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Dating


My professor for this course is a marriage counselor. At the beginning of the week he told us how he meets with his couples. He first meets with both husband and wife together and has a conversation. He will then talk with each of them one on one. Later he will bring them both together again and formulate what issues he sees. I found it very interesting that he said that based on their dating history, he can almost always predict the marriage issues.

So what is dating? In some of the text I read it said that, “Dating is a primary way to select the person with whom you want to pursue a serious relationship with.” I think that most of us know this definition, yet we interpret how we should go about it in different ways. Here at college everyone has a different definition of what they think that it is. I have roommates who think that dating is just being with a person 24-7. I have other roommates who think hooking up with someone from Tinder is dating. Personally I don’t think either of those are dating. So, I was excited to learn about the topic of dating in this class. What I think dating is was said perfectly by Elder Oaks, “A “date” must pass the test of three p’s: planned ahead, paid for, and paired off.”

There is a book mentioned in my class that I think would be a really good read. The title of the book is, “How to Avoid Falling in Love with a Jerk.” Everyone who has read it only had good things to say. Within the text John Van Epp brings up several points I want to talk about.

One thing that is discussed in the book is knowing someone. In order to know someone there are three things that need to take place. First, there needs to be togetherness. Togetherness is shared experiences. Second, there needs to be talk. Talk about thoughts and feelings. This talking should be mutual self-disclosure. Third, there needs to be time. The book talks about how it takes 3 months to begin to really know someone.

Next I want to talk about Van Epp’s model of attachment. He believes that strong attachments – the kind that create happily-ever-after relationships – depend on bonding in five areas: knowledge, trust, reliance, commitment and touch. It’s a mix of these five areas together that creates an overall sense of closeness. You need a balance of all five to develop the strongest bond. Whenever your relationship shifts out of balance, you will feel unsafe and experience feelings of hurt, betrayal, mistrust, anger, unfairness, loneliness, or some other insecure emotion.

In my class we talked a lot about touch. When there is physical touch early on in a relationship you can see the problem later on in marriage. An interesting fact that was shared is that on average college students have 3-4 hookups and only 1 date a year. When people realize how powerful touch can be they can take advantage of it. We need to be extra aware of this concept because if touch is higher on the scale than any of the other areas, we need to make a change. 

There are 4 steps that lead from dating to marriage. First is actually dating. Dating should be a variety of activities with a variety of different people. Second is courtship. Courtship is when you decide to become exclusive with one person. Third is engagement. Engagement is the commitment you make to the one person. Fourth is actual marriage. Each of these stages should be a distinct different step in the relationship. However, we have seen that most people just slide from one step to another without making it clear.

I have had roommates who say they are dating, yet have never left the apartment.
I have had roommates who say they are dating, yet have never been alone with each other. 

This leads me to Hanging Out and not Dating. There is a great talk given to young single adults in 2005 by Elder Oaks. He says, “Unlike hanging out, dating is not a team sport. Dating is pairing off to experience the kind of one-on-one association and temporary commitment that can lead to marriage in some rare and treasured cases.”

When a couple is always with other people they can’t get to truly know one another. Hanging out is not preparing you for marriage. You never have to deal with real life issues, and you don’t see each other in real life situations.

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