[Music] years ago my wife and I wrote a book for college women called how to find your soulmate without losing your soul and it did real well and guys started asking me like or is the book for guys you know where's the book for guys oh my god guys don't read you know and and they kept bugging me like no no like we're literate like we read and so I finally caved in and I started writing this thing and I got kind of like halfway through and kind of got stuck and like something was missing all I'm here is doing giving guys dating advice but guys don't want to hear from me and I figured out the guys want to know the guys want to know what the women are thinking when it comes to dating a relationship so I looked at the analytics of our social media accounts and then notice we had about a hundred thousand single young women following us on social media so I figure you know how to do I'm gonna ask the girls what they want the guys to know and then I'll tell the guys for the girls and so I posted these little videos like hey girls how would you want a guy to ask you out how would you not want to be asked out how about if their relationships not going real good how do you want to got to communicate that to you instead of ghosting you and so I started to ask these questions I said girls look just put your comments below and then I'll just I'll put those in the book now boy did the floodgates open okay within hours women had submitted more than 30,000 words of feedback which was longer than the entire book was at that point but the stuff that I learned was gold it was these expectations that women had but they just didn't feel like it was their job to tell the guy and the insights that I gained I mean the soft one were saying was mind blowing like I asked the girls for example just started what would you want a guy to root out of his life before he even asks you out to begin with and girls would say things like you know excessive gaming or laziness or selfishness or porn or whatever you know I asked him you know what's the one fault you want a man to root out of his life before he enters a dating relationship one girl said not meeting his ex-girlfriend at the duck pond not sure what that one was about but she seems pretty serious about that so I mean we can start there you know like guys let's just make a a commitment right now not to meet any ex-girlfriends at the duck pond so just we just verbally do this just guys just repeat I may have said I state might state your name until you know you commit to never ever meeting an ex-girlfriend at the duck pond give yourselves a hand I mean look how much see see how much progress they can make a lot of progress now all joking aside I mean dating today let's be honest I mean it's a mess it is we have a culture right now of single people who pretend like they're dating we have a culture of dating people who behave like they're married and we're stuck with a culture of married people who seem to think they're single everything is out of order and frankly not a lot of people are happy about it they did an article in Vanity Fair where they asked women how's it going today with dating relationships and the article is called tinder and the dawn of the dating apocalypse talking about how apps are annihilating dating listen to what the women said one woman said look it is rare for a woman of our generation to meet a man who treats her like a priority instead of just an option it's like we're not even people anymore we're menu items one girl said look there's no dating there's no relationships they're rare I mean you could have a fling that could last seven or eight months and never actually call someone your boyfriend hooking up is a lot easier no one gets hurt well not on the surface it's a contest to see who cares less and guys win a lot it caring less look it's body first and personality second another girl said honestly I feel like the body doesn't even matter to them as long as you're willing it's that bad but if you say any of this out loud it's like you're weak you're not independent you missed the whole memo about third wave feminism across the board this deep dissatisfaction has it always been like this absolutely not I met a grandma recently she told me her grandma told her that you should never go on a date with the same boy two weekends in a row because that might make him think that you're actually interested in him and you would just want to let him wonder about that now college girls that like dude two dates the same two weekends like most college girls we happen to have two dates in four years and they had them every weekend the guys back then it was just different I think they grew up a lot faster take for example my grandpa day after high school graduation he entered in the military went off to World War two at the age of 20 years old this guy was flying his plane deliberately into thunderstorms at night over enemy territory to avoid enemy aircraft fire on one of his missions he's flying a cargo load of barbed wire 300 miles deep into enemy territory as they're flying one of the engines just gives out the plane starts nose diving down into enemy territory if they were to land they'd be slaughtered immediately they took no prisoners and so the men started throwing out the back of the plane all these cargo loads of barbed wire lacerating themselves in the process and he's standing there sweating and bleeding you know his mind was just on his high school sweetheart back home and he just prayed to God and what happened the engine kicked back on he pulls that airplane up out of the dive flies back home safely proposes to his high school sweetheart raises ten kids with his girl now together they're buried side by side in the cemetery in Texas and if that's not good enough their names were Joseph and Mary it doesn't get much better than that and this guy while he's flying into thunderstorms to avoid enemy aircraft the guy was 20 years old you know what I was doing when I was 20 years old I was playing ultimate frisbee in college okay it's the age of 20 and they're doing that they just grew up a lot faster and I'm telling you and these men came home from war they knew asking a woman on a date is not a risk getting shot down by the enemy is a risk asking a girl out is a privilege it is a gift it is not a risk or something to be feared and so these men 16 million of them came home from World War two and began these families with purpose and I think for a lot of us today not only do we not grow up as fast we don't come from families where we saw our parents date each other I think the real root of why people don't know how