“I don’t want to pursue a man. But I also feel like I’m just sitting here waiting for something that never happens.”

I hear this constantly from Catholic women. They want to be pursued—and there’s something beautiful about that desire—but they’re also tired of passively waiting for men who never make a move.

Here’s what I want you to know: there’s a huge middle ground between aggressive pursuit and complete passivity. And learning to live in that middle ground might change everything.

What Encouraging Is Not

Let me be clear about what I’m NOT suggesting:

• Asking men out

• Making the first move romantically

• Chasing someone who’s clearly not interested

• Doing his job for him

If a man is interested, he should eventually step up and pursue. That’s the traditional script, and I think there’s wisdom in it. A man who won’t initiate is often a man who won’t lead.

What Encouraging Actually Looks Like

But encouraging? That’s different. Encouraging is removing unnecessary barriers. It’s signaling openness. It’s being approachable rather than waiting to be approached.

It looks like:

Staying to talk after events. If you immediately leave, he never has a natural opportunity. If you linger, you create space for conversation to happen.

Asking about his life. “How was your week?” is not pursuit. It’s basic human friendliness. And it gives him an opening to extend the conversation.

Being warm, not just polite. There’s a difference between “fine, thanks” and “It was good! I actually just started this new hobby that I’m really excited about.” One closes doors. One opens them.

Making eye contact and smiling. This sounds elementary, but so many women tell me they look away when an attractive man looks at them. Your eyes are communication. Use them.

Mentioning you’re available. “I’ve been thinking about checking out that new restaurant but I never have anyone to go with” is not pursuit. It’s information that lowers his risk.

The Church teaches that men and women are complementary—designed to draw out the best in each other (cf. Mulieris Dignitatem). Drawing out sometimes means making it easier for someone to take a risk.

Why Men Need This

I’ve written before about why men are hesitant to initiate. The short version: rejection is painful, the culture is confusing, and many men have decided the risk isn’t worth it.

Encouragement reduces the risk.

When you’re warm and open, he thinks: “Maybe she won’t reject me.”

When you ask about his life, he thinks: “She seems interested in talking to me.”

When you mention you’re available, he thinks: “She might actually say yes.”

None of this requires you to pursue. All of it makes pursuit more likely.

A Practical Example

Here’s the difference in practice:

Passive: He says hi after Mass. You say hi back and immediately start talking to your friend.

Encouraging: He says hi after Mass. You say hi, ask how he’s doing, mention you’re checking out the new coffee shop after—”you should come if you want!”

The second version isn’t pursuit. You haven’t asked him on a date. But you’ve created an opportunity and expressed that you’d welcome his company. That’s encouragement.

If he doesn’t take the hint after multiple clear signals? Then you know something about his interest level (or his courage), and you can invest your energy elsewhere.

The Mindset Shift

Instead of thinking “he should notice me and make a move,” try thinking “I’m going to be the kind of person who’s easy to talk to.”

Instead of “I refuse to do any work here,” try “I’ll make it easier for him, and he can take it from there.”

Instead of “if he really liked me, he’d figure it out,” try “interested men still need encouragement, and giving it doesn’t diminish me.”

The goal isn’t to chase. The goal is to be genuinely open—and to communicate that openness in ways he can actually read.

Your Homework

This week, pick one specific thing you’ll do to be more encouraging:

• Stay 15 minutes after the next event and actually talk to people

• Ask a specific man how his week has been

• Make eye contact and smile at someone who interests you

• Mention an activity you’d love company for

You’re not pursuing. You’re opening a door.

What he does with that open door is up to him. But at least you’ll know you gave him a fair chance to walk through it.

This is part of a series on “Male Isolation”

In Him,

Katie

Katie Palitto is a Catholic relationship coach and the creator of Game of Love dating app on how find true love.

I hear this a lot from women: “There’s this guy at my parish who gives me weird vibes.”

Sometimes—genuinely—something is off, and you should trust your instincts.

But sometimes? The “weird vibe” is just a socially awkward man who has no idea how to talk to women he finds attractive.

And I think we need to learn to tell the difference.

The Awkwardness Spectrum

Here’s what nervous often looks like:

• Avoiding eye contact (or making too much)

• Saying something that doesn’t quite land, then getting flustered

• Standing near you but not talking to you

• Starting a conversation and then not knowing how to end it

• Laughing at the wrong moments

• Being overly formal or stiff

Here’s what actually concerning looks like:

• Ignoring your clear signals that you want space

• Following you or showing up where you didn’t expect

• Making comments about your body or appearance that feel invasive

• Getting angry or hostile when you’re not interested

These are different things. But in a culture primed to see male attention as threatening, they can feel similar if you’re not paying attention.

What’s Happening on His Side

Let me tell you what’s probably happening inside that awkward guy:

He likes you. Or he thinks he might like you. And he has absolutely no idea what to do about it.

He didn’t grow up learning how to talk to women. His dad didn’t model it. His friends are as clueless as he is. The culture tells him that showing interest is problematic, but also that he’s supposed to initiate, but also that he should wait for signals, but also that he shouldn’t overthink things.

So he shows up to the young adult event, sees you, panics, and does something awkward.

Then he goes home and replays it for three days.

This man is not a threat to your safety. He’s a man who never learned social skills and is doing his imperfect best.

Why This Matters

I think many women don’t realize how many good men they’ve written off because of awkwardness.

The confident, smooth guy who knows exactly what to say? He’s had practice. Lots of practice. That might mean he’s naturally gifted socially, or it might mean he’s been with dozens of women and knows the script.

The awkward guy who doesn’t know what to do with his hands when he talks to you? He might be the faithful Catholic man who’s spent his twenties focused on work and prayer and has barely talked to women outside of work.

I’m not saying confident men are bad or awkward men are automatically good. I’m saying: don’t let surface-level smoothness be your only filter.

The Grace We All Need

The Catechism tells us that charity requires us to think well of others when possible (cf. CCC 2478). This doesn’t mean ignoring red flags. But it does mean extending the benefit of the doubt.

What if, instead of “that guy is weird,” you thought “that guy seems nervous”?

What if, instead of avoiding him, you gave him an extra moment of patience?

I’m not saying you owe anyone your time or attention. But I am saying: awkward men are often good men who never learned the social scripts. And good men are increasingly rare.

A Personal Story

A client once told me she almost didn’t go on a second date with her now-husband because the first date was so awkward. “He spilled water, couldn’t maintain a conversation, and literally tripped walking me to my car.”

She almost wrote him off. But something made her say yes to date two.

On the second date, he was still nervous but slightly less so. By date five, he was actually fun. By date twenty, she was in love.

“He just needed someone to give him a chance to relax,” she said. “Once he realized I wasn’t going to reject him, the real him came out.”

The real him was kind, faithful, hilarious, and devoted. He just took a while to show up.

What You Can Do

If a man at church is awkward around you, try this:

Be warm but clear. Smile. Make normal conversation. If you’re not interested, that’s fine—just be kind about it.

Don’t punish nervousness. If he says something weird, give him a gracious out rather than making him feel worse.

Look past the surface. Ask yourself: Is this man actually problematic, or is he just nervous? They look different if you pay attention.

The Church needs married couples. Good men need chances to be seen. And sometimes, the path to love runs through a few awkward conversations with someone who just needed a little grace.

This is part of a series on “Male Isolation”

In Him,

Katie

Katie Palitto is a Catholic relationship coach and the creator of free dating app Game of Love.

Ladies, I need to tell you something you probably don’t fully understand:

The fear of rejection that men carry around dating is different from yours. Not worse—but different in a way that matters.

When a man approaches a woman and gets rejected, he’s not just being told “no.” He’s being told something about his value as a person. At least, that’s how it feels.

I’m writing this because I think there’s a disconnect between what women experience and what men experience in the early stages of dating. And that disconnect is leaving a lot of good people alone.

The Weight of Initiation

Here’s the script that runs in a man’s head before he approaches you:

She’s going to think I’m weird.

She probably has a boyfriend.

I’m not good-looking enough.

She’s going to tell her friends and laugh.

I’ll be “that creepy guy” who hit on her.

If she says no, everyone will see.

This isn’t exaggeration. This is what my male clients tell me. Every single time they consider approaching someone, they’re running this gauntlet.

Now multiply this by every approach, in a culture that increasingly tells men their interest is unwanted. And you’ll start to understand why so many men have simply stopped trying.

It’s Not Just “No”

Women often think rejection means: “She wasn’t interested. Move on. Try someone else.”

For men, rejection often feels like: “You’re not enough. You misread the situation. You made her uncomfortable. You’re the problem.”

