Before The One: Episode One

Welcome to the first installment for the ‘Before the One’ series with Josh Love Talks will tackle the topic of online dating and the single Christian.

Josh is professionally a PMO analyst who has always had a keen interest in dating and helping singles to navigate the dating space and setting the foundation for what a good marriage and what a good relationship would be. It is such a huge privilege to have him feature on the blog and I really hope the audience is able to tap into his wealth of insight and knowledge and please feel free to connect with him on all his platforms!

His YouTube and Instagram is @JoshLoveTalks

What is your best advice for singles that are looking to settle down?

If I would summarize what my dating thing is about, is just don’t waste your time. Whatever it is, whatever angle you choose to go in. Whether you want to go with the flow and just have a good time, situation shifts, you’re looking for marriage, you want something serious. All my advice is centered around don’t waste your time. So know what you want, go for what you want, and hopefully you end up in the right place.

Thank you for that short and succinct advice and that is a lovely segue now into our next question. Tell us about your particular love story how did you meet your wife and what you did to prepare for her during your single season?

So I met my wife in church we went to the same we went to the same church and we had been around each other for a long time. When I moved to the UK I lived my aunt and my aunt was friends with her parents, so they all went to the same church and then her dad started the church and I happened to be in that church. I was the drummer and she was singing and in between all the singing and music and everything at some point we gravitated towards each other. We started talking and that led to a relationship which became something that serious and eventually we are where we are today. To the glory to God we’ve been married now for 10 years (by 2025) and we’re blessed with two beautiful babies although they’re not really babies anymore!

In terms of what I did in my single season, the first point was deciding that it is time to settle down. And that’s probably the game changer. That was the catalyst for everything else that came. Me saying, all right, cool. This is the person that I want or I’m ready now for a serious relationship, ready for marriage.

And that came as a result of time, I would say, was just that point in my life where I just felt, you know, okay? It’s time to get serious. And I met somebody that felt, you know, I had a loyalty, someone that felt that would drive for me, someone that I felt if we were going through a situation, she would always have my back. And for me, those were probably the key things in terms of choosing her to be my wife.

I focused on myself and this is something I’m big on: self-work and accountability. Everything in my opinion starts with self. We can go blaming people, what people do, what people don’t do, whatever, but I’m a big believer in accountability. Everything begins with self. Knowing what you want, going for what you want, how you behave, the effect of your attitude, what you say to yourself, your expectations, all of that I think plays a massive part.

Then I did a counseling course at that time as well because I wanted to be a counselor and that gave me the opportunity to get in tune with myself. Understanding myself and how I can be a partner for somebody, how I can add value to somebody. And knowing that I was in the right space, mentally, emotionally, financially, but yeah, that was upsetting down at the time. I’m not going to lie. But knowing, having a good idea of what marriage entails.

And of course, there’s no way you can really prepare for everything. You know, there are some things that in the last 10 years we’ve been through or I’ve gone through that nothing would have prepared me for it. There’s no way I would have seen that from that point. But just having that mental, emotional, spiritual thing that this is what I’m going into. I’m being prepared for it as best as you can. I think that plays a massive part.

To be honest, looking at the experiences of my older siblings and those that have gone ahead of me I always thought and assumed when it would be my turn things would just easily fall into place, although I was a lot younger when they were dating and courting their spouses, yet the caliber of Christian brothers we are seeing in our own time and in this generation is a little disconcerting, the apparent disdain or seeming nonchalance to settle down and get married. To use Gen Z terminology, it’s not really giving. So, in your opinion what do you think is really inhibiting the 21st century young ladies and young guys who are serious and being intentional from settling down? What do you think are some of the things that are influencing people from setting down?

There are a number of things. I’ll go through the ones that I often talk about. But actually, let me start from here. Just because you just described the times we’re living in. I think social media plays a massive role in hindering.