to date is because a lot of our parents forgot how to date in fact the buddy of mine he and his wife been married for 20 years he is never once his weekly date night with his bride rain or shine they go on a date it doesn't matter if the kids are sick in the living room thrown up in buckets who cares all those give him some benadryl knock him out for the night and have a date in the kitchen they will make the time because they have that friendship underneath to support this and I say this not because I've mastered all of this but because I know this is the solution you in this generation are being given a task to rediscover Christian courtship what is dating supposed to look like where are we even supposed to begin and I think where we got to begin is the number one questions like am I even ready to date right now is there junk going on in my life right now that if I were to drag this into marriage it would be toxic to a future marriage and you got a look inside is there some of that stuff going on in my life is it that boredom is it you know is laziness a duck pond like whatever it is like is there stuff going on in there and I think for a lot of people it's the vice of pornography not just for the guys either the girls I remember one woman saying she said you know what she said you weren't when you're a guy who looks at porn she said they all know they're into it it's like they're in this big prison together oh we're all stuck in porn one day we'll get out of here but she said when you the girl who looks at it she said it feels like you're in prison but it feels like you're each in your own jail cell and you think you're the only woman there but the fact is lust is not a guy problem it's a human problem and I know growing up I mean it was everywhere your buddies had your friends had it my high school one guy in my high school actually passed out porn from his locker to anyone who would vote for him as senior class vice president I mean he's in the hallway vote for half his voter I don't know where is the day is probably in Congress by now but yeah he was just and we would just laugh it off ah nobody's getting hurt you know boys army boys but I mean when we look in the depths of our heart would guy in here right now 15 years from now wants to be some 35 year old dad has got a slap your laptop shut when your five year old daughter walks in your office because she can't see what dad's saying it's not the father that we want to be that's why if you trashed the porn today forever you are being faithful to your brides before you ever lay eyes upon her and the solution though is not simply to remove the porn we have to heal the effects that it's caused within us and so we need to redeem the way that we look upon the opposite sex and many of us are taught like hey if you see something tempting just look in the other direction and that's important you gotta they say bounce the eyes I mean that's effective but the challenge with today's culture is like okay bounce the eyes okay well there's another girl down step well you're gonna get like whiplash after five minutes doing this in today's cultures there's got to be a more substantial response to the beauty of the human body and what I'd recommend is this when you see someone or have a sexual temptation or whatever you're drawn to instead of just thinking oh it's bad first inclination should be gratitude make a little sign of the cross on your forehead and you'll notice the first part of the sign of the Cross is up so the first part of prayer gratitude thank you God for making her beautiful you could pray Psalm 84 how lovely is your dwelling place Lord mighty God and so you're giving gratitude and resisting temptation thank you God next part of the Cross is down contrition god I'm sorry for the times I have failed to look rightly at your daughter's create in me a clean heart going from gratitude to contrition next part of the Cross is kind of over here intercession look over to her she'll wedding ring pray for her husband no ring pray for her future vocation you're transforming temptation now into intercession and then the final part of the cross it's kind of going over this way you leave the beauty of the person and go to its source which is God the ultimate source of the beauty of the human body is not the devil he did not invent that God did and this is why after temptation our hearts are restless because something has been stirred up that attraction that will ultimately only be satisfied in heaven I remember I went to an all-boys high school and whenever a girl walked onto that campus because there's an all-girls school next door I mean time Stood Still I was a thousand boys and then one girl walks on campus and it was like whoa I mean it wasn't that bad a lot worse actually but but when she was gone there's this restlessness not just because we looked at her wrong but because every person's beauty is simply a finite share of the infinite glory and bliss that we were created for and so we needed to take the earth beauty and trace our hearts back up to God for that source and so what's going on here is a redemption of the way that we look and I think one of the ways that women can help in this and guys is modesty now a lot of girls that they get kind of upset about the whole modesty thing look guys got a bad imagination that's his problem I shouldn't have to change the way I dressed as some guy can't keep control of his thoughts I understand the resentment there why are girls resentful for that because for thousands of years the whole problem of lust has been blamed on what the woman the body of the woman she's the seductress she's the occasion of sin but think about it what is the cause of robbery is the cause of robbery the jewelry in the window of the store or is the cause of robbery the presence of greed in the heart of the robber money doesn't cause robbery greed does same thing with human lust that causes the human heart and so women resent that because their body's not the problem our hearts are and I think another reason women resent modesty is because we've always thought of modesty well that's a girl thing that's a woman thing that's that modesty why do we think this we think this because we've made the mistake of reducing modesty to what you wear and that's it and if modesty is only what we wear then most guys will think butch I got that covered you know I mean I didn't have much of a battle in the closet this morning okay what's modest what's not modest okay pants shirt modest were good we're out and so I mean I don't even know how if I even wanted to dress immodestly I don't even know what I