One client told me about approaching a woman at a young adult event. She said “thanks, but no thanks” politely enough. But he felt humiliated for weeks. “I kept replaying it,” he said. “Wondering what was wrong with me that made her say no.”

Was her rejection actually about him? Probably not. She might have been dating someone, or not in a good headspace, or just not attracted to him (which is fine). But rejection hits the male psyche in a particular way—a way that can make them avoid the risk entirely next time.

The Modern Amplification

This has always been hard. But it’s harder now.

Men today are navigating a world where they’re told:

• Approaching women is intrusive

• “Cold approaches” are creepy

• She’ll let you know if she’s interested

• Wait for clear signals before making a move

Some of this is reasonable. Some of it creates paralysis.

A man who takes the risk of initiating is increasingly seen as problematic rather than courageous. So many men have decided: why bother?

I’m not saying we should go back to men aggressively pursuing women who aren’t interested. But somewhere between harassment and total passivity, there’s a healthy middle ground where men can express interest and women can respond—and we’ve lost it.

Why This Matters to You

If you’re a woman wondering why godly men aren’t asking you out, this is part of the answer.

It’s not that they don’t see you. It’s that the cost of being wrong feels too high.

The man at your parish who makes eye contact and then looks away? He might be working up courage that he’ll never quite find.

The guy in your young adult group who talks to everyone but never asks anyone out? He might have been burned before and decided it wasn’t worth the risk.

The coworker who’s clearly interested but won’t make a move? He might be terrified of being seen as inappropriate.

What Can Help

I’ll write more about this in another post, but briefly: women have more power here than they realize.

A warm smile. A longer conversation. Staying to talk after an event. These things reduce the risk for men. They don’t require you to pursue—just to be approachable and to signal openness.

St. John Paul II wrote beautifully about the complementarity of men and women—how we’re designed to draw each other out (see Mulieris Dignitatem). Sometimes drawing out means creating space for someone to take a risk.

To the Men Reading This

I know it’s hard. I know the culture feels stacked against you. I know rejection stings in a way that’s hard to explain.

But your vocation—if you’re called to marriage—requires you to take risks. Prudent risks, respectful risks, but risks nonetheless.

One “no” doesn’t define you. Neither does ten. The right woman will be glad you found your courage.

And to the women: the next time you see a man who seems interested but hesitant, consider what it might cost him to find out if you’re available.

Sometimes understanding is the first step toward connection.

This is part of a series on “Male Isolation”

In Him,

Katie

Katie Palitto is a Catholic relationship coach and the creator of Game of Love.

Before you blame him, there’s something you need to understand.

I hear it constantly from women: “Where are all the Catholic men? Why won’t they make a move? I’ve been going to young adult events for years and nobody has ever asked me out.”

And then I hear it from men: “I’m invisible. Women don’t seem interested. I don’t even know if I’m supposed to initiate anymore. Every time I try, I feel like I’m doing something wrong.”

Something has broken in the dance between men and women. And if we’re going to fix it, we need to understand what’s actually happening—not just on one side, but on both.

The Observation

Let me start with what everyone can see: men are initiating less.

Fewer men are asking women out. Fewer men are making the first move at young adult events. Fewer men are pursuing.

This isn’t just your imagination. The data backs it up. But here’s where we need to slow down—because the easy explanation (men are lazy, men aren’t trying, men don’t want commitment) doesn’t tell the whole story.

I’ve sat with dozens of young Catholic men in my coaching practice. Good men. Faithful men. Men who love Jesus and want to get married and have families.

And most of them are terrified.

What Men Are Experiencing

I recently worked with a young man—let’s call him Shannon—who hadn’t asked a woman out in three years. Three years. Not because he wasn’t interested. Not because he was playing video games all day. But because the last time he’d expressed interest in a woman, she’d told her friend group he was “creepy” for approaching her at a young adult event.

He wasn’t creepy. He was awkward. He was nervous. He asked if she’d like to get coffee sometime.

And he spent the next six months being treated like a predator in his own church community.

Shannon isn’t unusual. I hear versions of this story constantly. Men who tried, got burned, and decided it wasn’t worth the risk.

Here’s something we don’t talk about enough: for men, rejection isn’t just disappointing. It can be socially devastating. In a world where “believe women” is the default setting, a man who misreads a situation doesn’t just face rejection—he faces potential reputation destruction.

I’m not saying women should tolerate actual inappropriate behavior. I’m saying we need to distinguish between “he made me uncomfortable” and “he awkwardly expressed interest.”

The Mixed Messages Problem

Men are also receiving profoundly confusing signals about what they’re supposed to do.

They’re told to initiate—but not too aggressively. Be confident—but don’t be arrogant. Lead—but don’t be controlling. Pursue—but make sure she’s already interested first.

One client told me, “I genuinely don’t know what I’m allowed to do anymore. Every piece of advice contradicts the last one.”

And underneath all of this is a message many young men have absorbed without anyone explicitly saying it: You are potentially dangerous. Your interest in women is suspect. You need to prove you’re one of the good ones before anyone will trust you.

That’s an exhausting way to enter dating.

This Isn’t About Blame

I’m not writing this to blame women. Many women have real experiences of being harassed, pressured, or mistreated. Those experiences are valid, and the caution they produce is understandable.

But I want you to see something: the men who would actually respect your boundaries are often the ones most paralyzed by fear of crossing them. The good guys are the ones most worried about being seen as bad guys.

Meanwhile, the men who don’t care about your comfort? They’re not reading articles about whether they should ask you out. They’re just doing whatever they want.

We’ve created a system that penalizes the conscientious and barely slows down the predatory.

What We Can Do

So where do we go from here?

First, we need compassion—real compassion—for what both sides are experiencing. Women are frustrated that men won’t step up. Men are terrified that stepping up will destroy them. Both of these experiences are real.

Second, we need to make space for awkwardness. Someone expressing interest imperfectly isn’t the same as someone being threatening. We’ve lost the ability to distinguish between “that was uncomfortable” and “that was dangerous.”

Third, men need environments where healthy initiation is encouraged, not punished. Young adult groups and parishes can be intentional about creating cultures where asking someone to coffee is normal, not creepy.

And fourth—and I say this gently—women can help by responding to imperfect approaches with grace rather than contempt. You don’t have to say yes to the date. But you can say no kindly.

A Word to the Men

If you’re a man reading this: I see you. I know it’s hard right now. I know the rules seem to keep changing. I know you’ve been told you’re part of the problem just for existing.

You’re not the problem. But your retreat from the arena isn’t helping you or the women who are hoping someone will have the courage to pursue them.

Start small. Take a risk. Be kind if she says no. And remember: the right woman will appreciate your courage, not punish it.

In Him,

Katie

Katie Palitto is a Catholic relationship coach and the creator of Game of Love. She helps faithful singles move from endless swiping to intentional relationships.

If you’re scratching your head, you’re not alone.

Both Mike and I failed at marriage in our twenties, and l…

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“A 2023 study found that 35% of dating app users report feeling depressed after using the apps. And that doesn’t even account for the ghosting, the rejection loops, the comparison game, the isolation.

Here’s what no one says in Catholic dating circles: this process is hurting people. And telling them to ‘pray about it’ when they can barely get out of bed is not pastoral care—it’s a life raft with a hole in it.

Your mental health is not separate from your spiritual health. You are an embodied soul. Caring for your mind IS caring for your soul.

If this is you—you’re not weak. You’re not failing. You’re responding normally to an abnormal situation.”

CTA: “Join us for a deep dive into changing the way you date.”

Hashtags: #CatholicDating #MentalHealthMatters #DatingDepression #CatholicMentalHealth #DatingBurnout #EmbodiedSoul #FindingAdamFindingEve

The Code of Canon Law (1983) is the Church’s legal framework for her life and governance — 1,752 canons across seven books. Pope John Paul II promulgated it as the renewal of Church discipline after Vatican II. Canons 1055–1165 govern marriage specifically, covering everything from consent and impediments to the canonical form required for a valid wedding.

Why It Matters for Dating and Marriage

I learned the hard way that most Catholics treat canon law as bureaucratic fine print — something you deal with when a priest hands you a pre-Cana packet. That’s backwards. Canon law on marriage isn’t red tape; it’s the Church protecting what marriage actually is. Canon 1055 defines marriage as a covenant, not a contract — a total, permanent, faithful, and fruitful union ordered to the good of spouses and the generation of children. Understanding that before you’re engaged changes how you date.

