I Kissed Dating Goodbye: A New Attitude Toward Relationships and Romance

Unfortunately, the churches of today are taking these contents and calling it "God". What they have done is called "DENIAL" and "REPRESSION OF FEELINGS". As a single Christian, I am disgusted with the extremes this book manifests that dating is taboo. What's next, the dowry system?

I read this book on the suggestion of a female friend, expecting it to be ludicrous and puritanical.

I was actually plesasantly suprised. Rather than being a finger-wagging "dating is evil" tract, the book contained many nuggets of wisdom on matters such as truly honoring/respecting people, being unselfish, and waiting for what's best rather than going for instant gratification (the example he used is choosing two marshmallows later rather than one now). I actually found myself agreeing with the first 2/3 or so of the book.

However, I find some of his later positions to be a bit odd. He says that if two people are interested in each other, the man MUST make the first move (an arbitrary social standard, not from the Bible). Furthermore, a man must ask the girl's father for permission to ask her to marry him. If the father is not available, one must ask a person "responsible for the girl," such as the preacher of her church. I can perhaps understand the father issue (harmonious relations w/ the in-laws), but the "responsible for the girl" bit seems to imply that Harris believes women aren't capable of making these decisions for themselves.

I have heard that Mr. Harris has revised and reiussed this book (see the edition with the new, brown cover) and answered many questions/objections from readers. Perhaps he answered mine.

I'm 28 years old and still single. So if I don't get a wife after following these principles, well, I may ask for my money back. Just kidding. What I like most about this book is that it doesn't offer a formula for getting hitched. It is simply, at it's core, wisdom. The writers voice has the tone of a conversation over coffee. He isn't presenting a biased view about how he has it all figured out, he's simply bringing up the question about whether or not society has a firm view about romance and relationships. Will kids stop dating because they've read the book? Maybe. But then again, why shouldn't they? If more than half of marriages end in divorce, shouldn't we be looking more closely at the foundation of the family rather than trying to cosmeticaly fix something that was doomed to misery long before it began? This is the central thesis of my praise for Harris and his book. He goes to the root of the problem. You know, I didn't like everything that Josh had to say, and I probably will not follow his roadmap as it is layed out. But that's the beauty of the book. He's simply being conversational and prompting us to ask ourselves very important questions. I'll have coffee with this guy any day of the week. Thanks for writing from the heart. Looking forward to reading more from Joshua Harris.

