Week 5 Blog

     Well this week was a really fun topic! It was all about dating. The readings we had to prepare for class covered a lot about hookups and a lot of things that people do when they don't want to be in a relationship but they want the benefits of being in one. Concerning hookups, lauer & lauer says that heavy drinking played a big role in them, and 23% of the women of a study with 178 students and 7% of the same study said they had experienced unwanted sexual intercourse. I think this is terrible, first of all as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day saints we I believe we shouldn't have sexual relations outside of marriage. The culture of dating nowadays, is if you are dating someone you are probably hooking up with them, but that's not how it should be and in a lot of cases that's not how it is. 

    We talked about how a date should follow the three p's. A date should be paid for, paired off, and planned. People are more into hanging out now days than going on formal dates. There are pros and cons to hanging out. One of the pros is that you can meet more people at once and maybe even meet someone you want to ask out. For me, I usually want to ask a girl I already know a little bit about on a date, not ask someone I just met. Hanging out gives me the opportunity to meet multiple girls and decide on the ones I think it would be fun to take on a date.

    For the second part of this week's class, we talked about falling in love. I have not had the opportunity to read it, but they suggested we read a book called "How to avoid falling in love with a jerk" by: John Van Epp. I am going to try and read it eventually and I invite y'all to try and find an opportunity to read it too. A couple of the reasons we talked about that might cause people to fall in love are: sharing culture, and the idea of opposites are attracted to each other. The culture one makes sense to me, when you have things in common with people it is easier to talk to them. Culture is also on a different level because it is more personal, so if you share culture with someone will cause them to have a connection on another level. 

    The idea of opposites attracting is an interesting idea to me. I have seen many examples of it, so I know that it really does happen often! I just think it would make more sense for people that have similar personalities to get along better and be attracted to one another. I think that sometimes when personalities are different it can add to the others personality, if that makes sense. Maybe that is why opposites attract, is when they meet someone different than themselves it kind of feels like the rest of their personality is complete? It may also add to the aspect of communication because each person will have their own opinion and then they will see both sides of the argument, or decision. Communication is very important in a relationship. Harold B. Lee said "When it comes to marriage and family, it's not enough to communicate to be understood, you have to communicate so clearly that you cannot be misunderstood." If you start dating someone that you can clearly communicate with and trust, that is a key factor in falling in love with someone.

    These discussion this week were quite interesting to see everyone's different views on falling in love and dating. There are so many different factors put into play that lead a couple to falling in love. I hope these thoughts will help you with your challenges and successes in finding your one true love.