11/13/13- By Stephen Arterburn and (ad libs by Geraldine Chery)
Most folks tend to marry people they date. So, your grandmother may have advised you, “Don’t date anybody you wouldn’t want to spend the rest of your life with.” There’s a certain truth there. So, ask yourself, if you’ve decided the one you've been dating “is the one!” – whether that person is really Mr. or Miss Right. “If you want to be sure this is the one, there is no substitute for taking enough time to truly get to know the person,” writes Stephen Arterburn in his book Is This The One?
Here are a few tips your grandmother would approve of:
“ Anything less than a year of dating is too short," advises Arterburn. "Desperate daters want to rush the process, trying to lock you in quickly with expensive gifts or cheap sex so you will have great difficulty backing away.
"The desperate dater may ‘kidnap’ you into marriage with guilt, shame, responsibility or anything that attaches you to them for life. They have a great knack for saying everything you want to hear and doing everything you want to do. The chronologically desperate can’t wait because they think time is running out and the window of opportunity may close any minute. The financially desperate are in the midst of economic turmoil and are looking for the financial fix in a mate.
"Then there is the emotionally desperate person who believes the only cure for their depression or acute anxiety is a walk down the aisle with you. If you are attracted to a desperate person, it is much less painful to acquire a rescue dog from the local shelter than it is to spend a lifetime with someone you thought you would be able to fix, heal or cure and someone who expected you to do it.”
“Anyone consuming vast quantities of something or compulsively performing some compensatory act like work or exercise is highly suspect. That date is most likely a person who needs to be in recovery rather than in a marriage. There is nothing wrong with dating or marrying an addict as long as that person has shown at least two years of consistent involvement in a recovery program and the program has helped produce some character and integrity. Another red flag is the person who avoids a substance altogether.
"For instance, I have a friend whose daughter dated a man who did not drink. But what looked virtuous turned into a nightmare after the marriage. He had just been keeping it together until the marital capture and then he went back to drinking and the marriage ended. Know the reason why someone does not drink or eat certain foods. But more than knowing what they do and why, date them long enough to truly know them, inside and out.
"The non-recovering dater has some obvious excesses showing. Don’t overlook them or think that once you are married, you just might be able to love that person into a new way of being. It just never happens that way and if you believe it does, you may want to take a look at what you are drinking.”
“Whether it is the break up of a pervious romance, the death of a former spouse or a parent, or some other major personal loss such as a job, people need time to grieve before seriously contemplating marriage,” writes Arterburn.
“Often they need time before they consider dating at all. Those who are under-grieved cannot fully give themselves to a dating partner or mate, because part of them remains attached to what was or what might have been. The disaster is created when you marry this person and they wake up realizing you did not and could not fix their broken and unhealed heart.
"Grieving takes time. At least a year and often two. And that is with the help of a counselor who can help you grieve properly. If you are dating someone who is still angry and bitter of a loss they have not yet entered into the sadness that is needed for grieving to be complete. This does not mean that this person is not dating or marriage material. It just means that they are not eligible at the moment; Mr. or Miss Not-Right-Now is the best way to look at them.”
A close relative to the under-grieved is the person who is on the rebound from a significant failure. Maybe this person was dumped in a relationship, mercilessly fired from a job, ostracized by friends, defrauded in a potentially amazing financial deal or suffered some other or a multitude of humiliating personal losses.
The personal impact of the failure is subjective to the individual, of course, and the sicker the person, the greater the sense of devastation he or she feels over seemingly small tragedies. One way this person will compensate for feelings of failure is to find some success in some area such as dating. And what better way to prove you are not a loser than to have you on the arm when walking into a party or the old hang-out.
While it feels like you are the love of that person’s life you are the loss-recovery medication of the moment. Success in some other area leaves you out, where you really should stay in the first place.
Marriage is meant to be a lifetime commitment between two people, just you and your partner. That is hopefully what both of you are signing on for. It is not the kind of commitment that should be in place until you find someone great to replace the person what was just OK.
Of course, perfectionism can keep you on the sidelines for the rest of your life and this is not an encouragement to move to that extreme. But in evaluating who you will spend your time with you need to be sure that you are not settling for something you are not really excited about just so you won’t be alone. Settling is the quickest way I know to get married and end up lonelier than you ever were when single. You have to assume that if the person is just okay before the wedding cake is eaten, that same person is going to be just not okay on the other side.
Better to continue to seek for someone special that to settle for someone just because they are available. Pull back and reassess. You can always return to the relationship if it was really strong and meant to be and all you were experiencing were some cold feet.
Beware of the parentally enmeshed daterSo, the person of your dreams has a mother from Hades? "This issue is a bit bigger than just being a red flag," advises Arterburn.