One Teaching We Use Every Day

“The matrimonial covenant, by which a man and a woman establish between themselves a partnership of the whole of life, is by its nature ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring.” (Code of Canon Law, Canon 1055 §1)

The phrase “partnership of the whole of life” is doing a lot of work. Not a partnership of feelings, not of convenience — of the whole of life. That’s what you’re moving toward if you’re dating with real intent. Once you absorb that, casual relationships that were never going anywhere lose their appeal.

Lack of Freedom — What Tribunals Actually See

Most marriages the Church later declares null don’t fail on paperwork. They fail on consent. The Catechism puts it plainly: “The consent must be an act of the will of each of the contracting parties, free of coercion or grave external fear... If this freedom is lacking the marriage is invalid.” Canon 1095 codifies the same reality — if a person lacks the discretion of judgment or the psychic capacity to assume the essential obligations of marriage, the consent never landed.

Here’s what we watch for in dating, long before anyone is talking about a ring:

• Active addiction running the show. Pornography, alcohol, substances, gambling — while the addiction is in charge, the person isn’t free to promise fidelity or self-gift. The honest answer is treatment first, vows later.

• Untreated mental illness with no insight. Not the diagnosis itself — the refusal to address it. A person who won’t name what’s happening or accept help can’t freely give what they haven’t yet faced.

• Profound immaturity. Can’t hold a job. Can’t keep a small commitment. Panics every time something asks for a binding “yes.” The capacity for a lifelong “yes” hasn’t been formed yet.

• A “yes” given under pressure. Family expectations, an unexpected pregnancy, sunk-cost panic, the venue is already booked. Pressure produces a wounded yes, and a wounded yes may be no consent at all.

• A hidden double life. The person you’re dating isn’t the person you’d be marrying. Consent given to a mask is consent given to no one.

None of these are forever-disqualifications. They’re formation work the Church expects you to do before the altar, not after.

Lack of Form — Why the Church Cares Where You Marry

The other ground tribunals see constantly is simpler: lack of canonical form. Canon 1108 requires that a Catholic marry in the presence of a properly delegated priest or deacon and two witnesses, in the Church’s form, unless the local bishop grants a dispensation. Canon 1117 makes clear that a Catholic is bound by this even if they’ve drifted from practice. So the Catholic who marries on a beach with a college roommate officiating isn’t living in a “less-than-ideal” marriage — canonically, no marriage took place.

This isn’t the Church being precious about real estate. It’s the Church saying that how and where you marry is a public statement about what marriage actually is. If you’re dating a Catholic who shrugs at the form question, you’re not having a logistics disagreement. You’re having a disagreement about the thing itself.

How We Apply It

In True Love (Young Adults 20-39): We teach young adults to read freedom and form backwards into dating. If something would later be grounds for nullity, that’s the formation work to do now — not after vows.

In Before Forever (High School 14-19): We bring parents into the freedom conversation early. Most teenagers can’t yet name what makes a “yes” free, but they can be formed in the habits — honesty, follow-through, treatment when it’s needed — that will make a real yes possible later.

FAQ

Q: So if my future spouse has a mental illness, can we not get married? A: That’s not what the Church is saying. Canon 1095 is about capacity at the moment of consent — whether the condition is being addressed, whether there’s insight, whether the essential obligations of marriage can actually be assumed. Treatment and formation before vows is exactly the point.

Q: Why would canon law be relevant to someone who’s just dating? A: Because you date toward something. If marriage is the destination, knowing what the Church requires for a valid marriage — real freedom, no impediments, proper form — shapes how seriously you take the relationship you’re building right now.

This article is part of The Catholic Wisdom Behind Our Coaching series. Next: How the Mass Prepares You for Marriage.

In Christ,

Mike

Mike Palitto is co-founder of Finding Adam Finding Eve ministry and co-creator of the Game of Love app.

The Summa Theologica is St. Thomas Aquinas’s systematic treatment of Christian theology, written between 1265 and 1274. Structured as a series of questions, objections, and responses, it covers everything from the nature of God to the virtues, natural law, marriage, and human happiness. The English Dominican Province translation (1947) is the standard reference, and our RAG system holds over 1,100 chunks of it.

Why It Matters for Dating and Marriage

Here’s the thing — most men I’ve worked with treat love like a weather event. It shows up, it disappears, and they’re just along for the ride. Aquinas doesn’t buy it. He argues that love, at its deepest level, is an act of the will — a choice to will the good of another person. That idea changes how a man approaches dating. He’s not searching for a feeling. He’s building a capacity.

One Teaching We Use Every Day

“To love is to will the good of another.” (Summa Theologica I-II, Q.26, A.4)

Aquinas places love first in the order of the passions — not because it overwhelms reason, but because rightly ordered love draws the will toward what’s actually good. Put plainly: a man who hasn’t learned to will the good of others isn’t ready to choose a spouse. He’s still choosing for himself.

How We Apply It

In True Love (Young Adults 20-39): We use Aquinas’s framework on charity and friendship to help men distinguish attraction from love — and to identify whether they’re capable of willing someone else’s good even when it costs them something.

In Before Forever (High School 14-19): We introduce the idea of love as a virtue to be practiced, not a feeling to be found — starting with how students treat friends, classmates, and family before any romantic relationship enters the picture.

FAQ

Q: Isn’t the Summa too academic for practical dating advice? A: Aquinas wrote for students, not scholars — the Q&A format was meant to be accessible. The principle that love is an act of the will is one of the most practically useful things a person can internalize before entering a serious relationship.

Q: What does Aquinas say about choosing a spouse specifically? A: He addresses prudence — the virtue of right judgment — as essential to any major life decision, including marriage. Prudence isn’t caution; it’s the capacity to see clearly and act well. That’s formation, not just discernment.

This article is part of The Catholic Wisdom Behind Our Coaching series. Next: What Canon Law Says About Getting Married.

In Christ,

Mike

Mike Palitto is co-founder of Finding Adam Finding Eve ministry and co-creator of the Game of Love app.

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A lot of people come to me with one verse lodged in their head — usually Ephesians 5:25 or the reading from 1 Corinthians they heard at someone’s wedding. That’s not nothing. But if Scripture is your only reference point for love, you’re working from a fragment.

The full picture is much richer, and a little more demanding.

What Is the Catholic Public Domain Version?

The Catholic Public Domain Version (CPDV) is a complete translation of all 73 books of the Catholic Bible — 46 Old Testament, 27 New Testament — translated by Ronald L. Conte Jr. between 2009 and 2010. It includes the deuterocanonical books (Tobit, Sirach, Wisdom, Maccabees, and others) that Protestant editions omit, covering 1,181 chapters and 30,985 verses. Because it’s public domain, it’s freely available to anyone — which is why we use it throughout our coaching tools and content.

Why It Matters for Dating and Marriage

Scripture isn’t a collection of wedding readings. It’s a covenantal narrative — creation, fall, redemption — running from Genesis to Revelation. Love is the thread holding every part of that story together. When a young woman asks me why she keeps choosing men who can’t commit, we often end up in Proverbs before we end up anywhere else. The wounds shaping our choices didn’t show up out of nowhere. Neither did the path toward healing.

One Teaching We Use Every Day

Proverbs 4:23 — “Guard your heart with all care, because from it proceeds life” — shows up in almost every coaching conversation I have. Not as a warning to close off, but as a formation principle: your heart has a real capacity for deep love, and that capacity is worth protecting while it’s still being formed. It’s one of the first things I ask a client to sit with before they start dating again.

How We Apply It

In True Love (Young Adults 20-39): Scripture references ground the Game of Love assessments and feed directly into our RAG-powered coaching tool, so that when someone asks about attachment patterns or readiness for marriage, the answer is rooted in covenantal language, not self-help frameworks.

In Before Forever (High School 14-19): Each module opens with Scripture as a framing prayer, and the virtue teachings draw on Wisdom literature — Sirach especially — to help students understand that love is something you grow into, not something that just happens to you.

FAQ

Q: Does the Catholic Bible say anything different about love and marriage than other Christian Bibles? A: The Catholic Bible includes books like Tobit and Sirach that aren’t in Protestant editions. Tobit’s account of a marriage built on prayer and covenant fidelity, and Sirach’s practical wisdom on character and relationships, fill out the picture in ways that matter. They’re not minor additions.

Q: How do I use Scripture for dating discernment without it feeling like I’m proof-texting? A: Read it as story before you read it as instruction. The whole arc — created for union, wounded by sin, restored through love — gives you context. A single verse rarely tells you what to do; the full narrative tells you who you are and what you’re being formed toward.

This article is part of The Catholic Wisdom Behind Our Coaching series. Next: St. Thomas Aquinas on Why Love Is a Choice.

