Dating and the Single Parent Essay Example for Free

date and the Single P arnt EssaySummaryIn the book Dating and the Single P arnt Ron r anyy walks the single parent through the process of date again. This book is broken into three divides. Section one has basketball team-spot chapters and is titled Getting Past the Butterflies and fervent Fuzzes. In the beginning pile starts with Dating in a Crowd Dating with Purpose. (29) With this in consciousness the trainer begins to understand you leave behind be dating the entire family. Deal describes different types of daters, and warns the reader against the Consumer daters who inadequacy guarantees (44) astir(predicate) the dates. These consumer daters want the dates to be their all in all and meet their every take up. Deal as well as describes the thought of Mirror, Mirror on the Wall Am I Ready to Date? (47) This section describes the advert loss has on you, and your pass oningness to surrender to Gods direction regarding split up and re conglutination. (58) While determining if you are ready to date Deal lists the readiness factors can you give care being alone, self-assuranceing in God, look at past issues, and asking the questions like, What in my past can I not shake? This is acquire yourself and kids ready for dating.While thinking of fear as the main hurdle in beginning to date, Deal suggests you not sidestep (83) your fear hardly acknowledge it. (83) Not only your fear but how to handle the kids fears and concerns in the dating world. Deal explains When a parent dates, kids feel the shift in direction aside from them and the family this ignites their fear of more loss. (98) The encourage section of the book is called Going Fishing (115) and duologue intimately conclusion love. Finding love in all the right places and in all the wrong ways (117) talks about defining therelationship or the DTR thither are three ways to look at relationships we need to learn when to yield, stop or run with yellow, red and green saplesss. Goin g deeper (163) reminds us to think of where we are in life.Deal states Single people need that perspective so that wont overvalue getting married, and married people need that perspective so they wont unload sight of their purpose in being together. (165) Marital Commitment and Stepfamily Preparation (181) is the topic of the third section of the book. It is about getting re-engaged and making decisions about getting married. Guidelines are given about what things to look for such as endowment and trust issues, how to be open with the children (young and adult).Some key steps in how to pose a mix family are listed. Deal suggests exercises on how to be introduced, recognize loss in your child, preparation the wedding and including the children, and telling the ex. This book takes you through the processes of wanting to date again, dating, and choosing the right type of soul to date. The adjoining steps are about the engagement, telling families and children youre getting marr ied and creating a happily blended family.Potential Use for Christian CouplesThe chapter on Yellow Light. Red Light. Green Light. (141) is a chapter that most pastors need to share with their clients in the premarital counseling. This chapter and the concepts to be taught and learned can save couples from a lot of infliction down the road and give additional skills for making a marriage more compatible. Yellow swingys tell slow down (143) warm that things are great for now, however when you get married and the honeymoon is over rough fourth dimensions are coming. When you are trying to carefully blend families you need to generate confident(predicate) no one has on rose-colored glasses (145) or is ignoring the bumps in the road that allow cover in to mountains later on if not dealt with onward the couple gets married. A guidance needs to discuss a couple to slow down if loneliness or desperation (146) are detected in the counseling sessions. This could indicate an underly ing problem that will come out later in the marriage.The soulfulness with one of these disorders may demand that the otherwise person in the relationship try to be their all in all, and no one can be everything to someone. Counselors should consider a postponement of a marriage if one of the clients comes in with any character traits like quick temper, intimidating, angerreactions, chemical or somatogenic abuse, cant say no, constantly blaming others, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, problems staying calm, financial problems, disengagement with family, hiding previous relationships, or diagnosed genius disorder. (147-148) If a person has experienced or is experiencing one of these challenges, this counselor will strongly suggest that it is dealt with before the marriage takes place. peerless of these problems will cause too some(prenominal) stress for most marriages to overcome. Deal suggests there are red stop luminousnesss. If you acquire extreme differences in parenting styles (15 1) you need to stop dating. This counselor would retain.Raising children is a very hard job when you agree however, when you disagree children tend to play one parent off the other causing conflict between the parents. You need to remember you are not only bonding the person, but in like manner the children. Another red light could be the ex-spouse. If he/she causes constant trouble, you will be in constant turmoil in the recent marriage and will need to consider canceling your plans to marry. Deal suggests other red flags such as cohabitation. This counselor would agree with Deal that cohabitation leans toward persons who have negative attitudes toward marriage, increase their dissociate risk by 50%, are less sexually trustworthy, have lower religious commitment, and are tempted to slide into marriage. (154) Cohabitation is not biblical, in Genesis 224 gives us the standard for all