Relationships Make Gooder Relationships

One of the most telling signs of a healthy relationship is what it does to the rest of your life. A good dating partner should make you better, your relationships with others included. They should make you better to your friends, more present with your family, more focused on fulfilling your responsibilities to those God has already entrusted you. Your “special friend” (lol) should enrich your other relationships, not drain them. They should serve as an add, not a subtraction.

If your friendships are suffering, your family is worried, your grades are slipping, and your whole world has contracted down your dating partner, that’s not romance but a warning sign. Your sweet honeybear should be a positive, not a parasite. True love builds. It doesn’t destroy.

5. Be Who You Want to Attract

The bait you use determines the fish you catch.

A lot of young people spend time asking: “Why can’t I find someone good?” But the more useful question is: “What kind of person am I attracting and why?” How you dress, how you speak, how you act, what you post, what you laugh at, what you prioritize are all sending a signal. Are those signals attracting the kind of person you actually want? Or are they attracting people you’ll later wish you’d never met?

If you want to date someone of who loves Jesus, has wise habits, healthy goals, and good character, then strive to become a person just like that. Like attracts like. Be the person you’re looking for. Running as fast as you can toward Christ will attract others who are doing the same.

6. Listen to Your Community

Infatuation is a heck of a drug. I mean that sincerely. When you fall for someone, your heart and mind do genuinely strange things. Everything about them seems wonderful. You’ve a knee jerk reaction to paint any red flag green. “He’s not that bad, you just don’t know him like I do.” Every concern your friends or family raise is heard as jealousy, judgmentalism, or uninformed. When head over heels, you think down is up and live accordingly.

This is why your community — your family and church — matter so much. The people who love you and have known you longest can see things you cannot always see in the moment. Before that season arrives, you need to have already decided that you will listen to the people around you, especially when what they have to say is uncomfortable or inconvenient. Their perspective and honest feedback on your relationship is not a threat, but a gift.

Sometimes people’s counsel or perspectives can be wrong and its fine to reject it, but, as a simple rule of thumb to trust, if everyone who loves you shares the same concerns, take their unanimity with the utmost seriousness.

7. Don’t Kiss

Before you have a strong emotional reaction to this one, I want to ask you to do something: don’t let emotions do your thinking. Hear me out.

I’m not talking about a peck on the cheek like the one you can give grandma. I’m talking about making out, french kissing, extended physical intimacy. Any kind of kissing that is sexual in nature. In his scholarly article on making out (yes, this exists), Pastor Gerald Hiestand offers the simple argument:

Premise 1: All sexual activity must be reserved for the marriage relationship.

Premise 2: Some forms of kissing are sexual.

Conclusion: Therefore, sexual forms of kissing must be reserved for the marriage relationship.

You can read the article to see if you agree in the sexual nature of making out (though I wonder if you can think of a non-sexual form of making out). Regardless, the syllogism is worth some serious thinking. As Christians, we are called to not conform to the world but to be transformed by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12:1-2). By today’s sexual standards, making out is practically the same as holding hands. It may do us well to think before we smooch.

Deciding not to kiss in this way has a lot of practical wisdom to consider. Making out is not a finish line, it’s an on-ramp. It clouds your judgment when you need it most. It bonds you emotionally to someone in ways that have nothing to do with whether they’re actually right for you. Make sure someone loves your heart well before they touch your body. A person who respects that boundary is showing you something true about their character and their love for you. A person who keeps pushing against it is also showing you something true about their character and their (lack of) love for you. If you want to make sure someone loves you and not just what they get from you now, this is a pretty reliable test of someone’s character and intentions.

Now, if you’ve read this list and are now filled with shame, guilt, or regret because you got a few things backward, allow me to remind you: in Christ, you have been washed, sanctified, and justified from sins you’ve done or sins done against you (1 Corinthians 6:9-11). In Christ, you are a new creation and by the power of the Holy Spirit can live toward a different future. Rejoice anew in Christ’s grace and walk in the loving wisdom of his way from here on out.

Nobody has to take this advice. You never asked for it, anyways. But after six years of dating the woman I love and twenty-plus years of watching students navigate this season of life, I think these seven things can make a difference. Dating doesn’t have to be confusing or painful. With the right priorities and a little wisdom, it can actually be what it’s supposed to be: a purposeful, joyful road toward something wonderful.