Dating Non-LDS People

[Guest MormonGator]

15 hours ago, NightSG said:

And if your life is a straight path from A-B, you should become very angry with the Lord; He has deemed you so utterly incompetent at even just living that He doesn't trust you with any sort of challenge at all.

 

Totally agree bud. 100%

[Dream Weaver]

I also think LDS get married to young, actually I think many religious people get married to young.  I think people change as they grow older, or maybe they just become more comfortable with themselves and more able to be themselves.  Also younger people are more subject to peer pressure and fitting in (even in their 20's).  

[Jane_Doe]

25 minutes ago, Dream Weaver said:

I also think LDS get married to young, actually I think many religious people get married to young.  I think people change as they grow older, or maybe they just become more comfortable with themselves and more able to be themselves.  Also younger people are more subject to peer pressure and fitting in (even in their 20's).  

Honestly, I've seen that couples who are ok with casual sex / living-together on average do that at much younger ages than couples which are waiting to marry.  Couples waiting to marry due indeed tend to get married sooner- but by that time their non-waiting friends have been playing house for a few years already.  

[JohnsonJones]

On ‎1‎/‎12‎/‎2018 at 8:12 PM, NightSG said:

And if your life is a straight path from A-B, you should become very angry with the Lord; He has deemed you so utterly incompetent at even just living that He doesn't trust you with any sort of challenge at all.

Angry?  I'd absolutely be delighted.  That would be an awesome blessing.  If you could be a Christian and have no challenges that it was a straight path from A-B...that would be a WONDERFUL blessing.  For the righteous that would mean a much easier time to get to Heaven.  I think that would be wonderful!!! 

Unfortunately, I think it really isn't the Lord who throws these obstacles in our lives.  I'm not a Calvinist, so I have slightly different beliefs.  I think the Lord wants all of us to get to heaven and has made it possible so that we all can.  He does not try to stop us and I think he would have it as a straight path from A-B.  However, because he loves us he has given us free agency, so we are able to choose.  This same principle applies to the people around us as well, they all have free agency.  IN addition, we have the adversary who wants to drag us down to hell.  I think he puts a LOT of obstacles in our way, as well as temptation to us and to others around us.  This is what creates those obstacles and makes it so that we do not have that straight path from A-B.

But if I were blessed with a straight path from A-B without obstacles, I would definitely NOT be angry with the LORD.  I'd be praising and shouting hallelujah's all the way back to heaven.  That's more of a blessing than anything else I'd think...In MY PERSONAL opinion.

Edited January 14, 2018 by JohnsonJones
Clarifying that this is my thoughts on the matter in regards to obstacles rather than scriptural or doctrine

[Guest]

On 1/12/2018 at 9:12 PM, NightSG said:

And if your life is a straight path from A-B, you should become very angry with the Lord; He has deemed you so utterly incompetent at even just living that He doesn't trust you with any sort of challenge at all.

8 hours ago, JohnsonJones said:

Angry?  I'd absolutely be delighted.  That would be an awesome blessing.  If you could be a Christian and have no challenges that it was a straight path from A-B...that would be a WONDERFUL blessing.  For the righteous that would mean a much easier time to get to Heaven.  I think that would be wonderful!!! 

Unfortunately, I think it really isn't the Lord who throws these obstacles in our lives. 

I'm looking at this proposition from a completely different perspective.

I tend to think that the Lord actually guides us all over the map so we can learn all we can both temporally and spiritually.  If we do indeed have a straight path, that would mean that we didn't really need to learn much.  But we have a convoluted path to take us to different places (figuratively at least) in our lives to give us experience.

I'll repeat an experience I've mentioned before because it seems appropriate.

I had been asked many times what I would do differently in my life if I had it to do all over again.  And while I certainly have many regrets and sorrows in my life, I took one of these opportunities (one time this question was asked of me) to reflect a while. 

I was pondering scriptures on repentance, love of God, Christ's Atonement, "To try them and to test them,"  Learning through life experience.

I had gotten to a place in my life where I was pretty happy.  I didn't feel like I was still scrambling around trying to figure out what it was I was supposed to be doing.  I still had to work on actually doing it.  But I'd become pretty much at peace with my overall life.

I looked back on what events in my life brought me here.  I realized that each "bad decision" and each "life-altering trial" were all absolutely necessary for me to learn exactly what I needed to know to go on to the next step.  Moving forward, it all seemed like it was a crooked windy path that went all over the map.  But looking back on it with hindsight and the knowledge of the "how" such experience and knowledge could be gained, I realized that there was no straighter path.  The Lord knew all.  He knew just where to lead me and how I could be led, so that I would learn all I could in the shortest timespan.

There really was no better way.

I did not get accepted for some jobs that I applied to because I was not qualified.  So, I had to take a lower job.  There, I learned the skills so that I could be qualified for the higher job.

