Dating and Marriage I know "yuck" and "this again?!"
Dating, it is a dying activity that is either essential or the best method to build towards marriage. Or is it just changing? If you listen to your parents and grandparents there is only one good way to go about dating, you need to have a bunch of unattached activities with people who are nearly strangers or are strangers. Then from there, you need to keep doing that... then keep doing that. After you do that for a long time then you can think about "courtship" which is what teenagers and young adults today would call dating. After a courtship then you can get engaged and then married. I'll admit it does sound like a good method to find a spouse when we talk about it like that. But for me, it doesn't seem to work. A lot of people my age and younger feel uncomfortable talking to let alone going on a date with someone they barely know. So what do we do instead and how is it viewed by the generation just older than us?
Well, their main issue with the way we date and get towards marriage is the "hangout" method. What is the hangout method? It is basically just spending time with your friends or with a member of the opposite sex without calling it a date and without making a plan for it or spending resources on it. Resources is a loose term to mean time and anything you have, which means it doesn't have to cost money per se. On the surface, this does look like a bad idea and even when you look a little deeper. In fact, done wrong this doesn't work at all. If you simply spend time with a random assortment of people with no eyes for anyone you will get nowhere. As well, if you do develop a relationship from this and maintain just sitting on the couch and watching movies your relationship will probably have little depth. But my beef with this accusation is that it is an almost all or nothing statement. I just got married almost a year ago and my wife and I didn't have many planned out dates and still don't have many planned out dates. She and I didn't just sit on the couch and do nothing we actually went and did things but they weren't planned as often. The conclusion that we are given then is that my marriage is far more likely to end in divorce than someone who went on a ton of planned dates... I think I will hold a more positive view and work harder to maintain my marriage than that gives me credit. Maybe that might be true, but this is coming from a generation that kinda started or at least maintained (or spiked) the divorce craze in this country. Perhaps we are just a little wary of their style after watching years and years of divorces. We could argue that perhaps those who divorced all the time failed to do the planned, paired off, and paid for method. And you could even show me statistics that support that argument but aren't people and societies constantly changing? So how does data on people potentially more than twice my age translate to the same thing for me? It probably doesn't do as well as they might think. I mean people 40 years ago were far more likely to participate in overt racism and some still alive are that way but when you look at people my age and younger that drops significantly.
Plus when we keep going back that style of dating was actually seen as a bad thing by older generations... imagine that. Perhaps I can conclude that 'assortive dating" works well for some of the generations before me and that the way younger people are dating now works well for them. I'm happy in my marriage. I'm not saying they don't have more experience but I am saying the world changes every day, some things for the better, some things for the worse, and some things are kinda neutral.
As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, I would like to acknowledge that we have had church leaders who have spoken about this and said the "assortive" method is best. That is their opinion and not doctrine, sorry but that is the truth. While I believe they are almost always right we have had plenty of church leaders throughout the past who have said some things that were quite wrong.
I'll be enjoying a hard but fulfilling marriage for the rest of my life, and beyond in my belief system, thank you and don't try to convince me otherwise because that certainly isn't helpful and kind of rude.
Well, their main issue with the way we date and get towards marriage is the "hangout" method. What is the hangout method? It is basically just spending time with your friends or with a member of the opposite sex without calling it a date and without making a plan for it or spending resources on it. Resources is a loose term to mean time and anything you have, which means it doesn't have to cost money per se. On the surface, this does look like a bad idea and even when you look a little deeper. In fact, done wrong this doesn't work at all. If you simply spend time with a random assortment of people with no eyes for anyone you will get nowhere. As well, if you do develop a relationship from this and maintain just sitting on the couch and watching movies your relationship will probably have little depth. But my beef with this accusation is that it is an almost all or nothing statement. I just got married almost a year ago and my wife and I didn't have many planned out dates and still don't have many planned out dates. She and I didn't just sit on the couch and do nothing we actually went and did things but they weren't planned as often. The conclusion that we are given then is that my marriage is far more likely to end in divorce than someone who went on a ton of planned dates... I think I will hold a more positive view and work harder to maintain my marriage than that gives me credit. Maybe that might be true, but this is coming from a generation that kinda started or at least maintained (or spiked) the divorce craze in this country. Perhaps we are just a little wary of their style after watching years and years of divorces. We could argue that perhaps those who divorced all the time failed to do the planned, paired off, and paid for method. And you could even show me statistics that support that argument but aren't people and societies constantly changing? So how does data on people potentially more than twice my age translate to the same thing for me? It probably doesn't do as well as they might think. I mean people 40 years ago were far more likely to participate in overt racism and some still alive are that way but when you look at people my age and younger that drops significantly.
Plus when we keep going back that style of dating was actually seen as a bad thing by older generations... imagine that. Perhaps I can conclude that 'assortive dating" works well for some of the generations before me and that the way younger people are dating now works well for them. I'm happy in my marriage. I'm not saying they don't have more experience but I am saying the world changes every day, some things for the better, some things for the worse, and some things are kinda neutral.
As a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, I would like to acknowledge that we have had church leaders who have spoken about this and said the "assortive" method is best. That is their opinion and not doctrine, sorry but that is the truth. While I believe they are almost always right we have had plenty of church leaders throughout the past who have said some things that were quite wrong.
I'll be enjoying a hard but fulfilling marriage for the rest of my life, and beyond in my belief system, thank you and don't try to convince me otherwise because that certainly isn't helpful and kind of rude.
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