Getting Engaged

     This last week we talked about dating so this week it would make sense we talk about engagement and 'courting' as we called it in this class. This was an interesting topic because many of the students in the discussion have not been married and aren't engaged. We learned some interesting statistic on how successful marriages usually happen. One of them that I thought was oddly specific was talking about how long you should date before getting engaged. It says that those who date 1-2 years have more successful marriages than those who both date for under a year and those who date for more than two years. This seemed a little weird to me because it seems like the longer you date someone the more you get to know them. The research shows that people often get too comfortable in the relationship status of 'dating' that the transition to marriage is much harder, and many times doesn't work out. 

    This part of the discussion led right into question of, 'How do I truly get to know someone?' The more I am in this class and as more of my friends are getting engaged, I feel more nervous about marrying someone that I don't fully know. I've talked about this idea many times with my friends about how people can easily put up a front to present themselves in a certain way. This is scary to me in a marriage because what if I marry someone who ends up being completely different when I am married to them. When I say that I don't mean that they aren't as clean as I thought they would be, I mean what if they are quick to get angry when something goes wrong. So, we talked about this in class about the three T's to really know a person. Togetherness, talk, and time. Although these things seem very simple, I think they are often skipped over. I think many couples will spend a lot of time with one another but won't do a lot of the talking or sometimes only one person is doing all the talking. This can feel like you are becoming really close with a person because you spend so much time together but you don't really know them because you aren't talking about some of the important things that should talked about before you move on to being engaged or even exclusively dating.