It also plays a role in connecting, but I think it hinders a lot of people from settling down. And that happens in a number of ways. One, too many options. People, you know you can just jump into DMs after DMs. And if you’re using your Tinders and your Bumbles and your Hinges, you can just keep swiping right and what happens is everybody gets this feeling that I can do better because everything is just so accessible. If I meet somebody today and there’s one little thing that I don’t like, I can say ‘okay no that’s not for me‘. The grass must be greener because I’ve got access to a world of people and that makes it extremely difficult to want to stick to one person. So these little things that doesn’t have that wouldn’t have much effect in terms of building a strong relationship or longevity people take it on board and you know use that as a way to just throw situations away.

The other side of social media is its expectations and there are people with extremely high expectations in the sense that you want today what it taken other people a very long time to build. So you see on social media all these couples going on holiday having a great time you see them posting that they have been together for 20 years it looks great everything is amazing what that post does not show you are the arguments that happens in the background. What that post does not show you are the times where they didn’t talk to each other for a week, right? And they lived in the same house. What that post does not show you is the amount of times they wanted to break up and go different ways, but they just decided to stick with it. But, you know, nobody sees that. So it’s easy to believe that relationships or marriages are just this big bed of roses and great time and we should just be compatible and have this love goals and relationship goals.

So when you meet somebody and maybe in the first few weeks there’s a little disagreement there’s a little contentious you think ‘this cannot be the person, why are we arguing like this? It can’t be the person for me‘ you start to pick on things that in the grand scheme of things can be fixed, but you’ve got this expectation in your head of how things should be. So you walk away from those situations.

Lastly, people don’t really have a deep understanding of what you’re looking for. Everyone knows generally what they want: ‘He has to have a job, he needs to have this nice house, he needs to have done this by this stage‘. ‘She needs to be a wifey material. She needs to know how to cook.’ But it’s not in terms of what are the needs and what are the wants. There’s a difference between what you need and what you want. What you need are your non-negotiables.

So think about the things that you should not negotiate. So for example, if you’re somebody that’s spiritual, spirituality might be a non-negotiable. I cannot date or go out with somebody that is not a Christian , having the same spiritual level. A lot of times people don’t have this non-negotiables, people just want a whole bag of things. If you do a lot of shopping and if you go on any page or anywhere you’re shopping and you start adding features after features what happens when you click for result is that nothing appears.

You’ve got too many filters and that’s the way dating kind of works because people cannot find anybody because you’ve got so many filters, in terms of I want this and that and you cannot differentiate which one is a need to have now. You need to decide I can negotiate on this, I can give some leeway of this one, I don’t actually need this and if it doesn’t happen it’s not a deal breaker.

And a good example for me in these days is a lot of women say they want a 6 ft guy. I don’t understand how this has become a trend. I understand it. If you’re like 5’11” and you want a 6 ft guy it makes sense. And then you meet some people, you’re 5’2″ or 5’3″ and you want a 6 ft guy, Why? What does that do for you? I was talking to somebody the other day and she said that she’s like maybe 5’2″ and she said she wants a 6 ft guy because she wants her children to be tall. So it’s just little things like that and I’m not trying to say you shouldn’t want what you want everyone should want whatever it is you want. I’m not knocking that I’m just saying in the grand scheme of things where dating is very competitive, if you treat it as a business at the market, it’s competitive and a lot of people also want what you’re looking for right.

So you have to understand the things that you want to negotiate and what are the things that doesn’t really matter. There are things that you can let get away because the goal really should be things that add value to the relationship, things that will make you have longevity in your relationship and not just things that look good and I think these things play a massive role in whether people settle down or not.

Of course, just being attentive to yourself and being the best version of yourself. I’ll finish up with that because sometimes we don’t do the work on ourselves, but we want somebody that is perfect, somebody that has everything we’re looking for, but we don’t want to do the work on ourselves. Because I think it’s difficult to look in the mirror and spot your shortcomings. We look for that in the other person we say this person is not this, they don’t know how to do conversations, this person doesn’t know how to do this but how well do you listen and how well do you pay attention when people are talking to you? How good is your attitude?

So self-work whether that’s spiritually, mentally, emotionally, financially is so key because that is once again the foundation and you have to be the person that can add value to the person you’re looking for.

