What is the "it" connection?

I’ve only slightly touched on this topic a few times on this website, but I feel like I need to go a little deeper. So in this article I’m going to answer the question of what the “it” connection is.

“It” is that feeling you get when you know that he or she compatible with you. It is exciting and thrilling. When you leave that person you smile and think “that was so wonderful,” and you feel attraction for them —That’s it. I don’t need to say more because I know you’re already thinking in your head, ”Yes! That’s exactly what I’m looking for, that’s what I want in a relationship! –But it’s just so darn hard to find!”. And now you’re probably thinking about how many dates you’ve been on that fizzled and were “unromantic” and that there was no “spark”.

So what is that feeling anyway? –If you don’t like life to be spoiled then I recommend you close this website, power off your computer, lock you door, and go to sleep and forget about all that I have said so far. Deny the fact that I even brought this topic up. –the “it” connection is a passionate feeling you get right after your brain turns off. If you’re dating around looking for love and you expect it to manifest itself in some form similar to this, then I have to break it to you, but that’s not love, and just because you feel that way doesn’t mean that it will lead into a loving relationship.






As I mentioned in another article: Loving relationships require sacrifice, time, commitment, and trust, among other things. Love isn’t passion. If a person were to purely follow passion, they would head down many dark corridors before realizing that passion got them nowhere and that they were missing a significant aspect of their life called love. Many of the people who follow the passionate path eventually meet love, but it is typically after they are lying on a hospital bed giving birth to a child who, out of force for 9 months, developed a deep connection with that person.—okay, so that's a little harsh and only applies to women. Still, Passion and Love are NOT the same thing.

I’m not saying to avoid passion all together. Passion is the seasoning that makes a steak better, but true steak fans realize that a good piece of steak tastes good on its own. Love is the same way. You don’t necessarily NEED passion in order to have good love, but if love needs a little extra boost then it’s there to help.

So how does this all apply to you (you’re probably sick of that—I make every article apply directly to you, even though some of it gets really deep and seems like useless knowledge): If you go on a first date with someone who seems incredibly nice but doesn’t create that “spark” that you were looking for. Do not dismiss her or him. The important aspect of the relationship isn’t the passion. If he or she can provide for your needs. Whether those needs are spiritual, mental, emotional, or financial, if there is even the slightest possibility that he or she can fulfill those, then do not let him or her go until you know that he or she cannot. There.
That’s a simple enough rule, isn’t it?
If you’re a guy, I have to tell you something that you’re going to LOVE hearing. Most of the models I have met (my side hobby is film making, so I have met a few), have told me that the person they ultimately go for is the nice guy who can support them. True, they may go in and out of relationships with jerks who they feel quite passionately about, but when it comes down to settling down, the person they ALWAYS marry is the one who is nicest to them. What that means is that eventually people with experience (and you don’t doubt that that type of person has experience, do you?) ALWAYS end up with the nice guy. Nice guys finish last after all...and by that point, the girl doesn’t ever want to leave them.

So just to recap: If you want to have an awesome relationship with someone someday, then focus on what really counts. Don’t worry about the passion. It can always be worked out with time. Eventually, you can feel that "It" connection with anyone.

Why Relationships Matter So Much

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As you read from the many articles on this website, you might reach a point where you ask yourself this question: “Why is having such an in-depth understanding of dating, relationships, and marriage so important?” But, when you understand the importance of these functions, you will recognize your true potential, see the big picture, and you will have a desire to achieve success in this area of your life. It will make your life much better, you will be happier and you will enjoy your life much more.
Having an understanding of how this complex system called “relationships” works and how you can take the most advantage of this social system will help you make educated, conscious choices. It will empower you and help you to refine your character. It will make you into a better person and can help you gain the skills to change other people’s lives for the better.

I have divided this article into three segments: Marriage, Relationships, and Dating. It is my hope that these segments will provide you with an in-depth understanding of the significance of their functions. You need them, and you should approach them seriously.

Marriage
Aside from any obvious reasons why you would want to get married, there are several reasons why you need to get married, and the sooner you do so the better your life will be. You are incomplete without the opposite sex; without a husband or wife, you will reach a point where your progression halts; and without the opposite sex it would be impossible to fulfill ALL of your physical, mental, and emotional needs.
Progression is good, and you have a natural tendency to desire progression because you are a child of God and naturally want to become like him. When you choose to postpone marriage, or even to put it off entirely, you hinder your own progression throughmissed opportunities and failing to have certain experiences. Hard experiences build character, and having a spouse can by very trying on your patience; but God wants you to have those trying experiences because it will help you progress and become like him.
You cannot do everything in life on your own. There are many things that you simply cannot do at all but need the vicarious help of others in order to accomplish them. Particularly, you cannot have and raise children properly if you do not get married. Children benefit immensely from having both a father and a mother who love each other, worship God, and love them (the children). If you do not get married, you will remain incomplete and incapable of doing many things in the best way.








