Dating!

  Dating. Ah yes, dating. Such a fun and horrible topic. For me, it has been a topic I haven’t cared about much, due to my lack of desire for commitment, until recently. For me, dating in high school was a waste of time and money. I didn’t understand why I would want to take someone out that I knew I wasn’t going to marry. Obviously, now my opinion on dating has changed a ton. 

Throughout high school, and after I graduated until I went on my mission, I knew that my experiences with “dating” weren’t going to go anywhere. I would just go on dates to have fun, and eventually got bored of things never going anywhere with anyone. I only had meaningless relationships. What I mean by that, is there was never any commitment, so it was just a waste of time to be with these girls. I had this idea that I didn’t want anything to get in the way of going on a mission, and I knew that having a relationship could interfere with those goals. So, then I just stopped dating entirely until after a mission. 

I, of course, had girls that I was interested in on my mission, but nobody that I was seriously considering to date. When I got home, I definitely still had “mission goggles”. This meant that I was super judgmental of possible people to date. First of all, I felt like I didn’t have a purpose after the mission. Eventually, about 4 months of being home, I realized that working towards a family of my own was my next greatest purpose to chase, but I still had no desire to date anyone. On top of that, I would hang out with girls that I had no desire to date, and with all of this platonic time I would spend with them, eventually I would get a text, or have a conversation, of them confessing their feelings for me. This honestly put such a bad taste in my mouth. I felt like I couldn’t be my true, authentic self without someone catching unwarranted feelings, and on the flipside, there was nobody that I wanted to have feelings for. I was stuck between a rock and a hard place, and I wasn’t loving life. In fact, I was pretty miserable. I needed a change. 

I decided that the change I needed in my life was to go to school. I took a career exploration class that made us read this book that helped us find a career that we could apply our spiritual gifts in. That’s when it hit me. I was suppressing the person that I was, and that’s why I didn’t want to date. And just like that, the very next day, I asked out two girls and began my efforts to date again. This time, though, it was going to be toward a meaningful relationship.

Through a lot of time and effort, and really putting myself out there, I did what can be called assorted dating. I needed to take a different approach at dating from what I had considered back in high school. Assorted dating is where you date multiple people at once, but not exclusively. It’s something that the modern dating culture would view as being a “player”, but it’s far from it. A player doesn’t care about meaningful relationships, their mind is on one thing, and that’s themselves and their own pleasure. Dating around includes having fun with people while trying to find someone that you would be interested in taking things further with. From there comes the discussion about the RAM Model. 

The Relationship Attachment Model (RAM) endeavors to show us the qualities of an ideal relationship. The basics of the model are: to know someone more than you trust them; to trust them more than you rely on them; to rely on them more than you are committed to them; and to be committed to them more than you touch them. Putting this ideal relationship model out of order could lead to complications in a relationship. 

As I have tried to get back into a better definition of dating, I have been so much happier. There are, of course, still some struggles that come with it, but that’s what helps me to grow and figure out life a little bit more. Overall, the decision to date has been positive and fun, and has helped me to feel like I’m getting closer to having a family of my own. Hopefully you can relate to my story, and this helps you to get out there and love life!