Christian Dating Hooks

My friend sent me an article by screenwriter Steven Pressfield about “hooks”:

A hook is a “an action or statement designed to provoke a response.” In his context, blocked creatives try to provoke a response from famous or working artists by making an emotional appeal.

It turns out there are also Christian dating hooks—manipulative ploys to draw you in when you should be running at speed in the opposite direction. I know. I’ve dated him.

Although many hooks might seem harmless, at heart they are deceptively bent on control. Here are some common tropes:

1. You’re single, I’m single, we both love Jesus —

Yes, a friend did once message me on Facebook to let me know that although he had never thought of me “in that way” before, not only were we both still single at the time, but he also happened to find me attractive. Yay? I suppose this is the Christian version of being the last two people at the bar when it closes.

The message is clear: Settle for me. It doesn’t matter if we are compatible as long as we’re both Christian and I think you’re hot. Enough.

2. I’m a Good Christian Guy/Girl.

Closely related to the previous point, the person throwing this hook believes deeply in their own personal worthiness—not just in the eyes of the Lord, but in the eyes of all eligible single Christian men or women. Really, you have no right to turn them down:

“I paid my dues. I read my Bible. I go to church. I go to small group. You are the spouse that God owes me. You meet 95.68% of my criteria, and I’m willing to forgive you in advance for the other 4.32%.”

Turn this person down and risk the wrath of the righteous and morally well-endowed.

3. I’m attracted to you, therefore you are responsible for my feelings.

For whatever reason, Christian dating tends to always cast the object of attraction as some inscrutable Other. Less than a real person, but somehow also writ-large as the projection of all your hopes and dreams for marriage, for children, for sex, suddenly this person is the object of a strange and baffling hatred.

4. “Would you pray for me?” He sighs deeply. “I’m going through a hard time.”

Of course, this hook only applies if the hook-thrower is always going through a hard time—if they never have their sh*t together, so to speak. It’s okay not to have your sh*t together. It’s less okay to use this as an excuse to draw the other person into a tangled web of codependency and tears.

“But I need you. I’m helpless emotionally without you.” If a man or woman who has long since reached adulthood is trying to convince you that he or she “needs” you to cope emotionally, this is not a good sign. You are not a security blanket for adult men or grown-ass women—which incidentally sounds like some kind of odd sexual fetish.

5. I’m your knight in shining armor.

Points if the hook-thrower uses #4 and #5 to hook you into a relationship, making themselves both victim and savior.

I feel like this is actually a gender-neutral trope — saviors come in all shapes and sizes, from the friend who wants to help you get over your sordid, unladylike past, to the boyfriend who insists on paying for everything and wants to buy you a Fiat because you once said in passing that you thought they were adorable (they are).

6. You make me feel at home.

This one’s tricky. In healthy relationships, you do feel at home with your partner. However, as a hook, this always implies that he/she only feels at home with you. You are the one bright spot in his life. You are the best thing that ever happened to her.

The unspoken corollary to this is that you are always responsible for your partner’s feelings. If she feels wonderful, you will feel like the sun around which her world orbits; if he feels like sh*t, he will destroy you.

7. I want to be your friend / your boyfriend / your friend / your boyfriend / your friend. Remember? Before you explicitly rejected me, I said I just wanted to be friends.

Some men seem to possess the odd belief that remaining noncommittal in all things will keep them as pure as the pages of the KJV—I mean, safe from rejection. You can never pin them down on anything, but they seem oddly hurt when you start dating someone else.

8. No one else will ever love you as much as I love you.

“Our love is perfect. You are perfect. We are perfect together.” I don’t see this as a specifically Christian hook, however, it’s often trotted out at the end of the relationship to justify the hook-thrower’s obsessive pursuit.

It demonstrates the “two-sides of the same coin” nature of most Christian dating hooks—”love” is actually control in disguise. And so the hidden threat of “No one else will ever love you,” which means, ultimately, “You are worthless and unworthy of being loved—but I, in my magnanimity, I will love you.”

9. I’m only trying to help you.

Hidden behind this altruistic statement is the implicit, “There is something wrong with you, but if you would only let me help you, we can fix it together”—making a deal with a devil because God is absent—allowing Alymer to remove the single blemish on your flawless complexion. Don’t worry. It won’t hurt at all. I just want you to be who you were meant to be. Can’t you see how much I love you?