Dating is such a stress in so many people’s lives. I mean, it is a big deal. One of my biggest joys in life is my husband and my marriage. If I never dated, I wouldn’t have that today.
One thing that I always think of when talking or thinking about dating, and that we touched on a lot in my Family Relations class this week, was physical appearance. We put so much emphasis on this, but it can change so much and doesn’t (or shouldn’t) matter at first. When I first met my husband, I was not physically attracted to him. And yes, he knows this. Part of it might have been that he had a girlfriend and so he wasn’t really on my radar. He broke up with her, and we became best friends! Then wow, all of a sudden, he was really hot. I started to like him more and more and find him way attractive after I got to know him more. I learned his personality, his actions, his likes, values, etc. I think that this shows a good lesson that we can’t judge a book by its cover, because you never know what can happen, like us.
We got to know each other through togetherness, talking, and time. There is this popular book called “How to Not Fall in Love with A Jerk”. In it, the author talks about three things it takes to get to know someone and that is one, togetherness. This means dating! Dating helps you know what you like and don’t like. If people go on a more variety of dates, they start to know the person better through different activities and shared experiences. There is also a difference in dating vs hanging out, even though not everyone agrees. Elder Oaks has taught us that a date is planned, paid for, and paired off. (Quick side note: think about the relationship that there is between planned, paid for, and paired off and the man’s role to provide, preside, and protect. Interesting! I love it.) This doesn’t mean that every date needs to be crazy expensive and fancy. You can pay for dates with resources instead of cash. It can just be a casual date. Just because you are going on a date with them, doesn’t mean you are stuck with them for eternity! Dating brings people together in so many ways that it needs to be done to help get to know the other person. The next was talking. As we date and have shared experiences, we will have more to talk about. Things like this can help spark up a lot of different conversations to help get to know each other better. The last necessity to get to know someone, is time. As we date, we are obviously spending time together. We want to make sure that it is quality time, so we are wasting time. Time is precious and we can never get it back, so make the dating experience count because it can help our future marriages.
As we date and start and then become more serious, there is a model that can help us through the process is we follow it. It is called the RAM Model. The Relationship Attachment Model. First, you know someone. Then, you trust them. After that, you can start to rely on them. Then, you can commit to them. Lastly, you can then touch. As we follow this model, it can help us go into dating with eyes wide open. Sometimes we can mix this up, it is so easy to do, but that doesn’t mean we are doomed. As long as we go back and start at the beginning and try to move forward, and develop a testimony of the atonement which can help us through anything we need, we can date well and form great a strong marriages.
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