8 Things to prepare before going out for a date

The best way to obtain a happy and faithful marriage is to marry the right person at the right time. But how do you know when you’ve found the right woman Or the right man to settle down with?

Courtship and marriage are the culmination of the development that has taken place throughout the first eighteen to twenty years of life. Courtship allows young men & young women to practice in a limited way the roles and virtues necessary in marriage. 

Proper courtship is the phase during which people will decide whether or not to marry a specific person. It should not begin before young men and young women have nearly reached maturity. Plan to do that only after 18 or so. 

When couples respect each other enough to practice virtue in every aspect of their courtship, they lay a foundation likely to withstand the most serious assaults during the marriage.

During courtship, a couple practices the merging of two separate lives. Couples should look carefully at one another’s habits and preferences. Clothing, preferences, listening habits, language, hobbies, financial attitudes, personal grooming, manners and courtesies, actions around one’s own family and parents, spiritual values—these and more predict much of what marriage will be. Ordinarily, couples may assume that the other person is behaving as well as possible and, therefore, after marriage some “slipping” is likely. Habits, good or bad, are not easily changed.

“No one is perfect. Courtship is a time to observe and weigh what the other person is like, at his or her best and worst. It is also a time to evaluate one’s self.”  Spencer W. Kimball