Are We Making This Too Complicated?

This past weekend was LDS General Conference, and I really enjoyed it. Having the opportunity to get all that spiritual, wholesome enlightenment in one weekend is a great experience. I felt better and more optimistic Saturday night than I have in a long time.

One thing which was discussed a bit this time was the subject on marriage. Now, I don't really have that strong of an opinion on the subject. I'm not really all that close to getting married and don't feel too much need to hurry. Maybe that's wrong of me to feel that way. I don't know. Anyway, a lot of what was said was that we should be working to get married if we're at the right age, and it's not good if we're delaying it.

I've kind of thought about this a bit and have seen some discussion on the subject. I agree with some others that it seems so simple. It's like we should be able to find another person fairly easily, with all the people of both sexes looking for somebody to marry. With this same concept, it might even be fairly easy to find a girlfriend. However, it's not. Both of these can actually be really difficult.

I kind of wonder why that is. Almost everybody wants somebody else to be there for them. There's lots of people lonely out there and it seems like they should be able to find each other without too much difficulty. Then why are any people lonely and heartbroken when there are other people out there who feel the same way?

I think much of the problem may be due to high standards, maybe a little too high. A lot of us are trying not too settle for less than we think we can get. We often don't even test our compatibility with some people, since we've told ourselves it wouldn't work. Many set out on dates with this initial mindset, that they can't like the other person more than a friend and the date is just for fun. This results in a lot of pointless dates, because we're not looking at the other person as somebody that's even a candidate.

Back to the topic, I wonder if marriage would be quite as difficult if we just changed our attitude... if we went into every date looking at the other person as if they might be the one. That's really what dating is, isn't it? Maybe we should not go into anything with expectations, too low or too high, and just see how it goes. Maybe if we would stop waiting to find the right person and decide any person could be right for us, it'd be a lot easier... If, when we meet others, we treat them equally instead of based off whether or not that person seems datable. This is something I could do better with, as well, and I admit it's more difficult than it sounds.

I'm going to try to do better, though. I think, if we all made a little bit more effort to be open and give people chances, it'd make finding the right person for us a lot easier, as it would at least be a little less complicated than we might be making it.