In order to fulfill all of your physical, mental and emotional needs, you will need the help of the opposite sex. Physical (particularly sexual) desires are a sacred, necessary, and beneficial aspect of life. They lead you to use heavenly powers to procreate and help bring God’s spirit children into this world. Mental desires work in the same manner: you have the desire to be among equals intellectually and to be working with others towards common goals; having these desires help you to progress and, as anyone who has experienced the addictive feeling of learning something new will understand, the more you learn the more you will want to learn. Emotionally, you have the desire to build trusting relationships with other people. Without a close group of people who you could trust, you would suffer from loneliness, depression, and other emotional problems.
You have an innate need to fulfill these desires and without the opposite sex you will be left unsatisfied. Any attempts to fulfill your physical desires on your own will leave you forever wanting and can lead you to severe problems. The same is true with people who advance intellectually but are unequalled in their intelligence: they recognize that knowledge serves no purpose when it is not applied and it is kept to their selves; and you would have a challenging and conflicting life if there was no one you could trust. Regardless of the specific outcome of failing to fulfill your needs, the general result is sadness; you will be unhappy whenever you fail to fulfill those desires at the time they come knocking.
There is no need for you to postpone marriage; in fact, it should be something you work out quickly. You will find, after marriage, that not everything about your wife or husband is what you expected. Part of your progression is learning to look past your wife’s or husband’s faults and support them when they struggle. No two people are really “perfect” for each other when they start out; it takes several years for two people to truly “fit” (the common estimate is 7 years).
When you look at your life on the eternal spectrum, this life is a very small speck, barely noticeable compared to the billions of years before and after. Your soul is eternal and the hundred years that your life on earth contains are very minor. You will spend many more years of your existence married than you spend single. If you really want to be married for eternity to someone, it would be better for you to enter that stage of life sooner than to post-pone the inevitable. Imagine the ‘married stage’ as your final state, just like a frog starts as a pollywog and morphs into a creature with traits of half-pollywog-half-frog before turning into a frog, you have no need to teeter in both worlds when you could as easily reach your true state. Again, you are incomplete without the opposite sex; it is expected for you to one day marry for eternity to reach your “completed” state. (This is often why people who are newly married claim their spouse “completes them”)
In a good marriage, you can fulfill ALL of your desires, you will not be limited in your progression, and therefore you will not be “incomplete”. Your physical needs will not have to be completely bridled. You will be able to learn from one another and help fulfill each other’s mental needs. Also, you will always have someone who you can trust and turn to for emotional support.
Marriage is a specific type of relationship in which the ultimate level of trust is agreed upon by both parties; that means that when you agree to marry someone, you agree to the highest level of trust. Complete fidelity helps maintain your emotional, physical, and mental needs by ensuring that you will have a reliable source capable of fulfilling those needs. When you remain single, you hold things back from those you date because you lack that high level of trust, even if only on a subconscious level. You also spread yourself thin when you continue to date multiple people because you cannot fully commit to any of them and so none of them are given the chance to see all of you.

Relationships
“Relationships” is a loose term that includes acquaintances, friends, boyfriends and girlfriends, fiancés, and husbands and wives, among other things. Forming relationships is a good thing. Humans are social animals; they require the help of others in order to survive. The type of relationship that you have with another person is based on your interaction with that individual and the type of “compacts” you have formed with them. You subconsciously make generic connections to people that reference the type of relationship that you have with them. With this subconscious understanding, you are able to respond to their actions in an “acceptable” manner. For example, you do not passionately kiss your friends the way you would with your spouse.

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Times When your Brain Shuts off

Even when your subconscious or conscious tell you one thing, you should persist towards your goals and seek after the best opportunities in life.

It starts out simple enough: a guy lacks female interaction for a lengthy period of time [take for instance those who join the military, or serve a mission and spend most of their time without women] and then finally returns home and is looked up to by the opposite sex and given excess amounts of attention. Or perhaps a young lady who is not used to getting attention from guys [or a specific type of guy] suddenly has one shows interest in her. Both the male and female reactions to the above situations are the same: their brains shuts off and emotions take over.
You might find this humorous, but situations like these trigger three specific responses in your brain: 1) Critical thoughts are shut off. 2) Judgment is impaired and decision making skills are skewed. 3) The individual feels an overwhelming level of excitement and euphoria. I describe this as “brain dead behavior” and although it has its benefits, there are also many problems to this behavior. It is a part of infatuation and passion, which people will often confuse with "love". And many love and romance films have been produced about characters who go into this “brain dead” state; but have you ever realized how frequently this happens in real life; maybe it’s even happened to you?

