Dating, Courtship, Engagement, and Marriage


This week I want to touch on a few points of how we can prepare for marriage and what can we optimize when preparing for one. I will discuss the trends that people do or follow and hopefully, at the end of the reading, you can determine what you can do.

A study has shown that in the olden days' people would marry someone they have access to and are closer to. That has changed drastically though and with electronic technology advancing, it is now quite different. People would marry someone that lives closer to them because of these reasons; commonalities, probably they belonged to the same culture, they had shared expectations, familiar schools, friends, and neighbors that both know that would eventually support the relationship, and probably they also had shared interests (music, same activities).

Nowadays we probably marry someone because probably we share the same political opinions, probably we agree on what is important in spending money on. We marry someone judging by their visual appearance. Through that, we tend to draw a conclusion about them, their character, personality, and behavioral tendencies over time. We also marry someone because we may feel it is right.

People before used to do what is called assertive dating. It would mean both men and women would go on dates and have shared activities with a wide variety of people. Nowadays we have a different interpretation of the word dating. What we do now is more of like a “Date them till you hate them” type of dating. We laser focus on one person we date till we marry them or find something wrong about them. There are many disadvantages with this type of dating instead of overseeing our emotions when we laser focus on one person we become a subject of our own emotions. Spending time too much with people absorbs all your time and you focus more on how you feel and forget to be rational in making that decision. Our emotions can overtake and lie to us, just because that’s how we are feeling doesn’t mean it’s true.

One researcher found something that I think will benefit everyone even those who are married. 

 Confounding language like the tower of babel. Have agency to sift out what is the best for you. This guy analyzed a group of high school people going to college and mapped out the four T’s for people to really get to know each other.1) Togetherness ( having shared activities, doing things together), 2) Talk (mutual self-disclosure, sharing both our thoughts and feelings), 3) Time (it takes a minimum of three months to begin to know someone, do intentional activities and take breaks), and 4) Touch(involves cuddling, kissing and the likes).

With this information, it came out what is called a Relationship Attachment Model (RAM). If you desire to have a wonderful dating experience or marriage this is the pattern we should follow.1) Know, 2) Trust, 3) Rely,4) Commit, 5) Touch. These 5 things should be sequential for the relationship to be functional and healthy. Don't commit on a higher level than you rely on or trust or know them, it will damage you. Be intentional in how we develop the relationship. What we realize most about our generation is that we start from the finish which is number 5 Touch before we even know someone. We go hang out watch a movie with them and have a make-out session. We do not even know this other person, but we commit to them and trust them with our bodies. That is why we experience a lot of heartbreaks because we are not building our relationships on good foundations. For those who are married, and feel are also victims of this I would advise starting now to practice this model and see what difference it makes in your marriage.

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