If I could take one guess at what the single in your pew might say to you, given the opportunity, I would guess that it's this: listen. Please listen. Take the time to ask questions, to let the person answer, to hear without judging or jumping in with canned Christian formulas or buzzwords.

When you hear someone say that singleness is really hard, and you're tempted to retort, "You don't know what 'hard' is!"—stop. Catch yourself. Push away the impulse to correct and judge and win the "who has the more difficult life" contest. Ask what's going on that's hard and be prepared to listen.

Yes, it's possible that you'll hear something so silly you'll need to excuse yourself and go find a quiet place to roll your eyes. That's always a risk in human interaction. But it's also possible you'll hear about someone struggling to pay rent or medical bills on one salary. Or about someone who doesn't think he or she can face coming home to a dark and silent apartment one more time. Or about someone dealing with sexual desires and temptations that are becoming too great to bear. You may have the chance to say something that will strengthen and shore up someone's faith—or you may learn something that will give new life and strength to yours.

If someone mentions having a hard time trying to get a date, you could give them the standard "Have you tried online dating yet?" and then leave it there, secure in the knowledge you've done all you could do by making the suggestion. Or you could listen to the answer and hear how that's going. You could rejoice with them over hopeful prospects or offer support and empathy when they tell you they just don't think they can face one more rejection.

And please don't think you have to wait until everything in your life is perfect before you can make an effort. If you abruptly get called away two sentences into a conversation because your toddler poured juice on the cat, or your 5-year-old gave your 3-year-old a haircut, or your teenager backed out of the garage without bothering to put the door up first—that's OK. We get it. Any single person with sense (and there are more of those than you might suppose!) recognizes and accepts that we cannot come first in your lives, that some things are more important.

But we would simply ask you this: Keep trying. Keep making those imperfect efforts. However short and stilted and interruption-prone they might be, they matter. In fact, the friendships you create this way might end up meaning just as much to you as they do to the single people you're befriending.

This article is an excerpt of One by One by Gina Dalfonzo. Click here to get your own copy!

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