Not everything is bad about this behavior, if we didn’t have this triggered response, falling in love would not be as great or exciting as everyone claims it is. It brightens your life and helps you feel optimistic and hopeful. It gives you a desire to have more of this emotion, which in turn helps you to care for (& develop love for) the other person. Since the beginning of your relationship sets the foundation for the rest of the relationship, having the subconscious ability to shut off your brain allows you to more easily get comfortable with another person and proceed with the important matters of your relationship without interference. It is one of many survival tactics that our human body comes pre-programed with to help us continue socializing even when times are bad.

But understanding the negative side effects of brain dead behavior, and the ability to recognize when it is happening, can help you have a more successful dating life. First, it can help you by keeping you away from unwanted relationships and second, by not entering into relationships before you have the proper foundation in place that will help the relationship last.

The following are symptoms that maybe you have had before:

1) Critical thoughts are shut off – When you first experience this feeling for another individual, your brain finds it very easy to overlook obvious negative aspects of the other person. It can lead you to overlook mental, emotional, and physical flaws that, under normal situations, neither you, nor your friends and family, would see as acceptable flaws.
Take for instance an abusive relationship; when you brain shuts off, you believe that you are going to be perfectly happy with the way things turn out in the future only to later realize all of the verbal or physical abuse that you are bearing in the relationship and you have no way out.

2) Judgment is impaired and decision making skills are skewed – You will find yourself engaging in bizarre behavior that is not healthy for you emotionally, physically, mentally, or spiritually.
You might stop spending time with your friends which will ultimately cause you emotional damage when you no longer have regular friends, or it can cause you to turn against your family. Physically, you could deprive yourself of food or exercise simply because you would rather spend time with this person (who is the cause of your brain death). Mentally, you might find yourself losing focus at work or school because you would rather think about your developing relationship, which in turn causes other problems. Spiritually, you can be led to commit serious sins simply because they don’t seem as bad when you are "in love". *(But what you are really feeling is one form of passion.)
--I know, all of this sounds pretty extreme, but being “brain dead” is THAT powerful and surprisingly it causes all of these problems on a regular basis to most of the world.





3) Being overwhelmed by euphoria and excitement – Although it sounds wonderful to be this happy, it can cause you a few unforeseen problems when the feelings end. Later down the road when your relationship has progressed and the feelings have ebbed, you might sense that “something is missing” in your relationship or that the “excitement” just isn’t there.-–Obviously this is because at that point you will have finally snapped out of the brain dead behavior.
The problem with this is that it can lead you into thinking that you NEED to build excitement in your relationship or else you won’t be happy with one another.--But you don't NEED excitement in a relationship as long as you care for one another--It can lead you into ultimately separating from one another because you think the "magic" is missing, or it can lead you into pursuing addictive behaviors that only temporarily allows you to feel "excitement" and thereby force you to always be looking for exciting things you can try.

Yet another side effect that this euphoric feeling can create is that if your relationship ends, then the extreme high that you get on from your brain turning off will become an extreme low as your body realizes that you can no longer have those feelings.—-in other words it makes you feel and plants thoughts in you mind like "I'll never find someone like them again" or, "My soul mate doesn't exist".

A word for the wise:
Remember that success is how you define it; failure is the opposite of success. Failure can cause you to lose hope and feel as though you will never succeed. It is good to set goals and to define what success is to you. NEVER LOSE SIGHT OF YOUR GOALS AND DREAMS. The reason I point this out is that when you become brain dead, it is easy for you to “settle” for the person, or with their poor behavior because of the psychological feelings you are getting from the relationship. It can cause you to forget about marriage and settle for a live-in relationship because of the confusion it puts you in. It can also cause you to lose hope of ever having a loving spouse and family and from becoming happy; and once the feelings abate you might become “trapped” in a poor relationship.
Going brain dead can cause you to abandon other relationships because you assume that you have found “the one” when in reality you are selling yourself short. It can even cause you to lower your standards (called “settling”) in order to make yourself feel as though you have obtained some success in your dating life. Ask yourself: is this really the person of your dreams, or is it just your body telling you that you are tired of looking for something better?

Be wise about who you are building relationships with and in what way they are developing. The more control you have over yourself, the easier it will be to ensure that your relationships progress towards what you really want, and need to have, and not just what your body tells you.

