When does the actual dating process with a women begin? While many others may differ, in my personal opinion it is the moment of meeting the girl, to what use to be called, "going steady", when the mutual decision is to only see each other.

The reason I write this is because there is a difference between being "getting a girl" and being in an already established relationship. Until the man and woman make the decision to see only each other, there is a lot of mystery with what the man is suppose to do. Many men think that they are suppose to do the same thing as they would in an already established relationship, but, in fact, God did not design it that way.

Many men forget about what is called the dating process. If you look around at material, the dating process is almost completely ignored, while relationship material is plentiful.

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Why is there a shortage of material on the dating process, especially within the Christian community?

Not completely sure, but there are some books which do cover the topic of dating Christian women. I Kissed Dating Goodbye by Joshua Harris is a great book, while unlike the title, is actually not a complete call of Christians to not date, but to put the focus of the relationship on God and putting the biblical marriage at the center. He writes that we should move past selfish personal reasons for dating. Great! The book helps me a lot, but it does not focus on what to do when we are getting to know a girl and slowly moving the "dating process" forward.

Lets take a look at another book: When God Writes Your Love Story: The Ultimate Approach  to Guy/Girl Relationships by Eric and Leslie Ludy. Another great book, this one starts to get close to dating women, writing that a man should focus on God, fix his own life and become a better, more complete man, but it doesn't help with the "dating process". There are more books, but we will leave it with these two right now.

So we need to become "better men". Both of the books, while not helping with the "dating process", write that God needs to be the center of your life, and you need to fix yourself, but what do we do with that? We become a better person, suitable for a women of God, but unless you know how to act and what to do, women will probably stay away from you, or not be interested in you, causing a lot of unnecessarily rejection.

It's OKAY though, I didn't know for the longest time what to do either!