would wear I mean most guys I mean to seduce a woman what would we even wear like would we like dress up like a fireman or like a cowboy or sound like is that that I look guys they're laughing at me like like we don't even know and so because we think that modesty is only what you wear we missed the bigger picture or what about a man having modesty of his intentions when he asked me girl out what about the modesty of his speech when there's no woman around does he defend the dignity of women even at the expense of his own social status what about these forms of modesty um obviously the way the guy dances and interacts and so modesty is the guardian of love and so we need to look into our hearts am i working on these virtues am i rooting out this stuff before I enter into a dating relationship that's step number one am I ready step number two is okay is the the right person and is this the right time imagine a grid with like four squares this one is the right person and it's the right time this is the right person but it's just not the right time this is the right time but it's not the right person and this one is wrong person wrong time I want you to think right now where are you at in this maybe you found this person but is it really the right time you know where we're at in our career paths in school you've got to do the discernment and if it's only right front right person wrong time all that focus on the friendship keep it simple and you've got to think of dating it's like a job interview if you don't know the qualifications you're looking for in a candidate you're probably gonna hire the wrong person you've got to be able to have the courage to know what you longed for and during this stage of the sermon I found there's five main dangers you got to watch out for I think the first thing that we got to really be on guard against is missionary dating now missionary dating is especially common god bless you and you girls because what will happen as you meet a guy and you see the potential in him and you think oh I know he's got real rough around the edges but we can do some work on that it's kind of like one of those home makeover TV shows you know I'm talking about like where a woman falls in love with some property and she invests everything and thinking she's gonna fix it up and a lot of girls date like that where if the guy were a house he'd be like some dilapidated haunted crack house in Detroit and she's thinking ah but we can put a swimming pool in there brand new curtains and fix it all up what's going on here you're not dating a person you're dating your own imagination because the courtship phase of a relationship I think is when the person naturally would be on their best behavior right because you want to impress the other person but if that other person's behavior frankly is not that impressive they're not real willing to get rid of their alcohol their porn out of love for you well it's not a sign that things are gonna get better down the road and so you should be on your best behavior during courtship in fact perfect example not wanting to impress this in the news USA Today came out like two years ago this 20 year old college guy went on his first date with his girl in Pittsburgh now he wanted to impress her and so he did what any normal 20 year old college guy would do to impress a girl he took her three floors up of stairs to the rooftop of a bagel restaurant so he could show to her not the sunset no he so he could show to her how he could jump from the rooftop of the bagel restaurant to the adjacent coud oba burrito Mexican restaurant without landing in between so I mean cuz any guy who knows girls knows like one of the top things look they're looking for and like mate selection is parkour ninja skill since up so what this guy did is he kind of harness the power of that information and then he jumped but unfortunately he did not complete the jump he subsequently landed between the buildings he slid three floors down broke his ankle and was stuck there till 6 o'clock in the morning when emergency rescue crews had to come in and bust open the wall and bring him out now the news story didn't detail if a second date ever materialized after that first one but we got to give that guy props I mean he is willing to do what it takes to impress that girl how impressed she was is questionable but he was willing to do it and so we need to look at our relationships am i dating this person hoping they're gonna change or my dating this person hoping they're gonna stay the way they are for the rest of their life and yeah we all got imperfections but if they've got imperfections that would be toxic to your marriage the time to step back is now not 15 years and three kids from now and so the first thing we got to do I think it's got a step back and avoid that missionary dating because girls your mission is not to be his mother and guys that is not your job to be her Messiah we got a step back and focus on that stuff first second risk I think we look at here is rushing not just physically into the relationship too quick but emotionally when you get too close too soon it's like trying to read a book two inches from your eyes you can't see the text hold it back and you'll see its value more clearly if you want to kite to go up you don't run with the kite you hold back it's precisely that tension that allows it to reach its potential same thing in human relationships don't rush third thing I'd say is no Lone Ranger Lone Ranger is like well it's just it's just her and I against the whole world no we got to be plugged in to our family to accountability in fact I read one thing that said one of the best indicators the health of a female's relationship is what the girls female friends think about the guy because they tend to be more objective and if you got solid girlfriends and they're telling you you got to watch out about this guy and you're making excuses look I know he's got some problems and you know I know he's a convicted felon you know I know and his friends call him El Chapo I know but he's got a beautiful heart inside like now on dating the imagination again you gotta listen to the people who love you a fourth risk and I know this is gonna sound kind of weird at a Catholic conference but to not over spiritual eyes the discernment process because a lot of times we do this well she's got a brown scapular I have a brown scapular oh and we start to get ahead of ourselves thinking that just because we are in agreement on all things religious that we therefore will have a harmonious relationship there's more human elements to look at sometimes we get impatient