Preparing for Marriage

This week of discussion focused on preparing for marriage. Due to slow, but recent change, marriage is started to become less likely to happen. Most people go with the easiest route of cohabitation. Today I would like to share some information about cohabitation, marriage, and preparing for marriage. This is a bit of a controversial topic so please respect the opinions of others here.

In the past many people prepared for marriage through the form of dating. In which a man would invite a lady to do an activity together and get to know each other. In this they see if they have a chance at being compatible with one another. Growing up the culture I lived in define dating in which one person exclusively goes with someone for a time and share feelings with one another, if that relationship doesn’t work they breakup and find another partner that they can exclusively be with. In class, we called this Serial Exclusive dating. Going to Idaho I experienced a completely new culture in which people do go on dates, but in a different manner. They do not go exclusively with one person at first, but rather they go on many dates with many people. Seeing this culture hit me for a culture shock, it is rather interesting that in fact neither is a wrong to go on about dating. They both in turn help to reach their purpose in finding your partner for life.  I would like to share a little bit about these two types of dating and the pros and con I feel come with them. With Associative dating we discussed that it was a way to be able to seek quickly the qualities that you want to have in your future spouse, it also is a good way of getting to know many people. Contrary to what I think, it is supposed to be a lot easier to be able to go normally on dates as well since it is not exclusive, but more to get to know the person. Some cons that I see in it, is the desperation those people have while doing this. Most people that I know who do this, right when they find that person that they want to be with they take drastic measures to get married quickly without actually knowing the person leading to problems later, like divorce. With Serial Exclusive dating I believe that it is a good way to know someone more than just the surface level, form this you can make judgement in the qualities that you want in your partner. You have more chance to see how they act in a normal basis than just on a single date for an hour. A con is that from what I see is that it leads to have higher chances of cohabitation. Studies have found that those that cohabitate are not as happy as those who marry and on top of that it leads to higher chances of divorce if they eventually marry later. Usually the cause of this is that, there is not a new kind of relationship when they marry, it becomes more of something they do to just do it. They have already found out the ins and outs of their partner so there is no sense of new experience or adventure with their partner. From my own observation I noticed that cohabitation leads to much pain to the family, not just the individuals themselves, but their parents, siblings, and other family members as well. If you truly want to have a happy lasting marriage, I believe that you need to make that effort to take the chance and get married instead of cohabitating first.

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