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We were created with an unquenchable longing to be in relationship with others. Think about your life for a moment. What are your happiest memories? And then, what are your memories of greatest loss or pain? Our bet is that both your best and your worst moments in life involve people—relationships.

Our craving for relationships is a legitimate desire. However, this good and natural desire often turns against us, creating hurt and pain instead of trust and intimacy in our relationships. The reason is not hard to find out: human selfishness. We are all guilty when it comes to considering our needs and wants more important and of greater value than another's. And thus we all have stories of how others have hurt us relationally by being selfish and how we, in turn, have hurt others also.

The Bible prescribes just the opposite when it speaks of how we are to relate to one another: "Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others" (Philippians 2:3-4). Jesus tells his followers, "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another" (John 13:34).

Our world today—from reality television, to the latest issue of Cosmopolitan, down through the halls of the local high school—is obsessed with finding the right "formula" for successful relationships. If any of you have tried these various strategies for landing the right girl or guy and keeping her or him, you know that they only lead to confusing frustration. The reason is that there are no shortcuts for building trust and respect—the foundation of every relationship.

Fortunately for us, God spells it out clearly in the Bible, as the above quotations show, and says plainly we are to love each other, and that love looks like counting another and his or her interests as more significant than our own. This is the central quality of love—seeking another's good before our own. And the more costly the sacrifice we make to do good to someone, the more loving the act we have performed. This is why Jesus says, speaking of himself, "Greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down his life for his friends" (John 15:13).

The qualities of true love are given more detail in another, very famous passage of Scripture:

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. (1 Corinthians 13:4-8)

True love, as just described by the Bible, is selfless. Romantic love, according to the world, is selfish. True and selfless love leads to the development of trust and intimacy in relationships; the result is that they are healthy, lasting, and fulfilling. Selfish love leads to heartache and broken relationships; the result is that they are unhealthy, short, and damaging.

In light of these truths, it is extremely foolish to follow the world as it runs in blind circles trying to make "love" and relationships work, where love is defined as what will make me feel that I am great and special at the least expense to myself. Innate human selfishness causes relationships to fail, creating the pain of separation. But, with trust and respect being the foundation of any relationship, God says that we are to love others by valuing their needs more highly than our own. And the greater the cost attached to showing someone else we value him or her more highly than we do ourselves, the more loving we are acting toward that person. And, as a result, the more satisfying and lasting our relationships will become.

These basic truths of how to build trust and intimacy in relationships are the same regardless of whether the relationship is one with your parents, siblings, friends, coworkers, boss, boyfriend or girlfriend, or spouse. In fact, these relational principles also apply to your relationship with God himself.

We also understand that the relationship we often stress most over is romantic in nature. Therefore we have included 10 helpful steps toward developing a committed romantic relationship with someone of the opposite sex. (Remember that the healthiest and most lasting and also most pleasurable relationship must be built over time, in a mature, stable, and patient manner rather than the impulsive, irrational "hook ups" that lack a solid foundation and so soon fall apart and lead to much pain.)

Developing a Committed Relationship

Be Friends First

It is crucial to the future health and success of your relationships that you begin in the right place—as friends.

Backwards Dating

If the first encounters in your relationship are physical and not social, then most often you will continue to be physical with each other and this will build a false intimacy between you that lacks a true foundation of trust and respect. Since you do not know the other person yet, you cannot be loving them through your sexual activity but only using them to please yourself. (You cannot love someone you do not know.) Additionally, sexual activity (if allowed to continue) will crowd out other more important emotional areas of the relationship that need to develop at an early stage for the relationship to have a chance of survival. If you stop growing emotionally in your knowledge of the other person (and his or her knowledge of you), then the relationship is doomed to failure. This is backwards dating. To start a relationship through sexual activity is to begin at the end.

Walk, Don't Run

It is important from the outset that you are not in a hurry to progress the relationship to more intimate stages it is not mature enough to handle yet. Getting to know someone as a friend should be a patient and relaxed process. It should also be fun! Don't put artificial pressure on yourself to get another person to notice you or "fall" in love with you. Instead, try focusing on getting to know that person. Ask him or her questions to find out who he or she is and what he or she is made out of. What are his or her likes, dislikes, experiences growing up, interests, hobbies, favorite foods, books, movies, characters, and bands, favorite ways to kill time, favorite television shows or things he or she wants to learn more about. Having these types of conversations will only help you determine if indeed this is someone you would want to have a committed relationship with.

So have fun, laugh, spend time together in groups, with friends or family, and remember to be honest as you talk because this will help establish trust in your friendships.

Person or Possession?

Many people rush through the friendship phase of the relationship because they are anxious to "have somebody." Notice the possessive language. We want to "have somebody" so that we feel okay about ourselves. "If I am not alone," we tell ourselves, "then there must be something special and lovable about me." But if we are not secure ourselves before beginning a relationship, then we are weakening the relationship by placing on it a weight it cannot bear—our self-worth. For if the way to build trust and intimacy is by counting another's needs as more valuable than our own, then looking for the relationship to "complete me" will only doom it to failure. If my greatest concern is what I can get from you, as opposed to what I can give to you, then I am practicing selfish 'love' and burdening the relationship beyond what it can bear.

Who's the 'Right' Person?

