To understand the real roots of ghosting, we need to understand the difference between the natural and covenant mindsets and how they manifest in dating decisions.  Although encouraged to be not of the world, LDS singles still live in the world.  As such, without sufficient awareness, LDS singles more easily succumb to being of the world in their dating decisions.

The natural and covenant mindsets differ mainly in what they value most.  Natural men and women most value self-gratification.  What satiates the desires of evolutionary biology to pass good genetic material to the next generation dominates decision making.  In contrast, covenant men and women most value making and keeping sacred covenants.  They’ll give up some things of this world to have the things of the world to come.

That difference cannot be overemphasized.  Placing higher value on the desires of evolutionary biology essentially turns the heart towards this fallen imperfect world and our mortal life in it.  That priority says temple marriage and the world of eternity are acceptable only if natural desires are fully satisfied in this world of mortality.  Exactly opposite, the covenant mindset places higher value on the desires of discipleship and turning the heart towards the eternal world to come.

Ghosting plays right into the natural mindset.  But women ghost more than men because the natural woman doesn’t have the same values as the natural man.  Both most value self-gratification, but what gratifies the natural man often doesn’t gratify the natural woman.

Natural men value youth and beauty because these women are more likely to bear healthier children.  But natural women don’t value youth; men can play their part well into old age.  Instead, natural women value looks, muscles, money, and status because these things make it more likely the woman will bear healthier children or the woman and child will receive support after the birth.  It’s all about perpetuating this life in this world.

Ghosting plays right into that mindset.  Because of what she values most, the natural woman is always looking for a better option that’ll make it more likely she’ll bear healthier children and/or have support after the birth.  That’s what ghosting essentially is.  It’s exchanging someone less desirable for someone more desirable based on perceived ability to perpetuate life in this world.

Conversely, the covenant mindset seeks to perpetuate eternal life in the world to come.  Because it’s not natural to think that way, the covenant mindset requires conscious choice and discipline along the road of covenant discipleship.

King Benjamin taught as much in his classic discourse to his people.  Mosiah 3:19 teaches how to overcome the natural man.  The same prescription works for the natural woman.  Just replace all the masculine words with their feminine complements.  Either way, putting off the natural mindset requires conscious choice.  And we do it through the Atonement.

But you can’t choose the covenant if you aren’t aware.  Without awareness, we’ll all simply do what comes naturally.  The world, either in ignorance or rejection of the covenant, fully embraces the natural mindset.  This is the world where LDS singles live.  Being not of the world means recognizing that influence and consciously choosing against it.

We can start by chasing away ghosting.  That’ll take time and patience.  After all, no one’s perfectly in the covenant mindset.  We’re all both the natural and the covenant according to we’re at on the path of eternal progression.  But when we start by recognizing that truth and then increasing our awareness of which decisions the natural mindset dominates and which the covenant, we can let Christ and His Atonement into every aspect of our lives.  And that will bring us more joy in our journey.

That’s why I’m making this trip despite the inconvenience.  I want to make memories while I can.  I want to make memories a priority.

With my mother’s birthday approaching, it’s the perfect time to do this.  Still, I’m not sure what to expect in this trip.  As I said, I haven’t flown in eight years.

It’s not that I don’t like travel.  It’s just most of my travels have been accessible by car.  I say most because, when I started my PhD program, I could have flown instead of driving across the country.

But had I done that, I would have missed the opportunity to visit with one of my aunts who died just last month.  As I drove across the country, I made it a point to plan my route so that I would be able to visit with her.  And I’m glad I did that, because now that she’s passed on I no longer have that opportunity to make memories with her (at least not in this life).

Now I see a similar situation with my mother.  I’m not saying she’s about to die.  I’m saying I love this sweet woman who has done so much for me over the years, and I want to take advantage of the opportunity I have now to make memories with her while I can.

That’s a good approach to take not just with loved ones but with everything in life.  When we die — and we’re all going to die — we don’t take much with us beyond our desires, our knowledge, and our relationships.  Focusing ourselves here, then, should take priority in our lives.

