- Hello and welcome to Ask the Therapist,
I am that therapist, Jonathan Decker.
We pulled our Mended Light community
on what you wanted to pick my brain about.
And today's question,
how long should I date before getting married?
What's the threshold, right?
So that I know this is gonna be a healthy relationship
that's gonna last.
Well, it's not about timeline.
It's about doing it right.
I'll tell you what I mean after the jump.
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Listen folks, I've been on this planet for 40 years.
40 years, my life is about halfway done.
Seen a lot of things, experienced a lot of things
both personally and vicariously.
One thing that I've seen is that
there is no specific timeline
for if you date someone this long,
you are going to have a healthy, successful relationship.
What I have seen however, is outliers.
My sister met the man she was gonna marry
and married him two months later.
Their dating was two months.
Their engagement was like six weeks of that.
That is rolling the dice.
And it worked really well for her.
They've been together 20 plus years.
They're very happily married,
but that's a do you feel lucky type of situation
because very very often those rushed courtships
come at the price of not really actually knowing each other.
While there is no exact timeline,
I can tell you what checkpoints and markers
you want to pass through
to maximize the odds that you're going to have
a healthy lasting relationship.
There's a great book, it's called
"How To Avoid Falling In Love With a Jerk"
written by Dr. John Van Epp,
takes you through these steps.
First of all, he talks about
knowing, trusting, relying, committing, and touching.
These are the phases that we pass through.
And this isn't like an ice tray
where you get to know somebody perfectly
and then you start to trust them, and then you rely on them,
and then you commit and then you touch.
It doesn't just spill over once you hit the top
but they are going together simultaneously
and you want a downward slope.
What I mean by that is
you should know somebody more than you trust them.
You should trust them more than you rely on them.
Rely on them more than you're committed
and commit more than you touch.
Or a more clear way to phrase that,
don't be physically involved,
don't touch more than your level of commitment,
don't commit to somebody more than you can rely on them,
don't rely on somebody more than you trust them,
and don't trust somebody more than you know them.
So what does that actually mean?
Well, to really get to know somebody you need three things.
Talk, togetherness, and time.
Talk speaks for itself.
The actual conversation, honest conversation
getting to know each other, being vulnerable, being raw,
being real and letting the walls down.
Because the last thing you want is to put on airs
or pretend to be somebody you're not
in order to win somebody over when the other person over.
'Cause what's gonna happen,
they're gonna fall in love with a facade.
Far better to lose somebody
than to have them fall in love with
a version of you that's not even real.
So talk is important.
Togetherness is time in the same geographic space.
In the same space, because right now
you all are seeing you know what we are controlling.
You're seeing what we want you to see.
You don't see what's going on over here.
If you and I were talking over webcam,
you wouldn't see if I'm wearing basketball shorts.
My space might look very clean.
You wouldn't see that it's a huge mess over there.
You wouldn't see how I interact with my family,
with my friends, how I am in different circumstances.
You would see this controlled space.
That's why you can talk to somebody a lot over the phone
or over webcam, and think you actually know them
but you don't because you haven't had the time together.
So talk, togetherness
and then the last one is time.
So this is more to the point of the question that was asked,
how long should I date before I marry?
Well, the bare minimum to actually know somebody,
this isn't you know them so get married,
but the bare minimum to actually know somebody is 90 days.
It takes at least three months
for a person to show you who they really are.
And that's, if they're a decent person
and they're not trying to trick you.
If they're actually trying to deceive you,
you might have to go a lot longer than that
because they're doing the long con.
Put it this way,
I was not trying to deceive my wife when we were dating.
The first time I had her over for dinner,
my apartment was cleaner than it had been in months.
I mean I always kept it picked up,
but it was vacuumed, it was dusted.
Everything was sprayed down or wipe down,
everything was just immaculate.
And I made sure that I was nicely shaved,
I was wearing my best shirt,
maybe did some pushups before she got over
so I looked really swole.
I'm just kidding.
Actually, I might've done that.
Anyways, so then she shows up,
she's wearing makeup, she's got a nice dress.
And you might say that was deception,
I say best foot forward.
She didn't show up in sweat pants and a t-shirt
with no makeup and her hair done in a bun saying,
this is me.
I didn't open the door in basketball shorts
with an apartment that wasn't vacuumed
and cleaned up and said, yep,
well, this is what you have to look forward to.
We wanted to make a good first impression.
For the first 90 days,
people tend to not show you their angry side.
They tend to not show you their vulnerable side,
their sad side.
They really, really want to impress you
and they want you to see the best of them.
