Preparing for Marriage

                There are a few steps in preparation for marriage. They are: dating, courtship, engagement, and marriage.

 What is the difference between dating and courtship?

Often, today, we think of dating and courtship as the same thing. In fact, we use the word dating to replace courtship. When we tell friends and family we are dating, they think that we are dating one person steadily, with the intention of marriage. In other words, they think we are courting that person. Courtship is rarely used to describe a relationship anymore.

The true meaning of dating is going on a planned activity with a certain person to get to know them better. There should be no commitment on dates. A person should go on multiple dates with different people to get to know different people with different qualities. Dates give a person the opportunity to understand what characteristics and qualities are compatible with their own and that they like in the opposite gender. Some people also get dating and hanging out mixed up. Dating a lot more effective than hanging out. To make something a date, it needs to be Planned, paid for, and Paired off. This prepares men to Preside, Protect and Provide in a marriage.

If roles of a husband or wife are not being practiced throughout the dating experience, then how do we expect marriage to work when we’ve been practicing just being around each other? What we do while dating, courting and throughout engagement will be what happens through marriage. Therefore, dating is more effective. Men get the opportunity to practice providing by paying for the date, protecting by being paired off and needing to watch out for his partner, and presiding by planning the date. If two people choose to hang out all the time, there is no structure to it. It is very casual. They are not practicing anything except for being around each other. That is not what marriage is, and the marriage frequently does not work out when the couple chose to hang out instead of going on dates.

Only date exclusively when ready to marry. This will lead into courtship. This is when two people have the intention to marry and are more committed to each other. This is the time that a couple takes to get to know each other well and build trust in each other. It is very important that we are careful to decide who we court.

An engagement should be a time to get to know each other even better. Engagement is for togetherness, time and talk. You should already know a person well before getting engaged because now you have a higher commitment level to them. They should make time to be together and talk about things.

It is often that people slide into the different levels of the relationship. Many people don’t even know what stage they are really in because they aren’t stepping into new levels and officially talking about it. It’s more of a slide, which many times makes the process a lot quicker.

The RAM (Relationship Attachment Model) explains what should be happening throughout a relationship. From left to right, the model has: know, trust, rely, commit, and touch. Everything to the left should be at a higher level. We should know someone more than we trust them. We should trust someone more than we rely on them. We should rely on someone more than we are committed to them and be committed to them more than we touch them.

The first dates we barely know the person, yet we feel that we know them well. It takes a long time to really know someone, yet people make their relationship “official” after only the first few dates. They trust the other more than they know them and do the opposite of what the RAM model says is most effective. Many people have high levels of touching, such as kissing and hand holding before they even know a person. This leads to dangerous outcomes many times.

We would not be willing to hand our car keys or credit card to someone we don’t know well, yet we are willing to hand our hearts over to someone we know very little about. It is so important that we are careful to evaluate how much we really know a person before giving them all our times and our hearts.

Marriage between a Man and a Woman

Why does the data show that marriage between man and woman is more effective than any other marital relationship?

                Men and women are not the same. They do not equal each other. In fact, they are very different. Relationships between men and woman are usually the most cooperative.  This is because there are so many differences between the genders and those differences work together in way that betters each person in the relationship. These natural characteristics and roles in each gender cannot reach the person’s full potential alone. They need the opposite gender to help better the other and build them. In a man and woman relationship, the man teaches the woman how he may think or work which helps the woman to understand him and helps her to view things differently, and it goes the other way around as well.

                Men and women have very different brains. Women have more connective tissue in the brain which means she can be aware of multiple things at once. This does not necessarily mean that she can multi-task, but that she can be busy doing something and be aware of something else going on at the same time. Men have more gray parts in their brains, which allows them to focus on only one thing, but focus on it very intensely. It is sometimes described as men having boxes in their brains. Each box is something different and they can only have one box open at a time. Before they move on to another box, they must put the first box away before they can focus on something else. These differences in the different gender’s brains explain a lot about their roles in a home. The mother staying home can get things done while still being aware of the children. They can notice when something is wrong. If the kids are being unusually quiet, women can notice those things where men are less likely able to notice something like that. Men can go to work and focus on that very intensely while they are there. When they come home, they can shake work off and be fully present in the home where women are more likely to continue work at home and be less present.

                There are so many differences between males and females. Females are more relationship oriented. For example, this means that if they give directions, they will be more likely to explain how to get to the destination through landmarks which males are special oriented and are more likely to give directions through street names. Females also tend to be emotionally expressive and have better communication skills while males like action and aggression. Women express many more emotions and talk about them than men do in a day. They are also naturally much more nurturing. When females are younger, they typically play with dolls and like to take care of them and nurture them, already at that young age. They just naturally have that more caring and comforting characteristic of nurturing. Men like things or action. When they were young, they would play with trucks and they would tackle their siblings or friends. This also goes into aggression. They like to be aggressive, to tackle and wrestle with friends or family. Those are characteristics that come naturally in men.

There are usually very specific roles of a father and mother in a home with children. The father usually has the role of providing and many times they discipline the children in the home. The children usually feel secure with dad and know they will have their temporal needs met by dad. The mother usually has the role of the nurturer and caregiver. Often, the mom stays home with the children and takes care of the house while dad is at work raising money. This does not pertain to all families, however. Every family is different in how they raise their children and the roles they hold. Sometimes these roles are switched and that is satisfying to those in the household.

How Culture Affects Family Life

Culture in not just about ethnicity, the language a person speaks, or where a person lives. There are many more things that should be considered when examining culture. Culture simply is the way of living life for a certain group of people. There are things that are considered acceptable and things that are considered inappropriate within that group. Some things that are acceptable to one family might be inappropriate to another family. This means that there can be different cultures within families.

