In his book I Kissed Dating Goodbye, Harris claimed that dating was essentially practice for divorce because of the frequency of break-ups. Because dating is often short-term, it instills the idea that relationships are temporary. Although anti-daters are not totally against going out with your potential partner, they believe that dating should mostly be about determining suitability for marriage. Most anti-daters believe that God plays a hand in connecting them and their future spouse, so they are not worried about missing out on potential partners.
I disagree with this view; to me, it seems like an excuse to sit around and wait for the "perfect" person to fall into your life by the grace of God. Instead of thinking as a break-up or bad relationship as a precursor for divorce, I like to think of it as a learning experience. If a relationship doesn't work out for the long term, there was a reason: something about that person that you couldn't overlook. Whether it's an annoying habit or a personality trait that got under your skin, you can now put that on your list of things that you are not willing to compromise. Each relationship provides us with learning experiences about both ourselves and others that teach us what we want in other people and what we don't want.
Contrary to the view of Harris and the anti-daters, Donna Freitas and Jason King argue that we learn from all of the relationships and that through relationships of all sorts, we can grow in our understanding of who God calls us to be. Freitas and Jason King claim that anti-daters choose not to pursue dating because they assume dating is all about sex, but they refute this thought, saying that while dating is not entirely about sex, romantic gestures and intimacy allow us to think of the needs of others.
No comments:
Post a Comment