Are you in a relationship? Do you want to be? How much do you want it? How high does your boyfriend or girlfriend rank on the overall scale? For example, work is like a 5 and they’re a 9. Anything rank higher than them?
If the answer to that is no, this is for you.
I notice how many people are practically making their relationships the god of their lives. I can relate, Casey was #1 for a long time. We make the love and the relationship our ultimate.
It’s not the ultimate, it’s on fragile ground, and only a shade of the ultimate. In the right context, they are wonderful and should be celebrated. C.S Lewis has a quote in The Screwtape Letters where an elder demon warns his younger student about pleasure. Note, “Enemy” means God.
“Never forget that when we are dealing with any pleasure in its healthy and normal and satisfying form, we are, in a sense, on the Enemy’s ground. I know we have won many a soul through pleasure. All the same, it is His invention, not ours. He made the pleasures: all our research so far has not enabled us to produce one. All we can do is to encourage the humans to take the pleasures which our Enemy has produced, at times, or in ways, or in degrees, which He has forbidden.”
Later in another “letter”, he encourages extremes, ““All extremes, except extreme devotion to the Enemy, are to be encouraged.”
Why is this a bad thing?
For one, it’s not fair to expect them to meet every need and desire. It’ll burn them out if they are trying to meet every physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual need and want. Second, if you base your life on them and they leave or die, you will have lost everything. There was no balance there.
A person cannot fulfill you. Relationships are great, and work best when both give 100% without 
expecting anything. It’s not a contract, not even in marriage, where that 100% belongs.
A dating relationship is preparation for marriage, an interview of sorts. You date the soul, and see if they should get all of you, forever. They aren’t even close to being the ultimate, I’d say they rank under work.
What’s it a shadow of?
If you want a relationship that meets all your needs, not even marriage can fit that criteria. It too, is a shadow of something greater. Marriage where the commitment and self-sacrifice for each other travels through the good and bad times, never giving up, committed to the relationship until one dies. A relationship like that is as rare as a precious gem. Still, there is greater.
The relationship with Jesus.
That meets every need. Jesus is so crazily committed to you that he went to the cross in the ultimate act of self-sacrifice. When you act horrid, and unlovable, he loves you, forgives you, and doesn’t leave you. This relationship is the only one that won’t end.
Turn away from trying to make people and relationships the ultimate. Follow the Ultimate, the creator of your body and soul. The one that knows everything about you.
A Ronin's Journey 