This leads to an important distinction. How many magazine covers are littered with headlines similar to the following: "Finding Mr./Ms. Right: Check inside to see how you can land the man/woman of your dreams"? Headlines such as these sell magazines because so many of us are obsessed with finding "the one," the "right" person for us. This, unfortunately, places our focus in exactly the opposite place that it should be. To search for Mr. or Ms. Right is to search for someone else to give us what we need—it is the quest of selfish love. Our attention and effort, instead of spent toward finding Mr. or Ms. Right, should go toward being Mr. or Ms. Right for someone else. See the difference? In the first relational model I am selfishly seeking the "right" person to make me feel better about myself, and in the second I am striving to be the right person for someone else.

While you're single is the best time to focus on your own character and lifestyle. Without the distraction and time commitment of a romantic relationship, you have the opportunity to build yourself up into the person you want to be, the person who will hopefully someday become the "right" person for someone else. If you commit yourself first to becoming the right kind of person, one who considers the needs of others as more important than his or her own, then your odds of success at forming a lasting and fulfilling relationship will only continue to increase. In this way, you will also be freeing yourself up to truly love another by giving yourself to him or her, as opposed to trying to use him or her to get what you need.

With all this in mind, here are 10 steps that may serve as a rough and approximate guide of how to progress through the different stages of intimacy in developing a committed relationship.¹

10 Steps to Developing a Committed Relationship

The relational steps that follow form a progression that begins at first meeting someone and ends in marriage. Therefore these are not steps to progress through rapidly but may take years of time to develop. Do not attempt to unnaturally move your relationship through each successive step, but rather allow things to progress naturally, freely, and without micro-managing.

It is also assumed in the steps below that you are not sexually active with this person or living together prior to getting married. Both premarital sex and cohabiting have been statistically proven to cause most relationships to fail before marriage, and for those who do end up marrying, to increase the likelihood of divorce. Therefore, you should not get to the final steps in this progression until you are ready to be married to the person you are with.

Steps One through Four: Dealing with Similarities

During the first phase of a romantic relationship there is a glow of mutual excitement which generally blinds both of you to any imperfections in the other.

• You meet. There is a flash of interest. Initial communication occurs.
• You get together again. You chat on the phone or exchange e-mails. You talk a bit more and agree to go out.
• You begin the process of becoming friends. You share group activities together, such as school events, sporting events, movies, meals, etc.
• You begin meeting each other's family and friends.

Steps Five through Seven: Dealing with Differences

Typically at this point in the friendship differences begin to arise. These may be differences in interests, perceptions, styles of communication, goals, past experiences, etc. It is also a time where imperfections in the other person may become more noticeable. The person who before was 'perfect' in your eyes now possess weaknesses and flaws. If these are too significant that they will limit or hinder the growth of the relationship, or if they cause you to begin to compromise any of your core beliefs, then this is the time to evaluate whether or not the friendship should continue to develop in a romantic direction.

Though still difficult, a non-sexual relationship is 100 times easier to break off than one in which sexual intimacy has taken place.

• Explore each other's common and different interests. Be open to learning from the other person about his or her experiences and perspectives on things.
• Be honest but kind about perceived weaknesses or flaws in each other. Distinguish minor differences of opinion from major differences of worldview. Address with humility the weaknesses or flaws you see in your friend and have him or her do the same with you. How a person responds when confronted with a weakness will tell you much about his or her character, and thus be very helpful in determining if this is someone you could see yourself with in the long run.
• Explore life goals and dreams. Take increasing amounts of time together to discuss who you are as individuals and where you are headed in life.

Steps Eight and Nine: Dealing with Both Similarities and Differences

These steps are the final steps toward marriage and give the couple a final opportunity to judge if their relationship should end or continue on into marriage. To lay as solid a foundation as possible, it is critical that all issues between you be explored prior to getting married.

• Acknowledge that you are going forward together. Work through important issues such as finances, children, in-laws, communication, etc.
• You become engaged—you pledge your faithfulness to each other and express your intentions to be married. Begin premarital counseling with a wise, older couple. Read through the traditional list of wedding vows and evaluate whether or not you are prepared to make those "in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer" type of promises to each other. Finalize wedding plans and other necessary details (where to live after you get married, jobs, etc.).

Step Ten: Total Commitment

To marry is to commit through solemn covenant to join yourself, mind, body, and soul, to another for as long as you both do live. Without marrying you never truly have a committed relationship with someone else, because without the protection of the covenant of marriage and the promises of trust and faithfulness it contains, there is always the option to end the relationship. Once you get married, in spite of the current trends in our society, you are agreeing to never end the relationship. This is as serious as it can get. But it is also as satisfying and fulfilling as it can ever get!

• Marriage. You commit, through a solemn ceremony and the exchanging of promises, to join yourself entirely to your love for the rest of your lives. After the wedding, you have sex (hopefully for the first time!), which provides a beautiful picture of your new "oneness" along with great pleasure and intimacy. Finally, you discover that this is not really the end of anything, but rather the beginning of a lifetime of growing together with your spouse in intimate and satisfying oneness.

¹ The basic outline of the material that follows has been adapted from Lisa Hosler, "The One: 10 Steps to Developing a Committed Relationship" (Lancaster, PA: Loving & Caring).