Low Drama, High Stakes: The Four Things That Actually Matter in a Girlfriend

You can tell in about five seconds whether you're attracted to her. You almost never ask whether she gossips, whether Jesus is actually her Lord, or whether she'd make a good mother to your kids.

We've turned dating into a feelings audit: chemistry, vibes, whether she laughs at your jokes. The questions that actually predict whether a marriage survives get skipped, dismissed as too calculating or too early to ask.

Attraction matters, but it's not enough. The real tell is whether she's ordering her life under someone bigger than herself, or spending her energy managing everyone else's.

This episode lays out four specific, unglamorous filters for choosing who you date, the kind that never show up on a dating profile and that most men never ask until they're already in too deep. Fair warning: raising the bar shrinks the list.

Visit sethtroutt.com for more insights on authentic masculinity that takes dating seriously enough to ask the questions attraction alone can't answer.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:31

All right, what should you look for in a girlfriend as a man who's trying to honor Christ and build a life towards the future? Uh, when I went to a group of senior high school boys and they asked me that question, what should we look for in a girlfriend? I gave them three key points. And I want to give you four key points here and unpack that a bit and help you discern who you should be looking for when you're considering a girlfriend, someone you want to date, eventually someone that you want to marry. Number one is attractive. You have to be attracted to her. This is certainly not less than physicality, but this is a gravitas. You want to be around her, you want to spend time with her, that you want to look into her eyes. You want to uh so just think about attraction as gravity. You want to be closer to her, not further away from her. And so beauty is a part of that, uh, but it's also includes personality, the way she carries herself, uh, the way that she uh is attractive versus repulsive to your presence. I do think overcoming non-attraction is kind of a dead start. I do think God has made women beautiful and God has given men eyes. And we can obviously butcher that and we do all the time by objectifying with her eyes. But when we subjectify with our eyes as opposed to objectify with our eyes, we see her as a whole person, a sister in Christ, someone designed by God. And you go, I would like to spend more time with her. So that's what I mean by attractive. I would like to spend more time with her, that I'm uh interested in being closer to her, spending more time with her. And so that's not just raw physicality, that's not just Instagram pictures, but that's uh a whole person that you are attracted to. Uh that's not lust. That's not, I want to see her with less clothes on. That is inappropriate, that is objectification. But I mean when I see her as a whole person, do I want to be with her more often as a whole person? It's attractive. Number two, is she uh loving Christ and trying to order her life under the authority of Jesus? You as a man, your values and direction ought to be set by God, and her values and her direction ought to be set in God. It's kind of a cheesy picture here. But if you think like a triangle with God at the top, man and woman on the side, the closer you get to God, the closer you get to each other. Uh, that may be and is a gross oversimplification. But at the same time, that someone who doesn't share my values and my beliefs about the meaning and purpose of all of life, I cannot really meaningfully build a life with her. If she thinks the goal of life is sex, money, power, or if she thinks the goal of life is absolute ease and she just thinks the goal of life has nothing to do with honoring the Lord Jesus, participating in his mission, uh, loving your neighbor as yourself, honoring the Lord with your whole selves, then you're you're not you're building a fake connection because you're not really aligned on what is most important for your life. And so if you're tempted to get in a relationship with a woman who's a non-believer and you kind of think that's fine, what that's revealing to me about you is that Jesus Christ is not number one in your life and that you may not actually think that Jesus is Lord. You may think he's just kind of like a sports team you like to cheer for. You may be a fan of Jesus, but not a follower of Jesus. And so if Jesus is number one, then you want someone who's also working to make Jesus number one because the goal and purpose of life is determined by his lordship, his authority, and by the scriptures. And if some woman that you're interested in doesn't share that, then you are revealing that Christ is not that important to you. So that's so attractive. Really wanting to follow Jesus. Number three, I'm gonna say is low drama. Now, when I said this to these seniors in high school, they all kind of went, Whoa, that's really helpful, that makes sense, and that resonates. And here's what I mean by that is you know, a number of times in the New Testament, Paul talks about busy bodies and talking about women. And these are people who are making their business other people's business. And so this is kind of the gossipiness. This is the keeping up with the Kardashians, this is given to reality TV, this is constantly chitter-chattering about what other people are up to. She's not really leading her life, she's kind of looking left and right, inspecting and managing all these other people's lives. So she's given to drama. And I don't mean drama equals emotions, but I mean drama is being improperly caught up with what other people are thinking and feeling and doing, such that she's not trying to order her life under Jesus. She's constantly kind of looking left and looking right and evaluating the lives of other people. That's unhealthy. Uh, that's uh evidence of insecurity. If you're doing it as a man, it's evidence of insecurity because you're finding your sense of self in comparison and critiquing other people rather than trying to do what God has given to you. And here's the fourth one is do you think she would be a wonderful person to be the mother of your children? Now, I don't think that women's identities get reduced to mother. I've done whole podcasts about how that should not happen. But when you're thinking about raising a son, raising a daughter, uh, co-parenting with this woman, uh, raising them up in the household of the Lord, trying to create a household together that honors him, uh, this warm, fun, playful environment. And you go, can I imagine her as a mother? And if the answer is, eh, probably not, then she's either got some maturing to do or you need to find someone else. And so uh, but I want you to picture and imagine what will it be like to have a three-year-old and a five-year-old with this person? What will it be like to have four kids with this person? What would it be like? Can I, does she desire that? Does she want that? Do we have a shared vision for the household? Does she want 19 kids and you want two? You know, that's not gonna work. And so can we align and share this vision? Like, can I imagine her maternally caring for and being interested in kids? And so uh that calculation or that kind of gut level evaluation is one of the things you want to think about. Like uh, one of the best things about my wife is how we get to parent together and seeing her become the mother that God has designed her to be. Now, that's still like a sliver of her identity. You know, she still works, she's part of a church, she's uh she's a sister, she's a daughter, uh, she's a friend. But that maternal peace, that our connection there is really key. And so if you have uh a woman you're interested in and she doesn't check one of those four boxes, I really want to challenge you to question whether you should be dating her at all or looking somewhere else. And this is one of the hard things about the Christian standard is when you raise the bar, uh the herd gets thinner, the options get thinner. But it's important that you not find uh yourself uh stuck in some relationship where you are uh out of sync with one of those four things. And so those aren't law, those are just wisdom. Taking what you want. I'm curious what else you'd add if you want to reply to this somehow. Uh, but those are the four general things I give to guys as they're thinking about who should I try to date.