In Him,

Katie

Katie Palitto is a relationship & dating coach @Finding Adam Finding Eve ministry and co-creator of the Game of Love app.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church (Second Edition, 1997) is the Church’s official summary of what Catholics believe, celebrate, live, and pray — 2,865 numbered paragraphs covering the full range of Christian doctrine. It’s not a rule book. It’s a map of what it means to be human, and what it means to love.

Why It Matters for Dating and Marriage

Most men I talk to never cracked the Catechism open. They got bits of Catholic teaching in school or CCD, maybe some wedding prep, and that was it. That’s a problem — because the Church has been thinking about human love for two thousand years, and most of that thinking never made it into your CCD class. When a guy is stuck in a pattern of dead-end relationships or can’t figure out why nothing seems to work, the Catechism usually has a direct answer. Not because it moralizes at you. Because it’s accurate about what we are and how we got wounded.

One Teaching We Use Every Day

CCC 1601 defines marriage as “ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring.” That phrase — the good of the spouses — is the part most people skip over. The Church is saying marriage exists, in part, to make you better. Not just to produce children. Not just for companionship. To help another person actually become who God made them to be. That changes everything about how we approach dating: the question stops being “does this person make me happy?” and starts being “does this relationship draw both of us toward who we were created to be?”

That’s the created goodness the Church is pointing to. And once you see it, you also see how far the fallen reality of today’s dating culture is from that design — and why the path back is worth walking.

How We Apply It

In True Love (Young Adults 20-39): The Game of Love app draws on the Catechism’s teaching on the vocation to chastity (CCC 2337-2359) and human dignity (CCC 1700-1876) to frame the coaching experience. When our virtual coach surfaces a question about boundaries or intentionality, it’s grounded in this framework — not cultural opinion.

In Before Forever (High School 14-19): Module 1 introduces students to the Church’s understanding of human dignity before any conversation about relationships starts. We want teenagers to know what they’re worth before they start figuring out who they’re worth it to.

FAQ

Q: Does the Catechism say anything practical about dating, or is it just about marriage? A: The Catechism covers the vocation to chastity (CCC 2337-2359), which applies directly to how we date — how we treat people’s bodies and hearts, what we’re ordering our desires toward, and why self-mastery is a gift, not a restriction. It’s more practical than most dating advice out there.

Q: I’m not a theology person. Can I actually read the Catechism on my own? A: Yes. Start with CCC 1601-1666 (Sacrament of Marriage) if marriage prep is on your radar, or CCC 1700-1876 (Dignity of the Human Person) if you want to understand why the Church takes love so seriously in the first place. Read a paragraph or two at a time. It’s dense, but it rewards slow reading.

This article is part of The Catholic Wisdom Behind Our Coaching series. Next: What Scripture Actually Says About Love.

In Christ,

Mike and Katie

Mike and Katie Palitto are co-founder of Finding Adam Finding Eve ministry and co-creator of the Game of Love app.

So we built something about it. Here’s what God has been doing at Finding Adam Finding Eve.

A New Website

Our new home is live at findingadamfindingeve.com — built to serve the people we’ve been called to reach and to make it easy for parishes, schools, and families to bring Catholic formation for love into their communities.

Two Programs, One Mission

Everything we do flows from one conviction: the wounds that end marriages are the same wounds that prevent them from forming. Formation for love can’t start at engagement. It has to start earlier. Much earlier.

That’s why we’ve launched two programs under the FAFE umbrella:

Before Forever — Your Journey to True Love — is our Catholic formation curriculum for teens ages 14-19. It teaches young people not just what to believe about love, but how to prepare for it. Grounded in Theology of the Body and the Catholic vision of the human person, Before Forever is available in three tracks:

• Catholic School Curriculum — a semester-long program with facilitator guides, student content, and parent formation

• Parish Youth Ministry Workshops — standalone sessions designed for youth groups, CYO, and retreat settings

• Parent-Led Small Groups — families hosting 4-6 other families in their homes, with fully scripted guides so parents can lead formation themselves. Boys break out with dads, girls with moms. No theology degree required.

That last one is close to our hearts. Parents are the first educators. We just gave them the tools.

True Love — More Than Just a Date — is our young adult program for ages 20-39. The flagship offering is our Dating is Broken workshop series — ten sessions co-facilitated by both of us, naming the convergent crisis facing this generation and the Catholic answer to it.

The Game of Love

Our Catholic self-discovery app, Game of Love, continues to grow — helping singles and couples understand themselves and each other through assessments grounded in Catholic anthropology.

What’s Next

We have more coming — and we can’t wait to share it. For now, here’s how to get involved:

• Visit findingadamfindingeve.com and explore what’s new

• Subscribe to our newsletter for updates (more announcements coming soon)

• Reach out if you want to bring Before Forever or True Love to your parish, school, or living room

This ministry started because we learned the hard way what happens when formation is missing. Everything we build exists so the next generation doesn’t have to learn it the hard way too.

Be Known. Be Chosen. Be Given.

In Christ, Mike & Katie

Most Catholic dating advice falls into one of two traps.

Trap one: pure theology. Beautiful, true, and completely useless when you’re sitting across from someone on a first date wondering if they’re marriage material. Trap two: secular dating tips with a Bible verse taped on. Practical, maybe, but hollow — because it doesn’t account for who you actually are.

Katie and I built Finding Adam Finding Eve because we got caught in both traps. I spent my twenties making bad choices with no formation. Katie spent hers trying to hold together a marriage that was falling apart. We had to learn the hard way that good intentions aren’t enough — you need a foundation.

By the end of this article, you’ll know every source that powers our coaching system, our Before Forever high school program, and the Game of Love app — and why each one matters for your life right now.

This is a pillar article. Over the coming weeks, we’ll publish individual deep dives on each of these 24 sources:

• Why the Catechism Is Our Coaching Playbook

• What Scripture Actually Says About Love

• St. Thomas Aquinas on Why Love Is a Choice

• Theology of the Body Is Not Just About Sex

• The Psychology Framework That Changed Our Coaching

• And 19 more — from Canon Law to the document that unlocked the Feminine Genius.

Why 24 Sources?

Because you were created for more than a swipe-and-ghost cycle. And the Church has spent two thousand years thinking about what love actually is, what goes wrong with it, and how it gets healed.

That’s the arc: created, fallen, redeemed. You were designed for communion. Sin and cultural confusion have distorted the design. Christ makes restoration possible. Every source in our system speaks to some part of that story.

I worked with a guy I’ll call James — 28, Catholic, frustrated. He’d read Theology of the Body and thought he was formed. But when it came to actual relationships, he kept freezing up. Couldn’t read signals. Couldn’t set boundaries. Couldn’t figure out why he kept attracting women who weren’t ready for commitment.

His theology was solid. His formation had gaps the size of a canyon.

That’s why we don’t just use one book or one document. We use 24 sources — 15,477 searchable passages — because formation isn’t a single lesson. It’s a system.

The Foundations

Catechism of the Catholic Church

The playbook. All 2,865 paragraphs, covering everything from the sacrament of marriage (CCC 1601-1666) to the vocation to chastity (CCC 2337-2359). When someone asks “what does the Church actually teach about X?” — this is where we start. Read more →

Sacred Scripture (Catholic Public Domain Version)

All 73 books of the Catholic canon. Not just the verses you’ve heard in homilies — the full sweep of salvation history that shows what covenantal love looks like in practice. Read more →

Summa Theologica

St. Thomas Aquinas spent nine years writing a comprehensive treatment of love, virtue, and human nature that the Church still relies on 750 years later. When we need to understand why the Church teaches what she teaches — the philosophical reasoning beneath the doctrine — we go to Thomas. Read more →

Theology of the Body

129 teaching sessions from John Paul II on God’s plan for human sexuality, the body, and marriage. This is the Church’s most complete treatment of relationships. It’s also widely misread — most people think it’s only about sex. It’s about the meaning of being a person. Read more →

The Family Documents

Familiaris Consortio (1981)

JP2’s blueprint for the Christian family. Marriage preparation, conjugal love, responsible parenthood, the family’s mission in the Church. If you want to know what you’re building toward, start here. Read more →

Amoris Laetitia (2016)

Pope Francis on the joy and mess of love in families. Pastoral, practical, honest about how hard family life can be. Read more →

Gratissimam Sane (1994)

JP2’s love letter to families — the nuptial meaning of the body, responsible parenthood, education. One of the least-known family documents in the magisterium, and one of the best. Read more →

Casti Connubii (1930)

