It is very important that we understand that the foundation of every marriage is courtship. The way you handle your relationship with your partner during courtship will determine the type of home that you are going to build together, so you really need to lay a solid foundation for your marriage and home during the courtship.

What Is Courtship?

Courtship can be define as the traditional dating period of two partners before engagement or marriage. During courtship, the partners get to know each other and decides on getting married or not. When courting a lot of activities are involved, this activities may be fun but must be handle with care as your partner will be taking note of every decision you make. Although, taking note of your actions may not be his/her intentions but believe me they are taking note of everything, the person may not even know that he/she is taking note of things, but in future they will remember every actions and words spoken by you. So handle things with care.

Stages In Courtship

There are stages in courtship since it requires human behaviors and emotions, hence, reason for stages. The stages are :

• The Meeting : Every relationship starts somewhere and sometime, this can happen anywhere, it may be in a social gatherings such as church or party, even the meeting may be on internet. This meeting may be casual but with keen interest on knowing more about the partner.

• Attraction Stage : This is a stage where individuals will be making efforts to look more attractive so as to catch the interest of the other partner. At this stage the focus will mostly be on physical appearance, as the result their differences may not be noticed. This stage may last for four months to five months.

• Enlightenment Stage: At this stage, the partners may begin to notice differences, because they don't feel the tensions they felt at the previous stage again, so they will begin to act naturally which will give room for their flaws and differences to surface. As the result of this complain may start to come in with attempt to solve emerging problems.

• Engagement Stage: This stage comes into reality after which the couple have learnt a lot of lessons about each other and have decided to be with each other despite their differences. At this stage their relationship will be so strong that they will begin to plan their future together. Also their families and friends will begin to have relationship among each other.

Things to do and not to do during courtship

There is a law guiding everything you do earth either you know it or not. Also in courtship there is a list of things you need to do or do away with :

• Don't marry your partner out of pity : It is very sad that most people marry the wrong person today out of pity to that person, at the end of the day they will be the one to suffer the consequences. Don't marry because you feel bad for what had happened to your partner in the past. Don't carry your partner's bad experience burden, you are not responsible for it.

• Don't marry your partner because you feel that you owed him/her: Marriage is a life contract don't marry because you think you are indebted to someone you don't love in one way or the other.

• Find means for good communication : When I'm talking about communication, I'm not talking about just gisting about movies you've watched or something funny that has nothing to do with your relationship, communicate with your partner on how you want your home be, plan your home well with your partner. If you fail in this area, there is high probability that your marriage will fail in the future

• Don't take your partner for granted : Many people makes that mistake, when they see someone very lenient they may take him/her for granted or because their partner love them more than anything they may begin to misbehave. It is very good for your partner to love, care and trust, but anytime you fall short of this things from your partner due to your attitude that would be the end.

• Don't ever think you have power to change your partner : many have miss it because they think that they will be able to change their partner's bad attitude after the wedding, my dear, if this is what you think you have miss it already, you are not God, so you can't change anybody if there is this attitude you can't tolerate from your partner and it seems that the person is not changing, just run for your life, he/she will never change.

• Don't cheat : If you cheat during courtship there is probability that your partner will discover and when he/she does, that may be the end, and if it is not the end, he/she will never trust you again. If you don't love your partner you better let him or her go than cheating.

• Don't be blinded by sexual abilities, talents, beauty or wealth : These things are capable of blinding someone not to see what is needed to see. For someone to have all these doesn't mean you will find happiness in him/her, someone may be beautiful or handsome at the same time be a beast. Be wise

• Be vigilant : Here, I mean you listen to advice (not all advice are good to follow), if what you are hearing about your partner is more of negative than positive, please wise up and do your own research.

• Lastly be prayerful: I know with God all things are possible.

How long can a courtship last?

No matter how long you stay in a courtship, you can never know everything about your partner. The longer your courtship the riskier it gets. So THREE YEARS at most is okay. About 75% of prolonged courtship doesn't end in marriage, that will be topic for another day.

Your future starts now plan it well, please like, comment and subscribe. Thanks for reading.