All the different cultures have different perspectives and views on the family unit. Although we like to be accepting of everyone, not all cultures are completely valid. There are good things and bad things in each culture’s family dynamics. We should be investigating many different cultures and looking at what we like, and think would be good to include into our families from other cultures and look at the things we may want to avoid in bringing into our homes.

Many people base a family’s quality of life by the socio-economics scale. Family’s places on the scale are usually based on their housing, cars, employment/income, and education. The wealthy can have all these things, but still struggle with their family experience. Those who are at the top of the socio-economic scale, the wealthy, have been proven to have just as solid of a family dynamic than those at the bottom of the socio-economic scale, those who are poor. The wealthy may have more material items than the poor, however, they both have very similar social forms. The parents in both situations must work longer hours to provide a living for their family which requires less time with the children and spouse.

Employment plays a huge part in family dynamic and different cultures have different expectations of employment. In most families the role of the father is to work and be the provider for the family. Sometimes the mother in the family also must work to provide for the family. However, in some cultures the only role of the mother is to stay home with the children, to be the nurturer, caregiver, and keep the house clean and do the cooking. Sometimes it is not accepted in a culture when the mother in a house has a job.

Many times, families who are at the top or bottom of the socio-economic scale have fathers who work a lot of hours. Therefore, they are not spending as much time with their family as they should to create a healthy family bond. When this happens, the rest of the family grows closer as they spend more time together and the father gets pushed out a little bit from the family circle. This creates family problems as everyone in the family so be involved. The marital relationship should be the strongest in the family, but when one of the spouses is working long hours everyday the marital relationship grows further apart and as a result, the children’s roles are being switched to fill the father’s role in the family.

Those families who are in the middle of the socio-economic scale tend to have a better family life. They seem to have a better balance between having a good quality life, making money, and providing for their family and spending quality time as a family. They have more of the ideal family life where the marital relationship fulfills their roles as father and mother, but also work together in making the family work like discipline for their children and having equal and healthy relationships between each of their children.

Just because a family has every material possession they could ever want does not mean that they have a healthy family life and a good relationship with each of their family members. Material possessions aren’t everything, good and healthy relationships with all family relationships is.

Relationship Theories

Theories are an attempt to explain something. Some examples of theories are the Big Bang Theory or the theory of evolution. We often make our own theories every day without even noticing. There are four main theories to try and explain how families work and why they work. These are: the conflict theory, the exchange theory, the symbolic interaction theory, and the systems theory.

The conflict theory tries to explain why there might be conflict in a family. There are many things that could cause conflict between family members. No equality could be one of these problems. Whether it be no equality in household roles or no equality in decision making, it could very easily cause arguments and conflict within the household. Power and influence tie in to no equality. When one person in a family has power over another, it causes unhealthy relationships which leads to conflict. There are so many other things that can cause conflict in a family such as psychological manipulation or even who gets more income. These things also may cause a person to think they have more power over someone else in the house and lead to problems and unhealthy relationships in the household.

The exchange theory is when someone within the family relationship hopes to get at least as much out of the relationship as they are putting into it, if not more. This is when we seek situations where the costs are lower than the rewards. The things a person puts in could be time, money, sense of security, etc. The rewards could be money, emotional or intellectual validation, a sense of security, etc. With the exchange theory, the individual will look at what they will have to put into the situation and what they will get out of it and ask themselves if it is worth it. This is a selfish approach to a relationship and should be avoided.

Symbolic Interaction theory is one that could cause problems in a relationship. This involves gestures, actions, or words that could easily be misinterpreted. This theory can also get complicated because there are several different meanings to gestures, actions, or words. For example, there are different ways to hug, all of which will be interpreted differently by the receiver of the hug. Sometimes the same hug can even be interpreted differently between different people and the time or situation the hug is given. We can now see that this can get complicated. Words can also mean different things with the way they are said, and the tone used while speaking. All these things we do every day are interpreted and seen so differently by each person because of their interaction experiences they’ve had throughout their life. We may not think about the things we do or what we say, but when interacting with other people, we need to be careful and consider how they may interpret those things, so we can avoid misunderstandings that aren’t needed.

The last is the systems theory. This is where we analyze the group. This includes boundaries, subsystems, rules and roles. These are dependent and influence each other. Outside influences do not usually affect the system. Depending on how big the group or family is, there can be multiple subsystems. There is a system between mother and father, child and father, child and mother, child and child, etc. There can also be more than two people in a subsystem. All these subsystems work differently and have their own purpose that they fulfill to help and support the whole group. A big part of the system is rules. Most rules are unspoken but very powerful and clearly known to the system or family. They know to follow these rules even though they haven’t been clearly stated and they are mostly learned through the experience of breaking the rule and it usually only takes one time of it being broken to learning that it is unacceptable. The other important part to the system is roles. Every person in the system has their own role to carry to make the system work. Each role will support the system. The system will not work without each role, so as individuals leave the system, the other individuals still in the system take on the roles of those who left to make the system continue to work. There is also negative and positive feedback to other people’s actions. Negative feedback implies that the actions needs to stop. Positive feedback implies that the action should be continued. Boundaries are a major part in the systems theory. There are closed boundaries which are not inviting and keep information in, open boundaries which are very inviting and open for all to come in, and clear boundaries which can be inviting, but selective about who comes in. There should be less of a boundary between husband and wife than between the child and parents and the boundaries need to be clear and set. Individuals inside the system or family can be thoughtful and have a positive influence on the whole family by being consistent.

These theories help to understand that a family only works as a team. No individual can carry the family by themselves. It is always a team effort and we must be careful to help each other in proper manners so there are no misinterpretations. There will always be conflict within a family, but it is important to use communication to work things out as soon as possible.