well I want to know if this is God's will well I'm gonna do a novena I don't know find out I got nine days to figure this thing out but I look I mean novenas are great so theology for you the first the the fruit of the first novena was Pentecost God said nine days of Prayer from the Ascension and what was that gift from nine days of Prayer the gift of the Holy Spirit Himself novenas are wonderful things but I'm sorry they are not a substitute for authentic discernment and so we need to not rush the hand of God expect him to give us an answer on our timeline as for Grace's through novenas not vocational discernment necessarily and so be patient in that process and then I think the final risk that we run here in this stage is paralysis by analysis meaning we're not moving forward and a dating relationship because we don't have absolute certainty and we think and this could go with seminary vocations it's like well is this an apple seed or is an orange seed like I mean it could be an orange seed or really it looks like an apple seed I don't know if it's enough you'd put the stupid thing in the ground and see what grows up at some point you have to roll the dice it's sometimes you have to move forward because some people I think today are so afraid of making the wrong decision that they never take the risk that is required to make the right decision and I think one of the most overlooked aspects of this sermons is action at some point we gotta move forward and some people are afraid because they're like well what if someone better comes along other people are afraid to act because they've been hurt in the past but if you lock up your heart because you don't want it to be hurt at first it's like a castle no one's gonna hurt me again but I'm telling you if you don't learn how to let people in the castle becomes a cage the cage becomes a coffin and you become unlovable because the one thing you want the most love requires the thing you fear the most which is vulnerability because you don't want to take the risk you lock your heart up we have to be willing sometimes to be hurt but if we use the other principles as discernment we can make that wise choice now once we've made this choice and we've destroyed a right person right time how do you move forward what are you supposed to do well listen to some of things that the women said now this comes from all the advice that they were given me for this book and you know when I'd give these things a lot of this stuff is applying straight to the guys but I want the women to hear this because what I'm about to propose to you that these are not naive expectations ladies these are called standards and sometimes you just need the reinforcement that what you hope for is right and reasonable so here's some of the things ladies set when it comes time to ask in the girl out you may not ask her out for a text message okay right off the board no go this is what the girls said I do not want to be asked out over a text it is cowardly and not sincere the guys just trying to take the easy way out if he gets rejected if anything I'll probably decline the offer even if I do want to go out with a guy only because he asked out over a text now vice versa if I were to ask me out in person and me not want to go out with him I'd probably give it a shot because he was confident and up for the challenge another girl said she said let me just say all caps she says this is great she says the easier is to ask a lady out the easier it is for the lady to say no ask her out face to face second thing when you ask her out there's one word you must say when you ask a girl on the date the word the man must say is the word date if you don't say the date when you ask her on a date she has no clue what you're talking about if you look at the girls like here like bobbleheads I mean look around I guess because if he's like hey I think we should get together sometime we should get a coffee oh we should Netflix and chill oh we should come on like if she like hit what hang out what does he mean hang out like or like hang out or like were you gonna play like Minecraft together like what is it exactly he has in mind here and so listen to the girls said lots of guys will ask us if we want to hang out no we don't want to hang out okay she said look we got plenty of girlfriends to hang out with what we want is for you to take us to do something fun together lets us get to know each other do not say do you want to hang out look I've had several guys ask me that and it's so frustrating because it leaves me wondering like are we just two friends getting together or is this a date is he trying to pursue me like what is this it's so confusing I wish much rather a guy would just say hey I really like to get to know you better can I take you on a date or as one girl said guys being vague doesn't exactly make a girl go weak at the knees so clarity intentionality third thing no intermediary meaning you can't ask your friend to ask her friend to ask her if she likes you okay sixth grade is over people okay I'm gonna let that be done girl said look if you want to ask me out ask me out I don't want to hear about it from your friend or my friend be intentional be courageous our relationship is between us two not the extra people around us and when you ask her out you have to do this face to face and you have to take some risk and what the women said is look we hold so much more respect for you when you do this you ask us face-to-face because although you knew there was the possibility of rejection you thought we were worth it anyway and even if you do as a guy feel nervous that's okay because the confidence is attractive one girl said look I can't even imagine being with the guy who won't take any risk so when you ask you may not ask her for her Instagram okay if you're gonna ask her for anything it's the phone number you don't want to stalk her on social media to get to know this girl you want to let her to reveal herself to use you're not asking for social media you're asking for phone number when you ask her out give her advanced notice do not say wanna come over no you got to give her at least three days notice so she's got some time to prepare she knows the date plan the date don't when she says what are we gonna do don't know what do you want to do Oh what do you wanted it on Oh you'll play fortnight oh no I go anyway I know plan the date you got to put some thought into it where do you go on a first date this is interesting the girls unanimously do not want to go on a movie for the first couple of dates wait at least for the third fours date to take a girl on a movie