I’ve found it’s always good to step back every once in a while and evaluate where I am in my life.  How am I doing?  And am I going in the right direction?

If you haven’t evaluated yourself recently, then take a moment now to do so.  Just ponder on those questions I just asked for the next few minutes and reflect on your answers to them.

And if you’re anything like me, you’ll find yourself wanting in multiple areas.  That’s OK.  Just determine what you need to do to improve, and then decide to do it.  If you need tools or resources to support you, then go get them and put them in place.  If you don’t know how to do anything along the way, then partner with the Lord and let Him guide you to the who and what you need when and where you need them.

Overall, your life is what you make of it.  You only get one, so what will yours be?

Too many of us take for granted the opportunity we have to make memories with the family and friends we love.  In the busyness of living our lives, it’s easy to think we’ll always have the opportunity to make memories.

But you never know when you’ll no longer have that opportunity.  Accidents happen every day.  A festering medical condition could suddenly worsen.  An act of violence could unexpectedly shorten someone’s life.  Who knows what might happen?  You may not have the time you think you do.

Don’t waste the opportunity you have to make memories while you can.  Your life is what you make of it, and you only get one.  Make your life one filled with the blessings of treasured memories with loved ones that will yield satisfaction and joy for years to come.  Make memories your priority.  You’ll then spend more of your limited time building the relationships that matter most.  And that will bring you more joy in your journey.

How did friendship come to be so bad?  That’s totally upside down.  Friendship is good, and when you understand the fundamentals of the dating journey, you can easily see you do want the Friend Zone.

It’s hard to get anywhere in any journey without having a good map and then getting your bearings on that map.  That’s what knowing the fundamentals of the dating journey does.  They provide that good map and help us get our bearings.

One of those fundamentals is understanding the different stages.  And the first stage of the dating journey is the Friendship stage.  You’re in this stage when you first meet someone, and you’ll be in this stage until you start dating.  In this stage, there’s no commitment of either party to each other; anyone can come and go as they please.  That lack of commitment is necessary to foster each person opening up enough to let someone else know them better, which you need to foster true friendship.

Friendship is the foundation of all successful long-term relationships.  That’s why the Friendship stage is the first stage of the dating journey.  Without friendship, a married couple won’t have the stamina to get through the difficult times and challenges that sooner or later come to every marriage.  If you want to build something that lasts, begin with a solid foundation.

The Friendship stage is where building that solid foundation starts.  You don’t necessarily need to have that foundation completed before proceeding to the next stage.  In fact, you’ll be building that foundation of friendship all along your dating journey.  But you should have the core established before going further.

Many singles encounter difficulty in their dating journey when they try to rush it.  Seeing singleness as something to escape, they want it over as quickly as possible.  That propensity to rush leads them to think they’re in one stage when they’re really in another.

Singles progress more effectively through their dating journey when they consciously choose to be in the stage where they are.  You may want to be dating someone, but if you’re in the Friendship stage, then be there.  That doesn’t mean you don’t look for opportunities to date.  It means you focus on friendship building skills you’ll need when you’re with whoever you do eventually marry.

So when you’re in the Friendship stage, be in the place where you are.  Focus on building friendships and enjoying people for who they are and what they have to offer without any expectation of getting something in return.  There’s no commitment in this stage of the dating journey, so you don’t have to accept anything you don’t like.

When you focus on being where you are, what was once complex and confusing becomes simple and clear.  Truly being in the place where you are allows you to let go of worries and concerns about the future.  You can’t cross a bridge until you get to it, so focus on crossing when you get there.

Being in the place where you are also allows you to experience more joy in your journey.  Because you’ve pushed aside concerns about future stages for when you’re actually in those stages, you’ve cleared the space for more joy to come into your life.  You can learn to enjoy people for who they really are without concerns about what they might offer you in return.  The friend zone then changes from the equivalent of some God-forsaken wasteland to a wonderful paradise of plenty where life just becomes enjoyable.  And isn’t that what we all really want in the end?

