Finding Mr. Right

As Valentine’s Day approaches, thoughts turn to love, romance, dating, and even marriage.

A while back, a good friend of mine wrote a piece on dating (“My Grandma Would Trash This Marxist Rubbish”). Now, she’s updated it with the sequel: proof that standards, dating, and happy marriage all have something to do with each other. In her piece, “Finding Mr. Right”, Guiomar describes how dating and her standards finally paid off.

This week, I’ll be discussing Valentine’s Day and its significance on my weekly radio segment (9.05 a.m. – 9.30 a.m. EST, Thursday) with Teresa Tomeo. Guiomar’s article ties into one of our discussion themes, namely that if marriage is a vocation, i.e. something that one is called to do, then it’s going to involve work, starting with the dating/courtship that leads to marriage.

Granted, dating is not always easy. It’s not that long ago that I was out there; so I haven’t forgot. While it’s tempting to want to give up, the reality is that our future spouse isn’t going to just show up on our doorstep. But the work pays off. Read for yourself from Guiomar’s article:

On my thirty-fourth birthday my friends once again gathered to raise their glasses. This time, however, they didn’t just toast me but my husband as well. We got married a year to the day we met. We look back on our dating days and smile. He was looking for a feminine woman with a hard head and panache. I was looking for a masculine man with an outgoing personality and a kind heart. We had both thought we had high standards — perhaps too high. In hindsight what we actually had were traditional values that we refused to compromise on.