Continued from last week
You are left with this thought: No one can go back in time and change many years of having violated most of the principles of good health. But you can start where you are, determining to make steady improvement and maintenance of your health a way of life. Will your future spouse also do this? (You may wish to read our booklet God’s Principles of HEALTHFUL LIVING.)
Mental Health
Mental health is directly connected to a person’s physical health. The minds of both parties must not only be compatible, but must also be stable and balanced. Two aspects of this bear consideration here.
Take an analytical perspective. Ask yourself if the person you are considering is truly mentally balanced. Is his or her family mentally stable? Does the family have a history of depression or mental disorders? I must stress not to dig too deeply, or to critically analyze every mental health issue and nuance of the entire extended family. But careful—and very discrete—observation, with some analysis, is much more important than you may think. Just as family physical health problems can often reappear in later years, so can mental health problems do the same. Children tend to grow up absorbing much more of who and what their parents are than they can possibly know prior to becoming adults themselves. This is when latent tendencies can leap to the fore.
Then ask, how do you relate to each other mentally? When you talk, are you intellectually stimulated? Are you able to have—and do you enjoy—long talks about various aspects of life. Do you find it hard to carry on a continuous conversation, with the inability to stop at a given subject and take it much more in-depth than might normally occur? Also, do you find that you run out of things to talk about?
So many people think that fun in dating comes from exploring each other’s body. The greatest fun comes from exploring each other’s mind. You should be able to easily open up with one another, and to do so over a broad range of topics. You should be able to have a genuinely good time, and to enjoy sharing yourself with this person. If, on more serious or complex topics, the eyes of the other party are “glazing over” too often, this should give you real pause. This is because, in a dating situation, people invariably put their best foot forward, trying to ensure that they make the best possible impression. If you are not regularly hearing meaningful or in-depth responses, on a range of issues, “buyer beware!”—what you see will be what you get for a long, long time!
Make sure that you do not mistake the first impression of a person with a considered judgment of that same person, which can only come after more time spent together.
Having a high IQ is nice, and possessing a formal education—a lot of “book knowledge”—is very good, but it should never be the all-important factor. But you should certainly strive to find someone with similar intellectual capacity and ability. You will be much happier and much more fulfilled if you do!
Be aware of this: It is rarely good that the woman be a great deal more intelligent than the man. Such situations carry the potential of bringing undue stress and friction within the relationship—especially as the man tries to take his proper leadership role. He could feel inferior and resort to putting his wife down and insulting her to compensate for his inadequacy. While intelligence level and mental capacity cannot be measured or quantified exactly (and you should never attempt this), it is critical to remember this guideline.