As I watched the film again recently, I couldn’t help but think about dating.  Johnny Lingo saw in Mahana something no one else saw.  Where everyone else saw an ugly woman worthy of mockery, Johnny Lingo saw a woman so beautiful everyone would remember her as such forever.  The obvious parallels to dating invite us to see others as they could be and not just as they are.  And indeed, we can make more progress in our dating journey when we see with Johnny Lingo eyes.

Perhaps the most important dating lesson here is the influence we have over our own dating journey.  What we think of ourselves truly makes the biggest difference.

Many LDS singles think other people determine their progress in dating.  I used to be one of those, but not any more.  Now that I understand my influence over the choices others make, I no longer have the victim mentality that once drove me to blame others for why I’m single.

Johnny Lingo certainly didn’t have a victim mentality.  He could have easily chosen to court another woman.  All the single women in the island village had their eyes on him.  And Mahana thought so poorly of herself she preferred hiding in a tree over facing her suitor.

But Mahana changed her tune after Johnny Lingo exercised his influence.  He didn’t make her change how she thought of herself.  Rather, he invited her to do so by thinking better himself of her and acting in accordance with that perspective.  He exercised his agency to influence others to choose in his favor.  That’s a powerful lesson we can apply in our own dating journey.

Johnny Lingo saw in Mahana the beautiful woman she really was.  And he helped her to see that for herself so she could release that beauty for all to see.  He truly walked with her.

So often in dating, we look at potential prospects solely as what they are today.  We then assume they’ll always be that way and judge accordingly.  And we certainly don’t do anything to help others become what they could be.  It’s much easier to reject them then walk with them towards their potential.

That wasn’t Johnny Lingo’s attitude.  If he’d taken that approach and viewed Mahana as the ugly woman everyone else saw, he’d have chased after some other woman in the village.  But Johnny Lingo saw Mahana as she could be.  And he walked by her side to help her get there.  In the end, that approach resulted in his wife being the most desirable woman on the island.

What if we took that approach to dating?  What if we started seeing each other with Johnny Lingo eyes?  How different would dating be for us?

Instead of seeing people as they are now, try seeing people as they could become and asking, “If this person were to achieve his or her potential, how attractive of a prospect would he or she be then?”  Johnny Lingo didn’t judge Mahana based on what she presented before he married her.  He judged her based on what he knew she could become, and he helped he get there.  That’s what he married, not the ugly girl hiding in a tree, but the beautiful woman who would elicit the admiration of all who saw her.

We LDS singles need to adopt this approach in dating.  We need to see with Johnny Lingo eyes.  When we do, we’ll see more opportunity all around us.  We’ll make more progress in our dating efforts.  And we’ll enjoy both our single and our married lives more.  And that will bring us more joy in our journey.

From the original Greek, a mote is a small piece of wood like a chip or splinter, but a beam is like a much larger structural member used to construct a house.  The contrast here has been applied differently but always with a play on the vast difference in perspective represented by the different size of the mote and the beam.  When applied to dating, that contrast enlightens how LDS singles can improve their dating lives.  It’s all in the lesson of the mote and the beam.

The Savior is talking here about judgment because in the previous two verses He encourages judging righteously.  And it’s a pretty simple analogy.  How do we condemn others in righteousness when we ourselves are so grossly lack righteousness?

Often we judge small imperfections in others as huge monumental issues.  But if we look inside ourselves, we’ve got issues that truly are monumental, just as a beam is monumentally larger than a mote.  “For all have sinned,” the apostle Paul declared, “and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

I know for my own self I’ve never claimed to be anything but a walking construction zone with more imperfections than Swiss cheese has holes.  So who am I to judge others for falling short when I myself am so lacking?

And that’s the point.  It’s not about refraining from making any judgments at all; it’s about recognizing how we’re all flawed and then allowing that recognition to lead us into empathy and compassion in viewing others.  Our intention turns from condemning them for their imperfections to considering how we can help them improve.

The application to dating should be obvious.  When evaluating potential dates, too often singles reject candidates based on imperfections when they themselves are certainly not paragons of perfection.

