Saturday, June 26, 2010

Dating, Courting, and Social Networking, Oh My!!

Yesterday, a discussion took place among some friends of mine about the dangers that social networking webistes like Facebook and MySpace can bring to a marriage. People set up accounts and start spending time on these sites, then find themselves re-united, though perhaps only electronically so, with old friends and with old flames. Sadly, I've heard a handful of stories about marriages that have been broken or badly damaged by online "reuntions" that lead to affairs.

Of course, there are some obvious solutions to safegaurd your marriage from this kind of attack. First, you could just not use social networking sites like Facebook or MySpace. Secondly, you could limit your online "friends" to family only, or persons of your own gender. A thrid option, and the one my husband and I employ, is to keep the computer in a central location in the house, and to allow each other ABSOLUTE access to ALL accounts~usernames, passwords, etc.

So, when this conversation took place, I started thinking. My husband and I have a wonderful marriage. It's not perfect, but it's pretty great :) So, I started to think about why it is that we have been spared a lot of the pain and anguish that others have gone through.

It most certainly is not because we are any better, or any smarter than any other married couple. I DO believe though, that we are very, very blessed.

Part of the reason that I don't fear "old flames" harming our marriage is because I don't have any :)) My husband is the only man I ever dated. Now, there is a popular concept among some christians called "courting". I am not sure I understand the concept completely, but from what I gather, in families that promote courting ( as opposed to traditional dating) young men and young ladies spend time together with groups of friends, or with each others family memebers. The young man and young lady do not spend time alone together until they become engaged, I guess. As I said, I"m not sure of the particulars of courting.

In any case, it was never my intention to only date the man I was going to marry. I simply never had any intrest in dating anyone until I met him.

I was blessed with a lot of good friends in high school, and many of them were guys. But I never had any intrest in dating any of them. I just didn't think of them that way. After high school, the first couple of jobs I had placed me in situations where I worked with other women, so I just didn't meet a lot of guys. I could go into a lot of long, boring details here, but I"ll spare you. My point is that even though it was not really a conscious decision on my part, I never went on a date with anyone other than my husband.

It may not have been MY design, but I believe that it was God's design. I was sparend the teen age trauma of break ups and all of the angst that goes along with typical teen dating relationships. My husband is spared any emotional baggage I might have brought into our marriage from relationships like that~and as an added bonus, he knows he has no reason to worry about anyone on my Facebook "friends" list. :))

I can't really see us encouraging our daughters or our son to "court" rather than "date". But you can be sure that we will teach them NOT to date for it's own sake, and I pray earnestly that they will never feel the need to have a "boyfriend" or a "girlfriend" simply because all their friends are "dating someone". My prayer is that they will take to heart what we have taught them~that God has all ready chosen a spouse for them, and that He will bring that person into their lives in His way and in His time, and that He doesn't need our help to do that.

You see, I believe with every fiber of my being that the man I am married to is the man that God chose for me to marry. Believing that with absolute certainty goes a long way toward curbing ANY behavior that could harm our marriage. I hope that each of my children will have that same rock solid belief about their spouse.

I'm not naive. I realize that no marriage is untouchable, and that satan can be very powerful in his attacks, and marriages and families are his favorite targets. I get that. I am just taking this opportunity to say that I believe God placed in my life some protections for my marriage long before I was actually married, and I am far more thankful for that than I feel able to express.

No marriage is perfect, but am more thankful every day for the one God gave me.
Blessings,
Vicki