Dating

In class this week, my professor defined dating as doing a variety of activities with a variety of people. Upon hearing this definition, I realized that this isn't really the definition that our society regularly uses. The term "dating" is used quite loosely and often the person using the term has to explain whether they mean "going on dates with" or "exclusively dating" someone. The term has become muddled and confusing.

One of the things that we talked about that I think it might be important to discuss are the steps of how dating should go:
1. Dating
2. Courtship
3.Engagement
4. Marriage

When it comes to dating, we have developed a culture of "date 'em till ya hate 'em." (those are the exact words that Brother Williams used, and I thought it was funny) Young people seem to be less content with dating a variety of people and seem to want to attach to someone immediately until they cannot stand that person anymore. A cool visual that we talked about is tape. The more times you stick and unstick a piece of tape to something, the less sticky it becomes. This can happen with dating too. If we are constantly becoming exclusive with different people, we will be less likely to be able to "stick" to someone permanently. We are moving too quickly from dating into courtship.

When we discussed courtship, we talked about the base of the word. "court." In court, there are trials. Courtship should be "a trial of us." It is an opportunity for us to see if this is a person that we could spend our lives with.

The next step I found to be incredibly interesting. Engagement has changed so much over the years and in our culture, the whole process is quite frankly backwards. I can't even count the number of engaged couples that I have talked to who have had their wedding date planned before they were even engaged. Couples are picking out rings and have their entire foreseeable future planned out before there has even been a proposal. The surprise is taken out of the equation entirely. Although this isn't necessarily a huge deal, but I do feel as if it makes the commitment less special. Another thing that someone brought up in class is how it is not emphasized as much for the man to ask the woman's father for permission anymore. To me, this is kind of sad. That is something that I have always wanted. I think it shows a level of respect to both the woman and her family that is necessary.

Because the lesson was mostly focused on the process of getting to marriage, we didn't spend hardly any time talking about marriage. However, I think that it is important to understand that dating is an opportunity to prepare for marriage. A specific example that we discussed is the 3 P's of dating. A date should be planned, paired-off, and paid for. These things almost directly reflect the responsibility of a father in a family. The Father's job is to preside, provide, and protect. The 3 P's of dating directly help prepare a man for his responsibilities as a father. If we looked hard enough we would realize that almost every opportunity in dating is a chance to learn something.

This was a difficult topic for me to think about being a young single adult at BYU-I. It's funny because it seems that the more you think about it, the scarier it seems. For me, anyway. But I know that there is value in dating and preparing to have a family.