Written by Pius XI almost a century ago, and it still gets marriage right. The nature and dignity of the marital bond, the blessings and duties of married life. This one proves the Church wasn’t making things up as she went along. Read more →

The Person Documents

Mulieris Dignitatem (1988)

The document that gave us the language of the Feminine Genius — receptivity, sensitivity, generosity, maternity. If you want to understand complementarity without falling into either feminism-as-erasure-of-difference or rigid gender roles, this is where you start. Read more →

Redemptoris Custos (1989)

St. Joseph as model of masculine virtue — initiative, protection, servant leadership, total self-gift. If Mulieris Dignitatem unlocks the feminine genius, Redemptoris Custos does the same for men. Read more →

Christus Vivit (2019)

Pope Francis wrote this directly to young people. Vocation, discernment, accompaniment, and the call to holiness in young adulthood. For our Before Forever teens and True Love young adults, this is the most directly addressed document in the collection. Read more →

Deus Caritas Est (2005)

Benedict XVI’s first encyclical. What does “God is love” actually mean? He unpacks eros and agape — desire and self-gift — and shows how they aren’t opposites but two dimensions of one love. Required reading for anyone who thinks the Church is against passion. Read more →

The Moral Framework

Veritatis Splendor (1993)

Freedom, law, conscience, and the relationship between faith and morality. When someone says “the Church just makes rules to control people,” this document is the answer. Moral truth isn’t restriction — it’s the condition for authentic freedom. Read more →

Evangelium Vitae (1995)

The Gospel of Life — human dignity, the inviolability of life, the culture of life versus the culture of death. This reframes dating itself: you’re not just choosing a partner, you’re choosing which culture you’ll build your family in. Read more →

The Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality (1995)

Guidelines for parents and educators on forming young people in sexuality. This document is the backbone of our Before Forever parent formation component — and almost nobody knows it exists. Read more →

The Church’s Self-Understanding

Gaudium et Spes (1965)

The Church in the modern world. Paragraphs 48-52 contain essential marriage teaching. But the broader vision matters too — human dignity, community, culture, and the loneliness of modern life. Read more →

Lumen Gentium (1964)

You’re not dating alone. You belong to a people. The universal call to holiness applies to your love life. Read more →

Dei Verbum (1965)

How God reveals himself — through Scripture, Tradition, and the living teaching office of the Church. Understanding revelation matters because it’s the reason we can trust these sources in the first place. Read more →

Sacrosanctum Concilium (1963)

The liturgy as school of self-gift. Every Mass rehearses the pattern marriage requires: offering yourself completely, receiving the other, being transformed by the encounter. Read more →

Gravissimum Educationis (1965)

The Church’s vision for education — parents as primary educators, the role of Catholic schools, formation in faith and morals. The theological foundation for why our Before Forever program exists. Read more →

The Structural Sources

Code of Canon Law (1983)

Marriage requirements, impediments, annulment processes, sacramental preparation. When you need to know what the Church requires — not just recommends — for valid marriage, Canon Law provides the answer. Read more →

General Instruction of the Roman Missal (GIRM)

How the Mass is celebrated and why each element matters. Understanding liturgy is understanding the pattern of self-gift that marriage mirrors. Read more →

The Applied Sources

FAFE Ministry Content

Ten years of real-world ministry — practical guides on boundaries, red flags, green flags, dating apps, attachment healing, communication, and conflict resolution. Church documents are true and beautiful. But sometimes you need someone to tell you what a healthy third date looks like. Read more →

Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Person (CCMMP)

The framework from Divine Mercy University that integrates Catholic anthropology with psychology. This is the lens Katie trained in — 26 chapters on understanding the human person as body, soul, and spirit. It’s why our coaching doesn’t separate faith from psychology or healing from holiness. Read more →

How It All Works Together

These 24 sources live in our RAG system — 15,477 searchable passages that power the Game of Love virtual coach, inform every blog article we write, ground our Before Forever curriculum for high school students, and shape every coaching session Katie runs.

James — the 28-year-old I mentioned — came back six months later. He’d worked through our system. The Catechism gave him clarity on what marriage is ordered toward. Theology of the Body helped him understand his own desire. The CCMMP framework helped him see how his attachment wounds (that’s the fallen part of the story) were driving his patterns. And FAFE’s practical guides gave him the tools to actually change his behavior.

Theology without application sits on a shelf. Application without theology is just another self-help book. We built a system that holds both together — because that’s what redemption looks like in practice.

Your Turn

Pick one source from this list that you’ve never read. Just one. Read its individual article when it publishes. See how two thousand years of wisdom speaks to where you are right now.

You have the entire Catholic intellectual tradition behind you. Use it.

In Service,

Mike

Mike Palitto is co-founder of Finding Adam Finding Eve ministry and co-creator of the Game of Love app. Learn more at gameof.love.

Subscribe to our newsletter for weekly encouragement from Katie — newsletter.findingadamfindingeve.com

Take the free AdamEve Matrix Assessment → gameof.love

FAQ

Q: What sources does Finding Adam Finding Eve use for Catholic dating coaching? A: FAFE’s coaching system draws from 24 authoritative Catholic sources including the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Sacred Scripture, Theology of the Body, papal encyclicals like Familiaris Consortio and Mulieris Dignitatem, the Summa Theologica, Vatican II documents, Canon Law, and the Catholic Christian Meta-Model of the Person. These 15,477 searchable passages power the Game of Love virtual coach and all FAFE programs.

Q: How does Catholic teaching apply to modern dating? A: Catholic teaching provides a framework for understanding love, relationships, and human sexuality that addresses modern challenges like dating app burnout, attachment wounds, and the hookup culture. Documents like Theology of the Body explain the meaning of the body and desire, while practical ministry content bridges theology to real-world dating decisions like setting boundaries and recognizing red flags.

Q: What is the difference between Catholic dating coaching and secular dating advice? A: Catholic dating coaching integrates the Church’s understanding of the human person — created with dignity, wounded by sin, and called to redemption — with evidence-based psychology and practical relationship skills. Rather than treating dating as a technique to master, Catholic coaching frames it as vocational discernment grounded in virtue formation, self-knowledge, and authentic self-gift.

How many years have you been saying that? How many dating disasters, confusing conversations, and broken hearts have you processed alone in your bedroom, convinced that if you just think about it hard enough, pray about it long enough, or read one more relationship book, you’ll crack the code?

Let me ask you something harde…

Read more

I get it. It sounds dramatic. Maybe even a little medieval.

But here’s what I’ve seen after ten years of coaching Catholic singles: the ones who keep falling into the same patterns, the ones who can’t seem to break free of that relationship they know is wrong, the ones who feel this strange pull toward the exact thing that will wreck them? They’re not weak. They’re being hunted.

And the hunter has a strategy.

He’s been studying you

St. Thomas Aquinas had this way of naming things that cuts right through our modern fog. He described how the devil “encamps” around us. Not a random attack. Not a drive-by. An encampment. The enemy sets up camp at the point where your virtue is thinnest, and he waits.

Think about that for a second. He’s patient. He watches. He already knows your weak spots better than you do.

A woman I work with, let’s call her Jen, came to me after her third relationship ended the same way. Every time, she’d swear she wouldn’t get physically involved before she was ready. Every time, she’d hold the line for a few weeks. And every time, it happened the same way: a late night, some wine, the feeling that “we’re basically going to get married anyway.” Three months later, devastated. Again.

Jen didn’t have a willpower problem. She had a strategy problem. She didn’t know where her weak point was, so she kept getting hit in the same spot.

Here’s what I told her, and what I want you to hear: you need to know your three weakest points. Not in some vague way. Specifically. Can you name them right now? The exact moments when you’re most likely to compromise?

For some of you it’s physical. For others, it’s emotional. Maybe you overshare too quickly because loneliness makes you desperate for someone to really know you. Maybe you keep going back to that person’s Instagram even though you ended things two months ago. Maybe you let someone cross a boundary because confrontation terrifies you more than compromise.

The Catechism tells us something I wish someone had told me at 25: “Whoever wants to remain faithful to his baptismal promises and resist temptations will want to adopt the means for doing so: self-knowledge, practice of an ascesis adapted to the situations that confront him, obedience to God’s commandments, exercise of the moral virtues, and fidelity to prayer” (CCC 2340).

Self-knowledge comes first. Before the prayer strategies, before the accountability partners, before any of it. Know yourself.

There’s a practice called the Particular Examen that changed my life and has changed the lives of dozens of people I’ve coached. It takes thirty seconds. Every single day, at the same time, you ask yourself one question about your one weakest point. That’s it. Not a full examination of conscience. Not an hour of journaling. Thirty seconds on the one thing that keeps tripping you up.

