Marriage Benefits-We Don’t Just Date For Fun

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Myrtle Alegado: Do you remember when you began to seriously consider getting married? On today’s episode, we’ll talk to newlyweds who will share the progression in their relationship, from meeting, to courtship, and finally to marriage.

Welcome to Happy Life, a podcast brought to you by INC Media Audio that aims to help newlyweds navigate through the first years of marriage. I’m your host, Myrtle Alegado, and I’ve been married to my husband, Paul, since 1999. Later, we’ll hear some Bible-based advice through Brother Felmar Serreno, a minister of the gospel in the Church Of Christ.

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Inspiration to make your marriage thrive, you’re listening to Happy Life

Myrtle: Today, I’d like to welcome our newlyweds from Yorba Linda, California to the podcast. Thanks so much for joining us on Happy Life, Aedelbert and Darlene!

Darlene Alejandro: Thank you for having us, Myrtle.

Aedelbert Alejandro: Hello! Thank you for having us.

Myrtle: How are you both doing today?

Darlene: We’re good.

Aedelbert: Doing good.

Myrtle: Well, as I understand it, you got married in January of this year, right?

Aedelbert: Correct.

Darlene: Yes.

Myrtle: Oh, well,congratulations to you both! Now, how did you both meet?

Aedelbert: So I moved to the Bay Area to finish college at San Francisco State University, and Darlene actually came up to me at one of our church events. It was a coastal cleanup. And, you know, I was hanging out with my guy friends, and Darlene came out of nowhere and just introduced herself to me.

Darlene: Yeah. [laughs]

Myrtle: Is that how you remember it, Darlene? Give us your take.

Darlene: Yeah, he was new to Daly City local congregation. And it was about a month before I met him that he was already living in Daly City. And normally when someone new or a new member [of the Church Of Christ] comes into Daly City, I usually meet them just to welcome them. I didn’t meet him yet, so when I saw him at the coastal cleanup, yeah, I just went up to him and I was like, “Hi, I’m Darlene. I haven’t met you yet, but welcome to Daly City.”

Myrtle: Aww. Well, that’s cute, Darlene!

Darlene: Yes, so I went up to him at the coastal cleanup. And then maybe a couple days after that, one of our mutual friends on Instagram posted a picture of their friend group, and that person tagged him. Since I met him, I figured, “Okay, I can follow him now.”

And then fast forward a couple more days, he posted this story about working out and he asked, “Who wants to be my workout buddy?” Mind you, I did not work out at that time but something inside me was like, “I’m going to respond and I’m going to say I’m going to be his workout buddy.” And that’s where we started talking or messaging with each other.

Aedelbert: Yeah, so after Darlene replied to my story and she said, you know, “I’ll be your workout buddy,” we actually planned to hang out one day. And you know, one thing led to another, we started texting more, and started hanging out more. That led to me falling for Darlene, and I started courting her, and then I proposed to her [in] June of 2021.

Myrtle: So, Aedel, you used the term courting, and I’d like to touch on that a little bit. In the Church Of Christ, we don’t use the term dating per se, because that implies that you’re just seeing someone in a kind of casual, romantic relationship. With courtship, we do so in a Christian manner, according to God’s teachings.

So, now you’re both in your late 20s, and you’ve been married for a few months. What do you think about those individuals who date just for the sake of dating or date just for fun?

Aedelbert: I think individuals who date just for the sake of dating or just for fun, at least from my personal point of view, I think they’re doing it just because you know, they’re bored or they’re trying to maintain this social presence online. They just want to be in this relationship so they can look cool to other people, or just simply not to seem that they’re alone, I guess.

Darlene: Yeah, I agree with Aedel to an extent. I mostly think that people nowadays date for fun because [of] peer pressure. I guess the times that a person could start dating is typically, like, when you’re a young adult. Maybe you’re a teenager and you start developing, and you want to understand more, like, these feelings that may come up with another individual in your life. And since you’re just discovering these feelings, you don’t really know what to think about them. But they’re strong enough that it moves you to do something about that, which is dating.

Your heart, it’s like it’s telling you one thing, but then your brain is saying another thing, and it’s hard to differentiate the two. And that’s why I think some people want to experiment, and they date around to see who is the best option for them.

Myrtle: And what are your opinions on this mentality?

Darlene: Dating just involves a lot of feelings in general and, personally, I feel like it involves more negative feelings than positive. To hear about the concept of dating, and dating multiple people, or dating around, someone is bound to get hurt at some point. I think it’s just inevitable.

Aedelbert: I just disagree with ‘dating for fun’ or that mentality of dating for fun. Because, honestly, what’s the point of dating when the whole reason is eventually you’re trying to get married, which goes back to courting someone in a Christian manner. At least when we’re courting someone we try and find, like, their Christian values, what they believe in, seeing how one person’s beliefs aligns with yours. For me at least, I was always taught that growing up. And if you’re going to date someone, you’re really trying to figure out why you want to spend the rest of your life with that specific person.

Myrtle: Just curious, you know, you mentioned that you want[ed] to find somebody whose values kind of align with yours. Do you think that people don’t look for that these days, that the youth don’t think about that?

Darlene: Personally, I feel like nowadays, to find someone with the same values as you, or the same faith as you, I feel like it’s not at the top of a person’s priority. Most people just think of personality traits right off the bat. Like, they have to be funny, or they have to be a certain height, or they have to, I don’t know, have brown eyes, brown hair. Stuff like that.

Aedelbert: I think people trying to find if their values align or not is lost, because people are in it for, like, a social standing type thing. So they do it for a specific reason, that they’re trying to attain this specific thing, and they know that this person can help them get it.

Myrtle: But you know, at what age or point in life do you think people should start seriously searching for a ‘forever’ relationship?

Darlene: Honestly, I can’t really put a number on it, because I didn’t think I would get married at this age. I’m 27 right now, I didn’t think I’d get married at this age. But I think they should hit certain goals in their life first. Like, for example, I think someone should be established in a career, or at least confident in the path that they’re taking in their life. I definitely think they should also be confident just on their own. To have a partner, like a forever relationship, they are just like an added blessing.

Aedelbert: There’s no set age that someone should start looking for their ‘forever’ relationship, because everyone has their own path in life. Everyone accomplishes a certain, you know, achievement in life at different ages. First of all, someone should be established in their career, just so that it doesn’t put that financial burden when, you know, it’s time to get married. Like you should be confident that you could be okay with yourself, who you are as a person, and then finding someone else to share those blessings with you in your life, then that’s the perfect time to move forward and look for that relationship.

Myrtle: And I just want to add that, of course, you should also have the blessings of your parents to go forward with a ‘forever’ relationship and, you know, that next step in life, or next step in the relationship, engagement and then marriage.

So, you know, these days it’s common practice for boyfriend and girlfriend to just move in together and not get married at all. We, as members of the Church Of Christ, do not follow this practice, and later we’ll hear what the Bible has to say about this, of course. But I’m curious about how you two feel about this.

Aedelbert: I don’t think it’s right for this type of practice. Honestly, because I think it gives people an option or like a way out. But if you’re married, of course, you got married before God and then we learned that it’s till deat