"This is a show stopper or at least it should be. They always say you can tell a man by the way he treats his mother but this situation is the exception to that. The bottom line is that you do not want to spend your life with a Mama’s boy. If you do, you will be 'the other woman' all your life, interfering with two people who are umbilically attached. You are not his Mama and everything that is not his Mama must learn to relinquish all dreams of being anything but number 2.
"If you have not wondered why he has not married by age 40, wonder if you have not questioned why he lives within a half mile of her, question. His mama has him under her thumb and she is not going to allow you to pry him loose. The same can apply to a female and her Dad. But it is not as frequent.
"The main thing you are looking for is a person who feels free to be separate and distinct from the parents while maintaining respect and love. Mama’s boys and Daddy’s little girls are looking to replicate their childhood and you just don’t have the ability to do that. So when the parents are leaning in too close, it is time for you to lean back out a bit."
It is obvious that when you marry and it’s the real thing, you marry everything about that other person, including the financial status and history and credit score. Your assets and debts become the other person’s assets and debts, and vice versa. That’s why those vows read, “For richer or for poorer or for in poverty or for in riches. You sure do want to consider that poverty part. A shiny car to date in is not the cure all to avoid poverty and in fact may be a sign you will be headed that way. So, before you leap, look at the financial realities of the other person.
You are entitled to know everything and you are also entitled to walk away from anyone who would rather keep it all a secret from you. On the other hand, a person that is open with you about the trouble they have been through and open about what they have done to fix the problem and open about their desire to get more stable before moving forward, not that person may prove to be a real gem. Anyone can make a mistake in investing.
Anyone can lose a job and have a tough time finding another one. The real question is whether or not the person has a pattern of irresponsibility and no plan to build character or fix the debt. At a minimum, when you find the right person you and that person need to be sure you have the right financial plan before moving forward.
A marriage arranged under any kind of pressure is a marriage that will likely crumble beneath that pressure. If your parents are pressuring you to get married or to marry a certain person, or if you pick up that the other person is under a similar type of pressure, its time to knock that pot off the burner until you can make your own decision.
Consider a few other ways people feel under obligation to marry. There is the person dating someone with a terminal illness and the sick partner want to hurry up and get married. You want to do what is right and you don’t want to be cruel, but if you are not certain about the marriage, you must not feel obligated to do it. Another trap is fulfilling the request of a parent on their death bed to marry the one they know you should marry. Or perhaps someone is being suffocated at home and they are expecting you or making you feel obligated to set them free. If you feel you owe it to someone to marry them you need to take a second look at the origin of that feeling.
Ask who in your childhood made you feel responsible for their happiness and ask why you are repeating that pattern. The obligation to marry should could from a heart full of love and devotion to that other person. And before I finish I have to remind you of the most common obligation that produces sick marriages. It is the obligation to marry because you are having sex. Enough said.
If you say to me, “I have real peace from God about marrying this person,” I would probably say, “yeah, right!” Sounds like blasphemy, doesn’t it? After all, if you have real peace from God it’s a slam-dunk and you can move forward. Right?
Wrong. "Now don’t get me wrong," writes Arterburn. "God can and does give you his peace about a lot of things. You seek him, you feel his presence, and everything aligns and creates peace. But you have to be careful when it comes to huge, emotion charged decisions like who you are going to marry.
"What you think is peace might be you in a state of denial. Your peace may come from your refusal to or inability to see the truth about this person. You might have peace because you have a real blind spot about people in this particular area. You just don’t see it. Or you could have a real peace because you are emotionally unstable and this person is one milligram more stable than you so you feel great when in reality you are both in the same boat. It is very easy to mistake terrible for not so bad and it is easy to be very confused when you are in love.
"So, if real peace is your number one criteria for moving forward. Please step back and at least be willing to consider that there might be a degree of sickness or silliness in your real peace."
“Anger is a red flag issue that may not come out until the pressure of the ceremony creeps closer and closer,” writes Arterburn in Is This The One?
“Anger, rage, bitterness and animosity can all come to the surface after being covered up successfully. If you don’t believe how bad it can get watch one of the reality shows like Bridezillas. If you see this out of control behavior before marriage I shudder at the thought of what you might see after you are married. It can only get worse and often ends in physical abuse. So when rage and anger surface it is time to lace up your Nike’s and race to the nearest exit.
"Of all the people you might be tempted to think you can fix, this is the one you are most delusional about. A dater has to be in some state of desperate denial to move forward after seeing intense anger, bitterness and rage. Your rejection may cause more anger but it could be the thing that motivates that person to get the help that is needed. You will either live a life of relief or regret. Don’t choose the path of regret and ignore the pathology that can hurt your future and hurt every area of your life today.”
A lifetime is a very long time, advises Stephen Arterburn in his book Is This The One? -- but marriage vows are for a lifetime. So, take care as you date that person of your dreams. It’s your life!
Team Ghery