Jen started doing this at lunch every day. Her question: “Did I put myself in a situation this morning that could compromise my boundaries tonight?” Within three weeks, she started noticing the patterns she’d been blind to for years.

The lure and the wound

Here’s the second thing Aquinas noticed about the enemy’s tactics, and it’s the one that makes my stomach turn: the devil lures us with big, beautiful promises, and then once we’ve taken the bait, he leaves us with wounds.

God works the opposite way. God asks us to do hard things first, and the reward comes after.

The devil says: this will feel amazing. God says: this will cost you something, but what you’ll gain is real.

I think about this constantly when I coach singles through emotional chastity. Because the lure isn’t always physical. Sometimes it’s the promise of being fully known. Someone pays attention to you after months of loneliness, and the emotional intimacy accelerates way too fast. You’re sharing things at week three that belong at month six. It feels like connection. It feels like “this is different.”

And then it falls apart. And the wound isn’t just that the relationship ended. The wound is that you gave away pieces of yourself to someone who didn’t earn them, and now you feel hollowed out.

Mike and I both lived this pattern in our twenties. We thought love was supposed to feel urgent. We confused intensity for intimacy. We ignored the people who told us to slow down because the speed felt like evidence that it was real. It wasn’t. But God is in the business of redemption.

The real version of love asks more of you upfront. Discipline isn’t punishment. It’s training. An athlete doesn’t resent the gym because the gym is making her stronger. Self-denial in dating, saying no to things that feel good now because they’ll hurt later, that’s you getting stronger for the love you actually want.

The three-stage sales pitch

Here’s where Aquinas gets really practical, and where I think every single person in their twenties and thirties needs to pay attention.

He described temptation as a kind of sales pitch. The enemy approaches us like a salesman trying to get us into a conversation. And the pitch has three stages:

Stage one: the suggestion. A thought arrives. You see something, remember something, imagine something. An old text thread you shouldn’t open. A memory of what it felt like to be held. A “what if” about that person you know isn’t good for you. This part isn’t sin. Thoughts land uninvited all the time.

Stage two: entertaining it. This is where most of us get into trouble. You don’t act on it, but you don’t dismiss it either. You roll it around. You let yourself feel it. You open the text thread “just to read.” You imagine the scenario “just for a second.” You tell yourself you’re just thinking.

But you’re not just thinking. You’re negotiating.

Stage three: consent. By the time you get here, the fight is mostly over. You’ve already spent fifteen minutes in a mental conversation with a temptation that should have gotten a door slammed in its face at stage one.

The Church is clear on discernment here. The Catechism reminds us that “we must also discern between being tempted and consenting to temptation” and that “discernment unmasks the lie of temptation, whose object appears to be good, a ‘delight to the eyes’ and desirable, when in reality its fruit is death” (CCC 2847).

The practical takeaway? Shut it down at stage one. Do not engage. The moment you notice the suggestion, you name it for what it is and you refuse the conversation. You don’t argue with it. You don’t analyze it. You don’t congratulate yourself on your mature self-awareness while continuing to entertain it.

You leave the room.

I tell the people I coach: treat temptation like a telemarketer. The longer you stay on the line, the more likely you are to buy something you don’t need. Hang up.

Curiosity is the enemy’s favorite entry point. “I wonder what would happen if...” is the sentence that has wrecked more Catholic dating relationships than any other. Stop wondering. You know what happens. You’ve been there before.

The lie about God’s goodness

The fourth tactic is the quietest and the most dangerous.

The devil’s deepest play isn’t to get you to do something bad. It’s to get you to believe that God is holding out on you. That His rules are oppressive. That self-denial is just repression dressed up in religious language. That the people who seem happy living by the world’s rules have figured out something you haven’t.

He wants you to doubt that God is good.

This goes all the way back. The Catechism puts it plainly: “Man, tempted by the devil, let his trust in his Creator die in his heart and, abusing his freedom, disobeyed God’s command. This is what man’s first sin consisted of. All subsequent sin would be disobedience toward God and lack of trust in his goodness” (CCC 397).

Every sin starts with a whisper that God can’t be trusted.

In dating, the whisper sounds like: “Everyone else is sleeping together and they’re fine.” It sounds like: “God wouldn’t have given you these desires just to say no.” It sounds like a question you’ve probably asked at 2am: “You’ve been waiting so long. Has God forgotten about you?”

I sat with a 32-year-old man last year who told me he’d given up on chastity. Not because he didn’t believe in it. Because he was angry. He’d been faithful for years, watched friends move in with girlfriends and seem happy, and felt like God had abandoned him on the bench.

His struggle wasn’t really about sex. It was about trust. Do I believe that the God who asks hard things of me is actually good?

That’s the question underneath all of this.

And the answer isn’t “just pray harder.” The answer is that self-denial is how we find out if we’re free. If you can’t say no to something, you’re not free. You’re enslaved to it. The Catechism calls chastity what happens when “the virtue of temperance seeks to permeate the passions and appetites of the senses with reason” (CCC 2341). That word “permeate” matters. This isn’t about white-knuckling your way through dating. It’s about your whole self, body and soul, being integrated enough to love someone without consuming them.

Discipline isn’t the obstacle. It’s the door.

Your battle plan

Alright, let’s get practical. If the enemy has a strategy, you need one too. Here’s what I tell every single person I coach:

First, know your three weakest points. Write them down. Be brutally honest. Not “I struggle with purity” but “I lose my boundaries when I’ve had two drinks and I’m alone with someone after 10pm.” Specifics save you. Vague resolutions don’t.

Second, start the Particular Examen tomorrow. Set a daily alarm. Pick your single biggest vulnerability. Every day at that alarm, take thirty seconds: did I protect this weak point today, or did I leave it exposed? That’s it. Do it for thirty days and watch what happens.

Third, stop negotiating with the salesman. When a thought arrives that you know is pulling you somewhere dangerous, refuse to entertain it. Don’t reason with it. Don’t “just look.” Name it: “That’s a temptation, not an invitation.” Then redirect. Call someone. Pray. Go for a walk. Move your body. Anything that breaks the conversation.

Fourth, remember what God actually promises. He doesn’t promise easy. He promises that He “will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape” (1 Cor 10:13, referenced in CCC 2848). There’s always a way out. But you have to want to take it.

And if you’ve been losing this battle? Go to Confession. Not because you’ve earned it, but because you need it. The sacrament isn’t a punishment. It’s a weapon. Don’t wait until you feel worthy. Go because you need grace, and grace is what actually changes things.

I won’t pretend any of this is easy. The enemy has been at this a long time. But so has the Church. And you are not defenseless. Not even close.

In Him,

Katie

Katie Palitto is a relationship & dating coach @Finding Adam Finding Eve ministry and co-creator of the Game of Love app.

Can we be honest for a minute? Some of you aren’t dating freely. You’re dating out of pressure.

Maybe it’s the family group chat where every holiday ends with “So... anyone special?” Maybe it’s the biological clock ticking so loudly you can’t think straight. Maybe it’s the fear that if you don’t pick someone now, there won’t be anyone left.

Or maybe you’re so afraid of making the wrong choice that you can’t make any choice at all.

Both are prisons. And neither one leads to the free, authentic “yes” that marriage requires.

My First Marriage Was Not Free

I need to tell you something I don’t talk about often. My first marriage wasn’t fully free.

Nobody forced me to the altar. But I was driven by forces I didn’t recognize at the time. Pressure from family expectations. Fear of being the only single person at twenty-five. A belief that saying no would disappoint people I loved.

I said “I do” for a hundred reasons. Love was in there somewhere. But so was fear, obligation, and the weight of everyone else’s expectations.

That marriage failed. And the deepest lesson it taught me: a coerced “yes” isn’t really a yes at all.

Why Freedom Is Non-Negotiable

The Church doesn’t mess around with this one. Freedom isn’t a nice addition to marriage--it’s a structural requirement. “The Church holds the exchange of consent between the spouses to be the indispensable element that makes the marriage. If consent is lacking there is no marriage” (CCC 1626).

And consent isn’t just the absence of a gun to your head. It’s the presence of genuine interior freedom. Marriage is based “on their will to give themselves, each to the other, mutually and definitively, in order to live a covenant of faithful and fruitful love” (CCC 1662). Will. Not obligation. Not desperation. Not fear of the alternative.

This is why the Church’s annulment process exists--because sometimes people stand at an altar and say words their hearts aren’t free enough to mean. And a marriage without free consent isn’t a marriage at all, no matter how beautiful the ceremony was.

