Dating

    This past week we talked about dating and how the culture has changed over the last decade or so. we talked about how when our parents were dating in college you could go on a date one day with someone and the next day with someone new. there wasn’t this thought that you were DATING someone just because you went on a DATE with them. We talked about how this has changed. If you were to go on a date with someone people might think that you're super into that person and might want to see if you should go on another date. I remember having this conversation with my mom many times in high school. You can't just date around because you might be considered some rude names. I think it would be so fun to be able to go on fun dates with a bunch of different people! How else are you supposed to find out what you want in your future partner?! Since I have left for college, this culture has kind of changed. It's more acceptable to do this kind of dating. 

    We also talked about something called the RAM which is an acronym for Relationship Attachment Model. This is a model that has a scale for how much you should know someone before you trust them and then how much you should trust someone before you rely on them. It continues for committing to someone until you touch someone. When we talked about this in class it was SO interesting! It makes total sense that we shouldn't commit to someone before we really know a person, but how often do I catch myself doing that? More than I would like to admit! Or sometimes it's not committing to someone but that I rely on them without knowing them. That doesn't make sense why someone would do that, but we do! Or at least many of us do! There is a clear order to creating a relationship with someone. One example of this RAM going south is in high school and college culture. So many people will meet a person, maybe go on one date with them and make out with them. This is not unheard of! It's actually super common, but you can see this becoming a problem because you're 'touching them' or making out with them. You can't know someone because you went on a single date with them. As much as we think we can know someone super well super quickly, it doesn't quite work like that. 

    Sometimes when I hear people who get married in a semester or even six months, I question how much they really know their spouse. If you really think about it, if you get meet someone and are engaged within six months, you think you know the person but haven't even seen how they are in the winter! or the summer! I think that is so crazy! What if they hate the snow? You would never know! Obviously that's not something you NEED to know before you marry them, but my point is, there are many things that wouldn't come up in conversations because you aren't in the circumstances. Another example that I think of is how they act around their family, specifically their mom. If you've only seen them around friends at college, you wouldn't know if they treat their mom like garbage. What if they don't help their mom with dinner? Or if they don't clean up their dishes after dinner. It's very interesting to me to see how someone treats their mom compares to how they will treat their future spouse. I'm not saying your marriage is not going to work if you met your spouse and got married very quickly but I do think that many of the times, someone can be misleading you if you've only known them a short while.