Quick and Dirty Dating Advice for Very Religious Young People

Just be normal. Marriage is a physical reality.

For some strange reason the algorithmic gods have been serving up a lot of “the Catholic singles beat is impossible/sad” on my feed and while this sort of content is not normally in my wheelhouse, sometimes writers need to write regardless of whether or not the subject matter matches the gloriously specific “things I will publish this June to bring coherence to my Substack, so help me!” list I just drew up for myself last week.

So, forgive me this slightly off-topic post but I think we need to establish a few things in the world of dating, being normal, and the advice we give to our young people.

Just Bring You (detail) © Bernie Fuchs (1932-2009). Ladies’s Home Journal May, 1962

Very religious young people have trouble with dating because it is in some ways an opposition to nature to be very religious when young. Eros is proper to the young man, and philosophy and religion are proper to the old man, in part because philosophy and religion benefit a great deal from prudence and experience. But when young people get religion, or get political, it is natural for them to try to limit or deemphasize experience or prudence, because they have so little of it. So you get things like libertarianism in politics and extreme rightwing trad life or traditionalist posturing in religion (used to be New Atheism, actually. But now the kids are Right and Trad, so lack of life experience lives there now.)

The physical reality of our bodies and the intensity of lower passions is so strong in youth that the normal or commonplace thing is to sort of follow physical impulse while trying to avoid the obvious trouble it brings. This is what normal looks like.

Very religious young people are not normal. First of all, they belong to their generation, which by all accounts is not super horny, and not super adventurous or brave with the dating scene in general. All reports indicate that young people are having less sex and generally pairing up less than they did in the 80s and 90s, for example.

But this is good in some ways, because religion is true and because it is also beneficial to set up the major infrastructure of your personal life under the influence of some brain power in addition to hormones. Millennials and especially Gen z are basically rejecting the idiocy of Boomer and Gen X youth, which was lower-passions-heavy and which resulted in too many broken homes etc. You want the body to fully participate but ideally, you want the mind engaged when picking out a life partner because when the blush of youth wears off you need to actually like the person you love.

We know all of this.

So anyway, you’re young, you’re very religious, and you’re not normal. What do you do?

Well the first thing I would do when approaching dating life under these conditions is try really hard to not make this already bad situation worse. An example of making things worse when one already has an imbalance or oddness to them would be to make “being very religious” or “being the right kind of Catholic” the sole aspect and solitary facet of your personality.

This is of course what most young religious people are doing: making their interest or devotion to religion their main selling point, and their main personality. This is not good. They do this for many reasons, most of which are understandable, but people on the more normal side of normal see this presentation as creepy and problematic. And while we may make fun of normies, we should probably take into consideration their perspective if we are hoping to secure a relatively normal person to date and marry.

Because of course this is the core issue with the Very Religious Young Dating Crowd: they want to advertise unusual religiosity while somehow securing the interest and attraction of a normal person. Because no one wants to marry a weirdo, gross. We just want to be weirdos and have completely normal people fall in love with us.

But why would a normal person—that is, a person who does not primarily identify as a “Correct Kind of Catholic” or “Correct Kind of Religion” want to marry someone like that? What fun would that be? What about that makes life easier or better? What kind of marketing is “marry me, I’m super precise in my philosophical definitions and quasi-impossible to please liturgically.”

Bad marketing. It’s just really very bad marketing.

It would be like approaching girls and leading with “My body can only tolerate drinking a certain brand of rare bottled water because my main personality trait is deep, profound dissatisfaction with the normal water most people enjoy. This and looking down with disdain on people who have never realized that the water they are drinking is disgusting are my two main selling points.”

Bernie Fuchs - Early 1960’s - Most likely for Redbook Magazine. This man loves water, I think.

No one wants to marry or even date this person, because life with that is going to be a freaking slog. Obviously water quality is different than religious devotion, sort of, but not enough different to justify extreme sensitivity, fastidiousness, and invested ego concerning things most people don’t think about or don’t see as objective.

