At some point in my single years, a very handsome co-worker asked me out on a dinner date. But, instead of taking me out to a restaurant that evening, he surprised me by preparing a gourmet meal for us at his house. The food was amazing and we had a lot of great conversation. But then without warning, he began making strong advances. Before I knew what hit me, he was leading me toward the bedroom.

I had been doing my best to live a chaste single life and I knew if I took one step further down that hallway with him, I was going to lose the battle. So instead of letting the situation get out of control, I decided I would change it into something different.

I stopped, turned around and led him back to the living room where I grabbed a board game from his bookshelf. Then I sat down on the floor with a pillow and invited him to play the game with me. He hemmed and hawed and reluctantly gave in, but he softened up in no time. After a couple of hours, it was time for me to go. As I walked out the door he said to me, “That was the best first date I’ve ever had, thanks.”

Imagine, this guy had never had a date that didn’t involve sex, and that was back in the 1990’s. These days, the hook-up culture and cohabitation is normal. A frightening statistic reveals that for millennials, the time between meeting each other and having sex often takes 10 texts or less. Our kids are up against something unthinkable and the understanding of what makes a lasting marriage is rapidly disappearing. We, as parents, must explain the real purpose of dating to our children and give them some effective marriage preparation, because the world we are sending them out into is a ravenous, insatiable, sex-saturated world. If we want our teenagers to blossom as confident, happy adults who are capable of having a lasting marriage, we need to teach them what the true purpose of dating is. Here are a few suggestions for helping teens date the right way:

1 – Teach Them Human Sexuality Is A Good Thing

A big message I try to get across to my kids is that sex is a good thing if it’s used the way God intended, which touches upon some of the key points of wisdom from Saint John Paul II’s, Theology of the Body. In this insightful work, he explains that God created Adam and Eve as a gift for each other, and through their masculinity and femininity they were able to express their gift to each other. The pope called this the “nuptial” meaning of the body. This experience of total freedom and innocence in giving oneself to another can only be realized in marriage.

When sex is experienced outside of marriage, there is no freedom or innocence; it’s all about receiving pleasure. This is how a lover becomes a user; where the giving of the gift turns into taking an object and using it for self-gratification. Under these circumstances, a woman is not giving her body as a gift to the man or vice versa; she is using his body for her own pleasure, and he uses hers for his. When you explain this to an adolescent or a teenager, it’s really striking how easily this clicks for them.

2 – Dating Later Is Better

Since the real purpose of dating is for two people to discover whether or not they’re suited to each other for marriage, dating as 13, 14 or 15 year-olds really has no real purpose except inviting trouble. Although the teen pregnancy rate has been declining in the last decade, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services reports that the U.S. teen birth rate is higher than that of many other developed countries, including Canada and the United Kingdom.

Waiting to begin dating until age 17 or 18 also brings with it more maturity than younger teens can contribute, especially if the older teen has had a lifetime of seeing Mom and Dad live a good marriage.

There is great joy in understanding the truth and beauty of how God created our bodies as something good, and his purpose and design for them is also something very good. This sends the right message and helps them understand that waiting to date and saving sex for marriage is a good thing. They will be able to face the world and all it’s distortions with confidence, and it will be much harder for them to be swept away by the tide of sexual immorality and their chances of having happy, healthy, lasting marriages is huge.