My good friend Eric made an interesting statement recently after breaking up with his then girlfriend. This was around the same time I was getting engaged. Said he: "I'm convinced dating does not lead to marriage."
This comment flew in the face of a lot of advice I've received from a lot of people I respect, people whose advice I value for a multiplicity of reasons. Over the last few weeks, however, as I have thought about my own experience in the world of dating and relationships and as I have heard more than ever about the romantic lives of my single and married friends, I have come to agree more and more with Eric: the act of dating, especially dating in the micro-culture in which I live, does not lead to marriage.
As a student at a private religious university and an active member of my faith, I am subjected--often on a weekly basis--to comments about dating, courtship, and marriage from professors and religious leaders alike. They seem to have one common goal: marry off as many single students as possible before they leave school. Historically, my school's extracurricular and on-campus activities have been calculated to the same end. Dating (going out on dates) is not only encouraged, it's expected.
As a single male student here, I was expected to invite girls out to eat, to see a movie, to go rock climbing, to go mini-golfing, (this list is endless), .... Furthermore, it was socially expected that I would be ready to report on my weekend's activities at Church on Sunday to any one of my ecclesiastical leaders who might inquire.
And so, for three years after my two-year Church service, I asked girls out seemingly every weekend. I'm the kind of guy who does what's expected of him most of the time, unless I have some reason to believe that by so doing I would violate my personal standards. Since the social expectation seemed to be coming from my religious leaders and mentors, I subconsciously filed away dating under practices "ordained of God."
"The Family: A Proclamation to the World," issued by the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, issued in 1995, clearly states that "marriage...is ordained of God" (see opening paragraph of the proclamation). On a local level (and seemingly more particularly at my university), local Church leaders have sought to interpret this statement to mean that, by extension, dating is ordained of God.
Dating, in and of itself, does not lead to marriage any more than eating Cheerios for breakfast every day for a year leads to marriage. In fact, "dating" in the way the word is thrown around so nonchalantly in our culture is not acceptable in other cultures. And yet, marriage is a part of virtually every society and culture around the world. So how is it others get married if they don't date the way we do?
Before I continue, I would like to concede that I do feel dating can have a place in developing social skills potentially important in a marriage relationship. Moreover, when we date, we learn much about ourselves.
This should not, however, be construed to mean that these social skills and personal revelations cannot be obtained through any other means. Dating might even be the most effective way to develop these skills in our culture, but I know a lot of antisocial boys and girls that wind up married, even before their gregarious, adventurous counterparts.
The way we use the word "dating" often refers to a series of excursions, often on weekend evenings, almost exclusively with one person at a time. (That is, after all, what makes it a date, right?) These serial encounters force us to step out of our comfort zone, which might include not spending time with members of the opposite sex, especially not one on one time. To these ends, dating can build important social skills required in courtship and eventually marriage.
But it seems like the more couples I meet and the more stories I hear, even and especially from my married and engaged friends at my highly fruitful, marriage-producing university, the less I believe that just going on dates will get people married.
Perhaps the reason for encouraging us to date so much is that in our culture, this seems to be an effective way to help us cultivate these social skills. As for the dating itself leading to marriage, however, I'm not convinced.
While I cannot speak for everyone, in my own personal experience, it wasn't until I gave up on dating the way I felt I was being instructed to that I met and married my wife. During our entire courtship, we only went on a couple "dates." What we did spend time doing, however, was being with each other. We spent hours together just sitting and talking on a blanket on the grass outside our apartment complex. It was completely unplanned and natural. It just happened.
In fact, our first (and only, we joke) real date was one day last summer in the late afternoon when Kaela paid me a somewhat unanticipated visit to give me a CD she had made for me. I popped the CD into my computer and we listened to some great music together, then I informed her I was in the mood for Italian food and wondered whether she might be interested in accompanying me to a favorite restaurant in town. We went and had a great time, but again, it was not planned at all.
It was over the course of a couple weeks, but especially that first evening at the restaurant, that I realized how easy it was to talk to Kaela and how comfortable I was around her. I suppose the rest is history, but there's an important lesson to be learned here, and I suppose it's the reason for all this thought: we will not get married, at least certainly not happily married, until we put aside all the angst of the dating game that so many well-intentioned leaders heap upon us and learn to just be ourselves. It sounds simple, but it's the truth. If you are capable of truly being yourself on a first date you're excited about, all the power to you, but I highly doubt that is the case for most of us. Things just have to happen naturally, and until they do, no one will get what he/she really wants out of a marriage relationship.
And so, dating, as we call it, does not lead to marriage. In fact, I submit it's only when we disarm ourselves and the people we might be interested in "dating" and get down to getting to know each other--really know each other, not just some puppy love kind of know each other--that anything will turn out the way we want it to.
As a matter of fact, if you had approached me a year ago and introduced Kaela to me as a girl I might be interested in dating, I would have politely introduced myself to her, made some small talk, and politely excused myself. In so many ways she wasn't what I was looking for, but getting to know her in the way I did made it clear she was everything I never knew I needed and always wanted and more. She completes me, she understands me, she is patient with me; in other words, she just gets me. Being married to her is better than anything I could have imagined or hoped for out of marriage and yet, I think I could count the "dates" we've been on, both during and after courtship, on one hand.