Singles often assessing those imperfections, however tiny, as monumental disqualifications.  They focus so much on having perfect they forgo the joy they could have if only they accepted good enough.  And as we’ve discussed before, you can have maximum joy with someone who’s just good enough if both of you give your all to each other.

That typically isn’t what happens, though.  Singles use whatever standards they have as a litmus test in which no imperfection is tolerated.  And since so many of us are wildly imperfect, no one passes the test, which leaves singles stuck asking where all the “good” candidates are and wondering why they can’t progress in their dating journey.

What’s the solution here?  The Savior advised us to take the beam out of our own eye first, and then we’ll see clearly to remove the mote in another’s eye.  Applied to dating that advice becomes this: Look to accept and improve yourself first, and then you’ll be better able to accept and improve a potentially good dating partner.

Instead of discarding potential candidates with their imperfections, singles should ask how they can help them to discard those imperfections.  The key here is assessing direction.  You need to allow and encourage potential partners to show they’re aligning their lives with the direction you want for your life.  If they demonstrate that willingness, you should investigate further rather than summarily rejecting them for their imperfections.

I’m not suggesting we’re interchangeable parts or that there aren’t acceptable reasons for rejecting a dating candidate.  What I am suggesting is that we need to be more accepting of imperfection in others, especially since each of us is bereft with imperfection.  The perfect partner for you is the imperfect one who’ll help you become perfect and who you in turn help to perfect.

So take in the lesson of the mote and the beam.  It may be hard at first, but you just might be surprised at how perfect for you some of those you previously judged as too imperfect actually are.  And that will bring you more joy in your journey.

These false assumptions actually create the struggle with knowing who to marry.  That’s why singles looking for the presence of yes should instead look for the absence of no.

We’re here in mortality to exercise agency.  Our choices in this life determine our situation in the next stage of our eternal journey.  We therefore bear the responsibility for our choices.  

That’s precisely why singles who look for some significant spiritual confirmation often struggle with knowing who to marry.  Insisting God provide some unmistakable sign you should marry So-and-so means God carries responsibility for that decision.  That’s not how it works, so insisting it should work that way only ends in frustration.

We’re here in mortality to make choices.  And we have responsibility for those choices.  Pushing that responsibility back to God defies His plan for His children.  Insisting on some definite spiritual sign says we don’t accept So-and-so until God tells us marrying So-and-so will work out well.  It pushes back to God the responsibility for our choices that rightly belongs to us.

We naturally want the security that would come from God revealing to us So-and-so is someone we should marry.  But that’s not how it works.  A river journey tends to go smoother when you don’t fight the current by paddling upstream.  You can paddle downstream by aligning your assumptions with eternally true principles.  Instead of fighting God’s design for mortality by pushing the responsibility for your choices onto Him, go with the way it’s supposed to work by accepting that responsibility.

Revelation from God comes after you make your own decision and then bring that decision you made to God to seek His counsel on your decision.  God will then respond with yes, no, or maybe. If He answers yes, you’ll feel the strong, unmistakable impression He approves of your decision.  If He answers no, you’ll feel a similarly unmistakable impression He doesn’t approve.  And if you don’t get any strong impression one way or the other, He answers maybe, which means He trusts you to make your own decision.

So unless the Lord answers no, you should go forward with your decision.  If He answers yes, going forward is obvious.  But you should also go forward if He answers maybe.  If your choice would take you too far away from where He wants you, God answers no.  So when He doesn’t answer no, you can walk forward in faith following through on your decision.  Only if He answers no do you need to change course.  So all you really need is the absence of no.

Singles stand in their own way when they insist on the presence of yes when approaching marriage decisions.  But that faulty assumption also retards progress at any stage of the dating journey.  So unless you get that overwhelming sense of no from the Spirit, you should include more people in your circle of friends, and you should casually date more of those friends more often.

Especially in the early stages of the dating journey, you don’t need to receive revelation for every choice you make.  Some might extend that to deciding who to marry.  Regardless of how you feel about that idea, looking for the absence of no will have you making more progress more quickly in your dating journey.

