I have been thinking a lot about my relationship lately. I was explaining to one of my good friends that before I started to date my amazing girlfriend, I knew her. He inquired as to how, and I explained.
In May of 2009, my life had been kind of spiralling out of control. There was nothing too crazy that happened I just started making decisions and choices that were not honoring to God. I remember one day, after having a random make out session with one of my close friends, that I was changing. I remember looking in the mirror and wondering why, or what, or who I was becoming. On that night, I simply went to my desk and wrote a very simple vow to my future wife. I had just gotten out of a relationship like a month or 2 prior (you see why I was frustrated with myself) and was in the act of trying to fill that void. The problem was I was trying to fill it with the wrong things, like random make out sessions with girls I knew. Back to the vow I wrote. I wrote a simple vow to my wife that I was going to be a better man not by my words, but by my actions. I was going to choose her over whatever temptation came my way, from then on. I signed it May 29, 2009.
This resolve made me semi-obsessive about my future wife. You may say, well that is not so bad. You do not understand. I made a list, a pretty distinct list of what my future wife would and would not be like. I made negotiable, and non-negotiable categories. I made distinctions from the most broad to the most minute detail. I was absorbed. I was also very much so in love with her. I did not have a face to put on my wife’s characteristics but I quickly began to fall in love with the characteristics of her. To say it bluntly, I became very deeply in love with who she was, not what she looked like.
When I met my amazing girlfriend I found very quickly that she possessed all of the characteristics save one. After our brief moment of separation, even that characteristic (trust me with her heart completely) was broken down and eventually she was everything my list said she would be and more. So back to the beginning. My friend asked me, after hearing my story and seeing me grow, how distinct his list should be. I encouraged him to make one of his own you see. I told him to make it as distinct as possible. God can provide you with more than you could ever dream. I told him the simple truth of the list, and I am going to share it here with you all reading this post. If you make a list of things you want out of the one you are with, and you make it very descriptive and distinct, you will find one important and amazing truth from that list. Before you ever met the one you will marry, you already knew them. It helps when you are saving your virginity for marriage as I have been doing. I was not saving it for “marriage”, I was saving it for “her”, my future wife, the love of my life.
I hope as you read this, if you have crossed boundaries you wish you did not cross, that you make a list and start fresh. Write a vow to your future husband/wife. Be committed to a person, not a hypothetical shadow of a photograph. Get to know your future husband/wife by making a list and let them have the confidence and knowledge that even before you met them you knew them.
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Food for thought: God says, before I formed you in the womb I knew you. I know exactly what he is talking about after I made my list.
leadershape 
Good stuff man.