Last week in class we talked about the importance of dating. Fun
topic, right?? Well, it's a lot more tricky than just fun. Dating
shouldn't be a race to intimacy. When you are intimate with someone,
especially before marriage, you become attached and bound to them and it
is hard to think straight (i.e. hard to determine whether the person is
right for you to marry). It was great going through all the steps of
dating, because it validated the relationship I had and went through
with my fiance.
It can be really hard to follow the
steps to date. You first need to start by hanging out and dating a lot
of different people. Dating is different than courtship. Courtship is
being with the same person in an intimate relationship, going down the
path towards engagement, and then eventually marriage. Dating is going
on dates with multiple people, testing the waters to see what kind of
person you'd want to be with for the rest of your life. A lot of the
time, people race right through the dating process and go straight to
courtship. A lot of high schoolers go through this, and it ends up
harming their emotional well-being, especially if the relationship
doesn't work out.
After this lesson, I realized that I
knew Ryan a looooong time before we even started dating, and I had
dated a lot of different friends throughout high school-just going on
different dates with a bunch of different guys. After realizing from
them the kind of people I didn't want to marry, and who were just really
good friends, it was really easy to see that Ryan was the one for me
when we went on a couple of dates. After going on a few dates, we didn't
see each other for about a year. We then saw each other and when on a
few more dates and decided, together, that we should see where we could
go by courting. Now look-we're happily engaged and oh so excited to have
found our eternal partner!
In order for relationships
to work out, there needs to be set boundaries, set lines and set steps
to go through. Dating, courtship, engagement, then marriage. Only
through these steps can we attain a well-made decision for who we will
marry.
Great job Tashara I appreciate you sharing your own experience. One thing in particular that I like is the example of high school relationships which connects to intimacy and how at that age we just blow past steps mainly because our brains aren't mature enough but how the guidelines of the church prevent us from becoming hurt. What step in this process do you think is most important? Dating, courting, or engagement?
ReplyDeleteThanks
Maddison Dillon