So if you’ve been waiting for the presence of yes before you move forward, it’s time to change your assumptions.  Stop looking for the presence of yes, and start looking for the absence of no.  Walk in faith the Lord will tell you when you’re traveling too far from the path He wants for you.  That walk will breathe confidence in your gait as you gain more experience.  With that experience, you’ll learn, grow, and make more and more better choices.  And that will bring you more joy in your journey.

This woman says she disavows soul mates.  But she also confesses both liking some of her current boyfriend’s traits and wishing he had other traits her former boyfriends have.    She says she’s not being picky, but when you refuse to accept good enough I beg to differ.  But how do you know when you have good enough?

In my view, this woman stands in her own way.  She’s so focused on what her potential partner has today she doesn’t seem to consider what he’ll have tomorrow.  How can you avoid confusion when you try to decide for tomorrow using only the indications of today?  Here we see the problem with position.

If you marry someone today, you don’t get the person you marry today.  The person you marry today is the one you get 5, 10, 15, 20 years down the road.  It’s not about position; it’s about direction.

I’ve seen this in all my friends who got married.  Invariably it’s the same story.  Each partner is positioned at different points along the spectrum, which can be for anything from money to children to work ethic to whatever.  As the two partners live with each other, each exerts a force on the other pulling the other closer.  Eventually, they both end up somewhere in the middle between their original positions.

The most satisfying marriages have each partner pulling the other in a desirable shared direction.  When you and your partner want to go in different directions, tension will always be in the relationship.  But when you align yourselves to go in the same direction, the energy that went into tension now goes into propelling each of you towards perfection together.  Becoming better partners makes you better people.

That’s where I see this woman having her biggest problem.  Her considerations don’t seem focused on direction.  Her comparison of different boyfriends seems focused on position, like asking, “What can my partner offer me today?”

A focus on position is incredibly shortsighted.  Your position today says nothing about your position tomorrow.  You could have the best position today, but with a bad direction, tomorrow you’ll be worse off.  Conversely, even if you’re in a very bad position today, with a good direction you’ll be in a good position tomorrow.  Position means nothing.  Direction means everything.

Yet most LDS singles assess dating partners almost universally on position.  It’s like using the wrong tool for the job.  Sure, you can fell a tree with a pocket knife, but it’d be much easier with a chain saw.  Likewise, in making a decision that will affect your life tomorrow, you should consideration where your life will be tomorrow.  Direction gives a far more accurate indication of that than does position.

Now I’m not advocating you ignore position.  You can’t progress in your dating journey without an agreeable enough partner — that’s a fundamental principle of dating.  Often that means your partner should bring something to the table today.  Having nothing to offer just doesn’t make anyone agreeable to anybody.

That said, direction always has more importance than position.  Yet in our instant gratification microwave world, we’re often not patient enough to assess a quality like direction that takes time to assess.  The problem with position is one of patience.

Patience is then the ready solution.  Get to know people.  Stay in that dreaded “friend zone” with someone, because it’s more important you like rather than love your partner.  Spend some more time getting to know more people in the casual dating stage.  That experience will help you better assess the direction of each potential partner.

And so it goes for the rest of your dating journey.  Prize direction over position by taking the time to assess direction.  With that priority, you set yourself up for success because the person you get 5, 10, 15, 20 years down the road after you marry will be more aligned with your own direction in life.  And that will bring you more joy in your journey.

Many singles hold to that assumption under the guise of having standards.  They seem to see themselves acting nobly in a chaotic dating world by adhering to their standard that insists on only the best.  But such standards actually impede progress in one’s dating journey.  So if you insist on believing you’ll be happy only with the most attractive companion, then you’re letting your standards keep you single.

How does one progress in dating?  As I discuss in my upcoming book about dating, to progress to each next stage of the journey, you must make an agreement.  No agreement means no progress.  Period.

In the first stage of the dating journey, you meet new people and build friendships.  In the next stage, you casually date candidates you’ve befriended.  These activities require openness to social interactions.  Otherwise, you’ll likely never get the agreement you need to progress from friendship to casual dating and on to exclusive dating.

