Preparing for Marriage

Why do we date? There are three stages of finding your spouse and those include: dating, courtship and engagement. The period of dating is when we try to find out what we want and don't want in a spouse. We get to know people and see if their personality goes well with our own. We might even be able to see them interact with their family and that will help us know how they will treat us as well as our future children together. We can get to know their passions, their goals, their dreams, their experiences and what makes them who they are.

All of these things are essential in finding a person we want to spend the rest of our lives with. Once we find someone that is compatible with us, we usually begin courtship. Dating is fun and gives us experience. During courtship, we are better able to get to know the person. We begin dating with the desire to find out if who we are with would be a good match for us and if we decide we do want to get married someday. This is still a period of getting to know each other and beginning to consider our lives together.

Marriage is such a huge decision. Everyone will have their own story and no two stories will be alike. A lot of times, things don't turn out the way we think they will. For example, I think a lot of women that grew up in the church think they will marry a return missionary in the temple and stay home with their cute babies. While this does happen for some people, the traditional family is becoming very different in this day and age. We may have a couple where one or both have been divorced, one of them may have kids from a previous marriage, maybe the husband chose not to serve a mission, etc.