Steps that Lead up to Marriage

This article has been moved to my new website. I broke it into two articles:

4 Steps That Lead to Marriage

&&

How to Reach Marriage the Right Way, Not the Right Now

Go read the new articles and check out the new website!

New Years Resolutions

Happy New Years everyone!

I wanted to express the importance of new years resolutions, but my last article and my next post (this sunday) didn't allow for me to talk about realizing your dreams and setting goals to reach them.

New years, of course, is the holiday in which we reflect on everything we've done in the previous year and we set resolutions (or goals) to become better.

So while you're celebrating the new year, take some time to reflect on your dating life. I've provided a few thought provoking questions to help you:

• Do you feel like you've gone on enough dates this year, or would you have liked to have gone on more?
• Do you know of at least two people who you would like to pursue a better relationship with, or do you feel like there just isn't anyone who interests you at this time?
• If you are in a relationship right now, do you feel like the relationship is going at the proper speed, or would you like it to go faster?
• In 2011, will you be prepared to get married if someone popped the question, or are there things in your life that you need to work out before even considering marriage? If so, what are those things?
• Are you comfortable getting someone's number and asking them on a date, or do you have to work yourself up to that point?
• In 2010, did you feel adequate about pursuing a relationship with someone, or were there a few people you met who you felt were out of your class?
• Do you feel comfortable about yourself almost all of the time, or do you frequently feel like you aren't good enough?
• Do you feel like you've made a lot of progress in 2010, physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually or is there something that is holding you back? Are you hold yourself back?
• What is your primary goal, pertaining to dating, in the next few months?

Some of these questions can be really difficult and might be things you've never thought of before.
If after answering these questions you feel like there are a lot of things you could improve on, please consider my 8 week program. In the program I cover the basics that I feel everyone should know about dating.
I also really pump you up and get you motivated to succeed at learning this so that a few weeks after you've made your resolution you don't forget about it or give up trying.

Good luck with the new year!

What Society Got Wrong about Love

Let me first re-state something I’ve only briefly touched on in a few of my articles: you can grow to love anyone. There is an ancient debate about what Truth is—whether there is such a thing as absolute truth or whether all truth is relative. But if you believe in one true God, you already know that there is such a thing as absolute truth and that God knows all truth—whether or not we as mere mortals understand the truth or not. Therefore, the definition of Love has one actual definition; we just may not understand it yet. In fact, societies have misused the term to the point where it has strayed from the original truth it once held.—Simply put, society has love mixed up with other things.








There are two primary concepts that society associates with the word “love”; neither are 100% accurate:
The first concept can be replaced with the word “passion”, or the sexual desire for another person. This sexual desire is the combination of psychological connections and chemical reactions that your body produces. (e.g. hormones, etc.)
The second concept frequently associated with the word “love” has a few different terms that are synonymous with it, such as “the warm fuzzy feeling” and the “feeling like you can’t live without them”, or in other words, that you want to be around them all the time. This type of “love” is associated with the feeling of excitement; it is often the deciding factor when someone says they “click” with their partner. For lack of a better word, this concept will be labeled “infatuation” for the rest of this article.

Neither of these concepts can be limited to just one person of the opposite sex, because you can be infatuated with a couple different people at once, and you can obviously feel passion for many people of the opposite sex. You can even have a passionate, chemical or psychological, connection with someone of the same sex; but
again, neither of these two concepts are 100% accurate about love. When used together, these terms come close to the true meaning of Love.—Passion and infatuation are both a part of love, but there is more to the true meaning of love than just these two byproducts of it.

Love is primarily a verb, or an action word, that over time has been modified in the English lexicon to also become a noun. There are several languages that separate the verb from the noun and there are many languages that separate the word for passion from the word for infatuation.
This may appear obvious, but love also isn’t limited to male-female relationships, but over time, the word changed significantly enough for people to stop using it as often in other senses. For instance, “The soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul” (Samuel 18:1). This is a good example of an old, accurate use of the word. David, who later became King David and Jonathan, the son of the present king, were very close friends. They cared for one another, they understood one another. They wanted to remain in each other’s lives; and because of this Jonathan did everything he could to prevent King Saul from killing David. We can learn from this story that another part of love is caring for another individual, sometimes going beyond our comfort zone to do so.

Another good illustration of the concepts above would be when your mother gave birth to you. She put aside her physical well-being to bring you into the world. There were plenty of chemicals and other things floating around at the time and you both shared a very close physical connection (passion). She was also obviously obsessed with you and probably felt like she wouldn’t want to live if you died*(infatuation). But she also cared deeply about you and wanted you to have a successful life; she risked her own life in order for you to have yours (caring). Thankfully, you survived birth and are here today because of that Love.