I mean, even if your entire personality was “I am against murder” I’m not sure that sounds super fun to be married to, to be honest. I agree murder is bad but I mean crafting your entire personality around a true—but kind of fundamental or abstract position—is not what people are looking for in a life partner.

Why is that? Why are people looking for things other than conviction to and extreme devotion toward abstract realities or philosophical positions?

Because life is about prudence and getting through practical situations together with someone who makes all that fun and who eases the burdens of sorrow, boredom, disappointment, unfairness, hardship, and the cruelties of fate.

That’s what we actually look for in a spouse: someone who is going to navigate all of life’s sorrow and complexities and frankly, banalities with charm, humor, strength, and God love you, hotness. Because at the end of a long day/week/month/season of life, a physical treat for the eyes, ears, and heart is going to go much farther to soothe what ails us than a philosophical juggernaut of logical precision.

Nobody needs that at 1am after the baby is finally down for the night. Nobody at all.

Painted in 1935, Norman Rockwell’s The Peach Crop

Marriage is a physical reality. It is also deep companionship, but it is primarily about finding someone to blend your genetics with to make very pretty, very healthy baby animals all while keeping the babies alive as you laugh and strive through life together. You could even marry someone who uses phrasing like “my faith journey” and if you share physical attraction and basic actual erotic love, life can be a breeze. You will easily develop a fondness, if not love for, their preference for guitar music and liturgical hand gestures because you love them. That’s how eros works. Everything that isn’t right about that person becomes right simply because it exists in that person. You love it all, even as your mind thinks you shouldn’t.

What young people don’t understand is that the things that are incompatible between two people who love each other disappear, or lessen in severity simply because the object of our love contains them. I would never have matched with my husband on a dating app. Never. Because we like to do different things and we aren’t super compatible in a lot of ways, except for the couple of essential ways in which we are extremely compatible.

Simply insisting that marriage is a physical reality can offend Very Religious Young People. They want marriage to be a mental or spiritual reality. And it can be, but it needn’t be to be successful. The ideal marriage is a meeting of minds, souls, and bodies, but people without much life experience think if they can manage to match minds then the bodies will eventually come along, too. This is a profound error. Do not do this to yourself.

If you take nothing else useful from this quick dirty guide to dating, take this: There is absolutely nothing gained by dating or marrying someone you are not physically attracted to. I know it seems like people do this here and there, and a loveless marriage can be successful, but in the West especially, this is a dangerous path. Do not try to convince yourself that the physical is the lesser part of compatibility because life and Mother Nature will take this hubris personally and will relish teaching you a lesson for it.

No. Just be normal and marry someone hot. Don’t complicate love by removing the very basis and substrate for its sweet language.

Bernie Fuchs

Men spend a lot of time trying to convince young women that physical attraction can manifest later on, or that love can grow in a relationship that has “mutual respect.” But such men are not advising themselves to do this—no; they are very, very physically attracted to the girls they are trying to win over with this nonsense, and they are hoping to convince a girl out of their league to accept them.

Men do not spend a whole lot of time trying to convince ugly girls that physical love isn’t important, I’ve noticed.

I mean, just this very common trick should convince you that physical attraction is even more important than you previously thought—just the very fact that so many men are apparently fine marrying girls who do not find them attractive and do not love them is amazing. Why are they ok with this? Because they are so attracted to her they want to sign up for a life with her no matter what her feelings are. Imagine that.

Both the man who does this and the woman who falls for it are not doing themselves any favors. I’ve seen too many of these marriages at maturity in midlife, where the physical attraction wasn’t entirely mutual at the start and that causes a world of pain. No one ever gets over or it or forgives it. The knowledge that basic attraction wasn’t there from the start for one of them plagues the couple.

So that’s tip #1. Marry someone you are intensely attracted to, or don’t marry at all.

Tip #2. Shared religious fervor cannot substitute for personality.