March 11, 2002
My testimony completely sucks. I’ve been in complete day-after-day sign. I thought about killing myself last night. I’m sure I wouldn’t, but I have been thinking about it a lot. I feel dead inside.
March 12, 2002
I’m so dead.
March 14, 2002 “Intimacy without commitment is defrauding. Intimacy without friendship is superficial.”- Josh Harris
March 22, 2002 I feel like I can never measure up or be good enough. I think about creating a whole new identity for myself and a whole new life. Then I couldn’t corrupt my brother and sister.
April 5, 2002 “Make the purity of others your priority.” “As singles, we face the task of bultivating a balanced, biblical understanding of God’s purpose and plan for marriage.” “Dating can cause discontentment with God’s gift of singleness.” “A physical relationship doesn’t equal love.” “I must avoid situations that could compromise the purity of my mind and my body.”
June 11, 2004 Things haven’t changed much. I’m still a failure. I still think about killing myself, now more than ever.
June 21, 2004 I WANT TO DIE
I begin this review with excerpts from my journal. In 2002, I was 15 years old. I was a homeschooled kid, heavily involved in the Independent Fundamental Baptist church that I had been raised in. I grew up in fundamentalism, so the words purity, courtship, and defrauding were very common in my household. At 15 I had a crush on a boy from my youth group and I learned from friends it was a mutual thing. We sat next to each other in youth group, exchanged letters to one another, and smiled at each other from across the room. He went to a private Baptist school, one where many of my church friends went. I used to go with my girl friends from church to their basketball games and sometimes he would find me and sit next to me with my friends. Once he held my hand as we all walked next door to the school to Little Caesar’s for a slice of pizza. It was chaste, in was innocent, it was the one thing I had in my life that was my own. It came to everyone’s attention in March of 2002 which is when all hell broke loose in my household. It came with a lot of anger, a lot of punishment, a lot of guilt and shame and then a book called I Kissed Dating Goodbye. When my mom bought me that book, I wish I had started a fund for the amount of therapy I would need in my adulthood undoing all of the things I learned in this book.
I write this review not to be sarcastic, not to be rude or nasty or hateful about my upbringing. I preface this by stating I am still very close to my family whether or not we agree on everything. If I could convey one thing through this, it would be to parents, please do not buy this book for your children. There is a reason the author has since denounced every word that graced the pages of this series. It is damaging: physically, mentally, emotionally. I will never be able to fully convey with words what impact the late 90s-early 2000s “Purity Culture” movement would have on me for the rest of my life, but I know much began with this book. I grew up as a body. A body to protect, a body to save, a body that would never be my own. A body that was God’s first, then my parents’, then eventually my husband’s. I wasn’t a personality, vivacious and funny. I wasn’t my hobbies of theater and reading. I wasn’t me. I could never be me. I was a body, saving myself for marriage, focusing on what I wore because I didn’t want to “defraud” boys. I was a body who stared at myself in the mirror and wondered if I did all of these things right if someone would truly love me and want me forever. I was a body who obeyed and submitted now so I would obey and submit as an adult. But that was only if I was good, holy, pure. If I remained pure and chaste, the life I had to look forward to was one of subservience until death. I spent my whole teenage years in a mental war within myself. I wanted to want to do the right thing. I wanted to want a godly marriage. I wanted to want a room full of children. But what happens if wanting to want those things isn’t enough? Well, the first thing that goes is purity, usually. And it did. That crushed flower, that chewed up gum, that dirty snow. At 19 years old, that was me. I expected everything to change but it didn’t. There weren’t flashes of lightning, there was no sudden judgment. My life didn’t change. The only thing that happened was unlocking more of the guilt and shame I had kept hidden inside me all throughout my childhood. When my landlord’s 40 something son kissed me the first time, I heard a voice in my head say “well you let him kiss you. You can’t reject him now. You know what physical intimacy leads to. And you know once a man is turned on, you can’t make him stop now.” So he used to come into my room at night. The first night I told him I didn’t want to. That really didn’t matter though, because I had kissed him. When he got pushy, I heard my entire upbringing telling me I couldn’t stop him now. I started this. This was my fault. If I tried stopping him I would be defrauding HIM. I would be the tease. This was on ME now.
I wish that I could tell you that was the only time that happened to me. Most of my early 20s were spent in a battle between wanting to be an adult who makes her own choices, and the guilt and shame weighing down on all of my choices. At 27 I was violently raped by a man who was also raised in the purity culture movement. He knew that I was “dirty” already, so I guess my crying, my pleading to him to get off me didn’t matter. If someone else had already had me, surely he was entitled to too. After all, I was a bit worthless to a man of God at this point, right?
Things changed after that night. I spent a year pretending it didn’t happen. Telling myself it wasn’t real as I looked over my shoulder at every turn. Telling myself I was just being paranoid when dating became even more difficult for me. Eventually I realized I needed therapy to get through this. What I didn’t realize is that I needed therapy for a LOT of things and this horrible, traumatic event was just the tip of the iceberg. I will be 35 soon. I’ve never married, I struggle terribly with emotional intimacy and my tubes were tied years ago. I won’t blame a book for the fact the majority of my sexual encounters in my early 20s were not consensual. I won’t blame a book for the fact I blamed myself for an entire year about being held down in my home by a man I thought was my friend and raped. I won’t blame a book for the fact that I still struggle telling an interested man no to access to my body. I won’t blame a book for the fact that sometimes it’s easier to just say yes than deal with how violent the word no can make a person. I also won’t blame it for the fact I do not know how to be in a healthy relationship. I do not know what a healthy relationship looks like and I do not know how to kick this feeling of worthlessness, shame and disgust that creeps in sometimes and undoes all the work I have done to become a fulfilled, happy, confident woman. I won’t blame a book, but I will absolutely blame the culture that book not only is a major part of, but truly a book that helped start a major movement.
If you’re thinking about buying this book for a child I don’t know if anything I could say could possibly make you think again, but the only reason I am writing this is the hope that maybe it will. Talk to your children about safety, about boundaries, about consent. They are children. Do not put this guilt and shame and pressure on their young minds because it can truly destroy them. There are ways to talk about sex and purity that do not advocate for shame or disgust. If you’re a teen reading this review, please know, you are not dirty. You are not disgusting. You are not used. Whether you have experienced sexual intimacy or not, it does NOT define you. You are more than a body. You are more than your sexuality. You are more than a night of passion. You’re a person, a wonderful, vibrant, intelligent person who has their whole life and future ahead of them. I believe that about you, maybe in 10 years and thousands of dollars in therapy later I will get to believe that about me too.