The best example of Love is actually the Savior. He gave up his entire life up, from birth to death, in order to make it possible for you to one day have a perfect body and become sinless and return to Heavenly Father’s presence. He suffered, He bled from every pore, He took on the consequences of your sins, and He died publicly on the cross because He loved you. He also loved Heavenly Father, which is why He did everything He was told to do.—You can learn a lot about Love by studying the Atonement, [i.e. praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, the Death on the cross, and the Resurrection from the tomb].

Even though society, or the world, might have multiple uses for the word “love”, there is only one kind of Love. Passion and Infatuation might be aspects, or rather byproducts of love; but the real kind of love is manifested when you put yourself out of your comfort zone in order to help other people. It is selflessness and charity. The same kind of love that you have for your parents and family members now will be the same kind of love that you will have for your future spouse, and before you can find someone who will love you in this way, you will need to learn to love her or him this way.

Love is an essential part of having a relationship; it can very powerful as well. It is likely that the people who you think are the best people ever, the ones you look up to, are also incredibly loving people. They have a way of loving everyone around them and because of this, it is easy for you to love and look up to them. But not everyone is easy to love; with some people it can be very difficult to look past their faults and flaws and all of the hurt and pain they have caused you in the past.
We are encouraged by the Savior to “love one another”, to care about them, to take an interest in their lives and to assist them with whatever they stand in need of. The Savior wouldn’t give us such a commandment if we couldn’t fulfill it; and if we can grow to care about anyone then we have the hardest part of love figured out--the other two, after all, can become byproducts.

Remember the initial statement: “You can grow to Love anyone?” Well, you can also cause anyone to love you. If you have a little bit of knowledge, you can create Passion in other people; you can build yourself up and become interesting and put yourself into a position for people to be Infatuated with you; last of all, if you do the right things, you can give people the opportunity to Care about you.

Just like you can and should forgive everyone, you can also love anyone you choose. You can care about another person and feel infatuated with them. This is an exciting bit of information because it puts agency in your hands. You have a choice in the matter of “falling in love”. It isn’t just some random thing that happens to two people. It isn’t a matter of fate. This also means that there isn’t such a thing as “one true love”**, and any two people can love each other in the necessary way for a lasting relationship.

The absolute truth behind love is that any two people can love each other and be perfectly happy spending the eternities together.

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*If you’ve ever met anyone who has lost a baby at birth you’ll understand what I mean when I make that statement.
**This is another term that has multiple meanings and confusion in society. I’m referring to the definition that there isn’t just one person out there who you are destined to fall in love with.

The Most Important skill in Marrige

Marriage is a relationship in which a man and woman mutually benefit from one another, support one another, take care of one another, and allow an environment in which children can be brought into this world. Selflessness is crucial to this; you will be required to do many things that have no immediate benefit to you, and are entirely for your spouse or children. Love is a selfless regard for other people, and it is essential in a marriage relationship.

Postponing marriage because of your desire to get an education or to get on your career path can be a negative thing. Although such pursuits are good for you and will truly help you and your family when you choose to start one, they can also hold you back from greater blessings when you choose to prioritize them over other things, and when they permit you to develop bad habits. The important thing is that you do not want to develop selfish habits because you are on your own, you want to develop selfless habits regardless of your situation.

The way you choose to be today will be the way you become ten years down the road. Numerous studies have shown that unless you make a conscious effort to change your behavior, any habits that you have now will stick with you for the rest of your life—you don’t change without conscious effort. The easiest way to become less selfish is to start today following the golden rule: treat other people the way you want to be treated.

Many previous articles have covered the basics of setting goals and preparing yourself to be accepted by your dream spouse.—Do not stray from those things that you want; strive to develop a relationship with someone who has the potential to become the kind of spouse that you would like them to be and that they would like to be themselves. Again, follow the golden rule, if you want to find a husband or wife who is selfless, loves you, and cares about you, you will have to do the same for them.

Being selfish can mean valuing yourself above other people, but it can also mean taking actions that control or manipulate others. Love and lust are not games to be played with. As I have mentioned in other articles, your relationships are agreements of trust in some form or another. It is morally unethical and completely selfish for you to feign feelings in order to gain that trust. Just as it is inappropriate for a government official to misuse the power trusted in them; it is inappropriate for you to misuse the things others trust you with (especially if they are entrusting you with their emotions).