But assuming you can be happy in life only if your partner is the “best” or most attractive type limits those interactions.  That faulty assumption will encourage you to engage only with those who meet your standards, because what’s the point, after all, in “wasting your time” with people who simply won’t do romantically because they aren’t the “best”?

Mathematically, it just isn’t possible for everyone to have the “best.”  Yet many singles cling tenaciously to the hope they’ll be one of the few to score just such a life partner.  After all, no one wants to accept an unhappy and unfulfilled life.

But happiness in marriage doesn’t come from what each partner has.  Happiness in marriage comes from what each partner gives to each other.  And what you give is a choice.

If your partner has to be the “best” or most attractive sort for you to be happy, then God must have really messed up His plan.  Check out these words from then Elder Gordon B Hinckley.

How can God’s plan provide happiness for all His children if 90% of people aren’t the “best” but just ordinary?  Mathematically, 90% of singles can’t each have monogamous marriage with someone from the top 10%.  At least 80% of singles will be left unhappy if only the “best” makes a happy life.  Because God wants all his children to be happy, clearly happiness must be available without having the most attractive partner.

And happiness is available to those couples who place honoring sacred covenants above personal desires by giving themselves fully to each other.  Your companion doesn’t need to be the “best” or most attractive for you to give all of yourself to that person.  Granted, it’s more easy to do the more attractive your companion is, but it’s not essential for happiness.

The resistance many feel when confronted with such a choice is the natural man or natural woman in each of us.  The natural man and woman value self-gratification more than making and keeping sacred covenants.  Covenant men and women obviously reverse that value system.

I’m not saying we’re interchangeable parts.  You shouldn’t marry just anybody, and having standards does help with decision making.  Far too many LDS singles, however, insist on standards around what really isn’t essential for lasting happiness.  Elder Gerrit W Gong has taught,

Regardless of how you justify it, when you insist on having only the most attractive type of companion, your standards keep you single.  Lowering those standards to accept more candidates into your dating pool doesn’t mean sacrificing happiness.  Rather, it increases your chances of obtaining it.  So reject the natural man and woman, open yourself to possibility, and you may find the blessings you’ve been seeking have been right in front of you all along.  And that will bring you more joy in your journey.

But it's all really good discussion that touches on many interesting points.  And that got me thinking.  Pondering that and other LDS singles posts leads me to conclude that, when it comes to dating, natural is the enemy.

You might wonder what that means.  After all, these days anything natural is in vogue.  It's associated with purity, innocence, and goodness.  How can natural be the enemy?

You don't need any mental gymnastics to answer that question in a dating context.  You need only understand the differences between natural men and women and covenant men and women.

The Book of Mormon beautifully expresses that difference.  We don't usually discuss Mosiah 3:19 in terms of dating, but it possesses perfect applicability.  Consider each of these words carefully, for this one verse teaches bibles worth of truth:

How do these words apply to dating?  Increasingly in the world, natural men and women have destroyed dating and with it the families that might have resulted.  Thinking primarily of self and following natural behavioral drivers have removed many partners from the dating scene and complicated it for those who remain.

We Latter-day Saints covenant to be in the world but not of it.  That doesn't mean the world doesn't influence us.  In fact, the behavior I see some LDS singles displaying smacks very plainly of a worldly, natural mindset.

Enticement drives the choices of natural men.  Put enough enticement in front of him, and he'll pretty much follow the carrot at the end of your stick.  Of course, all men aren't alike; some enticements enchant some men more than others.  But the concept holds true for all natural men.

Experience, namely the state of feeling desired emotions, drives the choices of natural women.  We all know natural women; they have backup boyfriends, always look to "trade up" if they can, and are ruthless with other women who they see as their competition for their desired experiences with men.

Conversely, covenant men and women value covenant living over their natural drivers.  They seek to make and keep covenants.  Covenant men still feel the natural tug of enticement, and covenant women still feel the natural tug of experience, but they don't follow after it.  They choose to value covenant living over the natural focus on self.

