What is the difference between dating and marriage?

What is the difference between dating, or being married? There really isn't to many differences. We are emotionally involved with another person. We are giving our hearts away to another person. We share intimately our thoughts, beliefs, and dreams with another person. We become involved sexually, and giving our most sacred part of us to another person. We have the same issues and relating with one another. We have the same hopes and fears.

Whether we are a dating, or married our partner is the most important significant person in our lives. We spend hours listening to them, getting to know them intimately and intellectually. We are bonding with them, confessing that we love them, that we will be there forever. We confess that they are the only person in our lives that will rock our worlds, and they are the one.

In dating as we know it today, we choose to date without commitment. The one we choose to date can be the one for the night, a week, a month, a year, or a life time. We can walk away at any time we feel like it, leaving them alone in the world. We can pack up our things and leave them with nothing if we don't like dealing with the issues, or their issues, or our own issues. We can bail out of a relationship with no remorse, and no regret. We have the freedom to do what ever we feel like doing, regardless if it hurts the other person. That bad word, "commitment", is not in our vocabulary, because of fear, anger, bitterness, and resentments from past relationships that never worked out.

In dating we feel as long as we are not making a commitment than we don't have the responsibility of being a good partner, or taking responsibility for our children we bring into the world. We don't need to be responsible for our actions and behaviors, because I can leave any time, I feel like it, and move on to the next woman or man. I can sleep around with as many people as I can, and get away with it, because I don't have to be accountable for it, I am not her husband or wife.

In marriage you have to respect the boundaries of keeping your relationship pure and clean. You can't sleep around with anyone you feel like. You are afraid of getting caught, if you do. You are accountable for your actions and behaviors. You are responsible for your partner, and children. You have to face the relationship issues, the partners issues, and your own issues. You have to be responsible for your life completely. You have to keep a job, and provide. You have to be committed to the relationship to make it work.

Dating has turned into living with our partners and playing house with our partners. We can go through the same scenario's of marriage, buying a house, renting an apartment. Picking out furniture, moving through the same motions as you would in marriage. Only you have no commitment, and can leave any time you want too.

In both dating and marriage you both have to communicate your feelings, emotions, and beliefs to one another. You still have problems to solve, and get through struggles and storms. You have the same needs, desires, an attachments that you have in marriage. You have the same fears, insecurities, and jealousy's as you would be if you were married. You have the same baggage from past relationships or ghosts that haunt your mind. Your past history is in the back of your head. You bring it all with you whether you make that commitment or not.

In dating and marriage you have sex, and either share your passions, and desires only in dating, you don't have a safe place, to know that your heart won't be broken the minute a partner decides to leave. In marriage you know you have both made a commitment to your relationship and plans on being there and staying in your life.

If you get a sexual disease it's because there is not faithfulness or trust in the relationship, and boundaries have been violated. We can betray our partner, and probably the most damaging is when your partner has sex with someone else and either brings a disease home and spreads it to you, or you get pregnant as well as some other woman at the same time carrying a child from the same man.

Emotionally having an affair is the most devastating mistakes we can make, and breaks their heart, and you have betrayed them, and hurt them very deeply. That is probably the number one killer of a relationship. It is intolerable, and inexcusable.

We want to complain about marriage and divorce and choose not to go there because we think it's an unsafe place, but if you reverse it and look at it all the cold hard facts about dating, living together and playing house, there is more damage being made to our psyche by living in the dream world of dating.

It's enticing to be in the dating world, because you can get away with so much, and do what you want to do, but than we skip the reality of what relationships were really meant to be. We take the purity and the sacredness out of love, and replace it with a fake, imitation. It's like putting cheap zircon ring on your finger and saying this is the most beautiful diamond, but it's value is low, and we settle for that amazing shine to it, and it feels good in the moment, and if I don't like it well it's no big deal, and if I lose it, well it was just a cheap romance of a ring. If you place the real diamond on your finger, you are worried about losing it, because you know it is expensive, and if you lost it, you would be out one grand. You take care of it, you polish it up so it shines with brilliance, and every one notices it. They want to look at it, and think how beautiful it looks on your finger.

Well when you are dating you are settling for the cheap romance, and when you are married in committed relationship you are standing up for the genuine real love that we all seek.

