Why You Should Pray With Your Boyfriend | Selina Almodovar

Is it really that touchy of a subject when you’re encouraged to pray with your boyfriend?

I was having coffee with a friend one day.  It was a general catch-up session and we were both looking forward to it.

After we sat down and sipped from our warm mugs of latte and hot cocoa, and indulged in the deliciousness of the freshly made strawberry breakfast muffins, we began to talk about the highlights of life.

One of those highlights involved my friend telling me all about her new love interest, to whom she recently met online.

Sidenote:  I have nothing against online dating.  At all.  You can hear more about my thoughts on it in here.

Everything that she is telling me appeared to be good thus far.  Seemed like he matches many of her interests and she felt was time to take it up a notch and actually meet this guy.

Cause how else will you know if the love is real or not?

No sweat.  Being the friend that I am (and also constantly thinking about love & relationships) I asked her if she had the proper boundaries set up to ensure that nothing crazy would happen when he came down to visit since he lived in another city.

She mentioned a few precautions here and there and carried on about what they would plan to do together for the weekend.

And then I dropped a bomb that changed the direction of the entire conversation…

I suggested that she pray with him.

Her body language shifted from a place of comfort to one that was all of a sudden ready to wrap things up and call it a day.

She calmly explained to me how invasive that was for her since praying is such a personal and spiritual act between her and God.

“But isn’t that the point?” I asked.

I mean why wouldn’t you want to pray with someone you’re potentially looking at to become your future husband?

I’m not quite sure that she ever prayed with her potential boyfriend.  In fact, I never heard about how it actually went.  I’m guessing it did not go well since I never heard of such boy ever again.

But this got me thinking… why are you so afraid to pray with your boyfriend?

Having researched the topic, I can see the argument as to why you wouldn’t want to…

Praying is super deep and intimate, and you wouldn’t want to bring that level of intimacy too early into the relationship. 

Ok, I totally see where folks are going with that.  I can agree to some degree… but not entirely.

Here’s why:

Because if you are intending to date with Godly principles, then you would want God to be at the center of your relationship.  What better way to bring Him into that than by prayer?

If we are ok with praying corporately in groups, or with friends, then why not pray with your boyfriend?

To be honest, I was just starting out in my prayer life when I started dating Kyle.  So for me to just up and come into agreement with him on some stuff, just like that, felt awkward.  Like, super awkward.

Especially because I was still trying to strengthen my relationship with God at the same time.  So balancing the two relationships was difficult at first.

And if you’re facing a similar experience, then you should totally check out my latest book, “The Single Woman’s Prayer Book“!  It’s loaded with 30 personal prayers that you can dive into to help you embrace your singleness, heal from your past, AND prepare yourself for dating the right guy!

This book will also help you create your own personal prayers to use as you continue to build up your relationship with God and embrace His presence in your love-life!

While learning to pray on my own, let alone with my boyfriend was super intimidating at the time, it doesn’t have to be for you.

Here are a few reasons why I believe that you should pray with your boyfriend from the very beginning.

It includes God from day one.

If you’re seriously attempting to put God first in your love-life, then before you even go “Exclusive” your love interest would already know this about you.  Therefore, by bringing up prayer, it shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone.

And believe me, you’re gonna wanna bring God in from day one because you’ll have better discernment as to where your relationship is going.  Which leads me to my second point…

Prayer can reveal the truth and direction of your relationship.

Say you have a boyfriend who claims to be super into the Lord, just like you.  Then you get involved, things get deep, but you never really worshipped God together.  Sooner or later the cat will come out of the bag and his true colors will begin to show.

I can personally tell you that women have gone on to marry guys they “thought” were “on fire for the Lord”.  Only to see a totally different person come out on the other side once the honeymoon was over.  You don’t want to be that girl.

Prayer can show you the true heart of the man you’re interested in.

Also, I believe that if your relationship isn’t meant to be that God will reveal that to the both of you during prayer.

Prayer can either bring you and your boyfriend closer together or draw you apart.  And maybe this is just me, but I would rather discover that my relationship isn’t what it was cut out to be through the peace and loving communion with God than to figure this out some other way.  Just sayin.

So how exactly should you begin to pray with your boyfriend?

Well, for starters, I agree that prayer will draw you and your boyfriend into a very intimate place.  One that can almost be compared to a physical intimate standpoint.  So with that being said, you want to start the knitting of your hearts at a slow and cautious speed.

I wouldn’t necessarily go all in and have that mountaintop experience with your boyfriend on your first date.

But what you CAN do is pray over your relationship together from the start.

Pray for discernment and for strength to resist any and all temptation that comes to you both.  Pray that God’s will be done in your relationship and that you both stand in agreement and submit to His will, regardless of the relationship’s outcome.

Something you can also begin to do in the early stages of dating is attending corporate prayer together.  This means that you are praying together only with other people.  This can be done in a church, small group setting, or simply with a group of friends during a night of worship.

As your relationship grows, and you’re thinking that he might be a keeper, then you’ll know when and how you can take your prayer life deeper together.

It took me a while to feel completely comfortable with Kyle when we would just pray and worship together alone (we were already engaged and on the verge of marriage at that point).  But once we got to that point in our relationship, you will not feel hesitant or restricted to do it.

In fact, you’ll actually want to pray with your boyfriend.  Because at that point, God has knitted your hearts with His, so there is no shame in going to Him as one.

Now, praying with my husband is one of my most absolute favorite things to do as husband and wife.

So the next time you feel weird about wondering whether you should pray with your boyfriend, don’t.  Just remember, that like anything else in a growing relationship, these things take time to evolve.

But definitely, let those things evolve!  What you’re actually doing is building a foundation for a relationship to grow.  And if it never gets to that point, at least you never left God out of the equation, which is a win-win anyway.

What keeps you from praying with your boyfriend?  Share in the comments below!