Dating: Preparation For Marriage? Or For More Dating?

"Once I'm ready to settle down, then I'll get married, but in the meantime, there are too many new and exciting things I want to do. After all, I still have a lot of living to do."

But in reality, when marriage is done well, living is enriched, not thwarted. Our lives unfold and take shape in a way that no other experience can affect.

When we do marriage well — when we find a good traveling companion on this journey called life, and we love and are loved in return — life is anything but a ball-and-chain experience. Rather, it is an incredibly liberating and life-giving one.

In each of us there is a desire to love and to be loved. This longing for intimacy is met nowhere else like it is in marriage. In fact, marriage is uniquely designed to meet these desires.

The fact that 96% of Americans say that they have a strong desire to marry belies the fact that most of us (at least, intuitively) understand this reality.

We desire to love and to be loved — not just for a short time, but for a lifetime.

But when you look at the way we are doing dating:

- Is it really preparing us for marriage?

- Or is it just preparing us for more dating?

Quite honestly, it shouldn't surprise any of us that many men and women who do marry (approximately 50%) end up once again in the dating world.

After all, isn't the way we are doing dating in reality a better preparation for dating than it is for marriage?"

-Published on February 28, 2012 by John R. Buri, Ph.D. in Love Bytes