Week 5...Preparing for Marriage

This week we talked about preparing for marriage.  In other words, DATING!  This is something that is a hot topic at my house right now.  With two college age men living in my basement, my two sons, we have a lot of discussions about dating.  What is it exactly? What does it mean to date someone? How long do you “date” before you become exclusive?

One of the ideas that was expressed in class that I really liked, was about what constitutes a date.  It was mentioned that Elder Oaks defined a date as being “Planned, Paired off and Paid for”.  I agree that this is what an official date looks like.  We talked about what each of these mean.  I especially like the idea that “paid for” does not necessarily mean that it has to cost money.  Paid for can mean that the date was paid for with an investment of time and effort in planning. (However, I would caution that in the case of younger youth, to be a date it doesn't necessarily need all of these. If my 14 year old participated in an activity that was planned and paired off but not paid for, I would tell him it was a date!)

I also liked the thought about how these three “P’s” correlate to the three p’s from the proclamation concerning the roles of men. Preside, Protect and Provide.

Planned-------------------Preside

Paired off-----------------Protect

Paid for--------------------Provide

Another concept we talked about was that of attachment.  We used a metaphor of tape in comparing it to attachments in dating. If you place tape on a surface and then rip it off and do that over and over again, it eventually loses it’s stickiness, or its ability to attach.  The same goes for dating.  If a person gets attached and then breaks off relationships too many times it can reduce their ability to attach in the future.  This is something that I think young people need to be cautious of.  I see a lot of our youth getting into relationships and making commitments or attachments very quickly, before they know each other very well. This can be worrisome if it is done over and over and they find it harder and harder to commit in the future.