It was not a matter (for me anyway) of whether I'd show myself to be capable, but rather, to learn to be capable.  I cannot bench 200 lbs.  But by taking steps A, B, C, & D I could get there.  The Lord was not testing whether I could pass a big test.  As I was, I absolutely could not pass much of a test at all.  He was training me to get strong enough so that I could eventually be strong enough to pass harder and harder tests.

I finally understood my mission president's words that we should thank the Lord for a rotten day.  We thank Him because each such day builds us.  Each such day prepares us as long as we have learned to depend on Him to get us through.

Edited January 14, 2018 by Guest

[dddd]

On 12/26/2017 at 11:43 PM, bananarchist said:

 I've been very inspired by Joaquin E. Costa's talk from last summer about how his girlfriend Renee brought him to the churc

I found myself the same way before my mission.

I would NOT recommend dating non-LDS guys. Friends, sure. But from how painful my experiences were, no.

First of all, I was surprised that there were LDS guys that were willing to keep the law of chastity. Men are attracted to women with self confidence and standards, and the laws of God tend to do that for a person, so I never had a guy give me a hard time about that. One thing that helped were my friends. They were all over the guy saying, "You KNOW she's not gonna do anything right?" so that helped. However, because they were ok with me keeping the law of chastity it made me not feel so bad about dating them. {However...you are not equally yoked already with this person in that regard. If you do slip up and have chastity issues, you are going to feel guilty while they won't feel as guilty and as big of a need to correct the problem as you do. Also, if you break the law of chastity, the blame is on you. You would have been a poor example to them and it could hinder their desire to feel the Spirit and learn more.}

Second, I also found that (sorry LDS guys!!) but non-member guys will tend to treat you better. I think there is just a lack of quality women in the world so when they find one, they make sure to treat her right rather than just like another date. They want to hold on.

Third, I felt like non-members would not be marriage hungry like LDS guys. I always knew I was going to serve a mission, so I think I dated non-members as a way to avoid marriage. WRONGO. I think as a result of the first and second point I made, all three of the boyfriends I had before my mission became very preoccupied with marriage, in spite of since the onset of the relationship telling them that I would never marry outside of the temple and didn't see our relationship going that way.

Fourth, Elder Costa did not give that talk intending to tell our girls to go snare a boyfriend to baptize. Anytime you enter into a relationship and place an expectation on them to change, you are essentially being mentally/emotionally abusive. It's also very unwise for you to date someone hoping they will change as they can put on a good face at first and then reveal their true colors later on when it's too late.

Along that line, the more pressure you put on him to change, or to investigate the Church (which CANNOT come without repentance and change) the more the man you are dating will feel that pressure and tend to go the other way.

I may sound harsh but I gave my personal experiences. I dated an athiest guy while i was preparing for my mission Good guy.. From the beginning I told him verbatim "I would not marry you" and he told me what he was looking for in a marriage partner and it was so clear we weren't a fit and he wasn't looking to get married ANYTIME SOON. But it was clear we liked each other and wanted to spend time with each other. So we started dating and soon we were boyfriend and girlfriend. And then he started pushing marriage on me a lot. He told me (after three weeks!!) that if I didn't have my papers in to serve a mission by December we would get married. And I was in lala land and stupidly agreed and then freaked out. But I felt like I couldn't break up with him because he was investigating the church...he started to. I had never pushed him to learn at all, I just was myself and he expressed interest. And I justified things as well and told myself that at least while he was with me he wasn't breaking the law of chastity or drinking, so he was better off with me. I did turn in my papers around the same time he set a baptism date. I went to the MTC and waited that first PDay for a letter from him telling me how his baptism went, only to find out he had dropped his date and was no longer speaking to missionaries. I was the most heartbreaking thing in my life. He never joined the church, started drinking again, and later moved in with a girlfriend. That tore me apart. I've since dated and broken up with LDS guys, and have been shocked at how much less painful and how much more quickly I can recover from heartache compared to non-LDS guys.

I mean, you may ignore everyone's advice. I just say it because I was in so much pain and I had a comp towards the end of my mission go thru the same thing and it broke my heart to see her struggle.

Just be careful. When I met one of the guys I dated I thought, "I would be friends with him, but I don't think he would ever like me." and then there was mutual interest. And I thought, "I like him, flirting with him, but I'd never go out with him." And then he asked me out. And I thought, "Ok, I'd go on a date with him, but I'd never be his girlfriend." And then he started calling me his girlfriend. "Ok, so I'm his girlfriend, but I'll never marry him." And it came to the point where I had a one way ticket booked to go back to him and we were gonna get married. He turned out to be very abusive emotionally and mentally, but I fed into that when I said I wanted to marry him but only if he joined the Church. He was one of the people that put on a good face but was not a person I would have dated had I known.