And that's true
almost regardless of who you're dealing with.
It's only after about three months of real contact
and connection that people started to let the walls down
and show you who they really are.
Now that's not an exact number
for every person on the planet,
but that is what the research suggests.
Talk, togetherness, and time.
So if you met someone at the laundromat
and you talked all night long,
by sunrise you might think you're in love.
You might think you really know this person, you don't.
You had talk and togetherness, but not time.
If you meet someone on the other side of the world online
and you're talking for months and months
and months and months and months.
If you're not actually in the same place,
you don't truly know them.
Talk, togetherness, time.
He always talks about trust.
We don't trust people,
we trust this image in our head of who we think they are.
We get some evidence, a couple of observations,
and we start to build a picture
of who we think this person is.
We don't trust people, we trust that image.
That's why when someone betrays us we say
you're not who I thought you were.
So you need to take the time to compare
what you're actually seeing with this image in your head,
this idea in your head and see if they line up
and be constantly changing this idea of who this person is
based on the evidence.
And the real question is,
do you love the person that you are seeing?
Far too often, we have an idea in our head
of who we want this person to be
and we start to disregard red flags
and other things to the contrary
and other evidence to the contrary because of what we want
and because of what we believe we can create.
But again, it's far better to be real
just like you don't want someone to fall for
a fake version of you,
you don't want to fall for a fake version of somebody else
even if it's one you created up here.
Rely.
Relying on someone to meet your needs,
relying on them to be who you think they are
to see if they will follow through.
Commitment is how exclusive you are.
How exclusive you are.
And again, you don't want to be more committed
than you actually know a person,
can trust them and rely on them.
And then the really difficult one is physical touch.
The research doesn't suggest
waiting for marriage to have sex.
That's a value for a lot of people,
for other people it's not their value.
The research does say,
wait until a healthy committed relationship.
Wait until you've built everything
and let sex be the top of the pyramid.
The more physically involved you are with somebody,
the more prone you are to think and believe
that you are in love with them.
Far better to hold off
until you've got that sure foundation,
and then you can know that you actually are in love
and physical intimacy is just the icing on the cake.
Now he also talks about an acronym called FACES
family backgrounds, attitudes of conscience,
compatibility potential, examples of previous relationship,
skills of communication.
Family background.
How did this person learn to show and receive affection?
How do they learn to resolve conflict?
If they come from a troubled family
it doesn't mean they're not gonna be a good partner,
it does mean you wanna ask
what did they learn from that family?
Are they gonna maintain those patterns
or are they gonna do things differently?
And if they came from a happy family,
that doesn't necessarily mean they're gonna follow suit.
Families of origin are just our starting point
but it is important to see where they come from.
Attitudes and actions of conscience.
There's nothing more attractive than somebody
who has a strong conscience.
So see if they are who they seem to be
and see if they act with integrity.
Now, before I continue on, when this video is done
I want to refer you to this other one,
four tips to having a healthy relationship.
I think you'll enjoy it.
Check it out, it's so good.
It's so good.
The compatibility potential
doesn't mean that you're the same,
it just means that you go well together.
Examples of past relationships.
If they are constantly blaming their Xs for everything
instead of taking any accountability
or talking about how they learn and grow,
it's not a great sign because it means that
they tend to point the finger elsewhere.
And then skills are communication.
How do they resolve conflict?
How do they show affection?
Now, I can't give you a timeline but I can say
you need enough time before you marry somebody
to go through all of this.
Once again, that book is
"How To Avoid Falling In Love With a Jerk"
but to go through and to make sure you really know them,
to make sure you can really trust and rely on them,
to make sure you want to commit to them,
to make sure that you're dealing with somebody
who has integrity.
So go through all of these things
and whatever that timeline looks for you,
I would say
if it takes three months to actually know somebody
then maybe you don't be getting engaged
until at least four or five months.
That would be my guideline
but it varies from person to person.
Like I said, my sister had a radically different experience,
worked out well for her.
I've known a lot of other people that that was not the case.
Now, I wanna hear from you.
What is your experience with dating, engagement, marriage?
How can you know if someone is a good fit for you
or equally important, if they're not a good fit for you?
What has your experience shown?
I wanna hear in the comments below.
Also, if you have a question for me
for future Ask a Therapist segments,
I'd love to answer it here on the air
so let me know about that in the comments below.
If you enjoy what we're doing here at Mended Light,
please like, comment, and share.
Our mission is to help you heal and grow
so you can be the best version of you possible
and enjoy the fullest richest relationships.
Keep your light shining, we need you out there.
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