Everything that action you take sends a message of some form to other people either through body language and verbal language. Make sure that you are sending the right message to those around you. Sometimes it can be hard to keep track of all the impressions you are giving other people. Sometimes you might not even notice that you are conveying messages to them through your actions and words but when you do notice things that were unintended, you should be sure to correct them before they turn into big problems. Or, when you notice that there are frequent misunderstandings in your relationship, you should evaluate whether what you are doing might be sending the wrong message.

You should be especially cautious of sexual attraction and the chemistry. When you kiss someone, stare into their eyes attentively, wink at them, hug them, hold their hand, rub up against them, or engage in any other physical behavior, you are playing with chemistry and are sending a specific message to that person that you like them. When you spend excessive amounts of time with them, call or text them frequently, or lead them to believe that you are interested in them in any way, you are also sending a similar message to them. Although, there is nothing wrong with leading a person on*, it becomes wrong when you don’t really intend to follow through with the signs that you are giving them. It is selfish to lead someone on and bring them in, only to reject them later; but if you make your intentions clear, you will not find it difficult to develop the kinds of relationships that you are really after.

Being selfish also includes being bitter. Spite and revenge isn’t good for anyone. It often harms you as much or more than it hurts other people. Learn to forgive other people and let go of the bad things you are clutching onto. Don’t be that guy or that girl who holds grudges and does vile things.

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*I use the term “leading someone on” to imply that you are leading them to believe a certain thing based on your actions and words. I.E. you are controlling the message you are sending them

How to Attract the Right Person

I recently updated this article to go into better depth of what the original topic was. You can find the new article here.

Imagine going to the ice cream parlor to buy some ice cream, only to be told when you get there that your favorite flavor is sold out, forcing you to buy the next closest thing.
Looking for the right person to marry is like that.

There is no such thing as “one true love” or a “soul mate”; these are romanticized terms to make you feel better about your situation and give you a false hope that there is someone specific out there waiting for you.—On the contrary, you are capable of marrying anyone you choose, just like you are capable of eating every flavor of ice cream (food allergies aside). With love, there isn’t such a thing as destiny or fate, nothing is pre-decided beforehand that you will meet, let alone marry, the perfect person for you. You will marry the person you choose to marry, regardless of whether they are the best thing for your life or not.
However, because it is your choice, you may set certain criteria that you wish your future spouse to possess. This is what I want to theme today’s article around.

If you could take a look at your life, taking note of all the people you come in contact with every day and the people you know personally and how you know them, where you met, how good of a relationship you have with them, etc. You will have a general idea of what your “sphere” is. These are the networks you are connected to as well as the people who go to the same places you do and are likely interested in some of the same things you are.
Your sphere is all of the people who you could build a relationship with if you chose to. Out of that “sphere” about half of the people are ineligible for you to date based on sexual orientation. Depending on where you live, there are still plenty of people in your sphere who you could date and build a relationship with. Think of your sphere as the ice cream store which has many different flavors, toppings, and options.
In the ice cream story, you were faced with a dilemma, you left your house expecting to buy your favorite flavor but that flavor was sold out. Before we cover the dilemma, how do you know what your favorite flavor is? Perhaps you have tasted it in the past and enjoyed it. Maybe you’ve had something similar to it and you enjoy anything of that flavor. Maybe you know what you don’t want your ice cream to taste like and your favorite ice cream is the one that is completely opposite.

Relating this to finding your future spouse, how do you know what you’re looking for if you don’t have some sort of criteria or preference? Take out a piece of paper (or since most of you are on the internet, open up a document) and write down a list of criteria that you want for your future spouse, these can be things you want and things you know you don’t want.



Is the list very long? –Many people share this common list: Devoted to God, honest, trustworthy, successful, and attractive. ---Hold on, what does that mean? How do you plan on determining if someone is trustworthy? How can you find out if someone is honest or devoted to God? Do you plan on following your girlfriend around everywhere to see if she returns that extra change that the cashier gave her? Are you going to take notes on how many commandments your boyfriend breaks? How about people you don’t know but who are in your sphere, how can you tell if they are trustworthy without giving them a little bit of trust first and risking them breaking that trust?
Rewrite you list now, but write more specific things down that you could reasonably gage without being a creeper. I would recommend basing them around goals that you are working towards as well as your values and lifestyle. For instance, if all you want to do is be a stay at home mom with lots of kids, you could write that your husband better want to have a lot of kids as well and that he’ll have a better career than working at subway his whole life so that he can support your family. If you have a goal of owning and running your own restaurant, you’ll want a wife who will either support your business in some way by helping out with one of the business aspects, or who will support you for running the business. Perhaps you know that you don’t want to marry someone who is in the military because of the stress it has put on your present family for having a father or brother who is serving. Maybe you don’t want to marry someone who drinks or smokes or someone who doesn’t take life seriously. Write these things down.