one girl said movie no just no okay no movie for you you she says look if you go on a date with me take me somewhere where we can get to talk and get to know each other and of all the feedback I got from 1,500 women 30,000 words this one hands down was my favorite the girl said look guys do not offer a Netflix and chill or take me to a sketchy warehouse or some weird lot and tell me about your felony record speaking from experience my whole house up so guys the moral here is if you do have to disclose a history of incarceration you want to do it at a fancy restaurant okay not some sketchy warehouse or weird lot like do you think it and so next thing pace yourselves guys lady said look don't tell me that you want to marry me you feel called to marry discernment is done with the person not for or about them before you even date sure say you want to see if we call the marriage awesome because I'm not dating you just for fun it's intentional but it's not predestined when it comes to dating etiquette when you go to a restaurant the girl said please keep your eyes and your ears on me it was huge how many women said how important it was that the guy just knew how to listen to her during their dinner conversation that he could actually absorb what she's saying and give that back and when it comes to the physical intimacy basic principle never wait for the woman to say no because if a guy is putting a girl in a position where she needs to say no he might be thinking well look I'm a gentleman I'm not forcing her to do anything she's willing to do this and that but what's going on in the girl's mind could be this look I really enjoy this with him this is fun that feels nice but I feel like I'm compromising my morals and I just wish honey he would stop because I don't want to tell him no cuz then that's gonna make things awkward maybe he's gonna think I don't like that tug of war doesn't need to be going on in her mind he should never lead her to a spot to begin with where that would even be going on to begin with so where do you draw the line don't do something with this girl that you would not do in the presence of her father because you are not her man he is her man and on the day of their wedding he will walk her down the aisle to you and you'll give you big firm handshake I remember my wife she never had a dad but she had this like kind of foster father this guy was like this 260 pound English rugby player and it was knowledgeable Alexander all right and all Crystal's ex like boyfriend's is felt like scared to death of this guy but now I just said like I'm the first guy he's ever met dated crystal never afraid of him why would I fear him because our hearts are the same to love her rightly and so to realize that on that day when the veil is lifted and you get that handshake that's the day you become the man but until that day you honor her man which is ultimately her father and her heavenly father and so I think you'll find by guarding that innocence you're gonna be able to fall in love for all the right reasons next thing his girl said if the girl says no to you when you say could we go on a date and she says no a lot of guys like well how do I know she really means no when she said that she's rearranging her sock drawer or whatever like how do I know that means she's not really busy if the girl says no but she offers an alternative time I can't do it Saturday but I am free on Wednesday then okay there's there's an opening here if she says no but she does not offer you an alternative time date place zip code what have you then the answer is no but you want to take that in stride you don't want to be all pouty and petulant about this in fact I remember one guy said this there's billions of other women in the world and you just narrowed down your search for your future spouse so to me ask a girl out is a win-win situation either you end up with a girlfriend or you end up with clarity which either of which is better than being alone and uncertain and so go ahead and ask and so when the relationship is over let's say after a couple dates doesn't seem to be going the way you want or you date for a year and it's time to break up girls all across the world said please no ghosting ghosting in this modern phenomenon whereby a guy or girl expresses romantic attention for a day a week a year or whatever he loses interest and that he just disappears literally falls off the face of the earth and the girl is wondering like where did he go like was he abducted by aliens does he like another girl was he deported like like where is this guy and a lot of guys do this not because they want to be mean because like well I don't want to hurt her feelings so I'll just kind of like fade into oblivion but the problem with this is one girl said this she said the ending of your relationship should just be as intentional and clear as initiating our very first date and so I'll tell you as a guy initiating that first day you got to be straightforward you got to have some confidence and sincerity and you can muster that up because you might end up with a date but what happens when the relationships over are you just as willing to be straightforward confidence honest and sincere with her when there's nothing in it for you just for the sake of giving her some closure and clarity to me that is a much greater mark of a gentleman than just asking a girl out and it was kind of funny is that was writing this book I had been working out of this one gym for several years and I wanted to try CrossFit and so I quit the gym and I did three trial memberships of these three different CrossFit gyms and I found the one I really liked and I picked it and I signed up and they there's more intense than the others and it was you know they filmed the Nike commercial there and I liked the trainers and so but after I signed up a couple days later I get this text on my phone and it's the manager from one of the other CrossFit gyms wondering I'm gonna join his gym and I'd get the text and I'd look at it I mean like oh I don't want to tell them no so I'll just call to do some other stuff and like after two or three days the text is still sitting there and I'm writing this book about how not the ghost people yeah look at my phone I'm like oh my god I'm doing it like I'm a grown man ghosting the manager of a CrossFit gym because I don't want to have a difficult conversation so I say you know what that's it I'm gonna text him right now and I text my hey man you know thank you for the workouts got a great facility but I ended up joining the gym clothes for my kids school I wish you all the best literally like within two