A quote from Dr. Henry Cloud (actually excerpts from an article)

Well, I just don't have time for all this dating. I only want to go out with someone I could marry. Isn't that the purpose of dating? To find a mate?"NO! NO! NO!" I said, literally jumping up and down on the stage. If I could have screamed louder without breaking the microphone, I would have. "That is not the sole purpose of dating! Haven't you heard anything I've said?"
"Dating is as much about learning what you need and want, and how you need to grow and change, as it is about finding the "right" person."

Look at it this way. Tiger Woods grew up with the goal of winning more major golf tournaments than anyone in history. He wanted to win more U.S. Opens, Masters, PGAs, and British Opens than Jack Nicklaus did. What if Tiger had said early on, "I will not play in any other tournament than the U.S. Open." Ridiculous. What if any other athlete said, "I will only play in the Super Bowl, or the World Series." That's crazy. Or what if a medical student said, "I will only take the ultimate job in my life's career? I will not work at anything less than that." I would not want to go to that surgeon.

Some people approach dating like that. They think they know what they need, what they want, or who they need to be. I want you to join me in taking a hard look at your dating philosophy. If you have seen it as only a search for the love of your life, then I want you to make some shifts in your thinking. I want you to see dating in a very, very different way.

Dating is an opportunity to meet and get to know many different kinds of people. Expect dating to expand your view of what is good and what you find attractive in the opposite sex. Stop evaluating women and men by some criteria they have to pass or fail, and just observe, notice, and get to know them instead. You will find valuable things you may never have seen before.

Date to have fun. Date to learn. Date to experience things. If you are only dating to marry, you are not experiencing life, and you are missing out on knowing a lot of good people along the way.

See dating as an opportunity to grow in skills.
Dating is a place to practice how to relate to other people. If you know you need to be more direct, for example, practice with your dates. If you need to learn how to open up and talk about yourself, your feelings, and your wants, practice it in dating. If you need to learn how to confront others and deal with conflict, practice it in dating. Or maybe you need to learn how to deny yourself, listen to others, or be less self-centered. Dating is a place where you can bring all the parts of you that need spiritual growth.

If you never learn basic relationship skills before that special someone comes along, you are in trouble. You will not be able to do what you need to do in the relationship that matters most, and you may ruin it. In addition, if you don't learn mature relational skills, you will probably fall in love out of your dysfunction. So, use low-risk dating as a place to practice being a more mature person.

Changing your goal and expectations of dating from looking for a mate to learning and experiencing will do wonderful things for you. You are probably not ready to marry if you have always demanded that dating was for serious relationships only. Begin by taking the following pledge:
I will date as an end in and of itself. I will no longer see dating as a place only to find a mate, but as a place to learn, grow, experience, and serve other people. It is my new laboratory of learning, growth, and experience.

That is the first step in this program. See dating as a place not to find a mate but to learn and have fun.

Excerpted from http://www.christianitytoday.com/singles/newsletter/mind50601.html and originally from: How to Get a Date Worth Keeping. © 2005 by Dr. Henry Cloud. Used by permission of Zondervan.

Boundaries Chapter 4

If you do any of the following, then you may be giving up boundaries because of a fear of being alone:

• Putting up with behavior that is disrespectful
• Giving into things that are not in accord with your values
• Settling for less than you know you really desire or need
• Staying in a relationship that you know has passed its deadline
• Going back into a relationship that you know should be over
• Getting into a relationship that you know is not going anywhere
• Smothering the person you are dating with excessive needs or control

Surely there are other signs as well, but the point is, your dating is ruled by your internal solution, rather than by your God, goals, values, and spiritual commitments. Your aloneness makes you get involved in relationships that you know are not going to last. It also keeps you from being alone long enough to grow into a person who does not have to be in a relationship in order to be happy. There is a very important rule in dating and romance: To be happy in a relationship, and to pick the kind of relationship that is going to be the kind you desire, you must be able to be happy without one.

If you must be dating or married in order to be happy, you are dependent, and you will never be happy with whatever person you find. The dependency will keep you from being selective enough to find the kind of person who will be good for you, or will keep you from being able to fully relaize a relationship with a healthy person. If you are afraid of aloneness and abandonment, you cannot use the love of people who are truly there until you deal with your own fears.

So, aloneness must be cured first, and this is a good boundary for dating. Here is the boundary: In order to cure your fear of being alone, you need to put a boundary around your wish for a relationship. Cure that fear first, and THEN find a relationship.

How do you do that? First strengthen your relationship with God. Make him your first priority so that you are not trying to get God needs met by a relationship with a person.

Second, strengthen your relationship with safe, healthy Christians. Make sure you are not trying to get your people needs met by a dating relationship, or by God. Yes, you need God, but you also need people.

If you try to have a romantic relationship meet your needs for healing, it is not going to work. You need a support system to ground you so that you can make choices out of strength, not weakness or dependency.