It’s About Making Babies!

LisaQ answers a question on 20-Forty.com, about taking a ‘break’ during a relationship. And LisaQ makes a statement that caught my (rambling) attention.

Ugh! I hate talk of rules in dating period. Seriously, why do there have to be rules? You do what feels right in the situation.

How far is it, from the bar where you met to the kindergarten where a child of yours would start kindergarten, someday? Is it closer from the college library to a baby crib, or from a kegger? How far can you expect to go with someone, to get where you are going, before they decide to head somewhere else?

Dating, as a social recreation or worse, as a life plan to “find” a Long Term Relationship bothers me. The goal of dating is to find a good date. To find a partner that you have “successful” dates with, and continue to have successful dates. Then someday that string of dates may become an LTR, when you both *change* from dating to .. um .. cohabiting or sex on a regular basis or you drag family and friends into your dating sequence.

Then one or both will *change* to become parents, maybe, or one or both will *change* to want a formal tie or children, or both. To *change* to become mates. Or an unexpected pregnancy will make one or both consider changing – or leaving.

A long progression of changes, from social recreation to maybe a family. Along the way, the “successful” dater has to master meeting, and winning, successful dating partners, then changing from dating as social recreation to dating as social recreation with a selected partner (hopefully). Living an LTR without crossing a line into living like you are with a mate and living like a family, or straying back to the (successful!) life you had back when you were still “looking around”, is another life skill. And all before you have to master the skill of living with a mate, as a part of a family – yet another life skill. And all with the risk that you, or your partner, will continue practicing the skills you know, and depriving yourself and your partner of full participation in a current relationship stage.

I assume the goal of bringing people together is the same as what enabled the species of Humankind and various nations, tribes, communities and families to persist beyond the life of an individual – make babies and raise them to be productive adults.

So I return to the question that I asked that Freshman English student five years ago – if he won’t be a good parent, how can you afford the time to date him?

Leave aside the reason that nations, communities, families survive, that following generations must learn about that culture, and choose to defend and support that way of living. Today’s model of ‘dating’ is an expression of conspicuous consumption. The venues, the practices from dress to indulging in flowers, candy, and booze and other substances, of prideful selection and caring for cars, for “wild” behavior – these mimic the decadent (decayed) behavior of the indolent rich (not an oxymoron, nor an appropriate goal nor description of all wealthy people), and pander to and cater to advertisers and retailers and merchandisers that *demand* an eternally dating lifestyle, to maintain their market share.

Is there an alternative? Listening to the recent Country song about “What’s a guy gotta do to get a girl in this town?”, it seems to me that what worked for our great-grandparents should be worth a try. Mail order brides from a reputable firm. Just kidding, at least about the mail order bride. Reputable, though, that part is critical. Don’t pay attention to anyone until you know their background, their reputation, the details of their emotional life. “Mysterious” is an ingredient for adventure, not for building a family. Don’t mistake taking a sex adventure for a reasoned choice of a life-mate. If your fundamental understanding is that women sleep with their husband – don’t expect to engage in sex adventures and *not* believe you *must* have found the father or mother of your children-to-be.

Instead, get to know the people in your community. Look for those with good character, the ones that children and animals are better for knowing – and are available. Look for someone that is respected, open, honest. Then get to know him or her. Don’t gossip, but do find out whether others hold her or him in high regard. Avoid the most popular people, those that use cosmetics and displays of wealth to create their image – you want a home-body, someone content and competent to help raise a family. If there is no chemistry, no energy, if you don’t *enjoy* making that partner-prospect happy – move on.

I like Steve Harvey’s notion of a 90-day “probation” period before you start handing out “benefits”, but that .. depends on the situation. If you are invited, make a reasoned choice, depending on your knowledge of the person, your own commitments and responsibilities and needs. If invited, keep in mind that you invite a guest. A guest doesn’t become a mate overnight. Early in getting to know someone, sex as or with a guest might just be a momentary comfort, or merely getting to know a prospect.

Because pagans used sexual intercourse to seal rites of bonding, because the Church uses “consummation of marriage” to bind the new couple, their offspring, and the magic and powers of womanhood to the Church’s use – don’t make the mistake of thinking that sex before the rites have the same meaning or power.

Taking a breaK?

What about LisaQ’s initial angst, about how “free” someone is to screw around while on break?

A *family* takes a break by taking a vacation. By getting away for a time. They share a new experience, or merely escape ever-present stresses. Together. If there is stress, discomfort, then a change is needed. If the family doesn’t change together, they are more likely to grow apart. If one or both partners are unhappy in their daily lives – that is a couple problem, not an individual problem. Because the success of a family is that it sustains the members of that family.

In dating, as in dating as social recreation? A break means that one or both partners is unsatisfied, or hurt. A break lets someone stop seeing someone they are disappointed in, but put off deciding if they want to be there.

During a break, sex adventures with other people *might* help one decide they already have the “right” partner. But the exposure to new people, new situations, and overcoming new problems, without the break-partner to share the experience, opens the door to jealousy, to STD’s, to resuming a more formally “dating” lifestyle. And seriously weakens the “breaking” initial relationship.

An honest, responsible, respectful person will *not* take on new partners before ending previous obligations and relationships.