Natural men and women value self over covenants.  The natural woman stays single by insisting on dating only perfect men who can provide her desired experience with emotion.  Since most men aren't that, the natural man struggles with the lack of enticement, eventually opting out of dating to seek enticement in other avenues.

Thus, following natural inclinations results in rejecting opportunities to marry sufficiently good companions and create families that can further the Lord's purposes for this world.  The natural man and woman are indeed enemies to God.

In reality, no single one of us (pun intended) is completely a natural person or a covenant person.  We are each a mixture of both — good and evil, light and darkness, covenant keepers and covenant breakers.  What we choose to value determines how much we are of each.

Will we follow our natural desires when dating?  Will we insist on having only the best when an "average" option can deliver not only the maximum amount of joy it's possible to experience but also make available the covenants we need for exaltation in the eternities to come?  Will we view dating and marriage through the lens of self or through the lens of the family we will create out of that union and the generations that will follow after us?

In so many ways, natural is the enemy.  And it will always be the enemy unless the natural man or woman values covenant living over self.  Only valuing covenant living opens the heart to the Savior and His marvelous Atonement, which can transform us from natural men and women into covenant men and women.  And that will bring us more joy in our journey.

Harry has no clue what happened here.  But I do; I see very clearly what's happened.  Harry, my man!  You got played, bro.

In the comments to this post, most men think the woman was disingenuous, and most women think she was completely honest.  I think if we understood more how each gender thinks, we all might gain an increased understanding prompting greater patience.

Men think with logic.  Reason drives them to seek enticement.  Women think with emotion.  Emotion drives them to seek experience, by which I mean the experience of desired emotions as they live their life.  To understand the choices made in interactions between the sexes, we need to see those choices through each respective perspective.

From the perspective of logic, it's reasonable to expect further interactions based on positive past experience.  From that perspective, what the woman did was not honest; she's playing games.  However, from the perspective of emotion, it's just as reasonable to choose the feeling of being with someone offering enjoyable company (even if that someone is not the right type) over the feeling of being with no one.  From that perspective, what the woman did was honest; she's not playing games.

Who's right?  They both are.  That's why you have got to get good with you and the biological hardwiring in each gender's brain, because that's not going to change.  The sooner you can understand each perspective, the sooner you can accept those perspectives and get busy with what will make you more attractive and your dating journey more enjoyable.

The best way to become more attractive and enjoy your dating journey is to become the best version of you and adopt a personal ministry — your unique contribution of goodness to the world.  By improving upon yourself and giving all of yourself to your special way of improving the lives of others, you chart a course that will both best attract the type of companion that's best for you and maximize your joy along the way.

Too many LDS singles struggle with dating because they have ineffective assumptions.  It's all too common to find men and women who view singles life as something they must escape.  While understandable, that mindset is all backwards.  Trying to escape singles life suggests it's a problem, and no one wants more problems.  It also makes you look desperate, and no one really wants desperate.

Many LDS singles also don't understand the fundamentals of dating.  When they participate in dating (or what they think is dating), they trip all over themselves, ending up hurt and frustrated.  But that's to be expected when you don't understand the fundamental principles governing what you're trying to do.

When you do understand, you see your best course is to embrace singles life.  No matter how long it may be, make your singles life the best it can be.  Get good with you, make you the best you, and throw yourself into a life of contribution, a life that someone special will want to live with you.

Of course, the hardest part is to keep going without knowing how much farther until your journey ends.  But you must keep going, because the moment you quit is the moment you lose all attractiveness, the currency you need to secure the agreements required for progress in your dating journey.

You can't avoid the difficulties surrounding not knowing when your dating journey will end, but you can avoid many other difficulties in that journey with more frequent, higher quality communication.  We all need to assume less and ask more.

Harry, I'm truly sorry you got played, bro.  Yes, it hurts, but you minimize your future pain when you get good with you, chart your course, and then stay your course.  Understand how each gender thinks and what drives their choices.  Stop trying to escape singles life and start embracing it.  When you do, you'll start living your best life.  And that will bring you more joy in your journey.