I sort of came of age in the late 90s and early 00s, when Joshua Harris's book "I Kissed Dating Goodbye" was all the rage.  He recently came out as an atheist and he's getting a divorce, which I schadenfreuded.  It's fun to watch popular people fall, especially when they become the very thing they railed against. 

But on closer inspection, he's not all bad.  A lot of people felt duped or damaged by his relationship advice, and that's fair.  But my takeaway from his book was that dating is kind of stupid when there's no goal involved.  It's kind of like just spending your feelings on someone and eventually getting your heart broken.  His whole philosophy as I understood it was to date with purpose, that purpose being marriage.  It made sense to younger Christian me, and it still makes sense to older atheist me.  I'm no longer as big a fan of the purity culture crap -- abstinence and promise rings and the like.  And maybe I'm just too practical to be a casual dater (also I'm an antisocial dork).  But I latched onto the idea of dating with the intent to get married.  It worked out for me. #religion