Date... or Soul Mate? ❤️
The dating book that started as something I read with a boyfriend... and ended up helping me understand why I needed to break up with him. 😂
Yes, Fantasy Fred and I read a dating book together. Very romantic. 😂
Date... or Soul Mate? by Neil Clark Warren is one of those books that genuinely changed the way I think about dating.
Funny enough, I didn't originally discover it because I was single, heartbroken, and dramatically wandering through a bookstore searching for answers.
Someone recommended it to Fantasy Fred and me while we were dating.
Which, looking back, is kind of funny.
Here we were in an actual relationship, reading a book about how to know whether someone was a good person to pursue.
You know. Casual couple reading. 😂
But as we started working through parts of it, something unexpected happened.
The book didn't just make me think more carefully about Fred.
It made me realize how many things I didn't know about myself.
I thought I knew what I wanted in a relationship.
And in a general sense, I did.
I wanted someone kind. Faithful. Honest. Someone I loved. Someone who wanted marriage and family.
But when I started getting more specific?
Hmm...
Apparently “I want a good guy” was not quite the complete dating strategy I thought it was. 😂
The book started asking the kinds of questions that made me slow down.
What did I really value?
What kind of life did I want?
What qualities did I genuinely need in the person I married?
What things could I compromise on?
And what things would actually make it difficult for me to build the marriage I wanted?
Those questions became especially important because, by that point, there were already things in my relationship with Fantasy Fred that didn't quite fit.
There were differences I had noticed.
There were things that had made me uncomfortable.
There were things I had already admitted mattered to me... and yet because I cared about him, I was very good at asking:
“Could I make this work?”
This book helped me start asking a much better question:
“Does this relationship actually fit the life I'm trying to build?”
The Ideas That Changed the Way I Date
I'm not trying to summarize the entire book here. These are the ideas that became tools in my own dating life.
Know Yourself Before You Try to Choose Someone Else
Turns out compatibility is a little hard to evaluate when I'm not completely sure what I'm trying to be compatible with. 😂
One of the biggest things this book did for me was turn the questions inward.
Dating can make it really easy to focus on evaluating the person sitting across from me.
Do I like him?
Is he funny?
Is there chemistry?
Does he like me?
Could I see this going somewhere?
But there was another person in every one of those relationships who needed to be understood too:
Me.
If I don't understand my own values, fears, dreams, personality, needs, patterns, strengths, and weaknesses, then it becomes much harder to recognize whether another person actually fits well beside me.
Self-awareness isn't separate from dating. It's part of dating well.
The clearer I am about who I am and the life I'm trying to build, the easier it becomes to recognize what kind of relationship could actually support that life.
How well do I actually know myself?
The 20 Questions That Made Me Slow Down
Apparently I had spent a lot of time thinking about who I wanted... and not nearly as much time thinking about who I was. 😂
One of the exercises that affected me most was the self-discovery portion of the book.
The questions pushed me to think about things I didn't normally connect with dating.
Who mattered most to me?
What made me feel loved?
What made me feel safe?
What brought out the happiest version of me?
What were my fears?
What did conflict look like for me?
What did I want my life to ultimately mean?
Right before Fantasy Fred and I broke up, I finally sat down and really worked through those kinds of questions.
And they helped me see myself more clearly.
Sometimes the most helpful dating questions aren't questions I need to ask the person I'm dating.
They're questions I need to ask myself.
Those answers helped me recognize patterns in what mattered to me, what kind of environment helped me thrive, and what I wanted my future relationship to feel like.
20 Questions to Help You Know Yourself Better ✏️
I turned my own paraphrased takeaways from this exercise into a work-along Dating Toolbox page so you can slow down and answer them too.
Know What Actually Matters to You
“Nice, cute, funny, and likes me” probably shouldn't be the entire list. 😂
This book also pushed me to get much more specific about the qualities I wanted in a future spouse.
Before, I had preferences and general ideas.
But I didn't really have a clear framework for separating:
“This would be nice...”
from:
“This genuinely matters to the kind of marriage I want.”
That distinction became huge for me.
Because attraction can make preferences feel incredibly important.
And liking someone can somehow make actual dealbreakers start looking suspiciously negotiable. 😂
I needed to know the difference between a preference and a value.
Preferences can bend.
Values help determine the kind of life and relationship I'm actually capable of building with someone.
