By: Tony L. Jefferson, Jr.
As we all know, love has no time limit, but at the same time it shouldn’t be rushed! I’ve made this mistake a few times in my life, rushing to have something, rather than taking my time to really know what’s going on. No matter how long you know a person, dating and living with them, gives you a different experience of what they are about and in turn you can form a deeper bond.
As with anything worth having it takes time, patience and a will to want what you seek. Certain things in life we will never be able to get a handle on, no matter how hard we try it’s just no going to work the way we want it to. Everything happens for a reason, I am a firm believer in that aspect of life. When you meet someone that you think is amazing you want to keep and cherish that feeling forever, for fear of losing what you think may be the only good thing left in the world. You’ve been searching for years for someone that completes you, someone who won’t do you wrong. When you finally meet, someone, we often tend to rush into it thinking that person will escape our grasp.
What we need to do is grow with that person, not rush into marriage. Growth in relationships, in my opinion, allows you to form a deeper bond, know both of your strengths and weaknesses, and actually figure out if you are meant to be together forever or just friends. At a certain point in the relationship you should try living together. Living together gets you use to the person, teaches you new things you never knew about the person and further validates whether you two should be a thing.
I went through this, I rushed into marriage, although I knew the person for a long time, I didn’t really know the person. Until I deployed for this second trip to Iraq, our marriage was good, it had its ups and downs, but I feel we could have avoided a lot of petty things and had a lasting marriage if we would have taken the time to really get to know each other and have a proper courtship. Now I am not saying a relationship can’t work because you haven’t went through these things, because it most surely can, but I feel if we just take the time to really get to know that person deeply. It is exciting to learn about a person you truly love, to learn their hopes and dreams, what that person feels, what they believe, little things they do around the house or in their life in general.
In turn interesting discussion and more communication will arise from doing this, you can discuss how you can make each other better, how you both feel about things, and friendly debates on differences in opinion you both have. Getting to know that person deeply is a very personal and you get more out of being with that person, so even if it doesn’t work out, you can always be friends.
Living together before marriage is important because you have to get use to trying to be with that person for the rest of life. You have to get use to certain habits, they way they sleep, eat, etc. After about a year if you can deal with that entire person and you actually enjoy yourself, then you can be with that person for the rest of time. You grow closer, you are able to adapt to changes because you have already survived the storm, and you are preparing yourself to combine as one.
In conclusion, dating is an important part of relationships; learn all you can about the person you want to be with, family friends, emotions, among other things. Above all enjoy life and take it one step at a time.
