Below is a research paper that was written on dating and divorce:
Is Dating the Cause of High Divorce Rates in America?
Just as it takes time, consideration, and wise guidance to choose which Prince Charming or Dream Girl is right for you, the same must go into the decision young people must face on how they want to get there. So the main question when considering two different paths to a hopeful outcome is which path bares more benefits? Does our culture influence that decision? Is courting more beneficial than dating? If courting was cultural then and dating is cultural now, why are the divorce rates much higher now a days? Lets see.
Before someone chooses the road they want to take to marriage, it is necessary to research it, investigate it, and weigh the pros and cons that road may have. Sadly, most of the time people fail to do just that and they jump into what seems acceptable to the culture of the day. A mistake young people often make is living in their parents shadows and without a thought in some cases they just believe what their parents do. Young people need to wake up and figure out who they are and what they believe for themselves. They need to make, for example, religion or the process to marriage their own; or it just becomes a bunch of rules, and as the saying goes “rules are made to be broken”.
When one makes something their own, they look further into it to make sure it is something they want to do. Will it prove to have an outcome they desire? In this case most young people desire marriage, but they only know one way to end up with that result: dating. If they would take time to research dating, they will find there are other methods leading to marriage and that the dating game seems to lead to less successful marriages.
In the 1800’s courting was cultural and once you were married it was also against their culture to even leave their spouses; so it is obvious why there was not much of a divorce rate back then. However, once you reach the mid 1900’s the statistics rise. According to a chart found on The Curse of 1920 website, divorce steadily rose in the early 1900’s, but once it reached the mid 1900’s the graph line sky rockets up. It is said this was due to the women’s rights movement, but on top of that is evidence of courting becoming less and less a cultural thing as dating becomes more and more popular and accepted. As dating takes over, the divorce rates rise. A good explanation of this is found on The Bible Study website,
“The modern dating system does not train young people to form a relationship. It trains them to form a series of relationships, and further trains them to harden themselves to the break-up of all but the current one. At the very least, this system is as much a preparation for divorce as it is for marriage. Whenever the other person starts to wear a little thin, you just slip out the back, Jack.” (Bailey, D.V.C., 1)
Bailey explains that culture is now saying if you are not happy anymore with the relationship you are in, it becomes a normal and numb to the heart thing to do to trash it and find a better relationship in someone else. This gives a picture of a person with selfish motives. Yes, you are to look for in a mate things you desire and want in that person, but do not go looking around for a partner to fill those greedy desires of the moment. More and more are fulfilling the temporary desires and once those desires change they are free to go their own way once more. So how does this set you up for a successful marriage? Combine more power and control when it comes to satisfying your fading wants and women’s rights and no wonder the divorce rates spiked up rapidly in the mid 1900’s!
If this is the mindset a couple has when entering a relationship the outcome is more than likely going to be anything but good. This area of concern is expressed well below,
“The danger of believing that you “fall in love” is that it also means you can “fall out of love” just as in expectantly.” (Harris, I.K.D.G., 65)
Ten percent of all Americans are divorced according to the Divorce Statistics website and the good ole U.S.A. is ranked #1 for having the most divorces with a 4.95 percent of divorced couples per 1,000 people on the Nation Master website! These are recent statistics that only prove the point. If America is now generally a “dating” country, when few others are, why are we the leading nation with the highest divorce rate?
Harris explains,
“I do not believe dating is sinful. Some people have sinned as a result to dating, but I don’t think anyone can accurately say that dating in and of itself is a sinful activity. I view dating in a similar light as I view fast-food restaurants - it’s not wrong to eat there, but something far better is available.” (Harris, 13)
And our country’s weak spot is fast food! As we steadily grow in body size from the bad food, we do not end up with the outcome we wanted: skinny and happy. You end up suffering due to bad choices. You wanted to eat right, but that McDonald’s ice cream cone was what you wanted at that moment so you caved. And as we steadily date more and more, we end up making a nice collection of ex’s since each one was what you wanted at that moment when you caved.
So is dating prior to marriage the leading cause of divorce in America? Is dating the cause of divorce period? We are doing something wrong to cause that graph line to rise, and dating shows evidence of being the cause behind it. It is not necessarily “dating” that is ruining marriages though, but the heart of it. One’s motives affect the state of the heart. This is where things get messed up, because we choose to fulfill the wrong motives through a system called dating. Nathan Bailey agrees in his statement below,
“We need to find out what God’s plan for relationships is, and then follow it. The current model we are using ends up in divorce more than half the time. There must be something we are doing wrong.” (Bailey, 1)
The decision lies within the hands of the young people, and if they were not so accustomed to going with the flow they would take time to realize what is going on, and decide for themselves. What motives are they going to allow take over God’s way of doing things? This is an action that must be taken in order to lower that graph line and watch it make a perfect ten as it dives back down. Not only in America, but nation wide.
