Foundations Episode 9

Recap:
All relationships require work. You have to constantly put effort into a relationship in order for it to work out and progress. That means more time spent together, more sacrifice, and more effort on your part.

What your Parents and Friends Say

Simple Truth:
Everyone wants their parents to accept the person that they ultimately marry. Parents too, want you, more than anything, to marry someone that they approve of. That is why, while growing up, your parents as well as others who desired your well-being, would tell you things about what they expect from the person you marry. “Marry someone with money,” “You better make sure she isn’t two-faced,” “He should hold open the door for you,” etc.

The problem with the comments and requests that others give you, is that they are not your requirements. Although your parents and friends and neighbors may have good intentions, it is good actions that matter in the scheme of life, not the good intentions behind them. The only person who can accurately make decisions for you, is you. Although your friends and family may think they know what is best for you, only you can make that decision.

Finding a spouse is not something other people can help you with. In order to mature and grow, and thereby develop yourself into marriage material, you will need to develop habits of self-confidence and trust. You will need to learn how to make decisions on your own without the aid of other people. When you get married, you cannot run home to mommy and daddy every time you run into relationship problems. Your neighbors, friends, and religious adviser are your last resort for relationship problems.--The only person who you can accurately rely on is yourself, and therefore, developing your own decision making skills is an absolute must. When you are actually married, if you run into problems with your spouse, how do you think your spouse would respond to you turning to your old friends to complain about her or him? Do you think that your best friend has the ability to persuade your husband or wife to join your side of a argument any better than you do?

Of course, this doesn’t mean that you can’t trust the things that your parents or friends say about someone who you are getting serious with. There are times when your brain quits working because you are overwhelmed with chemicals, and these things can cause you to not think clearly and even get into hazardous situations. Having a second pair of eyes is a good thing in that case because it can help you to come to your senses. However, you always need to take everything that other people say with a grain of salt. They do not know you as well as you do, and although they may want certain things for you, you need to realize whether the things they want for you are going to fulfill your needs.

Families are especially active in telling you what you should and should not expect out of a spouse.—they have lived with you the longest and probably think they know you the best.--But families also have their own agendas. What I mean is that families start with specific goals in mind: Two couples come together with goals and plans that they want to fulfill in life and work towards. You were a part of their plan; after you were born they made plans to sustain you and to help you grow. But when once you reach marriageable age, in a sense, they fulfilled their responsibility to you. Many parents are nice and love you so much that they continue to sustain and help you, but looking at the natural processes of things, you are very much on your own the moment you are old enough to get married.






The reason for this is simple: Just like your parents took risks and ventured off on their own and ultimately got married, so too must you do the same in order to perpetuate the cycle. You need to get married so that you may have children, continue learning and growing, and ultimately accomplish your purpose in life. You can do none of these things without being married. And you aren’t merely expected to do these things. You are REQUIRED to do these things. You have an obligation to your Heavenly Father and to your earthly parents to get married. Why do I say that? Because what would the purpose of your parent’s lives be in having children, if those children did not grow up and become like them? Having children isn’t merely a fun thing to do, it isn’t merely so that they can have companionship. It is to perpetuate a long-lasting cycle that has continued for thousands of years and thousands of generations. You are obligated to get married and form your own “family” simply because you were born.

But to protect the family from rebellious, outside influences, families have a way of making their own patterns, behaviors and beliefs that control the processes in the marriage cycle. Sometimes these patterns are for good, such as making sure that you do not marry someone who will abuse you and limit your potential. At other times, these things can have negative effects, such as preventing you from getting married entirely. No one is perfect, and these cultural behaviors are designed by imperfect people, so you need to take these with a grain of salt as well.

The whole objective of this article is to help you realize that you need to think for yourself. No one can choose a husband or wife for you; it is something you need to do on your own. And trust me, if you do this, you will be much more satisfied with the relationship that you develop from the situation. Don’t let your friends or family dissuaded you from your decisions. Whether those decisions are to leave or to stay, you need to take accountability for them, because if you constantly rely on other people to make your decisions or to prevent you from doing things that you might regret, then how will you ever learn to make decisions on your own?

As I have said numerous times: Relationships require risks. If you don’t put anything on the line (whether it’s personal dignity or possibility of regret) then you will never learn, never improve your relationship abilities, and never have that dream relationship that you have always wanted.

That’s what Dating Zion is all about: helping you to realize what you will have to do in order to have your dream relationship. If you have any questions about what I have said in this article, or if your mind is so blown right now from what I said and you realize that you need to make some changes in your life, please let me know either by commenting below or emailing me right now ( consultdz@live.com ). I am always trying to improve this website and enlarge the understanding of its audience, so I would LOVE to get some input from you! …Thanks!

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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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!

