If you don't mind a critique...
Dating. What did dating mean to our parents? Dating was something where you weren’t in a relationship with someone, it means you were getting to know the person to start a relationship. Now to us dating means you’re my boyfriend and I’m your girlfriend. So when I talk about dating, I’m talking about what it means to us. Dating in our generation.
You mentioned that dating refers to something different to us than what it did to our parents. I have to disagree. To go out on a date generally refers to two people who are trying to form or strengthen a relationship whereas two people who are actively dating refers to two people who are in a relationship. This is true today and it was true when our parents were teenagers.
You shouldn’t just be dating someone just to pick out little qualities from each person then try to piece together an imaginary person you want to find later.
This statement needs elaboration. It's kind of vague, so pardon me if my response missed the point.
It sounds like you have this idea that people date each other because they want to take qualities of their current relationships and try to look for someone else in the future with those qualities. This is never the goal of dating, though it can be a side effect from being in relationships.
If you go out with a person you care for, but you realize you have a hard time getting along with a person who likes to go out often, you might start looking for someone who's more apt to staying home more often. Gaining this information wasn't the goal of the original relationship, it's merely a side effect from being in the relationship which happened to have failed.
Taking what you can from current relationships so that you can improve current or future relationships is something everyone should do, even Christians.
The world treats every relationship like an everyday thing when in reality its not. Dating and relationships is something special. When you date someone we should do it the old fashion way, be friends while you get to know each other if you like each other and think you guys are stable enough to form a relationship and grow into marriage do it.
I'm assuming you're referring to non-Christians when you say "the world". You're generalizing way too much. There are many different reasons why people date.
You're also under the impression there's an "old fashion way". Our methods of dating may have changed, but the reasons we date have not. Some people date as a means of looking for fun, others want something that's casual and temporary, and some people date as a means of finding the right person.
Then after dating for a while as friends. You guys decide you can form the relationship of boyfriend and girlfriend with the hopes of getting married. If you guys don’t see that happening while dating, its probably a sign you shouldn’t form a commitment with that person in a relationship.
Later on, you explain what you mean when you refer to people as boyfriend and girlfriend. However, you need to keep in mind that other people use these words differently than you. What you may refer to as
just friends might be
boyfriend and girlfriend to another person.
I have Hispanic roots so I speak Spanish. In Spanish we call the bride to be the “novia” and the groom to be the “novio” which means boyfriend and girlfriend. I consider this translation when we take it back to our terms. Really if you’re a girlfriend, you should be a bride to be, and if you’re the boyfriend you really should be the groom to be.
What you're referring to as girlfriend and boyfriend is commonly referred to as fiance and fiancee in English. We consider two people in this position to be engaged.
Not just two people getting to know each other and calling each other bf and gf. Take your time, they all say breaking hearts is they way to find the perfect person but a relationship is something special. Its not a game where it doesn’t work out and you both lose and ohh move on. Cause that’s how you treat a game. You lose you move on to the next. A relationship is a bond between two people and its not just a game. So don’t treat it like one.
When we refer to dating as a game, we don't mean dating is as unimportant as a game of checkers. We mean there are certain strategies, such as what we see in Chess. Just because someone might date a lot as a means of finding the right person, it doesn't mean they don't take the relationships seriously. It simply means they're trying to find the right person.
Some people don't take dating seriously though, but it's not just because they simply date, break up, and move on. It's because they don't take their partners seriously. It's because they rarely care what happens.
Now that I've gotten the negatives out of the way, allow me to focus on the positives.
You're well aware that serious relationships tend to work out best in stages. Although I believe you shouldn't dwell too much on what it means to refer to someone as boyfriend and girlfriend, you understand that it's better for two people who want a serious relationship to take their time in getting to know one another before jumping straight into a deep commitment. This was your main point, and it's a very good one. All of my disagreements are focused more on the fluff, or the fairly minor details.
If you focus less on the terminology, I feel you could really flesh the idea out some more. Explain what it means to commit too much too early. Express how things can go wrong. Etc.
Anyway, it's good to see someone your age writing down their views on life. I hope you don't take offense to any of my criticisms, but I feel you'll learn from them one way or another. Making your ideas public and listening to other people's reactions is a great way to challenge what you think you know and to flesh out your ideas so they're more in depth and consistent.
