Dating can be like observing Animals in a Zoo

Dating can be crazy, zoo-like, and chaotic. But today I want to tell you about how dating away from home can be like looking at animals in a zoo.

Dr. Brent A. Barlow, renowned Marriage Preparation professor (1), compared dating at college to animals in a zoo. When you are dating at college or anywhere away from home, you and the people you date can seem like animals in a zoo because the people are not in their natural habitats. People are shoved together in little apartments surrounded by different environments and different people. The result is that they can often act a little differently and it is harder to see what that person is really like. Thus, before you make any lasting commitment (like marriage), it is a good idea to go visit their hometown and see what their “natural habitat” looks like.

Going to a person’s hometown is important because it lets you observe their “family of origin”. The Family of Origin has been found to have HUGE influence on later couple attachment, communication, and marriage quality (2)(3). This is because your family is where you learned to communicate, to love, to fight…pretty much everything. But don’t worry, if you don’t like the way your family of origin taught you, you can change things, especially through relationship education classes, books, internet resources, and how you and your partner decide to interact with each other (3).

But what am I looking for?

Things that you should take notice of in their natural habitat/hometown:

1. How does your partner interact with their family?
2. How do they interact with their friends and the people in their town?
3. How do they interact with their hometown environment? (What things do they like to do there, do they like or hate their hometown, etc.)
4. Did they have any enemies in their hometown?
5. How do their parents and siblings act towards each other? (This shows you what sort of environment your partner grew up in).
6. Has anything major happened recently to disrupt their home environment? (so that you are not currently witnessing what their home environment was like while they grew up). This could include things like death of a parent or family member, divorce, or remarriage.

Let me give you an example with a guy I dated several years ago. His parents had already come to see us in our college town, so I felt like I had a good grasp on what his family and home life were like. Boy was I wrong! When I actually went to his hometown, I learned so many things about him! Both good and bad. For some reason in college, he didn’t come off as a farm boy at all…but his hometown was saturated with them. His family builds their own houses, has a lot of land, etc…and since I liked hard-working farm boys, this was a plus for me. However, his sarcastic humor came out even more at home than it had at college…and this was a minus for me. Obviously different people will either love or hate rural towns or sarcasm, but the point is you need to go to their hometown to find out what they are really like. You need to do your homework, be very observant, and ask lots of questions.

There is a little bit of Sage Relationship Advice for you. If you liked this article, subscribe for more at the bottom of the page.

(1) Barlow, Brent A (2008). Notes from a Marriage Prep class taken in Winter 2008 by Sage Erickson. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brent_A._Barlow

(2) Dennison, R. P., Koerner, S. S., & Segrin, C. (2014). A dyadic examination of family-of-origin influence on newlyweds’ marital satisfaction. Journal of Family Psychology, 28(3), 429-435. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0036807

(3) Darin J. Knapp, Jonathan G. Sandberg, Josh Novak & Jeffry H. Larson (2015) The Mediating Role of Attachment Behaviors on the Relationship Between Family-of-Origin and Couple Communication: Implications for Couples Therapy, Journal of Couple & Relationship Therapy, 14:1, 17-38, DOI: 10.1080/15332691.2014.953650