Dating - Feelings And "Being In Love"

Feelings related to love should not be allowed to grow too early lest they become damaged, corrupted or even destroyed

Now that we have portrayed a positive, lovely picture of marriage, which young people need to hear often, we must also warn them that their feelings related to love should not be allowed to grow too early lest they become damaged, corrupted or even destroyed.  This ends up ruining the very reason we have those feelings.  Let me give you some examples:

Young people must understand the emotional cycle that occurs when they entertain loving someone

Our kids are ignorant.  To them, they are just going to a dance or to a prom with a date.  They are ignorant as to how powerful the emotion of love is towards another.  When that happens they experience that “love is blind,” and “love is crazy,” and “love is powerful.”  It actually causes them to become a different person.  Why do they need to know this?  So they will be careful not to even touch it.  When they do touch it because they see a boy they like or a girl they like and want to get a relationship started, they can realize that they need to withdraw quickly or they have to invest their time and energy into something else.  Young people when educated can learn to recognize their own feelings.

I always tease the young girls on how they will “pine away” when they fall in love.  “Oh, Oscar.  Oscar.”  Their grades drop.  They quit the choir.  They stop going to their extracurricular activities.  “I only have time for Oscar!”  And then I tell the girls, “Don't ever let a boy do that to you!  What a waste of time:  writing his name on the top of your books.  `Oscar.'  What a waste of time to pine over someone too early in life.  Is their any boy or girl in the tenth grade worth that much time at the expense of developing yourself?  Don't let anyone cheat you like that.  This is your life.  You're going to be in `love' with somebody, think about him or her all the time, and talk on the phone for hours at a time?  What a waste of time that you could be using in such a positive way to develop who you are.  You can build yourself up, doing so many constructive things.  But instead you're moaning and groaning about Oscar.”  On one hand, I talk facetiously like this, but on the other hand, the point gets across.  

They must understand what happens to their heart when they entertain being in love with someone and what happens when they break up

Often we should remind ourselves that young people are young.  This means that they have not developed fully and have many experiences in life to go through before they can possess the proper mature reasoning of an adult.  I say this because once young people get deeply involved in relationships they do not and cannot have the proper perspective regarding that relationships.  They just do not have the maturity in life to comprehend all their feelings and to properly respond to what their heart is telling them.  This is why we urge all of us to seek the Lord proactively with our children.  It is the best to instill proper reasonings and aspirations within our children before they dive headlong in "love."  Most likely by then it is too late to render a proper help for them to save their heart's capacity.

Their heart becomes occupied

When human beings fall in love, whether prematurely or at a time when they are prepared, our hearts become totally occupied with the one we love.  This is the way the Lord made us.  Therefore, when young people date and get involved with members of the opposite sex, they should know that this will greatly affect their heart.  Their heart will become preoccupied with another person.  They will gear their whole life around that person.  When love is mature or to say it another way, when love is "ripe" this is the sweetest human experience.  However, when love is immature because the person is young and inexperienced, this occupation becomes very damaging to the participants.

Most young people do not know how to carry a job, they do not know how to bear the responsibilities for their well-being, and they do not know all the factors needed to carry on a healthy productive life.  This is why God gives us our young people for such a long time:  we need to raise them up and train them in every aspect of the human life.  Yet, so many young ones get prematurely involved in a relationship without any idea of the ramifications.  Their once simple, free heart becomes occupied and hard towards anything but that other person.  Yet, they have no idea what true long-term commitment entails.

The damage of dating prematurely

Unfortunately, most American kids have no intention of marrying the ones they date and so many many relationships break apart after a period of time.  This is devastating to a young person's psychology.  Figuratively, a part of their heart has been broken off and carried away.  God never intended humans to experience this kind of hurt and void because He desires us to grow to maturity in Him and get married to the one He has prepared for us.  Notice the key word here is "prepared."  Today's casual dating has nothing to do with preparation.  It is based on peer pressure.  It is based on emotional drives prematurely set in motion.  It is based on lustful fulfillment.  Those few relationships that develop at a young age with intent to marry are destined for many unnecessary problems and obstacles which could be avoided if they could put off their "flame of love" until they experienced more of human life and mature in their person to the point in which they are ready for a long-term commitment.

Most young people have more than one relationship before they actually find their life partner, their spouse.  This means that they give more and more of their heart away to ones that are not their future spouse.  Relationships always involve the heart of a person and if one does not pursue this relationship to its intended climax, meaning marriage, then part of the heart is torn when that relationship is ended.  This means that people give a part of their heart to every relationship that the Lord did not ordain nor prepare them for.  Ultimately, the capacity to love is greatly affected and diminished because it has been withered away by premature relationships.

... to be continued

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