Dear Mom,
I’m in a quandary. A good friend of mine wants to line me up with a girl he thinks is pretty cute. He says we have a lot in common but she is also a different religion. He says that I should go out with her anyway because she’s nice and fun to hang with. I don’t want to seem closed minded, but I have only dated Mormon girls because we have more in common and I find it easier to talk about certain things because they have the same grounding and morals. My good friend is also Mormon, but he likes dating girls, period, no matter their religion. He says, “You don’t have to marry them, you know.” What do you think?
Wondering
Dear Wondering,
While I do think your friend has made a good point about getting to know girls, no matter their religion, I tend to lean on the side of caution. That’s not to say that I don’t know of people who have married someone of a different religion and made it work, but I have also known couples of different religions that thought they were just going to date and have a great time and later married and were unhappy. Yes, I have also known people who have married, of the same religion, who later got divorced. And yet, I still hold true to what I was told by my mother many years ago when I first began dating, “You marry whom you date.”
Dating is fun and should be fun. We shouldn’t go on a date “expecting” marriage but I also know that you rarely, if ever, marry a person you haven’t dated first, so I would think closely on that.
When I was dating, I didn’t always listen to the advice of my mother and was sometimes unhappy because of it. What I learned instead was that, rather than to date someone of a different religion separately and seriously, it was better for me just to make some great friends and have some group fun that didn’t involve pairing off.
I know I sound like a Mormon but I can’t change who I am and neither should you. Stick to your guns. If you’re uncomfortable going on this blind date for more reasons than simply because you’ve never met the girl, keep my mother’s quote in your mind when making your decision. That doesn’t mean you won’t later meet the girl at some other event and get to know her, it just means that you won’t single her out by going on this blind date. There are wonderful, spiritual people in every religion on the planet but that doesn’t mean you have to date them. Yes, even if you’re best friend singled them out for you.
If you choose to date the girl, remember that you never know what will come next. You may decide to become great friends or you may get serious and you may get married. Never dating this great girl in the first place will save you from the latter.
I know some people reading this column will get angry because of what I’ve said. They will think that I’m being high and mighty and that I’m more than a little prejudiced. So be it.
Dating is never closed minded if you go into it with certain goals and expectations about what you want out of life. Because your life will probably last at least 70 years, if your goal is to marry someone of the same faith because of what you hope to share and receive from them, you should stick to that.
Mom