minutes he text back hey thanks for letting me know that it was good getting Noah across your next workout and it was just like okay you know what sometimes we just got to have hard conversations it's just part of maturity and listen one of the women said ghosting is basically sending the message that you don't respect someone as a human being enough to have a crucial and sometimes hard and honest conversation with them about how you're feeling and honestly if you're not mature enough to talk about how you're feeling or your feelings the lack thereof then maybe you're not ready for a relationship whatsoever yeah it hurts but at least no more time will be wasted and she can invest it in someone who's invested in her there's nothing wrong with not liking someone because we all can't marry each other but please don't then just pop back in when it's convenient for you and use me as your emotional fidget spinner whenever you're bored in other words if you're gonna commit there commit and if you're gonna break up with her at least commit to your breakup and so last thing I'd say at least in terms of the ask an out phase just because you go on a date with somebody it doesn't mean that you're dating you have to ask someone officially to ibly a boyfriend/girlfriend and as I was running this is interesting because I remember from back in college I did this girl for two years at the end of two years we broke up but we're still friends everything and she told me at that last big conversation we had she said Jason you know one thing it always kind of bothered me we dated is a we dated for two years she said you never actually asked me out and I'm like well I got some kind of a funny thing to say and I'm kind of play it cool on the outside but in my brain I'm like what I never asked her out I'm like fact-checking like CNN during a trump debate like surely that cut must be falls you know and my brain is like thinking about and I think I and I really thought like holy cow like I never asked her out we just kind of hung out and then we hung out more and then we kind of hung out more and more and I guess we just morphed into this dating relationship and then I thought back I'm like wow I did the same thing on the last girl I dated and so we've got to not slide into our relationships we need to decide into that and so this is what's going on people instead of committing or hooking up hoping that'll end up working out but it only does about nine percent of the time friends-with-benefits becomes dating about nine percent of the time studies show we have couples cohabiting before they get married what's going on here is we're grasping ahead of ourselves and so this is the one thing I'd recommend after is the basic dating principles is guard the innocence of your relationship guard the purity of that relationship because ultimately girls look what you win a man with is what you keep them with okay if you win him with pleasure you can keep him with pleasure but pleasures repeatable you can get that anywhere and get off the Internet another girl can find it anywhere if you win him with your body well you can keep him with your body but here's the problem like every woman has a body I can't even remember the last woman I met who did not have a body okay this is a repeatable asset of sorts but if you win in with who you are as a human person those relationships are far more likely I think to go the distance and so what I have found in my own life that chastity and abstinence has been the greatest preparation for intimacy sexual emotional intimacy within marriage best preparation was absent as in chastity and that would sound counterintuitive like well how could abstinence prepare you for sexual intimacy in marriage one reason is because abstinence is going to be a part of your marriage whether you like it or not it will be a season in your marriage sometimes God will call you to practice heroically long seasons of absence even within your marriage I have a friend his wife when she was young had been sexually abused and I guess she never really went to counseling and stuff's kind of worked through it and they got married and things went smoothly for many years and in like a decade into their marriage memories started coming up flashbacks things and she told her husband like I don't know this is coming from but like all this stuff for my child's coming back and I can't be physically close to you right now it just brings up too many bad feelings and her husband is a good man honey I totally understand that I respect that and also love you and just just non-physical ways and we can work through this and she was so appreciative and a week of abstinence went by in marriage okay that happens and then a month of abstinence went by and marriage okay that happens and then it was two months and three months and four and five and six months of abstinence and marriage at which point he's really wrestling with God over this like Jesus you know I didn't sign up for this and gods like actually you did good times right there and but so hard on him is like he kind of had a broken notion of masculinity that if I'm a real man you know women will be sexually responsive to me and the very fact that his wife was so frigid towards him in the bedroom just made him feel like less of a man but by staying on that cross of abstinence for love of his bride he was becoming more of a man to her than any man had ever been in her life and through her wound he was healed of his broken idea of masculinity and through his own affliction she was healed as well now imagine though if he had become whiny petulant cold distant and pouty because she wouldn't fulfill his needs imagine how his woundedness would only have infected hers but because he learned as a single guy that abstinence itself is an expression of love to do it best for your beloved not just what feels good in the moment as a result of him knowing how to stay on that cross he was able to fulfill the very call of Christ because I think Jesus Christ looks at every man who wants to become a husband or priest and he hangs there bloody and beaten from the cross and he just looks at you and he says this is how I got my bride to heaven how else do you think that you're going to get yours there and so we need to look to him as that model of masculinity we need to look at people like st. Joseph st. Joseph understand was probably about an 18 year old guy when he married Our Lady and the church honors him as the terror of demons and the guardian of the Virgin this is a guy at the age of 18 God thought huh who of all men should I entrust the Immaculate Heart of Mary