In the pages of history courtship used to be the way and norm our our society. The man had to pursue the woman, learn about her, and earn her trust, and heart. They would not see each other all the time. They would not spend hours upon hours alone. They wrote letters to each other and communicated who they were to one another. Both of them would share their life stories with one another.They would get to know each other intimately through words, and their character had to be honorable, trustworthy, and genuine.

When we date in our society today sex is the main goal, and how many partners you can have sex with. It's all about "me" and not "we". It is very selfish and self seeking. It is not about what we can give to the relationship or what we can bring to it. We settle for a society that promotes sex, and romantic love on every magazine, media presentation, and television. We romanticize it to death and try to live in a fairy tale world and life, and it's not realistic.

When it comes to our personal lives and emotions we are not careful with it, and we dont' protect it or guard it. We don't set up boundaries, and we don't pay attention to what we are getting into or the consequences of our actions. We rush into relationships with out balancing out whether this person is healthy for us or not. We don't look at the whole picture, and if they use drugs, alcohol, or have other addictions, even if we don't agree with it, we go along with it any way, and than complain why we are sitting in the hell whole we are sitting in at the moment. You really have to ask yourself one question. Who got you there? Who made the choice? No one made that choice but ourselves, and we can try to keep up with our peers just for the sake of being in a relationship, but at what cost.

The price is heavy to pay if we don't start paying attention to why we are in relationships, and why we choose the partners that we do. We have to understand their is nothing wrong with dating, but in a way that we are not hurting ourselves or other people financially, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. We have to understand that we fall for the lie that the Media teaches us about romance and love.

We don't have to settle for it, and it is a personal choice. If you choose to date and have sex that way you are the only one that has to live with the choices and consequences of it. No one else does. You can complain about it, but until you learn to stop making the same mistakes over and over again, you will never learn the lesson and keep repeating them, and come to the same place over and over again. Doesn't matter what partner you choose, till you learn the lesson you just create more problems for yourself and them.

I spent countless hours over the last 15 years reading on relationships, marriage, dating, and being single. The differences were, that in the single life you had to learn to love yourself, become a whole person and be responsible for your life sexually, emotionally, spiritually, and physically. You had to get rid of the baggage. Get your finances straight, your goals and dreams put in place, and be successful in being your self. Being in love with God, and depending on him to meet your desires, needs, and life.

In the dating situation you had to understand you were hurting yourself and your partner if you were not open and honest with them. If you didn't build that foundation at first out of rock, you would eventually collapse through the shifting sand beneath your feet.

It starts from the moment you speak to each other, and how you set your boundaries and limits. Woman have this tendency to give away everything. You name it they'll give a man the shirt off their back if the man tries to take them for a ride. They will give them money, they will give them their apartment space with no rent, and let him be lazy and live on the couch. She will allow him to get away with anything, and give her self away sexually. When he gets tired of it and walks away, she has nothing. She has a child, she has an apartment, and no money. A woman can play a man the same way.

Both partners in dating had to be serious about making a commitment and should be only dating the person if they considered them marriable. If it didn't work out no damage done. There was no sexual activity, and both could walk away with out harm. They built their relationship on the principles of genuine love and respect. They honored one another, and either continued on with the relationship and eventually made a commitment and got married, or they separated and went their separate ways.

Im marriage the consensus was the same living honorably, respecting your partner, being truthful, honest, open, and communicating with one another in positive ways. It was about protecting your relationship from being harmed by outsiders. Building a wall of protection around the relationship and not letting the enemy in to destroy it.

Such as things like affairs, drugs, alcohol, gambling, pornography, and millions of other addictions. Preventing family from attacking your partner, and standing up for them, and putting them first, because when you get married you are making a new family, and yes your family is important, but even in-laws can do some damage to your relationship if you don't set boundaries, and explain to them that this is your life and marriage. It is your family.

Also not allowing finances to consume your thoughts and divide you in arguments. There are many dimensions of a marriage and relationship, and it can only survive if two people learn to work together to protect it, and build it in a way that it will not fall through the cracks and end up in divorce.

If you never really challenge yourself to have the best life and relationships by learning what you need to and than applying it to your life, you will never find happiness, and joy in a relationship the way it was meant to be surrounded by genuine unconditional love.

All rights reserved Hattiemattiemae Spiritweaver March 22, 2011