In the Mormon culture, often times we move very quickly into marriage and the steps leading up to marriage. In the world, people often take their time and live together and wait years before they get married. Do we really understand what marriage is and how important this step is in our lives? Why don't we take this big step very seriously? We focus on the wedding day, event or reception, we focus on what we are going to wear, who will be there, what the ring will look like, etc., but we often fail to focus on the one thing behind all of this preparation: actually being married and what that means and how everything will work after the wedding day. We focus so much on the details of the event and we forget to prepare ourselves for the marriage part and often times this leads to divorce or complications down the road. Why aren't we willing to postpone an engagement to focus on school? Why do we feel the need to rush and get married between semesters, so it "works" with our schedule? That isn't a foundation I would want my marriage set on. There are a lot of things I've learned this week about how boys and girls bodies work and how certain chemicals in our body sometimes lead us to believe that we are in love, when we are actually just confusing ourselves. There is a chemical in everyone’s brain called oxytocin that is released to allow you to feel attachment. Women have a significantly higher amount of this chemical than men do. This chemical can be released just by simply sitting on the couch next to someone. Sometimes we often confuse this feeling of attachment with love. If you are hanging out with someone and get this burst of chemicals being released, all of a sudden you feel more attached to that person. Your body soon begins to get confused. You were just hanging out with this friend of yours and now you like them? There was a diagram that was illustrated to me that outlines the process we need to take when creating relationships. The first thing is to get to know someone. What does that really mean? Does it mean spending 24/7 with them for a month straight? Does it mean getting to know their favorite movies and activities? It takes 3 months to start to get to know someone. Knowing someone isn't just knowing what they like but it is coming to know how they are in different situations. Just knowing their preferences isn't going to help you in marriage. Marriage is much more than just hanging out and spending all your time with the person you marry, in fact it is far from that. Marriage is making decisions with another person that will affect both of you. If you never have to make decisions while you are dating or engaged because you stop going on dates, just hang out, do homework together, and spend all your time together then you will not be prepared for marriage. After you get to know someone (3 months at least) then you begin to trust that person. After you learn to trust that person you begin to rely on that person. Then you are ready to commit to them (meaning, start dating them seriously, not skipping to being engaged). After you are committed then physical touch comes next. If any of these steps precede the one before it then there will be issues, especially when it comes to physical touch. Physical touch releases that chemical called oxytocin and messes everything up. If you get physical too quickly then you skip the important steps of getting to know that person, gaining trust, learning to rely on them an being committed to each other. To most people if not all, those are the things people seek in a relationship. They want consistency, no surprises. Once you get physical, all of that is out the door because your brain tells you that you are happy and in love, but you don’t even know the person. This is why we see abusive relationships and other unhealthy relationships because the people feel like they can't leave because their brain tells them that they love this person that they don't even know. They skipped the important steps. I have a lot more I could share with you, but I may have to save it or another post. I just want everyone to realize how big of a step marriage is and to not take it lightly. It isn't worth the lasting, not to mention eternal consequences it can have on you and your spouse. If you would like to know more about the dating process, the statistics and the worldly process that seems to be failing us, please leave some comments and I would be more than willing to do another post with more details on this topic.