to to guard her innocence I know who I'll pick I'll pick a college aged guy to guard the immaculate heart of marriage that's how much confidence God has in a young heart that is full of love Joseph was in love with Mary people think oh no you got to kind of keep those guys apart you know garter virginity in all seven no no Josef's love was not a threat to her virginity joseph love is precisely what safeguarded her virginity it was the very thing that kept her safe was how much he loved our lady I mean in love with her how could he not be in love with her she was married and so we need to turn our hearts to st. Joseph to look to the crucifix to learn how to authentically love and some guys might sympathies and I mean this is all inspiring and everything but like I just still don't get it like sex in marriage good sex out of marriage bad in good out bad I mean look as long as we consent and we respect each other the next day like is it really that bad but what the Catholic Church is asking us to do is just speak the truth in our bodies when a husband and a wife make love they renew their wedding vows not with their words but with their bodies they are renewing their wedding vows in the flesh and the Church's teaching on sex it's just simple as look love marriage sex and babies go together and in that order and if we keep them in that order civilization thrives if we start splitting them up and moving around civilization itself begins to crumble and ultimately we can try all the strategies in the world when it comes to dating and all this stuff but ultimately purity is a gift from Jesus Christ and he will give it to you if you want it first of all go to the sacrament of reconciliation some people I'm not going to confession what if I tell the priests what I did it's like that's the point like you did you did not break the unknown 11th commandment I mean he's not gonna call the Vatican I've never heard of this before Pope Francis like did Pope Francis wouldn't care he'd be like no hablo English click so just go go and you know what I don't want you this weekend this week just to go to confession I want you to have a great confession some of you already been to confession 10 times and you've always been a father forgive me here's my cents and you hand them some and then you walk out with a couple because you walk out with them because like one I'm really kind of ashamed of that stuff so I just don't want to bring that up that shame does not belong to you that shame belongs to the devil you need to give it back to the devil next time you go to the confession get it all out every single corner of your soul make clean and then you walk out of that door as clean as the day that you were baptized as a child and so go to confession and have a great confession spend timon Eucharistic Adoration and just pouring out your heart to him opening up your wounds and pursuing that healing that he alone wants to give you especially this week during the Christmas season and we also have gifts to give you guys to help you to live out this lifestyle if you take a peek on the screen you'll notice some of the stuff that we've got on there let's see if I can back it up one so at our booth all we've bought about 1,500 free copies of books that we just want to give you guys and we want you to take even more than one take him and bring him home to friends in the dorm pass them out things like that you never know who could end up with one of these things in their hands in fact I know girl was given the DVD somehow of our chastity talk and she was a stripper and she watched this video and she not only did she quit stripping she took the DVD of our chastity talk with an entire television set into the strip club set up the whole thing and showed the strippers a chastity talk in the back room of a strip club that's one place I'll never get to give a talk but she's able to get there and so you never know where these resources are gonna end up and so we brought 1,500 them to give you guys for free and so what we do at all the Assemblies is we give away all this stuff for free and then people contact there's like oh we want to give away stuff in Africa we want to give away stuff at our University and what they'll do is they reach out to us and then just contacts on the website we will send you as much as you want for free if you say hey I want to give away a thousand books you tell us we send them to you for free and then you begin them via the missionary on your campus I know some college students they said our school has a sex Fair on our campus where they've got like people giving away contraception this and that and sex tips and all that stuff so they said fine we got something to say about sex too so they got a booth at the sex Fair they had contraception over here with plan B and on their booth they called it Plan C chastity and so they filled it with all this free chastity stuff and they gave it out to the students University had an exit survey what is the number one thing you learned this year's sex Fair number one response chastity we got to put our nets out into the deep and so we've got 1,500 books give you the starter you want more you just reach out to us on the website now one way that we give away these things is donations and we're not going to ask you for anything we've got a gift to give you there is a person a donor who said I want college students young adults to try this prayer app and for everyone who tries it I will donate to the ministry so you can give free things to college students and so what I want to invite you to do is if you can whip out your cell phone it doesn't cost you a penny pull this thing out and I just want to ask if you would text the word prayer to the number six six eight six six so you take a second texas cost you absolutely nothing and then you're gonna get a link to download this prayer app called hollow i've been using this thing for a couple months now i love it brush your teeth in the morning just hit the button it can lead you in different morning prayers meditations you're gonna get right back a text to download lit the link if you download that link and you activate this thing you get like two weeks of free prayer through this app once you activated that will keep track of that and that amount of people who just activate the app not just download activate the personal make a donation for every single person who does that and then we're going to take donations from that and then use it to spread this message all over your college campuses and so you can download it if you need to do your password do it later and so that's the stuff that we