The Things That Steal Your Freedom

Most people who lack freedom in dating don’t even realize it. The coercion is subtle. Internal. Disguised as virtue.

Fear of being alone. This one masquerades as “openness.” But there’s a difference between being genuinely open to love and being so terrified of singleness that you’ll say yes to anyone who asks. If the thought of another year single makes you panic, that panic is driving your decisions--not discernment.

Family and cultural pressure. “When are you getting married?” is the most dangerous question in Catholic communities. The weight of communal expectation can override personal discernment. I’ve worked with women who dated men their families loved but they didn’t--and couldn’t leave because approval felt more important than peace.

The biological clock. This is real, and I don’t dismiss it. But urgency and wisdom don’t always live in the same room. A woman I coached--let’s call her Teresa--was thirty-seven and panicking. She started saying yes to dates she would have declined at thirty because the math was getting scary. She wasn’t choosing. She was reacting.

Unhealed wounds. Sometimes the thing stealing your freedom is buried deep. Attachment wounds. Unprocessed trauma. A belief that you don’t deserve better. Those wounds make choices for you before you even realize a choice was being made.

How to Reclaim Your Freedom

Freedom isn’t the absence of desire for marriage. It’s the ability to choose it well--from wholeness rather than desperation.

Name your pressures. Is it genuine desire, or fear, obligation, or someone else’s timeline? You can’t resist pressure you haven’t identified.

Heal what needs healing. If wounds are making decisions for you, willpower can’t fix that. Seek counseling. Work with a spiritual director. The formation you do now prepares you for the freedom marriage requires.

Practice saying no. Learning to say no to what’s wrong is the only way to make your yes mean something.

Separate God’s voice from fear’s voice. God’s invitations create peace--even when they’re challenging. Fear’s demands create urgency and panic.

The Yes That Means Something

When I married Mike, it was different. Blended family, complicated histories, plenty of reasons for doubt. But for the first time, I was free. Free from the expectations that drove my first decision. Free to choose him--not because I had to, but because I wanted to.

That freedom is the foundation our marriage still stands on.

Your Homework This Week

This week, sit with one question in prayer: Am I free?

Not “Am I dating?” Not “Am I trying hard enough?” But: Am I free to choose love? Am I free to walk away if it’s not right?

If the answer is uncomfortable, that’s actually good news. The first step toward freedom is recognizing where you’re not free.

And freedom? That’s where real love begins.

In Him,

Katie

Katie Palitto is a relationship & dating coach @Finding Adam Finding Eve ministry and co-creator of the Game of Love app.

The Deeper Story

“You are not alone. These struggles …

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Let me ask you something. How many times have you sat across from a client, or opened a message from one, and realized you were working with half the story?

She tells you about the guy she’s been dating for three months. She thinks he might be “the one.” But something feels off, and she can’t name it. You ask the right questions. You listen well. You offer what you can. But in the back of your mind, you’re thinking: I wish I knew more. I wish I could see what she can’t see about herself yet.

You don’t know her attachment style. You don’t know that her family-of-origin wounds are driving a pattern she’s repeated in every relationship since college. And her readiness scores would flag two areas she hasn’t even thought to examine, but you’ll never see them.

You’re doing good work. But you’re coaching in the dark.

I know that frustration. I’ve lived it, both as a coach and as someone who needed coaching and couldn’t find it.

When Mike and I started Finding Adam Finding Eve, the conversations we had with singles were heartbreaking in their consistency. I don’t know who to talk to about this. Not theology in general. Their specific situation. Their Tuesday night confusion after a date that felt wrong but they couldn’t say why.

But here’s what surprised us: we started hearing the same thing from coaches.

Catholic counselors, spiritual directors, campus ministers, marriage prep facilitators. Good people doing important work. And they were telling us they felt limited by what they didn’t know about the people sitting in front of them. A life coach I worked with put it this way: “I spend the first twenty minutes of every session catching up on context I should already have. By the time I get to the real work, we’re almost out of time.”

That conversation haunted me. Because the Catechism calls this work “indispensable.” Not optional. Not nice-to-have. CCC 1632 says the role of the Christian community is indispensable for transmitting the values of marriage and family, “much more so in our era when many young people experience broken homes which no longer sufficiently assure this initiation.”

Indispensable. That’s the word. And the people doing this indispensable work were telling us they needed better tools.

So we built them.

What My Coaching Gives You

My Coaching is the coaching system inside Game of Love. If you’ve read about it from the user’s side, this is what it looks like from yours.

Your Clients Arrive Informed

When a client opts in to share their assessment data with you, here’s what you see before you ever type a word back.

You get their My Story narrative: background, family, faith journey, relationship history. You can see how much they’ve opened up. You get their MATRIX scores, a quick formation baseline across eight areas. They can assess themselves and someone they’re dating. The gap between those two assessments? That’s often where the real conversation starts.

Then it goes deeper. Their KNOW Thyself profile gives you temperament, love languages (giving and receiving, which most people don’t realize differ), attachment style with severity level, and their Virtue MATRIX percentage. This is the richest self-knowledge data your client has ever handed you.

Their READY scores show readiness across eight dimensions, with items flagged at Critical, Caution, and To-Work-On levels. You know exactly where to focus before the session begins.

And if they’re in a relationship, the GIFT data shows alignment percentages per category, red flags, and formation opportunities. Plus a downloadable workbook you can walk through together in couples sessions.

No intake forms. No starting from scratch. Your client has already done the work of self-examination. You get to start where it matters.

The Virtual Coach handles routine questions 24/7, drawing from over 11,900 chunks of Catholic teaching: the Catechism, Theology of the Body, Sacred Scripture, the Summa, Canon Law, papal encyclicals, Vatican II documents. When your client asks a question at 11pm on a Tuesday, they get a response rooted in the same sources you’d reference.

So when they come to you, the conversation has already started. The Virtual Coach has done the initial work. You get to go deeper.

And you? You work within the same vision of the person. How God created them. Where they’ve been wounded. How grace is transforming the gap between the two. Your clients won’t hear that language, but they’ll feel it in how everything connects.

Here’s what I love about this model: it respects your time.

Message a Coach is asynchronous. A client sends you a focused message (750 characters max). You respond within 24 to 48 hours, up to 5,000 characters. No scheduling conflicts. No squeezing someone in between back-to-back sessions.

You respond when you’re ready, with full context already in front of you.

Group sessions let you serve multiple clients in a single hour around shared topics: Singles Readiness, Navigating First Dates, Pre-Engagement Discernment. Community and formation in one room.

And 1:1 sessions are there for the deep work. Complex family-of-origin wounds. Relationships that might need to end. Attachment patterns that keep showing up. Couples walking through GIFT results together with you as guide.

You scale the depth to match the need. The platform handles the rest.

If you coach Catholic singles who are actively dating, and I’m guessing that’s why you’re reading this, let me tell you what this looks like in practice.

A 28-year-old woman takes the KNOW Thyself assessment. She discovers she has an anxious-preoccupied attachment style at a moderate severity level. Her giving love language is Acts of Service, but her receiving love language is Words of Affirmation. She’s been dating a man for two months and can’t understand why she feels unseen even though he’s constantly doing things for her.

Without this platform, she might talk to a friend. She might Google “anxious attachment.” She might ask her parish priest, who is wonderful but not trained in attachment theory.

With My Coaching, she messages you. And when her message arrives, you already see the full picture. You see the attachment pattern, the love language mismatch, and her READY scores showing that Family of Origin is flagged as Caution. You don’t spend twenty minutes catching up. You spend your time helping her connect the dots, with the full weight of what the Church teaches about the human person behind you.

That’s the difference. That’s what we built this for.

Familiaris Consortio says something I think about often. John Paul II called the work of lay specialists in family guidance “a commitment that well deserves the title of mission, so noble are the aims that it pursues.” He went further: “The future of the world and of the Church passes through the family.”

The future of the world and of the Church. That’s not small.

You became a coach, or a counselor, or a spiritual director, or a campus minister, because you believe in accompaniment. You believe that people don’t have to figure this out alone. Neither do you.

We built My Coaching to put better tools in the hands of the people already doing this indispensable work. Assessment data that would take you months to gather on your own. A Catholic knowledge base deeper than any single library. A format that respects your time. And a place where your expertise reaches further, not where it gets replaced.

Scripture says it simply: “Where there is no guidance, a people falls, but in an abundance of counselors there is safety” (Proverbs 11:14).

Your clients are looking for safety. You can be the counselor who provides it. With the full picture, finally, in front of you.

