Dating Ideas
Dates should be a fun but dating is serious business. It’s important to distinguish between the friendly relationships we develop from the friendship we want to develop into a relationship, over relationships that devolve into friendships. We should always start at arm’s length and let people get closer, not the other way around. That means, developing your friendship should be the first goal in your dating life. You can’t entrust your life to an acquaintance, and you can’t marry just anyone. If dating is meant to lead to marriage then you must be willing to date for that end.
Causal dating sends the wrong signal on every level, because it makes the goal “friendship” or even “friendship with benefits” but it also includes certain duties that go beyond just friendship.
Date with a purpose and your dates will help you grow in intimacy, trust, companionship and love: date casually for fun, and you’ll just find your heart broken. When you date, you can have lots of fun, but you should be intent on the goal: only when you know the goal, can you be sure you are heading in the right direction.
To that end, here are some dating ideas:
Create a photo album: Photo albums are coming back in vogue. They can be a lot of fun, but they also help you to recall parts of your relationship. If you expect your relationship to grow in love and intimacy a photo album can help you to catalogue that growth. Make it something you do once a month, perhaps taking turns as to who holds the camera or chooses the destination. Building a life together means putting the pieces together over time, and an album that you create while you’re dating might be a nice reminder when you get old and gray.
Get Lost: Finding your way in an unfamiliar place can be rather daunting, stressful, or even just a little crazy, it can also be really revealing when you do it with someone else. Are they resourceful? Are they good at directions? Do they know how to read a map? It can be just the thing to take your relationship to the next level, especially if you want to get to know a nearby city that is a little unfamiliar. Here’s the tip: take a bus/train to a random destination, get off, and try and make it back to some familiar place. A day walking while getting lost might be just the kind of thing you want to put in your photo album if you’ve got one started. (Also, make sure you check out the general area nearby to make sure that while you may be lost, you’re at least safe.)
Make dinner: Cooking and hanging around the kitchen makes domestic life come alive. If you’re into dating with the hopes of sharing your life with someone, then the most obvious place you want to become comfortable with them is around the kitchen and the dining room table. Food is also the way to a man’s/woman’s heart. If you can cook, you might move them from “like” to “LOVE”.