got for free and then also on our booth kelsey skok is one of the emcees here just released a book about two weeks ago called uncompromising purity where it's not just a guy problem or for the first time we've got a book just for the girls on how to break free from stuff like pornography and things like that and so Kelsey's book is there at the booth my wife and I also wrote this one for the girls how to find your soul mate without losing your soul the first chapter is the top ten guys to avoid I know one college girl she told me she keeps us in her dorm and if a guy tries to hit on her she goes back to the dorm she'll reread the list of ten things they're like nope you are number three and number seven and number nine so we're not going anywhere so that always helps to have and then we also have the dating blueprint book which just came out for the guys I included in here verbatim quotes of 25 women exactly the words they want you to use when you ask them out so you literally have no excuse whatsoever left not to ask a girl out and so all that stuff is in there my wife picked out these cool little purity ring's for the girls like a crown like the daughter of the king got some cool t-shirts the hearts of Joseph of Mary and then if you want this summer we're going on pilgrimage to Italy to Rome and Assisi with myself and father Agostino Torres there's info with the boots on that and then lastly I will be at the booth all afternoon and all tomorrow as well in the next day swing by because I love to hang out with you get to know you a little better and you know all the stuff I just dumped on you today and I know it's a lot I know it's a lot to process you might be thinking Jason this is this is great but man I wish I heard this five years ago I wish I heard this 10 years ago my relationships are a mess and I'm going through this now I'm trying to heal through that I just want you understand how much God is with you in the mess a buddy mine's always reading books about the Saints and I say hey you've read any good save books yet he said oh yes I'm reading about Saints and addictions on my own school like Saints who help people with addictions he said no no no I'm reading about addict Saints I don't remember them in catechism class he he's like yet read about this guy guys named a Saint Mark ji Chang Zhang from China this guy was like a 30 year old husband father and a doctor he gave became sick with a stomach ailment and so he treated himself with a drug opium which is a common drug to treat that at the time and the illness was resolved but a drug addiction remained he went to a priest a father forgive me I've become addicted to this drug and the priest gave him absolution gave him some advice and Mark left and he fell back into the drug addiction and then he came back to confession back to addiction confession addiction confession addiction sound familiar and it came to the point where the priest said you know Mark because you keep struggling with this I don't think you're really that sorry and so I would ask that you no longer receive Communion at Mass and you don't even come back to confession until you've overcome this vice which is obviously bad pastoral advice to give but even know how to deal with the addiction and Mark did what he said he kept coming to Mass with his family but he didn't receive Communion he didn't go to confession because he wasn't quite perfect and he kept falling back and forth in and out of addiction for a year and then it was ten years no sacraments 20 years no sacraments 30 years away from the sacraments still a faithful husband and a good doctor but wrestling secretly with his addiction and he began praying to God God just just make me a martyr I can't see any other way that I'm gonna end up in heaven and God answered his prayer in the year 1900 the Boxer Rebellion came into China began persecuting Christians and Catholics and he was rounded up with nine members of his family and as they're being dragged off to the place of torture and execution his grandson said to my grandpa where are we going and Mark said them we're going home we're going home brought over the place of execution a one by one they started beheading cutting off the heads of the members of his family and he begged the torturers to kill him last so that no one in his family would have to die without him by their side and one by one they beheaded everyone in his family until at last they took off his head as he was singing the litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary and today he is a canonized saint in the Catholic Church who died addicted to opium this is proof that the saint is not the one who does not have a mess in their life the saint is the one who gives their mess utterly to Jesus Christ and so this week let's give him our mess last night father Mike Emily didn't they just dive right in we're not gonna waste any time let's go right in nobody's perfect we're not but let's let him meet us in our brokenness but like st. Therese of us you said it is a much better thing to talk to God than to talk about him so let's close up our time together in prayer and the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit amen Father in Heaven I asked your special blessing upon all your sons and daughters here today in search of their vocations if you are calling them to the married life we ask your blessing to come down not only upon them today but we pray for their future husbands and wives we pray that all the graces that are being received this weekend through the sacraments through the times of adoration and mass that those graces would also be applied to whoever those people may be we pray that they would come from solid families that they might know the meaning of sacrifice and love we ask you to preserve them from the evil one if you're calling any adhere to the priesthood to the religious life Lord we asked you to give them a heart full of peace of courage of faith and joy that they could give themselves as fully to you as you have given yourselves to them and we pray for the gift of pray for the gift of silence and for the gift of purity and again we entrust all of these things in all of our vocations future and present to our lady as we pray hail Mary full of grace the Lord is with thee blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus Holy Mary Mother of God pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death amen Saint John Paul the second pray for us the name of the Father the Son the Holy Spirit amen god bless you and I look forward to meeting you over the booth thank you very much self hey guys [Applause] [Music]