Very Religious Young People, who identify primarily as such, believe that finding another person of similar devotion is the main recipe for marital bliss. Most of the idiocy and tragedy that is common parlance in dating culture is just downstream of this mistake. Sharing religion, even sharing the same fervor or type of religiosity just isn’t as important as you think it is. It cannot actually provide the basis for a romantic relationship, for one thing.

So as a single person, if the main advertisement or main selling point you brandish when approaching the opposite sex is something that in the great scheme of romantic things, just isn’t that essential, you’re already doing it wrong.

Things that are more important than shared fervor/liturgical taste:

1. Physical attraction

2. Personality/habits of looking at the world and one’s place in it

3. Family culture (not family religiosity, but culture)

4. Position and stage in life

5. Hobbies and interests

I do think if you’re a very religious person you probably can’t casually date and marry an atheist or someone who just doesn’t think about religious things at all. But I will go far enough to say that a Catholic and a Lutheran who have strong physical attraction and compatible family cultures and hobbies will have an easier time making it work than a couple of coreligionists who are not super attracted to each other but think they should be, because they agree on a lot of liturgical/cultural/political issues.

The body doesn’t care if you agree on abstractions, because the body is in the business of mating and making more little bodies, and compatibility on a physical basis is paramount.

It would be super convenient if we all could just arrange marriages for ourselves, like “parents of old” apparently did in some societies, and love people whom we think we ought to love. But the body knows better, and lots of people who are the best of friends and who share a deep compatibility in religion, philosophy, and politics simply cannot mate and have children together happily.

It’s more important that we allow people the freedom to find their genetic/physical match and make all the rest of life work out as well as it possibly can beyond that than that we force young people who are not physically attracted to each other to nevertheless pair off and start families because we think “the West” or religion or whatever needs more children. We do not need more children with parents who do not love each other. Shared religion does not ease this problem; it adds stress and weird religious pressure to it.

Tip #3. Create an identity outside of your religion.

Actually, being a super devoted Catholic isn’t a personality. It’s more like a social crutch to get through the confusion and uncertainties of youth.

I follow the Catholic Church’s teachings to the letter, and I believe my Catholicism is the most important aspect of my life. My decision to convert at age 20 was the best decision I ever made.

But, I also think it’s important that people know me and see me as something other than a Very Catholic Lady. Very Catholic Lady isn’t a personality. It’s declaring membership in a group and it’s an easy identity that can serve as a means to avoid both actual people and the actual complexities of life. My personality and my way of relating to people have very little to do with my religion, at least on the surface. It has much more to do with the things I take interest in, with my family culture and the way my siblings and parents and I talk and see things, with my passions and interests, with my ability to see humor and charm in the mundane.

I should not be loved simply because I signed up with a particular group of people. I will not be desired because I agree with the Pope or because I value a certain liturgy. I will be loved not because of or for my Catholicism, but instead for the way my personality, my soul, and my artistry reflects the one, holy, Catholic and apostolic faith. I am loved for what I bring to the faith, in my particular existence. We all are. Everyone deserves to be loved for the unique facet they provide to the universality, not their membership status in or devotion to the group.

So, when advertising yourself, branding yourself, selling yourself, (which is what dating is) present what you are, fundamentally, at the core of your being. Present what is unique or different about you. Present why life with you would be fun and worth going through all the ups and downs of marriage together. Present yourself, not your group membership, so that people can meet and fall in love with you.

And recognize that hiding behind all this liturgical type and “correct religious devotion” is a way of making sure nobody knows you at all. It’s a way of advertising yourself based on things you have decided to support with your reason. Your religion is very important, don’t get me wrong . . . but it isn’t really you, especially if your particular religion happens to be the going thing right now. What are you if you’re just another guy with nothing to say for himself other than that he also thinks what all other young guys his age and social status think?

If all you’ve got going on in your life is your religiosity, then you ought to get some other hobbies and passions and interests so that you can approach people on that basis first, and then see if mutual attraction and interest leads to compatibility on deeper levels.

