By Callie Allen

My name is Jared, and I recently got into a relationship, But my younger brother who is only 18 got his girlfriend, who he had only been dating for one month, pregnant. After seeing the struggles my brother has been going through lately, I decided to talk to my girlfriend about our relationship plans and our standards. We both agreed that we don’t want to have the issues that my brother has been going through. My brother has had issues with his girlfriend which caused them to break up. He will now have to go to court to battle for custody and settle an amount of child support he may have to pay. That is not a situation I want to have in my relationship. 

Me and my girlfriend have only been dating for 3 months. We always have so much fun together, We haven’t even kissed yet, she thinks taking it slow allows you to get to know your partner, while getting to know what each other’s values are. She has taken a class and learned about something called “love Chemicals”, they are released within the first 3 to 9 months of dating. She wants to wait for those chemicals to pass before making any sexual, or even marriage plans. Those chemicals make young adults think irrationally. She says she doesn’t want to have sex until she is married, seeing her parents struggle with affording children made her want to be financially set. Which I agreed to do, although I want to spend my life with her I cannot be positive because I have only been dating her three months and im still experiencing love chemicals in a high dose. 

While talking to each other we have played this game called 20 questions, which may sound childish but it allowed us to get to know each other’s values and personality, and just really get to know each other.  While playing this game we have discussed multiple values, and interests, and we found out we had a lot more in common than we had originally thought. This game was only a way to learn some of the basic stuff about each other, but waiting a minimum of 9 months it allows us to get to know each other and really talk to each other. After getting to know each other we realized that we are both kind of competitive, with realizing these we decided to be aware and be able to vocalize it to each other. When she begins to get competitive i tell her, in a polite matter, she accepts it and we usually begin talking or doing something else. We have agreed on on our sexual boundaries, and have also made a time around the same age, that we would like to get married, and have kids after marriage. We will not have sex until we are ready to have kids, because although you can use protection and other things there is always a possibility and we are not financially stable as of right now. 

We agreed that good communication was an important value to develop before making any huge commitments, having good communication will allow us to have a successful relationship, and will allow us to be able to talk about things that may become a hurdle in the future. We also agreed to not hide our true selves, especially while getting to know each other. If we hide who we truly are then it could end up with false hope and i could maybe be committing to a completely different person than I had originally thought. 

I feel that having this talk even in the early months of dating is important, because you need to learn each other’s boundaries as well as know what each other are like before getting into a lifelong commitment. I told my brother that although he now has permanent ties with his ex, he can always start a new relationship, but before starting one he should really think about his values and reevaluate especially now that he has a child. I have told him about the decisions me and my girlfriend have made up and how it has really been beneficial to us. He said he agreed and he would wait a while to get to know the person before jumping into a serious commitment.