Once upon a time there was an average LDS young woman who entered the dating world on a quest to eventually find an eternal companion, as well as create some fun memories on the way. She found, though, that dating could be very confusing at times.

For example, sometimes when she held hands on dates, her date would call her the next day and they would start dating exclusively; other times, her date would continue asking other girls out in addition to her. Or sometimes, she would ask a guy on a date just to have fun, and he acted nervous around her ever after that because he thought she was interested in a way he didn’t reciprocate and he didn’t want to hurt her feelings. When a guy brought her a flower on a date, one of her friends told her it was a big deal and implied great commitment, while others said it didn’t necessarily mean anything other than politeness. 

At first, this young woman thought that the problem was that no one communicated in dating. And reading the words of the world’s philosophers and sages only gave her conflicting information. But then one day she read the story of the tower of Babel and she realized she had been wrong. The problem wasn’t that people didn’t communicate. Everyone communicates in dating, but everyone speaks a different language. Holding hands or asking people out or giving flowers meant something different to everyone. And so two people who thought they had communicated clearly could find themselves completely misunderstood.

She wondered if it had always been that way, and whether it had to stay that way. She learned that in the distant past, societies had much more consistent, widely established ways of showing interest and communicating commitment. But something had confounded the language of dating so that there was no longer one world-wide manner of speech. She wondered if the only response was despair, or if there was some way to fix the problem.

She decided that since ancient prophets used the urim and thummim to overcome differences in spoken language, she ought to turn to modern prophets for help in overcoming differences in dating languages. She found like-minded young Latter-day Saints, and together they searched the words of the prophets to find out what they said are the purposes, patterns, and principles of dating that we should follow.

Eventually, as more and more Latter-day Saints continued their individual quests with the words of the prophets foremost in their minds, they found that they were more successful in finding eternal mates, and that dating was a lot more fun in the process.

The above is a sort of parable I came up with in college during my single years, to capture some of the often-confusing and always-amusing moments that I and so many of my friends encountered in dating. At one point I even created a website called Latter-Dating Saints to share this analogy and some of the helpful things I’d learned in my thirteen years of dating (I got married just shy of my thirtieth birthday).

The website never went anywhere in part because I had just gotten married. But my passion for recommending prophetic counsel on dating and romance has only increased. I noticed that there is plenty of material joking about dating woes (movies like Hitch and The Singles Ward came out while I was in college, both of which I really enjoyed). But too often such treatments only present dating stories to laugh or complain, rather than to offer solutions and optimism. Sometimes people even try to portray the Latter-day Saint dating experience as being uniquely difficult. I completely disagree. 

Ironically, even though you might not expect it because I didn’t get married until I was almost thirty, I had multiple conversations in my single days where a friend would ask me, “How are you so confident around the opposite sex? Why are you able to be so relaxed when it comes to dating?” I never saw myself as particularly self-assured, but to whatever degree that was true, I know exactly where it came from: following God’s prophets. 

Do you want capability, safety, and security in dating and romance, in married life and eternity? Be a true disciple of Jesus. Be a genuine, committed, word-and-deed Latter-day Saint. Believe that your faith has everything to do with your romance, because it does. You separate dating from discipleship at your peril. Jesus Christ, the Light of the World, is the only lamp by which you can successfully see the path of love and happiness. How should I love thee? As He does, for that way “never faileth.”

Jeffrey R. Holland, “How Do I Love Thee?” New Era, Oct 2003, p. 8; quoted in New Era Special Issue: Dating for Beginners, Apr 2010

I love talking about what prophets have said about dating because clarity brings confidence. Most of the anxiety people feel comes from uncertainty, like being told to fly a plane without ever having lessons or knowing where you’re supposed to fly to. In contrast, I was so blessed by what modern prophets have taught about dating because when you know the purpose of dating and the principles of how to do it right, you’re able to relax and enjoy the journey much more easily. 

On my short-lived latterdating.blogspot.com website, I also experimented with creating an online quiz called “Jerk or Gent?” to find out where people drew different lines or interpreted different actions in dating and relationships. I’ve since refined the quiz and use it whenever I talk to youth or parents about dating. Here it is—it’s only eight questions, with only four paragraphs of reading. You can also print it double-sided and cut it in half.

It’s fun in a classroom to go over the quiz results and watch class members vocally disagree. The purpose of the quiz isn’t necessarily to persuade the learner of a set of right answers (although there are certainly answers that fit what prophets have taught and which make dating a lot more easy and fun). I use the quiz to show how, even if you feel confident about what certain actions do and don’t mean in dating and romance, not everyone else agrees. On many subjects, it’s merely academic and people can agree to disagree. But since dating is inherently a social activity, when significant portions of the population interpret your actions differently, that is a very relevant fact you can’t ignore.

So who’s right in such a disagreement? There are best practices, to be sure, and the best places to start finding them are counsel from God’s servants. But even beyond that, the undeniable implication that everyone should accept is that, in the face of broken communication, the solution is improved communication. If others are likely to misunderstand what you’re communicating in dating, then you need to practice more ways of communicating it better. Decide what your standards are, and then communicate them—kindly but clearly.

The good news is that the story of the Tower of Babel has a happy ending, in Ether 1. The Jaredites responded to the confusion of languages with prayer, consulting prophets, and sharing beyond their own immediate household with their friends and community (Ether 1:37), and the Lord helps them build up their own thriving society when the one around them is crumbling. Anyone, in or out of the Church, who follows inspired principles in their dating life can reap the blessings.