Well, hi, friend. Welcome to Job with Julie. I'm Julie Slattery, and this is a listener-so-operative podcast, an outreach of authentic intimacy, which is a ministry dedicated to reclaiming God's design for sexuality.

Well, if you've been following the ministry or you're listening to the podcast regularly, you might have noticed we've had a lot of

episodes recently around marriage, and particularly sexual intimacy in marriage. We've had a

webinar series and some podcast episodes focused on sexual pleasure. And I realize that for a lot of

our single listeners, that means you've kind of tuned out.

So I wanted to have a conversation that's really relevant for you today as a single Christian.

And my guest for today is Lisa Anderson.

Lisa is really a funny, amazing, thoughtful person who runs the boundless ministry over at Focus on the Family.

A boundless show is a nationally syndicated radio show and podcast, and it's just filled with

great information and just everyday journeys of what it looks like to be single in today's culture.

Lisa shares so practically and so honestly about her journey as a single woman in her 40s.

We're going to be talking about some of the things she wrote in her book, The Dating Manifesto.

She's going to share about how some of her beliefs, even as a young single woman, impacted

her gaining relationships.

She'll talk about some of the joys and struggles of being single as an older adult

and give some great advice on just what expectations are healthy to have

as you search for a potential spouse in the future.

So without further ado, let's go to my conversation with Lisa Anderson you and I connected when we

both worked at focus you're still at focus on the family and you recently wrote a book called the

dating manifesto which is kind of an intimidating title how did manifesto get in Well, I'm often told as a single woman that I'm intimidating, so I figured I was just going to live up to that and be like, bam, you know, put this book out. No. I came up with the title, and it was funny because I agonized over it. It's weird. I'm usually pretty good at coming up with clever titles for things. I title blog posts. I titled the show every week. But I was like, what can I call this book? Oh, my goodness. And I knew it was both for women and men. And so I didn't want it to be too fluffy or whatever. And I was just thinking to myself. And at one point, I was like, you know, it's kind of like my manifesto, my line in the sand, everything I wish I'd

been told in my 20s, but wasn't about dating relationships, being single, all of that. And I had actually had a conversation with Gary Thomas, and he was batting around ideas for me and said, you know, what about the singles manifesto? And I was like, well, you know, I think I came up with the dating manifesto,

and maybe I should go with that.

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