This exercise is meant to help you describe what your ideal partner is like. In the ice cream analogy this is your favorite flavor.

When you go to the ice cream store you go with the intent on purchasing your favorite flavor with all the right toppings and served as a milkshake or in a bowl or cone. When you start looking for someone to marry, you might discover that there is no one who perfectly fits your criteria within your sphere. (the dilemma) That is okay and merely means that you either need to expand your sphere and branch out in order to discover the people who are like that (perhaps you don’t know enough people), or you need to settle on the flavor that is most similar to what you are looking for (perhaps your criteria is too strict). Again, it is perfectly fine to run into this problem. On the other hand, you may find it easy to fill your criteria, just be sure to get the most out of what you want in life (don’t be too general unless it is honestly what you want).

The second part to finding the right person to marry is a little more complex than choosing ice cream at the store. Now that you have an idea of what you are looking for, you need to switch places with that person. Get inside their shoes: what types of things do THEY like and are looking for in a spouse? It would be nice if we could put as our number one criteria: “they will love me for who I am”. But what is essentially being said by that statement is that you aren’t going to change in order to help them with their life or to help them to love you. Selfish relationships rarely last—if they can even get off the ground to begin with!
The important precept to understand is that “you need to be the right person for the right person.” Don’t think things are automatically going to fall in your lap and be easy. Remember that there is no such thing as destiny or fate, everything is your choice and if you want something out of life, you will have to work for it. If you become the right person for your right person, the hardest part will be over. –It will be easy to convince him or her to marry you because both of your lives will fit together perfectly.

As time goes on, you change and your likes and dislikes change as well, be sure to update your list of what you are looking for. At the same time, strive to become the kind of person that your future husband or wife will easily fall in love with and it will make finding the right person a lot easier.

The Plan for Marriage

For starters, I want to announce the special occasion that I have moved all of my articles out of facebook and into the blogger website. I have a feeling this will be much easier for me to organize and help people read and follow what I write.

The topic I wanted to write about today goes along well with the last article I wrote about advancing from one step in a relationship to another. This time I’m going to take a step back and explain some situations that lead up to having a relationship. I’ve heard a couple people talk about how they’re still in a certain “stage” of dating. It is implied, with some of these same people who are in that mindset, that these stages require them to perform a specific “type” of date and that they must be done in a set order.

I would describe this as “The Plan for Marriage”.

Their order typically goes something like this:
Mingling – Group dating – Non-committed Dating – Committed Dating – Courting – and then Marriage.

They point out the specifics behind each type of date, and mostly agree with their reasoning but with some differences. There ideas are:
Mingling is more of a pre-step to building a relationship. It’s going to an activity and saying “hi” to someone and meeting them for the first time. Group dating is designed to put them in a non-awkward position where they can get to know a person a little more and decide who they want to single out for the next type of date, Non-Committed dating, which can be double or single dating in their opinion. It is meant to get to know a person even better, but at the same time, such people will also be dating other people so there isn’t really any ties that bind the pair together. Then comes Committed dating where both people agree that they won’t date anyone else and they “test” out the other person to see if they are worthy of advancing to the next stage. Courting is the final stage to “dating” in such people’s mind and is meant to be some sort of pre-engagement as well as full engagement where they work out their final problems before: Nuh nununuhhh! Marriage. Everyone seems to stop there without explaining marriage, so I’m going to assume that I know what they are talking about.

While this “Plan” for dating sounds well and good, I think there are a bunch of missing pieces as well as parts that have been assumed, some of which are assumed incorrectly. Let me proceed to explain my own “Plan” as I feel it might shed some light on this subject.

For the sake of congruency I’m going to use the same names, however, my definition is slightly different:
Mingling – Dating – Courting – Marriage.

Mingling: This seems to be the same as what everyone agrees that it is. You go to parties, you attend events, you go to gatherings with the same interests as you, and you meet people. You find people who you “connect” with or people who you find attractive and you ask for their phone number or some other means of getting ahold of them in the future.

Dating: Here is where the instant difference comes in. This is more like the concept of “Non-committed” dating where you aren’t tied down to anyone but you’re going on dates to get to know the other person, however, I wouldn’t draw a line between the popular definition of committed and non-committed dating. Dating is dating. Your objective should be to decide if you want to settle down with an individual. You can accomplish this in many ways, and I will touch on this a little further on in this article, but essentially there shouldn’t be a need to make this complex.

