Modern Dating and Its Pitfalls

Dating has changed a lot over the years; it is way different today than how it was even twenty-five years ago when our parents were dating. These days people do not go on dates with people unless they think they might like them, instead of going on a date to figure out if they like them. They are too afraid to ask people on a date until they "know them" when that is what you do on a date; you get to know someone. Before this people would go on lots of dates with lots of different people. Then once they found one person they really liked, and they could potentially see themselves marrying that person, they would court them, or start dating them exclusively. Then, once they progressed enough in their relationship and decided they wanted to spend the rest of their lives with that person, they would get engaged. After that they eventually got married.

Now this is not to say that we do things completely different nowadays, we simply tend to combine steps or completely skip some steps altogether. People will go on dates with just one person and then after a little while they decide to start exclusively dating that person, even though they have yet to date anyone else. The problem with this is that they do not know the qualities they really want in a spouse, since they have yet to look at the qualities of anyone else. Another thing that can happen, and is even more common in the Later Day Saint Culture, is people will get engaged without even dating that person first. They will get to know a person for a few weeks, get engaged, and then start going on dates once they are engaged. The steps of dating, courtship, engagement, and then marriage don't exist just to be inconvenient, they are there because they help create long lasting relationships.

Something else that is very common is online dating. People will meet someone online and sometimes meet up in person and explore the relationship further. However quite often what will happen is they will experience their entire relationship online until they get engaged, and then they will meet up in person. Quite a few problems can arise from this. People can very easily lie online. They can tell you things about how they act, look, their beliefs, etc., and it could all be completely untrue. Now this can also be the case with face to face dating, however it is a lot easier to lie in person than it is to lie online. You can never truly know someone unless you have met them face to face. One of the other issues that could come up is deciding where to live once you are married. If you date long distance like this you may think that it is only temporary, which it usually is, but then you have to come to a decision of who is going to uproot their lives in order to eliminate the distance. This kind of disagreement can very easily end a relationship.

Another common practice nowadays is cohabiting. People think that they should see how they well live with their partner before marrying them to test their compatibility. However the problem with this is that cohabiting life is not equivalent to married life. When people cohabit they still have two separate lives instead of sharing a life together. They have separate bank accounts, separate bills, separate responsibilities, and separate problems. Then once they finally get married (if they do end up getting married) they are used to living in this way, so they will keep up a lifestyle of having separate lives. This created distance and contention between them and tends to lead to a lot of problems, often times even divorce.

None of the statements or situations stated are hard and fast rules, they simply are very common occurrences in our modern society. So the best thing we can do is try to avoid the situations where these problems occur, or try to change the trends that occur due to these situations.

Men & Women: The Importance of Their Differences

Men and Women are extremely different from one another. To begin, women are more relationship oriented, while men are spatially oriented. One way this is shown is in how they give directions. I used to get rides home from people a lot and whenever I would tell people how to get to my house, I would tell them I live over by Little Ceasars. They would then start driving in that direction and I would direct them from there. However, my dad always says you go North/South on I-25, or similar a instruction, whenever he directs people. I always found this very confusing when he would tell me where to go, because I had no idea what he was talking about, since he was using spacial orientation instead of relationship orientation, which makes more sense to me.

Another way in which me and women are different is the fact that men tend to put all of their focus on one thing, while women tend to focus on a lot of little things all at once. I see this a lot in my parents. My mom always has five or six different projects going at once. She is currently redoing our house and she is fixing the stairs, building a bench, and putting up our patio cover, while also working on two or three sewing projects. Anytime she gets stuck on one project, or another one takes a higher priority, she just stops that one and moves on. My dad on the other hand likes to have one thing going at a time; especially during tax season. When my dad is working on doing our taxes he does not do anything else for about three days.

The last big difference I want to discuss is the fact that women are much more expressive with their emotions than men are. When I said goodbye to my parents the first time I came up to college I cried for a good fifteen minuets; even this semester I cried for a few minutes when they left. However my brother, who got dropped off for the first time this semester, just gave them each a hug and went off to Get Connected. I could never imagine going and doing something right after saying goodbye.

Although men and women are clearly very different from one another, it is important to note that these differences are what make men and women so compatible. Sometimes you need to be comforted by your mom, but if you are always coddled and you never receive a firm guiding hand from your father, you will not have thick enough skin to survive in the real world. Your boss does not care if you were tired and that is why you did not finish your work. They just care that your work gets done and if it does not get done, you could get fired.

The fact that men and women are different allows them to divide up responsibilities based on strengths. For example, my dad mows the lawn and he taught all of my brothers how to do it. My mom sews and she taught me how to do it. My dad is the main breadwinner of our house and my mom mostly stays home to take care of us kids. It is necessary to have people who can do different things.

Finally different situations may call for different approaches to solving a problem. What I mean by that is, that one persons method of doing something might work sometimes, but it is good to have someone who does things differently in case the first way does not always work. For example, my dad and mom both ties shoes differently. This was very helpful growing up because I could not figure out how to tie my shoes the way my mom did, so I just did it my dad's way.

