Most people don’t understand the real meaning and purpose of dating. Some think dating is for sleeping together.
And some are dating because they couldn’t let an attractive person pass them by. This book gives you the real and wisest meaning of dating.
When you meet someone that you believe you can share your life with, you test your belief by taking time to know that person better.
Dating is that period of getting to know someone better with the intention of settling down together.
Wrong Reasons for Dating:
i) You Don’t Date for Sex:
The dating relationship is too weak to carry the demands and consequences of sex. In fact, sex complicates a dating relationship.
Dating is for social bonding rather than sexual bonding. A strong commitment (like being together forever) is a result of social bonding (friendship) rather than sexual bonding.
We don’t commit the rest of our lives to someone for sex no matter how many times we do it.
It is the friendship and companionship we share that makes us trust and wish we could forever walk side by side in the journey of life. That’s what must make us commit.
Actually, during dating, sexual feelings disturb the development of companionship. Sexual activity disrupts and slows down social bonding in a dating relationship.
That is why you can have sleep with someone when you are not even socially close enough to discuss contraception; what to do with the baby when it’s born; or how far you want to go together in life…
When she is pregnant and wants to move into his house that is when one young man starts to say “I can’t live with her.” If you can’t live with her, why did you sleep with her?
When you settle down, you will realise that “sleeping together” is just fifteen to thirty minutes of what you will do after a whole day of living together.
If you are bad at living together, sleeping together won’t be that fun either.
Dating is not for testing if we can sleep together, dating is for testing if we can live together.
ii) You Don’t Date for Exploration
If you still don’t know how people of the opposite sex think and behave, let me give you some truth in advance – dating won’t help you know them much either.
Only a few people, who are confident enough to be themselves, can behave as normal during dating.
Otherwise during dating most people behave as who they wish they were rather than who they really are.
Knowing that someone is observing and assessing your behaviour automatically makes you show your most favourable side.
So if you think dating is for knowing how women or men think – then you are using a poor technique.
That person you see every day at college or workplace – that is who he/she really is. If she is always murmuring about the boss and the new manager – that is what she really is, she likes complaining about people in authority.
Assess whether her complaints are constructive or destructive because one day you will also be a man in authority in the house you wish to build with her.
That guy you saw at college. You were sitting at the sports field and he was playing in the team. The referee gave him a red card, and in return he slapped the referee out of temper.
That is who he really is – and years of dating might never be enough to show you what you saw in that moment.
Dating is NOT exploration. Dating is when you meet someone whose character you have liked, and you begin to relate in order to see how you get along.
The aim of dating is settling down.
If you are not ready to settle down, then you are wasting an important fraction of your lifetime dating.
Why Dating and Getting to Know Each Other Matters Nowadays
In the past we used to live in villages and traditional communities where values and beliefs were very similar.
Even a person you had never met was similar to you in many ways and understanding each other was easy. But due to growth of cities and towns, and globalization forces we have now become urban societies.
That means, though we meet at the same places, we come from totally different backgrounds.
If we marry before we take enough time to know each other, we only become husband and wife to everyone else yet remain total strangers between the two of us.
Getting to know each other, being shocked by each other’s differences, learning to adapt to those differences and trying to change so that life can go on, could be very difficult especially if you are already under the pressure of family and marriage responsibilities.
For that reason, giving enough time for a friendship to grow is very important before settling down with someone.
Settling down too early can be a heavy burden on the development of friendship among newlyweds.
Some people believe you pray, then when God tells you “This is the one” you step forward and marry that person.
Most of the times we think we heard God when what we heard is just our hearts. It is good to take time to know that person, and find out if you can really share a lifetime together.
It’s not that you don’t trust God; rather it’s your ear that you don’t trust.
Test your intuition before you trust it.
There is an error most young people make in the name of love. They just want to follow their hearts forgetting that even the heart can be deceived. F
or example, you can clearly see there is no future with your current girlfriend or boyfriend but you still tell yourself, “My heart doesn’t want to let him/her go.”
Then some people will say something sweet yet so wrong, “If your mind is confused, follow your heart.” My friend the heart can be deceived. It can lead you to paradise or to pain.
Before you follow your heart, first ask yourself who your heart is following.
– MOFFAT MACHINGURA
If that person is worth following, then set your heart free. If that person is NOT worth following, my dear tie a collar around your heart and drag it away from there.
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