My 10 Must-Haves + 10 Cannots
Basically my dating grocery list—but significantly more important than remembering milk. 😂
One of the biggest things I eventually created from what I was learning was my list of 10 Must-Haves and 10 Cannots.
My Must-Haves are qualities or values that I genuinely believe need to be present in the relationship and person I marry.
My Cannots are things I know I cannot build the kind of marriage I want around.
It isn't a “design the perfect husband” exercise.
It's a clarity exercise.
And that distinction matters.
If I wait until I'm already deeply attached to decide what my dealbreakers are, I become extremely talented at negotiating with myself.
Suddenly I can explain just about anything. 😂
Having the list gave me something to come back to when my emotions were louder than my clarity.
Create Your Own 10 Must-Haves + 10 Cannots
I made a full Dating Toolbox exercise that walks through how I created mine and how to separate actual values from things that would simply be nice to have.
Compatibility Is More Than Liking Each Other
Two good people can genuinely care about each other and still not be the best people to build a life together.
This might be one of the harder lessons I had to learn.
Fantasy Fred wasn't some terrible person I needed a checklist to protect myself from.
There were things I genuinely liked about him.
We had shared interests.
We had meaningful conversations.
We had fun together.
He became my first official boyfriend after my mission, and that relationship mattered to me.
But liking someone isn't the only question.
As I got clearer about myself and my list, I started seeing places where our lives, needs, stages, and important values weren't lining up the way I needed them to.
A relationship doesn't have to be horrible for it to be wrong for me.
I don't need to prove that someone is a bad person in order to acknowledge that we aren't a good fit.
Compatibility isn't about deciding who is good or bad. It's about whether two people's lives actually fit well enough to build something healthy together.
Stop Asking Only, “Could I Make This Work?”
Because if I really like someone, the answer to that question is almost always, “Well...probably if I try hard enough.” 😂
This became one of the biggest changes in my dating mindset.
I used to spend a lot of energy asking whether I could make a relationship work.
And technically?
People can make a lot of things work.
We can adjust.
Compromise.
Explain.
Justify.
Shrink something that matters to us until it seems manageable.
But that isn't always the healthiest question.
Does this actually fit the life I'm trying to build?
I want to choose a relationship because the important things align, not because I've proven I'm capable of tolerating the places they don't.
The Book Didn't Make the Decision for Me
Right before Fantasy Fred and I broke up, I took time to really work through the self-discovery questions and think carefully about my list.
I wrote.
I reflected.
I thought about what I wanted my marriage and future life to look like.
And then I looked at the relationship I was actually in.
Not the version I hoped it could become.
Not the version that might exist if certain things changed.
The relationship that actually existed.
And I had to admit that some of the things on my list weren't lining up.
That didn't make ending the relationship easy.
I cared about Fred.
Ending something with a good person can still hurt.
But for the first time, I felt like I had more than a vague feeling of, “I don't know if this is right.”
I had language for what mattered to me.
I understood myself better.
And I had greater confidence that ending the relationship wasn't me being too picky or giving up on something good.
I was recognizing that a person could be good, a relationship could contain genuinely good things, and it could still not align with the life I felt I was supposed to build.
That clarity mattered tremendously when I ultimately chose to walk away.
Why This Book Changed My Dating Journey ❤️
Date... or Soul Mate? didn't hand me the name of the person I'm supposed to marry.
Honestly, that would have made the book significantly shorter. 😂
What it gave me was something I think I needed first.
Clarity.
Clarity about myself.
Clarity about what matters to me.
Clarity about the difference between preferences and values.
Clarity about what I could compromise on—and what I shouldn't keep trying to explain away simply because I really liked someone.
And maybe most importantly, it taught me that dating isn't only about finding someone who chooses me.
I'm choosing too.
I'm choosing the kind of person I want beside me.
I'm choosing the kind of relationship I want to build.
And those choices become a whole lot easier to make when I know who I am, what matters to me, and where I'm trying to go.
Maybe the question isn't only, “Is this my person?”
Sometimes I need to start with:
“Do I know myself well enough to recognize the relationship that's right for me?”
📚 Date... or Soul Mate?
This is one of the books that genuinely earned a permanent place in my Dating Toolbox.
If you read it, I especially recommend actually stopping and doing the exercises instead of only reading past them.
I learned a lot from the words in this book—but some of the biggest changes came from finally sitting down and answering the questions for myself.
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