marriages and in Matthew 195 Jesus tells us marriage is a legal and binding relationship.The gre en light (159) means everything is good and you can proceed with the dating or marriage plans. In the green light stage you can define your relationship. At this point Deal suggests you can share your relationship with your children. This also is the stage during which it is suggested you take the Couple Checkup (169). There are two advantages to doing it in this stage number one it provides you and your partner an objective X ray of your relationship health. (169) Second learning about your weaknesses helps you as a couple target specific ways to improve. (169) This counselor will encourage couples in the red light zone to take a break and consider not dating any longer. If they are in the yellow light zone this counselor will encourage them to consider looking deeply at what the problems are and working through them before proceeding with the relationship.In the green light zone this counselor will encourage them to be willing to talk about issues when they arise, to be willing totalk about them, and to work on a compromise. Deal states Confidence calms the heart and reduces anxiety. (194) This counselor could not agree more, and knowing where you stand in a relationship is the most important element. Solidifying the relationship so both persons know how each other feels and what to expect keeps the green light going. Telling the children if you have children will be important. A plan needs to be made about how to tell them and expect the unexpected. One needs to expect them to be happy and for them to be angry about the decision. Letting the children know what will happen will help them through the fear and anger.Deal does not go into depth about what to do if the families do not want this marriage. What if the families do not like the person you want to marry? This counselor agrees the spouse that was married to the ex ought to tell him/her before the wedding sidereal day. Once the wedding day has taken place often times the children are going to be str essed out by this and misbehave. Deal suggests often times when things settle down from the wedding the child parent relationship will work itself out. This is a relationship neither party has had to handle before and it will be new challenges to both the parent and the child. Deal encourages parents to have a united front with the children. (206) If they do not have a unified team everything will begin to crumble. (207)CritiqueDeal speaks about commitment and trust (187) issues with couples. He explains that marriage is complicated and requires a couple to not be selfish. God in his uncounted wisdom ask each person to make a covenant that binds them together throughout life, (187) or until death do us part. (187) Elwell states in the time of Christ a man could divorce his wife for the most trivial of reasons (347) from the Hillelite Pharisees. (347) This would suggest that if you take the side of the Hillelite Pharisees, our no fault divorce laws have been more or less for centu ries. It is a delicate dance to get someone to commit to marriage to you when you are ready to commit to marriage and they will not.Deal gives several ideas Patiently continue dating, wrestle with your impatience, identify any specific concerns, give time for the hesitant person to find resolution, and at some point, the higher desire person will grow weary of waiting. (188) Deal does later in the book suggest a time line of five years is a reasonable time to wait onsomeone. If you have waited for five years and they still have not made a decision but you love them and cannot ideate life without that person do you walk away? Would it not be like a divorce? This counselor would not suggest anyone stay with someone for more than the five years unless they can make a decision to marry or not to marry.Deal speaks about crockpots and blenders in the chapter about Preparing for a Good Blend. The crockpots are those couples who move slowly with low heat, (208) while the blender couples are those who move pronto with high velocity. (208) Deal states It is far wiser to adopt the crockpot cooking style. (208) Otherwise slow and study is a much better way to blend a family than trying to quickly trying to force them to be a blended family. In this chapter he gives ideas about how to create stepfamilies. He says Younger children under the age of five may require far less time to soften toward stepparents than those between the ages of ten and fifteen years. Also, on occasion, a stubborn ingredient may resist softening and retain a sour taste. In either case, keep cooking. This counselor would whole heartedly agree with his wisdom. The younger children are when stepparents arrive into their life, the easier it is to accept them.Deal also gives ideas about how to handle situations like getting married, calling a stepfather Daddy, combining holidays and other special-day traditions, and pickings pictures as a family. (209-210) With statistics saying that fifty percent of fi rst marriages fail and sixty percent of second marriages fail (smartmarriages.com) this counselor believes Deal has made great recommendations in his book about how to blend families. immingle families will take work and Deal says that many times in this book. This book is an easy read with thought provoking topics. Some of the topics have a different way of looking at them than tralatitious thoughts. This book is a must read if you are thinking of remarrying or marrying someone who has been married before.ReferencesDeal, R. (2012). Dating and the single parent. Bloomington, MN Bethany House Publishing. Eller, W. (2001). Evangelical dictionary of theology. 2n ed. Grand Rapids, MI Baker Book House. Marano, H. E., part? Dont even think of remarrying until you read this. www.smartmarriages.com. Accessed November 8, 2014.