I haven’t done so hot in this arena truth be told. I usually end up with guys who love and care about me but who have varying fundamental differences that ultimately make us incompatible. It’s tough because at my age I have begun feeling and hearing the tick of my internal clock. And I know I’m young, but Haley so kindly reminded me that once I reach 34/35 in 2 – 3 years, a pregnancy will be considered high risk. I’m over her and bad dating connections!

Dating while parenting is super tricky. I have to remember to set a good example and to think through my dating choices with supreme scrutiny. I can’t get swept up too soon or fall in love with reckless abandonment or throw caution to the wind (things that my personality would prefer to do) because I have to think about the entire picture. It’s not just about my life. It’s about my daughters life too. Will she be comfortable with him? Will they get along? Will I be comfortable with him taking a parental role in her life? Will the dynamic change too drastically to make a blended family work? So many cautionary thoughts plague me, yet I keep putting myself out there. Why?

I recently told a guy in response to him saying that he was intense, “LOL I’m a Scorpio, I live for intense. I’m just looking for my last intense love that’s all.” That text packed so much truth for me. Way more truth than I initially realized I was sharing.

While I don’t subscribe to the in’s and out’s of astrology, I have found one thing to be true: People born under “Scorpio” have intense personalities. Something about them draws you in. And likewise, they are drawn into intense connections. They do many things in extremes especially when it comes to love. What my text revealed for me is that my love relationships have to be intense in order for me to even be interested. There has to be an intensity about the person. He has to be passionate about something and enjoy throwing himself into his interests and goals. I can just about name every real relationship that I have been in was with someone who was intense.

That text also revealed that I’m done playing games for real. That I’m not even getting involved with you if this can’t be it for us. I want that last intense love. I want to know that my person, who ever he is, isn’t turned off by my desire to love him and to be loved as fully and as humanly possible. I don’t want excuses, I don’t want waiting games and or even a rush to the finish line (marriage), I just want a guy who is ready for what I have to offer.

That level of intensity poses a problem though. You guessed it, I’m a mama. A future clergymama at that. That intensity might work for us in a bubble, but I don’t know how that works with Haley because it’s blown up in my face twice now. Two intense relationships that ultimately didn’t last because there was more to the story than just us. Thankfully, it wasn’t because Haley couldn’t or didn’t fit into the picture but because we couldn’t reconcile our energy in ways that were conducive to a successful relationship. Yes, everything about being and wanting an intense relationship isn’t good. Sometimes you don’t know when to stop arguing or how to let something go. Sometimes you get tunnel vision and miss the fact that you and that person don’t even have the same moral standards. Sometimes you get so sucked into the light that it burns you.

That level of extreme draw and magnetism can hurt you. So, I have trouble dating while parenting because I’m like a moth to a flame. But there’s still something very alluring to me about the passion and shear joy that comes along with finding your forever person, someone who will throw themselves into being with you as much as you throw yourself into being with them.

As a future clergymama, this packs a double whammy for me. I’m already deeply devoted to ministry in ways I never knew were possible. Will I have more to give? Will they understand my devotion to God’s service and to the service of others? Will he be interested in supporting that? Or will it just be for me? Of course I want someone who is supportive of the work I will do within the church but I also want them to have their own thing if ministry is not their calling.

Ultimately, I trust God to lead me because God has this love thing on lock. And the way God loves me so intensely, I know that there is a human version of that somewhere out there for me.