Your next step: Visit gameof.love/partner to learn more about joining My Coaching as a coach. We’d love to have you.

In Him,

Katie

Katie Palitto is a relationship & dating coach @Finding Adam Finding Eve ministry and co-creator of the Game of Love app.

Let me tell you about the most awkward first date question in Catholic dating.

“So... how many kids do you want?”

It usually shows up somewhere between the appetizer and the entree, delivered with the casual intensity of someone who’s been coached to “get the important stuff out early.” And honestly? I appreciate the intention. But if that’s the depth of your fruitfulness conversation, you’re missing the point entirely.

Because fruitfulness isn’t just about babies. It’s about how you love.

The Question Behind the Question

I worked with a couple--let’s call them Nathan and Sophia--who had the children conversation down to a science. Both wanted four kids. Catholic schooling. NFP from day one. They matched perfectly on paper.

But when I sat with them individually, something else emerged. Nathan hadn’t volunteered at his parish in three years. Sophia’s friendships had withered because she poured everything into dating. Together, their relationship was a closed circuit--all energy flowing between them, nothing flowing outward.

They agreed on the number of children. But they had no practice in the kind of generosity that raising those children would actually require.

Here’s what fifteen years of ministry has taught me: openness to life isn’t a checkbox. It’s a disposition. And that disposition starts forming long before you’re standing at the altar debating NFP methods.

What Fruitfulness Actually Looks Like

The Catholic tradition teaches that marriage has a “double significance: openness to new life and the marriage union” (Humanae Vitae 12). Both unitive and procreative. Both inward-facing love and outward-flowing generosity. Marriage is designed to produce something beyond itself--children, yes, but also community, hospitality, service, and witness.

The Church puts it plainly: marriage is “ordered toward the good of the spouses and the procreation and education of offspring” (CCC 1601). But notice that word--ordered toward. Fruitfulness is a direction, not just an event. It’s a way of living, not just a biological outcome.

And that direction has to be cultivated.

In my twenties, I didn’t understand this. I thought fruitfulness was something that happened after the wedding--something marriage produced automatically. But Mike and I discovered that the disposition of generosity and openness we needed as parents was the same disposition we needed to build as a couple. Fruitfulness isn’t a switch you flip. It’s a garden you tend.

We learned to ask ourselves: Are we building something together that goes beyond us? Are we pouring out for each other and for others--or are we consuming?

The Selfishness Trap

Can I be direct? Modern dating culture encourages a kind of relational consumerism. What am I getting from this? How does this person make me feel? Am I being fulfilled?

Those aren’t bad questions in small doses. But if they’re the only questions, you’re training yourself for a barren marriage. Because marriage will demand that you give when you’re empty, serve when you’re tired, and pour out for small humans who don’t say thank you for approximately eighteen years.

Fruitfulness is the opposite of consumerism. It’s a posture of abundance--believing that love multiplies when it’s given away, that your life together is meant to overflow its banks and nourish the world around you.

The bond of marriage contributes to the well-being of the spouses even when children aren’t forthcoming. Growing in the nuptial bond constitutes the unitive meaning of marriage. But that growth requires a generative spirit--a willingness to build, create, and give.

Cultivating Fruitfulness Right Now

You don’t have to wait for marriage to practice fruitfulness. Start today.

Serve together. If you’re dating someone, volunteer at a parish event or a food bank as a couple. Watch how they treat people who can offer them nothing. Ministry reveals character in ways a dinner date never will.

Be generous with your time. Fruitfulness in dating means not hoarding your partner’s attention. Maintain friendships. Support each other’s callings. Encourage growth, even when it’s uncomfortable.

Talk about more than logistics. “Do you want kids?” is a fine question. But dig deeper. What kind of home do you want to create? How do you imagine practicing hospitality? The answers reveal whether someone has a fruitful heart or just a family plan.

Examine your dating posture. Are you dating from scarcity--desperately trying to get your needs met--or from abundance? Scarcity produces grasping relationships. Abundance produces fruitful ones.

Practice spiritual generosity. Pray for the person you’re dating. Share what God is teaching you. A couple that grows together spiritually is already building a domestic church.

Your Homework This Week

This week, do something generous that has nothing to do with dating. Serve at your parish. Write an encouraging note to a friend. Babysit for a young family. Practice pouring out.

Then ask yourself: Is my dating life making me more generous or more self-focused?

The answer matters more than you think. Because the fruit you bear now is the seed of the family you’ll one day grow.

In Him,

Katie

Katie Palitto is a relationship & dating coach @Finding Adam Finding Eve ministry and co-creator of the Game of Love app.

If you’re reading this, I already know something about you. You’ve probably shown up to at least one date as a carefully edited version of yourself.

You know the version I mean. The one who laughs a little brighter, whose life sounds a little more put-together, whose past is a little more polished. The version who never mentions the messy divorce in the family, the anxiety you manage, or the fact that you spent last Saturday crying on your kitchen floor because loneliness hit harder than usual.

I know this version because I perfected her for years.

The Curated Self

Let me tell you about a woman I’ll call Lauren. She came to me six months into an engagement, panicking. “I don’t think he actually knows me,” she said. And she was right. For two years of dating, Lauren had presented the version of herself she thought her fiance wanted--agreeable, easygoing, always spiritually “on.” She’d hidden her struggle with anxiety, minimized her complicated family history, and never once told him she’d been in therapy for depression.

Now, facing a lifetime of being seen, she realized she’d built a relationship on a foundation of half-truths. Not lies exactly. Just... not the whole truth.

Here’s the problem: you can’t give yourself totally to someone you’ve only partially revealed. And totality is exactly what marriage asks.

What Total Self-Gift Actually Means

St. John Paul II talked about marriage as a “total gift of self”--body, mind, heart, and soul. The Catechism says married couples “give themselves definitively and totally to one another” (CCC 2364). That’s not poetry. That’s architecture. The entire structure of sacramental marriage is built on the premise that you’re giving the real you, not the highlight reel.

But here’s what I’ve learned: totality in marriage requires practice in dating. You don’t suddenly become vulnerable on your wedding night if you’ve spent two years performing.

I lived this. When I started dating Mike, I had a past I was deeply ashamed of. A failed marriage. Choices I regretted. Wounds I hadn’t finished healing. And every instinct I had screamed: Hide it. Show him the good parts. Let him fall in love with those, and maybe by the time the rest comes out, he’ll be too committed to leave.

But that’s not love. That’s a sales pitch.

The night I finally told Mike everything--the real everything--was one of the most terrifying nights of my life. I sat across from him and laid it all out. The failures, the shame, the things I’d never told anyone. I was sure he’d walk away.

He didn’t. He said, “Thank you for trusting me with that.”

That was the night our relationship became real. Not because my past didn’t matter, but because he chose the actual me--not the edited version. And for the first time, I understood what it meant to be fully known and fully loved.

Why We Hold Back

If totality is so essential, why do we hide? Because being fully known is terrifying. Our wounds whisper that if someone sees all of us, they’ll leave. So we protect ourselves by offering partial truths and curated versions.

But the grace of the sacrament is meant “to perfect the couple’s love and to strengthen their indissoluble unity” (CCC 1641). Grace perfects what’s real, not what’s performed. If you bring a masked version of yourself to the altar, grace has less to work with.

Practicing Totality in Dating

How do you practice total self-gift before marriage? Not by trauma-dumping on the first date. Totality is progressive--matched to the depth of the relationship. But it is honest.

Share your real story--gradually and intentionally. By the time you’re discerning engagement, this person should know your significant history. If you’re hiding something major because you’re afraid they’ll leave, that’s a red flag about the foundation you’re building.

Stop performing. Notice when you’re editing yourself. The question isn’t “Will they like this version of me?” It’s “Are they falling in love with the person I actually am?”

Let them see you struggle. Not every hard moment needs to be processed alone. That’s how you learn whether this person can handle married life--which is full of mess.

Name your fears. “I’m afraid that if you really knew me, you wouldn’t want me.” That sentence, said honestly to someone who’s earned your trust, is one of the bravest acts of self-gift you can practice.

Your Homework This Week

This week, take one step toward totality. Share one thing with the person you’re dating--or with a trusted friend if you’re single--that you’ve been holding back. Something real. Something that scares you a little.

You don’t have to share everything. Just crack the door open. Because every act of honest self-revelation is practice for the total gift of self that marriage will one day ask of you.

And that gift? It’s the most beautiful thing you’ll ever give.

In Him,

Katie

Katie Palitto is a relationship & dating coach @Finding Adam Finding Eve ministry and co-creator of the Game of Love app.