Teenage Marriage, Part 4.2 – Uncomplicating Marriage

Practical Application:

 

So how does that work? How do we “uncomplicate marriage?” What do we change in the dating/courting process that makes the pursuing of a spouse a simpler matter? Here are three suggestions (only the first one will be dealt with in this post):

 

1. Don’t treat it like a game. You know what I’m talking about. I’m talking about the does-he/she-like-me game. The taking of every “hello” as a “let’s get married” (girls) or an “ask me out already!” (guys). The countless times talking to your besties about whether or not he likes you (girls) or the endless nights sitting in bed going over everything she does, looking for hints that she likes you (guys). Yeah, that game. By the time one person actually gets up the nerve to ask the other person out, there have been half a dozen imaginary relationships and breakups in the minds of each person without the other’s knowledge. He hugs you goodbye one night, you assume he likes you. He doesn’t sit by you at lunch. You assume he hates your guts. He says hi to you in the hallway. You assume he likes you again. He forgets to come to your party. You assume he’s forgotten that you exist. Marriage is much more serious than that! We participate in these fantasies because they give us thrill and pleasure and our friends encourage us to do it (peer pressure), but they are ultimately destructive to real, fruitful, godly pre-marital relationships. They change the way you act around the other person, making conversations awkward and rare. As a result, you never really get to know the person, but since you have become infatuated with them, your mind wants to know everything there is about them. Since it doesn’t have that information, what happens? Your mind fills in the empty spots with romanticized details and facts. You hear a rumor that he got an A in a class, so your mind assumes he’s a straight-A student. You hear that he was playing football on Saturday so you assume he’s a football player. You see him talking to a kid in the park and assume he’s good with children. You see him pull $50 out of his wallet and pay for something and assume he’s got a good, steady source of income. Now what’s happened? This guy (we’ll call him Tom) got an A in English, played some football with his friends in the park on Saturday, answered a kid’s math question and spent his birthday money. However, you see Tom as a straight-A student, involved athelete, good future father, and capable of supporting a family, when he’s most likely just your average high school student. The game that went on inside your head regarding Tom has placed him on a pedestal so high that he can’t even see the top. You relentlessly try to get into a relationship with Tom, only to succeed and find that he’s no different than any other guy out there, making for a very short-lived romance. So, the first way we “uncomplicate marriage” is to refuse to participate in this hormone-infested, romance-crazed dating game. Stop assuming on people’s motives and start viewing people objectively. Base your knowledge of their life off of what they have actually told you. Don’t assume any piece of information gained second or third-hand is true unless they verify it. Secondly, we need to stop getting in relationships that we are ill-prepared for. That means: 1) don’t get into a relationship until you are ready or nearly ready for marriage (nearly ready meaning that you’ll definitely be ready by the time you got engaged, assuming the relationship progressed that far) and 2) don’t rush into things. Get to know the other person before you make a commitment. And I don’t mean dating. Get to know the person you are “interested” in in the context of a purely platonic relationship, making sure you protect both your physical and emotional purity. Engage them in normal conversation in group settings, don’t set them apart in your attentions and affections, just be friends until you know the other person well enough to know for certain that you’d be willing to make a commitment to a relationship with marriage as it’s goal.

    

   The first step to uncomplicating marriage is uncomplicating the getting-into-a-relationship stage. View the matter objectively and get your information about the other person from the other person. Don’t rush into a relationship but wait until you are certain that this person is someone you could see yourself married to in a year or two. This will minimize the amount of relationships and breakups, both imaginary and real, and will make the relationships you do have more solid, as they are based off of more than mere conjecture.