I Kissed Dating Good-bye ....YOU WHAT! I have heard that over and over ! This book written by Joshua Harris has taken this society by storm. This book is full of words of wisdom, stories and new ideas. Joshua has a great style of writing. His ideas have challenged youth (even a few adults) to treat one another with complete purity. This is a wonderful gift to any young person who is just starting to see what these whole male-female relationships are all about. I read this book at age 20. I wish I had read it 7 years before that. Give Joshua a chance to speak to you about what has been laid on his heart. My hopes are that this book would speak to you like it spoke to me.

After reviewing quite a few of the negative remarks regarding this book, I have to say many of those reviewers misunderstood this book. This book is not attempting to convince people not to date... in fact, if you read the introduction, the author states this upfront. Nor is the author looking to setup some dogmatic formula in place of dating. Rather, the author seeks to challenge Christians in their approach to romantic pursuits, and their understanding of what true love is, and allowing God to guide their choice in who they spend the rest of their lives with through sound Biblical principles.
This book is absolutely radical, and sometimes, it just shocked me. It challenged me greatly, and made me see my own blind spots. I attempted to read this book when I was 17 years old (it was a gift given to me by a concerned older brother/pastor), but did not allow myself to get past the first chapter, and thought it was such a stupid book (I also skipped the intro back then). I picked it up again recently (now I'm 21), and I was absolutely blown away, especially after reading chapter 15.
I look forward to reading the sequel to this book, "Boy Meets Girl."

This is a well written book for those who have same kind of thoughts. But for those who disagree with him, it is a poorly written book. I am one of the people who disagree. It seems like this book is just based on the author's personal experiences. He wrote this book based on what he felt, saw, and heard. Since he had some bad experiences in his dating relationships, he thinks all the dating relationship is not good.
He also says that dating someone distrubs the pure christian life, but I think this opinion is also just based on his thought. I've seen many great christians who are in dating relationships.
I'll say that I do not recommend this book for those who are in dating relationship or getting into one. Specially, for non-christian readers, do not read this book, it may look just stupid.

I'm not going to deny that this book makes you think. Harris asks teenagers to take a serious look at their values and beliefs about dating, and asks them to make sure that they feel Christ would agree with their theories.
However, I think the book takes a condescending and unrealistic stance on the issue of dating. Harris seems to imply that most teenagers are incapable of having chaste dating relationships, and that having a quote-unquote "typical" dating relationship is sinful.
As a teenage girl and devout Catholic, I have a set of values that reflect my personal beliefs and needs. I am not against dating in its "mainstream" form, because many of my friends (I don't comment on my own relationships, though I assure you they have all reflected my values) have been involved in completely chaste dating relationships, without all of this "courtship" nonsense.
The idea of courtship makes very little sense to me. It appears to be a way to "duck out of" having to develop mature, appropriate relationships; in short, it is a way to avoid having to set boundaries and learn to communicate with your "significant other." While it probably does require more persistence than a "typical" dating relationship, I don't feel that makes it any more meaningful or "correct" in God's Eyes.
Teenagers must make their own decision about their relationships. I do feel, however, that books like this one actually backfire: they promote the idea that teens/young people are NOT able to control their own actions, and are not able to handle themselves in "the real world."

I had mixed feelings toward this book. There were many things about the author's ideas that I did not agree with. I don't feel that the way that he describes as the best way to go about wooing a mate would work the best. However, there were many doctinal issues that I agreed strongly with, such as his stance on purity. Although the title of the book is something I don't particularly agree with, I respect the author's motives and reasoning.

I happened across this book by accident and I really felt the Holy Spirit telling me that I needed to read this book. As I began to read, I saw God areas of life that weren't pleasing to God and that I needed to change my attitude and trust God to run my life. I also found that I was taking principles from this book and applying them to other areas of my life. I consider this a must-read for anyone who is single and is looking for that special someone, but ESPECIALLY to teenagers who are just starting and have the world's view of dating. There is a better way! Just trust in God because he knows what is best for you. After all, he created you and loves you unconditionally.