In today's society it is quite common for people to try and belittle, or even get rid of, the differences between men and women, but I feel that we should celebrate them.

Familial Culture

Culture is a way of life that is passed down from generation to generation. It is something that exists within families due to the fact that the traditions associated with a culture are taught by the parents to the children. My family continues to perpetuate the culture that is associated with being members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints because my parents taught us the things that members typically do. For example, we go to church for two hours every Sunday and once a month, on the first Sunday, we fast for two meals in order to show our faith. We also pay tithing because we know the great blessing that come along with doing such a thing. Some other cultural traditions associated with our religion include celebrating Christmas and Easter. I would not do most, if any, of these things if I had not learned them within my own family.

This method of passing pieces of our culture from one generation to the next is very beneficial for a lot of reasons, one of them being that it allows people to decide which parts of their culture they want to keep. If you like a part of your culture you keep that aspect "alive" by continually taking part in it within your household. However if you do not like something you simply stop doing it with your kids, or you just don't teach them it at all, and then it is no longer a part of your culture. For example, when my family first started out, we always went to my grandma's on Christmas because that is what she always did growing up, so we were expected to follow suit. However, my mom did not want to spend Christmas with our extended family, and us kids agreed. Going over to grandma's meant changing out of our pajamas and leaving all of our fun new presents behind. We just wanted to sit around and have fun all day, not have to go to grandma's and watch the adults exchange their presents and be really bored the whole time. So one year my mom decided enough was enough and she told my grandma we would spend Christmas Eve with everyone, but Christmas Day was ours.

I was really glad that we got rid of that part of our "culture", but there are still a lot of traditions that I would love to keep. Speaking of Christmas, one of my favorite traditions I have in my family is eating Fruit Loops with Eggnog. I know, it sound weird, but it is actually delicious; we add some milk as well so it is not as rich and thick. This is a part of my culture that I really want to perpetuate, which I will do by eating the same thing around Christmas time with my family. Another tradition I would love to perpetuate is the tradition of doing puzzles together as a family. Since I have such a big family, there is not a whole lot that we can all do together, but doing a puzzle is something we can all do together. So I would love to try and get my kids to like puzzles so we can continue this tradition.

One of the traditions that I myself would like to set aside is the tradition of eating a lot of leftovers. I totally understand that for my current household this is what works for us, but personally I really like cooking. So my hope (although we will see how realistic this goal really is) is that if I am a stay at home mom I will have time to cook a few times a week so we will not always just be doing leftovers, or having kind of a free for all when it comes to dinner time. I also want to set aside the tradition of playing a lot of video games. I do not see anything wrong with playing video games, but I think that it is also important to spend time as a family doing things like puzzles, board games, and card games. So my goal is to try and replace video games with other things we can do together as a family.

Family "Rules"

One thing that I have never really thought about until this week is the idea of unspoken family rules. Often times we do not realize the "rules" that we follow within our families, but if we do not follow these "rules" there is bound to be confrontation. For example, in my family we have assigned seats in the van. Mom and dad always sit in the front seats (usually with dad driving) and the two oldest kids get the two big seats in the middle row, with the very oldest in the seat right behind the drivers seat. The youngest kids sit in the back row with the oldest of them behind the seat on the passenger side, the youngest in the middle, and the middle child of those three sitting behind the seat on the drivers side. Then if there were ever more people than that in the van, the youngest two would double buckle in the back seat on the drivers side. If anyone ever tries to sit anywhere else, people fight. This was especially a problem when we started learning to drive and my mom would come and sit in the back. She would often times just take the spot of the person who was learning to drive (typically the oldest), but if she ever did not everyone would fight over who got to sit by her and who got to take the oldest kid's spot instead of her.

If there is not confrontation as a result of these rules being broken, but instead the rules simply change, there is bound to be confusion. For example, one of the rules in my family is that if you are cold, you put on a hoodie, socks, a blanket, etc and then if you are still cold, you can go and ask dad to turn up the heat. I was so used to following this rule that when my dad told me how I could turn up the heat in the basement if it got too cold, I was shocked. I was so used to not being allowed to turn up the heat, or having to ask him to do it if I did want it turned up, that I did not know what to do when I was allowed to do it myself (especially because I had no idea how to work a thermostat since my dad always did it himself). It took me a while to get used to this adjustment to the "rule" and it was even harder because the original "rule" still applied to the top two floors, so I had to be used to two different ways of living, just one floor apart.

Another thing that stood out to me this week was the idea of symbolic interaction theory. In this theory people will often put meaning behind others actions, even if that meaning is not what that person really intended. For example, when you hold the door open for someone you could just be trying to be polite. One person may take it that way, but another may be insulted and think that you are implying that they cannot hold open a door for themselves. How people will interpret an action, as well as the actual meaning intended by an action, can vary from person to person and situation to situation. Due to this, we need be more careful about how we interpret others actions because the reality is that they could have a totally different meaning behind what they are doing than what you may think. If people could try a little harder not to assume what people are thinking, we would all be a lot happier and there would be a lot less conflict in the world.