6.) It is best to meet new people at a bar. Untrue. The best place to meet viable potential dating partners is at your local church. This gives you time to see people interact with others and with family. How a person interacts with family and friends is a good indicator of what you can expect to see from them over time with you. It gives you time to learn about them, before you decide to increase the level of socialization through dating. And finally, it gives you at least a cursory chance that you share some values and ideas common to your religious thinking, although as stated before, do not assume to know too much in this arena before extensive conversations and observation.
Meeting at social clubs such as a health club, gym, sports team events, etc is likely your next best location for date selection for similar reasons. Dating people where you work is less preferable as most people do not have the social maturity to maintain quality professional working relationships if a personal one ends or ends badly. Singles bars, drinking parties, and the like are the worst places to meet serious dating candidates as judgment is often impaired during these types of outings, and intentions can easily be misunderstood due to the surrounding environments. Where you meet does not destine a relationship for success or for failure, but where you look for one is an indication of what you are looking for and of what you intend to offer.
7.) It’s OK to date someone who is already in a committed relationship with another person. Untrue. People tend to rationalize the situations they create for themselves, often by blaming another. Bad marriages, accusations of an unfaithful partner, accusations of abuse, etc.. are all used as reasons why a person might show themselves as available for dating while not yet un-entangled with the perceived source of their pain. This represents a lack of judgment on their part, and may be an indicator of a particular personality weakness they are prone to. If they are willing to “cheat” on their existing partner, they are willing to “cheat” on you. No one likes to believe this at first, but over time the axiom proves true almost without exception.
Everyone who enters these kinds of “complicated” relationships thinks that theirs will be different. But this is mere self delusion. The entangled party should free themselves of the other BEFORE thinking they have 100% of themselves to offer another. If they enter dating knowing this cannot be true, they doom themselves to failure.
If you are not in a committed relationship, and choose to date someone who is, it is you that compromises your own self-worth. You effectively give license to date only a portion of the other person, knowing you do not have access to the whole. You will not get the attention, respect, or time you need to build a lasting relationship, because the situation of entanglement will prevent you from having it regardless of intentions. Relationships that start out on such shifting sands are doomed to end in a crashing heart. Best to avoid them, and wait until you are able to give and receive 100% attention from your dating partner.
If we had learned how to date properly, to value others properly, and to submit our own wills over to Christ so that He might lead us and change us into who He wants us to be, our marriages would be the epitome of happiness found on this miserable planet. With proper foresight, we would not be entering into divorces so often or so casually. We would have been properly armed with a better understanding of who we were committing to, and what that would require of each of us. And so as with all things good, evil creates myths to infect our thinking, warp our judgment, and send us headlong into a tunnel of despair. But it need not be so, with those who have discovered the beauty of surrender to Christ. For those who do, there is an entire world of discovery waiting to be uncovered.
So in summary, the purpose of dating is more about preparing us for a life of giving to another, sharpening our social skills, and teaching us what it means to explore interests that were not our own. Even young children can experience the joy of socialization and should be guided by parents, peers, and teachers to respect others, learn how to communicate effectively, and learn to experience new things and interests in a group social context. Our lives become enriched as we avoid the pitfalls, and warped thinking of evil. And the relationship of marriage that we prepare for throughout the dating process becomes something we can enter into knowing we are bringing a submitted heart, and the experienced set of hands and feet of a servant.
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