Please know that I don't hate romance. I don't believe that relationships are bad, only that they have their need place and priority level.

Ladies, girls, females of all life stages: please stop looking for your completion in a man. Maybe it's the overly photographed, idealistic world we live in. Maybe it's the hormones. Maybe we're just wired this way- but the truth is that our knack for over-exaggerating our flaws cannot be fixed through chasing after a mate.

As women, we are constantly compared and criticized. When asked by well meaning onlookers, everything seems to come back to our singleness and its surely impending end. So maybe it isn't a surprise that we assume all of our problems would be fixed (or at least made less worrisome) if we only had someone by our side. We're lonely, insecure, and scared. We ache for fulfillment, strength, hope, comfort, and peace. The problem is simply that we're looking in all of the wrong places.

When we date out of a sense of need, we find nothing of value. Dating someone so that they can complete you is setting them up for failure. There are some things that no man - no matter how blue his eyes are or how sweetly he smiles - can do. There are some weights that will simply buckle any man on earth, no matter how strong his will power is.

We can't get in a relationship because we want to feel wanted.

Romans 5:8 says that while we were at our messiest, God the Father saw so much value in us that He let His Son to make us clean. THAT is being wanted. There may be boyfriends that breeze in and out of our lives, but no one will ever see our darkest moments as clearly and still love us as strongly as our heavenly Father. If we try to find our value in all the wrong places, we are only widening the void in our hearts.

We can't get in a relationship because we need to feel safe.

We live in a world of constant change. People, circumstances, and feelings are all so fickle; we can not place something as our hearts in the care of something so temporary. No matter how sweet the guys in our lives may seem, nor how protective they may be, sometimes (even without trying) they hurt us.

Some of us have been raised in a world that hasn't been very stable, and like any sane drownding person we cling to the first solid thing we can find. Ladies, it can't be him. We have a problem that spans for our eternity- to patch our internal conflicts with our new relationships would be futile. It's like putting a band aid on a bullet hole.

When we try to calm the ache in our chest with a new man, we ignore the bigger problem. Jesus saw our hurt, and He has offered us a healing that is transcends temporary. Even in some of the oldest scriptures, God speaks to us saying He will NEVER "leave or forsake us". Who would know us better than the One who made us? We have already been given us everything we need to live this life (check out 2 Peter 1:3).

Our problem is not that we need another person. Our problem is not that we need someone to love us, accept us, comfort us, or heal us. Our problem is our own brokenness- and Jesus has already provided us a solution.

Don't confuse the cause of your hurt. Give Jesus your heart.