You have to be the person that can add value to the person you’re looking for. I’m a big believer in value as well because it’s how people perceive you. If people see you as an asset to their life, that means when they’re dealing with you, this person can actually add something to me.

Closing Thoughts…

We are going somewhere in life. We all have our ambitions. We all have things we want to do, and the state of mind we want to have. You want somebody that can come in and add to that. And I guess that’s where this whole thing about what do you bring to the table conversation comes from. But really and truly, and some people get angry with that, but what everyone is asking for is value.

Where can you add value, it’s just that it’s done from the other person’s perspective. What I’m saying is you have to look at it from your perspective as opposed to what can I get from you ? Start thinking about what can I give ? What do I have in me to give because if you have a lot to give, eventually you’re going to start attracting the right people.

A number of times we’re just thinking about the things that we can get so we’re always looking at the other person and what they have or what they don’t have, as opposed to within us working on ourselves to make sure that our cup is full so when somebody else comes along we have something to pour into them. And if they don’t have anything then you’re confident that you know what I’ve done my work you haven’t done your work I just know where i want to be.

Thank you so much Josh Love Talks for sharing his amazing nuggets and wisdom with us!

Although we didn’t really discuss online dating as a single Christian, I will share my personal experiences with online dating.

I think you have to be honest with yourself and really understand what motivates you or pushes you to try online dating.

For me I was frustrated with how things were going in certain areas of my life and I felt like I had no control in terms of schooling and my professional life and I thought well at least I can have some sense of control on my romantic relationships surely.

"He changes times and seasons;
    he deposes kings and raises up others.
He gives wisdom to the wise
    and knowledge to the discerning.
22 He reveals deep and hidden things;
    he knows what lies in darkness,
    and light dwells with him." - Daniel 2: 21-22 (NLT)

The false notion that God helps those who helps themselves. Honestly I prayed about it and I felt peace about it. I never got a loud no from God so I felt let’s try this and see how it works out. It was also quite encouraging when a few people I knew also met their spouses or partners at the time on the app. Some wonderful unions have come as a result from online dating and it felt like why not? My experience initially was interesting as it did open a wider range of possibilities from the limited options around me. Sometimes you feel frustrated that am I not here at all?? I now know that God protection and his veil is truly powerful. Instead it showed to me some deep routed issues with my self esteem and linked to some hurts and disappointments happening in other areas of life and this just felt like another point of rejection. So, I actually wasn’t even bothered by that, but my self esteem and self confidence had taken a huge hit and needed to be bolstered up again. That was what online dating seemed to be for me.

UNTIL, I started encountering some people that were going to cause me to let go of my consecrations and in the guide of not being judgmental and being accepting, I had to recognize that everyone is at a different level at their faith journey. If I wasn’t careful I would compromise so much and miss where exactly God had for me to be at. So, I eventually made the tough decision to let go completely of the apps. I had a few times where I would delete and redownload. But, at this point glory be to God, I am no longer on the apps!

Please be careful to read and understand what I write, I am not saying using dating apps is wrong or sinful. Trust me if I feel led to hop on another app I will gleefully do that as instructed. But, it wasn’t the method for me. It was the self prescription I gave myself to mask deep seated hurts and feeling like I needed to have some sort of control of my life. There was too many aspects of my life where I felt powerless and helpless and I was tired of feeling like a victim. But, glory to God that redeems all things. He has started to heal those parts.

So, a key takeaway for me from Josh Love Talks interview is the importance of taking time to understand and know yourself and that would guide you to ensure you are not wasting your time or the other person’s time. This will also robustly inform your non negotiables and help you highlight your weak spots and strengthens so you can truly be a valuable asset to the person God has for you.

Please comment below the key insights you have taken form today’s blog. The live recording of the interview will be made available by the end of the series so you can play it back to listen to it as well!

Please connect with Josh Love Talks by booking sessions with him through Instagram!

See you for the next episode!

#ByGodsGrace

Mo 🙂