Dating: What's the Point

I do not think that dating is necessarily practice for divorce, but the “hook-up culture” is. Relationships can be a positive experience that teaches you compromise and helps you learn what type of person you work well with. As Freitas and King say, dating is important because it involves caring for another person in a deeper way than friendship might. I agree, dating can teach you positive skills that you can use when married. Many of my peers are in relationships or in the “hook-up culture.” Often at my age, my peers may simply be in a dating relationship for social status, which is a negative. However, sometimes they are dating because they genuinely like each other, which is positive so long as they have appropriate vulnerability with one another. The hook-up culture is setting both sexes up for failure in regards to marriage and relationships. The hook up culture almost always confuses and hurts those involved. “Hooking up” does not teach people how to care for one another or show appropriate vulnerability, in fact it shows them two extremes. By “hooking up” they are inappropriately vulnerable in a physical way because they do not really know or respect one another. They are emotionally unattached by “not caring” if they date or even talk to one another after hooking up. This may be alright with those involved in the short term, but once one wants to settle down, he or she may not be able to.