The Big Picture

 EDIT: (1/20/2011)
I just added the option for you to receive updates on this blog via email. You no longer have to remember whether or not there is a new article this week or if it is next week, it comes to you in your email!

Also, don't forget that there is a facebook page set up to sending out reminders, so like Dating Zion on there as well.


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The Big Picture
The decision to get married may be the most important decision of your life. It is one in which you probably look forward to making, but also feel nervous and uneasy about. It might be one that you are anxious to make or it might be one that you keep postponing for other things.
However, before you proceed with this important decision you should understand the Big Picture: There is more to life than just marriage; and although marriage is essential and should not be put off or hastily initiated, you should focus on changing yourself to become the best person possible. If you are doing everything possible to become a better person and you are making reasonable steps towards the goal of marriage, there will be nothing stopping you from getting married at the right time and in the right place.

You have been given, agency, or the God-given ability to choose your own life. If you work at it, you can accomplish anything; but remember the old adage “work smarter, not harder”. -–That’s right, sometimes working hard isn’t enough; you also need to know how specific things work in order to work better. For example, before the Wright brothers built their first airplane, they had to learn a few principles about physics (lift, thrust, drag, equilibrium, etc.) Yes, they worked hard, but they also learned well.
With that in mind, it is easy to see the power that God has given you to act in this life: You literally have the world at your fingertips and if you work and learn, you can make all your dreams come true.

In the rest of this article, you will learn how every principle previously presented on this blog works, and how they are all related. And, after reading this article, hopefully, you will begin to see much more of The Big Picture.

(Click the numbers for a specific Dating Zion article written on a similar topic.)

1. Resolve to Work	-- Before you even start on your journey, you should answer this questions, and be completely honest with yourself while: Are you really willing to do the work necessary to succeed? Do you have the self-control to give up anything that might stand in your way? To do this, you will need to weigh your options and determine what things you value more. Pertaining to marriage, is getting married more important to you than worldly success? Is it more important to you than popularity? What about being a good person, is that more important than having friends? Is devoting your time and energy to the cause worth accomplishing the task? No matter what your answers are to these questions, you now know how much you are willing to give in order to get what you want. If you were completely honest with yourself, it will be easier next time you need to put forth the time and effort for your goals. Choose today to go to work; don’t put it off till tomorrow because you never know whether something else will come up tomorrow. Resolve to work.
2. Set Goals and have Dreams	-- At the same time as you are resolving to work, you need to decide what you really want. The more specific you are about it the better. Your wants and desires that are general, are only dreams; your wants and desires that are specific are goals. All goals need to have a time limit. Some goals are quantifiable, meaning a number can be attached to them. Above all, goals and dreams need to be personal. Some people say: “You need to make it your own”. In other words, you need to do things for yourself, not because other people want you to. If other people want you to move out of the house and get married, you need to decide for yourself whether you want to move out and you want to get married. No one else can make goals for you, but they can help you once you have set them. If you want to get married, that’s just a dream; but if you want to get married in the next 3 years, that’s more of a goal. How can you measure that goal? –One option is to count the number of sub-goals that will help you reach your long-term (3 year) goal; but not every goal needs to be quantified. Some goals can be conditional, meaning yes or no. With conditional goals, you need to clarify the conditions. For example, having the goal to “be comfortable around the opposite sex” isn’t necessarily quantifiable.-—sure, you could set a goal to talk to 75% of the people you come within arms distance of for more than 3 seconds, and then every day tally up how many of those you actually did, but it would be better if this goal was conditional: when you reflect on the day, did you get nervous about talking to someone and if so, why? How can you improve? A major part of the big picture is setting and reaching goals and dreams.—that’s part of your eternal progression, which is part of the big picture.
3. Plan and Prepare	-- Now that you have goals, both short term and long term, how are you going to accomplish those goals? What steps do you need to take to reach your goal? If your goal is to save up X amount of money so that you can get on your feet once you are married, what does that require of you? How much of your paycheck will you need to devote to this, and what will you do without that money? Some plans are just about self-control and additional mini-goals, but other plans are more complex. Take for instance a time where you needed to learn something before you could accomplish your goal. Your options might be to go to classes to be taught those skills, or to hire a tutor, or to simply read a book on the subject. Which will you choose? Which will give you the best learning experience? Which will cost the most? These are the kinds of questions involved in planning and preparing to accomplish your goal. Think about everything involved and how you will accomplish it. Write all of this down. Write your goals down, write your dreams down, and write your plans down. And every time you feel impressed to add to or change your plans, write them down immediately before you forget them.

Click here to see the Next Page.

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!

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 Not Lose Hope of Having a Good Relationship

This article has been rewritten on my new blog: rdccoach.blogspot.com

Here are the new articles:

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”.