Bernie Fuchs

Don’t get me wrong; I do think religious compatibility is a major component of a successful marriage. But I think it is a very lousy way of attracting and meeting people. It implies that the sum total of their personality is just whether or not they are similarly religious in their 20s and 30s, and to be brutally honest, religiosity in youth just doesn’t tell us much. If you’re still very religious in your 50s and 60s, after life has handed you some deaths and some births and some tragedies, and disappointments, etc. then your devotion actually says something about your character and your depth of soul.

Fervor in youth can be good; but it isn’t a great indication of the soul, or the quality of the person. Because religion shows up in life when things go wrong, when people die, when we are at our worst, or when we brush up against our own mortality.

The devotional practices of young, inexperienced, healthy people with no children or families of their own just aren’t that interesting or revealing.

As I said above, your religious sensibility isn’t your personality. It isn’t even a good indicator of how you will live your life and react to what fate throws at you. In youth we are unproven, and our devotion is necessarily unproven, too.

Tip #4: Normalize simply saying “I don’t think of you that way.”

Dating in 2026 is the cruelest sport, because we can now find out if we align on so many factors like life expectations, intelligence, social circle, religion, philosophy, etc. before we ever meet in real life.

This means that you can really like someone, really enjoy their personality and agree with them on all important things, but feel zero attraction to them, and that won’t be evident until you try to actually go out on a real date.

Dating used to happen among people who were already physically attracted to each other, and then they went out on dates to talk and be in public together so that they could assess whether or not the non-physical things about them were also a match. How cruel to have dating only determine the physical. There’s nothing you can do about that. Or, very little you can do. And yet, it’s seen as the main thing you’re putting out there and the main thing people are rejecting now when you go out on dates. No wonder everyone hates this.

Imagine what it would be like to only go out on dates with people who are super physically attractive, and who feel the same way about you?

It would be amazing, romantic, a little bit scary, and very exciting.

Balcony Scene, New York, by Arthur Getz (1913-1996)

That’s what dating used to be. Now, it’s terrible because most of the time you meet someone you should be attracted to, or who ought to find you attractive, and the spark isn’t there, and then you’re left trying to come up with pleasant ways to convey that essential fact for the rest of the evening.

If you meet people in person, doing something you love, and performing well in that arena . . . you are more likely to find dates with people who are actually attracted to you. If you go online, and you try to match up head and soul before ever meeting in physical reality, you’re setting yourself up to have a majority of your dates lacking in physical attraction.

And then people lie about their availability or their interest in dating or their vocation, etc, because simply saying “I’m sorry, I just don’t think of you that way” is REALLY awkward and painful after weeks of talking and texting and meeting of the minds.

Telling someone you like that you don’t find them attractive is among the worst possible things you could say to a friend.

Nevertheless, that’s what dating is now. Dating is finding out if we like each other’s bodies. It used to be the opposite: it used to be proceeding with a certain amount of knowledge (I like you and find you attractive) and investigating whether or not attraction is the only thing there, or if perhaps deeper compatibility is possible. That was exciting. Because weirdly, finding out that someone super hot doesn’t want to marry you was less horrible than finding out that someone super awesome doesn’t find you attractive.

What we do now is soul-crushing.

So: to conclude, it’s not surprising that dating culture and especially dating among the Very Religious Youth is a mess. It makes sense that it is a mess, because things are backwards and everyone is just trying not to hurt everyone else, while also trying to not get talked into a marriage of minds with bodies that don’t find each other attractive.

Don’t marry (or date!) someone you aren’t attracted to. Don’t lie to people and lead them on about how attractive you find them. Try to meet people in physical reality first, so that dating isn’t just finding out that someone you love talking to isn’t attractive, or isn’t attracted to you.

And don’t hide behind your religion or politics. Lead with your actual personality and your actual deal, and use dating to find out if compatibility on the deeper things is possible among your new and improved dating circle of pre-screened hot, and hot for you, prospects.