Topic Essay 2 Taten Evans

Dating and marriage in my culture is heavily tied to my religion. You have to date and get married when my religion says I can. In my culture it is generally accepted and expected that we will not start to date until we are sixteen. I think that this helps people mature before they start to date and that can help with a more safe, fun, and interesting dates. Now I do not want to preach to anybody so I will focus more on the aspect of dating in my culture and put short ties to religion in it because of how heavily influenced dating and marriage are related to religion in my culture.
Dating is usually started at the age of sixteen in my culture. Dating is generally hanging out with friends but you inviting a certain person. We generally do not have one on one dates but usually group dates (tying back to religion generally). Most of our key dates are dances that are at our schools. We generally date boys and girls of our age group maybe someone a year older or younger than ourselves. We almost always drive to our dates (I would not usually put this in here until I found out that in New York they do not drive at all). Dates are usually kept generally short because of religion generally. Dating is always in a public setting limiting intimate interactions between one another also generally due to religion and self morals if you have any. When people date in our culture that does not mean that they are “going out” or “Boyfriend, Girlfriend”. Many of our dates are between friends with no intentions to make it anything other than friends. I am actually not really sure why this is, my thoughts on it is not completely because of religion but because in our culture dating is all for fun not just to be with the one you “love” or believe you love at your young adolescent age. It may also be due to boys going on mission when they get older and not wanting to get attached.
Marriage is also heavily tied to religion in my culture. Usually boys marry after their missions which would be around the age of twenty-one. In my culture it is very common for people to get married when they are at a young age. I really have not the slightest idea why that is but I could probably relate it to religion because it seems that everything else I have written about has tied into religion somehow.
In all religion plays an unexplainable part in our dating and marriage. Even if someone is not of the same religion it is so ingrained into us that most people follow the same guidelines because that is our social and cultural norm.