Skip to main content

Rules of Attraction: Dating

 Hello everyone! I am absolutely so excited to talk to you about this week's topic. Dating! The steps of dating, the rules of dating, some things you should be doing while dating, the fun stuff! 

To start off, let's talk about assortive dating. Assortive dating is dating multiple people, and a variety of people, at the same time. Believe it or not, this is the way you should be dating. The reason why this is the way to go, is because while dating multiple people at once, before being exclusive with someone, you can kind of learn and see what you like in a partner as well as what you don't like. It also helps you as an individual to know what you can change in yourself to do better. This is actually a really important step before becoming exclusive with someone because it is a very high level of commitment to date someone exclusively. Now this shouldn't freak you out, it just means that you shouldn't put all of your attention on someone before getting to know them, and it's okay to date other people while getting to know someone you might be interested in eventually becoming exclusive with. People date, pursue that one person, they're happy that they don't have to date around anymore, so they date that one person exclusively without being ready. Doing it this way can create so many more problems than if you just decided to date exclusively when you feel that you're ready to get married. 

Now I bet you all have experienced someone asking you to "hang out", and I bet it left you wondering what they actually meant by "hang out". What is the difference between dating and hanging out? Well, while dating someone, you're paired up with one person and usually only go out with them individually without the influence of a group setting. While just hanging out, you may find yourself trying to compete for the attention of the person you're interested in in the midst of everyone else in the room. There could be a lot of confusion including confusion with labeling; romantic or friendship. Hanging out vs. dating could create an artificial environment. People tend to act differently around a group of people in comparison to being on a date with the ability to have a one-on-one conversation with one person. Another comparison is that dates are usually planned instead of the spur of the moment hang out session. Going along with this, a date is paid for and usually paid for by one person or the other, although nowadays we're seeing a lot more "split bills". 

There are four steps to dating. Dating, courtship, engagement, and marriage. Once you decide to date someone exclusively there are a variety of things you should be paying attention to as well as asking yourself and your partner. While dating someone, what roles do they already portray? Does he prtotect you, including emotional protection as well as conversational protection? Conversational protection meaning does he save you from unwanted/inappropriate conversations? Is she nurturing and supportive? Does he take initiative? Do they accomodate working together? During a course that I'm taking at the university I attend, my profesor talked about the "3 T's". These include time, talk, and togetherness, this concept is also known as the "know quo". Time is the bottom level and expresses that you just cannot know someone within 3 months or less of dating. It's just impossible. If you think you know someone within 3 months of dating them, you don't and therefore should take your time to get to know them before moving onto the next stage of the relationship. The "talk" level let's us know about self-disclosure. And "togetherness" teaches us to know that we should have shared experiences. Without shared experiences, there is no togetherness or union in the relationship and that will not change once you get married, so it's an important step to experience while in the dating and courtship stages. If you can't decide where to eat together, how are you going to decide where to live together, the number of children you want, the financial aspects in the relationship, etc;. These convserations are one's that need to be had before you get married. While in having these difficult conversations, points should be made by both people in order to make a healthy decision. This will also help make decisions in marriage. 

It's important to know someone. It's so important to take the essensial steps in a relationsip to make it a more healthy one. Thank you for reading my blog this week!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Understanding Development

To start off, let's talk about the four age stages. There's birth- 2 years old, then 3-6 years old, 7-11 years old, and lastly 12-17 years old. In each stage, there are three domains. These include physical, cognitive, and socio-emotional.  Let's talk about the milestones that happen within each stage and go through them age by age: From ages birth-2 years old, your child may learn how to lift their head off of the ground, they may ley on their tummy. They will learn how to smile as well as how to vocalize. They will start to become aware of their body parts. The child will start to look selectively a well as maybe learning how to pull themselves up in a standing position. They will start to develop motor skills such as putting objects in a container. They will start to learn social referencing and problem solving. They'll learn how to walk and learn self-feeding skills. From ages 3-6 years old, your child will be able to think about objects, people, and events without ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Coping: Much More Than Just "Getting By"

 Hey everyone! This week is a shorter blog than past weeks, but I'm writing about coping and how that may look, and should look, in a marriage. Coping is a natural things that comes with stressor events such as divorce, illness, loss of trust, finance loss, moving, etc;  These things can cause a whole lot of both stress and anxiety. These things can often break a family apart, but we need to keep in mind that they can also strengthen a family as well, especially if you cope the right way.  Knowing the difference between healthy and unhealthy coping mecahnisms is extremely important. Some common unhealthy ways to cope could be alcohol, complaining, blaming someone or something else, burying and putting all your time towards work, and denial. Now while in a relationship, especially marriage, the most important thing you can do while coping with someone whether that's dealing with something individually or together, is to talk to each other. Talking to each other can help in...
Post a Comment
Read more

Problems and Solutions of Communication

    Hello everyone! This week kind of goes along with some of the things I talked about last week, but now I'm specifically going to go into more depth about communication. Communication is such a hard thing to master, and you most likely never will be a pro at it, but you can sure practice until you figure out a way both you and your partner are communicating successfully.     Communication, if done right, can save a relationship. Sometimes we may have no idea what is trying to be communicated. Sometimes we can guess, but still won't know exactly what the other person is trying to get across. Let's talk about the four things that make up communication, but can also get in the way of it. The four things are media, words, tone, and non-verbal. 14% of communication comes from words, 35% of it comes from tone, and 51% of communication comes from non-verbal meaning body language and actions. People mostly believe tone over words, and that's really important to remember w...
Post a Comment
Read more