Dating Is the Trailer of Your Marriage

Did you ever sit down with your favorite streaming service and watch trailers?

You know what sort of movie you want to see but you need more than the title and a brief description. You need to experience some of the movie before you commit.

Dating and marriage should be like that. 

Dating is the trailer of your marriage.

You can see a Catholic Match photo, and read a brief description of the person. But it’s when you date the person, that you begin to experience some of the person for yourself.

How does dating help you know if you should commit? Here’s an easy rule:

If it’s in the trailer, it’s in the movie—only more of it! 

Movie-wise, if the trailer is funny, the movie will be funny. If the trailer is scary, the movie will be scary. If the trailer is boring, the movie will be boring.

Okay, so what if a trailer is good but has a millisecond of something you hate? You know that you will see that scene played out for a significant amount of time and even more intensely when it comes to the actual movie. 

Right? I don’t need to tell you that about movies. Everybody gets that. But it’s true of marriage too and not everybody gets that. 

And marriage is way more important!

What you see in dating, whether it is good or bad, beautiful or ugly, you could be living with for possibly the next fifty years. And the things you see just hints of in dating are going to play out for a significant amount of time and even more intensely when it comes to marriage.

So pay attention when you are dating!

Sorry if this seems unromantic, but dating is not only about having a good time.

It is also the time when you are supposed to think about the long-term future. Take it from someone who has been married over 30 years and has lots of friends who also have lasting marriages. 

We can all name something we are living with now that was there from the beginning, we just chose to ignore it.

I am not saying that all of us regret our marriages—far from it. I am also not saying that everything you see that you don’t like needs to be a deal-breaker. We are all fallen and selfish. No one is going to get a perfect spouse or be a perfect spouse. 

But you should definitely not ignore your beloved’s faults. Do this instead:

Observe what they do after they have fallen. Can they admit they were wrong or are they always right? Do they shake it off or do they get into a brooding funk? Are they more interested in forgiving and being happy or in getting their version of justice?

Back to our movie imagery: you need to learn the character. Find out: Who is this person really?

It might take time. Just as some movies do an excellent job of hiding who the character really is until you have watched for a while, you need to see your beloved handle different situations and people. You can watch a movie wondering: Is she sincere or is this sweetness just a tactic to get what she wants? Is he the hero or the bad guy? 

Ultimately, what will reveal the truth? Time and circumstances and the other characters. 

You need to date someone for a long enough period of time so that you can see them in different circumstances, with different people, in different places, especially in their home environment.

And you should know yourself.

What kind of person are you? What are your needs? Be honest and true to yourself not just in a hurry to settle.

If you were picking a movie, you would have no doubt about what you wanted to see and what matched and what did not. You would not put on Braveheart and expect it to go like My Big Fat Greek Wedding. 

Yet lots of people prefer to concentrate on the stuff they liked and ignore the scary stuff. It’s like saying, “Hey, there are jokes in Braveheart. That makes it a comedy, right?”

Just ask divorce lawyers where that gets you—straight to their office!

Here a set of divorce lawyers, themselves happily married, tell you that most people spend more time thinking about wedding cake than the nature of the commitment they are making. 

I would add that most people understand how movie trailers relate to movies but not how dating relates to marriage. 

Don’t let that be you. 

Marriage is a way more significant choice than a movie.