When you’re trying to find someone with whom you’ll spend the rest of your life, you’ll probably do it the traditional way, by going out on a date. However, dating does not represent the best way to find out whether or not you’re truly compatible with another person. It’s a pleasurable activity but it’s extremely artificial. Think about what you do on dates. You go out and entertain yourselves, spend money on delicious food, enjoy movies or plays, attend sporting events, and go for romantic walks in beautiful places. These situations rarely come up in an actual marriage. In fact, you’ll often have to force yourselves to schedule such quality time together.
When you’re married, you’ll spend much of your time working together and managing things together. You’ll be managing your household and your yard. You may be managing children and pets. You’ll be required to discuss finances frequently. Practical matters will consume the bulk of your conversations. In dating, you get into deep conversations where you reveal your heart’s deepest longings and your hopes for the future. You also talk about your past and the secrets that you have held. This kind of conversation can be rare in the day to day life of a marriage.
A new way of dating, and one that might let you find the kind of person who would be good for you to marry, would involve running a company together. Specialized service companies could link people up with a business that they would run together for a short time. Based on how well they manage that company and interact, they would then consider whether to continue seeing each other. It sounds boring and mundane, but if you did it, you would find out what you really need to know about that person and whether or not that person would make a good marriage partner for you.