Courting: This is where I think most people get thrown off. Of all the articles out that that encourage singles to relearn how to court, not many of them go in depth about what it actually is, and those that do still provide a lot of room for misinterpretation. Courting is very similar to the modern term of “boyfriend/girlfriend” or (and here’s the tricky term) “dating” as in, “I am dating Shelby Tang”. Courting could be described as a diplomatic relationship between two people, one male one female. It is typically initiated verbally and though it is slightly binding, it can be dissolved depending on circumstances. The agreed upon terms are that both parties will choose not to date other people. Think of it as an alliance.

This “alliance” brings trust into the relationship; whereas before trust wasn’t a necessary component and either side could pursue other people. This provides the opportunity to test one’s level of trust in a lower-risk situation. Humans have ingrained in them a need to require trust and most social organizations have methods in which trust is secured; whether it is through a written contract, a computer password, or a specific understanding of information, we desire trust and we expect it in every aspect of our lives. While we are courting, we have the opportunity to share personal information with the other person such as our dreams, goals, and life plans. Lasting relationships are based on the things discussed in courting.

Because both parties have agreed to enter into a strict relationship of trust, there is the benefit of increased comfort and security. Without such comfort and security, it would be difficult to cover the necessary volumes of information that is needed before making further commitments to one another.

Marriage: Marriage is that “further commitment”. Once you have courted sufficiently and are comfortable with one another, love one another, are attracted to one another, understand a great deal about one other, and feel completely safe and secure with one another, then the agreement to get married is initiated. This is called engagement. During engagement, courting continues until the wedding day. After they are married, the couple will continue to develop trust for one another, they will continue to grow with one another, they will continue to love one another and be attracted to one another. If courting were compared to an alliance between two countries, marriage would be a complete union of countries where there are no longer two countries but there is only one country. This doesn’t mean that the end is reached; it means that they have fully agreed to never date or look at another person of the opposite sex. This is the ultimate trust, and they do this because of the benefits that come with it. Both parties benefit from making this agreement.

Now to return to the previous point I made. During the dating period, your objective is to decide if you would like to enter into a (courting) relationship with the other person. Finding is not a part of this stage. All of your finding should take place during the “Mingling” stage, so don’t approach a date as though you are going to “find” someone, as you have already found someone. Think of it as digging through a raspberry patch. Once you find a raspberry, you need to decide if it is worth it to eat it right now or to leave it alone and let it develop more and possibly you will return to the raspberry if someone hasn’t already eaten it. Dating is like examining the berry.

That said, I would like to touch on three kinds of dates: Group dates, double dates, and single dates. Group dates are defined as dates in which many people, as a group, do something, anything, that allows them to get to know each of the members in the group better. Double dates are dates in which four people, two guys and two girls, do something, anything, that allows them to get to know each other better. Single dates are dates between two people, a guy and a girl, in which both people get to know each other. They are personal. However, it is important to understand that the more people in the group, the less you will get to know the other people. One reason for this is time. You can only pay attention to one person at a time and since there are more people trying to get your attention, you will not be able to notice everything about everyone. Try reading the first page of 10 books or reading 10 pages of one book, there is a major difference in the amount of information you get from each scenario.







Theoretically, one could say that over time they could get to know everyone in the group if they go on enough dates as a group with them all. Such people fail to recognize another big benefit provided in single dating, and that is privacy. Most people don’t or won’t open up unless there is some level of trust or safety and security provided to them. In a group, some people don’t like to compete for attention, with others all they do is compete for attention. Both types of people are not being themselves; the first will guard their personality and the second will hype up and lie about their personality just to get attention. In order to truly get to know a person, you have to be alone with them. Yes, there is a risk that going on a single date will be awkward, but there is also a risk that it will be amazing and that you will instantly connect with the other person. You will have to take risks in order to marry the perfect person for you.

Group dates are actually a modern invention. The closest thing to a group date over a hundred years ago was a ball, but even balls were more events where everyone was invited to mingle and get to know the other people in their sphere.

There is a line that ought to be drawn by everyone to make the distinction between “finding” people to date and “getting to know” other people. Once you have “found” someone you would like to date, you should take them out on a date and not waste your time trying to “find” out if they are right for you. In other words, don’t mingle when you could be dating. Make dating a priority to mingling. This may simply mean getting a phone number from a girl who you have mingled with already, or it might mean asking a guy out on a date who you already have his number.

Don’t make finding someone you want to spend eternity with into something that is more complex than it has to be and set yourself apart from other people by getting to know someone and determining if they are worthy to court rather than “searching for the one”.